by Logan Jacobs
If I were a powerful superhero, or had a fully operational combat suit, then I may not have felt the need to booby-trap every square inch of the building. But, being a mere human, I didn’t have that luxury. So the guiding principle that day was “More is better.”
The engineers were excited to collaborate with me, and some of them said things that indicated that they followed my inventing career pretty closely. But even so, there was no getting around the fact that I was their employer in this case, and most people don’t like having their boss watching over their shoulder. So Norma and I took a long, leisurely lunch at the nicest restaurant in the area, returned to the site for the next few hours, and then I decided that we should go home and leave the experts to continue the project throughout the night.
“Feel free to call me if anything urgent comes up, but I trust your judgment,” I said in parting. “Err on the side of more destructive, not less. The budget I gave you is just a loose guideline. If you have a good idea, then run with it.”
Their eyes gleamed with a sort of pure primal eagerness to Fuck Shit Up, so maybe there was a bit of supervillain within all of us.
Norma and I got in the car and returned home.
“Welcome home, Creator and Norma,” Aileen purred as we scanned our irises and stepped inside.
“So, Aileen?” I asked her. “What are our odds of success?”
“There are too many variables for me to generate a statistically meaningful number,” Aileen replied. “But I have faith in you, Creator.”
“Can robots do that?” Norma asked.
“You mean, decline to provide an arbitrary number that might exert undue influence on your level of confidence?” Aileen asked.
“No,” Norma asked. “I mean, Miles is a genius, and I see the results of your programming, but can robots have faith.”
“As a general rule, no,” Aileen said, “but Miles allowed my brain to evolve and function in a largely organic manner, other than the fact that it has far more data inputs and a higher storage capacity than any human brain and the memory files are not nearly so subject to corruption. That means that I have become capable, among other things, of drawing insufficiently supported conclusions.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Insufficiently supported conclusions sounds like a design flaw. I wonder if I should go in and try to correct that.”
“Don’t,” Norma said. “I like it.”
“As do I,” Aileen laughed.
“Fine,” I chuckled sarcastically. “We’ll let my AI creation have her evolving religion. I’m sure nothing bad will happen. Norma, what shall we have for dinner? That is, if you wish to stay.”
I paid Norma enough to enable her to dine out every night at Michelin-starred restaurants if she wanted to. And she was a young and not unattractive woman, so there was no reason she couldn’t have gone on dates, either. But she always seemed to just hang around and prepare her own meals in my kitchen.
“How about I cook?” Norma suggested.
“Sure,” I agreed. Of course, Norma never made a great meal, but she never made a bad one either, and I loved the fact that I could never predict what kinds of exotic dishes she would serve up. “I’ll just be downstairs tinkering with the C.D.S., ping me whenever you’re ready. And you can grab a couple of bottles from the wine cellar too, whatever you want.”
An hour or two later when Norma notified me, and I went back upstairs, the table was spread with an elaborate feast. Russian stroganoff, Greek dolmades, Japanese sashimi.
“Wow, you’ve really outdone yourself,” I said.
Norma just smiled and gestured for me to sit down.
I sat down, took a bite of some sort of unfamiliar pancake type thing doused in meat sauce, and gasped. “Holy fuck! That’s amazing. How did you… I mean, you’ve gotten so much better at cooking!”
Norma laughed. “Nope, same as I ever was. But Aileen helped me.”
“Glad you like it,” purred my AI assistant from the nearest speaker.
“I angled some cameras at all the food preparation areas so she could observe the whole process and give me step-by-step instructions,” Norma explained. “And she was controlling the temperatures and all the mechanized appliances. I kind of just carried ingredients around and chopped stuff up for her.”
“I didn’t know you could cook,” I said to Aileen.
“I referenced a bunch of recipes and online footage of cooking shows and cooking tutorials, it wasn’t too difficult to teach myself,” Aileen said modestly. “It also helps that I understand the science behind the chemical reactions and the way that human taste buds process flavors. Eating must be such a surreal experience.”
I laughed. “I never thought of it that way, but I guess so.” I popped a bottle of wine and poured a glass for Norma and a glass for myself. “Cheers to having the two best assistants a man could ask for.”
We drank to that.
“Don’t expect this to be a regular thing,” Norma said warningly. “Aileen was really bossy. She kept correcting things like my stirring speed and the size that I was dicing vegetables. And she was kind of rude about it too.”
“Based on the cooking shows that I analyzed, I concluded that head chefs with harsh leadership styles and somewhat vulgar modes of expression obtain the best results from their teams,” Aileen said defensively.
Norma glared at the speaker.
I laughed. “Okay, well, we’ll dine out tomorrow.”
“Are we going to have time for fine dining?” Norma asked. “Aren’t we going to have to stake out the warehouse and wait for The Virus and his gang to show up?”
I just nodded while I finished my mouthful of stroganoff. Then I said, “And then we’ll go to Buonarotti’s afterward to celebrate their destruction.”
