Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  “For someone with such a mundane imagination, Kendra, you do all right.”

  “Why are we whispering?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “though I’d prefer we were talking in code to frustrate the parking lot security cams with their onboard AIs that do the lip reading on the fly.”

  “Seriously?” she said, with her hand held in front of her mouth as a shield.

  He gazed over at her and pulled down on the right corner of his mouth. “Don’t bother. The cars read our minds when we get close. Anything untoward they pass along to the on-campus security. Though I’m guessing those things,” he said, pointing to the light posts, “read everyone’s minds in and out of the cars for the bosses inside. What self-respecting CEO is going to not expect his employees to vent the instant they’re out of earshot?”

  She shook her head. “I’m the detective. I should know about these things.”

  “Don’t go too hard on yourself. They have a twenty-four seven detective’s channel with nothing but this stuff on it. Only problem is you need a chip implant to keep up with most of it, far less anticipate how the bad guys are going to try and get around the latest spy tech.”

  “No wonder the city AI hasn’t bothered to take us out. Figures we’ll come to our senses if we just keep talking.” They were at what appeared to be the entrance. “Assuming we’re right about all of it, I still don’t get the total lack of respect. I’m actually starting to get pissed someone hasn’t at least tried to take a shot at us.”

  He glared at her as if she were from Mars. “Have you ever been inside one of these buildings? You could blow up the White House before you could scratch a tile with diamond tipped high heels.”

  “I don’t wear high heels so I won’t be tempted to gouge your eyes out for a sexist remark like that.”

  “And when they take your gun and handcuff your hands behind your back, and you can’t high kick them with the stilettos, then what?”

  “I take your point.”

  He went to grab the door handle and she put her hand on his. “Maybe we should control our minds once we’re inside the building. If we have a plan, we can just think nice happy thoughts until time to execute them.”

  Torin stared at her as the sprockets in his mind stopped twirling against air and actually engaged one another. “That’s genius. Only we need to do just the opposite.”

  “Say what?”

  “It explains why no one’s bothered to make a move on us. They read their disaffected employees minds, any useful ideas on how to bring the company down probably get implemented as tweaks to the security system. They expect a little subterfuge. I mean, it’s human nature.”

  “So what, we go the other direction? What if we come up with something that might actually work? It’s not like they’re going to play into our hands and cue us that we’ve found the one hole in their defenses by charging us from all directions.”

  “Your unembellished policeman’s logic is so damn frustrating at times.”

  “Stop stalling. You’re the improvisational genius. Improvise.”

  “We’ll have to look for some telltale sign, the giveaway in the counter-subterfuge that tells us we’re on the right trail. I guess that puts you in the driver’s seat as you’re better trained to tell the lies from the truth than I am.”

  “We’re entering another twilight zone of scientific breakthroughs, I’ll need you just as much to figure out what might actually work as sabotage.”

  “Aren’t we the pair?” They pulled the handles on the double doors together and entered as one.

  They found themselves inside a glass enclosed lift that was already moving upwards. No buttons had been pressed and no choice given. “Must be robots only on the ground floors,” Kendra said. “Less chance of any human meddling where they might actually cause some harm.”

  Torin pointed to the twisters dropping out of the sky. Before he could lower his hand, a second tornado had descended. Together they were doing a fairly effective job of tearing up the surrounding industrial park. Which made the third one to drop down out of the sky complete overkill. The things were coming up on all sides of the cube, which they could tell owing to the keen construction that afforded a three hundred and sixty degree view wherever you were. Japanese inspired architecture if ever there was any. “Maybe that’s why they haven’t bothered with us,” Torin said. “They’ve got way bigger fires to put out.”

  “I guess it was just hubris that allowed us to think we’d be the only humans who wouldn’t take the news well about having our bodies overwritten without our consent.”

  “Christ, there must be entire NGOs and CSOs dedicated to activist campaigns on this scale, assuming Mother Nature is not the only one to blame for those twisters. You’d think we’d know about at least one of them. I’m ashamed to say I was giving all my charitable money to Save the Whales and Greenpeace.”

  “Oh, this has Greenpeace written all over it. You probably paid for at least one band of one of those tornadoes.”

  They were gulping and losing the grip on their lower jaws in two-part harmony as the twisters continued to wend their ways closer to the cube. “Could just be global warming,” Torin mused. “By the time the elevator took us to the top of our building last night there was twelve feet of snow outside, in summer.”

  “Since when has Mother Nature bothered to coordinate her end of the world agenda with ours?”

  Torin sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you have a point.” The elevator stopped on its own. “Hell, we’ve been so absorbed in the local weather we forgot why we came here, which was to plot and scheme to put a stop to the future, to this future anyway.”

  “Maybe the building AI is running distraction scenarios, afraid we might come up with something threatening.”

  “And risk destroying the entire corporate plaza? Nah, these guys are too penny pinching for that. They didn’t get to be masters of the universe by making grand gestures when small ones will do.”

