by JT Lawrence
More and more it seems to Kate that her reality is spinning out of control. The rate of evolution of everything is just too fast. How can anyone keep up? Is she even meant to keep up? Or is that a recipe for insanity? She has a pervading sensation that she doesn’t feel safe. An everyday sense of menace hovers, a constant vicious vertigo, and she finds it difficult to believe she’s the only one who feels this way.
Seth puts his hands together in a quiet clap, as if he’s about to start telling a really good story. “There’ve been some incidents over the last few days. Random. Seemingly random, anyway.”
“Incidents? Like what?”
“Little quirks. Small glitches. At first they didn’t seem too sinister.”
“Like what happened at MegaMall?” asks Keke.
“Exactly.”
On Tuesday a mannequinbot started screaming at a customer in Milk&Silk. The customer said he did nothing to set it off, but the security footage later revealed that he had sexually assaulted her. Except they don’t call it sexual assault when it happens to a robot. Interference, they say. He had interfered with the skinbot: had shoved his hand into her designer brassiere in broad daylight. Or artificial mall light, anyway. It’s not a criminal offence—not yet—so he’ll get away with his story, Kate is sure. After all, what is he expected to do when the goods are flaunted to brazenly? Surely the skin was asking for it, wearing that seductive get-up? And conveniently avoiding the fact that the whole reason for her existence is in fact to model lingerie, and that a 5.0 robot is incapable of ‘asking for it’.
“He got off lucky,” says Keke, perhaps referring to the DroidChef incident.
“The mannequin didn’t,” says Kate, picturing her naked body being carted back to the factory if she was lucky, and the recycling yard if she wasn’t.
“And then the JungleRumble thing,” says Seth.
“Hey?”
“It’s under the Blanket. I assume they paid handsomely for that.”
“Nah. The CEO is Mashini Wam’s daughter.”
The president’s real name is Mashigo Amahle, but she has the reputation of getting inconvenient people taken care of, hence the nickname. Umshini Wami is the one apartheid resistance song that stayed long after the struggle was over. Loosely translated, it means ‘my machine’: the song is about a fighter calling for his machine gun.
“But seriously, that amusement park was just an accident waiting to happen. I mean, hopped-up kids and robotic wild animals? What could possibly go wrong?”
Kate winces. She’s seen the ads showing adults and children alike putting their heads into lion’s mouths like old-school circus lion tamers. Riding crocodiles in the river. Winding boa constrictors around their necks. “There’re always so many kids there. I don’t actually want to know.”
“I do!” says Keke.
“Then you need to hack the Blanket.”
“Where’s a talented hacktivist when you need him?” says Kate, but when she sees Keke roll her eyes, she regrets the joke. She hasn’t even asked her how Marko is lately. Or where he is. Or if she thinks he’ll ever come back.
Seth smooths over the awkward pause in conversation. “Well, they’ve closed it till further notice. Pending enquiry and all of that. I’m sure the government will assign a ‘task team’ to investigate.”
“Ha.”
“So … we’re hoping that all these glitches are coincidence?” says Keke.
“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Kate and Seth say, at the same time.
“When you look at the common denominators—” Seth fetches a glass from the kitchen cupboard and pours them all a whisky. “Then you’ll see why this is a real problem.”
“What are they? The common denominators?”
“Area, for one.”
He projects a map of South Africa from his Scribe and red blisters emerge like a pox. Johannesburg is clearly the eye of the storm.
“Holy fuck,” says Keke.
“And, more worryingly—”
“It’s spreading,” whispers Kate. More and more flags appear at the edges of the tornado. Fear is a yellow zip up her back.
“Yes, but that isn’t what I was going to say.”
“What’s happening out there? What’s causing it?”
“That woman who was killed at The Bent,” says Seth, “that hand … belonged to the hotel porterbot.”
