As I write this week’s offering, I have just been informed that my internet provider is down…again. In hopes that I will not be visited in the night by men in black trench coats wearing Dick Tracy hats, I will only provide the initials of my internet provider. It’s three letters, and they are the same folks that started most of the revolutions down in South America back in the day. Anyhow, I have now been a victim of “failure to communicate” for two days in a row. Unthinkable! So, I called the 800 number to demand how I, an American citizen, holder of an outdated U.S. passport, and a member in good standing of Costco could be subjected to such outrageous, unreasonable and demeaning treatment. I listened as the tele-phone rang at the corporate home of the three letters. I was primed and ready to hurt some-body’s feelings. Oddly, the ring tone sounded like my grandmother’s ancient phone from back in 1959. I was drifting into the Twilight Zone. A voice answered, and I was shocked. It was the warmest, pleasing sound I had heard in years. In slow, clear, lyrical phrases, an old-er American female voice answered my concerns before I even had a chance to start my tirade. Was my grandmother working at an AT&T call center in heaven? I was completely thrown off my game. This dear woman was speaking in the language of my birth. There was no trace of any accent from the other side of the world. I could actually understand every-thing she was saying, and I immediately wanted to tell her about every bad day I had had since 1972. She was wonderful. She apologized for the inconvenience and even told me what time the problems would be corrected. It was my moment of Zen. As the conversation ended, I had to resist saying, “Goodnight, Amma”. True to her word, my internet service was re-stored…temporarily. Today, it has cruelly happened again. Unthinkable! Shattered and de-moralized, I was not strong enough to dial the 800 number once more. I had to ask my wife to make the call. This time it was different. It was all politely impersonal and business-like. My fragile faith in the nostalgic rebirth of customer service lay crushed on the ground. As I thought about it later, I wondered if it all had been a dream. Had my day without inter-net service resulted in a breakdown and complete loss of reality? Then, it came to me. Sadly, my call with the “Betty White” of customer service was not real at all. It was, of course, AI. I had been blinded by the light of artificial intelligence. What I thought was Z.E.N. was actually A.T.T. Well, it’s like Rod Serling always said, “Submitted for your approval, life can be stranger than fiction, in the Twilight Zone”.