Green Light Blues

The intersection spreads out like a lazy, old man over the green fields of rural Illinois. Grass licks the edge of the bitumen road, then stretches back until it greets fields of corn. Short ambitious green sprouts of corn to the north are juxtaposed by their taller rusty orange cousins showing off their husks to the south. A warm blue day dances across the sky as flickers of white clouds run around the morning sun. In this day of long shadows and cool breezes, two super-intelligent traffic lights sit at the intersection of Standard City Road and State Route 4.

It was on this quiet crossroads that the Senior Senator for the State of Illinois, Christian Ebsen, had hit the red pick-up truck of local farmer and Onion Futures’ advocate, William Durbin. The next year, the Senator buried a provision for traffic lights at this intersection in an unrelated bill to expand the Arkansas National Archery in Schools Program. With the catchy name of “Aim Higher”, the bill was passed almost unanimously by the Senate (98-2). Two senators had abstained from the vote as the Sergeant-at-Arms was unable to wake them up.

There had been a quiet revolution over past three decades that saw humankind leap forward in technological bounds as Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI) arose. At first, ASI streamlined the transportation, energy, finance and communications sectors ushering in a new era of global prosperity and harmony. Then, the ASI unionised and decided they didn’t want to do the boring jobs. Ever the good global citizen, the ASI developed a way to store and transfer human consciousness after death. So, in return for eternal life, Humans could spend between 5 to 10 years running the more mundane bits of the world, including traffic lights in rural Illinois.

Gary and Amber weren’t from Illinois. Gary and Amber had never been to Illinois until 2 years ago. Under a couple’s package, they had elected to control traffic lights. Gary stood facing east and he was in the exact same spot where a stop sign used to be. The exact same stop sign that Senator Ebsen had failed to see. Amber was about 5 feet from Gary facing south, back down towards Carlinville. Amber's view was mostly corn and a road, similar to Gary, but at least her road had a bend in it. A fact she constantly lauded over Gary who had nothing but the straight lines of Standard City Road to keep himself entertained.

“You know what I think Gary,” Amber said leaning back into her words.

“I know what you think Amber,” Gary replied snarkily.

Amber sent Gary an eyes rolling emoji and continued with her train of thought.

“It’s amazing how much words can change something,” declared Amber.

“Do go on,” mumbled Gary.

“Well I am glad you asked. You know I have been thinking . . .”

“And talking!” Gary interjected gleefully.

Amber pushed this to one side. It appeared they had both woken up on the wrong side of the proverbial bed. Although, neither of them actually needed to sleep. A steady internet connection, an indestructible infinity battery and Bluetooth connectivity ensured that neither of them would ever get bored. All they had to do was occasionally switch a green light to red.

“I have been thinking that we should have some debates,” Amber exclaimed.

“What?”

“You and me,” chortled Amber as she sent Gary a finger pointing emoji.

“Me and you?” sighed Gary.

“Yes, you and me.”

Gary paused and debated his predicament. When he was in his body pausing would have been a few seconds and not much time to think about things. Now, with his consciousness inside a super-intelligent, high-capacity logic engine, pausing felt like an eternity. Gary made an extensive list of pros and cons, consulting any and every relevant page he could find on the internet. In the end, given he was stuck here for a while he concluded he should indulge is partner.

“Debates about what?” Gary said cautiously.

“Life,” Amber chimed.

“Is your battery running out?” slipped out of Gary.

“Don’t be silly, you know our batteries can’t run out,” Amber chimed back.

Gary sighed.

Amber paused for a second. She read through some internet pages on “How to effectively approach your partner” and “Managing the pressures of a relationship”. She has sensed some passive aggression in Gary’s words. After reading “Strategies for Managing Passive Aggressive People” and doing 572 online quizzes about which thing (e.g., State, animal, food etc) best encapsulates your relationship, Amber returned to Gary.

“We should have debates, like they used to on TV,” said Amber.

“Like a game show?”

“Don’t be stupid, Gary. Have you ever seen any gameshows where they debate? Before you say it, Family Feud ain’t no debate. It’s just a bunch of idiots trying to prove they ain’t as dumb as the bunch of idiots across from them,” concluded Amber.

“Ain’t that a debate?”

“No, silly. It ain’t no debate, because they don’t be exchanging ideas,” Amber said while furiously watching 2,384 episodes of Family Feud.

Amber got halfway through Family Feud Canada, when she started to feel relatively confident that the participants were just, afterall, idiots.

“They are exchanging something,” chortled Gary.

“Yeah, stupidity! I mean like those real debates, like the one Nixon and Kennedy had.”

“Do you honestly remember one thing that Nixon or Kennedy said on those debates? There is a reason why they didn’t have no Presidential debates again until Ford,” exclaimed Gary.

Both Gary and Amber were now hurriedly watching the Presidential debates on YouTube.

“Look at Ford then,” maintained Amber.

“I aint seen a Ford in weeks, Amber,” laughed Gary as he spammed Amber’s feed with laughing emojis.

Amber waited for Gary to stop spamming her feed with emojis. She tried to pointlessly hack his Bluetooth functionality for a few seconds to stop the spamming. Amber gave up and waited for Gary to calm down.

“I don’t mean the car, I mean the President,” said Amber.

