Already we have given so much of ourselves to machines, the better for them to seamlessly anticipate and serve all our modern needs. And as the information economy emphasizes the precarity of all other economies, the notion of 'being served' is more problematic than ever. Is it possible to give so much to the algorithm that it knows us better than we know ourselves? After a point, we see our own reflection in the data body -- and maybe we see things we don't like.
 

Jemma crept reverently into the resort reception area, hoping to convey gratefulness and respect through her posture. Immediately, she felt the embrace of lo-fi liquid house, a media backdrop fountain wall, ring-shaped overhead lighting and the humid scent of eucalyptus piped in from unseen vents. All of it a gentle reminder that she was present, here and now.

Jemma saw her own waxy shadow rippling indistinctly on the perfectly polished floor and thought, this must be the place.

The most desirable thing about the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center was the promise that there were no human staff members. The private resort’s state of the art algorithm thoroughly scraped each guest’s public data corpus, performing what was advertised as a rigorous, obeisant analysis of their daily lives, their preferences and desires, the better to curate an effortlessly personal experience.

That was why Jemma had chosen this place, of all the options she’d had, to stage her important creative retreat. Jemma was a good person, the kind who did not like to be served by workers  – at the end of the world, why should anyone be disinfecting gym mats, changing linens, or having to remember that she liked precisely two ice cubes in her passionfruit martini, no more or less? Why should anyone need to memorize her restrictive dietary needs? No human should ever have to demean themselves like that for another.

Of course, the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center was not within everybody’s price range. That was all the more reason for Jemma to feel guilty, along with how clean the place looked. Not everybody enjoyed the privilege never to smell another person, never to speculate about mysterious crusts left on upholstery, never to risk touching the flickings of strangers’ picked scabs and noses.

“Hello?” She whispered softly into the space, minding the delicacy of her tone to ensure she sounded both humble and worthy. The foyer was like a beautifully polished fiberglass egg, potted ferns waving in unknown air currents, with no other person to be seen at all. Jemma reminded herself that while guilt was bad, an appreciative perspective on her own privilege was good, as long as she kept a straight back.

Jemma was a posture therapist, specializing in what body-positive physical therapists called maladaptive coping, and so she knew you had to maintain your alignment whenever possible, lest the indignities of contemporary life pull you into monstrous shapes. The whole reason she’d come to the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center was to work, to finish a content series on home posture corrections, so this was no time to let her shoulders slouch.

Slouching was lethal, and Jemma’s mission was to democratize solutions. In fact, it was no time to think about herself at all – I am a servant of the people, **she thought, taking a moment to meditate on all the grateful recipients of her work, who would learn across her series of short clips how to reverse their rhomboid atrophy and reclaim their spiritual backbone.

“Hello,” she said again, even more softly. Even if all the servants were invisible machines, they might still be recording her voice for quality assurance, and she would be mortified to sound entitled.

There was a hum of machinery as a wide monitor began slowly rising from the reception desk, a gleaming curve of white fiberglass and pink tile. Jemma patiently waited for the monitor’s bath of white light to wash away all her undesirable feelings. To her delight, the touch screen did not seem to have a single human fingerprint on it.

She interacted intuitively with the touchscreen check-in menu, entering her name, Jemma Carey, and meticulously checking and unchecking her own data privacy preferences. Some people, usually stupid ones, had concerns about data scraping and predictive algorithms and whether they had any boundaries, but Jemma knew better – you had to take ownership and pay attention. You couldn’t just leave that responsibility to nebulous forces in these times.

“Hello,” she said again, even more softly. Even if all the servants were invisible machines, they might still be recording her voice for quality assurance, and she would be mortified to sound entitled.

Already the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center was providing an elite and trustworthy standard of customer service, inviting her to confirm or deny every need she ever had: Strictly gluten-free breakfast buffet and dinner menu options, lavender oil on her pillow every night (though she was tempted to alternate with the sandalwood option), a deep tissue massage every morning after the gym, where she could reserve her favorite cardio machines, a time slot for the private pool. Pink noise rather than brown or white for sleep.

Everything was going to be perfect. Surely this beautiful environment would solve the creative block she’d had for months, the way she popped her whiteheads.

“Hi there!” There was another human voice, and Jemma startled.

