All the way the woman fought him, like a drowning swimmer blindly fighting a lifeguard, flailing and scratching at him.
When he finally got to the truck, he flung the woman in, locked the doors, and turned on the ignition. He adjusted half of the vent to her, half to him. Slowly, warmth began to seep in, the feeling starting to return to the parts of him that had become numb.
Beside him, the woman screamed and sobbed, banging at her door.
Severe weather conditions hamper rescue
Weather conditions also hampered the rescue team, which had to treat several cases of hypothermia, some severe.
Sgt. Wilson urged people caught in accidents in cold weather to remain in their vehicles, keep the motor running to keep warm, and wait for security services or paramedics to arrive.
With temperatures and wind chills in the range seen recently, frostbite and hypothermia from prolonged exposure are real concerns. Death can strike long before the body actually freezes.
Mathison cursed the woman, cursed himself.
What was her story? What tragedy could make the woman think something like that could take the place of a real, breathing human child?
Or could it?
The woman beside him continued to sob. What have I done? he asked himself. What have we done?
Had he just left a little girl to perish in the cold? Did it matter that she had her mother’s eyes, her hair, was made in her mother’s image? Could she feel the coldness overcome her, the horror of darkness closing in, the fear of dying alone, unloved? After she was gone, would it matter, if she didn’t have a soul?
And what if she did?
What did it mean for him to make the choice to leave her there? Had he just failed the Turing test of his own humanity?
“Damn it!” he said.
The wind pushed back at the truck door as Mathison fumbled at it, stumbled outside again. He had to lean forward to keep from being blown back.
Every step was agony now, not just because his constant shivering now made him falter, but because every step was a repudiation of all that he’d taken for granted before tonight. But he followed the truck’s headlights, farther, farther, out into the night.
When he reached the girl, still there where he remembered, he knelt down without looking at her palm, at the ugly brand that set her apart from everyone. Instead, he looked at her.
She was just a little girl, in a party dress and stockings, helpless, almost sleeping. The smallest thing. Her lips were ashen, her eyes were closed, and her eyelashes were frosted over in crystals. But she was breathing. The girl was alive.
She stirred without opening her eyes, when he reached under her arms to lift her up. “Daddy,” she murmured.
The snow blinded him. “No, sweetie,” he said, through tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Not more than sixty pounds, he thought, as he lifted her. The smallest thing. So frail, almost inconsequential.
Her ribbon had come undone, and her auburn hair was askew, strewn with snow, the crystals sparkling like stars. He brushed them away as he carried her back, back toward the headlights in the distance, back to the warmth from the opening door, back into her mother’s arms.
Interstate reopened
The westbound lanes of I-94 are now open to traffic after being closed while officials investigated the crash.
Officials had advised early Friday afternoon against travel on I-94 because of icy road conditions and limited visibility.
There were snowfall warnings for several areas around Port Huron on Friday evening. Those warnings have since been lifted.
A Word from Samuel Peralta
The classic Turing test is a qualitative measure of a machine’s ability to mimic the behavior a human. The test was posed by Alan Mathison Turing, a British mathematician, philosopher and computer scientist.
As I write this, the Turing test has already been passed in real life by several artificial intelligences, fooling the test judges into believing they were conversing not with synthetics, but with human beings.
“Humanity” is the story of a double Turing test, about how a little girl and a man both fail their tests, and their redemption.
* * *
The epigraph is taken from the film A.I. by Steven Spielberg, a modern retelling of Pinocchio (or the commedia dell’arte, Buratino) in which a robot boy longs to regain the love of his human mother by becoming “real.”
Humanity also references the experience of the Holocaust era, when a Star of David was used as a method of identifying Jews. The apartheid of the world of Humanity is underscored by my three principles of robotics—with apologies to Isaac Asimov—mentioned in passing in this story and explored elsewhere in my other stories, including “Liberty” (subtitled “Seeking a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being”). Like Asimov’s Three Laws, it’s a construct that allows me to explore the nature of humanity.
Here are the Precepts of Robotics, as I imagine them in my world, enunciated in different ways in “Humanity” and some of my other works:
A robot is a machine, not a human being or person, and is imbued with no rights whatsoever.
A robot is the personal property of one human being or person, who is its master.
A robot must obey its master first; then it must obey any human being or person.
