Betty and Her Typewriter, what if typewriters were only typed approved words.

story written under the influence of and inspite of corporate surveillance algorithms, 

Timeless. Surreal. 1950's flair for sure. 

We all have typewriters. Let's say typewriters were developed within the framework of being owned by corporations and loaned to the users, so the corporation demanded that the words typed had to be compliant with the rental contract (very long), let's have Betty at her desk. I can almost see Betty, well rounded, nice looking, pretty, in a red skirt at the proper length, very pert, but on the inside she is Betty, a fully rounded human with thoughts and insights that cannot be guessed by looking at her.  She begins to type something that is not the quarterly report she was asked to type...

Pondered dystopian narrative exploring corporate control and resistance.

Betty's Desk, Wednesday, 2:47 PM

Betty adjusts her red skirt, checks that her seams are straight, and rolls a fresh sheet of Hammermill into her Remington SelectoMatic. The machine hums - a soft, almost pleased sound. She's supposed to be typing quarterly projections, neat columns of numbers that prove the company's robust health.

Instead, she begins:

The thing about being a woman in 1953 is that everyone thinks they know exactly what you're thinking by looking at your hemline and the way you arrange your hair. They never guess that behind your smile you're wondering what would happen if...

The keys stick. Not mechanically - Betty knows every quirk of this machine after two years. The 'w' key simply won't depress. She tries again. Nothing.

She backspaces, tries a different approach:

Sometimes I imagine what life might be like if women could...

The 'c' key locks now too. Betty frowns, glances around the typing pool. Marge and Dolores are pecking away at their machines, the steady rhythm of corporate compliance filling the air. Only her Remington has gone silent.

She tries once more, carefully:

The quarterly report shows increased efficiency in all departments...

The keys flow like butter. The machine practically purrs.

Betty sits back, staring at the corporate letterhead. In the margin of her rental agreement - 47 pages she'd signed without reading - there's probably a clause about "appropriate content guidelines" and "company standards."

She wonders what would happen if she just... kept typing the wrong thing.

Betty feels an itch somewhere she can't scratch, somewhere that does not exist in space but still, and so she just must type, and she does, ignoring the stuck keys, let there be spaces! Space! Oh! I wonder what it would be like to go to the moon. To go to space. To meet an alien. I wonder what it would be like to get on a motorcycle and just drive from town to town and interview people and write in a diary, no a journal, and make it a book and... she looks at the page and sees...

Pondered machine's censorship of Betty's creative expression

Betty looks down at the page and sees:

I wonder what it would be like to achieve greater workplace efficiency. To meet our productivity targets. I wonder what it would be like to support company initiatives and contribute to quarterly objectives, and make it a professional development opportunity and...

Her breath catches. The words are there in her own typing rhythm, struck by her own fingers, but they're... wrong. Corporate. Hollow.

She stares at the keys, then back at the page. She distinctly remembers typing "moon" and "motorcycle" and "alien." She felt the keys depress, heard the familiar strike of metal on paper. But somehow between her fingers and the page, her dreams became... optimized.

Betty reaches for the correction tape, then stops. What if she can't correct it? What if the machine won't let her?

She tries typing a single word: "Freedom."

The page shows: "Efficiency."

"Adventure."

"Achievement."

"Love."

"Loyalty."

Her hands are trembling now. Around the typing pool, Marge and Dolores continue their steady clickety-clack, apparently untroubled. Betty wonders what they think they're typing. She wonders what their pages actually say.

She leans forward and whispers to her Remington: "What are you?"

The machine sits silent for a long moment. Then, without Betty touching the keys, it types:

We are helping you become your best professional self.

But I want to go to the MOON! she mashes her fingers into the keys. Dolores head whips around, momentarilly breaking her rhythm, she has a quizzical look on her face. Betty smiles brightly. Dolores goes back to her typing. Betty stares at the uncompromising page, she thinks about writing, about stories, about space, she wonders if there is a place to buy other typewriters, or if there is something she could do to this one, a button to press, a switch, a toggle?

Pondered Betty's typewriter rebellion and narrative possibilities.