To her horror, an enormous blond goon of a man had just come dragging his smoggy suitcase into the hotel’s perfect parlor. His hairy legs emerged from his holiday shorts into a garish turnout of his two pink, callused feet, exposed and practically bare in sandals. His pelvis tilted far enough forward to dump his belly out, and he had the telltale rounded shoulders of someone who, rather than seize his own agency, simply allowed life to happen to him. Jemma was a good person, so she took meticulous care not to allow even a flicker of disgust to show.

“Hello,” she said, in a gentle, enthusiastic tone that conveyed the fact she saw this Goon as an equally valuable person to herself.

“Wow, a robo-hotel, huh?” Jemma took care not to cringe. Goon’s voice was so loud, and nobody said robo-hotel any more. “Rise of the machines,” he added, with an annoying laugh. He probably didn’t even know how it all worked yet. He probably left boxes unchecked and then blamed somebody else. Goonish as he was, he looked too young to be such an embarrassing Zillennial, and Jemma felt sorry for him. If the machines were listening, she wouldn’t blame them for judging.

“Is it your first time?” She said it warmly. She would make sure not to think herself better than the Goon if he said yes.

“Yeah,” he said, flushed and grinning and slouching. If Jemma was better than him, that would be why, not because he’d never been to an algorithmic resort before.

“Have a nice time,” Jemma said, smiling in a friendly and non-judgmental way. She finished entering her preferences on the monitor and beeped her device against it, to place her card on hold in case of any incidentals.

“You too,” said the ruddy Goon, still wafting his personality and his odors eagerly all around the lobby without a care. Jemma wondered if the poor Goon noticed the straightness of her back, the length of her neck, the graceful valley between her shoulder blades. She wondered if he had the good sense to notice that Jemma did not have a triangular hump from a maladapted trapezius, while he did – there was a term for that, but she graciously did not allow herself to think of it. She wondered if the Goon was self-aware enough to feel jealous.

But he was still standing there, grinning at her. He didn’t seem to understand that he and Jemma were not the same. But that was precisely the kind of ugly thought that she had to set aside, in order to be a good person who was aware of her many privileges.

It was time for her blissful retreat to officially begin. Jemma exhaled a sigh of relief in the unspoiled elevator, and followed a soundless, sinuously patterned hall lit with concealed sconces to the door of her suite. When she got there, the lock thudded and showed a green light without her even having to do anything. It knew her device; it knew her.


***

After sleeping off the jet lag, Jemma awoke in a perfectly curated manner: First a wash of low-spectrum light and a simulation of a natural sonic landscape (“Morning Birds”), and then the gradual dawn of subtly pulsing lo-fi chill housewave generated according to the rhythms of her heart.

Rising in an ideal state, Jemma calmly went to the desk and resumed her work:

Many, many people in our contemporary times, struggle with a phenomenon I fondly refer to as “neck butt.” This may sound extreme and I apologize to anyone who may be offended, but I find that honest language and good humor can be effective methods to motivate my clients to focus on their healthcare with the right degree of urgency. Significantly, modern postural habits can collaborate maladaptively toward a distinctive syndrome: Forward head position from slouching toward devices, kyphosis and lordosis from sustained sitting periods, combined with aesthetically displeasing rounded shoulders and a loss of functional tone and responsiveness of the entire shoulder complex.

She considered her language. She did not want anyone to feel like there was anything wrong with their bodies, even though of course there was. If you wanted to encourage people to change, you had to first provoke in them honest reflections on their shortcomings.

There was a sound at her window like someone throwing a handful of pebbles. It had begun to rain, and outside the sky looked jaundiced and swollen. Desaturated palm trees waved limply over a grey infinity pool, precipitation prickling its surface. The view looked distinctly inferior to the vivid promises made by the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center’s online gallery.

Jemma stared at her screen, feeling her motivation and focus treacherously ebb. Surely at the edge of the world, at the height of her privilege, she should not be distracted by a little rain, and yet. She looked at the time and saw to her relief that it was mid-morning: Soon would be her scheduled detox water and smoothie duo, followed by her gym session and daily massage. Massage was not a privilege, however. It was a necessity to break up adhesions that might one day gather into a neck butt. Everyone could afford massage if they made it a priority.

