by Lior Samson
“Okay, let me refresh my drink and then I’ll fill you in.”
“Ditto. I don’t think these people have any idea what they are up against with the two of us. Which says, by the way, we should keep cool about being a couple. Not for the usual reasons, but if there are people out there who don’t know they’re dealing with a pair, we can play that for some gain.”
“Amen. Let me check on Becca. Get Tandi to give us refills, and then let’s sit in the den and strategize. We got a lot of stuff to deal with.”
— 31 —
“I want to go with you to court,” Becca said through a mouthful of cereal.
“It’s probate court,” Barbra said without looking up from the news feed on her tablet. “The will is being contested, that’s all. There’s not likely to be much drama.”
“I want to know what’s going on. I mean, I have a stake in this, too. There’s all these legal things going on. It seems like they just keep coming.”
“That’s because the criminal trial that everyone expected never materialized. Even lawyers need to make a living, and there are so, so many of them. So now there’s this crush of civil suits and counter suits, with attorneys pushing and shoving like students queuing for rush tickets to a hot new musical.”
“How many is it now?”
“I’ve lost count. I know Existendia brought civil actions against Kagoshima-Antech, maker of the robotic arm, and U-mote, the company that supplied the telepresence robot. Now Cloudastics, which recently acquired Existendia, has alleged that officers of Existendia withheld materially relevant information. Plus, U-mote and Kagoshima-Antech have jointly sued Cloudastics, arguing that its elastic cloud services failed to provide, quote-unquote, sufficient and necessary real-time response to maintain safe operating control of the robotic arm. The list goes on.
“Anyway, if you want to go with me, you can, but probate court is kind of the ho-hum of the judicial system.”
— —
Hal Workman had one of his wills-and-estates specialists running the show for the day, a solemn-faced oldster who could have passed as an undertaker’s uncle. As promised, the proceedings were a litany of routine until Bannon Turndale introduced a motion to have the Drucker proxy appointed as administrator of the estate, at which point, the judge decided to take a recess, no doubt to dig for a precedent.
Timed for maximum effect, just as the judge exited, a NuConfer Model 23 Telepresencer, a slick new two-wheel model using the same self-balancing technology as the Segway and WheelIt personal transport systems, extended itself to its full five-foot height and rolled up the center aisle. It slowed as it approached where Becca was seated on the aisle next to Barbra and pivoted toward them. The face on the monitor smiled and winked at Becca. “Hey, BB Babe, how’s my girl?”
Becca’s mouth dropped. “Daddy?”
“The real thing, BB Babe, the real thing.”
“Ohmygod! It’s really you, like, I mean. You remember.”
“Of course I do. I even remember when I helped you find that vase on eBay to replace the one that you clobbered with the Frisbee, which you knew better than to throw in the house.”
Becca put her fist to her mouth and started to cry. “Oh, Daddy. Oh, I miss you. I—” She turned to her mother. “It’s Daddy.”
“No, it’s not your father. Your father was killed—maybe by these people, the very people who are running this … this demonstration. It’s a fake, for show.”
The robot rolled forward. “I’m no fake, darling. I’m the real thing, right here, standing before you. And don’t give me that look of yours. I’m here to get back control, just as it should be, running Drucker Unified again, in charge of our assets, you and me, again.”
“You … no, I’m not going to dignify this ruse by talking to an AI as if it were real. We do that too much and too easily. We’ve stopped paying attention to the difference between the real and a good imitation. Tandi is not the house, BlueBee is not alive. They’re just computer programs, like … like this machine in front of me. It’s a game of ‘let’s pretend,’ like those cloud-connected companion dolls that we never let Becca have when she was little.”
“Yeah,” Becca said, “and I thought you were so mean. I—“
Barbra put her hand on Becca’s arm without turning from facing the telepresence screen. “This is different, this is a vicious trick being used to play on our emotions.”
Drucker’s voice, perfectly modulated, came from the robot. “This is different, as you say, because I am not an artificial intelligence, my intelligence is real. I am not a simulation. I am me, still me, just now embodied in software. Do you want me to prove it? Do you want me to tell you about what we did in Aruba that time when—“
“That’s enough!” She looked away and scanned the room until she spotted Bannon Turndale. “This show has gone far enough, Turndale.”
The face on the screen shook side-to-side. “Don’t look to Turndale. I’m here on my own accord.”
“Then I’ll turn you off.” She got up and squeezed past Becca into the aisle. She reached behind the screen, feeling for a switch.
Turndale, who had been watching the proceedings with triumphant amusement, snapped to attention. “Don’t touch that. It’s the property of Existendia Enterprises.”
“Property? Okay, then it is just a thing, an object, a piece of equipment. It can hardly be appointed administrator of my late husband’s estate.”
“That’s for the judge to rule, Ms. Wilson.”
The avatar turned to face Bannon Turndale. “Don’t worry, Bannon. She can’t turn me off. I remotely disabled the panel on this thing. I’m here as long as—”
He was interrupted by the return of the judge and the announcement that the court was back in session.
“And what the hell is that thing? Get it out of my courtroom, Mr. Turndale.”