  “You’ll notice the only thing going flying is the cars and the trees. The buildings seem to have energy shielding of some kind. That or the structures are simply rated against category seven tornados, 8 on the Richter Scale, and whatever other super-storm scenario they could factor in.”

  “I still say it’s a long shot. And could we stop playing into its hands in the event you’re right, please, by continuing to be overly absorbed in the weather wars?” Torin said, sounding as if he was finally losing his cool.

  “Yeah, sorry. Nothing like being unable to stay on point in the middle of an apocalypse.” She studied the building’s interior, trying to make sense of it.

  “That’s a progressive Apocalypse, thank you very much. Meaning if we get past this end-of-world scenario, there’ll just be another one around the corner.”

  “As good a reason as any, I suppose, for why we can’t stay focused on the Clyde Barker investigation. We’re too busy putting out fires this minute to worry about the ones brewing in the background.”

  “This Age of Abundance has a flipside, or so it appears.”

  “And me thinking all along our principal investigation was stalled because we needed to heal our hurt inner child enough to have sufficient mind power to track Clyde Barker down.” She played the buttons on the elevator panel in a desperate attempt to get them to work, rather late in the game.

  “We can’t keep dodging every bullet.”

  “We can’t. Let’s hope someone can,” she said absently, still trying to make sense of NanoFab’s interior. “I’m sorry, but I can’t even tell what they make here.”

  She could tell Torin was getting worked up as well, apparently not doing any better than her at getting his bearings. Then a light went on in his eyes. “You might want to strap in,” he said, loosening his belt and tying himself to the elevator’s railing. She followed suit.

  As one of the tornadoes approached, the building unfolded like origami, taking humanoid shape, and using one of its exterior panels Captain America fa
shion, holding the shield to the twister. The tornado span above the panel until it was neutralized, dissipating less than a minute later.

  “Captain America” lased the skies, neutralizing the other twisters by affecting the local weather front blowing through with targeted hits meant to rob it of its fury. They found themselves in the head of the figure with the best angle on just what was at stake.

  The battle over, the creature folded itself back down into a cube again and suddenly they were descending from the center of the building, no longer from the outside, down past ground level into a subterranean realm.

  The glass elevator—clearly made of anything but glass, more like some complex polymer that put bulletproof glass to shame—spit them out about forty high-industrial-sized-ceiling floors below ground level. It then retracted, as the hole in the floor that could have taken them down at least another forty such floors closed, sealing off both exits.

  They were standing in the middle of a large shiny floor like the first couple brave enough to start the danceathon.

  “I feel like I’m being babysat until the adults can get here,” Kendra said.

  “Get out of my head.”

  With both of them still trying to get their bearings, turning around on themselves, the high gloss surface on the hardwood floor started gathering itself up in three clumps. Those clumps continued to gel into shape until one took the final form of a man, one a woman, and another a child whose head reached to her mother’s shoulder.

  The three figures went from clear and transparent to fully colored in, real life humans. Hubby was what you might expect of an exec, impeccably dressed and manicured, down to the sculpted three hundred dollar haircut. His mouth was small but it made up for its diminutive stature by being that much more subtly expressive. The wife’s straight black hair curled up at the ends, just above her shoulders. Her stature, bearing, and mannerisms were even more regal than her husband’s, who, by contrast, managed to look dressed down in his suit, whereas she looked fit to host a cocktail party. The daughter with long straight blond hair down to her butt had the most haunting, piercing blue-green eyes, and a vague facial expression that added to the mystery.

  Torin leaned into Kendra and whispered, “Three of the nanococktail people,” he said.

  “Yeah, I got that much, thank you.”

  “Kendra, Torin, happy you could join us,” the man said. “I’m Monty. This is my wife, Beatrice, and my daughter, Sylvia.”

  “Well, Monty, I wish I could say it’s a pleasure, but you’re kind of creeping me out right now,” Torin said, “and I’m the open minded one of the two of us, so imagine how she feels.” He pointed to Kendra whose mouth hadn’t taken that shape since last they were in the bedroom, speaking of distracting visuals.

  “Maybe if I could address your many concerns,” Monty said, “I could help you find that tranquil place inside yourself that will allow you to be guided by your higher self instead of by your fears.”

  Kendra leaned into Torin and said, “How about that? He even speaks your language.”

  “Yeah, I got that much, thank you.” Torin stood hemming and hawing for a while before he could formulate a response. “I’m sorry, but where’s the factory? All I see is more hydraulic suspension, suggesting you’re as well equipped to ride out a ten on the Richter scale earthquake as you were to ride out those twisters above ground.”

  “Right you are, Torin,” Beatrice said. She was taking the lead, Kendra figured, because it was starting to piss her off that the wife and daughter were standing so demurely beside Monty, like some idea of women being subservient and respectful to men out of the 1950s patriarchal, Christian-inspired families. “This isn’t the factory. This is more like our United Nations building, set up to field requests by execs looking to enter into partnership with us or license the technology for innumerable spin-off applications.”

  Kendra turned toward Torin. “Reason number two why the City AI didn’t bother to shut us down. I guess you were right about the brakes going on the car having nothing to do with Her and everything to do with karma.”