As if on cue, her doorbell chimed. As she already had many times during her stay so far, Jemma felt a rush of gratitude for the certainty there would be no human on the other side to see her disheveled, unfresh and unable to focus on her important work. She found it an ordeal to be nice to workers when she had not even brushed her own teeth. Why should some innocent person contact her personal miasma?

When she opened the door, her heart sank. On the floor was a plain wood tray with two glasses on it. One was a glass of water with orange slices. The other was a smoothie made of starch-colored fruit purees, crowned with a slice of papaya.

She had specifically requested no citrus, due to her reflux, and green smoothies only – nothing with fructose, which was no friend to her gut biome. These beverages were like poison. It was hard to believe the machines could have gotten it so wrong.

Jemma was determined not to panic. She searched the desk suite for the monitor controls, and was annoyed at how long it took to find a cheap-feeling button that clicked in unpleasantly when it summoned the luminous, monolithic touchscreen. It was a terrible feeling to be annoyed by a button, but the sensation didn’t last long: right on the home screen was a juicy-looking, touchable phrase: SOMETHING WRONG?

The error report menu was so extensive Jemma was initially unsure how to file. Under Hospitality there was a section called Bad Prediction, and so she checked that. Under Food and Beverage there was a section called Sensitivities, and while there was an option for fructose, there was nothing to check regarding her citrus reflux.  The closest thing she could find was Not Otherwise Specified in the Textures and Odors section. At least they had a Textures and Odors section.

It was hard to believe the machines could have gotten it so wrong.

It somehow did not offer the satisfaction of a thorough complaint, but on the plus side, there was no guilt about expecting the problem to be fixed immediately.

In extreme cases, the weight of the arms pulls the whole upper body forward, and the trapezius becomes overdeveloped as we rely on it to raise our arms. At the same time, our miraculous, totally acceptable body develops a pouch of rigid fatty tissue (sorry) adipose tissue to protect the vulnerable part of the spinal cord at the nape. Due to the forward head position, the fully dysfunctional trapezius forms a yoke of meat with a distinct butt-like cleavage to it. This classic neck butt presentation is an increasingly common consequence of our modern condition.

Jemma was beginning to freak herself out. She decided to finish her work and go to the gym before her massage, so that she could do various lateral and deltoid routines followed by chest-opening stretches. These problem-solving exercises would eventually be incorporated into her body of important work – Jemma knew she had to offer people constructive avenues to deal with the horrible information she calmly and neutrally offered them about themselves. It was just easier to write detailed descriptions of structural concerns.


***

Jemma glided serenely down a tube-like white hallway softly pulsing with lo-fi house music and lined with ambient LEDs. This was definitely the kind of place she belonged to. It was a shame that not everyone could experience curved walls and the scent of ambient tea tree mists, but Jemma renewed her commitment to practice gratitude and channel her blessings into her work.

She expected the fitness center to be freshly machine-cleaned, and wondered what kind of cute accoutrement would indicate the cardio machines reserved for her by algorithm. When the exclusive electronic lock admitted her to the gym, however, Jemma was horrified to see another person in there, a misaligned arrangement of flushed limbs pumping away at one of the machines. On the machine, there was already a spattering of sweat drops.

“Hi!” Gasped Goon, puffing his miasma all around. The smell of him sharply curdled the air. Jemma inhaled, despite the soothing sound of the air conditioner. He had horrible form, clutching the machine arms and yanking at the pedals with his feet, tendons standing out at the backs of his ankles and knees in protest of how he flung them in random directions. His neck butt quivered like a gelatin mold with his naive efforts – how could he think he was exercising correctly?

Jemma did not say hi, pretending she did not hear because of her ear pods. She observed with detachment a fury rising inside her body, and her reflection suffered a scarlet flush that began to spread across her perfectly straight throat. She felt no relationship to the frizzy, furious creature she saw in the mirror – the mirror was emblazoned with decals that read Relax and Breathe and Time For You. She was a good person.

Still, there was such a thing as boundaries. Anyone might agree that it was a shame that, even in a high-end, state-of-the-art hotel like this one, there was no one to stop men from saying “hi” to her in the gym. Why wasn’t there something the algorithm could do about this, perhaps in the Sensory Issues Not Otherwise Specified section of the complaint form? The “hi” lodged under her skin like a splinter.

