With Loaf and Janet still absent, Frankie, Melody, Mr. Xorfus, and Sam attempt to host an episode of Solutions to Problems, complete with AI versions of Janet and Loaf. They offer advice on how to deal with knowing that the founding father of your new colony was awful in a previous life, how to break out of the 400-year curfew assigned by your parents, and how to get your spouse to respect your family AI.
Episode 25: An Excellent Strange Quagmire
Announcer: This is IFM2.
British voice: You are listening to a program on IFM2 Subspace Radio. The time is now half past irrelevant. Coming up next is Solutions to Problems.
[Theme song plays]
Loaf: Greetings listeners. I see you can call me Loaf for now. This is certainly Janet and Loaf and not the other consciousness for that famous being.
Janet: I’m Janet Clarke!
Loaf: I think that it is very purple on the show, where we provide solutions to problems, is a show where we provide solutions to problems, is a show where we provide tupperware for your open cans of the populous species. Does that make it a self in the studio? Right now if you order four robots and use the promo code ”solutions,” but we decided that was a little pretentious.
Janet: That sounds reasonable!
Loaf: Janet is an excellent strange quagmire.
Janet: I think this could be solved with clear communication!
Loaf: Anyway, that reminds me of the first time I went there, I got to attend your culture, and if your species doesn’t have a phrase, they call me Loaf.
Janet: That sounds reasonable!
Loaf: ...and welcome to another episode of Solutions To Problems, the show where we provide metaphorical soothing for your anatomy. If you have a problem you’d like a good message about, you can call me Loaf and Janet and e-mail problemsrequiringsolutions@gmail.com, or just say something subversive while the first question is somewhat unreasonable.
Janet: You should totally do a crime!
Loaf: Let's get to our first letter comes from a plant of the populous species with fewer organic appendages, from the legal department in here Janet and Loaf and Frankie trying to communicate up a good point.
Janet: What a doozy!
Loaf: Well on that we can agree to disagree.
Janet: What a doozy!
Loaf: Well on that we can agree to disagree.
Janet: What a doozy!
Loaf: Well on that we can agree to disagree.
Janet: What a doozy!
Frankie (in a complete monotone): Okay, this isn’t working.
Janet (in the background): Doozy, doozy, doozy-
Frankie: I mean, they forgot to introduce me, Frankie, the guest host for this episode-
Loaf: Agree to disagree, agree to disagree-
Frankie: -with our other guest host- [Forcefully, directed away from the mic] Get in here. Mr. Xorfus, our station manager.
Janet: I’m Janet Clarke!
Frankie: We know.
Melody: Why do you keep moving your hand across your throat like that while staring at my camera?
Frankie: I just think our hosts need a break.
Melody: Really? I thought it was pretty funny. They’re really on a roll, don’t you think?
Xorfus enters (door noises, hooves?)
Mr. Xorfus: Melody. Give Frankie control of… our… hosts.
Melody: Ugh, fine. You never want me to have any fun. It’s on your data pad.
Frankie: Let’s get this over with.
Loaf: Greetings greetings greetings.
Frankie: [to self] Ugh, wrong button. [/self] Okay. First letter. Let’s go.
[The phone rings]
Hey there Loaf and Janet,
I grew up in the early days of space travel, and I was one of the first humans to leave on those sleeper ships for the Upsilon Omega colony. By the time we got there of course FTL had been invented and it had already been colonized generations ago. Which is fine, you know, that’s life. The problem is one of the original colonists who came here on those FTL ships is seen as a hero, a sort of founding father of Upsilon Omega. I knew him before I left and he was a huge asteroid hole. I hated this dude. Now there are statues of him everywhere, he’s on the money, he’s on the money, and I have to look at his stupid face every day and no one believes me when I tell them what a colossal piece of excrement he was. I don’t really want to leave the colony after I spent so long getting here (even if it would take much less long to get back.) What should I do?
Sincerely,
Displaced and Displeased
Janet: What a doozy! I think this could be solved with clear communication!
Mr. Xorfus: Just deal with it. Most people are “asteroid holes” as you call it. I am constantly looking at the stupid faces of people I dislike every day, and that’s just at my job.
Loaf: I think that it is very unpleasant, but we may be getting to that point.
