by J. S. Morin
Commiseration. Camaraderie. Peer bonding. Factionalizing.
Anthony shrugged. “Hey, you’ve still got two years to be youngest ever.” He was the same age as Alex, raised from a military test pilot’s DNA by Dr. Sandra and Dr. Mary. Taller and brawnier than Alex, the proper strategy would have been maneuvering him into fighting Bart instead of doing it himself.
Alex gestured with the pool cue. “That would be fine if my only goal was being youngest. But I want to be emancipated. I don’t need this.” He waved the cue around to indicate the campus in general. “I need a lab space and a skyroamer, access to the whole Earthwide, and a share of the drone labor pool.”
Tiffany smiled and maneuvered around the dangerous end of the pool cue to lay a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Next year. They can’t hold you back forever.”
Though he’d known logically from a young age that he wasn’t predisposed to height, it still rankled Alex that she was several centimeters taller than him. He pulled his shoulder away and found a rack to store his new cue. “Not the point. They just stole a year of my life.”
Zach snorted. “What’s it matter to you? Your parents let you do whatever you want.”
If only.
Charlie7 and Dr. Nora gave Alex a great deal of leeway, at least insomuch as these plebeians understood the term. But there were limits Alex didn’t dare test. A dog could get farther on a slack leash by not tugging it taut. Pull too hard and the leash would reel in. The inattentive hand holding it would overcompensate.
“Alex,” Dr. Nora called out, voice announcing her arrival even before she entered the rec hall. She was decked out as if she’d been expecting a celebration today. “There you are. Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
Spreading his hands with a shrug, Alex plastered a soldier’s smile onto his face. “Hey, we can but try. It was a long shot anyway. Where’s Dad?” He headed for the door without a goodbye to his friends. They knew the way things worked. Alex was caught, and it was time to be the perfect son again.
“He stayed in Paris,” Dr. Nora explained sheepishly. By Freud, the woman was an open book. “Said he knew you’d get rejected.”
“Oh,” Alex said. Much as he tried not to let them, the words punched a hollow, sensitive spot in his stomach that he couldn’t protect.
“But he said he had a surprise to make up for it,” Dr. Nora said brightly as she led the way outside to her waiting skyroamer, kicking off a fresh wave of jealousy and indignation. “A new science that no one else is studying.”
Skepticism. Optimism. Eagerness? Tentative forgiveness.
“I’m listening…”
Chapter Ten
Abby reclined on the chaise couch in Dr. Ashley’s office. Having been supplanted ages ago by mixed-personality surgeons, the former neurosurgeon had turned to a growing field in the Second Human Era: psychiatry. And today, the patient who’d come to her office was testing those skills.
“Even Plato couldn’t tell me how old he was,” Abby said, fighting to maintain her composure. “But he was a parrot! They’re supposed to live practically as long as people.”
Dr. Ashley studied her with inscrutable robotic eyes. “You’re feeling guilty because you were caring for Spartacus. He had been your father’s friend. Plato trusted you to take care of him. But he was genetically modified. There was no way to predict his lifespan.”
“I killed him,” Abby said, covering her eyes and wiping her hands down her face. “It’s my fault he’s dead.”
“Just take a deep breath,” Dr. Ashley advised. Odd advice, seeing as she hadn’t taken a breath since waking up in a robotic chassis. “Living things are ephemeral. You need to focus on the good memories of your time with him.”
“Is that out of a book?” Abby snapped. She shook her head. “I can’t do this.” Rummaging in her pocket, she pulled out a cigarette rolled by a machine she’d made herself, filled with leaves she’d grown in her own hydroponic garden. A laser tool dangling from a chain around her neck lit the end. She took a puff and waited in silence.
“Spartacus was a unique animal,” Dr. Ashley said after Abby had settled back down. “I’m sure he would appreciate your grief on his behalf.”