  “So where do you make the nanococktails, if you don’t mind me asking?” Torin said, shifting his attention back to Beatrice.

  “In mini-fabs no bigger than a lunch box,” the wife said. “The idea is to get everyone all over the globe to have a mini-fab. That way everyone gets to feel like they’re part of building the future. We take our ten percent off the top, of course, of however many more inventions those in possession of a mini-fab are capable of. The bulk of the profits remain with the ninety-nine percent. That way no one feels threatened, everyone feels included, and everyone is prosperous enough to decide what future they want for themselves, no pressure.”

  “Great way to diffuse pushback and eliminate people picketing at your door, not to mention the eco-terrorists like us all too happy to blow you up rather than see our minds, bodies, and souls overwritten by whatever programming you’d like to instill in us.”

  The husband held up his arms in a placating manner. His quick reflexes suggested he was the salesman of the bunch, the wife perhaps the scientist, the daughter, yet to be determined, perhaps just proof that this legacy was as much for the future as for the here and now. “You can use the prefabs for designer children, or designer life-managers and consultants if you like, keeping the necessary uptick in intelligence and adaptability off of you like inoculating yourself with a stupid virus, if you like. If you want to stay as you are forever, no one is going to force the issue, but you’re going to need go-betweens who can navigate the future for you on your behalf, to make sure far smarter people don’t take advantage of you.

  “Right now there could be any number of individuals and organizations doing end runs around you from a half a world away, trying to figure out how to rob you of everything you worked so hard for in life, and you’d be entirely vulnerable to them. Boosted intelligence and interconnectivity with the grid, with other bright people working on your behalf is your only real defense.

  “But you know as well as we do that if you don’t play the upgrade game, you’re a dinosaur, and it’s just a matter of time before you go extinct, even with all the prefab assistants in the world.”

  “Are you saying entire people come out of these prefab boxes?” Kendra asked.

  “No, of course not,” the daughter said. “I’ve been parented by half of the human race. The next generation on line will be parented by everyone. True children of the world. We couldn’t let any one person determine the fate of a being so advanced, more advanced than you in every way. It wouldn’t be socially responsible.”

  “Socially responsible,” Kendra chirped. “Now there’s a laugh.”

  “So how do you work the supply chain dynamics?” Torin asked. “You’re talking about the way they assemble cars today, with each corner of the world responsible for making a piece of it, only this is taking that concept several generations beyond.”

  The father just smiled. The smile meant to reward the brightest child of the bunch. “The hive mind coordinates the different mini-fab factories, essentially one globally distributed consciousness. They also read your minds, know your hearts, your dreams for yourselves, for your children, for the future. They anticipate where your thinking falls short, the hundred and one hurdles you can’t foresee. They dialogue with the city, rural, and suburban AIs, the Acropolis AIs, all the way up to the planetary AI. These mega-minds all have their areas of expertise. None is infallible. None is all-knowing. Which is why the human mega-mind, interlinked through the mini-fabs, through the various regional AIs… well, out of that debate, come the children that come out of the mini-fabs, each one unique, each one condensations of all of that, right-fitted to you but in a way that ensures the child is also right-fitted to the world, a puzzle piece that fits just right with the larger whole.”

  “You see, that’s where you lose me,” Torin said. “You’re trying to play God. You’re doing it better than most, I grant you that, but…” />
  “What makes you think the planetary AI isn’t dialoguing with the Cosmic Consciousness directly?” the child said, smiling. “You’re a psychic. You know what I mean about entering a meditative state so you can listen to that inner voice, so you can hear God talking to you directly. Maybe He uses words, maybe images, maybe the flashes of insight you have. Whatever form the communiques take, how is that any different from what networked AIs do? Or maybe you think they’re incapable of the same techniques available to far more primitive minds? Yeah, sure, that doesn’t make the process any less imperfect. The Godhead is filtered through their limited consciousness same as it’s filtered through yours, subject to the same distortions and limitations.”

  “I should feel assuaged by your words, I really should,” Torin said, eying the child, then shifting his focus back to the parents. “But what you’ve all proven is that this individual uniqueness you speak of is just a myth. The same words are coming out of different mouths, that’s all, the same truths. Close my eyes, filter the sound through a synthesizer to take out the different inflections, and you’d all sound like the same person to me.”

  They all smiled at him as if he was the bright one again. “We all sound like you, you mean?” the wife said. “We just thought if we sounded like the voices in your own head, the medicine would go down better. But I suppose if we were to drop the pretense now, it’d just freak you out even more. We’d seem even more like drama therapy for an unruly adolescent.”

  “Torin,” Kendra said, grabbing his arm, “we can’t do anymore here. It’s surrender today or resist as long as we can. That’s a private decision we’re going to have to make someplace far away from here.”

  He turned to her and squeezed her upper arms, pulled her towards him and kissed her on the forehead. “What if we choose different paths?”

  “Then one of us will have to be a little more patient with the other one.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I wonder which one that’ll be.”

  EPILOGUE 4