Faulty Prophet

by Karl Beecher

  "Ah, well then," said Colin, his collar feeling suddenly tight. "It's a good thing, I'm sure."

  The shuttle continued its descent.

  Colin stepped out of the air-conditioned shuttle and onto the planet's surface. The baked, dry air smothered him like a blanket.

  Everyone else busied themselves. Tyresa and Ade supervised a couple of the security officers, who were noisily unloading cartons of equipment as well as the large automatic digger Colin had seen used on Mars. Commander Leet meanwhile conferred with the other two officers. Colin felt like the only child in a family arriving at a holiday site, getting under the feet of the grown-ups unpacking the car.

  He looked around and quickly noticed there was precious little to look at. The sickly-yellow ground appeared to be something between dry grassland and desert. The flat, featureless plain stretched to the horizon, dotted by a scattering of bare-limbed trees here and there.

  "Gangway!"

  One of the officers behind him was lugging the digger along. Colin turned and side-stepped out of the way, noticing in the process that the lorry-sized shuttle had been obscuring something else. He took a few more steps until the thing was fully revealed.

  A building.

  A damned ugly one at that, a featureless assortment of grey boxes stacked two stories high. Its appearance suggested the architect had been promised a bonus for every right angle they could cram into the design. A dirt trail road meandered along the front, while in the fields behind it, lots of dark poles jutted from the ground. There were countless dozens of them, standing perhaps three metres tall and spaced widely apart.

  A man chose that moment to emerge from the side of the building. He had a mess of unkempt grey hair and a salt and pepper beard, and his ocular implant was just about discernible from this distance. He was dressed in a white robe open over a shirt and trousers of faded brown. He moved cautiously towards the party, eyeing them suspiciously.

  "Commander Leet!" Colin whispered loudly.

  The Commander broke off her conversation, and he waved her over. She joined him in watching the stranger but betrayed nothing of what she might be thinking. Robbi then drew Tyresa's attention to the man as well, and the two set off to meet him with Colin tagging along behind.

  "Greetings, citizen," said Robbi as they neared the man. "My designation is Robbi Leet Five-One-Two, Commander, SS Cruiser Eighty-Nine."

  The man folded his arms and tried to stand with stature, but his drooping shoulders didn't seem up for it. He looked like a man just leaving middle age behind.

  "Greetings, Robbi Leet Five-One-Two," he replied in a deep, world-weary voice. "My designation is Falco Shuffla Eighty-Eight."

  He turned and looked expectantly towards Tyresa.

  "Oh…" she said at last. "Greetings, Falco Shuffla Eighty-Eight. My designation is Tyresa Jak, one and only."

  Then he looked at Colin.

  "Erm…" dithered Colin. "Colin Douglass, twenty-eight, Crescent Gardens."

  Robbi gave the tiniest of irritated sighs. "Outsiders," she explained. "Please remain tolerant. Is this your residence or place of occupation, citizen?"

  "Both," he replied.

  "What is your occupation?"

  "Softw—" He hesitated, as though he hadn't been asked the question in a long time. "Well, I used to be a software engineer, but that was years ago. I terminated that work in favour of the simple life of a humble farmer, harvesting nature's bounty to nourish the Collective."

  "What type of farm is this?"

  "A solar farm."

  "May we see?"

  Falco eyed the pistol at the Commander's hip, then the collection of armed security officers in the distance. "As you wish."

  He led Robbi, Tyresa, and Colin to the side of the house, offering a closer view of the poles sticking out of the ground.

  Falco pointed at them. "Solar collectors. Together they project a Presley field over the whole ground which catches the U.V. The energy is then—"

  "Uncle!" came a voice from behind.

  A young lad of about twelve or thirteen and dressed similarly to Falco was walking towards them from the house. He had a long, mournful face that suggested he might go on to excel in the undertaking business.

  "Jonn, I told you to remain inside," Falco snapped.

  The lad came to a stop beside Falco. "Who are these people?" he asked in a voice that was the human equivalent of a church organ. He made Wednesday Addams look like a Californian cheerleader.