“Sapient animals get the short end of the stick,” Abby said, shaking her head and taking another long drag from her cigarette. “Cages, restrictions, distrust, rules, training… control, control, control. At the very least, they shouldn’t see death coming. They shouldn’t understand it enough to be afraid at the end.”
“The grieving process is difficult. The human population isn’t old enough, nor medical science primitive enough, for you to have experienced it firsthand. This is what it’s like when people die.”
“Well, it’s awful,” Abby said, flicking ash on the floor for one of the cleaning drones to worry about later. “And if I wasn’t such a fuck-up, maybe he’d still be alive.”
Dr. Ashley’s smile emerged from hiding. “So, that’s what’s really—”
“No!” Abby snapped. “I’m crying because my damn parrot died!”
The robotic therapist waited out Abby’s rant with a long pause that tantalized her to begin anew. When Abby declined in favor of catching her breath, Dr. Ashley continued. “You feel like you’re not competent.”
“He was a parrot,” Abby said. “He had a vocabulary better than my dad’s. He could tell me when he was hungry or bored or sick. How hard should it have been to take care of him?”
“Would you have felt better if you’d left him with your parents?” Dr. Ashley asked. “Maybe if he’d died under someone else’s care, you’d have spared yourself this guilt.”
“Anyone but me,” Abby said. “Everyone was all gushing about how brilliant I supposedly am, but seven years of caring for a parrot who should have lived fifty and—”
“It’s not the parrot,” Dr. Ashley said. Before Abby could object again, she put up a hand. “I know. Your grief and sadness are genuine. But your reaction tells me that this is merely a trigger for an underlying issue.”
“You’re not supposed to interrupt me,” Abby said bitterly. “You’re a shitty psychiatrist.” She took another puff. If the robot couldn’t take a little criticism, she didn’t belong in the profession.
“This isn’t a reflection on whether you’d be a good parent.”
“Swing and a miss,” Abby said. “I don’t see any reason to raise kids. Let a robot do it. They can do everything. Science. Math. Engineering. Construction. Let ‘em do everything. You don’t even measure up in their book since you’re a single personality, complete with baggage from a past life.”
“I admit, the career change was abrupt,” Dr. Ashley said. “But I adapted. You have too. You merely fail to appreciate the value of your contribution.”
“Please. I write ham-fisted plays and ear-cringing music. There’s a fine line between being talented and being humored. Robots are wonderful at humoring humans.”
“I’m not humoring you, and I regret the implication,” Dr. Ashley said, crossing her legs and leaning back in her chair. “I enjoyed Factory Lane, and I thought the score was original.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Originality. The bar of my success has been set a hairsbreadth above plagiarism. All I’m really doing is whining vicariously through a bunch of volunteer actors about the iniquities of the Second Human Age. If I did the same thing at a coffee shop in 1950, I’d have been called a beatnik and told to find a job. Or a husband, I suppose, given the times.”
“But times are the issue,” Dr. Ashley replied. “You may not see it, but as someone who remembers the twenty-first century, I can see the contrast you bring out between the society we last had as a species and the imitation of it we play-act now.”
A long exhalation of smoke curled from Abby’s nose before she replied. “Really? You’re not just being nice to the girl with dead parrot, are you?”
“Temporary boosts in mood aren’t my goal,” Dr. Ashley replied sternly. “I could lie and fill you with platitudes, and nex
t week you’d be back here angry with me when the reality sank in. I want you to deal with your problems, and underselling your own talents is your biggest one. Your mother’s name and legacy are destined for the history books, but your works will live beyond your days. Every age gets one—a Homer, a Voltaire, a Twain. With so few of us in the world, it would well be that the name Fourteen is remembered for a singularly talented playwright more than the first of the new humans.”
Our kind, she’d said. With the edge taken off her sorrows, Abby picked up on that slip. Dr. Ashley Arroyo still thought of herself as human, not a robot. It had been fifteen years since the mass activation of unmixed Project Human scientists, and that hadn’t been long enough to chase away the ghosts of that old life.