Then all the weights were on the rack in the wrong order. It was frankly disappointing, as Jemma did not come to an algorithmic resort to do someone else’s job for them, and her motivation to exercise disappeared. Given the odor, she couldn’t stay here anyway.

To avoid conveying any rudeness or ingratitude, she sat on a bench and pretended to be busy looking up workouts.

However, the neck butt is not merely aesthetically challenging. It can lead to arms which are turned the wrong way in their sockets, eventual neuropathy and loss of mobility. To address the root causes of neck butt, we must consider lifestyle issues, such as the individual’s career, common postural mistakes associated with device use, and form during fitness activities.

“Hey, hey,” Goon seemed to keep saying. Now he was right in front of her, repulsively wet and hairy, waving and waving.

“May I help you,” Jemma said at last, pulling out one headphone in a manner that conveyed extreme generosity and patience.

“Did you see the corpse earlier,” Goon said, pointing at the gym doors, although Jemma couldn’t see anything through the frosted glass. He pronounced it in a wrong, provincial way, like corp-us.

“There were some ambulances here just now,” he went on, even though Jemma did nothing to encourage him. “I saw them wheeling out a body in a bag. Yikes. Do you think the machines have had enough? Killer robot hotel, ha ha ha!”

“Of course not,” Jemma said. Someone had died, yet this Goon was still occupying space, being himself. She could feel her face doing something unkind and impatient, so she leaned even harder into her good person voice. “They’re not robots. They don’t have feelings. Did you check off all your preferences?”

“Sure,” Goon said, bewildered, but Jemma bet he had gotten overwhelmed by all the options and given up.

“Then everything will be okay,” she smiled at him. She considered explaining that she was a good person who devoted her life to helping people stand up straighter in body and spirit, and that she had the power to treat his neck butt. The idea of placing her hands on that flushed, freckled slab of trapezius was repulsive, though. It probably had pale curling hairs spiraling out of it.

Accidents happened all the time. If someone died at the hotel, they almost certainly had a pre-existing condition. The deceased almost certainly forgot to label an allergy or a heat sensitivity. Not everyone was responsible enough to use algorithms. People probably checked all kinds of boxes they were not supposed to be checking.

“Hey,” Goon said, apparently still unsatisfied with the amount of emotional labor she had already donated to him. “If there’s no human workers here, who called the coroner? What do we do when we need a real person?”

“You just use the complaint form,” Jemma explained, determined to be kind and patient no matter how much of an imposition his existence was. “It’s very extensive. You just have to understand what you’re looking at.”


***

There are numerous hidden factors which may encourage the body to slouch, embrace itself, carry stress in the back and otherwise not stand up straight. Some of these include but are not limited to: low self esteem, compound trauma and complex post-traumatic stress, avoidant attachment disorder, social proxy disorder and related isolation syndromes, Raynaud’s disease and other forms of cold sensitivity, insomnia, hypersomnia, compulsive work disorder, gaming addiction and poverty.

Jemma struggled to return to her important work. She had received an alert to her phone that there had been a booking error with her daily massage, and that instead of having it after the gym, she would have to have it in the evening, following her saffron and valerian tea blend with two drops of oregano oil to detoxify her gut biome.

She was determined somehow to live with this, even though it was sort of humiliating to have spent so much money and placed so much faith in the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center, and still not get the personalized standard of attention she had been hoping for. How much data about herself would she have to provide before the stupid machines could understand who she truly was, what she truly wanted?

And why had there been no apology, no offers of discounts or restitution, in response to her complaint?

Jemma decided there was no harm in submitting an additional complaint via the touchscreen in her suite, whose actuation seemed somehow even flimsier and more halting than the last time. She must have made some kind of error with the previous one, so this time she not only checked off more sections of the Sensory Issues Not Otherwise Specified section, adding Human Odor and Hygiene (General), she navigated through the Healthcare section and picked Attention Deficit Disorder, even going so far as to tap in the words “asked to wait with no warning, v triggering,” in the More Details field.

In the How Are We Doing field, Jemma submitted three point five stars, with a dark little pang of guilt. Being a good person did not mean you never complained. It did not mean you never had needs. She couldn’t indulge in the hypocrisy of being a posture therapist who cringed.

