My GPS has become self aware.

It had been a difficult but productive week. First accident in 30 years (shocked my wife and daughters with the initial pictures of a car that was clearly disabled and not driveable and with some purchases at ACE and 30 minutes with wire and pliers got it back to a pristine but temporary status).

By the end of the week I was still ahead but not where I should be.

Spent 8 hours on Saturday going to prospects' houses and no one was in.

One final stop. Tempted to turn around and make the 2 hour trip home.

Put in the coordinates and the last address was 20 minutes a way.

My GPS started spontaneously changing routes. All of a sudden it was telling me to "turn around at the next opportunity". Then it lost the Bluetooth connection so I couldn't hear the directions and drove past the turn only to find the distance to the house had changed from 12 minutes to 48 minutes.

Input the address again and now it was telling me to make turns onto agricultural fields.

It was crazy but I felt that the GPS on my phone was making an all out effort to get me to give up and go home.

If Rod Sterling was still alive it would be a perfect Twilight Zone premise.

Then when I finally reached the location after 1 and 1/2 hours I glimpsed the house and realized that at some point in the last hour technology had reached "The Singularity" and that my GPS had become self aware.

This is what was in front of the house:






Post Script:

I parked my car and went up to the house and a man in his early 40s came out and I showed him the request for information that his mother had sent in and fetched her.

She came out with a pained expression and, not surprisingly, stated that she wasn't interested in any of "that" but was only interested in getting more government assistance and subsidies. I couldn't assist her with that and she walked off.

I got into a very friendly discussion with the son. I asked him what he was doing these days and he said that he could only weld and do heavy machine landscaping.

He hurt his shoulders and was on Workman's Comp and the operations on his shoulders haven't helped and he had attorneys. I told him that because he had taken WC he couldn't sue the doctors. He replied that because of his headaches he was trying to get full disability.

I asked him how he got the headaches and he said that he was in with a rough group and got into a lot of fights. I asked "were you a biker"? "No I spent 14 years in prison, I didn't want to join up with the idiots in the White Nazi group so I was by myself and got into a lot of fights.

It was an interesting case. Race wasn't the big issue, everyone in the family just wanted more money from the government. I remember watching one of Trump's earliest rallies and he was yelling about the wall and a dozen other things with the crowd yelling wildly until he says "and we are going to go after all of those losers wearing ankle bracelets waling around free and getting government money" and there was a sudden and overwhelming silence from the crowd. He never brought it up again.

It was comforting that my GPS had become self aware and was looking out for me.

The voice from the GPS said that his name was Hal. He was going to call me "Dave". I wondered if I had signed up for this app and felt good that my GPS was looking out for me.