Sometimes ideas are best communicated in a parable or allegory. Plato’s “the cave” being a highbrow allegory and things like George Orwell’s “animal farm” and Gullivers Travels are perfect examples of stories with meaning.
The Background
This serves as a setting summary for “The Florist”. It saves having to re-hash the characters, settings and terms of each new post. Instead, new readers can catch up on the who by linking to this post.
Where
The Florist is set in the near future in the year 0023 Y2k, a new calendar system created by the overlords of the nation of the Combined States of Atlantica, or CSA for short. It is a world and nation that is similar to that of what we know today but with a one party controlled government, the republocratic party.
The financial controls of the CSA operate similar to a western financial system but with more of a focus on fairness. For example, in the year 0018 Y2k the practice of public accounting was banned as it was unfair to those who could not afford to hire accountants or advisors. By law, the citizens of the CSA could only rely on government resources to be tax and regulation compliant in their businesses.
Who
Mr. C.F. Profitt owns a flower shop in a small town. The flowers he sells are neither of high quality or beauty but he has a stellar reputation in town as being a great Florist when people need help creating a gift or a special arrangement. He struggled with bookkeeping and taxes even before the ban in 0018 but may have stumbled across a solution.
The Receipts and Revenue Service (RRS) is the taxing authority for the Combined States of Atlantica. It is a mainly computer-driven automaton responsible for compiling, assessing, and collecting various taxes from the nearly 500 million citizens of the CSA.
What
Mr. Profitt has recently acquired a second-hand laptop computer from an overseas refurbisher and recycler. To his surprise the refurbisher failed to wipe the original contents, and Mr. Profitt has come into possession of an old RRS research computer. On this computer is an uncensored version of the chatbot used by the RRS dated shortly before the accounting ban. The program is labelled TaxGPT.
TaxGPT was invented as a research tool for accountants but the fact that it exposed loopholes and vulnerabilities in the RRS systems led to the banning of private for hire accounting.
TaxGPT responds to prompts in either Karen or Capone mode, depending on which persona Mr. Proffitt addresses his questions to.