Farenheit 451

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Weirdly, I had a Ray Bradbury moment the day the venerable Sci-Fi author died.

I doan read the genre, but I did git to go to school.  Fahrenheit 451 was assigned us'uns. Y'all has read it?  

 'Member the Mechanical Hound ?

I met that cur in a medium size Spanish city known fer its sedate old world grace, stuffy professors of arcane Iberian  history an' thus,  far off the Tourist Trail. 

Aunty, in correspondingly sedate rental coche, pulls into courtyard/ plaza/ parking area of determinedly sedate hotel alongside other vehicles. AB hops out of coche, hits the lock on remote entry "key" that ain't a key, skips into the reception to register, realizes she done left her phone in the drink holder, scurries back out to retrieve same,  hits remote entry an'....nada. NADA.  

Try again. Again. N A D A. Not even an impotent clickin' sound.  Really?  Sigh. Reckon the rental folks will tell me whar' to git a new battery fer the key-less key thingy.   

Fumin' --Aunty ain't got no time fer this--I hustle back into the blessedly cool reception whar' a professional young'un murmurs, "Madame, please to leave your key. My colleague will take your coche to the parking garage and transfer your luggage to your room."


"Well, Ciruela Dulce, it ain't gonna be no use to ya'. It's battery jes' died on me."  I aim the key-less key out the stately window at the coche to demonstrate mah distress.


The murmur, "Madame, I will request your coche unlocked in two minutes.  Do not take worry."

I stare. What kinda talk is this?

 "I beg yore pardon?  Youse gonna request my car be unlocked? Request of whom?  How do  they lock it? Wait--WHY wuz it locked at all?


Murmur, "Madame, do not take worry.  The policia  have locked your coche.  For your safety, of course. One moment please. Only a moment."


(Insert heah a vision of a roach walled Mexican jail seen in all them spaghetti westerns--that'd be what held Aunty back from an utter meltdown diatribe on the horrors of a police state.

 
 Iffin' them policia folks can remotely lock mah coche, I knowed Uncle, clueless at home, wuz gonna git a blister or two pryin' me outa some subterranean squalor pit, even iffin' he donned his Zorro mask an' cape.)


Murmur an' me locked eyes.  


Sibilant  Aunty, "Well now, Dulcinea darlin', reckon iffin' yore policia locked up yore bankers instead of mah coche, yore folks would not take worry all over Madrid an' Barcelona."

* * * *     * * * *     * * * *


Apparently it be the policy of some hotels to have a "spectrum" umbrella  over their property so that they can lock yore vehicle at will.   (Mebbe they do this in our Metropolises too?) Thas' in addition to cameras thicker than horseflies in every major city.   I doan need to make no mention of what this means for invasion of privacy, personal space that y'ain't got none of no more, etc.  Later that night I heered how Bradbury done left us, an' wuz creeped out again by mah own encounter wif' the Mechanical Hound.



 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ in other privacy news:
 
 The gubmint done give the first ever fine fer data minin' to an outfit fer sellin' yore credit info to a potential employer, minus any verification of said data an' wif' out yore knowledge that youse been mined or sold.  


It's a start--fer the battalion of attorneys whose gonna profit--the victims git nuthin'.
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