Life unsure
What’s in the box?
It was an unremarkable box. Bland but somehow stylish in its carefully engineered blankness. Brown cardboard, just slightly smaller than a shoebox. It had been on his kitchen table for a couple of hours. Kevin was staring at the box. He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. It was just a box.
There had been an unexpected knock at the door earlier in the day. It had been left on the doorstep. There was no address on it. That was one thing. Also, he knew that he hadn’t ordered anything. So how had it ended up here? As he looked closer, he became more confident that it had reached its correct destination. His second inspection had revealed a tiny red logo embossed into one corner of the box lid. It was small — a self-conscious exercise in minimalism. He recognised the small red marking, it just took him a little while to remember where.
Digging through an old box folder, he pulled out a letter from his life insurance company, ExLoLi, as it was abbreviated in the advert he had seen. The letter he held in his hand was printed on brown paper and carried that small red logo on the header. Kevin had to admire the brand's consistency. This was it, a match. What Kevin couldn’t then work out was why they had sent him a box. Picking it up, it felt almost empty. It weighed the approximate mass of the cardboard that constituted it. Perhaps it was empty, he considered. Given its corporate neatness and bland exterior, why did he feel so much trepidation in opening it?
It was around a month since he had created the account with ExLoLi. He found them on one of those price aggregator sites. He didn’t even need to add any details. He just put his name and postcode into the site. The rest was automatic. It was that type of smooth automation that makes you feel like you are being looked after. The equivalent of an understanding nod from a concierge, that sort of feeling. He presumed the aggregator was using credit score data and whatever else was available to align him with the most appropriate insurance company. It was a connection built on trust.
He was currently purchasing the apartment that he was already renting, he now needed life insurance for the new mortgage. He really didn’t want to think too much about it, so the automated selection that came back from the site was fine by him. The price seemed fine too, so he clicked and the rest just happened. He got a letter a couple of days later — which felt quite antiquated and slow compared to how the processes started. A letter in this day and age. And now a parcel too.
Kevin wasn’t what you might think of as a gadget-minded person. He used tech whilst remaining quite wary of it. He didn’t like working out new things, it was tiresome and disruptive, and he had to admit to being concerned about privacy. He kept his slatted blinds that covered his windows at least partly closed at all times, he wasn’t keen on being seen. He thought of himself as being quite careful in that regard. Quite security minded.
Curiosity grew and he put his concerns aside. The box lid slid off, gliding with just a small amount of resistance, and inside was a neatly arranged installation of cardboard segments. At its center, nursed in a small pocket of foam, was a device. Next to it a small piece of paper. Activate me and your life insurance premiums will be halved. Like his privacy he was careful with money, so that was the deal that would finally convince him.
As he looked more closely and spotted another sheet of printed card, sliding it away from the packaging, he discovered that there were three aspects to the deal in front of him. The device would set personalised goals based upon his data, they would be geared towards his needs, it told him, enhancing his health, wellbeing and life expectancy. The result would be a fuller longer life, they described it as. The other two aspects were financial but non-specific. The device would keep up with his performance, if he didn’t keep active he would need to repay the insurance premium discount he had been given — paying it back retrospectively for all of the months that the discount had been received for. The other payment would be for the free device. It would only have to be paid for when activity levels were deemed insufficient. So, keep fit and healthy and it would save him a lot of money, especially as he was only just turning thirty and he planned to live for quite some time. The savings would be massive. And he wouldn’t mind being more active and healthier anyway, he just needed some motivation.
To accept the deal all he had to do was put the device on his wrist, the flow of data from the wearer’s body would automatically activate it. It would then connect to the network and the deal would be confirmed. It would also immediately start its haptic data gathering.
The instructions were written in a pithy and informative way, whilst retaining that casual and informal tone that accompanies technology. Snippets of technical details were embellished with encouraging slogans and little slang style phrases, and then there was the occasional inviting promise of what life will become in the near future.
Part of the reason for the pithiness of the instructions was the apparent simplicity and intuitiveness of the interface. There were no buttons to work out. A sleek exterior, black and shiny. Its inconspicuousness was almost pleasurable. The sheer simplicity was on the verge of making it so invisible that it was eye-catching. There was no need to have the inconvenience of charging this device either. The instructions explained that body movement alone would be enough to keep it charged with kinetic energy. The device would work in perpetuity. My own activity would ensure that. And so it would capture a constant and unending flow of information about the wearer and would provide never-ending guidance on how to optimise health and wellbeing.
