Author: OTS

My admin hat
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AI and jobs

A lot of the rhetoric around AI* is wildly off the mark.

When something becomes more efficient or cheaper, people want more of it. This is a law of economic nature.

Generative AI is making grunt-workers more efficient. There will be more people doing more of it. Now that isn’t an unequivocable good, as the form of this could be more paperwork since one paperwork-worker can do more. It does mean that a lot of paperwork that people want done will get assigned, and some of the restraining influences on the spread of paperwork before will be overcome.

Consider your TPS reports. You hate them. I hate them. The managers who assign them do understand this, mostly, and most of them are trying to reduce TPS reports. TPS reporting is expensive, takes time, and all that, so there’s a restraining force.

But people still want TPS reports, so when a manager discovers one admin-staffer can do twice the TPS-reporting, those TPS reports will be assigned. Unclogged, the TPS reporting will flow. There will be TPS reports everywhere. And efficiency is never as clean as one imagines, so more admin-staffers will be hired to do TPS reports with generative AI TPS reporting software, and the world will become a brown, stinkier place. But there will be more admin-staff jobs.

There will also be people who make generative AI models, tune them from TPS reports, and provide tech support. The admin-staffers will not be fixing their models.

There will be more jobs elsewhere too. Data labelling is going to be a big thing, and people need to do it. All these systems run on hardware. Hardware in the cloud is still hardware; it’s just hardware somewhere else. So that hardware will need sysadmins, manufacturers, supply chains, and developers.

If you want a paradigm, imagine the transition from horses to cars. Transportation became more efficient. Before mass-market cars, only a few people had horses. Vastly more people now have cars. Sure, a very few cars, fewer than horses, would provide the transportation needs for the few people who had horses, but that isn’t what happened.

We’re staring into a future of more jobs, more employment, more TPS reports documenting that employment, and generative AI.

*That name, AI, is wildly off the mark too, but I haven’t found a better one. Replace it with ‘computers doing math really quickly’ whenever you see it.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 16

Previous chapters in the text box to the right.
New updated schedule: Wednesdays and Sundays, noon Denver time (MDT)

Chapter 16

I’d finally run down Osret and in the moment of triumph, hesitated. He wasn’t ready to fight me. It would be murder. He couldn’t breathe, even in the thick, seashore air. He was probably one of those guys who did five minutes of sprinting spread over an hour fairly regularly because it got him cut. Good for him, but it didn’t help him outrun a murderer.

And it would be murder. But he deserved it.

Self, you’re not here for him. You’re here for the saber. Osret is secondary.

Get the saber.

This was a good thought, I judged.

“Osret, where is my sword?” I asked and some other voice interrupted.

“Hold, mortal!”

Oh, biscuits. Who was that?

I turned around, and some fop in silk and boots came up the road behind me.

The birds overhead were going nuts. They’d never really shut up, even for the night, but now they were raising a din.

He wore a designer sword with emerald fabric woven through the belt and scabbard. It looked mid-length and straight, long enough to fence with but possibly edged. He looked proud of it. He ran up and drew while outside my range before stepping in. The blade fell into line with my neck.

“Mortal, you are guilty of crimes against Mallens, Honor Him,” he said.

“Which ones?” I demanded.

“Deadly ones.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“He tried to kill me!” interrupted Osret, but the interruption of his panic-breathing set him coughing.

“Not you,” said the fop. “Worse. Treason.”

Oh, sickness and death, everything was ruined. They found out about the killing, they had traced an assassin, I was going to Hell until they could stretch my life out no longer in pain and all I could say was, “Could you be more specific?”

The fop could. “You have eaten honeydew and nectar, and it is treason for a mortal to take the sustenance of the gods,” and he looked so pleased with himself.

I went slack jawed. I had to deliberately shut my mouth.

“But I caught you,” he continued. “I will–”

I took off my belt and wrapped it around my off-hand forearm.

“Mortal, are you high?”

I blitzed.

My left opened the gate, catching his blade on the belt and shoving forward and down. His sword cut through leather like butter. My right shot past the fop’s head. He juked to the side, swung the sword wide and around, but my left, no longer blocking, got him dead in the guts. I got inside his counterstroke and threw the boxing cross.

I didn’t catch him cleanly in the jaw. I got him at an angle, but up close like that, I had the hip action double dirty. He hit a wall and bounced.

I threw the left again, a wide, stupid shot that’s worthless if they see it coming. But the fop was having a religious experience, an epiphany, and seeing nothing but himself. He wasn’t fated to win. He was other people, and I hit him so hard he fell out from under the sword.

I chased.

He hit the ground, rolled, and the idiot had great reflexes. He came up with a knife. He jabbed, I pulled back, and we circled.

Then everything changed. Hands up near the face, palms back, pushing straight shots with the quickest recoil I could, I moved back and let him come. He slashed with the knife. The knife was everything. He might eat a dozen, three dozen punches and win if he got one clean cut.

