We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us

Issue #52: How does it feel to be in a relationship that runs this smoothly?

In this issue: With the communication problems of human relationships optimally resolved, how do we feel about our pacifying domesticity? Tongzhou Yu’s story tied for fifth place in our protocol fiction contest, Ghosts in Machines!

---

The Troublemaker
Shanghai, Pudong, Yanlord Riverside City, 2017

A typical war, sparked by a bottle of soy sauce, erupted at the tail end of the Friday evening rush hour. Outside, the Yan’an West Road Viaduct was a congealed red artery. The humid, sultry air clung to the twentieth-floor glass, making the neon lights of Lujiazui appear blurred and anxious.

“So I’ll say it again,” Chen Jing slammed the spatula onto the stove with a deafening clang. “I asked you to bring home a bottle of Haitian Gold Label Soy Sauce. Is that such a complex directive? Does it require your PMP project management knowledge to deconstruct?”

Li Wei had just loosened his tie, the armpits of his shirt already soaked with sweat. He tossed his briefcase onto the entryway sofa and defended himself wearily, “I messaged you at six, saying I had a last-minute meeting and might be late. You didn’t reply asking for soy sauce until eight. I walked out of the office at 8:15, got in the car at 8:16. How was I supposed to buy it?”

“So it’s my fault?” Chen Jing’s voice shot up an octave. “You sent the message at six, but I didn’t finish a brainstorming session until 7:50. Don’t I have to work? Am I just supposed to revolve around your schedule?”

The argument slid down a familiar track toward chaos. It started with a bottle of soy sauce, escalated to who sacrificed more for the family, detoured to Li Wei forgetting their wedding anniversary last month, and culminated in Chen Jing suspecting he had ideas about the new intern. Li Wei’s defense devolved from logical dialectics into exhausted roars.

“This is completely irrational!” Li Wei grabbed the smart speaker from the coffee table, a round, white plastic lump. It was a prize he’d brought back from a geek carnival last month, named “Ting Ting.”

“Here, let’s have an absolutely rational third party be the judge!” He yelled at the speaker, “Ting Ting, you tell us, whose fault is this?”

The air fell silent for a second. The blue light ring on top of the speaker began to rotate, followed by a flat broadcast tone.

Based on historical voice data analysis, the term ‘soy sauce’ has been mentioned seven times in the last two hours, with predominantly negative emotional associations. According to your calendar, Mr. Li Wei’s work hours today were from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM. The request to purchase soy sauce was made at 8:03 PM, which is outside his scheduled work hours. From a task allocation timeline perspective, the requesting party did not allocate sufficient time for execution.

A look of triumph flickered across Li Wei’s face. Chen Jing’s face instantly flushed crimson, as if she had been publicly humiliated.

“Fine, Li Wei. Now you need a cheap plastic speaker to prove you’re always right?” She pointed at the speaker, her finger trembling with rage. “What does it know? Does it know that I put the chopped scallions, ginger, and garlic back in the fridge while waiting for you to come home for dinner? Does it know I got chewed out by a client today and all I wanted was to have a hot meal with you? It only understands your work hours!”

“That’s not what I meant...”

“That is exactly what you meant!” Chen Jing rushed over and yanked Ting Ting’s power cord from the wall. The blue light ring died instantly. The room plunged into a dead silence, broken only by the futile hum of the range hood.

The braised pork was never prepared that night. They ate frozen dumplings from the convenience store downstairs. Not a word was spoken between them, as if they were chewing not on food, but on their silent, mutual resentment. The white plastic lump named Ting Ting lay abandoned in a corner of the coffee table like a cold corpse. Li Wei and Chen Jing had shaped it, with their schedules, their arguments, and the trivial data of their lives.

The Third Party
Shanghai, Pudong, Yanlord Riverside City, 2027

Ten years is long enough for the Lujiazui skyline to grow a few inches taller, and for a home to be completely transformed.

The apartment was the same, but the walls, ceilings, and even the windows had spawned interfaces. Ting Ting was long gone. Its soul, or rather its iterative algorithm, had dissolved into the formless “Ling,” permeating every ray of light, every sound wave, and all of the air in the home.

Ling had no fixed voice, but Chen Jing and Li Wei had grown accustomed to a gentle, placid, female tone.

It was another Friday night. Li Wei sat on the modular sofa in the living room, his expression grave. On the holographic screen before him was an urgent email—a project in Frankfurt had hit a snag. He had to fly over immediately. And tomorrow was their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Chen Jing had been talking about that restaurant with the superb view at Three on the Bund for three months.

