Chapter Text
“Hello, Carlos.”
That was the first thing the voice ever said. Carlos thought he’d go for something a little more personal than the traditional “Hello, world.” Not that it mattered. This was just a test, after all, taking some software that had been part of an abandoned company project and seeing if there was anything that could be done with it.
The software had some sliders that could be used to change the pitch and timbre of the voice. Carlos played around with them for a while, listening to “Hello, Carlos” said by a variety of virtual people, before he went back to the random settings that the program had been on when Carlos opened it. He liked that voice the most. It was rich, deep and smooth. Carlos thought for a moment about what other things he should have it say.
“Hello, perfect, beautiful Carlos.”
For a moment Carlos smiled to himself, completely unselfconscious. Almost immediately, though, he remembered where he was, and looked around to see if there was anyone near enough to his cubicle to have heard that. There was no one visible, so relaxed again and put on a pair of headphones. Really, if he was going to be working with audio, it made sense to wear headphones anyway.
It was a pretty neat piece of software. Carlos gave it Jeff Winger’s speech from the first episode of Community, and sent that audio to his boss, along with an invitation to experiment with words and phrases, because the best way to get an idea of what the software was capable of was to use it. The next day, he arrived at work to find his boss’ reply.
Carlos,
I‘m excited about the potential applications for this software. I’d like to have you test its capabilities. Find its limits and tweak them and push it farther than it can go right now. I think we have the potential for a text-to-speech converter that could fully mimic the range and subtleties of the human voice.
I’ll send you lists of words and phrases that I’d like you to get it to say. It’s important to keep them as part of sentences. I’m particularly concerned about phrases that consist of common words. For example, it can say “dog” just fine, as well as “park,” but when I tried to get it to say “dog park” it just came out weird.
Anyway, here’s the first list. If you could get it to say these as parts of sentences and make sure it doesn’t sound too stilted, that’d be great. It it does sound stilted, let me know what needs to happen to make it stop. Ideally you’ll be able to handle those issues yourself, but just let me know if we need to get another programmer, or even a full team, on board. Of course, if we need more than one or two other people, it might not be worth it to the company to keep going, so bear that in mind.
The list:
Sheriff
Police
Children
Kids
Angels
Heavens
Desert
Secret
Helicopters
Alligators
Gatorade
Light Bulb
I’m also interested in seeing about inflections. Can you make it sound like it’s asking a question? And what about inflecting a particular word differently on repetition, for emphasis or other effects?
Get back to me as soon as you can.
--Al
Carlos got to work, writing up sentences that combined as many of the prescribed words as he could. To make the job less tedious, he tied the sentences together, writing brief snippets. Nothing too extensive, no more than a paragraph or so at a time. They wound up about the same length and level of detail as minor news stories. That thought amused Carlos, so he kept it going.
When the voice spoke, it sounded both ominous and disconcertingly chipper. The difference in tone from one sentence to the next could be unsettling. Carlos would have to do something about that… tweak the algorithms that governed intonation somehow… but for the meantime, he just went along with it. His silly news stories just got more and more ominous as he wrote more, especially when he got to the bit about the dog park.
It took some work to get the program to say “dog park” with anything sounding like a human speech pattern. When Carlos finally got it to sound vaguely acceptable, it still wasn’t quite right. No human would say the phrase “dog park” while sounding quite so foreboding. So, when Carlos wrote some sentences to show off how well the thing could say “dog park,” he tried to make them match the weird, misplaced gravitas that the voice imbued to that phrase.
Carlos really enjoyed listening to the voice, hearing its mellifluous tones read off the sentences he’d written for it. And since he was having fun anyway with his fake news stories, he wrote himself into some of them. And, because he was already messing around with surreal fantasy imagery, he figured he might as well turn the version of himself that the software would talk about into a fantasy.
Hearing praises of himself come out of the speech synthesizer made Carlos happier than it probably should have. After every few paragraphs of “real” work, he’d give himself a break and make the voice say something about him. He liked having it describe him as some irresistible figure, with a strong jaw and straight teeth and perfect hair. No one would have used those descriptors for him in real life, but it was nice to think of himself as having those qualities, even if just for a couple of minutes at a time while he worked on this project.
He exported the audio in snippets, leaving out the parts about himself. His boss didn’t need to hear that.
Al,
Here are some sample sentences. I think this is a pretty good illustration of the software’s current capabilities in regards to the things you asked me about. I’ve got some more audio I could send you if you want to get more thorough, but I figured I’d keep things brief for you right now.
There’s a lot of potential in the software, I agree. I’d love to make it my new project and tweak it however you feel is necessary until we have a finished product.
--Carlos
He attached the following pieces of audio to the email.
“The City Council announces the opening of a new dog park at the corner of Earl and Somerset, near the Ralphs. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park. People are not allowed in the dog park.”
“Are the unmarked helicopters circling the area black? Probably world government. Not a good area for play that day. Are they blue? That’s the Sheriff’s Secret Police. They’ll keep a good eye on your kids, and hardly ever take one.”
“Remember, Gatorade is basically soda, so give your kids plain old water, and maybe some orange slices when they play.”
“She is offering to sell the old light bulb, which has been touched by an angel.”
“It’s easy to forget in this hot, hot, hot desert climate, but things would actually be slightly harder for us without the sun.”
“The City Council would like me to remind you about the tiered heavens, and the hierarchy of angels. The reminder is that you should not know anything about this.”
“And now for a brief public service announcement: Alligators. Can they kill your children? Yes.”
Al didn’t hear Carlos’ favorite piece of audio. It was one where Carlos was mentioned, and besides, it didn’t use any of the words that had been on the list. Carlos had written it when he was almost done with his samples and just wanted to give himself a quick break for something fun before he finished up and passed on the audio.
“Carlos looked nervous. I’ve never seen that kind of look on someone with that strong of a jaw.”
He shivered. It was ridiculous, the effect that voice had on him.
Before Carlos left that day, he exported audio from everything he’d put together as one file. He copied it over to a flash drive so that the voice could keep him company when he got home.