Stop Looking

by A C Praat

  Another thought occurred to him. He could buy his own phone while he was in town, and then he wouldn’t be reliant on the Kruijers’ laptop. Though it would mean taking a whack out of his cash reserves. The money card in the wallet would no doubt have a pin so it was next to useless. Besides, you could be tracked through electronic purchases. Better to leave that alone.

  A trip to town grew in appeal.

  * * *

  A few spots of rain smeared the windshield as Philip drove the Kruijers’ truck down the highway into town. Outside the supermarket lightning lit the sky, and moments later thunder rolled in the distance. Not a day to go exploring the town center.

  ‘The phone shop is just the other side of the carpark,’ Afra assured him. ‘I will be half an hour.’ Rain drove in as she pushed open the passenger door then slammed it behind her, before striding, head down, toward the supermarket. Philip watched the rain stream across the windscreen as the daylight winced away. Few people would be out in this, that was one upside.

  The guy in the shop tried to hook him into a contract, only giving up when Philip told him he was visiting the country and wasn’t intending to stay. Three hundred dollars lighter, Philip splashed across the carpark back to the truck and sat, soaked through, until Afra arrived a couple of minutes after him, scaring him when she banged on the window. She held up a shopping bag and pointed to the back of the truck. Philip stepped into the downpour again to help her lift the groceries into the back.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Afra was in a hurry to get home.

  The rain hammered the roof so loudly, conversation was impossible. Philip’s view narrowed to the half-circle of windscreen swept clean by the wipers, instantly obscured again by the storm. The ten-minute journey into town, trebled in length as they crawled along between the shelter belts, which were shaking and bending in protest, casting leaves and twigs into the air and sending them scuttling across the road. He’d never driven in anything so ferocious.

  At the intersection with the state highway he looked both ways several times, and then launched across the road, hoping rather than knowing that nothing would collect them on the way over. After the turnoff, the stream that yesterday had narrowed the road on his walk to the orchard had breached its banks and flowed tire-deep across the tar seal.

  ‘A little faster,’ Afra yelled.

  He gunned it across the water and was still speeding when Afra yelled, ‘Here!’

  He’d almost missed their turnoff. Water was carving furrows into the unsealed surface of the road, but it seemed calmer – the shelter belts were closer together, shielding them from the harshest lashings of the storm.

  As they pulled up by the front door the outside light blinked on, then off. Beside him, Afra groaned. ‘The power.’

  No power? Philip reached into the back seat to retrieve the box with his new phone in it. What was it with this country?

  ‘It’s usually only a couple of hours.’ Afra pulled her hood over her head and leaned onto the door, struggling to open it against the wind. ‘Our poor blossoms.’

  Philip pulled his cap down and entered the fray, retrieving the shopping, then kicking his boots off in the paved entranceway. Wil had lit their wood burner. The flames licking its window were the only light banishing the cold and darkness of the stormy afternoon. It was a welcoming sight. Philip’s irritation softened. No power, no computer, no phone. Nothing he could do. Nothing anyone else could do either. He deposited the groceries onto the bench.

  Wil handed him a towel. ‘Old copies of The Guardian on the coffee table, if you don’t mind straining your eyes. The one from the second week of October will interest you.’

  ‘Thanks. Could I take them? I might try for a nap.’

  Wil nodded.

  It was even darker in his cabin and the rain on the tin roof was deafening. He dropped the newspapers on the bed under the window, then unwrapped his phone. May as well plug it in for when the power came back on.

  Afterward, he sat on the bed and sorted through the newspapers. The issues were weekly round-ups of international news. Page ten of the October issue that Wil had alerted him to covered the talks of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons in Paris that week. Among the bureaucrats, academics and human rights groups attending the talks was a representative from the Say No to Killer Robots campaign. Rawinia’s group. Goosebumps crawled up Philip’s arms as he read on.

  The critical issue was autonomy – the ability of machines to identify, select and fire on their targets without any human intervention, a development that was becoming increasingly more likely with advances in AI and robotics.

  Philip nodded. That was true. It was technically possible.

  Several arguments were arrayed against such a development. The one that caught his eye was the moral one: robots couldn’t make such decisions because they lacked human judgement and the ability to understand context. Without these qualities they couldn’t make complex ethical judgements on the battlefield, like who was a civilian and who a soldier, or assess the proportionality of an attack. This put robots in breach of the international rules of war.

  The arguments seemed familiar, though he’d never worked in a lab dedicated to making weapons. At the bottom of the article a related one was signposted, further on in the paper. He flipped over a couple of pages to a headline which asked:

  Is Australia Developing Lethal Autonomous Weapons?

  A flush heated his face. The article re-hashed the furore in Australia caused by the leak of a project about robotic bees which some claimed was evidence that Australia was pushing on with their developments without international sanction.

  They were the same claims he’d read online, leaked by the same ‘anonymous source’.

  Most of the article was devoted to the impact of the exposé on the Paris meeting. The writer opined that the incident added urgency to the talks. It was felt that if the international community didn’t move to ban autonomous weapons soon it would be too late. Developers would take advantage of the legal – if not moral – vacuum.