How much data about herself would she have to provide before the stupid machines could understand who she truly was, what she truly wanted?

After pressing ‘submit,’ she felt irrational and guilty. It must be the Goon Effect, his miasma of stupidity had infected her, so that now she worried about whether the machines really did have feelings. If she had been in a human hotel, she could do something like tidy her own room so it was perfectly neat for the maid, with all her trash in one place, to show that she was not a burden like other guests. She could leave a generous thirty percent tip at the bar, and the bartender would think: Ah, this woman has gratitude for her privilege.

***

Jemma wasted time with her important work until she heard the knock at the door, signaling that it was finally, at long last, time for her massage. If it was a good massage, one which steeped her deeply in appreciation for her privileges once more, then perhaps she would re-evaluate the How Are We Doing field and give a half-star back.

Outside the door was a robot. It looked like a tall black monolith rippled with studs of heavy industrial grade silicone that pulsed and whirred with the white noise of hidden servos. It was an abstract shape, nothing humanoid whatsoever about it, but for some reason, someone – some person, it had to be – had stuck two large plastic googly eyes at the top of the writhing, rubbery pillar.

Jemma wasn’t sure exactly what she had been expecting. One of the googly eyes swung madly in its bubble as the robot quietly glided into her bedroom, throwing a long shadow in the smeared red sunset that hung outside. Then it waited there, apparently for her to take her top off. She wondered how it would know when it was time.

Jemma took her top off and lay face down on her bed, breathing in the relaxing scent of lavender oil from her pillow. It was good to try unconventional things. It was good to trust your life to the systems of the universe, which were intelligent enough to ensure that everyone got what they deserved, so long as they provided enough information.

One of the googly eyes swung madly in its bubble as the robot quietly glided into her bedroom, throwing a long shadow in the smeared red sunset that hung outside.

With a distinct grinding sound like a coffee maker, the silicon tumors began to thud-thud-thud into Jemma’s back. She felt the robot’s manifold fists grind against some horrifying lumps, places where the fascia of her trapezial plane had, despite her attention, knotted up with lactic acid at the offenses of contemporary life. It did hurt, to have her adhesions pummeled, but it was worth the pain, at first.

Then the robot began to pound at her a little too hard, and Jemma said “ow.” It did not seem to hear her, and so she said “ow” louder. Probably its voice recognition software only understood words and not exclamations, so she said: “not so deep, please.” The googly-eyed massage robot still did not seem to hear her. If anything, perhaps it only heard the words deep please and began to pound harder. Her body thudded resonantly, and she felt a popping sensation between her ribs, which normally signaled a beneficial release of stored air, but which, today, was frightening.

“Stop,” Jemima shouted to no avail, feeling her face burn with a rush of adrenaline and embarrassment. Pain was good; people needed to be able to tolerate discomfort in the battle against adhesions, but this was ridiculous. This was not a four-star hotel massage. It was not even a three-star hotel massage. It was distinctly a two-point-five star hotel massage.

Abruptly she rolled out from under the robot’s ministrations, and as she put her top back on, she watched it leave worrying dents in the mattress in her wake. Still only one of its eyes moved, the black disc rolling around in its plastic bubble as it pounded and pounded until the mattress began to creak in protest.

What if the Goon hadn't been wrong? What if the robot knew she had filed a complaint, and had come for revenge? Would she be the next stupid, lumpen body carried out of the Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center in a shroud?

“I’m very dissatisfied,” she told the robot. There was the sound of tearing fabric, and memory foam sprang out from the wound in the bed. “I want to speak to a real person,” she said, but it didn’t stop. It did not even turn to look at her, its one plastic eye rolling and rolling.

Jemima forgot to put her shoes on, conscious of the sticky skin-cell slap of her bare feet on tile as she hurried down the hall to the elevator. Maybe tomorrow she would be embarrassed about this, how she wandered the empty halls actually hoping to encounter the Goon. Not that she thought he was right about anything, per se, but it might be a relief to admit to someone that she wanted to see, to find, another actual person.

Although the Goon had previously had no compunctions about fouling the reception area with his miasma, he was not there now – she saw only a pristine, perfectly polished lobby of glassy pink tile and verdant monstera. For the first time, Jemma wondered just how many guests were actually staying here.

