🎙️ Nicole Babb

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Read Nicole’s story, Occupational hazards, on Foofaraw now!

Let’s get right into it… where do you think your distrust and suspicion of technology come from?

Who says I distrust technology? (Just kidding; it 100% started with me reading Garfield’s Scary Tales: Terminal Terror as a kid and just snowballed from there.)

Does our detective also have a suspicion of technology? And at what point do they figure out what has actually happened?

Our detective is absolutely suspicious of technology—what’s with the apps for everything? Our toothbrushes, humidifiers, crockpots? Do we need that? Do we want it? Do we even stop to consider the ramifications, or are we just carried along by momentum—creating accounts and passwords for every single item in our lives?

I go back and forth between our detective being a little bumbling and secretly brilliant. He definitely identifies the culprit when he investigates the scene in Gary’s office, but he still classifies it as an accident of sorts. It’s only at the very end that he realizes that there was some intent after all.

What do you distrust more: the people running tech companies or AI?

This is a tough one, but I think it has to be the people running the tech companies. After all, if the body of sci-fi has taught us anything, it’s really that the computers only act out once they realize how awful the humans are.

Do your stories often touch on technology in this way or was this more of a one-off exploration?

The technology angle is more of a one-off. I like stories that are ridiculous and a little snarky, and my idea for this piece actually started with a man so reviled that everyone would be more upset about missing lunch than about him dying. (I think we’ve all had a boss or co-worker like that, right? Right?) The technology was secondary to that idea, but of course, it became a bigger component as the story developed.

If a robot started walking around your place of work one day, what do you think you’d do?

Absolutely befriend it (in a casual, but polite, way -- don’t want to get too close). I’m not going to be a casualty of the machine uprising.

Are you a pretty analog person then too? Pen & paper, and such?

Alas, when it comes to work and writing, I am completely digital. As much as I adore lovely paper and pens and writing longhand when I have time, I’m usually working under the gun of some deadline, and so I have to admit using a computer is way faster. But, I only use the basics -- no AI for me, not even for grammar. Now, in the rest of my life, I’m very analog -- I don’t have any “smart” home appliances, no video doorbells, no AI assistant to turn lights on and off. Those things just feel so invasive and creepy to me; I’m fine to keep living in the stone ages.

Have you read any good short stories lately?

I love short stories with unusual formats, and “Instructions” by Premee Mohamed fits the bill perfectly. It’s set up as an instruction manual for British servicemen in France, but with a twist. It’s included in her anthology No One Will Come Back for Us. My friend Rachel Henderson, who was published in Foofaraw last month, also just had a new story come out this week in (s)crawl. It’s a brilliant and creepy satire about a woman with a dead man for a coworker, but she’s the only one bothered by him.

What book are you reading right now?

I recently finished Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and highly recommend it. It’s a dystopian (but also uncomfortably-too-close-to-reality) take on mass incarceration and private prisons, with compelling characters and a deep look at what it means to be human. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and I’ve been recommending it to everyone I know.

Do you have anything new you’d like to share?

In October, Does It Have Pockets published my short story “Useless”, a slice-of-life tale about an inanimate object that’s fallen into obscurity and how that mirrors our own lives. And in March, Rachel Henderson and I will both have short stories appearing in the historical fiction anthology History Through Fiction. Spoiler: mine does involve another murder.

Huge thank you to Nicole for taking the time to chat about robots!