Started with Errors (Relative Industries Series Book 2)

by Joanna Beaumont

  Like the guard on the gates, they wanted to get the implant. Having the spiders crawl around in your hair and embed their legs in your scalp was strange enough, but having an implant. She shuddered, pushed her empty bowl away and lifted off the SS5000’s headband. She’d need more than a thousand free credits to convince her.

  “Is that you, Lana?” Lewis yelled when she walked past his bedroom on her way to her own. “Can you help me?”

  She checked her watch. Thirty-five minutes to get to the lab. Single-occupancy of an apartment was not allowed in the New Cities, and flat mates were allocated. They’d lived together for two years. She thought she’d trained him well, but he’d developed bad habits while she’d been away. His door should be closed to prevent his stench infecting their apartment.

  Apart from a crack of light leaking around the ill-fitting bedroom blind and the glow of the lights on his helmet, his room was dark.

  His eyes, ears, mouth and nose were covered by the drop-down visor on his helmet. The tight-fitting sensory body-stocking he wore gave him the appearance of a thief in the night.

  Kneeling on one knee in the middle of his bedroom floor, he twisted his hand-held controller like a screwdriver into something non-existent. He stopped and looked around blindly in her direction, his visor unmoved.

  “Lana?” He jerked up, and a drift of old, stale air hit her nostrils.

  She covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve. “Take your helmet off.”

  “I’ve muted audio. I can hear you, but I can’t take the helmet off. I’ll lose my position at the top of the leader board. Can you pass me a bottle?”

  “You’re in the top two?”

  “No, the top one-hundred. While you were away I swapped to a job on the shortage list.”

  “What job?”

  “Robotics engineering.”

  “But you’re an architect.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, they’re not building much anymore. Science and engineering jobs for RI come up much more frequently, especially on Ascension Island. I’m bored creating virtual buildings. I need a real job. I want to get away.”

  “Just take a break.”

  “I can’t. I’m pulling veg in an hour. I need to finish. It’s okay for you. You already have a job.”

  That was true. Her degree was in an RI sponsored subject. She had a job working at RI-UK. While for some reason, be it stubbornness, pride or family tradition, he chose a university subject that landed himself in the unenviable position of competing with thousands of others in a virtual employment environment before he could gain real employment, if ever.

  He knelt on the floor again and continued twisting his controller. “This one’s a drifter. I’m performing a hard reset, but it’s difficult to get to the battery. No home should be without an EMP emitter, but getting through this mother of a shell will require a mega pulse.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m running late,” she said to the top of his head.

  “The robot’s values drift away from human values. It’s a consequence of the self-optimisation code running on each one. The gatekeepers inside Zone 12 identify the drifters, and the drifters are sent back to RI. Can you hurry up?”

  “How can they drift?”

  “They self-optimise in different ways. They’re individual personalities, and like us they learn by cause and effect. If you slap them enough times, they might slap you back. But the number of slaps it takes for them to slap back depends on how far they’ve drifted. That’s how RI identifies an abused robot. RI must protect its assets.”

  “And here’s me thinking RI wanted to protect humans from robots.”

  “Well, by sending a drifter back to RI they are. You wouldn’t want to come across one in the street. Bursting here!”

  The yellow filled bottles on the window-sill were more like an ornamental arrangement of vases.

  “They’re all full. Just go to the toilet like normal people.”

  “Can you empty one?” he asked.

  She huffed and shook her head, more at herself and what she was about to do than him.

  He’d guilt tripped her into it.

  She removed a bottle from the window-sill and held it out at arms-length. Trying not to spill its contents, she headed for his en-suite bathroom. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “Not down the toilet!” he shouted.

  “Why?”

  “I forgot to take my meds for the last few days, and I don’t want a call from the docs.”

  Holding her breath and taking care not to splash it, she poured his urine down the sink.

  She took the bottle back to him and tapped his shoulder. “Here you go.”

  He stood, swiped it from her and pulled down the concealed zipper in his suit. “Thanks, I’m desperate.” A huge sigh of relief accompanied the echoing sound of his urine hitting the bottom of the glass bottle.

  She rushed out of the room. “You could wait until I’ve gone.”

  “Have you got any spare credit for fresh air? It stinks in here!” he called, shaking the main vein.

  She slammed his door behind her.

  He really was taking the piss now.

  Lana closed her bedroom door, launched herself at the air vent and selected the single-credit clean-air option. She gulped cool, filtered, bacteria-free air deep into her lungs.

  If she could use a credit to delete that last scene from her mind, she would.

  With her nose cleared, she stepped inside her bathroom and washed her hands. She removed her blue-tinted contact lenses and placed them inside the lens case next to the sink. She twisted the cap from the bottle of drops next to the case, tilted her head back and squeezed two drops into each of her dry, brown eyes. The drops were as welcome as water in a desert. She blinked a few times, letting them soak her parched eyeballs.

  Regrowth showed at her roots. Just a few millimetres, but enough to concern her. She opened the cabinet beneath the sink and counted the tubes of hair dye. Ten left. Enough for now.