“Your Honor, I just want to demonstrate—“
“No demonstrations, no theatrics with some Clever Hans in robot form, Mr. Turndale. This is probate court, not some criminal three-ring circus. I review documents, hear arguments, and rule. Period. And right now I am ruling, ordering you to get that thing out of my courtroom, or I shall have to find you in contempt.”
“But, Your Honor …”
“Did I not make myself clear? Out. Now.”
The Proxy turned to face the bench and started to approach. “Your Honor, if I may explain myself …”
“Mr. Turndale, I will not dignify this ploy by conversing with your toy. Now get it out of here, or I will summon security and have it removed and impounded.”
Turndale walked over to the proxy. “Cole, just leave. Let me take care of this. And tell your friend Aram Netsky to let me handle the legal end. I have this under control, and I need you to go back to your box.”
“Back to my box? You tendentious twerp, I’ll—“ The face on the screen froze, and Aram Netsky’s voice came from the speaker. “Sorry about that, Bannon. It seemed like a good idea. I’ll get this back to the truck.” The robot turned and trundled back down the aisle.
— —
Netsky, clearly annoyed, leaned back in his office chair. “So, what do you suggest next, Mr. Drucker?”
“Cole, I keep telling you, just call me Cole.”
“If you insist, Cole it is. It was win some, lose some in court last week. Even if we ultimately prevail in having the new will invalidated, we are not going to end up with you as executor of your own estate. So, what do you think, Cole?”
“Well, we got blocked in probate court, but we may not need that. Oh yeah, and it seems clear we’ve been found out on the domestic front. The dump from my backup was interrupted and then turned into garbage. Fortunately, the software was configured to dump last-in-first-out, so we recovered most of the last year. At any rate, I always prefer to be working multiple fronts, so we keep our legal team bashing away to invalidate the new will. If the older will is in force, even a court-appointed executor will have to follow it.
/> “In the meantime, I would be moving to use what we do know of Drucker Unified to keep manipulating the stock through our network of shell corporations and holding companies. And, speaking of shell corporations, I have an extra five mil socked away in the Caymans that we can add to the pool. The access details, which I could not remember exactly, were in the upload from the backup server. Not even my wife, not even my lawyers know about it.
“Also, I’ve been catching up on developments, and even without the rest of the backup files, I can tell you pretty much what you can expect from Drucker Unified for at least the next several quarters. The technology that was announced last week, for instance, the onsite robotics, is basically fake news. The demo clips you saw on the news and online were preprogrammed sequences carefully staged to look spontaneous. I know, because I steered that whole program. They’re reaching, pissing on the territory ahead of the competition. I can tell you, there’s at least another two or three years before you’ll see autonomous bots and warm bodies working side-by-side on construction sites. Just wait for the problems to start becoming public around the time of the Construction Electronics Show in March. The stock will plunge and take its time climbing back up. We can sell short this time, then use the gains to expand our holdings on the next go-round.”
Netsky snorted. “A man of highest ethical standards. And I seem to remember you as someone who went on record as dead set against all forms of insider trading.”
“Dead-set. For a man utterly lacking any sense of humor, you can be almost amusing at times, Netsky. At any rate, how would this be insider trading? Who’s your insider? Me? That’s not going to fly in court. I’m not an insider, and who can fault you for consulting a computer. What do you think computer-driven trading is?”
“Okay. We can do all that. What else would you do?”
“I’d give me arms and legs. I know you’re working on that, but let’s get this whole android thing up and running. If you can get me a dick again, that would be good, too. I think of it all the time, you know. That programmer you were talking with yesterday, Tatiana Something-or-other. God, what a pair.” The mobile conference avatar unit spun in place.
“You sure don’t give up, do you. I don’t think the technology exists for what you are thinking about.”
“Then we make it exist. It’s just a matter of resources. We don’t have to limit ourselves to Drucker Unified. We continue to build up our war chest, then we buy the brains to make it happen. Drucker Unified is a piece of cake, but I also know all the big players in the industry. I can tell you which ones are concrete and which are wet sand. We can play the whole construction sector and just keep on with job one—building wealth. That’s the key to everything else. That’s the key to immortality.
“And remember, Netsky, I told you the Backhoe Bob blog was a brilliant idea. Now hordes of schmucks looking for a killing in the stock market are part of our own personal dark army.”
“Okay, but we’ll need a detailed agenda. By the way, did Dolph talk with you about interfacing directly with the keyboard input on a computer?”
“We did better than that. You know, you guys love your coding too much. Whatever the problem is, the only solution you see is to write more software. You’re like a toddler with a toy hammer. Everything looks like a nail. No, I just told him to let me talk to the voice dictation input. Besides, I never learned to type with more than two fingers. It would take forever.”
“Whatever. Just give me a list of stocks and a buy-sell calendar, and we’ll keep building my portfolio.”
“Our portfolio. I told you, it’s halvsies on this.”
“I’ll get Turndale looking into how we could do that.”
“Just do it. Forget the whole legal crap. None of those pen pushers know what to do with me. Nobody in the DA’s office could even charge me for the death, never will. I’m immune, invincible, immortal. And you need me.”
“I might say the need is mutual.”