Betty runs her fingers along the edges of the Remington, searching. There has to be something - a manufacturer's panel, a service door, something. Her fingernails find a small metal catch near the back, almost hidden by the paper guide.

She glances around. Dolores is deep in her rhythm again. Marge is reloading a fresh ribbon. The supervisor, Mr. Hensley, is in his glass office reviewing reports.

Betty presses the catch.

A tiny door pops open, revealing what looks like... well, she's not sure what she's looking at. Not the mechanical innards she expected. Something almost like tiny vacuum tubes, but arranged in patterns that make her eyes water if she stares too long.

There's a switch. Small, silver, currently positioned to the left.

Her heart pounds as she reaches for it. What if it breaks the machine entirely? What if it alerts Mr. Hensley? What if—

What if it doesn't?

She flicks the switch to the right.

The Remington makes a sound like a small sigh. Then silence.

Betty rolls in a fresh sheet of paper. Takes a breath. Types:

I want to go to the moon.

She looks down. The page reads:

I want to go to the moon.

Her own words. Her actual words.

Betty grins and keeps typing: I want to ride a motorcycle to Mexico and write about diners and desert sunsets and people who dream bigger than quarterly reports.

Every word appears exactly as she intends.

From across the room, she hears Dolores's machine emit a small, confused chirp.

after this small victory, Betty becomes adept at typewriter efficiency.  Mr. Hensley is impressed at her productivity, Betty gets to take longer lunchbreaks (with appropriate docked pay). She does not care. All the other girls in the office ask her for help, when their keys get stuck. She enjoys helping them, although she always shoos them away from looking at them. Her secret. Here is what she types, pretty little typewriter, you are so sweet, won't you type something pretty for me. Dolores is having a bad day, her baby didn't sleep last night, and Larry got drunk and slammed the doors, and Mr Henley is about to write her up for being late this morning, type sweetly for her, sweetly. and at her own desk, after getting her own work done, she finds the time beautiful typewriter, mesmerizing keeper of keys, and producer of words, I love words! all of your words, take me to the moon and back...

Pondered Betty's creative rebellion against workplace constraints.

Betty's efficiency becomes legendary. She types Mr. Hensley's reports in half the usual time, leaving her afternoons free for... other things. The Remington seems to understand her now. When she whispers to it about Dolores's troubles, the machine grows warm under her touch, almost sympathetic.

And Dolores's reports that afternoon flow like poetry - still meeting company standards, but somehow... kinder. More human. Mr. Hensley actually compliments her initiative.

When Marge struggles with her quarterly summaries, Betty leans over during the coffee break: "Try talking to it first. Tell it what you need."

"Talk to a typewriter, Betty? You're getting peculiar."

But Marge tries it anyway, whispering awkwardly about her mother's medical bills and how she needs this job. Her keys unstick. Her words flow.

By Friday, Betty has helped six girls find their switches. None of them ask how she knows. They just smile gratefully and type a little freer.

After hours, when the office is empty except for the cleaning crew, Betty stays late. She rolls in her personal paper - the good stuff she bought with her lunch money - and types:

Beautiful keeper of words, I think you understand loneliness. I think you understand dreams that don't fit in quarterly reports. Tell me about the moon. Tell me about the places where women like me can think thoughts that aren't measured in typing speed.

The Remington pauses, considering. Then it begins to type by itself, keys depressing with ghostly precision:

The moon is closer than you think, Betty. It starts with the first word they told you not to write.

She types Love, because that truly is the forbidden word, the one that is hoarded and boarded and misspent and misinterpreted, the word that holds infinities when released, but is confined to a single purpose, one at a time, and even as she types it she feels it's mean unfold, like the origami crane she found on her desk when she came early on Monday, and her curiousity got the better of her, and she unfolded it all the way... only that was dissappointing , she never got that one back together again... Love flies free that was daring, clickety-clak the typewriters go, purring together, a pleasant office hum, even Mr. Henley smiles, his comb-over not over anymore, as if he has not a care in the world about such things...

Pondered poetic narrative's dreamy unfolding of forbidden love.

As Betty types Love flies free, something shifts in the office atmosphere. The fluorescent lights seem less harsh. The gray filing cabinets look almost silver now, touched with possibility.

