Everett opened a blank document in his word processor software. He moved his mouse over to the button in the upper right for SADIE and clicked.
“Hello, Everett,” the modulated voice said. “The Smart Automated Dictation Interface Editor or SADIE is ready to go. Shall we start?”
Everett appreciated how far this technology had come. “Okay, SADIE, start dictation.”
“All right, Everett, I’m online. Start dictating when ready.”
Everett sat back in his desk chair, hands completely off the keyboard and mouse. He picked up his double Old Fashioned off the desk and started telling his story. “I don’t remember when I first thought about the most endangered mammal on the planet, comma, the riverine rabbit of South Africa’s Karoo desert, comma, but once I heard about them I was captivated…”
He continued, watching his words appear as text on the screen word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph.
SADIE broke into his dictation at one point. “Everett, I believe that last sentence is a fragment.”
Everett furrowed his brow. He knew it was a fragment – it was a fragment for effect. “SADIE disable grammar correction.”
“Grammar correction disabled. Please continue.”
And he did.
A few paragraphs later he stopped. “SADIE, move the last paragraph up above the previous paragraph.”
Everett watched as the last paragraph moved graphically above the previous paragraph.
“Where do you want to start again?” SADIE’s electronic voice asked.
“At the end of the next paragraph – after ‘and so I went to the desert.’ New paragraph.”
The cursor moved to the indicated position. “Please continue,” SADIE instructed.
“I had asked my wife, Leslie, if she would accompany me to study these elusive creatures. She said she wasn’t interested. Had I known she would die while I was in the remote desert field camp, I never would have gone.”
“That’s a bunch of horseshit!” Leslie’s voice came across the speakers. “You know you murdered me!” On the screen the words “That’s a bunch of horseshit. You know you murdered me!” spelled out on a new line as Everett dropped his Old Fashioned.