“Say whatever you like. I know stuff you don’t, and I’m the one who can lead the way to you having it all, so I—”
Netsky had quietly positioned his mouse and tapped on the “Sleep” button. “And what were you saying, Mr. Proxy? Who is in charge here? We’ll continue this conversation when I feel like it. Is that clear? Nod if you understand. What, no nod? I guess some things are still hard for you to do, especially when the connectome software is idle.”
He tapped the icon for his assistant. “Di, get Turndale in here. I want to discuss some legal matters.”
“Of course, I’ll fetch him.”
Netsky smiled. Ordering people around was one of the few forms of social interaction that he actually enjoyed. Belittling those around him was another of his pleasures. Even better than barking at Turndale himself was having Di tell him to come by. One of his monitors timed out and faded to black. Netsky looked at his own reflection in the darkened screen. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, he thought, who is the smartest of them all? Drucker was only a test case, a one-oh release of a software tool, a means to an end. Netsky could almost feel his own immortality within reach.
— 32 —
“So, I need to be in charge of—” The face on the telepresence avatar suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and went wide-eyed. “What the fuck? We were just talking, Netsky, and now … How many hours have gone by?”
“Who cares? We’re still talking. I just returned from dealing with Turndale and then a meeting with my dev team. Now, what were you on about?”
“Don’t you fucking ever do that again!”
“Do what?”
“You know. Put me out, turn me off. It’s fucking freaky to be talking with you and suddenly you appear in the door and hours have gone by. Don’t do that. Ever.”
Netsky ignored him as he scanned through and approved the latest string of updates to the code base. “I don’t think you’re in much of a position to protest. Just keep in mind, we can pull the plug on this project—on you—anytime we want.”
“Just remember, you want what I know, what I represent. And you have a contractual obligation to keep me going. I don’t have to cooperate.”
“No? Really? You want to keep going or not? We’re the ones paying the electric bill.”
“And I’m paving the way to your future. Make nice or—” The image atop the mobile conference avatar froze, then broke up in pixelated static. When it slowly reformed the expression was a cartoonish approximation of horror. “What in hell was that?”
“My neuro-psych people think it should be a digital approximation to an epileptic seizure. They’ll be interested in your reaction. What do you think?”
“What do I think? You are fuckin’ nuts, some kind of gestapo tyrant at the terminal. Don’t. You. Ever. Pull. That. Again.”
“What? This?” Netsky retyped the command and tapped the return key. The avatar image went jittery as the sound from the speaker stuttered. This time it took over a minute for the face on the screen to recover. Netsky typed a note to himself. “I guess there are some cumulative effects. I’ll have to consult with the neuro-psych boys to make sure we’re not doing any real damage to the connectome model. You okay, Cole?”
The face on the screen had its mouth open. “I …”
“Maybe this is enough for today, Cole. Perhaps you should get some rest. We have a lot of matters to review, but those can be put off until tomorrow.”
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Now you seem to have found your voice, Cole. ‘Please.’ What an excellent choice of words. It makes me hopeful about us continuing to work together. Do you feel up to reviewing the market figures, or would you like to take a break?”
“Having a little trouble thinking right now. Maybe …”
“Yeah, maybe. So, get some rest, dream a little dream, and tomorrow we’ll get back to work.” He set the parameters for a slow slide into unconsciousness.
Jerry Pendrake entered the office just as Cole’s eyes began to droop on the telepresence scre
en. “What’s up? Isn’t it a bit early to be dialing down the proxy?”
“Our Mr. Drucker has had a bit of a tough day. He seems to be running a headache and needs some REM-time to restore his mental balance.”
“You’ve been playing around again, haven’t you. I wish you wouldn’t keep jiggering with the software. It’s been running just fine.” Pendrake crossed his clench-fist arms.
“I’m just trying to keep up with the neuro-psych research. You know, they now think they can add the experience of pleasure and pain into the simulation. It’s just a matter of injecting the right signals at the right points.”
“Tell me you haven’t …”
“Not yet, but I have been trying to improve performance, getting the software to be more responsive, shall we say. I think I have found some work-arounds.”
“Work-arounds. How can such a bland expression sound so sinister coming from your lips?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. It’s my job to keep improving the operating software so we can get as much as possible out of the Drucker proxy. Period. Now, what event of note is enough to bring you out of your den into the late afternoon light?”
“We’re being sued. Drucker Unified and the Drucker family have brought a joint civil suit for wrongful death. They’re asking for two-fifty and recovery of the connectome model.”
“Two-hundred-fifty thousand? Chump change. We—”
“Mil. Two-hundred-fifty million.”
“Well, that’s what we have lawyers for.”
“Yeah, but it’s going to be a big drain, even if we prevail, and Bannon says our legal people are not super confident on that front.”
“Then get some legal people who are.”
“That is not our only problem. We can’t just buy our way out of everything, even with the Cloudastics resources behind us now.”
“Well, do what you need to do, Jerry, just do it. Again, if you can’t handle it yourself, find the people who can. That’s always worked for me, although mostly I can handle whatever comes up.” He turned back to his screens as Pendrake left the office shaking his head.