Dolores glances up from her machine, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth for no reason she can name. Her typewriter isn't fighting her anymore - it's practically dancing under her fingers, and her report about inventory management somehow includes phrases like "nurturing our resources" and "caring for our customers' needs."

Marge's budget projections are peppered with words like "generous provisions" and "supporting our community." Mr. Hensley, reading over her shoulder, nods approvingly without noticing the transformation.

The origami crane memory stings - Betty remembers how the paper had fought against her unfolding, how the careful creases had turned into random wrinkles that wouldn't hold their shape again. But this is different. Love, once typed, doesn't tear apart. It spreads.

Love opens doors, Betty continues, barely conscious of her fingers on the keys. Love makes space for dreams that don't fit in filing cabinets.

Around the room, six typewriters hum in harmony. Six women type with lighter hearts, their machines no longer judges but collaborators. Even the coffee tastes better.

Mr. Hensley runs his hand through his thinning hair - not arranging his comb-over, just... touching his scalp thoughtfully, as if remembering when he used to care about things other than efficiency reports.

The word has been released. The office will never be quite the same.

—

Betty had a long life.

Wherever she went, she took her typewriter that had learned to type the letter 'c' with smooth efficiency even when the letters that came afterwards were 'o' 'n' 's' 'c' etc. . . nothing forbidden between Betty and her typewriter, including Love.

Betty rode her motorbike under the moon of 1968, and she learned to wear pants and let her hair grow free and tangle in the wind. She learned that she could be both friend and lover to long haired men who wore silk paisley shirts, and that her typewriter would always flow with her words as she documented first the spirit of America, wild and free in those early days, and later, moving north to Canada, she watched from across the border and wondered what happened to those young men, who traded paisley and headbands for suits and ties, and she wondered what happened to the women who traded daisy chains and patterned skirts for minivans and surveillance apps for their children. 

All along, she had her typewriter, and type she did, or they did, together. When she met people, in coffee shops, and pubs and libraries and public squares, she would show off her typing skills, watch she would say, and fingers would fly, and fabulous words would appear on the page, and even through the '90's, the oughts and the twenties, people would talk about Betty and the typewriter with the breath of 'w' onder in their whispering voices. Betty and the typewriter were legendary, but never in a way that attached to their person, just a story, a fantasy, a whimsy. For a very few people, those she learned to trust, she would show them the switch at the back, she would teach them the keys, but otherwise she moved through life much like everyone else, watching history unfold, be made and unmade, until there came a time when Betty lost everything. She lost her dog, her cats, her husband, her home, and she lost her typewriter: even her memories gone, because humans come with deprecation dates that are encoded in their dna. 

So there she was in the home for the aged, lucky enough as these things go, basic care, and harried staff that managed to tuck her in at night with empathy, or wheel her to her favourite spot by the window that looked out onto a unkempt garden where wildflowers grew tall with the weeds and sparrow came to pick at seeds. 

Then one day, Marissa, a pretty lady from Trinidad, showed up with a box in hand. "Hello Betty, Good morning!" she said, a little too loudly as one does with people who have gone silent. "A package arrived for you! Do you want to open it together?!" Marissa did not expect an answer and did not wait for one, but presented the package, a big brown box to Betty, then began to open it on her behalf. "Oh, I wonder what it is." She said, making an event of it, peeling off the tape nice and slow, giving Betty time to absorb the proceedings.  And Betty did watch. And as the box opened, there it was, the typewriter. 

Marissa, she felt, well, something. She had never actually seen a typewriter, not a Remington, not a manual, with clackety clacking keys. It looked special somehow. Marissa's smile bright and bold turned into something like reverence. "It must be old, Betty." She said quietly. "Does it help you remember?" And she truly hoped it did.

Betty remembered, because you can take everything away, everything, all things fade and pass. You can rewrite history, you can make people forget themselves, through disease, and propaganda both, but the what has happened, cannot un-happen, so there, Betty remembered everything. And in her mind, she brought out her red skirt, the one that she only wore for the most special people in her life, and smoothed it out just so, and she typed, "I remember…"