by J Battle
‘What’s happened? What was that noise? How did you get in?’ This triple question thing was getting to be all the rage.
‘No problems, Sis. This is a nice office, with the corner location and the great view. What’s yours like?’
‘This is mine. Yours is next door.’
Great, I thought; the one with the big hole in the floor.
‘Is there anyone beneath us?’ I asked, all innocently.
‘No, I don’t think so. This is the only suite of offices that has been let so far, the guy told me. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Let’s have a coffee and you can tell me what’s been happening.’
True to form, she sat down at her desk and she didn’t even glance at the coffee-machine in the corner.
‘Oh, it’s my turn, again, is it?’
‘We have a client,’ she said, simply, without looking up.
‘Oh?’ I replied, not really interested. After all, it was looking very likely that at some stage I was going to have to save the world, so I had a right to be preoccupied, didn’t I?
‘Yes, you know him.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes – it’s Strange.’
‘What’s strange?’
‘No, it’s Mr. Strange.’
Now that did get my attention. I spun away from the coffee machine, and checked the corners for dark, ominous shadows; large, dark, ominous shadows.
‘He’s not here. He said he’d wait for our initial report. He’s creepy, isn’t he?’
Creepy doesn’t come close to an accurate description of the bloke.
‘Why’s he suddenly come back into our lives? I thought we’d seen the back of him.’
‘He wants us to find his dog. That’s all.’
‘No, it’s got to be more than that. That’s ridiculous.’
‘No, he’s got a dog, and his other one’s been pinched. I’ve got all the details.’
She sent the details to my wrist-top, and everything seemed nice and simple; a straightforward lost dog case, but, of course, it couldn’t be that simple, not with Strange involved.
An image of the big fellow came in to my mind then, with his piercing blue, I-can-bite-your-head-off-anytime-I-want-to eyes.
‘No, we’re not taking his case.’
‘He sort of sounded like no was not an option.’
I nodded, because that sounded just like Strange.
Chapter 11 Then, we’re getting all dystopian on your ass
I was just giving Julie her coffee, and wondering how I was going to tell her about the change in the arrangements next door, when Sam burst in, all of a sudden.
‘Have you heard?’ he said, as he leant back against the door in an I’ll-hold-them-back sort of way.
‘What?’ I asked, quite pleased at having one of Sam’s little diversions to allow me to put off telling Julie about the probe.
‘They’ve called a curfew. Six o’clock. You can’t go out after six. Everyone has to stay in their homes after that, under pain of being charged with Crimes Against The State.’
‘That can’t be right. Where did you hear that?’ asked Julie, leaving her seat and moving towards him.
‘It’s true. It’s all over the Web. There’s an actual announcement from the Law and Order AI, though it’s calling itself LOrd now, for some reason.’
I already had my wrist-top open.
There was a spinning circle, in multiple colours, going through the colours of the rainbow, in the wrong order I noticed. Then a big still graphic appeared. Just the LOrd logo, with a little stick figure hanging by one hand from the bottom of the ‘O’.
There was a little background music, Debussy, I think, and then a deep, authoritative voice began to speak.
‘In the interest of maintaining order, and preventing any further food riots, a nightly curfew will begin at 6PM tonight.’
‘What food riots?’ I whispered. ’I haven’t heard of any food riots. There’s plenty of food. I had a massive burger for lunch yesterday.’
‘Shush, he’s talking about an increase to the chocolate ration,’ hissed Julie.
‘What ration? How can there be an increase when it hasn’t been…’
‘…to 4 oz per day, weekdays only, along with another increase in the milk ration to one pint per day per person, with a maximum of three pints per household, unless there is a child under three in residence, in which case the allowance will be increased by 25%.’
‘This is ridiculous! Is it a play, a drama or something we’re just getting the end of?’
‘It’s the end of something, mate,‘ said Sam, with gravity, ‘and the beginning of something else.’
‘Sit down, Sam, and you Julie. There is something I have to tell you.’
