Engineered Tyrant

by J. S. Morin

  Alex scanned the crowd.

  Need a candidate. Original robot. Hard science background.

  Unlike his opponent, Alex had widespread support among the unmixed robots. Dr. Jason was one of a handful who’d ventured out to old Germany for the day. Alex singled him out.

  “Dr. Jason,” he said, pausing as the crowd shied from the target of Alex’s pointed finger. “You were scanned on the doorstep of the robotic revolution. Where would you have guessed humanity would reach by the thirty-second century?”

  Dr. Jason shrugged. He was wearing a track suit with a hooded top, arms folded across the front pockets. “Couldn’t say. Mars colony. Orbital habitats. Maybe some interstellar colonies. But the invasion put a hold on that.”

  “Did it?” Alex asked, raising a finger.

  “Well, it wiped out the population,” Dr. Jason countered.

  “The technology survived. In fact, that was a key to Earth’s recovery. Mass production. Robotic minds. Yet I’d argue we’ve progressed more slowly in the robotic era than in the late Human Era. You see transorbitals and extraplanetary mining. You see gene factories and agrarian complexes. I see an alien city with technology we buried for a thousand years. I see an island in the South Pacific filled with poor creatures meant to have been human.”

  Rapt attention. Awaiting conclusion. No further waiting or they’ll get restless.

  “It’s the mixed robots,” Alex shouted. “Committee thinking, even inside a single mind. Committees of committees like some Kafkaesque nesting doll. Is it any wonder change proceeds at a glacial pace? Immortal, driven by caution, heads filled with facts and figures and stripped of heart. The mixes aren’t like you or I. The unmixed robots are as human as any of us. They possess the human mind and spirit. If my father had populated the Earth starting with the project team, this planet would be a technological paradise by now.

  “I say it’s time to take back Earth. Let the mixes run their own affairs. Humanity is for humans!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Sunlight intruded on Abby Fourteen’s Paris living room, stealing the night from her. One of the cleaning drones had set the nearly empty bottle of bourbon upright on the floor and mopped the spilled puddle. Slouched in her sitting chair, Abby wondered why she didn’t just give up.

  Humanity was hopeless. In nearly a week of skyroamer travels, she could count on one hand the number of minds she had changed. Maybe she under-counted. Maybe she hadn’t. It just appeared that time and again, the eyes watching her honed and practiced entreaties were glazed over with a protective barrier against logic and compassion.

  Alex was a monster.

  Abby had known him all his life. He’d somehow navigated childhood absorbing information from both his parents and discarding their ethics with the deftness of a surgical extraction. When forced to examine the matter, Abby had to admit that amorality was fine for a pure scientist. Had Alex cloistered himself in lab studying energy theory, his mis-sythnetic attitudes would have been harmless.

  Those ideas were never meant to escape a lab.

  Something had gone wrong in Earth’s education system that a child—even one educated by his parents—could come through emancipation with such prejudice.

  Dragging herself out of her chair, Abby ran her tongue around her mouth to work out the gummy feeling that had settled there overnight. She wasn’t half as hung over as she ought to have been. Instead of transfusing saline to chase away her headache, she headed for the coffee maker.

  Otherwise blank screens blinked with news alerts demanding her attention.

  “Request denied,” she muttered to the video screen in the kitchen as she waited for a pot to brew. The world could wait until she was feeling like herself before inflicting polling updates, speech recaps, and other political nonsense on her.

  It took two cups of coffee before the caffeine had replaced all the lingering bourbon in her bloodstream. The idea sickened her. “Maybe it’s me. Maybe everyone is just too polite to tell me I’ve got no business being the voice of reason. I can barely keep myself together, let alone the species.”

  But this wasn’t about Abby Fourteen versus Alex Truman. She didn’t want the job Alex proposed to create. All she wanted was to keep Mom in a position doing the work that needed doing—the hard work of managing humanity’s growing pains, not the easy bromides Alex tossed around like paper skyroamers.

  This wasn’t about Abby winning. It was about Alex losing. Abby was the non-vote, the anti-revolution, the pat on the back for humanity’s greatest advocate.

