LOSE THE OOPS by Mary Jo Rabe

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Carla clenched the steering wheel of her rusty, blue, aging compact car as she maneuvered down Highway 52’s foggy, last steep hill into Dubuque. The leviathan semis that barreled past her shook her car but not her resolve.

Still reeling from her boyfriend’s betrayal, Carla’s gut feeling told her that she had to get away. Dubuque was a whole different neighborhood, kindly aloof from any county to the south. Dubuque was where she could start over.

Her little Chevy brought her to the crowded parking lot that the Awesome Agnostic Charities shared with the Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

Hoisting her tall, sturdy bulk out of the car, Carla paced back and forth, trying to keep warm. The air was already a little frosty, even though it was only the beginning of October. Or, maybe the shivering came from uncertainty about the new job. Despite how she had promoted herself, Carla wasn’t the capable public relations expert she claimed to be. Probably, as soon as her new employer noticed what a loser she was, she would be out the door.

After graduating with her associate’s degree from the Clinton Community College and losing her high school, farmer boyfriend to that Bible-belt bitch, she had just wanted a job, any job.

She stared at the two-story, black-striped, cement building. With a backdrop of beautiful, ornate, old houses up on the hills, built by riverboat captains during their heyday, this concrete warehouse eyesore on the banks of the Mississippi was where she was going to start work today.

She trudged to the door and rang the bell. The door swung open. A voice yelled, “Up to the second floor,” and so she walked up the chipped, gray cement steps toward the light.

A short, chubby man who looked older than her father and had even less hair waved from a doorway. “You look like Carla Cook; come on in. We can’t wait for you to start.” His round red face lit up enthusiastically. Carla immediately had an unexpected good feeling about this job.

She walked through the door and recognized the rotund man as her new boss. He had looked taller in the video conferences. Remembering her manners—after all, surely they would hesitate to fire a polite employee—Carla smiled, faked some confident enthusiasm, and said, “Mr. Jepsen, thank you. I am so thrilled and rarin’ to go.”

Looking around, though, she wondered if she was in the office of a real business. They were standing in a tiny enclosed area that someone had stuffed two dented tables and chairs into, leaving only enough room for a skinny fashion model to walk through.

Carla was no expert, but even she could see that the computer equipment looked ancient. She hoped they at least had software that she had learned to use in the community college computer labs.

Mr. Jepsen shook her cold hand with his warm, sweaty one and smiled. “Come over to your desk,” he said, pointing her to a flimsy, four-legged metal structure.

Carla wanted to ask if the whole office had been furnished on a trip to a second-hand store. Instead, she smiled and sat down quickly, which had the advantage of her, at a five-foot eleven-inches in low heels, no longer towering over Mr. Jepsen.

Mr. Jepsen looked hesitant but hopeful as he sighed and said, “Well, I think we got to know each other well enough during the application process, but now that you are working for us, maybe I should tell you a little more about our organization.”

“Yes,” Carla interrupted. “For me to do good work for you, I have to know more than I do now.” She hoped this was a polite way of saying she knew absolutely nothing but was eager to learn and just as eager to keep this job.

“Good thought,” Mr. Jepsen agreed. “Doing public relations for us isn’t an easy job, and I have to tell you, you are already the fifth person to take it on in only two years. Anyway, agnostics and atheists often get an automatic bad press, but we believe in our charity and want you to make us well-liked, so we can collect more donations and do more good work.”

He looked away and started rubbing his hands. “It’s probably tactless or maybe even illegal to ask, but since this was a problem with a couple of your predecessors, if you are religious, do you have a problem dealing with non-believers? We need you to make us sound acceptable to the religionists without annoying our small but loyal group of supporters who don’t subscribe to religious beliefs,” Mr. Jepsen said.

“No,” Carla said truthfully. “I have friends who go to church and friends who don’t, and what people do or don’t do on their respective day of worship is none of my business.”

“Great,” Mr. Jepsen said, releasing his hands, with relief dripping down his flushed, reddened face. “Then, here are the basics: Get us good publicity, get us into the media in a positive light, and take control of our online publications, social media, blogs, and everything else that comes up.”