I feinted, feinted, he leaned back and came forward. He slashed overhead, and I kicked him in the inside of the thigh, right in the meaty part of the muscle. He tried to stab my leg but aborted when I threw that jab again. He blitzed, I faded back, he swung twice and I dodged everything to kick him in the same leg, this time the outside.

He pressured. I retreated and fell back, giving up a dozen good chances to deny him any. Now he chased. My belt was in half, one end flapping, and not long enough to block. I kept a grip on the tail of it in my left. I could block one or two with the off hand, but he’d lay the arm open for sure.

Sickness, I wish I’d taken the sword instead of closing.

He lunged, I retreated, we circled, I went for the fallen blade but he blocked me, I got another good leg shot, and fell back. He stepped forward, almost over the sword.

He was going to try to kick it up into his hands. He wanted it. I could taste his hunger for it. As soon as he did, as soon as all his weight landed on one leg, I was going to blitz so hard I’d knock his tastebuds out his back door.

And he knew.

He dropped onto both feet, even stance, right in front of the sword.

I rose up onto my toes.

We both knew.

He tried to body fake me. I didn’t fall for it.

He moved his off-hand out behind him, ready.

I breathed.

He body faked again.

I breathed.

He stomped one side of the handguard, the sword pivoted up, and he hooked a toe under the handle.

From outside range, I went. My right fist shot forward; my left followed. He swung the knife, I swung my left palm out and open with the folded up belt, smacked the blade, and he only cut the heel of my hand. I cleared his knife-hand sideways.

He caught his sword.

I got him in the throat.

His whole body went rigid, he dropped the sword, and I followed-up to his head. The bells of his temple rang, and the gods left. He dropped.

I looked back.

Osret was staring at me like I was the devil.

I picked up the sword, and the moment my hand touched its handle, I knew its name and lineage. This was the Drowning Breath of Ogden, made by Thorophus the Weapon Maker in his Eighth Testament. It had been forged of eight lesser blades that killed Ogden. His son, Aelon, had ordered this one of their steel and used it to avenge his father. I heard the words Thorophus whispered as he made it, and the dire hatred Aelon had spoken when he used it. It had been made for revenge, it hungered for revenge, and when I held it, the sword yearned.

I knew of this sword. I had had filed paperwork on it. It was a blade of Fate.

The fop was from Fate.

“He was from Fate,” I said out loud.

“Is from Fate. The Bureau of Sanction,” said a new voice, and a woman stepped from shadow to the ground. “You have not slain him yet.”

I looked at her and held the Drowning Breath.

She was tall and beautiful, hard but curved. She’d pulled chestnut hair back, wore white armor of moonsilk, and her boots were tall, laced things that reached the midpoint of her shins. Her jacket and pants were tight enough to move, but with moonsilk that meant nothing. It flowed like liquid silver. I could see the creases where her hips met her pelvis, the tightness of fabric across her chest, and the tiny dimples of muscles flexing on her rump. She had bright red eyes.

Around her shoulders flew a red and gold dragon, long as a python. It had no wings, but flames danced on its hide. It and she shared an eye color, red, but the dragon had scales too. Tiny flames seemed to escape from its lips as it slithered through the air, climbing on invisible things like a serpent might climb the roots of a great tree.

I didn’t know her. We’d never met. I would have remembered a hot dragon lady.

Well, hot because fire is hot…but no, sexy-fire-dragon-lady was definitely a thing. I had not known sexy-fire-draon-lady was a thing, nor that I was into it. I was. I would have known if we’d met.

We stared at each other, and the red of her eyes leaked out like tears. But her tears burned, and they leaped for the sky like candle-flames freed of their wicks.

“You may take him and leave,” I said.

She considered a moment. “No.”

I held the Drowning Breath of Ogden, and she wore a fire dragon like a scarf.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

She didn’t move her feet but pulled her head back as if my words splattered crazy in her direction. “You’re asking me that?”

“Yes. If you run, I won’t chase you.”

“No,” she said again.

I raised the sword point until the blade stood between us.

Her dragon spiraled in and out, and she reached for it from one hand. The serpent turned to liquid fire from which she drew a long, single edged sword that danced in her hand. The flames of the dragon vanished, or perhaps its essence was merely made steel.

She had a dragon blade. If I did not know her, I knew of her kind. She was from the Bureau of Sanction.

I said something which had been said to me. “You think you’ll win, and you might, but this will not go well for you if you do.”

She smiled like I had in the House of Hemlin, where Zenjin had said that to me. Things had not gone well for me, but they’d gone much worse for him.

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The Final Trial

If at the end of days I meet my maker and he judges me for my life, the prosecution may accuse, “Matthew, you’re terrible at paperwork.”

I’m not really going to have an answer for that.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 15

Previous chapters here or on the text box on the right.

Chapter 15

The traitor dashed up two flights. His footsteps banged overhead. The stairs were folded and stacked, and he was only ten feet away if I could reach through the ceiling. But the fork wouldn’t go that far. I followed him up the first set of stairs, around a hallway to the next flight, and up the stairs again. At the top of this one, I saw him dive into a room, but I didn’t have time to throw anything.