  Abby stared into her third cup of coffee. It didn’t have the answers she needed. She glanced over at the kitchen video screen. “Show messages.”

  A list like a census popped up, except too many instances of the same name crowded the rolls. Nigel, Billy, Rosa, Plato—Abby at least checked the messages from Dad. He, at least, was asking after her health and state of mind. Her friends seemed mainly concerned with the political game they were currently losing.

  Game.

  Losing.

  Abby frowned. Her friends didn’t have the answers she needed, either. All the players on both sides of the game were political neophytes. Abby needed to enlist a player who knew the game backward and forward, inside and out.

  Even though the Arc de Triomphe was a ten-minute walk from her apartment, Abby took her skyroamer and was at Charlie7’s doorstep in two.

  Her heart raced with the effects of excitement and over-caffeinating. With the election less than two weeks away, it might have been too late already. But this was the bridge she had resisted crossing. She’d wanted to win on simple merits, but why should she fight with one arm tied behind her back when Alex was no doubt dredging the lake bottom for manipulative tricks from history.

  Charlie7 must have heard the door alarm. Even if he wasn’t at home, he no doubt had a relay tied in that would allow him to answer over intercom from anywhere in the solar system. Abby waited even after it seemed like Charlie7 should have long since answered.

  Her patience was rewarded. “Not a good idea, Abbigail,” Charlie7 said over the intercom. “You don’t want to be talking to me. Even hanging around outside might start the rumor section of the Social on fire.”

  “I don’t care,” Abby said. “Ten minutes of your time could make or break this campaign.”

  She squeezed shut her eyes. If Charlie7 had been a supporter of Alex’s ambitions, he would have been working behind the scenes. Alex wouldn’t have been so transparently manipulative. Nigel’s algorithm would have identified the old robot as a definitive supporter. Charlie7, of all robots, had to know this was all wrong.

  And if she was wrong, what further damage could Charlie7 do to her flagging campaign?

  The door slid open. Charlie7 stood in the lift that led into his underground home. “Five. And if anyone asks, this was a social call.”

  Abby stepped into the lift, and the doors shut behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief that was short-lived as the lift didn’t move. “Not even letting me inside to sit down?”

  “Four minutes, forty-two seconds,” Charlie7 reported.

  “Right,” Abby said hastily, realizing that a robot’s time limit wasn’t the nebulous concept that a human’s might have been. “Alex is winning this campaign by being a grinning idiot idealist opposed to every good thing the Human Welfare Committee has done since its inception. How do I combat that?”

  “That’s what you’re wasting my time on?” Charlie7 demanded. “It’s simple. You’re losing because you’re not running for office. Alex is running unopposed.”

  “But I don’t want there to be a separate human government, and if there is, I sure as atoms don’t want to be in charge of it,” Abby retorted. “I’m campaigning for the status quo.”

  “The least inspiring rally cry ever,” Charlie7 said dryly. “I had assumed that your campaign was for form’s sake since democratic ideals despise a coronation. Simply by this election process going forward, Alex has all but guarant
eed that humanity is getting its own governing body. The terms of its autonomy—if any—will be negotiated by the victor.”

  “But I want to stop the whole thing,” Abby insisted. “I have nearly 35 percent support. I just need to bridge the last sixteen to a majority.”

  Charlie7 snorted. “I lived through Human Era elections. Being down thirty points within the final month is called a landslide. If you want any hope of victory, you need to shift the playing field. It’s not a matter of handshakes and stump speeches. You need to turn the election upside down. Declare yourself as a real candidate.”

  “But I just said I don’t want the job.”

  “Or get your mother to run. Eve could convince a lot of fence-sitters if she reassured them personally. And your time is up.”

  The lift doors opened. A Parisian breeze wafted in.

  “Answer me this, at least,” Abby said as she backed out of the lift. “Do you really want to live in a world where Alex is the voice of humanity?”