  "Just visitors," replied Falco. "Now, go back in—"

  The lad pointed at the Commander. "She looks like military. Is she military?"

  "Jonn…"

  "That's a gun," he said to Robbi. "You're definitely military. Have you ever killed someone?"

  "Jonn!"

  The boy finally went quiet.

  Falco apologised. "My nephew, Jonn, is not accustomed to visitors. He's not accustomed to very much actually."

  Robbi looked at him penetratingly. "You use familial terms. This boy is your bio-nephew?"

  "No," replied Falco. "‘Uncle,' ‘nephew,' they're just nicknames."

  She shifted a little on her feet. "A little unorthodox, is it not?"

  "Yes," sighed Falco. "But honestly, I'm past caring. Jonn is the bio-offspring of a good friend of mine who died four years ago. I took over management of Jonn. I raise him here myself."

  "Surely he should reside in a Collective school."

  "He did when I first took over, but it transpires he's rather a…unique young man. Unfortunately, he never adjusted to our edu-system. Anti-social they labelled him. Plus, he has a rare genetic mutation that renders him unable to use tekapt."

  Indeed, the lad sported no visible implants.

  Falco continued. "As you can appreciate, this all makes him unsuited to the environ of a Collective school."

  "You educate him yourself?" asked Robbi.

  "I do what I can," replied Falco wearily. "Unfortunately, I have had little success with the more humanistic topics, but he does have an extraordinary aptitude for electronics. He spends hours playing with circuits and components. He fixes my collectors when they break down. And he kills the glob-rats that come onto the farm."

  "I was not aware that glob-rats were classed as a pest."

  "They're not, it's just something he likes to do." Falco peered carefully at the Commander. "Is he the purpose of your visit? Have you come to take Jonn away?" He stepped closer. "Please say you have."

  "No," replied Robbi. "We are here on an archaeological investigation. We have strong reason to believe that a plus-important artifact is located somewhere on your farmland."

  "Artifact? What kind of artifact?"

  "Unfortunately, I am not authorised to share the details with you. However, I am authorised to show you this." She reached into her jacket and brought out a slate. With a pinch of the corner, the floppy sheet turned rigid, and some illuminated writing appeared on it. "An excavation permit signed by Admiral Woot, Chief of Staff, Collective Stellar Forces. This authorises us to excavate on your land if we deem it necessary."

  "What?" exclaimed Falco. He snatched the slate and read through it. "This is unacceptable!"

  "I am authorised to relay the apologies of the Stellar Forces," Robbi continued calmly. "We will, of course, attempt to minimise disruption and we are authorised to compensate you for any damage we cause."

  "Banishable military!" Falco snapped. "Bunch of jumped-up, unsophisticated—"

  "I am also authorised to inform you that you are entitled to file a complaint with the relevant agency."

  "I will," he said, immediately setting off for his house. The boy scuttled after him.

  Tyresa smirked at the Commander. "I love it when you get all authoritative," she said sarcastically.

  Robbi gestured to the expanse of collectors behind the house. "Well, Doctor Jak, the field is yours. What is the first task?"

  Tyresa grabbed the scope from her belt and activated it. "I need to find a likely spot to s
tart digging. Not sure exactly what I'm looking for, but if the last site was anything to go by, we should find a highly localised magnetic field around her somewhere. I'm going to look around."

  "Remember," Colin told her. "If you find anything like the artifact on Mars, don't touch it."

  Robbi and Colin watched Tyresa stalk the ground, scope in hand, like someone dowsing in a country field. As she moved further out, they strolled gently along together in silence.

  Eventually, the silence grew uncomfortable. Colin sought a way to strike up a conversation.

  "May I ask you something, Commander Leet?"

  "You may."

  "When you were talking to Mister Shuffla there, you got all…well, suspicious when you thought they were related. Why was that?"

  "A feature of Collective society you're probably unfamiliar with. Our society is not based on the ‘family' as it is in other cultures. We do not raise children as our personal property. In the Collective, forming a private family and personally parenting your children is most unorthodox."