Kate sees it happen again: the woman’s crazed eyes and open mouth as the thing clawed at her leg. Porterbots are known for their strength, they’re manufactured that way to perform their jobs easily.
Keke’s breath is a whisper of terror. “It’s AI.”
Experts have been warning us for decades.
Enslave AI before it enslaves us.
They’d been lectured about the danger of embracing artificial intelligence without restraint or respect for as long as they can remember. Not by dodgy fringe-dwellers or city disconnects but by the most respected people in the field. The graphic refreshes itself, and a surge of new flags pops up like a Mexican wave.
Chapter 9
Dragon Scales
Innercity
Johannesburg, 2036
Silver is shown out the clinic. She puts her mask back on, and adjusts her breathing to the claustrophobic filter over her mouth. Her coat feels heavy on her shoulders. She should have known the DarkDoc wouldn’t help her without Kate’s consent. He’s considered to be this renegade biotech specialist on the forefront of science, breaking rules all over the spectrum, but now Silver sees he’s just like everyone else: a sheeple bleating the same tune as everybody fucking else. Why can’t creeps think for themselves? She’s so sick of it. Why can’t she be eighteen already?
She’s further enraged by the tears that spark her eyes.
Keep cool, Silver.
“Hey,” says Dragon Scales.
He’s hot in a bad-boy way.
She pulls her mask to the side again. “Hey yourself.”
Sexy in a kind of grimy way that makes her feel a tingle of excitement in her pelvis.
He moves to open the cab’s door, but stops as if something is just occurring to him.
“You wanna go somewhere?”
Danger strokes her neck.
“I shouldn’t,” she says.
“Why?” He laughs. “You have a curfew?” He opens the door.
“No,” she fibs. “I just have to get back.”
“I’ll take you,” he says, so she climbs in. “I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go.”
Chapter 10
On Ice
12 YEARS PREVIOUSLY
ICE
Johannesburg, 2024
The security gate judders open and the navy van glides through, its tyres crackling on the tarmac. A guard acknowledges them with his palm as they pass. The sleek vehicle winds around the vast building and enters through a sliding turnstile at the back which elevates the van. They land up on the fifth floor. Once the ignition de-activates, Detective Ramphele turns his head to check on Zack.
“I’m still here,” Zack says. “Did you expect me to have vanished?”
Ramphele snorts. “I’ve seen the footage. I know what you’re capable of—I don’t understand it, but I’ve seen it—and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Of course Ramphele doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t have the neural capability. He’s still 100% bio, as far as Zack can tell. It’s like expecting a goldfish to think out of the bowl.
Zack wipes the perspiration from his palms. This arrest is a risky development, and his anxiety is interfering with his regular cool reasoning. Ramphele’s got a vice-like grip on him. A wild dog with a bone. Zack’s anxiety taps him on the shoulder, insisting that he needs to escape. So much hinges on the successful completion of his mission; a mission he knows is now in jeopardy.
Zack stares forward through the superblack tinted windows, his mind racing. “Where are we?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“You’re puttin
g me on ice,” Zack says. The Innercity Crim Establishment is the place you stay while you’re awaiting trial.
“You’ll be lucky,” says the detective.
“Lucky to be on ice?”
“Lucky to get a trial.”
“So Nash was right, then,” says Zack, more to himself than to the cop.
“Helena Nash was a kid-killer.”
“She wasn’t, though, and you would have known that if you had done your job and hadn’t had a complete fucking farce for a trial.”
Ramphele grunts.
“It was the trial she deserved,” says the detective. “And you—”
The doors unlock after their mandatory two-minute security quarantine. The cop holds up his Tile: Zack’s mugshot is front and centre. Next to the picture are 3D icons for various folders. As far as he can see, there is an icon for every one of his deceased clients. Ramphele swipes up to show scores and scores of files. A hundred, two hundred? Dead.
“You’ll get the trial you deserve, too.”