“I just write lousy plays,” Abby said with resignation.
Dr. Ashley smiled. “There are few things the mixed robots aren’t good at. It’s the same problem with having too small a gene pool in an organic population. They lack for artistic creativity. None of them possess it—not that I’m any better, mind you, being one of the contributors myself. They can’t conjure it from nothingness. Your kind owns the monopoly on art.”
Abby stood and forced a smile to cover one she might have meant in earnest. No point in letting Dr. Ashley get an overblown sense of her contribution here. After all, Abby had come in grieving over the death of Spartacus, the parrot that had stolen her father’s name.
She blinked.
“Well, thanks, Ashley,” Abby said, resisting the urge to take a quick puff before departing. “I may not feel any better about letting the foul-mouthed little imp die, but I think I’ve found the inspiration for my next play. See you next week.”
Chapter Eleven
The only light in Alex Truman’s lab was the active display monitor of his computer terminal. All other sources of illumination had been extinguished in the name of science. From the darkness, power coils and inverters hummed, their echoes hinting at the size of the unseen room. There was no one on hand to tell him what to do or how to do it.
Today was the big day.
Yesterday, the Cutting Edge Science Committee had certified his setup as safe to operate. Allowing them admission to his lab was the greatest concession he’d made during the ramp up to the culmination of his life’s work.
Two years had passed in both the blink of an eye and an eternity of painstaking scientific labor. Alex had performed more calculations in that time than he had in the entirety of his education. If only those fools at the Emancipation Board had seen fit to grant his petition at ten instead of thirteen, he’d—
Focus. Move forward. Those lost three years aren’t coming back.
Had someone asked him as a boy whether mathematics would be easier if he made up his own rules, Alex would have found the question endlessly amusing. Of course, made-up math would be easy. But when dealing with dark energy, Alex had been forced to posit his own hypotheses, develop his own working models, and invent a branch of mathematics that strained his imagination like a dam during a flash flood.
With calculations double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked, Alex flipped on a bank of lights over his test rig. The sudden brightness stung his eyes, but he needed to go over the equipment before powering up everything. If it worked, the whole system ought to be reusable. If something went wrong, he might need to rebuild it from scratch.
Power relays… connected per specifications.
Circuit breakers… open as a precaution.
Organic medium… well, it was there. Whether it works is as much a mystery as any part of this experiment.
Emitter… Alex checked with laser measurements… aligned.
The software he’d simulated ad nauseam. It was junk science—more engineering than anything—based more upon guesswork than knowledge. That would change. Today he’d gather real-world data.
Shutting off the lights, Alex made his way by memory through the maze of equipment to the blast-proof room next door. There, he sat down at a console that cast a sheen on the optically neutral pane of transparent steel separating Alex from the experimental rig.
The system was prepped and waiting for him. Alex had even designed a huge red mushroom-headed button. He slammed his palm down and felt the button thump into place.
The console went dark. Out in the lab, a lone digital display shone with a countdown. Alex counted along with it… after a fashion.
10… “Archimedes,” he said softly, the oldest inventor worth remembering.
9… “Gutenberg.”
8… “Da Vinci.”
7… “Galileo.”
6… “Watt.” He remembered to pull down a pair of goggles designed to filter the visible spectrum.
5… “Bell.”
4… “Edison.”
3… “Tesla.”
2… “Turing.”
1… “Truman!” Alex shouted, raising both fists in the air as the display went blank.
Even through the steel wall, he heard the clack of the power electronics kicking in. The floor resonated.
A thin beam of light, pale purple and barely visible even with the goggles filtering out extraneous wavelengths, stretched from the emitter array to the brick target he’d set up.
Time passed.
The light remained steady.
A timed relay switched off, and the room beyond the protective wall went dark once more.