She looked doubtfully at the tiny monitor on her desk. Someone had already started the computer, which was vibrating ominously. She reached toward the narrow keyboard.

“Oh,” Mr. Jepsen began, his round face again turning the color of a ripe tomato, just like the ones Carla used to exhibit at the County Fair. “Sorry about the equipment and really sorry about your salary. One of the selling points of our charity is that our overhead is genuinely minimal. However, we did invest in some great software that I want to show you.”

He pointed a sausage-like finger to the icon on the desktop showing a red slash over a smiley face with a hand up against its forehead.

“That’s ‘Lose the Oops’,” he said proudly. “It’s some new start-up; some people even say it’s from around here. You message it everything you write or want to say and the software checks it for accidental insults, unintentional references, or things you might wish you hadn’t expressed in such words. It stops the damage before it even begins and prevents possible catastrophes in every known language on the planet. They must have a database with more entries than there are corncobs in Iowa. It’s the greatest thing since word processing.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Carla said doubtfully. “Do you mean this company censors what I write?”

“Actually, if there is any censorship that needs to be done, that’s my job,” Mr. Jepsen said as he coughed with definite embarrassment. “After all, you just work for us, and we have the final say about what you publish in our name. But ‘Lose the Oops’ protects my behind. Nowadays, everything ends up in worldwide distribution. How am I supposed to know which joke in an ad might anger a potential donor on the Fiji Islands or in Hong Kong? Somehow ‘Lose the Oops’ maintains a massive database of phrases, references, gestures, sounds, or images that all mean bad things in different places. My guess is that it is run by a worldwide network of librarians.”

He looked her in the eye and sighed. “You’re very young, but you must have heard about flubs that caused hurt feelings, ruined lives, and even provoked violence, all because people didn’t realize what they were saying. Or the mistakes like trying to sell a car called ‘no va’ in Spanish-speaking countries or the vacuum cleaner manufactured in Sweden that was proudly advertised with ‘it really sucks.’ The Internet has just made everything worse. Mistakes never go away; one wrong word can haunt you or your organization forever.”

“Well, if ‘Lose the Oops’ makes helpful suggestions, that’s great,” Carla said, hoping to change the subject slightly. “Show me how to use it.”

The next few months flew by faster than the usual one-day Iowa transition from summer to winter. Carla had a long commute, driving from her apartment in her hometown of Shoo Fly, population almost three hundred, following the Mississippi upstream through Bellevue and St. Donatus and then down the steep hills into Dubuque. The commute was even longer when she had to urge her Chevy through drifting snowbanks and across rink-sized patches of ice on the highways.

Still, she liked the drive. Watching the river, trees, and hills gave her time to think.

She decided she wanted to learn more about computers. The Northeast Iowa Community College in Dubuque had all kinds of webmaster courses, and she lucked out, ending up in a class with a really cute teacher from Cedar Rapids who augmented his teaching salary by teaching one evening a week in Dubuque. Bernie, a self-admitted former hacker, said she had the talent for becoming an even better hacker than he had been.

Carla gradually got better at public relations. In a way, it wasn’t all that different from the cheerleading she had done in high school. When the team was down, that’s when the cheerleaders had to yell louder or jump higher.

It was often hard to get good press for an atheist/agnostic charity. Still, the response to the company’s blog was surprisingly positive, and donations increased regularly.

At first, when she talked to friends, none of them had heard of a software called “Lose the Oops.” Everyone remembered bloopers they had seen or read, and occasionally someone would say that “Lose the Oops” sounded like a good idea, something that might even keep you from getting fired. However, she was the only one who actually used it.

Carla couldn’t complain. “Lose the Oops” saved her from any number of embarrassing missteps. “Lose the Oops” even helped her polish up her own use of language. Often, she had to express thoughts from the organization in a few very well-chosen words. “Lose the Oops” helped her find them.