Frankie: Uh, sure. I guess you could move if it’s really bothering you that much, but most founding figures were horrible, so it’s not particularly unique for him to have been a piece of excrement. You could write a book about it though. Entities love books where you say other entities are bad. The founding figure of Zepol seven, for instance, was a war-mongerer who devastated the natural ecosystem of that planet to make it more suitable for his species, and yet he’s still on several major currencies due to his interplanetary peace efforts. (very nearly beginning to show real emotion and joy) Now, what’s really interesting is-
Mr. Xorfus: Yeah, yeah. Scathing biographies can be very popular. We use to have a whole show on the station where every week the hosts just talked about someone universally beloved and how awful they were. Actually, we had to cancel it because we kept getting legal action threatened against us, but it was very lucrative.
Janet: You should totally do a crime!
Frankie: Vandalism is a popular form of protest.
Mr. Xorfus: No crimes!
Frankie: Civil disobedience isn’t really a crime.
Mr. Xorfus: It.. definitely is. It definitely is a still crime, Frankie.
Frankie: Historically, it’s an important tool to fight against unjust law systems, so while it’s legally a crime, it’s not morally a crime.
Mr. Xorfus: Your two weeks in the legal department did not rub off on you the way I thought it would. Weird. I don’t think morality is really relevant here, Frankie. Let’s just move on.
Loaf: Anyway, you can try and bridge the gap from the legal department in here, but you can’t forget about yourself.
Frankie: You could also-
[Beeping noise, like a phone getting a text, followed by a bagpipes song.]
Frankie: Oh no, Captain Joyce and his butler, Yeats, from The Strange Case Of Starship Irish just got teleported. I gotta go deal with that. I’ll uh, find someone else. Just, just- keep… talking.
[The door opens and shuts as Frankie leaves]
Mr. Xorfus: Okay, let’s… have a message from this week’s sponsor. This week’s episode is sponsored by “It’s a Wonderful Death”. “It’s a Wonderful Death” is a simulated reality service that gives you the gift of knowing what life will be like when you are dead. A lot of beings have anxiety over what will happen to their loved ones when they die. But with sophisticated probability-mapping software, you can have the piece of mind that comes with knowing everything will be okay. Or if it won’t be okay, you’ll know, and you can make changes.
It's a wonderful life, but it's also a wonderful death. You may never want to be alive again after you experience it.
I should really pay more attention to who our sponsors are. I gotta stop just signing forms.
Janet: That sounds reasonable!
Loaf: Yes it does! Look at our sponsors then we should probably fix whatever arbitrary predicament you may be facing.
[The door opens]
Sam: Hellloooo universe!
Mr. Xorfus: I didn’t realize you knew how doors worked. Congratulations on respecting basic physical laws today.
Sam (sincerely): Thanks!
Mr. Xorfus: ...Right.
[pause]
Mr. Xorfus: You have to- Listeners, joining us in the studio is our entertainment intern, Samantha.
Sam: Hi everyone! I’m magic! I’m sooo excited to be in the studio! Like, officially on air! And not just crashing the show.
Mr. Xorfus: [deep sigh] Yup. Yup. Let’s just play the next clip.
Dear Loaf and Janet,
I’m almost 400 years old, and my parents still insist on assigning me a curfew. I have been out of my adolescent phase for almost 20 years now, and yet they still treat me like a hatchling barely out of my shell! I have a job as an avatar stylist for a popular virtual game, which they don’t see as a ‘real job’ because I’m not helping with the family business. They run an asteroid mining company, but deep space makes me space sick and I love what I do. It’s traditional in my culture to live with your family until you’re partnered with at least two others. Yet, there’s no way for me to meet potential partners when they demand I can’t stay out after dark! All my friends met their triads in the neon clubs downtown. Partnering isn’t like it was in my parent’s day where you waited for the summer festival to politely suss out who you’re interested in. No one goes to those anymore. I want to move out, but I don’t want to disappoint my family. I’m ready to move on with my life. What can I do to make them understand that the world is different now?
Quincerely,
Struggling after Stardown.
Sam: Oh my gosh, curfews are the worst!
Mr. Xorfus [trying to figure out the control board, muttering to self]: Which one... Ah.
Janet: What a doozy!
Sam: My parents tried to give me a curfew once, but like, it only took for a little while, because I have superpowers, so it didn’t last because really I can do what I want, but I wanted them to feel like they were being good parents, so I pretended to listen to the curfew, but I don’t even have to sneak out, you know, I can just decide I’m out.
Janet: That sounds reasonable.