  "No families? So what do you do instead?"

  "When someone wishes to invest biologically into the Collective's future, they find a suitable partner and apply for permission to combine their DNA in a gestatrix, a kind of artificial womb."

  "How romantic."

  "After gestation, the infant is deposited into a Collective nursery. From there, it is managed by nurses and teachers as it goes through the various levels of schooling."

  "I see. And where are the parents in all this?"

  "The bio-parents? Wherever they wish to be. There's little further required of them."

  "So, they never see their children?"

  "It is considered orthodox to remain abreast of your child's development, to monitor your investment. For example, I send an annual report to my own bio-parents detailing my current status and progress."

  Colin screwed up his face in disbelief. "Investments? Progress reports? What about basic love, don't your parents love you?"

  "My parents…" She hesitated a moment before giving a shrug. "They love me as much as anyone else in the Collective."

  "But you're their daughter. They should love you more than anyone."

  Robbi shook her head. "That would be to act possessively towards a person. That is selfish and egoistic."

  "Dear God," said Colin. "Pardon me for saying so, Commander, but this all sounds…well, horrific."

  Robbi hummed as though she'd had this conversation before. "Then let me ask you a question. Where you live, does the state love you?"

  Right now, Colin had no state, so he thought of Great Britain for the sake of argument. He'd always thought of the British state as possessing not so much a warm embrace but more a sort of cold, dead hand, a level of maternal kindness symbolised by Margaret Thatcher snatching milk from a child's mouth.

  "Love me? Certainly not," he scoffed.

  "And that I find horrific," replied Robbi. "The state raised me, it oversees my existence, ensures I'm fed and clothed and housed. It embodies the sum total of love in the Collective, which is shared equally. We don't practice individualistic love in the Collective because that cultivates egoistic tendencies and encourages the victim to engage in behaviour contrary to the collective good. What you seem to think of as love is the wish to monopolise one individual in order to satisfy your own selfish desires. But we love the whole equally. We love collectively."

  Despite her utter sincerity, Colin couldn't believe it. "You seriously expect me to believe that Transhumanists don't fall in love?"

  "I didn't say that. I said we don't practice individualistic love." She cast a glance around before lowering her voice. "In truth, it's not unknown for us to fall victim to such feelings on occasion. However, discipline helps us avoid succumbing, as do therapies and suppressive drugs."

  Colin looked over at Tyresa, still stalking around with her scope, and then back at Robbi. "Have you ever been in love, Commander?"

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "A word of advice, Colin Douglass. Never ask a Transhumanist things like that. We find it profoundly embarrassing."

  He mumbled an apology, which Robbi accepted with a nod.

  A few moments later, Tyresa ceased her stalking and came to a stop. Colin and Robbi approached her, but she looked dejected.

  "Not good," she sighed.

  "Meaning?" asked Robbi.

  "I can't pick up any trace of the magnetism I'm looking for." She pointed at the nearest metallic pole. "Of course, there's a chance these things are interfering with the readings."

  "And if they're not?"

  Tyresa shrugged. "Then there's nothing here."

  The three stood a moment in quiet, grim contemplation.

  "So, what do we do next?" asked Colin.

  29

  Lowcuzt watched Crzethnuk's machine reach the peak of its noisy display once more. The SAP in the nexus chair writhed and winced as the unbearable commotion echoed around the walls of the Überdigitality room.

  You'd think, reflected Lowcuzt, that a super-intelligent alien could engineer something a lot quieter than that bloody contraption.

  This was now the third test the Predecessor had conducted. It was becoming apparent he might not have been the engineering genius he'd made out to be. He had talked the talk pretty convincingly and belittled the skills of everyone else around him—as any good technical leader should—but when it came to actual execution, his efforts didn't quite live up to the promise.

  What's more, Lowcuzt wasn't convinced Crzethnuk had a plan. He'd seen no evidence of a specification for what was being built. And what Crzethnuk called ‘testing' actually turned out to mean cobbling things together half-assed, throwing the switch, and then working out what had inevitably gone wrong before starting the whole process again. The plan, such as it was, seemed to be to keep trying until he'd got the thing working whether he understood how he'd done it or not.

