Mad-Sci-Soc

by Arrand Pritchard

Mad-Sci-Soc

  by

  Arrand Pritchard

  Copyright 2015 Arrand Pritchard

  All rights reserved. This book can be distributed provided it remains unaltered.

  No part of this work can be copied without permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Part 0 Prologue

  Part 1 Joining Mad-Sci-Soc

  Part 2 The Battle to Save Time

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Part 0 Prologue

  Friday, December 13, 2117.

  In 2117, a group of freedom fighters called the Open Genetics Alliance Group had taken over the New York Museum of Computer Archeology and was threatening to destroy a valuable ancient artifact, dating from 1977, a DEC PDP-11 computing device.

  The OGAG's demands were: a) Free access to the genealogical data within the Legacy Net. b) The end of DNA profiling and manipulation of the general public genome. c) Freeing all pets from slavery. d) A flight to Iceland.

  The broadcast networks had been tweeted and the Superhero Union had been scheduled for the event so it looked like it was going to be an exciting show. Emerging from an anonymous-looking black auto-auto, surveyed by camera drones, was Captain Kittoffery, yellow latex-clad veteran superhero, returning after years of legal wrangling over technology patent rights. Stepping out behind him was a new, unidentified nervous-looking young female super-heroine sporting medusa-like white hair and a blue-grey wispy cape.

  The Captain waved to the drone-mounted cameras before the heroes activated their invisibility cloaking and starting on their 100 meter walk across the plaza towards the beleaguered, mock-palladium style building.

  Tension grew in the Broadcast channel’s mobile control suite as Reginald Gillard, TrueCrime-9+ Super Hero Reality Show Director, had to make a crucial decision: broadcast live (with a five minute delay, of course) or put together a compilation show.

  “The new fem is televisual. Do you have her name?” said Clive, Reg’s assistant, viewing her 3D image on his holoscreen and spinning it around.

  “It’s in a text. Corral Girl or something,” said Gillard fingers waving in mid-air as he tackled the virtual controls presented by his heads-up display.

  “The old west isn’t her style,” mused Clive, enlarging the emblem on her image torso..

  Gillard noticed and stopped his finger dance to inquire bruskly, “You have them on infra-red?”

  Clive snapped back to the broadcast feed, “Only 2D.”

  “Are the camera drones inside?”

  “All taken out. They must have anti-drones.”

  “And the micro-drones?”

  “They’ve been taken out too. And we don’t have many left. Just a couple of dozen, maybe. So what’s the decision? Go or no-go?”

  “Well...” said Gillard in a long drawl. Leaning back in his chair he ran his hand through his blue and white pin-stripped hair, that matched his fabricated blue and white pin-stripped shirt, before making up his mind. “No sorry, while the girl has audience-appeal-potential there’s nothing televisual here. Infrared is a bore and they are making sluggardly time to CATLOC. There’s no cameras inside either. No, we’ll capture the show from bodycam and re-broadcast later. If it’s any good, that is. Which is doubtful with new heroes!”

  “I thought new heroes are good. Good for ratings.”

  “Ratings are won with familiarity not novelty. Even if we can hype a newbie but they are a disaster for live broadcasts. They’re always such... bozos.”

  “Good to see the Captain’s back though,” muttered Clive.

  “Not in my book. I’m still taking the extra strong Rad-free tablets after the mess up with the panda herd,” he said curmudgeonly.

  Five minutes later there was still no news. By 2117, child birth was quicker than this freeze-frame and the crowds outside were restless. Robots maintained a cordon around the museum holding back the pedestrians and cyclists frustrated at the delay, although the A2s and scooters had automatically re-routed.

  A human Police Officer, that rare breed of human able to pass the psychometric tests to conform to the 2080 “Protect and Serve” Law, linked into Gillard’s G-Phone.

  “Hello, Mr Gillard, I was just wondering whether you had any update on the situation.”

  “No, we’re in the dark on this one,” sighed Gillard.