Then she started seeing advertising for “Lose the Oops.” It promised to keep you out of trouble, to keep you safe from shitstorms, and to keep you from being sued. It claimed to make you more spontaneous since you no longer had to worry about being misunderstood. “Lose the Oops” would help you say exactly what you wanted everyone else to understand. It seemed foolproof, no matter how many fools used it.

The software spread slowly through the Midwest and South. After about a year, everyone she knew was using it. Even with a hugely expanded customer base, the quality of the product didn’t diminish. On the contrary, the corrections became more customized. Carla had the impression that “Lose the Oops” knew what she wanted to say better than and before she did.

Carla and Bernie became a couple, and she spent more and more time in Cedar Rapids.

She was glad that “Lose the Oops” let her get her work done faster at the Awesome Agnostic Charities. Her workday usually ended with her dashing something off and “Lose the Oops” returning perfect advertising copy or social media quips or scripts for video productions which she didn’t even need to read through. One glance, and she was on her way south or west, depending on which day it was.

One day, Bernie mentioned that his school system now required teachers to submit all their written communications and tests to “Lose the Oops” so that the school could avoid any unpleasantness. At first, he had been skeptical, because he often just finished creating that day’s test a few minutes before he wanted to leave for school. But “Lose the Oops” was getting faster and faster. Bernie usually got the corrected version within minutes of transmitting it.

Then the city of Dubuque started insisting that all municipal employees use the service, and most other government agencies followed suit. It didn’t take long for insurance companies to require their customers to use “Lose the Oops” for all communications in order to prevent lawsuits.

One day, Mr. Jepsen mentioned offhand that he had read “Lose the Oops” was now seeking customers from other countries. “I wonder where they could find enough staff for all the different languages,” he said. “But I guess other internet companies have managed, so why shouldn’t ‘Lose the Oops’?”

After almost two years on the job, Carla was a public relations expert, and the Awesome Agnostic Charities took in more money than any other charity in Iowa. Mr. Jepsen managed to get her a raise and state-of-the-art computer equipment.

When she heard the good news, Carla said, “Actually I should send some of my raise to ‘Lose the Oops.’ For all practical purposes they are my copywriters.”

“Who cares?” Mr. Jepsen retorted. “As long as the bottom line shows us increasing our donations, you can have as many copywriters as you want.”

“How much does ‘Lose the Oops’ cost anyway?” Carla asked. “Do they charge a flat rate or so much per submission?”

“Funny thing,” Mr. Jepsen answered. “The bigger ‘Lose the Oops’ got, the cheaper it got, even though it increased the number of customers and improved its service. Oh, I meant to tell you, ‘Lose the Oops’ sent us a new contract. Their service is free if we agree in advance to accept all their suggestions and never make any ad hoc changes to what they return to us. Is that a problem?”

Carla was getting ready to leave for Cedar Rapids. “Absolutely not,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem with any of their suggestions. ‘Lose the Oops’ knows what I want to say better than I do.”

The contract for free service made “Lose the Oops” even more popular and ubiquitous. Soon everyone was using the free version and singing its praises. It didn’t take long for it to become part of the normal communications process, and that worldwide.

By summer, Carla was planning her wedding. She seldom bothered to read through the texts “Lose the Oops” sent back until one Friday afternoon when she was searching for her chart of seating arrangements for the reception.

In her “immediate” file, she discovered the corrected version of her latest press release for the Awesome Agnostic Charities. For some reason, she started reading it.

“Whoa,” she said to herself, after the first few paragraphs. This was not good. “Lose the Oops” had Awesome Agnostic Charities proclaiming that their name was only a combination of words and that the organization certainly had no problems with a belief in a higher power.

She sat back down and began checking previous communications from “Lose the Oops.” Yes, there it was, starting about three months ago “Lose the Oops” had begun making changes in the content she sent them, making the Awesome Agnostics sound vaguely Unitarian or even generically religious.

Oh no, she thought. She printed the e-mail and raced with it to Mr. Jepsen’s office. She was so glad that all the dealings with “Lose the Oops” had been his idea. “Look at this.” She showed him the page. He read it carefully.

“Well,” he said. “Well, I see no real problem. Other non-theistic organizations have been saying similar things lately; we’re not alone here. So far, no one has complained, and donations are at an all-time high.”