  She reached inside the shower cubicle and selected the short-shower button on the control panel.

  Save credit-short shower.

  The illuminated ring around the button turned green, and she stepped inside. Then with one eye on the numbers counting down, she washed her hair as quickly as she could.

  It had grown longer while she worked away, but she didn’t risk getting it cut in Beijing, not when she couldn’t speak the language.

  On the shower’s control panel the numbers flashed red in warning: five, four, three, two.

  She wanted to get her credits’ worth.

  Hitting the stop button on zero, before the shower automatically used another credit, was a small pleasure. Like when her grandfather stopped the petrol pump on a whole number of pounds at one of the old abandoned gas stations outside the New City. If he hadn’t already been dead, the thought of moving into the New Cities would have killed him.

  She hit the button on zero and the water shut off. A satisfied cheer rang in her head.

  Her grandfather was not an enthusiastic adopter of technology. The switch to electric cars was difficult, driver-less—never. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear him ranting about RI now.

  Sunday driving was a pleasure before the driver-less cars sucked the joy out of life and increased congestion. And the RI robots have taken the jobs. RI are building the New Cities because the land has flooded, but there can’t be enough space for all of us. Don’t trust them.

  He blamed RI for all the world’s ills: climate change, the infertility crisis, the jobs shortage, the state guaranteed salary, the civil war. His conspiracy theories were intricately detailed, and those comforting, wispy strands of blame often tempted her with a cocoon of certainty. But she resisted getting hooked in because once that stuff wrapped tight around you it spun its own sticky web and suffocated common sense.

  Would he think she was a traitor if he knew RI had sponsored her degree and now
employed her? She never did tell him before he died. But when she never asked him for a penny he must have been suspicious. He might have known and choose to ignore it. The thought of his silent disappointment made her feel sad.

  She shook herself from the maudlin and checked the time: fifteen minutes left to get to the lab. She must hurry.

  Mindful of another public announcement, she rubbed her wet hair with a towel: Save credit-dry natural.

  She’d been waiting for the ultimate one: Save credit-kill yourself.

  Chapter Three

  Ready to leave for work, Lana waited outside her apartment building for the taxi she’d ordered.

  A single-seater, white, bullet auto-cab slotted into the park lane in front of her. Work was two miles away in the commercial sector of the New City. Electric bike rental cost a single credit and walking would earn twenty. But she’d be even later if she took either of those options.

  The door rose smoothly, and she dropped in the seat. The interior of the cab morphed into a screen, and a woman’s face appeared:

  Welcome, Miss Lana Underwood. Please send me your destination.

  Lana sent a thought-text: work.

  I have removed four credits from you total. Please go to the nearest RI tech store to have your thought-text upgrade and your credit transferred. Any credits not transferred will be zeroed in two days.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Relative Industries is sponsoring your auto-cab today. Your position inside the New Cities is a privilege. Illegal drug use results in immediate expulsion.

  Lana sighed. Where would she get drugs from anyway?

  She stared out the window while the auto-cab slotted between lanes, and the screen played out an advertisement for a soft drink—Don’t think it, drink it.

  She was a captured audience, but she refused to pay double for an advert-free ride. As she watched the woman on the screen drink from a can and smile, she realised she did need a drink. She hated it when they used thought marketing on her.

  A few blocks away a crowd had spilled from the community square onto the road. It was a political rally organised by the Youth Party, and now she knew the reason for the eerie quiet earlier. The armed guards made sure the rally stayed peaceful. Not like the demonstrations she once took part in when the Youth Party was the Youth Action Group, before the war and before the evacuation into the New Cities. No thrusting of banners now. No fist punching in the air. No marching. No chanting. This crowd was only allowed to smoulder.

  Her auto-cab slowed. Precariously abandoned electric bikes and guards protecting the crowd were blocking her lane. Through the gaps in the crowd she saw the Youth Party leader, Paige Green, on top of her soap box reading a no doubt carefully prepared statement. Paige looked up, and Lana thought she looked directly at her. She gasped and sunk down in her seat, out of sight.

  The auto-cab slotted onto another lane and accelerated. Lana straightened up and looked out through the window again.

  Paige Green didn’t need to rally her supporters. The young would never vote for the other party. And as long as she had the vote of the young, regardless of their minority position, the government took them seriously.

  Inside the auto-cab the adverts ended and the news channel turned on. Unable to switch it off, she groaned.

  The female face of earlier spoke again.

  A special report from our investigative journalist outside the New Cities.

  Convinced they had the regular reports to scare those living inside the New Cities, Lana wanted to look away or cover her eyes and watch through the gaps between her fingers.

  Inside a room partially lit by a camera light a reporter and gang leader sat opposite each other. Fuzzy pixels obscured the gang leader’s face, and a haze of red and black, from a scarf, covered his mouth.

  “Can you show us outside?” asked the reporter.

  The gang leader made hard clicking noises with his tongue, and another gang member with covered face nodded before pulling back a curtain used as a makeshift door. They moved outside into the bright sunshine, and the camera followed behind. The same sun shined on those that lived outside the New Cities, but it could not feel as warm.

