The Christmas Ballet

As every year, I´d like to wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year mith my Christmas tale.

The Christmas Ballet

“Hurry up, Nedd, we’re going to miss it!”

“Hold on, will you? This bot is impossible to deal with! No—again! I’ve already told you: my address isn’t in your database!”

The pleasant voice addressed the user once more with impeccable courtesy:
“I understand the process may feel frustrating at times, but I am here to assist you. Could you please provide the name of your street so we may proceed? Click on the arrow and the complete dossier will unfold…”

“Oh for…—give me a phone number where I can talk to an actual human being!”

“I am very sorry that this process is proving stressful. In fact, I would recommend that you relax, as I am detecting a potentially dangerous increase in your heart beating. Here is a number through which you may contact a human supervisor.”

“What do you mean you’re detecting…—do you have access to my damn smartwatch??? And that number you’ve given me thirty times—nobody ever picks up!”

“Hey, for heaven’s sake, the taxi is downstairs already! You can sort this out tomorrow. I’ve spent forty minutes trying to get one to come, and this is the first that hasn’t cancelled halfway through. You know they never wait for you—let’s go, now.”

“I curse the algorithm and your digital ‘please come back later’!”

“It deeply saddens me that you feel I am not being sufficiently helpf…—”

The violent slam of the laptop screen cut short the carefully modulated prosody of an artificial intelligence trained on the finest examples of courtesy that vast amounts of world literature could offer (trained for free, of course).

The couple grabbed their coats and bolted, slamming the door behind them. They hurled themselves down the stairwell, racing the two floors that separated them from the street, their stampede adding yet more noise to the building.

“Easy—breathe,” Joel said once inside the taxi. “It’s stressful, I know, but you’ve seen how the theatre entrance gets for the Christmas Ballet. This year there´re facial recognition devices, so it should be smoother. In theory.”

Indeed, the Christmas Ballet traditionally marked the symbolic opening of the city’s festive season, and this year expectations were particularly high thanks to JUNO’s new score for The Bitcracker. The owners of the AI engine had been teasing audiences for months, increasingly stingy with their output: barely one hundred thousand musical compositions released that year.

They were still far from their destination when a velvety, late-night-radio voice emerged from the driver’s area:

“I regret to inform you, Mr. Hariri, that we have been unable to verify whether your insurance policy is currently valid. While we cross-check the data and attempt verification again, I must immobilize the vehicle, for your safety and that of its occupants. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The taxi came to a gentle halt as the driver erupted into a torrent of curses in several languages, pounding the dashboard in rage.

“Damn it—come on, we’ll have to run. We’re still miles away!”

One flung open the door to the pavement, dragging the other by the arm. They leapt out without looking back and pushed forward as best they could, though hurrying was difficult amid the dense crowd of evening pedestrians.

The streets were already ablaze with Christmas lights—and with drones, tracing festive shapes and Christmas figures above the crowd. A crash of breaking glass rang out nearby, followed by screams; a drone had veered off course and smashed into a shop window. A CARE (Cognitive Autonomous Response Environment) forced its way through the crowd toward the accident:

“Please allow me to pass so I may assist. We deeply regret this unfortunate error, though we remind you that the reliability rate of autonomous drone operations remains extremely high.”

“They can say what they like, but these robots still give me the creeps. You don’t see a single police officer anywhere anymore.”

“Come on—move it. Forget about it, or we really won’t make it.”

In front of the theatre, a tightly packed crowd was protesting and shoving its way toward the entrance. Theatre staff stood beside the biometric identification machines, apparently idle, trying to form orderly queues, though progress was painfully slow.

Joel spotted a friend in the crowd and pushed toward her, pulling his husband along.

“What’s going on? Why is this such chaos?”

“Joel! From what people are saying, the machines started malfunctioning for certain people, creating bottlenecks. Apparently, the less white and male you were, the more they failed. They had to bring out the humans still working here. There aren’t many, and it took a while, but people are finally getting in.”

After some time, they found themselves inside the building at last.

“Nedd, our seats are right by the stage. Please ask one of the FRIEND - (Functional Robotic Interface for Entry & Navigation Directives)—where exactly we’re supposed to go.”

“Actually, I think I can manage on my own, if you don’t mind.”

Indeed, they found their seats on the first try. They sat down and left their coats on the floor.

“We regret interrupting your interesting conversations and other waiting activities, but we kindly request that you take your seats. The good news is that the performance is about to begin. From our calibrated mechanisms, we wish you an enjoyable performance”, the loudspeakers announced.

Immediately, the lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and the long-awaited performance began. There were the dancers of Custom Dynamics, performing acrobatics to music played by no orchestra at all, but streamed directly through the sound system.

The show opened with a playful comic piece in which a human ballerina attempted to imitate the mechanical dancers, much to the audience’s delight and laughs.

“They can say whatever they want, but I find this humiliating. And doesn’t this music sound like a hundred others we’ve heard before? What’s so special about it?”

“SSSSHHHHH. STOP TALKING. WE CAN’T EVEN HEAR OURSELVES LAUGH.”

Nedd fell silent, closed his eyes, and made a fervent wish for what he hoped the Three Wise Men would bring him that year.