  The article finished on a cautiously positive note: overall the talks had concluded with a movement toward an international treaty banning the development and deployment of autonomous weapons. Four more countries had pledged support for the ban. But members of the ‘five eyes’ countries remained unconvinced: Australia, Britain, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

  Philip pushed the newspapers off his lap. He was British and until recently he’d been working in Australia. Now he was in New Zealand. All countries implicitly supporting the development of autonomous weapons. If he was involved in the leak – an instinct that was strengthening with each new piece of information, each shadowy memory – he wouldn’t be safe here or at home. The only positive thing he could draw from the situation was that the authorities thought whoever had leaked the code was already dead.

  He curled onto the bed and closed his eyes. Dead. What would that mean for him?

  A part of him railed against that idea with its implicit accusation of guilt that had forced the need to hide. And yet another part was quietly pleased.

  It would have taken guts to leak that project.

  You could never build the ability to judge complex situations into a swarm. The bees could not meet international legal requirements in a warzone. He sighed and his body sank into the bed. If being the leaker was the truth he was drawing closer to, perhaps he could live with that.

  * * *

  Philip woke to darkness and a persistent, drip, drip, dripping outside the cabin. He sat up. What time was it? He flicked the switch on the bedside lamp. The power was back on. Newspapers fell to the floor as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and bent over to retrieve his phone. The battery was full. As he worked through the set-up screen his mind raced. Who would he look up first? Charlie, Rawinia or Mishra? Maybe his own name? Or the institute? They’d never developed a separate website for that – their work was showcased on the university’s �
� so maybe he should look up the computer science department.

  The web browser wasn’t working.

  No reception!

  This place. He bolted through the door, carrying the phone. Reception was no better as he strode toward the house. Opening the side door, he nearly collided with Afra carrying her compost bucket out.

  ‘Damon.’ She looked at his phone. ‘Ah. Reception is pretty bad down here. You need to go up to the sealed road, yah? But come, we are about to eat.’

  Philip didn’t want to eat. He wanted to find out what was going on with his life. ‘All right.’

  Afra paused in the doorway and peered back at him. He was probably being rude.

  ‘Dinner sounds good.’ He forced a smile. As she disappeared through the door he checked the settings on his phone for a Wi-Fi connection.

  No connections available.

  The laptop had been ancient and they were on dial-up. Apply in person made sense now. Well, he’d just have to ask to borrow the laptop again.

  But after dinner Wil settled on the couch with the laptop, intent on checking the international news.

  Philip ground his teeth. Now what? The light seemed to be brighter than earlier. The storm had passed and the clouds were clearing. A soft pink sky was visible in patches above the shelterbelt at the end of the block, sloping away from the house.

  ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  Wil nodded, his gaze never leaving the monitor.

  ‘Good idea.’ Afra glanced up from her book. ‘Stretch your legs after being cooped up all afternoon.’

  As he trudged up the muddy driveway, trying to avoid the wet grass hanging into the ruts, his spirits lifted. The air was fresh and the leaves and the remaining clusters of flowers on the orange trees were beaded with water and glistened in the half-light. In ten minutes he was going to have some answers.

  Just past the archway onto the shared road, a man in a raincoat and long shorts walked toward him, a black-and-white collie trotting at his side.

  Tess. Grief kicked at Philip’s stomach and he stopped.

  ‘Evening.’ The man stopped too and smiled at Philip through his beard.

  Philip offered the collie his hand. It sniffed at him then moved on. ‘Beautiful dog.’

  ‘We never miss a day.’ The man nodded at his dog and then followed it up the road.

  Suddenly Philip wasn’t looking at an unsealed road, but at a dark-haired woman crouched on the pavement outside the Gallery of South Australia, scrubbing Tess’s ears. ‘Aren’t you a beauty?’ she said.

  Mishra McKenzie; that had been their first date. Why did he always circle back to her? What had happened after he’d told her about the project? After their fight? She would be his first search.

  The road made a smack, smack sound as his walk turned into a run and his run into a sprint. At the corner where the private road joined the public one he bent over his knees, panting. Running – how he missed it. It was twilight now, and so much darker out here than in the city. He stepped up onto the verge, wetting his sneakers on the grass, then crouched beside a shelter belt of bamboo to turn on his phone.

  The search for Mishra McKenzie turned up several hits. The first was to a profile page in the Psychology Department at the University of Adelaide. No photo, but there were links to her research interests and publications: methods papers on discourse analysis, something about post-colonial Indonesia, and one on AI.

  AI: Their common interest.

  Beneath the dripping bamboo, his mind sent him snatches of an exotic blossom; Frangipani flowers floating in glass bowls lit by candlelight. The scene expanded – his apartment in Adelaide. Mishra was there. And his flatmate, Brett. A twitch of annoyance accompanied Brett’s memory. Lexi was there too. Mishra had spent the evening arguing with Brett about AI, and military applications of it in particular. In the end she had been right: the military was interested in his pollination project – they’d ruined it.

  He navigated back to Mishra’s home page. A note beneath her profile said she was on sabbatical visiting Massey University, Wellington, for the summer semester.