  “Welcome to our world outside the privileged New Cities,” the gang leader said. His voice was distorted through a sound box.

  Malnourished children with dirty faces and torn clothes searched through a rubbish dump, desperate for food or anything they might trade for food. The sight of shaven haired girls and boys with bones protruding through tight skin would sadden anyone. Lana guessed their ages at five or six. Those youngsters might be the last ones born on Earth. The fertile pre-thirty-fives still had children even though they couldn’t look after them. The discarded precious last drops from an empty water bottle. Infertile and irrelevant.

  The children stopped still. Some stared into the camera. Their eyes bore into the souls of those watching, into Lana’s soul. Others waved or ran up to the news crew begging for food only to be batted away like pests.

  “For the children who live outside the New Cities surviving off the land is a normal way of life,” the reporter said.

  Lana swiped at the screen, but it wouldn’t turn off. She couldn’t help, so why did they insist on showing them?

  The camera crew moved past the dump and scanned the surrounding landscape. Shanty buildings had tin roofs painted in bright reds and blues like seaside chalets, but the joyous colours couldn’t mask the scale of the decline.

  “We are in the UK, five miles outside a New City. This level of descent after the civil war in ’58 could never have been imagined. These people knew running water and sanitation once, and the children’s only concerns then were their screens running out of charge.

  “Outside the New Cities the houses are burnt out shells, dangerous and uninhabitable. With no sanitation, clean water, education or medical facilitates diseases common in the slums of other countries are threatening our New Cities.

  “During the war the rebels stubbornly refused relocation and chose instead to live outside civilised society in squalor. The only protection we have from their communicable diseases is the shoot to kill policy operational within one mile of each New City boundary.

  “However, the risk posed by air-borne diseases cannot be ignored. So we must ask those of us who live inside the New Cities, for our own protection, should the government offer a vaccination program to the slum people?”

  The news reporter looked directly into the camera. “Send a thought-text with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to vaccination.”

  Lana shuddered. She lived a few miles from where the scenes were filmed, but they felt much further away, like the old charity advertisements she’d watched as a child on TV. Only she had no money to give, and what use would donating credits be outside the New Cities?

  Having a comfortable life inside a New City, she could pretend the outside didn’t exist, but knowing it did was enough for her to appreciate her position of safety. Lana would not survive outside. She likened herself to a handbag-dog socialites once carried around with them. Abandon her in the wild, and she’d be ripped to shreds by the savage feral dogs.

  The auto-cab slotted between lanes then stopped in a slot on the park lane outside the glass high-rise lab facilities where she worked.

  The shell inside the cab turned solid white.

  Earn credit and walk. Goodbye, Lana Underwood.

  She climbed out, wishing she could slam the door. The door closed softly, and the cab silently drove away.

  It would be Lana’s first time back at RI-UK in six months. She rehearsed greetings in her mind while walking to her glass tower.

  Hi, good to see you. I’ve missed this place.

  She laughed. Nothing wrong with a few white lies.

  Her colleagues resented the fact she and Callum had the opportunity to work at RI-China. She hoped they were over it. She was not sure she would be though.

  A bronze plaque was fixed to the wall on her right.

  Relative
Industries—Fertility Research Centre.

  Sustaining the population for a better future.

  She felt as giddy as a child on her first day at school and didn’t understand why. Yes, they’d received the letter from the HFEA, but she wondered if it was something more.

  It was something more. It was Callum. Her heart was beating faster just at the thought of seeing him.

  She sent a thought-text to the control panel on the door:

  Access denied. Thought-text version mismatch.

  She unzipped her bag and searched inside it for her work pass, hoping that would open the door.

  Quick footsteps approached behind her. Lana startled, and her eyes focussed on the reflection of the road in the glass door. A woman was pacing towards her.

  Lana turned around then breathed out with relief. How dangerous could she be? The woman was as old as her grandmother was before she died, but she was like a possessed greyhound after a rabbit, and the distance between them had soon closed.

  The woman’s grey-white hair was thin. Sun spots were large on her face and arms. She leaned closer towards Lana, catching her inside the doorway. Her grey eyes were ringed with cholesterol. Spittle had gathered at the corners of her mouth. She pursed her wrinkled lips and spat in Lana’s face.

  “Devil’s work. You’re going to hell!”

  The woman paced the entrance, muttering and wringing her hands. “Fruit of the womb is a reward from God. Every good and perfect gift comes from above.”

  Lana was stunned.

  Where were the guards?

  Trying to anticipate her next move, she listened to her spin the Good Book some more.

  “The devil makes work for idle minds.”

  Lana wanted to tell her there would be no humans left to send to hell soon, and other than the robots no one would be left to wipe her backside or fetch her groceries when she was incapable. But that wasn’t true. That was Lana’s destiny, and why should this woman care what happened to her?

  She’d had her life, albeit much changed from the one she may have imagined. She could never have known her retirement fund would be useless, and she’d be chipped like a dog, living in this compound and provided with a daily credit.