With Colorado’s Safer-at-Home Lockdown and the fact that I never bothered to get my cable-TV hooked up, I find myself reading, and watching lots of YouTube videos & DVDs off my computer instead. This short story is a re-write (and CoVid-19 update) of an essay I originally published way back in 2015. What if the entity you’re watching started talking back at you? Not as outrageous as it might sound.                                                                                                               Word Count: 928

Interactive TV

That Talks Back at You

Think about it. It’d be quite the eye-opening experience to yell at your television and it responds back to you? Let’s say some inane infomercial comes on at 3:00 am. The CoVid-19 Pandemic has completely altered your circadian rhythms and you’ve turned into a night-owl. That bag of chips you’re scarfing down empties out, and you decide to scream at the tube. Suddenly the TV set acknowledges your ranting & raving and answers back. A deep booming James Earl Jones type baritone that says it will seriously take into consideration your opinions. Wow what a concept, an interactive TV that actually happens? This sounds like it could be as much fun as that time you found yourself trapped overnight in a Game-Stop. Basically, it is too. The video store incarceration adventure happened last week, but that’s another story.

You may be asking yourself, how is this possible? More appropriately, why is this possible? This is a question better left to philosophical technology discussions, and paranoid conspiracy round tables. Folks stuck at home because of the CoVid-19 Lockdown and finding themselves with lots of time on their hands. We might add that they also have very little motivation to contemplate the ramifications of doing anything remotely constructive. Since that’s the case, let’s attempt to answer that first Interactive TV question instead.

Your television doesn’t look any different than other high technology viewing devices. In fact, it’s quite typical. One of those new flat screen models with crystal clear, holographic, 3-D, imagery and surround-sound speakers strategically placed in each corner of the room.

You paid a design consultant lots of disposable money you don’t have to pinpoint the proper location to position those sound emitting devices too. Makes you wonder, is that the reason the television talked back in the first place?

Possibly, after all, how do you know that interior designer you hired isn’t a government operative? Accumulating information for some sort of covert organization right under the noses of most private citizens? You don’t, after all the guy did have an Adolf Hitler mustache, and grandpa always said that was a legitimate reason to be suspicious about these sorts of things. He also said it makes for a more cautious, and therefore more interesting journey through life. That’s also justifiable.

Ironically enough, that 3:00 am infomercial incident wasn’t the first time the tube has talked back at you either. What about that situation last week in the middle of a win-or-contemplate-suicide game? Your sports-viewing options have made you desperate and watching KLB (Korean League Baseball) is the only option. The team you’re rooting for sure managed to grasp defeat out of the ironclad jaws of victory with that one. They go into the 9^th inning of the game with a 10-2 lead and looking happier than a Hollywood movie executive whose latest offering just hit the eighty-million-dollar profit plateau.

Then this brain-dead manager of theirs chooses to use every pitcher in that obviously CoVid-19 decimated bullpen of his. Turns a sure-fire thing into a nail biting, boredom inducing (this is after all the game of Baseball?) pitcher’s duel. This lasts another five innings and totally empties out your snack food stash (we hate it when that happens).

What sort of mind-numbing thoughts were going through the heads of those brain-dead morons when they were building up a three-run lead in the 13th, get two outs, and follow that by balancing right on the verge of victory with a 3-2 count on the batter? Promptly proceeded by losing the game in an epic collapse that makes Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo look like a loss in Checkers to his nephew? You damn right the TV talked back when you yelled at it. There would definitely be something seriously wrong with the situation if that didn’t happen.

How should you respond to this when it takes place? Start up a running dialogue with the voice? Possibly, although it might respond back in a strange cryptic way when you ask it a question. What if it reply’s in a belligerent tone instead? How should you react? Hopefully it’ll be friendly, so in this case interacting with the TV might be a lot of fun. Maybe you can ask what the entity thinks about that latest job offer you got yesterday. If you take the advice at least you don’t have to ask customers if they want fries and a drink with that take-out order they’ve placed.

Or you could just ignore it. That course of action always seems to work pretty well for the federal government. They’re extremely efficient and we all know how neglecting stuff works for them.

Should you be worried about hearing voices talking back at you from the television? Maybe, but probably not. Thank God that psychiatrist altered your medication. Then again, does he really expect you to take three or four pills every six hours? Or was the prescription one pill every hour? Maybe you should call him and find out what the proper diagnoses is? Naah, why bother?