  In other words, Crzethnuk seemed to be a fairly typical programmer. However, since lives were at stake here, it was less trial-and-error than it was trial-and-terror.

  With a flash of light, everything went quiet again. Test three was complete.

  Forn stepped through the hanging smoke, wafting it away as he went. The fog cleared to reveal SAP_12, still sitting in the nexus chair. She appeared to be alive—an improvement on the first test with SAP_16—and didn't have the glassy-eyed expression of someone whose mind had been emptied of content—which would be an improvement on the second test with SAP_9.

  Forn leaned over. "SAP Twelve? Can you hear me?"

  The SAP sat up. She looked at Forn and opened her mouth to speak. "My carpet bottle stretches pink on the mice."

  She gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth, a look of shock on her face.

  Forn's shoulders dropped. His face appeared longer than that of a man who had climbed a mountain to find enlightenment at the feet of a guru only to discover a sign reading, ‘Sorry, closed until further notice.' He shook his head.

  Curses! yelled Crzethnuk.

  SAP_12 removed the hand again and pointed at her mouth. "Zesty shirts feign microscopic bell-ringers!" she cried desperately.

  What's wrong with her? asked Lowcuzt. What in exile is she gibbering about?

  She's trying to tell us the words are coming out differently from what she's trying to say, explained Crzethnuk. It seems we scrambled her brain's language centre.

  "Fruit plagues!" blurted SAP_12. "Fire a durable plantation beneath the evangelic wishbone?"

  Crzethnuk sighed and signalled at Forn, directing him towards the vault. Forn nodded tiredly, took the SAP's arm, and pulled her from the chair.

  Well, look on the bright side, remarked Crzethnuk as they watched Forn lead her from the room. She'll never need to use a thesaurus ever again.

  "Weekly nipples segment old archways!"

  The door to the vault slammed shut.

  Lowcuzt rarely laughed at the best of times, but there was no humour to be found in th
e Predecessor's last remark. Since the disastrous death of SAP_16, he'd had little mood for anything at all. A dark, grim atmosphere was creeping over the place. Certain feelings kept rearing their heads, feelings he'd been trying and failing to ignore.

  At first, they'd been simple ones, mainly horror at seeing the dead body. He could still see the look on the expired SAP's face. A little later, Forn had made an offhand remark about SAP_16's model starships, which he had apparently enjoyed making when off duty. If Lowcuzt had ever bothered to visit the SAPs' mess room, he would have observed a few of them decorating the place. As a child, Lowcuzt had loved building model starships too, usually when all the other kids were away playing hyperball. He would probably still do it today if he weren't so damned busy all the time. Since then, his feelings had grown complicated and harder to understand. He'd been struggling particularly with a very unfamiliar one. It might have been what other people designated ‘guilt.' He couldn't be certain because he had no access to a dictionary to check what it meant.

  After the second failed test, which had emptied SAP_9's brain completely, Lowcuzt found himself wondering about SAP_9 as well. He didn't know why, but the curiosity was insatiable. Under the guise of helping Crzethnuk determine why the tests kept failing, Lowcuzt had suggested asking Forn for more information about the subjects. It turned out that SAP_9 had started a three-dimensional chess club with his colleagues and was apparently a very good player. Apparently, SAP_12 wrote poetry. Maybe she still could, but if she had the same problems with her writing as she now had with her speech, her poems might no longer have the same ring to them.

  The point was, these people weren't cretins or faulty products. They were just different. Withdrawn, unsociable, reclusive. They had the pursuits of introverts, just like Lowcuzt. Unfortunately, these qualities were treated practically as disabilities in the Collective. As children, they had probably failed to adapt to collectivist schooling with its constant interaction and emphasis on group activities. That must have been why they'd fared so badly in education. They had probably come to work for Lowcuzt because it was one of the few opportunities of work available beyond menial. Heck, if the SAPs had computer skills, they'd be indistinguishable from most of the programming staff.