  Charlie7 looked Abby up and down, possibly scanning for recording devices before deciding how to word his reply. “I get one vote, same as every human and original thirty-three scientist. 205 votes out there to divide between you; maybe as many as 207 depending how the upcoming emancipation hearings go. I’m less than half a percent of your problems. Good day.”

  The lift doors snapped shut. It was probably her imagination, but they closed with a bit more authority and rudeness than normal.

  “Well, that could have gone better.”

  Abby wasn’t ready to throw anything yet—neither the proverbial towel nor her hat into the ring. Charlie7 was wrong. It took a bold stance to even think it, but the damnable relic wasn’t infallible. If he wasn’t going to help, then Abby had to entertain the notion that he was manipulating her toward some other end.

  If there was one person who would never slyly manipulate Abby, it was Dad. That said, Mom was the next least likely candidate, and she might actually have some sort of actionable, practical advice that wasn’t so sugarcoated it could pass for a lollipop.

  Again, the in-city skyroamer trip was so short as to seem like a waste of battery charge.

  Abby didn’t knock or press the door alarm at her parents’ house. The door let her in without a hint of reproach. Still, Mom was plugged into every system. There was no sneaking up on her in her own home.

  “What’s the occasion?” Mom asked, taking the stairs down from the second floor. Fully dressed and with no sign of Dad around, she must have come from the office.

  “I need your help,” Abby said.

  Mom hugged her. “My little Prometheus. Letting the political vultures peck away at you for the favor you’re doing me. Anything you need, just name it.”

  “I need to know what I can do to keep Alex Truman from winning this election.”

  With a condescending expression, Mom pulled away from her hug. “Short of shooting him, dear, it’s over.”

  Abby blinked her surprise. “And you’re OK with that?”

  Mom scowled and headed for the kitchen. “Not the shooting, of course. But I’m getting used to the idea that a chairmanship isn’t a lifetime appointment.”

  “And letting Alex take over?”

  Mom chuckled and shook her head. “All the crazy things he’s saying… it’s politics. No one can oppose everything. Yet Alex Truman stands for every contrarian position he can take. Anyone still thinking of voting against him is either an unqualified supporter of every decision I’ve made or just feels a personal loyalty. Anyone with a gripe—any sort of gripe—can find a place in the Truman Scheme. By the way, that’s your best piece of politics right there, branding his platform a ‘scheme.’ Makes it sound sinister.”

  “But it is sinister,” Abby insisted. “If he implements even half the policies he advocates, then—”

  “Then he’d be a fool,” Mom said sternly. “This is the part you’re failing to grasp. The robots all understand. It comes up in the off-record chatter at meetings. Alex Truman is trying to win an election. He’s not going to do half the things he claims. He wouldn’t want to. He just wants to hold the reins of power for a while. Lab rat like him won’t be able to stay away from research for long. He’ll arrange regulations so he can study dark energy the way he likes and back out of public view. Someone else will take his place inside two years, mark my words.”

  “So… you don’t even care if I win this for you?” Abby asked.

  Abby found herself on the receiving end of another hug. “It’s fine,” Mom said. “I have a lot of work to do, still. But I know that either way, this election isn’t the end of life on Earth whichever way it goes. I need you to know that it’s OK if you lose. I won’t blame you.”

  By the time Abby left, she had a sick pit in her stomach. Mom of all people…

  There had to be more going on. If the vaunted Eve Fourteen couldn’t see the dangers of an Alex Truman regime, she needed to find someone who could shed light on the matter. She needed to visit the one person whose name on the list of likely Abby voters had come as the greatest surprise.

  Abby needed to visit Alex’s mother, Dr. Nora.

  Chapter Fifty

  Dr. Nora hadn’t shared living quarters with Charlie7 since Alex’s emancipation. Their contractual obligation to provide a two-parent environment, per Human Welfare Committee rules, had been fulfilled. She lived in Berlin, roughly equal distances from her son in Copenhagen and her son’s father in Paris. She kept her family at arm’s reach but no farther.