  If that were true she’d be in New Zealand for the next few months. Could he hide for that long? Did he need to? Why couldn’t he remember?

  Plenty of hits on Rawinia Te Whatu as well, almost all linked to various charities – the recent ones as spokeswoman for the Say No to Killer Robots campaign. She had long braids and a don’t-mess-with-me look about her. He didn’t remember meeting her at all, but his feelings toward her were anxious and wary.

  Headlights cut across the verge and then a car stopped.

  Philip froze. No one knew he was here, did they? What should he do? Running would draw attention.

  ‘You all right?’ a voice called.

  Philip waved his phone. ‘Best spot for reception.’

  ‘Down at the Kruijer’s, are you?’

  Philip nodded. He couldn’t see the person’s face in the darkness and didn’t know if they could see him. He hoped they couldn’t. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. They were worried they’d get no takers. Careful on the road – you’re invisible except for that phone.’

  The car drove on toward the eucalypts at the end of the road.

  His heart slowed, but the encounter left him with an urge to be safe inside his cabin on the orchard. One more search: Philip Templeton.

  He ignored all the social media links to various Philip Templetons; he’d never been one for virtual networking.

  Further down he found a mention of himself in the Bristol team who worked on the robot, Freddy, but nothing about Adelaide or the pollination project. Well, he’d only been there a few months and it took a while for anything to crawl through the university’s processes. Equally, none of the hits were linked to the leak of the bee project either. Wouldn’t his name have come up if he was a suspect?

  At the bottom of the second page was a link to The Telegraph – in memoriam.

  His finger hovered above the screen. It couldn’t be him. His awareness shrank to the square of light and the word – memoriam.

  Tap.

  A picture of a candle appeared and below it, TEMPLETON. Then, Philip, beloved son, died October 2017. Taken too soon, sorely missed. CT

  Philip sank to his knees on the sodden ground. CT. Catherine Templeton. His mum. She thought he was dead? Philip leaned over onto one hand and gasped for breath. Mum. He had to call her, right now. With tears blurring his vision, he tapped her number into the phone, then hesitated. Had he let her believe he was dead? He was on the run. What if they were watching her, even now?

  ‘Damn it!’ His yell was swallowed by the trees as rain spotted his upturned face and he terminated the call. He couldn’t contact her yet – he needed more information.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mishra, Rawinia and Raffe had fallen into a pattern, and Brett with them. Leave the farm in the morning to check their phones and messages, then back to the beaches to continue the search. Tuesday they’d scoured bays further south.

  On Wednesday morning, Brett had overheard Mishra’s plans to fly to Wellington and promptly booked flights of his own. She’d clearly given up on this part of the country, and he learnt too that Philip had sent flowers with a coded message about Mishra’s sabbatical. He might already be in Wellington. Well, they’d soon find out. Though with Mishra leaving, Brett was lumped with the twin problems of how to continue his surveillance of her in Wellington and retrieving his devices from Rawinia’s truck. Maybe he should leave them; what were the chances that Mishra would be back, or that Philip would turn up somewhere around here?

  One thing for sure, he’d miss this place. It was Thursday morning, and he sat on a log at the beach that skirted the bush in front of his rented house, sipping a cup of coffee. The sun winked and twirled on the sea, making his eyes screw up behind his shades. He’d already been for a run, picking his way among the pungent debris washed up by the storm, and then taken a dip in the chilly water. What had Philip been thinking
when he jumped off the yacht?

  Tomorrow Brett would fly out to scout the airport and surrounds at Wellington before Mishra arrived. Which meant today was his last chance to test the bees without an audience. Maybe they wouldn’t work and he’d be off the hook. Of course, that possibility didn’t negate silencing Philip by some other means – something he didn’t have at his disposal unless you counted hand-to-hand combat. Brett shuddered. He’d never killed anyone – not from close range. Intelligence usually meant analysis and planning, not doing the deed yourself.

  Dark thoughts for such a shiny morning, Nielsen.

  Finishing his coffee, he walked back through the bush to the house. The briefcase had been stashed under a sofa – plugged in, just in case – since he’d arrived on Monday. He slid it out, positioned his thumbs on the catches and looked into the camera.

  Click.

  His heart started to patter in his ears. Get a grip, Nielsen. It’s only a test run.

  The heavier bees that he suspected carried the payload were still in their moulds toward the hinges of the briefcase. Should he test those too? When – if – he decided to deploy the bees he didn’t want any stuff-ups.

  Outside the house, between the veranda and the bush, he rested the briefcase on a folding chair and pulled out the smartphone. Like the case it responded to the print of his thumb and a visual scan of his face. The software launched, asking for parameters of the sortie.

  The beach couldn’t be more than twenty meters from where he stood, and his car was parked maybe one hundred meters away in the opposite direction, up the track behind the house. Maybe he should walk them down to the beach. Obstructions like the trees might affect their Bluetooth communication though that was unlikely. The conditions at the beach were more likely to impact the infrared capability.

  You’re not trying to detect anyone, he reminded himself. And anyway, how likely was it that he would be deploying the bees under perfect circumstances?