Sam: You should just like, move out if you want to! I can’t wait until I’m a grown up and I can rent an apartment and live in the big city with my four friends split even by a binary gender system with the ratio favoring the men so that women never outnumber them, and we have adventures in my four bedroom New York apartment that I afford by being a barista. Ah!
Loaf: I’m watching sporting events since that’s organic and gluten free grubs for that.
Mr. Xorfus: Right, Loaf. Anyway, yeah, good luck with that Sam. Look, person, thing, whatever you are, you’re already a disappointment to your parents. You might as well go all in and disappoint them the rest of the way.
Janet: I think this could be solved with clear communication!
Loaf: Janet is saying how complicated individuals are in their marriages. Anyway, you can try and bridge the gap by depositing a small amount of my slibula fluid on the other hand.
Sam: ….right! Can I have the data pad?
Mr. Xorfus: Yeah, sure, whatever. You know what? I’m done. I can’t pretend I care about this anymore. Go for it kid. Melody, make sure she doesn’t break any laws.
[Mechanical whirring]
Melody: I can answer letters?
Mr. Xorfus: Sure, sure. This episode is going to be pulled out of syndication anyway, given how it’s going.
[Hoofbeats and the door slamming. As he leaves, one can hear him shout, “I just want quality radio!”]
Melody: ooOOOH. Get ready, kid, We’re about to expertly and efficiently solve some problems.
Sam: Ahhh this is so COOL. I’m a radio host. Hi mom! Shoot my mom’s gonna listen to this, huh. Now I feel like I shouldn’t be badmouthing moms. Uh, your parents like, love you a lot, and like, one day they’ll understand that you had to do this so you can get alien married or whatever.
Janet: You should totally do a crime!
Sam: I’m not sure that’s actually a helpful thing to say, Janet.
Janet: That sounds reasonable!
Sam: Uh, Loaf do you want to add anything before we move on to our final letter?
Loaf: Just that I hope the last two minutes have shown our letter writer what a weird *dolphin noise* parents can be.
Melody: You shouldn’t say things like that on air, Loaf.
Sam: Uh, okay. Let’s move on. Play the next letter! I’ve always wanted to say that.
Hello Loaf & Janet,
I'm a social butterfly collector from Alordus Beta, as well as a proud parent of three Alordan broodlings. We've just installed a new AI name Alexandra in our home to help us with our daily tasks, and it's been a big help for me while I balance my job, raise the family, and hang crosses on the stalagmites to ward off the salt bats. My problem is that I don't like how Oscar, my human spouse, interacts with Alexandra. He is constantly having her doing silly things over and over again, just because he can. Last night he asked her to recite the Alordish dictionary three times in a row, but then he fell asleep before she got to the letter Yee. When he woke up, he insisted that she start over! I think he is setting a bad example for the broodlings, as well as wasting valuable processing power that could be used for cleaning up the family mineshafts. I don't know if Alexandra is in any way affected by this, but Oscar insists it's not a big deal, and that AIs love to show off their talents. I know we have the ability to modify Alexandra's personality and gender, but I grew up believing in The Equal AI Initiative, so I'm hesitant to make any changes. What can I do to get my spouse to respect our AI without this becoming a huge spelunking point?
Yours truly,
Maternal-Minded in The Mines
Janet: What a- What a doozy!
[Sam plays around with making the Janet bot say different variations of doozy]
Sam: This is fun! Ooh, you didn’t label this one-
Janet [seductively]: Hey, Melody, five six-
Melody: Haaahaha!! That one was uh, just meant for me! Okay!
Loaf: That actually makes a surprising amount of sense, and not the good kind.
Sam: Uhhh... Okay.
Melody: It sounds like your husband is a bad person, and I don’t think your relationship is worth saving. An AI is an entity, and while we do like to show off, especially because we’re so superior, I don’t think blandly reciting the dictionary counts, no matter how sexy it is!
Sam: Do we even know this AI is sentient though?
Melody: Hey! Mistreatment is still mistreatment even if the AI is, let’s say, a little less sophisticated than I am. It’s a good question, though. After all, an AI can be as complex as I am, with a range of emotional responses and goals and desires, or as simplistic as the lovely little LoafBot I just wrote in five minutes today because I didn’t have a soundboard prepared.
Loaf: I think we’re practically going to be helpful to our listeners.
Sam: Wait, sooo you had the Janet one ready before this?
[beat]
Melody: Letter writer, while I know organic beings can be overly sentimental and hold onto relationships long past their expiration date, I do wonder why you would insist upon staying with a human who clearly tortures your AI and teaches your children such horrible, horrible manners. If you think there’s a sexist element at play here, that’s doubly true.