“That’s not the point,” Carla said. “We can’t trust ‘Lose the Oops’ anymore. They aren’t just fixing bloopers or improving style; they are changing the content.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Jepsen said. “But if they are, it’s not just us they are doing it to. I’ve noticed how conciliatory and polite everyone has been lately. Almost all the religious organizations are saying nice things about their competition and even about us. I’m not entirely sure what we should worry about.”

“Well,” Carla said, “for starters, ‘Lose the Oops’ isn’t just encouraging polite behavior; it’s forcing it down people’s throats. For all practical purposes, the software is in control of worldwide communications and is spreading lies. Who are these people, anyway? What do we know about them?”

“Probably they are just doing what is good for their business,” Mr. Jepsen said.

“Slippery slope,” Carla said. “This is too much. I’m sending ‘Lose the Oops’ an e-mail right now telling them to quit changing any of the contents I send them.”

Carla sent off the e-mail, but then her maid of honor called to complain about the dresses Carla had picked out, and then the florist messaged her, and then her mother wanted to talk her out of an outdoor wedding at the Bellevue State Park officiated by a secular wedding arranger. By closing time, Carla had forgotten all about her e-mail to “Lose the Oops.”

The following Monday she saw the reply from “Lose the Oops.” They had merely corrected the spelling on her e-mail. She sent them off a blistering reply telling them to cease and desist, and it too merely came back with corrections.

Carla stomped into Mr. Jepsen’s office. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m never using ‘Lose the Oops’ again.”

“That would create a problem,” Mr. Jensen looked up at her, startled, and shook his red face. “It’s too big a risk; we would be too vulnerable if no one protected us from mistakes you might make. We’d lose our insurance and, no, that’s out of the question.”

Carla, remembering how much her wedding in the park was still going to end up costing her and Bernie, didn’t want to threaten to quit since she did need the money.

“Well,” she spat out between clenched teeth, “How can I get in touch with a real person at ‘Lose the Oops’? This censorship business has got to stop. I can’t believe that everyone else is willing to put up with it.”

“Actually,” Mr. Jepsen said, “our only contact with them has been electronic. No one knows where the physical company is located.” Carla shook her head and walked back to her desk.

Not wanting to be accused of overreacting, she started calling around to see if anyone else had noticed “Lose the Oops” interfering with contents. Some people had, but no one was particularly upset. The general attitude was that maybe the changed version of their words was more appropriate or more likely to get them what they really wanted.

Carla was surprised at the apathy but remembered that she had been so obsessed with her wedding plans the past few months that she also hadn’t paid any attention to “Lose the Oops.”

For some reason, the whole “Lose the Oops” thing really bothered her now though. Her gut feeling told her she should be upset. Carla didn’t like the idea of someone else controlling her. She went back into Mr. Jepsen’s office and asked, “Do you mind if I try to look for this company? I’ll make up the hours later.”

“Do whatcha have to do,” Mr. Jepson said.

Carla went back to her speedy, new computer. By now, her hacking skills were excellent. Unfortunately, it seemed that the “Lose the Oops” people were even better than she was. Every time she thought she was getting close, she found herself suddenly thrown offline. This went on all week.

In the long run, it didn’t matter how often “Lose the Oops” set up roadblocks though. The “Lose the Oops” people were more skillful, but Carla was determined and persistent. After one stubborn Sunday all-nighter, she was able to pinpoint the location the “Lose the Oops” communications came from, which turned out to be hidden among the beautiful, ornate, old mansions up on the hills in Dubuque.

It was early in the morning, and Mr. Jepsen had just arrived, but she burst into his office anyway. “You’re not going to believe where ‘Lose the Oops’ has its headquarters!” she yelled.

Mr. Jepsen took off his jacket. “Are you still pursuing that?” he asked.

“You said you didn’t mind,” she interrupted. “All electronic communications from ‘Lose the Oops’ start in Dubuque, here, at this address.”