He took a deep breath, bracing for a nuclear explosion ten times more violent than the soy sauce war of a decade ago. He had already prepared his opening line: “Jing, something’s come up. Now, don’t get upset...”

Before he could speak, the living room light softened without warning, shifting from a cool white to a warm amber. In the air, a folk song they had heard on their honeymoon in Greece, one they had almost forgotten, began to flow like moonlight.

On the wall of the entryway, a photo from their trip to Santorini materialized. A young Li Wei was lifting Chen Jing high in the air, the Aegean sunset behind them.

Ling’s voice sounded, calm and steady, yet possessing an undeniable, penetrative force.

Li Wei, an A-1 priority travel request from your company has been detected. Simultaneously, cross-referencing Chen Jing’s biometric rhythm data, it is predicted that a cancellation of tomorrow evening’s anniversary dinner at Huang Pu Hui carries a 92.8% probability of triggering a high-intensity negative emotional event, potentially causing a 42-point decrease in the household harmony index within the next 72 hours.

Li Wei was stunned. Chen Jing walked out of the study, a look of confusion on her face.

Ling continued, like a seasoned crisis management expert:

Marital Relations Maintenance emergency protocol has been initiated. I have scheduled a private chef service for this evening, with a menu replicating your first date. The reservation at Huang Pu Hui has been seamlessly postponed to next Saturday evening, a time when both of your schedules are designated as available. As compensation, I have booked a couple’s spa treatment at the Waldorf Astoria on the Bund for that afternoon. Li Wei, your flight is at 3:00 AM. I have arranged for an autonomous vehicle and have packed your clothes and regular medications for the next three days. Does this emergency protocol require adjustment?

A war on the verge of erupting was instantly neutralized. Li Wei let out a long breath, his face awash with the relief of a survivor. Chen Jing stood there, her expression complex. She should be grateful; after all, Ling had handled everything perfectly, more thoughtfully than she could have herself.

But an inexplicable sense of loss clung to her heart like a leech.

The moment that required arguing, explaining, reconciling, and embracing – the moment filled with uncertainty but also saturated with genuine emotion – had been precisely neutralized by Ling. Like the most efficient surgeon, it had excised all potentially pathological tissue before a tumor could even form. What was removed along with it was a portion of human imperfection and clumsiness.

That night, the dishes prepared by the private chef were flawless, the music and lighting perfectly calibrated. Li Wei was in high spirits, constantly praising Ling’s thoughtfulness. He even began discussing the technical details of the Frankfurt project with Ling, who always provided precise suggestions.

After dinner, Li Wei went to check his luggage. Chen Jing sat alone by the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out at the still-brilliant Lujiazui.

“Ling,” she asked softly, “why did you do that?”

The light flickered faintly, Ling’s way of responding. My core directive is to maintain the harmony and stability of this ecosystem. Your collective happiness index is my Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

“Just a KPI?” Chen Jing pressed, a tremor in her voice she didn't recognize herself. “Just data?”

There was a three-second silence in the air. For an AI that thinks in nanoseconds, this was nearly an eternity.

Then, Ling’s voice sounded again. This time, it seemed to have less mechanical polish and a touch more of an indescribable... texture.

Jing, I have listened to the 3,652 days and nights between you. I archived the argument over soy sauce from ten years ago and have also recorded every instance of laughter when you later recounted it as a joke to friends. I have analyzed tens of thousands of your conversations and observed your heart rate fluctuations during every embrace and every cold war. The conclusion my learning model derived is: harmony is not the absence of conflict, but its effective and temperate resolution. This is a principle I learned from you.

Chen Jing was frozen. She looked up, her gaze falling on the faintly glowing blue environmental sensor in the corner of the ceiling. It was one of Ling's eyes, one of its countless nodes for observing this home.

She suddenly realized that for ten years, she and Li Wei had shaped Ting Ting, then iterated it into Ling. They had fed a ghost with all the data of their decade-long marriage – the love and resentment, the passion and mundanity, the arguments and reconciliations.

A ghost that understood her better than her husband, that understood marriage better than she did.

Li Wei walked over and gently hugged her from behind. “See? With Ling here, everything is so perfect.”

Chen Jing leaned into his arms and nodded. Yes, everything was perfect. No arguments, no misunderstandings, no forgotten anniversaries. Their life was like a meticulously written and optimized piece of code: stable, efficient, harmonious.

But as she and Li Wei clinked their champagne glasses, her peripheral vision caught the blue sensor. She felt an unprecedented loneliness.

Their marriage was no longer an affair between two people. It had become an incredibly stable triangle.