  Thanks to having a human son, Dr. Nora’s home was outfitted with every human comfort. Not five minutes after arriving, Eve was sunk down in the cushions of a comfortable couch, blowing to cool a spoonful of split pea soup Dr. Nora had offered. Unlike her two more recent visits, this one seemed likely to occupy a significant portion of her day.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Dr. Nora said after Abby broached the subject of the polling predictions. “Last thing that boy needs is a gaggle of lapdogs doing whatever they’re told—a larger gaggle, at any rate; he’s got too many as it is.”

  “What is it that worries you about Alex winning?” Abby pressed between mouthfuls of soup. The whole house was a monument to Alex’s youth, adorned with pictures and childish projects preserved for posterity. The furnishings were all in keeping with the expectations of rowdy play by a human too small to know caution. “It can’t just be his ego.”

  “Ego? That boy runs on ego,” Dr. Nora said dismissively. “I tried to ingrain a sense that everyone is special in their own way. Charlie’s the one who kept reminding him how he’d been the brightest star of the Human Era and telling Alex what he had to live up to. Couldn’t bring myself to tell Alex what a bastard his father had been as a human.”

  Abby recoiled, nearly spilling her soup. “I thought you two… I mean… weren’t you two together before the invasion?” Her face warmed and not from the soup. She hadn’t come here to pry into Dr. Nora’s love life, especially not pre-invasion history. But she’d come for answers, and if she needed the backstory to get them, she’d brave the choppy water of pre-robotic nookie.

  “Keeps a secret better than a dead man, my Charlie,” Dr. Nora said. “But a girl can do a little digging of her own. I was pregnant when I got scanned. I know it wasn’t Alex, but my mind sort of connected the dots and made it him. But you see, it wasn’t the invasion that cost me my child the first time. We broke up. I had an abortion, patched things up with my husband, and pretended nothing happened. At least, that’s the best I’ve pieced together. I can’t know for sure, because Charles Truman never scanned me again—or never kept the scan if he did. He wanted me to remember him the way he liked.”

  “That’s creepy,” Abby admitted. “Does he know you figured it out?”

  Dr. Nora snorted. “That one figures out everything. Try surprising a man for his birthday when he has every communication channel bugged.”

  “He snooped on your Social use?” This didn’t sound like the Cha
rlie7 she’d grown up knowing as a friend of the family.

  “Mine? Try everyone’s.”

  Abby was aghast. “But I thought they changed to a new encryption after the Dale2 incident. The Social is unhackable now.”

  “Try telling that to the unemployed, self-proclaimed greatest genius of all recorded history.”

  This wasn’t possible. If it were true, then Charlie7 could still be manipulating Earth’s history as it unfolded. He could be the mastermind behind Alex’s rise. “No. That doesn’t sound like the robot I grew up—”

  Dr. Nora burst out laughing. “News feed reviews call you the greatest actress of your generation. That campaign mole of Alex’s gave you a run for your money. But you’re not the best at false faces of any era that has Charles Truman in it.” Her mirth drained. “And Alex is turning out just like him.”

  That was her opening. Dr. Nora still clearly loved her son; otherwise, she wouldn’t have kept her home as a shrine to him. But by the same token, she didn’t seem to like him.

  “Nora,” Abby said. “Do you think Alex is going to do even half the things he claims in his campaign speeches?”

  A wry grin spread on the robot’s face. The expression matched so well with one of the archival photos of Dr. Nora Maxwell-Granger that it seemed that she was merely a human wearing a mask. “You want to know Alex’s real political views? I can show you.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Emancipation, among other aspects, was meant to be a clean slate. The adult was not responsible for his actions as a child. By regulatory decree, pre-emancipation records were sealed and not admissible for any infractions committed in adulthood.

  By regulatory decree, Abby shouldn’t have been able to access those old records of Alex’s. But a proud mother had kept copies of everything her son had accomplished. The only more thorough recording of a child’s development came from Evelyn11’s ghoulish accountings of her experimental human hosts. But Mom and all Abby’s aunts had lived sterile, controlled lives. The medical records and brain scans didn’t give half the insight into the workings of their minds that Alex’s school assignments and personal correspondence with his friends yielded.