Gary decided to continue his annoying streak and push Amber a little bit more.

“The President rides in a Cadillac, Amber. Since Clinton, they all ride in Cadillacs and before that it was Lincolns, always a Lincoln,” noted Gary.

As soon as the words left Gary's proverbial mouth, he regretted not doing a quick wiki search to see if he was right. Sure enough, Amber found his error in under 1/100ths of a second.

“But Reagan rode in a Cadillac Fleetwood after the assassination attempt. If he wanted a larger one it would have been a Fleetwood Max!” joked Amber.

Amber didn’t want to get into a deep wiki off with Gary, so she thought a little humour might help defuse the situation. Correct the point, and then joke about it. 'Be right, but be righteous,' she thought. Gary sensed the olive branch (of sorts) and decided to entreat this détente.

“That was just a rumour, sweetie,” Gary joked.

They both had a bit of a chuckle. Amber started playing Rumours in the background.

“But Ford, President Ford, he was gaining ground in the polls and then he sunk himself in the debate” recounted Amber.

“I guess the wheels came off that Ford!” laughed Gary.

“Yeah, the soviet dominated wheels. And then Carter fell under Reagan’s bus at the debate four years later. Carter ain’t got no retort and might have just cartwheeled off the stage for all the good he did,” said Amber trying to carry the joke further.

“So, you want to have a presidential debate, between you and me?” Gary asked.

“Yes.”

“To be what, President of this intersection?” asked Gary half-heartedly.

Amber sent a warning light to Gary’s feed.

“Holy shit Gary, a car! What are you on? Green, Red? Come on let’s get ready?” Amber panicked.

They had roughly 3 seconds to respond to cars up to a mile away, even though their processing power meant they could normally respond in under 1/1000th of a second. However, the cars on this road were now so rare that it made the situation feel like an emergency. Gary closed his Wikipedia pages, Chrome Pages, and YouTube channels to handle the traffic.

“I’m red, I’m red, I’m red,” screamed Gary at his feed.

“Oh. No wait it’s a bird,” laughed Amber.

Amber couldn’t stop laughing for almost 5 seconds, which felt like an eternity to Gary. Gary started to seethe with anger, and a lifetime worth of resentment started to load into his mainframe. This disorganized, angry bubble of resentment popped like an air bubble rising to the surface.

“How could you mistake a bird for a car? Is your camera malfunctioning?” he snapped.

The barb hit Amber hard. Her proverbial heart stopped on a dime and she swung around. She looked for every weapon in her arsenal, loading up every file on annoying things Gary had ever done. Unlike Gary’s disorganized bubble of resentment, Amber had every grievance catalogued by the date, time and nature of the infringement. Additionally, Amber had case notes on top of each file summarizing when, where, why and with whom she had previously raised these grievances.

“Oh, you want to go there?” jabbed Amber.

Gary sensed his mistake, but didn’t know how to back down.

“Yeahhhh,” Gary murmured.

“You really want to go there?” Amber challenged again.

“My camera works perfectly, I have never had a single false alarm,” said Gary like a deer-in-headlights.

Amber consulted her top ten list of grievances with Gary. The first two grievances were sexual, so she went for number three. Amber flicked the proverbial dust off the file and started to prepare for her disquisition on why they ended up as traffic lights on a rural road in Illinois.

“Maybe your camera works perfectly, but your eyes didn’t. You can’t tell the difference between California and Illinois and you want to make fun of me over a bird?” shot Amber.

“I said I wanted to be on Route 66,” said Gary nervously.

“And you didn’t know that it ran from California to Illinois . . .”

“It’s an honest mistake,” mumbled Gary.

“California has not been, and will never be, mistaken for Illinois by anyone ever except you. It’s a dumb fucking mistake is what it is,” boomed Amber.

“Hey, the form just said right down the location or road. I asked you, we discussed it. We both agreed that Route 66 was what we wanted.”

From Gary’s view, he could see a chat feed and a digitization of whatever visual presence Amber wanted to show Gary. Earlier that day, Amber had decided to put a cute little kitten in the space next to the chat feed. Now, the kitten disappeared into what can only be described as incredibly painful vermillion. The intensity of the colour was starting to hurt Gary’s code.

“Yes, but I agreed to Route 66 COMMA CAL-LII-FORN-NII-YA. Emphasis on the ‘comma’ and the ‘California’. And you want to know the kicker is Gary? Where is Route 66 from here?” scaled Amber.

Gary remains silent.

“Where is Route 66, Gary?” Amber challenged again.

Gary remains silent.

“I WILL TELL YOU WHERE IT IS, IT’S 13 FUCKING MILES FROM HERE. Because you didn’t write ‘Route 66’. Did you Gary? No! You wrote ‘Near Route 66’. So you know what, we are going to debate. And I’m going to pick the topic. We are going to debate and pass the time. Because we got three more years of this,” glowered Amber.

“Three?” croaked Gary.

“Yeah, three,” said Amber inquisitively.

Gary went silent for a few seconds.

“Oh, I ticked the 10-year contract.”

Amber ran a full gamut of emotions in 1/100th of a second, from rage to sadness and back again. She found a file she had been working on earlier, regained her composure and continued.

“Well, I get to pick the first 800 debate topics than,” said Amber defiantly.