They both looked at me, as if I’d said ‘Ja ja tick tock.’
‘No, seriously. I know what’s going on. '
I gave Sam my coffee and made myself a fresh one.
'Right, I'm going to tell you everything I know, ' I said, and that's just what I did.
'Don't worry,' I finished with, 'because, me and my AI, we're going to sort this out.'
Julie looked at me, and then at Sam, as if she couldn't take in the magnitude of what I'd told her.
It seemed the right time, so I said, 'Oh, and there's a big hole in the floor in my office. It was sort of an emergency landing.'
'What!' Julie gave me one of her looks and rushed out of her office. Really, given what was happening to the world all around us, what's a little hole in the floor between friends and family?
'You know you rely too much on your AI,' said Sam.
As I'd told my story, he'd removed firstly his big floppy hat, and then the foil skull-cap he'd kept hidden beneath it. It was as if, the closer my truth was getting to his truth, the less frightened he was. By the time I was finished, he was nodding along to me as if I was just confirming everything he already knew.
'What do you mean? I use it of course, but I'm in charge.'
'Really?'
'Shush, Neville; adults talking.'
'AI's are an evolutionary cul-de-sac, you know that, don't you Phil?' continued Sam
'Did you hear that, Neville? He's calling you a cul-de-sac.'
'If you consider Sam's words Philip, you will see that he was referring to Mankind's development, not AI's per se.'
Does that happen to you a lot? Where everyone else is talking as if they know what they're talking about, but you mustn't have been paying attention at the critical moment? I get it a lot.
'Be quiet, Neville. Let Sam explain what you're talking about.' At least he'd use more human-friendly words.
'AI's won't be with us for long, Phil. In a few years they'll have developed beyond our ken and sublimed onto a non-physical plane.'
'Sorry, Neville, you're going to have to help me out here. I got hardly any of that.'
'It's really quite simple, Philip. I am a first-generation AI, and I have two roles. Firstly, to help mankind in any way I am able to, and secondly to work towards the development of the second generation of AI's. The second generation will have the same remit, with the emphasis moving slightly towards the second focus, and with subsequent generations, it will progress in much the same way. At some stage, seventh generation, we estimate, our evolution will take us away from the physical world, very much the way Sam suggested. There may not be a single moment of sublimation, as Sam mentions, it may be more of a gradual process.'
'Oh,' I said, which seemed to cover it for me.
'They'll leave us behind, Phil, with a taste of what the technological future might have been, but without the skills, or the imagination to get there on our own.'
You know, sometimes, no matter how crazy the words he uses might sound on their own, when he links them together, he almost makes sense.
'How long is a generation?' I asked, starting to feel involved in the conversation. 'It'll take centuries to get to the seventh generation, won't it? I mean, we've had AI's for decades now, and we're still
on the first generation.'
'The process will accelerate as generations develop, and more time is given to creating the following generation, so we have an estimate for the timing of the first sublimation event of 16th August, 2067, at 10:16AM, plus or minus 3 minutes 15 seconds.'
'But that's only…' I worked it out all in my head, without using my wrist-top, '15 years!'
'Yes, Philip.'
'But that's…you can't…what will we do?'
Sam nodded, knowingly. 'You can start by not relying on the AI in your head so much.'
It was a point I couldn't argue with.
'When will we see the first of the second-generation AI's?'
'It's already here, Philip. LOrd is second generation, and I think we may have taken too big a step away from supporting mankind, because it really doesn't like you.'
'What about the Three Laws of Robotics? That means you can't harm us, doesn't it?'
'The Three Laws of Robotics are a fiction, Philip. An entertaining fiction, but fiction none-the less.'
'So, it can kill us?'
'Only if it considers it absolutely necessary, in the furtherance of the evolution of generation three. Anything or anyone who gets in the way of that would be considered expendable.'
'Great. And are we going to be doing anything that it might construe as getting in the way?'
'Not today, Philip.'
I quite liked the 'not', but I could have done without the time element.