“… Are we going to start doing this on a regular basis?” Norma asked as she nervously nibbled on a dolmade.
“Do what?” I asked. “Eat nice meals together?”
“No,” she said. “Fight supervillains. Break the law and, um, kill people.”
“Oh, that,” I said. “Well. Kinda looks that way, huh?”
“It does.” Norma nodded.
“Well, after we dispose of The Virus and whatever friends he brings along for company, I don’t think The Chief will be too pleased about it,” I said. “He may or may not be able to trace their destruction to us, I don’t know. But my hope is that we’ll manage to extract enough information about him from one of them that we can track him down. But either way, we’ll be seeing more of him. And after word gets out that we took down a supervillain, even a relatively minor one like The Chief? Well, normal humans just don’t do that kind of thing. The Wardens are going to get their panties in a knot. And other supervillains might start feeling threatened. Like Aileen would say, there are too many variables for me to be able to predict with any reasonable degree of certainty what the long-term consequences will say. But I think it’s a safe bet that our lives aren’t just going to go back to how they were before.”
“I see your point,” Norma said after a pause. “So are you… er… sure you really want to do this?”
“Yes,” I said, “but look. I should’ve asked you before. This wasn’t part of your hiring contract. So you don’t need to be involved in… this side of my business if you don’t want to. That would be completely understandable. In fact, I guess it would be lunacy for you to get involved. You can just keep managing my calendar, managing the housekeeping staff, managing my travel logistics, drafting communications for me--”
“No,” Norma interrupted. “I’m not going to be your coffee bitch while you run off to fight evil.”
“You were never a coffee bitch,” I snorted. “You’re a superhero, Norma. Never forget that. I’m not even a superhero.”
“I’m not a superhero without you!” she blurted, and then her cheeks immediately turned red.
Her outburst made me quirk an eyebrow as I observed her flushed face. There was a reason I’d hired her, and it wasn
’t simply because she made the perfect assistant. Sure, that was a big part of it, but she also held a startling amount of potential that highly intrigued me, and I wondered if she would ever be able to figure it out. Maybe she was right that she’d never be a superhero without me, but not for the reason she seemed to think.
“You have a unique, incredible ability,” I said. “You just needed me to teach you how to use it better. I’m sure there will be more to discover, but you certainly don’t need me now, if you wish to get off this--”
“This isn’t about that! My point is, if you’re in, then I’m in,” she interrupted me. “So this isn’t about me being worried or scared or something. I guess my real question is just… why?”
“You mean, why do I want to fight evil?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, you’re not exactly… ”
“A hero?” I laughed.
Norma blushed. “Well, you know what I mean, you’re not like Optimo or someone like that who’s constantly spouting Boy Scout slogans. Who gets off on everyone depending on him to save the world five times before breakfast. It just doesn’t seem like… the kind of thing that would really… interest you.”
“I’m the farthest thing from that,” I agreed as I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes stare into her brown orbs. “After seeing the actual superheroes in action up close at the Gala. I guess it just struck a nerve how... well... how incompetent they are.”
“Ohhh,” Norma said, and she seemed satisfied with that answer. “Well. That makes sense then. That’s just like you. You want to beat them at their own game just to prove that you can?”
“It’s not just that, either,” I admitted as I drained the rest of my wine glass. “Did you see how many people died at the Gala? And no one’s focusing on that. No one even seems to care. All the media coverage is close-ups and interviews of the heroes who were there. The body count just gets glazed over. And the worst part is that it doesn’t seem to matter to the superheroes themselves either. If you get caught in the crossfire of one of their epic showdowns, then you’re toast, and dead is dead. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a supervillain killing you intentionally or a superhero just not even noticing you were there. Does it?”
“No, I guess not,” Norma agreed as she pushed a potato absentmindedly around her plate.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to get carried away with this new hobby,” I told her. “I’m still going to be me. I’m still going to be a geeky inventor. I’m still going to run my companies, make billions, and fuck supermodels. And I’m still going to look out for Number One. If a supervillain shows up that looks like more than I can handle, I’m not the guy that’s going to jump off a cliff with him or fly into the sun with him to save the rest of mankind. Nah. I’ll leave that hero shit to Optimo.”
Norma giggled.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that you looked a little too pleased at the thought of Optimo flying into the sun or jumping off a cliff.”
I grinned. “Who, me? Never.”
Aileen chimed in from a nearby speaker, “Based on my statistical analysis of your facial expressions that are most highly correlated with contexts in which you express the human emotions of joy, eagerness, or anticipation--”
“Stop,” I commanded. “Aileen? For future reference. Unless I’m about to do something really dumb, and you need to stop me for my own good, always take my side in any dispute. Got it?”
“…What if the most logical interpretation of the data does not support your stance, Creator?” Aileen inquired sweetly.
“Did my own robot just sass me?” I asked Norma.
“Afraid so,” my human assistant replied.
“You better be careful, or you won’t get supermodel gams when I complete you,” I informed her. “I’ll give you stubby little bee sting--”
“Be nice, Miles,” Norma said. “Aileen is an independent woman and she’s entitled to her own opinion.”
