Testing one, two, three
My smart TV is getting too smart for me. Why only last week it told me what I should be doing with my time. Cheeky bugger I thought as I zapped the remote control, pulled the plug from the wall and threw a blanket over the screen. “If this keeps going on I’ll be like that girl in Poltergeist or that unfortunate soul in Videodrome.” I worried as I dug out the manual that came with the TV and quickly read through it looking for any reference to Faust, voodoo or David Cronenberg. Not a sausage, but my suspicions remained.
For some time I’ve been trying to outsmart my smart TV. When watching the box I’ve taken to wearing a gira e mask ( is it really a screen or a clever two way mirror?) and I log on to streaming services using the guest name, Test. How clever I thought, only to discover in recent times how such smarts can back re. Now people have started calling me Test or Testy (when they’re wrong and I’m right) and just last week a batch of utility bills arrived addressed to Mr Test. Even my wife has started calling me Mr T when I clearly belong to a genus of African even-toed ungulate mammals with long necks (as anyone with eyes and access to Wikipedia can tell).
But as we know from Vegas (and the Terminator movies), the machines always win. So last week I started to use my real name again. But my smart TV was having none of it. Could I prove that I was indeed Mr X? And if I was what happened to Mr Test? Had I disposed of him in some sinister act or stolen his identity? Proving that Test didn’t exist, except in some virtual universe, was complicated, as it seems he was in fact much more real than I was, an entity with a fully- edged CV including preferences for broad comedies and dark thrillers and a weakness for the occasional sports documentary. Test was the man I never would be. I felt small.
Now I truly wanted to be Mr Test, artist, aesthete and man of the world by all (online) accounts. It was then the doorbell rang. rough the peephole I could see a tall dark stranger, cardboard thin: indeed you could say he was one-dimensional. Or maybe that was a trick of the porch light. I opened up, safety chain still in place, just in case.
“Hi I’m Mister Test, I believe I live here,” said the thin man, pro ering a card.
“Are you having a gira e?” I asked just before my mask slipped.