By the time I crossed the little hallway, he’d slammed his door shut. It was one of those flimsy interior things. I went through it like paper, and Osret hadn’t even stayed to try to lock it. He was already running through a closet that opened into a bathroom.

The bedrooms on each floor shared a bathroom, and on the other side, he ran through an open doorway into a different bedroom. Again he tried to slam the door shut, but I threw the fork and stapled the door to the wall. Osret ran. I came after. He threw some suits off a rack and got back to the stairway. This time he ran down.

I jumped the stairs, hit him with both feet in the back, and knocked him across a wooden floor. He slid like the puck in a hammerslide game. Unfortunately, the stairs had been steep, and in jumping, I’d cracked my chin on the angled ceiling and landed on my rear end. He got up. I shook my head and rose. Footsteps pounded up the stairs below.

Osret turned to face me with his hands up in a boxing guard. I threw a straight right through his forearms, caught him dead on the chin, and lifted him off his feet. He did a backflip through the door behind him.

It was a little library, like a den or a workroom, and smelled like lemon cleaner. Stacks of wooden boxes collected dust in the corners, and the only light was the hall light coming through the door. It flickered as someone ran past.

I chased Osret, and as he tried to get up again, grabbed him by the expensive vest collar. The idiot wore a vest. I put my hip into it, threw him out a window, and he screamed as he broke the glass.

Apseto and Nurim appeared in the doorway. They’d got more knives, but they looked terrified. For a moment, they hesitated.

“He betrayed me and killed your friends. You have done me no harm. Good bye,” I said and jumped out the window.

We were only on the third floor. It was only twenty feet up. Osret wouldn’t have had a problem if he had jumped, not tumbled, but the tumbling and the broken glass fragments hurt. Still, he was up and running when I landed in a crouch. He fled, abandoning every pretense but speed, and raced along the street with his arms pumping. I ran after, my fingers clenched into fists.

#

He was a fit guy. He clearly ran for exercise, and everyone runs faster when they’re chased. But he ran wild, all adrenaline while gasping for air, not pacing himself, and while he nearly lost me in the first block, he had to slow down for the next. He missed a good opportunity to take a side street and maybe lose me. Then I had him in sight.

The streets were bizarrely empty. The day I’d arrived, there had been people on the roads and sidewalks. I’d slipped between them, trying to appear as an ‘other’ to everyone and had received no attention. Now no one else walked the sidewalks or waited at street corners. Even the people who worked outside, vendors, rickshaw cabbies, and buskers, all found other places to be. Osret and I had the city to ourselves. Clouds still filled the sky, and the thin light that made it through wasn’t strong enough to cast any shadows. If anything, the cloud cover was lower and boiled faster. More often lightning flashed without ever coming down.

The unnatural emptiness of the city lead to one moment I didn’t have the time to think about. While I chased Osret down a street with townhouses on each side, I noticed a figure standing on a rooftop, watching. Her long, black braids were pulled back, the braids showing the first hints of white hair. She wore one of those cape-things women liked. It looked like a long jacket without sleeves but with a thick collar.

Those cape-things are expensive. I don’t know why, but only luxury places make them.

Either way, she had no business standing on a rooftop, watching me chase Osret through the streets, and yet that’s what she did.

But chasing Osret took all of my attention, moreso when he realized he hadn’t lost me. He started taking fast turns, going right then left, cutting through alleys and hopping fences. I stayed on him but couldn’t close the gap.

Finally he tried to brute force out-distance me, skipping all the turns and shifts to head straight south, pounding out miles. If he hadn’t burned all that energy to begin with, he would have made it. But he’d never had a chance to catch his breath with the sprinting. While he stretched his lead as far as two blocks, I cut it in half and half again. When next he looked back, I was almost on him, less than a hundred feet behind.

He turned down some random road, and I don’t think he had a plan. The road lead to a blackstone rookery with basalt walls and limestone window sills. Gulls covered the roof. They’re noisy, chattering birds. Osret ran straight to the front door, tried it, and found it locked. He was gasping now. He pulled back to take it with his shoulder when I crashed into him from behind, kicked his feet out from under him, and he dropped.

He didn’t even flail when he hit the ground. He just breathed.

I was finally going to get my sword back.

Did I kill him?

I stood still for a moment, unprepared for the thought. He had betrayed and shot me, he’d killed his cousins, but he lay at my feet. He couldn’t fight. Did I kill him?

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The Silver City

Baroness Alyssa told me, “Wait ’til you see the reflection of the Moon in the lake, then speak Utor. Karesh Ni will be revealed in starlight.”

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Updated Schedule

I’m going to start publishing TiH on Wednesdays and Sundays, until about chapter 30. It’s a big break point.

KN needs some work.

The reason TiH is working is Kog has a distinct goal to work toward. He’s elliminating everything that connects him to the failed assassination. That lets the character drive the narrative. Elegy doesn’t have that yet, and the pieces to set it up aren’t falling into place.