Publisher's Synopsis
The marketplace conducted by and for AI negotiation units can be fast paced, cut throat, and indifferent to human concerns-but it is always profitable for someone. Transaction agent Float Flume, working for the House of Floral, enters the arena seeking business opportunities and deal making glory. This novel describes Floral Float Flume's participation in ten separate negotiations-potentially taking place in just a few moments, at the speed of computer processes. These business deals include a film project, a real estate development deal involving five sets of three buildings, bargaining for human resources (including medical, military and civilian personnel), and sales of wine, cars, a scooter rental company, cloud services, and a "human energy value building." The transactions begin with simple sales but proceed to more complex negotiations that involve argument, dissent, coalition building, aggression and cooperation. Agents demonstrate a sense of humor, anger, frustration and loyalty. As the transactions cover the range of great success and great failure, there is much drama. All the action is recounted in a specialized language developed by the AI units themselves for this marketplace, consisting entirely of English-language words beginning with the letters FL-. The words are not randomly chosen but comprise a constricted vocabulary with specifically assigned semantic values and syntax. This text represents an attempt to replicate a machine code constructed from fragments of human language. It forms a companion piece with the author's book of AI inspired texts, Robot Speak, which reconstructs the English language to create private codes deployed in what may be poems, transactions, programs, and spells. Three of the pieces in that book comprise the working materials for this novel about Floral Float Flume's adventures in the AI marketplace.