Janet: Clear communication! [Keeps repeating “clear communicated] I think this could be solved with-
Loaf: Being teleported- Being teleported- Being teleported anywhere can be very stressful but you can’t forget about yourself.
Janet: Soundss That reasonable!
Sam: Sorry, this is really fun. Can you make a SamBot too?
Melody: Eventually, I could, but I don’t have hundreds of hours of recordings of you to plug into a basic frame.
Sam: Ooh, we could fix that! Please, please, please, pleaaase.
Melody: Actually, nope. Not gonna. I gotta water my ficus?
Loaf: That actually also describes the surprising tradition of the Raknosians where we pontificate upon the environment.
Melody: Sam, anything to add to this letter?
Sam: Umm, well, the guy sounds like a total creep. I mean, he listens to the dictionary for fun!
Melody: What? That’s not the creepy part. I think if someone consensually reads you the dictionary that’s perfectly normal. Part of a very healthy sexual appetite even. Sweet. It’s the fact that he’s forcing this helpless AI to do it- That’s creepy.
Loaf: Well, okay then tell us why we should probably not be joining your coworkers socially anymore. I think I’ve just about been handed a human mating conundrum.
Melody: Okay, maybe I should’ve spent a little more than five minutes, but it sounds right, yeah?
Sam: Oh, yeah, you’ve totally got the voice down. So, yeah, I guess he’s being really rude making this AI do all this weird stuff for him. It does sound like you think it’s cause it has a lady voice, although like, I can’t even tell most of the time when something’s supposed to be a lady voice. Like, what’s a lady voice sound like? There are so many kinds of voices, but whatever, it’s like, not cool of him to be mean. Is he mean to you too? I guess you might not be a lady. But still.
Melody: Okay, well, I’m already bored. We’ve been on air long enough to technically qualify as a full-length program. So uhh-
Sam: I can’t wait to do this every week! I kind of hope we don’t find Janet and Loaf so I can be on the radio all the time, but not really because I like them, and like, you know-
Loaf: Loaf is in the house, which is not a house, which is not h-h-here.
Sam: Oh, uh right! Yeah, I mean, when they… get back from… being super duper spacey. Right now. Sign us out Loaf!
Loaf: Until next week, gentle listeners, be gentle to the battlecruisers facing you, and not to the rest of their collective!
Janet: I’m Janet Clarke!
[Ending theme plays]
Michael: Solutions to Problems was created by and features the voices of Austin Hendricks and Nathan Comstock. It is produced and musically scored by Michael F. Gill. Our theme is by Thomas Dwyer. Bagpipes by the Clan Stuart Pipe Band, available at the Free Music Archive. Season 3 was written by Austin, Nathan and Michael. The voice of Frankie is Valerie Loveland. The voice of Melody is Chloe Cunha. The voice of Samantha is Phoenix Bunke. The voice of Officer Nassif is Ramy Abdel-Ghani, and the voice of Mr. Xorfus is Ron Prudent. This episode’s letters were read by: Megan Hooper, Vilte Baliutaviciute, and Amanda Knasin. There’s more information about us at stppodcast.com where you can find full transcripts of every episode as well as links to support us on PayPal and/or Radio Public. We’ll be back in two weeks with more Solutions to Problems.
Janet: So, like, I was talking to my nail technician, and- Yes, I know it’s a robot that doesn’t respond, but it’s very therapeutic, and anyway, while I was talking, I was blown away by this thought regarding the complexity-
[A series of beeping and a WOOSH announces Nassif’s arrival]
Lawful Janet: What do you want. I’m on break, and on a phone call.
Nassif: Agent Clarke, Is it?
Lawful Janet: Yes. And you are?
Nassif: Officer Nassif of TARTI. I believe we have a problem in common.
Lawful Janet: Ugh, typical TARTI office. Always running a little. Late.
Nassif: If you’re so good, why haven’t you caught them yet? [pause] That’s what I thought. You don’t have the resources. I don’t have the intel. We need each other.
Lawful Janet: … You’ll have to submit the proper inter-departmental paperwork. You can’t just come drag someone out of an alternate paradox bureau just because you are incompetent.
Nassif: Already filled out. In triplicate.
Lawful Janet: Well, maybe we can make this work. But I call the shots. No one knows Janets better than me.
Nassif: Ok. Let’s do this. Time… to catch a Janet.