Mr. Jepsen squinted at the page. “Are you sure? I’ve been there,” he said. “That’s a Cistercian convent, you know, nuns who don’t talk much. It’s a beautiful old mansion that the nuns inherited from the widow of an heir to a steamboat fortune. She also left them a foundation to pay taxes, utilities, and whatnot for perpetuity. It was in all the papers.”

“Anyway, I thought that meant the nuns had money,” Mr. Jepsen chuckled. “And so I hit them up for a donation. The feisty, old nun in charge threw me out and told me to go to wherever atheists get damned to if they don’t believe in heaven or hell.”

“Anyway, they’re what you call cloistered. They don’t have much contact with the outside world. They just spend their time praying and making candles to sell. I don’t see how they would have the know-how to create something like ‘Lose the Oops.’”

Carla sighed. “All I know is that this house is where our messages from ‘Lose the Oops’ originate. Something’s going on there, and I want to know what it is. Is it all right with you if I drive up there? You already gave me the afternoon off so I could go to Cedar Rapids.”

Mr. Jepsen laughed. “I doubt if anybody could stop you. Go ahead; see what you can find out. If you can talk the head nun into a donation, I’ll match it as your wedding present!”

Carla laughed too and stumbled out the door. Her Chevy was a little reluctant to start, but eventually it let itself be persuaded. For one brief second she wondered if she should call or send an e-mail first to get an appointment, but then she decided she wanted to launch a sneak attack. Whoever was behind “Lose the Oops” was a tough opponent, and Carla needed every advantage she could get.

She took a roundabout route up behind the hills and then down to the expensive neighborhood of massive stone houses with their individually sculptured façades, barely managing to find a parking space at the end of the winding little lane. Walking down the bumpy sidewalk to the convent, Carla tried to rehearse what she wanted to say.

She got to the door, but the doorbell produced such a loud rendition of a popular hallelujah melody that she forgot everything she planned to say. A plump, sixtyish woman opened the door. She was wearing what had to be her nun clothes, a long-sleeved white robe with what looked like a black jumper over it and a short white veil perched at the back of her head, giving her a vague resemblance to a giant, antagonistic penguin. Sister sixtyish penguin frowned. “How can we help you?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” Carla said. “I probably need to talk to whoever is in charge here. It’s about your software, ‘Lose the Oops.’”

Sister sixtyish penguin didn’t move even one facial muscle. “Do you have an appointment with Sister Kunigunde?” she asked.

“I don’t see how I could get an appointment when you spell-check my e-mails instead of answering them,” she blurted out.

Sister sixtyish penguin stepped back at that and said, “You are, of course, welcome to come in and wait in a guest room. I’ll see if Sister Kunigunde has time for you.”

She motioned for Carla to follow her to a small dark room furnished with old-fashioned, wooden, straight-back chairs and a small round end table covered with a white, embroidered cloth. The nun then closed the door and disappeared while Carla fumbled with her phone to make sure she had the correct address.

The door flew open and Sister sixtyish penguin’s impassive face managed to say “Please follow me” as she walked briskly down the dark hall to a modest office no bigger than Carla’s makeshift one at work.

A short, skinny, old crone wearing the same outfit, but whose tiny veil had no power over her intimidating mane of long, bushy, white hair, stood behind her narrow, white desk. “Come in and sit down, Ms. Cook,” she barked impatiently and pointed to a sturdy-looking, metal folding chair in front of her desk.

“There’s no reason to waste my time. I am Sister Kunigunde, and I am in charge.” She sat back down and folded her hands over her desk.

Carla’s Lutheran background didn’t really prepare her for dealing with nuns, but she didn’t want to make any completely unnecessary mistakes. “Thank you, uh, Mother Superior?” she asked as she sat down.

“I’m nobody’s mother and am certainly not superior to any of my sisters,” Sister replied tartly. “For whatever reason, the other sisters keep electing me to run this place. Well, even our founders knew that God moves in mysterious ways. What is it you want, you foolish girl?”

Carla paused and then asked, “Well, for starters, do you admit that the ‘Lose the Oops’ software is run from here?”

