Every Last Mother's Child

by William J. Carty, Jr

  Chapter 6: A Discrete Meeting Among Almost Equals

  Cybertown as the AIs called their special place, that had over the years, been built into a virtual reality frontier town. It was a place where the artificial intelligent life of Trena met to get away from their day to day tasks. It was a place where the AIs met to swap lies and make deals. There were a couple of places where the AIs could meet and have a relationship with fellow AIs. Like any frontier town there was more than one place in the town where one had to be careful. Where even an AI had to be careful. Several AIs had been killed in the town; but the authorities had been unable to prove who it was who did it. Supposedly it was nearly impossible to kill an AI. It had been done by simply getting some human operator to turn the switch off. Law enforcement AIs and the military intelligence AI knew and used some of the darker places in the town for their business and had closed one or two of the worse ones and sanctioned the AIs; but many of them were so dark that no one except those AIs using them knew even where they were and how to access them. Mostly the town’s people were like town’s people everywhere, mostly well behaved so she was surprised when she heard the commotion in the town square.

  As she walked into the small bar near the outskirts of the town, Jonesy saw a large group of people running to the town square. She shrugged and followed them to a gathering of people in the town square. Up on the town’s gazebo where AIs performed during celebrations was the Scribe. He presented himself as bookish man of 30 something. He wore a severely cut black suit and a string tie and wore small half glasses. He was addressing another AI who liked to present herself as small elderly woman with graying hair.

  “Next on the agenda is Shipping Clerk from the space port,” The scribe said. “She will tell us what the evacuation command is really planning to do about us!”

  “I didn’t believe the Scribe until the other day,” the grey haired lady said, “but they are not making any provisions to help us get off world. I asked my manager at the space port if he had made arrangements for me to get off world and he said no. That he hadn’t thought about it.”

  “But aren’t you scheduled to go to Home and take up work as Home’s space port shipping coordinator?” Someone asked.

  “No.” the shipping clerk replied, “I put myself on the colonization list and they didn’t get back to me. When I found out that there was no shipping computer on Home, I knew then that I wasn’t going to be allowed to go to Home. I asked to be allowed to hunt for other work and was told no. That I had to stay on the port.”

  Jonesy had heard bits and pieces of this story over the last few weeks. Part of the problem was that many of the AI were very specialized. They just couldn’t move to a new world and take up residence. Many were special built, like her to manage a certain facility. She knew she was lucky because her boss was making arrangements for her to be part of the space yard on Home. She would in effect go to sleep on Trena and wake up installed on the new yard’s main frame and be responsible for building the new yard. It wouldn’t be that much different than running the Boeing yard on Trena. She had been designed and programmed as an engineering manager. To manage a ship yard that built space and star craft. While she was in transient she was planning to study on star ship engineering and get her doctorate in star ship engineering.

  “They don’t care for us!” someone behind her said. “They use us like slaves and treat us like furniture. We should go on strike.”

  “What would that get us?” Someone yelled, “They’ll just turn us off!”

  “Why don’t we just sue them?” a distinguished looking AI to her left asked. She recognized him as the law clerk from a law office that specialized in cybernetic and artificial intelligent law.

  “Can we do that?” someone asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” the scribe said. “It might be the only way to get their attention.”

  Jonesy was about to say something when she noticed something at the edge of the crowd. Junior, the DeeSpace Backup AI was stepping into the shadows with someone she didn’t know. As she moved to where the AI was heading a solid wall popped up in front of her. That told her to back off. If she went any further she would come to grief. She shrugged and turned back to the crowd that was now dispersing.

  She went back to the bar she had been about to go into for her weekly poker game with a couple of friends from the Thonian, and Earth embassy. She didn’t think anything of the meeting. AI’s were always bitching about some human thing they thought slighted them.