Kevin slipped the device onto his wrist. It gently buzzed as it came to life. The screen flickered with that red ExLoLi logo for a few seconds, and then it began. It introduced itself to Kevin and he found himself smiling and responding. It started its initial analysis of his bodily signs. It described them as satisfactory — which was disappointing to Kevin as he knew that the label satisfactory always actually meant unsatisfactory — and then it set an itinerary for the rest of the day. Kevin slipped into some worn-out jogging trousers in preparation. The sense of being looked after felt surprisingly comforting. In terms of his welfare, the device would now share the burden whilst also saving him money.
He’d managed to keep up in the past, but with the targets increasing and a bit of boredom setting in, he had slipped in the last few days. It was the first time the red ExLoLi logo had appeared on the device. He didn’t like it, it seemed a harsher shade of red than he had remembered. A warning sign rather than the previous scarlet glow. The notification message it carried told him that he had only 5 hours to achieve his personalised goals or to click to find out what he owed. To ensure it wasn’t missed, it repeated the message in audio as well as text. A much colder voice scratched from the speakers. He knew that there would be some money to pay for the three years of discounted premiums. Not a massive amount but it was growing each month (actually, it turned out, they compounded it for each day). What he hadn’t accounted for was the cost of the device. A five figure sum appeared before him. It already totalled more than the equity he had accumulated in the apartment. And that monthly premium discount meant that it was growing. The sharp intake of breath that followed triggered a warning from the device about managing his breathing and keeping it even.
As he walked through his kitchen, the tiled floor was illuminated by the clock on the cooker. It read 23.28. It was far from the first time he’d passed the clock since darkness. It was actually the 86th time this evening. He knew because he was currently doing laps of his open-plan living space. Walking as closely as possible to the wall, he was circumnavigating the room, making sure to stay close to the edge so as to maximise the distance travelled with each circuit. He looked down at his wrist and the still gleaming device. Just 2,000 more steps to do before midnight to ensure he met his personalised target for today.
The more active the device made him, the greater the targets that were then set. The earlier friendly and encouraging tone of the device started to slip. It was like it was bored of him and of his obvious inadequacies and lack of sufficient motivation. It sounded annoyed at having to constantly cajole him. This got especially acute when the targeted health goals started to amass and the deadlines loomed. The warmth had been replaced with coldness and even what seemed now to Kevin like a sharp meanness. Where he had once been complimented on his discipline and even on his fitness levels, the device now slipped in more and more frequent blasts of negativity and stinging criticisms. It started in quite a tame manner. It’s only a bit of kit, he reminded himself, nothing more. The problem was, he had to listen. If he failed to keep up, the consequences would be massive. His home and therefore his life would be gone. A pure fear of the unknown gripped him, he couldn’t shake the image of the consequences of missing the next target. As Kevin dropped into his seat, that now familiar buzz returned to his wrist. He needed to try to find a way of keeping his heart rate above 140 for the next 30 minutes. He wasn’t sure why, that was his next instruction, there never was a reason. It suggested focusing on burpees.
Weeks of agony. There was a gradual escalation in the lengths he was going to appease the device. Exhausted, Kevin lay on the floor of his kitchen. He’d managed to douse water over his head and was now just trying to compose himself. He looked at his bare feet. The blisters were bleeding. He’d lost the toe nail from the big toe on his right foot. After hanging on for a while the thinned and blackened strip of nail that had remained fell off a couple of days ago. His only respite was at work. The device completely left him alone for the work hours that were scheduled into his online calendar. Of course, he’d thought of trying to block out the entire week to see if that would keep it quiet. He soon realised it would only allow him to include a maximum of 42 hours of time allocated to employment activities per week. The rest now belonged to the device and its seemingly arbitrary whims.
It chided him. Dragging himself to his feet a blackness descended, with it came a relaxing sensation. His premiums no longer needed to be paid. That relaxation didn’t last long. As things got darker he recalled the miniature printed words on the back of those device instructions. It was only after a few weeks of wearing it that he had looked for a way to turn the thing off, that’s when he had noticed the extra terms and conditions. As he drifted in the darkness it occurred to him that they would be unlikely to pay out.