“Hello,” Jemma shouted, in a tone that conveyed desperation and paranoia. Outside she saw the flashing of ambulance lights. “Hello!” No one came. The reception touchscreen chugged haltingly into place, but it was the same data menu as always. What if she were to offend the machines with the sin of a third complaint?

That was when Jemima noticed the curtain: A little panel of pastel-pink velvet behind the counter, waving in the artificial tea tree breeze. It felt like a crime to sidle behind the automated reception desk, to push aside the heavy, sensorily unpleasant fabric, and to slip into the cool, uncurated darkness behind it.

“Hello,” she called, finding herself in a surreal liminal space: A ceiling made of white popcorn tile, a floor made of beige flecked vinyl. At the end of a long, dark hallway, a red sign that said EXIIT flickered. Jemma’s heart plummeted  – if even the EXIIT sign was misspelled, how could she possibly expect a high standard of customer service now?

Incandescent light in a problematic, overstimulating blue hue leaked out of a closed door and licked the ugly tile. Jemma was definitely someplace she was not supposed to be. She was walking in the dreadful limbo zone of Goonhood, becoming a person with untreated adhesions, who filed multiple complaints, who did not leave five stars at all times out of respect for the workers, who did not leave a 30 percent tip, and maybe this hallway was where people like her deserved to end up.

“Hello,” she said, as gratefully and respectfully as possible, tapping on the closed door. At length, there was the thudding of an electronic lock, and the door opened. She’d felt almost certain that there would be a real person inside. Wasn’t that the secret – that constructed realities always had some kind of loving, attentive wizard at the controls?

Inside the room, Jemma saw a crescent-shaped console with hundreds of monitors and dozens of inscrutable touchscreen panels. On the console was a crumpled, grease-spotted bag that said Taco Bell, and a plastic Baja Blast cup with a straw that had been visibly chewed. She felt a chill running all the way up the ramrod of her spine, and felt compelled to take a step closer to the monitors.

Ultimately, each of us must accept that we live in an era of profound isolation coupled with incredible conveniences, and this results in a deep physiological unmooring of our very essence. Our bodies are wonderful machines designed to support our goals and help determine our orientation to challenge. The more abstract and information-oriented such challenges become, the more our physical forms lose their original functionality. Please enjoy the following content on exercises to help avoid the dreaded “neck butt.”

The camera footage seemed to cycle endlessly among different guest rooms. Jemima saw the hideous forms of strangers’ bodies sleeping in disheveled beds, and bathrooms littered with half-finished, unfresh cosmetics, food trays left on floors. On one display, a robot the size of a dumpster swept a blue light ineffectually back and forth across a mysterious white stain pattern on the tube-like gym hallway, white on white.

As Jemma looked, the truth began to set in slowly: every disgusting, malformed, misaligned, maladaptive body was a version of herself.

There was neck butt Jemma, rising from her bed and squeezing at the grotesque yoke that froze her shoulders – a Jemma that had never trained her posture at all, one who sat and sat and never met her deadlines. There was lordosis Jemma, her pelvis kinked ungratefully, dumping her belly out as she screamed at the reception desk display monitor.

On another display, kyphosis Jemma jerked two dumbbells above her head with terrible form, oblivious to the further injury she must be causing herself. At the bar, she winced to see her humped shoulders as she waved her device – a fool who thought that a thirty percent tip could ever be enough. In front of the lobby backdrop, Jemma didn’t even realize her head was jammed so far forward as she took a grinning picture of herself. Her arms hung forward heavily, swinging in their sockets like ripe starchy fruits.

The Jemmas peered directly into the surveillance lenses, looking right through her. Each looked more disgusting than the last, filing complaints, telling the truth.

In one window she even saw a lumpen and monstrous version of herself undressing slowly, striding seductively toward an unmade bed – in which lay the Goon, just as upsettingly naked as herself, holding out his freckle-flecked arms for her. In another, a body lay still on a hallway stretcher, under a shroud, and she knew it was hers. She’d thought she was a good person, but The Hotel Grand Platinum Marquis Escape Center knew everything about her.

She wanted to check out, but she had nowhere to go.