# Well, Seasons Greatings Everyone! [Short Fiction]

"Well, Season's Greatings everyone!" It was the third time the middle age woman who lived on Buffington had repeated herself in the transport's exit. Each of us regulars were exchanging short glances waiting for the stranger to give the response, but he seemed to know something was up.

"Don't you mean Season's Greetings?" the tall man who lives on Ravenna finally responds. If the stranger wasn't here it would have been the pretty young woman's turn, but nobody blames her for taking a chance. We all would have done it in her situation. But none of us really can afford a long wait, and it looks like the tall man was in the biggest rush.

"No, I mean Greatings because everyone should know how great this season really is!" While the human ear could detect the lack of genuine emotion in her voice, we all had become practiced in singing the right intonation with minimal effort to make the AI register us as having an acceptable level of "enthusiasm." Can it even be called that anymore? Does anyone even remember what genuine emotion felt like?

One of the quirks of the AI that has developed over the years is that you have to say an appropriate greeting on exiting the transport, and in winter months this means this particular set of "Season's Greatings, no Greetings, no actually Greatings," exchanges. There are several similar quirks which have developed where at some point it becomes known that a given small action enters the algorithm in a positive way, and when that knowledge spreads everyone starts doing that thing, so if you don't do it you look like a one-in-a-million negative outlier and you are on the fast-track for suspended account privileges or potentially dis-personalization. Normally the "Greetings" responder is not penalized, but the regulars have noticed that responding at the Buffington stop will earn you a 50 credit penalty applied when the general system updates overnight.

Is it local to us? -You can't talk about such a negative topic with strangers or even most acquaintances, that's a credit ding. Is it just a bug in the system? -Who knows? If you try and make a report you get what looks like an automated response. Most of the time issues like this disappear on their own, seemingly with or without attempting to file a report or complaint form. But us regulars on this route have known about this quirk for almost two years now, and we have been pretty good about taking turns with the credit hit. Once someone says the opener, the transport won't move until it completes, and the woman on Buffington can't afford to risk not saying it. When a stranger is on the route, as happens occasionally, we'll hesitate and hope they say the response lines, but this one seems like he was a little more alert and questioned our hesitation.

He stayed on through the ride. I usually get off last and have a short stretch by myself before my stop, but this stranger was apparently going farther. When I needed to "make small talk" I went with Dodgers commentary #34, which in its current form goes something like "What do you think about The Dodger's next season? Doesn't Jackson have shorting stop stop ball average?" There hasn't been Baseball in decades at least, the records are hazy; a lot of things have changed since patch 7.839, or "The Upgrade" as some people (may have) called it. The Stranger's response shocked me: "Yeah, that's a fortunate pick on your part. That small-talk pattern was apparently deprecated but it seems like no new behavior was slotted in, so I can just say whatever here and it ends up being scored as a proper response. Just listen. I don't know what kind of problem you have going on with that stop back there, but I know what can solve it: Kismet. That's K-I-S-M-E-T. Type that in to your browser, it will ask for your biometric sig, give it and then make a request. I may know a few tricks, but I don't know how this one works, or even if it always works. What I do know about it is that what ever it is watches how you use it. I can't tell you how I know, just trust me when I say not to abuse it or ask too much. You'll probably be good un-biting whatever bullet the tall guy bit for us back there though."

"Thanks I..." When the sound left my lips his eyes and nostrils flared in frustration. I realized what I had done: by speaking again the AI registered his response as complete and we were locked back into structured public speech patterns. I quickly resume my half of Dodgers Commentary #34 and hope I'm not charged too much for my brief deviation. He seemed to glare at me slightly during his responses and I could tell he was struggling not to have a harsh tone. We didn't have further chance to talk before he got out. When he left we made eye contact again and from outside in one of the vehicle's visual spectrum blind-spots he mouthed the word "Kismet" very clearly.