Chapter 11
Amphibian Suspicion
Ramphele pushes Zack along by the small of his back; it is an intimate gesture. The entrance to the facility on this floor is modest, with just a hulking black gate that automatically opens after a dull buzzing sound comes from the adjacent security kiosk. Ramphele guides him through the hall and to the scabby timber reception desk that’s pitted and tattooed with blue ink—a remnant from another era. No pens here anymore: A silicone stylus is less dangerous than a ball-point.
Never letting Zack out of his peripheral vision, the detective sigs a few holo-leaves and time-stamps them. The bored receptionist yawns them through.
The warden on admission duty is a woman taller than Zack and twice as built. The uniform is powder blue with an angular cut. Her eyes click into his and don’t let go.
“So this is him,” she says, curling the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. Her tag reads WARDEN C BERNARD.
“Yebo,” says Ramphele. “You ready for him?”
“Oh, yes.” She slants her head as if to get a proper look at Zack. There’s something cold in her eyes, something hard and shiny, as if her pupils are the point of something sharp: a kitchen knife or, more suitably given their surroundings, an ice-pick.
“Oh yes,” Bernard says again, and he imagines her cracking her large knuckles, getting them punch-ready, even though her meaty hands are otherwise occupied. Her calves are solid; Zack guesses she’s a walker. Bernard takes a plastic envelope from the detective then turns and pushes the pad of her finger up against the biometric access pad. An arrow lights up above the door.
“I’ll call for details about the trial,” says the detective.
“You do that,” says Bernard. Ramphele looks on as the metal door and then a glass partition, slide open—a double mouth—and watches as the warden and Zack are swallowed up by the elevator.
Warden Bernard has a head of tight, wiry curls that she keeps gelled into submission. Her head is an army barracks of metal pins. She wears a choker with rivets that reminds Zack of a dog collar. Zack stares at the back of her neck as she turns away from him to select the relevant floor. Clammy. Her skin is too white. SPF100 junkie? Or because she spends her life in this prison. He guesses the latter. It lends her a slightly amphibian suspicion.
Zack breathes in deeply through his nose and sighs it out. How long will he be stuck here? Until a trial date is set. When will they decide that? Who knows.
The warden looks at him sharply. “Problem?”
He holds up his cuffed wrists. “More than one.”
It’s imperative to get on the warden’s good side. Zack counts his lucky stars that he’s reasonably good looking and that she’s a woman. Never a guarantee, mind you, but it’s a good start.
They get buzzed through the iron gate.
Christine Bernard collects Zack’s ICE-branded prison clothes from a counter, and they walk down a corridor scraped by the thousands of reluctant heels before his. The door to his cell opens automatically, and Zack takes stock of where he’ll be sleeping for the foreseeable future: iron bed, stained mattress, dog blankets, bare walls. He wonders off-hand if the absence of art and colour and natural light in prisons is a purposeful or accidental strategy to capture minds as well as bodies. Bernard further darkens the door.
Zack turns to her, and she tosses him his uniform; he catches the orange overalls on his chest, and wonders how many creeps had worn this particular outfit before him.
“Get undressed,” she says. He expects her to leave, but she stands there, watching him.
He starts with his tie: unknotting the teal silk and placing it over the back of a chair, then opens his white-collared shirt, button by button. Bernard swats her palm with her baton like a metronome. It has a textured handle for better grip and an expandable, telescopic rod; sixteen inches of solid steel for extra striking power.
Zack unclips his belt, drops his pants, and reaches for the overalls.
“Everything,” the warden says. She eats him with her eyes.
Zack hesitates. He doesn’t want to wear prison-issue jox, and he certainly doesn’t want to be completely naked in front of Bernard. Not because he minds being naked—he’s usually rather a fan of nudity—but because it will give her too much power, too quickly.
She sees his hesitation and it hardens her face. Her fingers wrap around the hard steel.
“Everything.”