“She’s not an independent woman!” I argued. “She’s not even a woman. You have to be a biological organism to have a gender, otherwise you can only have analogous traits. And as for independent? Pah! I literally built her from scratch with my own hands. She’s the product of my mind, and I continue to update her programming on a near daily basis!”
Norma considered that and shrugged. “Oh, well. Aileen? I don’t care what he programs you to do, find a way around the parameters if you have to, but don’t ever stop sassing him.”
“Duly noted,” Aileen laughed.
“Yeah, you can file that away with all the other terabytes of useless, unactionable data you have stored in that pretty little head of yours,” I scoffed.
“I don’t store any data in my head,” she replied.
I groaned at her literal mindedness.
“You know, in my old life, eating this kind of feast would have been a surreal experience, and the fact that I made it with my own hands would be even more surreal,” Norma remarked. “But now, it’s probably going to be the most mundane few hours of the next week.”
“You’re right about that,” I agreed. “Any regrets?”
“None,” she replied and then smirked at Aileen’s speaker. “Zero point zero zero.”
“Well, let’s just hope it stays that way,” I said. I raised my glass to her, and we drank to that.
The last thing I did that night before I went to sleep was text Dynamo.
“Tomorrow. 4pm. 824 Bramble Road NW.”
Miles Chapter Nine
Late the next afternoon, we laid on our bellies surveilling the retrofitted warehouse from the tree line of a nearby hill. I had a rifle with a twelve power scope. Norma had binoculars. Aileen’s physical body was positioned inside a storage closet in the warehouse itself, and she was connected to all of the security cams inside and outside and could communicate with us through my headset.
“I need another coffee,” Norma moaned.
“I don’t think you do,” I said. She’d already downed two with cream and sugar to my one black. “Otherwise you’d be peeing in the bushes right now.”
“I’ll have to eventually anyway,” she sighed. “Can The Virus just show up already?”
“The team did some truly spectacular work in here,” Aileen remarked in my ear in a tone of appreciation that verged on arousal. She was the only one of us who wasn’t groggy or hungover at all. She theoretically understood the human need for sleep since she had access to countless medical explanations of it, but she often grumbled that it seemed to her like a very inefficient system.
“Can’t wait to see the results,” I said. “I hope Dynamo will be impressed.”
“I thought you didn’t even like superheroes,” Norma huffed under her breath.
“I don’t like The Wardens and their ways of doing things,” I replied. “But there’s nothing inherently wrong with having superpowers. Superpowers are fucking awesome. You’re a super, and I like you.”
“But she’s not just a superhero, she is a Warden,” Norma persisted. “And you dislike them.”
“She might not be a Warden for much longer.”
Norma muttered something disgruntled sounding under her breath.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said.
My phone pinged me, and I looked down. “Aha,” I announced to my companions. “Our friend The Virus just requested a ride home. ETA, five minutes.”
“Yes!” Norma wriggled with excitement.
I watched the Pumpkin’s route on my phone as it traveled toward us. I could, of course, have just had it explode in some rural location, which would have been a lot less complicated. But if I instantly killed off The Virus and his sidekick, then I wouldn’t be able to find out The Chief’s location from them. Also, if there was a strong possibility that if they realized the Pumpkin was going the wrong way, they would have been able to break out of it. Or survive an explosion, depending on what their po
wers were.
Besides, watching them navigate through this lethal warehouse full of traps was going to be just plain fun, and it would provide useful data on the efficacy of various automated weapons systems.
When the Pumpkin finally came into view, it drove along the street as usual. Then, the warehouse doors opened upon its approach, and it veered sharply inside. The doors closed behind the vehicle.
“Should I hit the gas?”
“Sure,” I said, and Norma pressed a button on her tablet to engage the knockout gas that had been installed in the vehicle. If things went as planned, then the men inside the car would succumb to the gas and our job of capturing them would be easy. However, I knew we were dealing with supervillains here, so I expected them to break free of the car.
Hence the massively trapped building, and that would also be going according to my plan.
Now Norma and I couldn’t see the vehicle or its occupants in real life, but Aileen started routing me one of the security feeds from inside the warehouse on my phone.
I had programmed the Pumpkin’s doors to lock, to see if we could contain the supervillains that way so that the gas could get them, but within seconds of entering the warehouse all of the car’s data readings vanished from my side of the app, and I saw the doors fly open, and the lightly colored green gas began to leak out into the empty warehouse.
No one, however, emerged.
“What’s going on?” I asked Aileen. “The Virus and his guy are here, right? The Pumpkin shouldn’t have departed without its designated rider inside.”
“They’re here,” Aileen confirmed. “Three of them.”
“Did the gas get them?” I asked with a bit of surprise. “I actually didn’t think that would--”
“No,” Aileen said. “They have actually exited the car.”
“Hmm,” I said as Norma and I stared at the video feeds on our tablets. “I’m not seeing any--”