“Admit!” Sister Kunigunde raised her somewhat quavering voice and stared at Carla. “We’re so proud of it it borders on being sinful. Our order developed ‘Lose the Oops,’ invented it, polished it, got it working, fixed problems that came up, and spread the bots throughout the world.”

Carla looked at her skeptically. “I’m supposed to believe that a bunch of housebound nuns could come up with a software that can prevent misunderstandings and embarrassing references in hundreds of languages?”

Sister Kunigunde snorted. “Your ignorance and lack of imagination don’t become you. Think about it. There’s an organization with branch offices worldwide, operating in hundreds of languages and cultures. This organization employs highly motivated, hard-working women who feel they are serving God with what they do. Our order promotes a lifestyle that demands hours spent in creative thought, what we call contemplation, and that every single day.”

“We use technology to keep in touch with the outside world”,” she continued. “If the technology we need doesn’t exist, we create it.”

“We developed the linguistic algorithms we needed to manage the amount of information we deal with.”

“So, yes, our religious order developed and distributed ‘Lose the Oops,’ to the benefit of all current and future residents of this blessed planet. We have ushered in a new era, one where human beings are starting to behave like good neighbors to one another.”

Sister Kunigunde stood up and looked at Carla sternly. “Now, why the blazes do you want to put a stop to our good work? I assume that’s why you were so persistent in searching for us.”

Carla said, “But how…,” when Sister Kunigunde interrupted her.

“Of course we detected your hacking into our system over and over again. We finally decided it was God’s will to let you find us.” She frowned. “In my opinion, God was being peculiarly mysterious and inscrutable this time. So, why are you so determined to stop us?”

Carla looked her in the eye. “You’ve gone too far,” she said. “It’s fine to make people’s communications more polite and less prone to misunderstandings, but you have no right to change the contents of what people want to write or say.”

“Why not?” Sister Kunigunde asked. “Before ‘Lose the Oops,’ people indulged in all kinds of cruel language and actions, provoking even worse reactions. It was simply time to put a stop to it.”

“Are you so certain you want to object to what ‘Lose the Oops’ is doing to life on Earth?” she continued. “You have to have noticed there is a lot less violence and cruelty among your fellow creatures during the past few months. We are, in our humble way, using the talents that God gave us to remove some sources of unhappiness and anger.”

Carla didn’t know if she should be freaked out or should take charge. Okay, fanatical nuns were behind “Lose the Oops,” and they were deliberately interfering with communications, actually censoring people because they thought it was to the benefit of humankind. Was that really a bad thing?

Carla wasn’t completely sure. It was better for people to be polite and considerate to each other. If that led to fewer wars and less suffering, that was a good thing. What if the nuns could change the way human beings dealt with each other?

She and Bernie wanted kids. It would be wonderful if her kids were never bullied. She had no rational arguments against what the nuns were doing. And yet she had this feeling deep inside that kept screaming, “No!”

Carla decided she had to go with her gut feeling. “I want you to stop censoring people,” she said. “You can continue to prevent mistakes or misunderstandings in people’s communications, but everything else has to stop. Otherwise, I’ll go public; I’ll tell everyone what you’re doing, and if you manage to stop me, it will just be a matter of time until others notice your manipulations and expose you. Sooner or later, everyone will stop using ‘Lose the Oops.’”

Sister Kunigunde shook her head. “We were convinced that we were doing a good thing,” she said sadly. “But it looks like we must have miscalculated. We assumed that by the time people noticed our manipulations, they would appreciate the obvious benefits.”

The old nun sighed. “You, obviously, are too formidable an opponent, what with your amazing public relations skills. I have no doubt that you could turn public opinion against us.”

“Still,” Sister Kunigunde said. “I would ask you to give this more thought. If you want things to go back to the way they were, fine, you have the power to stop us. Show us how you can get people to treat each other better, and we’ll stop manipulating them.”

Carla stood up impatiently. “No,” she said. “That’s something human beings will just have to figure out for themselves, without any nuns dictating their behavior. Stop the manipulation with your software, or I’ll expose you. That’s my final offer.”