“Humanity” is set in the same world as that of “Trauma Room”, “Hereafter”, “Liberty”, and “Faith”— a world where corporations have expanded beyond governments, where pervasive surveillance is a part of life, where non-human self-awareness has begun to make humanity face difficult questions about itself.
If that world sounds almost familiar, you’d be right. Change “telepaths” to “intelligence agencies” and “robots” to the name of any one of the many displaced segments in our societies, and we’d be talking about the world we live in today.
* * *
Ever since I fell in love with science and speculative fiction—both the classic writers, including Asimov and Ray Bradbury, and the more contemporary, including Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro—I’ve realized that what such fiction does so well is to illuminate not the future, but the present.
We live in a present in fear of the future—of something unknown, dystopian, apocalyptic. I believe that, despite all this, there is promise. There is hope. I write about that, and I hope you’re with me for the journey.
Come with me.
The best is yet to come.
Samuel Peralta is a physicist and storyteller. He has designed robots for nuclear applications, and headed start-ups in software and semiconductors. An Amazon bestselling author and anthologist, he is the creator and driving force behind the Future Chronicles anthologies.
http://www.amazon.com/author/samuelperalta
http://www.samuelperalta.com
A Note to Readers
Thank you so much for reading The Future Chronicles—Special Edition.
Through the work of a number of talented authors, editors, artists and other contributors—and the amazing support of readers like you—the Future Chronicles series has become one of the most acclaimed short story anthology series of the digital era, hitting the top ranks of not just the science fiction, fantasy and horror anthology lists, but the overall Amazon Top 10 Bestsellers list itself.
The Future Chronicles has also inspired several other quality anthology series in speculative fiction and in other genres, and inspired scores of spin-off stories, novels, and series. It’s been amazing.
I’d like to thank the editors I’ve worked with, including David Gatewood (il miglior fabbro), Ellen Campbell, Carol Davis, Crystal Watanabe, Nolie Wilson, and Jeff Seymour, who helped focus what I’ve always held the Chronicles to be all about—story.
Thank you, too, to the hundreds of authors I’ve worked with, too numerous to mention, many of whom have become close friends—I get by with a lot of help from you all.
I’d also like to thank John Joseph Adams, who was not a Chronicles editor, bu
t whose editorial hand helped shape some of my own stories and my appreciation for story.
Finally, thank you to Hugh Howey, whose ground-breaking work in speculative fiction, and continuous encouragement and support, made us realize and appreciate what was possible.
* * *
If you enjoyed the stories in this book, please keep an eye out for other titles in the Future Chronicles collection. A full listing of titles can be found at
www.futurechronicles.net
One of the things about the Future Chronicles series is that you don’t have to start with the first book published, and work your way through the list. You can start with any title, then pick and choose the books you want to read, in any order.
But, if you were curious, here is a list, by release date, of all available and planned titles in the series:
2014
The Robot Chronicles
The Telepath Chronicles
2015
The Alien Chronicles
The A.I. Chronicles
The Dragon Chronicles
The Z Chronicles
Alt.History 101
The Immortality Chronicles
The Future Chronicles—Special Edition
The Time Travel Chronicles
The Galaxy Chronicles
The Cyborg Chronicles
2016
Alt.History 102
The Doomsday Chronicles
The Illustrated Robot
The Shapeshifter Chronicles
Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Chronicle Worlds: Feyland
The Jurassic Chronicles
Chronicle Worlds: Drifting Isle
Chronicle Worlds: Half Way Home
The Gamer Chronicles
The Mars Chronicles
* * *
Finally, before you go, we’d like to ask you a very small favor, if you please: Would you write a short review at the site where you downloaded this book?
Reviews are make-or-break for authors. A book with no reviews is, simply put, a book with no future sales. This is because a review is more than just a message to other potential buyers: it’s also a key factor driving the book’s visibility in the first place.
More reviews (and more positive reviews) make a book more likely to be featured in bookseller lists and more likely to be featured in bookseller promotions. Reviews don’t need to be long or eloquent; a single sentence is all it takes. In today’s publishing world, the success (or failure) of a book is truly in the reader’s hands.
So please, write a review.
Then tell a friend. Share a link to us on Facebook, or maybe even a Tweet—link to our books at www.futurechronicles.net. You’d be doing us a great service.
Thank you.
Samuel Peralta
www.amazon.com/author/samuelperalta
www.samuelperalta.com
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