  “It’s just that the pedestrians are already walking around the barriers and the cyclists are becoming annoyed. They want to know the time slot duration so that they can re-schedule their calendars,” said the Police Officer humbly.

  “This isn’t scheduled or rehearsed. We don’t have any end time or expected breaks.”

  “It’s a real crime?” stuttered the cop.

  “All crime is real. This one is just un-parametrised.”

  “So... your estimation?”

  “We’re not going out live. We don’t have a time frame. We need to ‘think different’ on this?”

  “Oh Jobs, no time slot! Ok. I’ll re-route them. F.Y.I, we have called in an air strike in 15 minutes. You might like to close off your recording streams before then,” said the officer helpfully.

  “I will have double-dozed before then,” Gillard replied.

  Nothing happened for ten minutes. Not even chatter on the Su-U channels. Clive was updating his social media pages and Gillard was on an audio conference. Then the air strike arrived, five minutes early. Gillard scrabbled from his chair, fell over and pointed to a big red button. “Close off the cameras! Close off the cameras!” he squealed at his assistant.

  The air strike consisted of a couple of hundred diner-plate-sized drones, they arrived seemingly out of nowhere from over and around the New York buildings, in every direction, they smashed through the museum’s windows and streaked through into the building. The angry buzz of activity stopped as quickly as it had started. If you blinked, you could have missed it. And you would have blinked too, the drones were accompanied by a blinding halogen light to divert the gaze of onlookers.

  Then there was a strange silence.

  And a few seconds later there was the stranger silence when all the lights failed and the machines stopped humming.

  Power had gone out inside Gillard’s mobile studio van. All the holographic displays disappeared. Even his G-Phone was dead.

  He stepped from the now darkened van out into the quiet plaza in front of the museum. He noticed the robot cordon guards had failed, frozen to the pavement. They were being prodded by a small crowd of puzzled and disoriented pedestrians. The power outage was widespread.

  Uncharacteristically and for the first time in his life, curiosity became Reginald Gillard’s sole motive as he walked unguarded towards a crime scene.

  He then had second thoughts, returned to the van and sent his assistant inside.

  Clive soon came running back. Sweat pouring from his face, he panted. “I don’t think we can make a show out of this!” He then went to the back of the van and threw up.

  ***

  Part 1 Joining Mad-Sci-Soc

  Chapter One Of Fridges and Frigidity

  Tuesday, January 22, 2123

  Mad-Sci-Soc. Where do you begin with a time traveling story full of world events, flashbacks and difficult relationships? There is no better starting point than the point where Terri and I first visited the Mad-Sci-Soc... it used to be a University club, a crazy one, and then it morphed into something else, something that was not quite definable but definitely crazy. It was Terri's idea to go to them. She knew where they were located, on the edge of the campus, but still inside the robot-free zone. With gentle snow falling around us as we walked through the historic brown brick housing district, it looked very Dickensian.

  So there we were, at what could be t
he crucial turning point in human history; and where I started to unravel the mysteries of the organisation and the problems facing civilisation. Of course, I may be exaggerating. I presume there may be a parallel universe that did not start here in New York, 2123; a universe that does not have the dichotomic predicament that I was confronting. But that is always the problem with disturbances in the space-time continuum, nothing makes sense except from the first person perspective.

  My augmented reality first person perspective was focused upon my gorgeous girlfriend, Terri. In a world of glamorous women and wimpy men, she was the most glamorous of carpet retailers and I was arguably the most geeky of freelance technical researchers. While gorgeous, she had made a couple of fashion mistakes that evening; she had her eye makeup recently re-tattooed and her eyebrows were now just a bit too high. As a result she looked permanently surprised. Or more accurately, surprised and annoyed. Her other fashion mistake was a lack of warm clothes. Her diamond-effect vest dress was only covered by her transparent raincoat with the broken hologram generator. Of course, she had no hat since that would disturb her purple-to-grey faded hair. Although she claimed that her furry boots and the heating unit in the vest provided adequate warmth.