“That’s it?” Alex asked aloud. He tore the goggles from his head and threw himself down in front of the console, chair creaking in protest.
If nothing else, he’d gathered plenty of data. From visual recordings to nanosecond readouts of power usage along every circuit in the test rig, he could pick apart the thirty-second experiment down to its particles.
But little had happened.
The violent, columnating cascade reaction that his father’s dark-energy rifle produced had failed to do anything more than shine a flashlight for a few moments. He’d wasted 99.94 percent of the energy used by the system. The apparent violations of the first law of thermodynamics—at least to standard observation—produced by the alien technology were entirely absent.
“It should have worked,” Alex muttered accusingly at the data. “At the very least, it should have failed. This… nothing… is unacceptable. This is a valid setup. That was dark energy. Why did it fail to behave like every other dark energy reaction created by alien tech?”
He knew the answer, at least the superficial answer. The data he needed was unavailable. Working examples of the principles at work were locked away in an undersea alien dome that should have been a bastion of science instead of a sealed tomb.
In the gloom of the computer display monitors, he found his goggles on the floor and kicked them across the room as hard as he could. “This isn’t fair. We shouldn’t have to start from scratch. The alien tech works. We just need to tear it apart to find out how. The Cutting Edge Science Committee wouldn’t think this was too dangerous if those aliens showed up again tomorrow.”
Alex had never believed his father’s assurances that Earth was safe. For all anyone knew, those cephaloid creatures had colonized half the galaxy and were only just starting to worry what happened to their Earth colony so long ago. Or maybe that wasn’t the only hostile alien species out in the infinite cosmos. Either way, humans and robots ought to have been working together to ensure military superiority once the inevitable second encounter came.
Instead, Alex had invented a dark energy cat toy.
Chapter Twelve
Quelle Suprise was a Parisian cafe located at the hub of the city’s residential center. It was an authentic replica of a classic outdoor coffee shop circa the early twentieth century with one major exception. No one worked there. Through a combination of self-service and drone automation, the only ones who ever visited were patrons. Today, that meant a circle of four human friends.
Abby sipped her cafe con leche as she commiserated with her friends. The azure sky and its array of stringy clouds were hidden
by the umbrella stuck through the table center. A fragrance of fresh flowers failed to penetrate the exuberant aroma of coffee beans.
“Sorry about Sparty,” Rosa said, sitting across the table with her legs folded beneath her in the chair. “You going to… you know… have a service or something?”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called Toby22 to come take care of… you know.”
Billy cringed and held out his hands with fingers spread wide. “Eugh. I can watch anything on a screen if I know it’s fake. Computer images and actors going home to their families afterward. But any news footage or anything without a screen in the way just makes my skin crawl. Bad enough eating non-factory meat but to just keep letting things die?” He let loose a long sigh. “I was born too soon. Let the robots work out the kinks, and let me back onto Earth in another hundred years.”
Rolling his eyes at his companions, Nigel sipped from a teacup, pinkie finger extended. “Really. You’d think we were brought back into the dark ages sometimes. You get used to the world working a certain way, then it slides back into chaos without warning. Abby, dear, if you need any comforting, I’m at your beck and call.”
“Thanks, Nigel,” Abby said dryly. “But I’ll pass. And can we please talk about anything else? I called you all to cheer me up, not remind me of Spartacus. Or proposition me… but thanks for thinking outside the box.” She cast Nigel a playful glare.
“Well, I’ve been working on frog houses,” Billy said. “I’ve yet to stumble on a design that’ll convince them to move in, but I think I’m getting some inkling as to what the domestically minded frog-about-town is looking for in a domicile.”
Abby listened politely, same as her friends did about her plays. Billy had been building animal habitats since his emancipation, having been denied an apprenticeship in city planning. She’d never been sure whether his vocation was an absurdist protest of Paul208’s decision not to expand his mentorship program or simply an alternate outlet for his architectural urges.