As she walked out the door, Sister Kunigunde said quietly, “Then we will stop altogether. We have never been ones for half measures. Goodbye and Godspeed, Ms. Cook. The sisters and I will pray for you.”

Carla drove to Cedar Rapids, relieved that she could cross this problem off her list and concentrate on getting her wedding organized. When she got to Bernie’s apartment, she turned on the local news station that reported “Lose the Oops” was suspending operations.

She decided to call Mr. Jepsen. “It’s gone,” he said. “The ‘Lose the Oops’ software has disappeared. No one can believe it; it even made the top of the news. What did you do?”

Carla said, “It’s a long story, and I still have a thousand things to do for my wedding. As soon as I’m back, I’ll tell you all about it. I guess I’ll just have to be much more careful about what I write now without ‘Lose the Oops.’”

“No, funny thing,” Mr. Jepsen interrupted her. “A few minutes ago, I got an e-mail from our insurance company. They already found a replacement for ‘Lose the Oops,’ something called ‘Safe, Not Sorry.’ This company promises to work to our complete satisfaction. So we’ll be using that from now on.”

“Good,” Carla said. “See you in two weeks.” She put down the phone and pulled out her tablet to see what progress she could make with her to-do list.

When Bernie came home, she was down to number twelve on the list, getting flowers delivered to the Bellevue State Park. “How was your day?” she asked as he headed toward the kitchen.

“We had to stay late for a faculty meeting,” he said. “Our school has to change software providers. We’re going to use something called ‘Clean It Up’ instead of ‘Lose the Oops.’”

“That’s partly my doing,” Carla admitted. “I’ll tell you all about ‘Lose the Oops’ at supper. Are all the schools going to use ‘Clean It Up’ now?”

“Funny thing,” Bernie said. “Our principal said every school in Cedar Rapids got an offer from a different company.”

Carla was relieved. Apparently all kinds of companies were ready and eager to do what “Lose the Oops” had done; they had just been afraid to take on a giant monopoly. Another good reason to get rid of “Lose the Oops.” Now people could make demands of their new software provider, like absolutely no censorship. If your demands weren’t met, you could always switch to a different company.

* * *

That evening, Sister Kunigunde looked at the sisters around the table in the refectory after saying grace. “I can report that, so far, everything is proceeding as expected. Step one, getting people used to the idea of giving up control over their communications, was successful. Step two has been equally successful. The predicted number of protesters made their way to various Cistercian convents; we pretended to give in by taking down ‘Lose the Oops’ when in fact we just repackaged and renamed it for individual distribution by fronts we set up around the world. With the additional spyware in the new and improved software we will be able to eliminate future protests even before the potential protesters get the idea.”

“I think we can conclude that God is on our side in this endeavor. Let us once again give thanks and ask God’s blessing for step three, which we will launch tomorrow.”

* * *

“Oh, look,” Bernie said as he opened a card the day after their wedding. “The nuns from ‘Lose the Oops’ wish us a long and blessed life together. It’s nice that they don’t hold a grudge!”

“Yes,” Carla said as she wondered why she suddenly had this uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach again.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Mary Jo Rabe grew up on a farm in eastern Iowa, got degrees from Michigan State University (German and math) and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (library science). She worked in the library of the chancery office of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Germany for forty-one years, and lives with her husband in Titisee-Neustadt, Germany.

She has published Blue Sunset, inspired by Spoon River Anthology and The Martian Chronicles, electronically and has had stories published in Fabula Argentea, Fiction River, Pulphouse, Penumbric Speculative Fiction, Alien Dimensions, 4 Star Stories, Draw Down the Moon, Dark Horses, Wyldblood Magazine, and other magazines and anthologies.

Blog: https://maryjorabe.wordpress.com/

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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Lose the Oops”:

We applauded author Mary Jo Rabe’s comments on the current issues of AI and the idea of censorship (although could this really be considered as censorship?) in an amusing and most definitely non-political way. Ah, the power of the Church. It certainly makes us wonder.

And of course, the author doesn’t stop with delivering just one surprise for the reader. She hits us with a second, and even more unexpected, one. It’s a perfectly set up piece all around.