  But really what was rushing through my mind when I looked at her, was the change to her relationship status on EgoSpace. She had changed it that day to “it's complicated”. What a body-blow! I would have liked to forget about this and concentrate on the task at hand but every time I turned around, reality augmentation would kick-in; my contact-lens-heads-up display would show the results from my face-rec app and return her status. I definitely needed to change the settings to stop the facial recognition function from running all the time.

  The task in hand was entry into the club house, aka geek-central, the geeks’ cathedral... Mad-Sci-Soc had the reputation as the gathering point of the cleverest of scientists studying the most intellectually challenging and most ridiculously obscure subjects that bordered more on philosophy than science. I was geeky but not in the same way as these guys. They were the very epitome of the uncool part of geekdom and who wants to be associated with that?!

  "We've tried everybody else, haven't we? The Police, maybe?” I asked.

  “The Police? I doubt this is their bailiwick. It would break their programming," sighed Terri.

  “The University?”

  “Serious scientists are not going to take us seriously."

  “The Military?”

  “I guess we haven't tried everyone.”

  “So we should try them?" I said anxiously and gladly. Anything to avoid stepping inside the building.

  “For frack-sake, Aaron!” Terri said. She was testing me again.

  "No. Just joking," I lied.

  The previously tacitly assumed plan, that I was to enter alone, was made explicit. “So go in then! I'll wait outside."

  As my last delaying tactic, I said, “Is it because of Max?”

  She sneered, “You work it out."

  In an attempt for sympathy, I said heroically, “It's ok. I'll go in alone.”

  Terri was not amused as I continued to linger on the pavement checking out the steps and the door, “Cold feet? I have the real cold feet. If I'm happy to freeze out here then you can do this. So, go!”

  “I don't know whether I want to be seen entering...”

  “You don't want to be seen going in? Shall I find a bag for your head! Some extreme-sport fanatic you are!”

  I gave her a sarcastic smile. Terri was always a real world type of person while I still possessed a level of real world disconnection syndrome caused by years of game playing. However I prided myself on my ability to confront real world situations. I guess I liked to prove myself. Obviously not in an academic, exam-type way.

  I turned around. There were no surveillance drones, no robots and no people. At least none that I could detect. Nothing to worry about there.

  It was early evening, empty greyness only warmed by amber street lighting, I guess the snow had driven the humans inside. There was a few auto-taxis and A2s, but nobody looks out from their auto-autos, people were too busy with their social media exchanges or controlling their surrogates. We had to be there in person rather than traverse any virtual worlds because the MSS club members shunned such shimmering digital environments, which suited me anyway, having had my avatar banned from most.

  I had run out of excuses.

  I crept up to the black door to read a small sign which read "Come on in! But remember ...we may be mad but we still don't like time-wasters!" Under the doorbell with a name plate with just three letters: “M. S. S.” I pressed the doorbell and the door automatically replied in a sing-song voice, “Come on in. Push the door hard.”

  I pushed open the sturdy metal door styled with fake embossments to make it appear in-keeping with the age of the building. Inside was a long brightly-lit corridor with posters showing headlines from old news pages: “Oil found under Manhattan!” and "Empire State Building converted to world's largest drilling rig!" “Matter Transfer at Columbia Uni wows Scientists.” “Captain Kittoffery saves Korean Town from Wild Radioactive Panda Herd.”

  I ought to mention something about Captain Kittoffery for those people in the future (or the past!) who have not seen his exploits on TrueCrime-9+ channel’s Super Vigilante pan-device broadcast reality show. Captain Kittoffery was one of the limited number of licensed heroes that frequented New York and other parts of North America. And sometimes, as described in the news article on the wall, other parts of the world depending upon international treaties. CK could hold an Olympic heavy lifter with their maximum weights on each of his outstretched arms. Amazables! Was it a real super power, a stage magician’s trick or computer generated imagery? The superheroes claim their powers are mutotonic but nobody really knows what that is. There were enough eye witnesses to his super strength to disprove camera trickery. It remains a mystery.