Chapter 12
Even My Toaster is Intelligent
TWELVE YEARS LATER
Seth’s Apartment
Johannesburg, 2036
Seth sets his Scribe to project the running news holo on the large white wall next to where they’re standing. Echo.news is showing the hyperloop crash in slow motion.
“Speaker,” he says, and the sound of the journalist’s voice is amplified throughout the room.
“Mere hours ago we reported that these incidents were not linked. There was nothing to tie the Loop accident to The Bent Hotel murder. However, after consulting a panel of experts—”
“We approached you,” says a man in a polka-dot bow-tie. His wiry hair and eccentric outfit make him look like an Andy Warhol-styled Einstein.
“Pardon me,” says the journo, “I stand corrected. Dr Kirk called us to set up this piece.”
Dr Kirk is sitting behind a desk, his fingers interlaced. His thumbs shoot up and he nods to acknowledge the journalist’s apology. Kate gets the idea the doctor doesn’t care who called whom, but it’s his job to care about facts. His poker cap—a bright green visor with an open top—casts emerald light on his face, which makes Kate think of the Wizard of Oz, and the Tin Man who wanted a heart.
“Since chatting to Dr Kirk, we’ve changed our position.”
The Echo.news ticker tape animates and winds around the room like the 1980s video game Snafu, an ever-extending pink snake flickering the death toll. The numbers keep changing colours.
CONFIRMED FATALITIES
HYPERLOOP: 612
BILCHEN SATELLITE DEPOT (SANDTON): 82
CARBON FACTORY: 39
PRINTADRINK: 14
JUNGLERUMBLE: 3
THE BENT HOTEL: 1
STREAM STUDIOS (DROIDCHEF): 1
MEGAMALL MILK&SILK: 0
When did the world get so utterly broken?
In 2028 more than half of the world’s leaders were women. It seemed at the time more of a bitter, hard-won status rather than a triumph. And now it feels like a hollow victory, because really they were handed a poisoned chalice. It’s as if the male leaders tossed them the keys to a car that broke down after having its engine fall out onto the highway during rush-hour traffic. The new strains of terrorism, the gummed-up rivers and noxious air. It’s like inheriting a bomb that’s about to explode and being expected to say thank you.
That’s why seeing that old picture of the skinny polar bears is one of the saddest in history. Because at the time the picture was taken, it wasn’t yet too late. So they
can clone the bears now but where will they live? That’s what happens when the polar ice melts and there are more plastic bottles than fish in the sea. That’s what happens when humans think they’re a superior life form.
And now this.
“Dr Kirk, can you tell us what your take is on these incidents? And what it could mean for the country? Are we facing a robot rebellion?”
Kirk’s qualifications run along the bottom of his picture: Dr Kirk (Theoretical Physicist) CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA.
“We knew it would happen eventually, right?” says Keke. “A robot rebellion. The Singularity. I’ve watched enough sci-fi shorts to know the drill.”
“Yes and no,” says Seth. “This isn’t either of those things, but that doesn’t mean—”
“It’s not a rebellion,” says the scientist.
“Ha,” says Kate. “Seth. How did you know?”
“How I know everything: maths.”
Kate and Keke shrug at each other.
“Can you put my slide up?” says Kirk to the journalist, and he does so. It looks almost identical to Seth’s map, but now has double the number of red flags.
“I’ve just come from an emergency meeting at NASP, and my associates and my hypothesis is that it’s simply an update snag.”
The journo pushes his blackrims up the bridge of his nose. “A snag?”
“Robots’ codes are being constantly updated. We’re exploring new territory all the time. It’s hardly surprising that the odd upgrade has some … unexpected consequences.”
“Dire consequences, in this case,” says the journalist. “Rebellion or not, artificial intelligence is … Well, it’s killing human beings.”
“Indeed. Just because the spur is at a micro level we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that it’s an insignificant problem. If we don’t fix this fast, we’ll be facing a potential global catastrophe.”