  The yellow-latex-clad Captain had a brief period of celebrity status until he was quagmired in a patent legislation suit against the Ms Bell mega-corporation where he won a victory of sorts, a technical victory. But after that he disappeared from broadcasts (or as we Brits still call it, “TV”) he was replaced by more charismatic and eccentric heroes such as Nerdifer and Sargent Canada. CK had not been seen in several years. I mentioned this since I walked into an office space occupied by a single, large male personage that reminded me of the Captain.

  “Mad-Sci-Soc?” I enquired.

  "Can I help?" asked the man looking up from his holoscreen.

  “I doubt it but hey, we've tried everybody else,” I replied breezily. “Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Captain Kittoffery?” The face-rec application flashed up his name on my head-up display: Conrad. But his surname and other personal details were suppressed by a privacy filter.

  The man furrowed his brow, “You flatter me. I’m not that good-looking. I’m just a humble post-grad. You were saying?”

  “It's rather difficult to explain, er... Conrad.”

  The man appeared to wince.

  “I... er... have a problem with my fridge,” I said in a manner that I hoped indicated I did not really want to be there.

  “We don't fix fridges. There's a repair shop down the road would you like me to show you on NetMaps?”

  “This is a really big fridge problem,” I said trying to make it sound more interesting.

  The man stood and offered me the way out, "Like the sign says on the front door, we really don't like to mess around."

  “What sign?” I asked befuddled already forgetting the warning about time-wasters.

  Conrad sighed. "Sorry. It must have fallen off. Anyway, we don't do anything with fridges, ok, good-bye."

  “No, no. Wait. Give me a minute to explain. It's of earth shattering importance but it's going to sound crazy,” I said in a panic, contemplating the tongue lashing I would receive from Terri if I did not come back with some relevant information.

  “Cra
zy you say...?” he replied slowly and rubbing his large chin. “In what way?”

  “So if I mention fridges then you won't mind?”

  "Is your fridge making funny noises?" he ventured.

  “Yes, well it was...”

  “This is perfectly normal. I wouldn't worry about it. Check the diagnostics and try defrosting once in a while,” said the man and sat back down to look at his holoscreen.

  “Actually it is not the noises it's making that worries me. I think our fridge has come alive!”

  “Well, everything is computerised nowadays. Has the machine developed a bit of a personality?”

  “No. The computer stopped talking to us months ago. That was quite a bonus actually. No, it's moved by itself.”

  “Moved by itself? How?”

  “That's why I'm here.”

  Conrad hummed to himself. “I think you better go right back to the beginning. What's your name again?”

  I was relieved that I had finally gained some of his attention. “It's Aaron. Aaron Quarts. That’s Quarts with an S not Quartz with a zed...”

  “Sure. Sure. Wind forward a bit.”

  “Well, it all started while I was practising making tea for Terri..."

  “Tea? What type?” said Conrad.

  Perhaps I didn't really have his interest. “Ceylon. Terri's favourite.”

  “You have a permit for the tea?”

  “Well, of course,” I sighed. “It's medicinal.” He didn't seem convinced.

  “And who's Terri?”

  “My girl friend.”

  “Hmm, Interesting,” he said, suddenly intense.

  “No, that's not the interesting part.”

  I then told him the story about when the fridge first started to misbehave.

  “I was doing research on the legacy-web trying to extract open-source technology. People always laugh at my ancient computer with its keyboard and mouse or make sneering remarks about its hygiene, all that dust build-up between the keys... but really it is the only way to truly access the ancient texts.” Conrad rolled his hand indicating for me to speed up my story. “I was staring intently at the computer screen, its old and solid, not holographic, when I notice a movement behind me as a flicker on the computer screen, a reflection.”

  “A mirror effect?”

  “Yes, right. I focused on the reflection and this time I could tell what it was. The door of the fridge moved. The first movement I detected must have been the door opening; the second, which I saw clearly, was the door shutting. It made a hermetic thud as it closed.”