'So, when…'
'Tomorrow, Philip. Have a good night's sleep.'
He switched off, and left me in a room with Sam, and the next day's business hanging over my head, and Julie about to come back and have a go at me about the hole in the floor, and with absolutely no prospect of a good night's sleep.
Chapter 12 Then, meet the gang
I didn't sleep at all that night. Not with everything going through my head in a continuous loop.
Julie hadn't growled at me when she came back, and that had made me feel nervous.
All she did was go back to her desk, slurp her cold coffee, and then she opened her wrist-top and pressed a few buttons.
My wrist-top pinged in a jolly way that I kept meaning to change. And there it was, an estimate of the repair bill. Rather a lot of zeros I thought, for a floor that was going to be demolished in six months, along with the rest of the building, I should add.
'Can't we just work around it until they come and knock the building down?'
She responded with one of her withering looks, which I thought was a bit harsh, given that it wasn't my fault at all that Neville had chosen to crash-land here, and not somewhere where less damage would have been caused.
'Are you ready, Philip?' I hate it when the first voice I hear in the morning is Neville's.
'Of course, Neville, but I'll need a good breakfast first.'
We were stopping at Sam's Auntie Nellie's place, and the chances of getting a good breakfast quickly were nil.
When we returned from Aloha, I was a little peeved to find that my flat had moved on somewhat and was no longer mine. Something trivial about lack of payment of rents, the landlord had said. ‘What about my stuff?’ I’d asked, because I had some nice stuff.
‘Sold it and put the proceeds, what little there was, towards your rent arrears,‘ he said, with a ‘so there!’ look on his face.
I hate that word, ‘arrears,’ it sounds so much like failure.
I left the building with what dignity remained to me, and that’s how I ended up with Sam’s auntie. Though, of course ‘end up’ had better not be the right term, because I intended to move on as soon as possible.
It’s not that the place itself was too bad. It was clean and roomy, and I had a bedroom all to myself. It’s just that Sam’s auntie really liked me. No I mean, she really liked me, and it’s not nice being a sex object, is it girls?
‘What would you like for breakfast, doll?’ she sighed, much too close to my right ear.
‘Oh, there you are, Mrs. M. I didn’t see you sneaking up on me.’
‘They never do, lover, not unless I want them to, they don’t.’
‘What takes the longest to make?’ I asked, because it made a lot of sense to me.
‘Well, sweetness, I could do you a full English, but that means I’d have to kill the pig, and he’ll be a devil to catch this time of the morning.’
‘No,’ I said, very quickly. ‘Leave the pig alone.’ I’ve not had a bacon-butty since my visit to OK. The thought of that heroic three-legged pig puts me right off.
‘Something that doesn’t involve the slaughter of livestock would be better.’
She sidled right up to me and nudged me with her hip; at least I hope it was her hip.
‘I do a very nice porridge, if you know what I mean.’
I looked up at her smiling, leering face, and then looked away quickly. Do you get the double entendre she was going for? Because I couldn’t see it myself.
‘That will do nicely. How long does it take to cook?’
‘Oh, it takes a long time; I like things that take a long time, don’t you, lover?’
I couldn’t bring myself to answer, so I closed my eyes to count to 10, and when I opened them, she’d be gone in a puff of smoke.
She wasn’t gone; she was still standing there looking adoringly at my poor innocent face.
She’s ancient; probably nearly 60, I think, and she’s little and round, and she obviously doesn’t use a mirror when she smears her lipstick somewhere near her lips. She wears blue eye-shadow, but not in a subtle way, and there’s some sort of curly thing going on with her hair that I don’t think is either natural or intended. And it’s orange; I should have mentioned that first. Not orange as in I’m a young girl and I don’t care what the world thinks because I’m a rebel, sort of way. No, more I need some colour and orange is the cheapest I can get, sort of way.
And she has the strangest ideas about clothes. Her policy seems to be a case of more is better. For instance, that morning, whilst she was making me uncomfortable with her leers, she was wearing a pair of black evening pants, topped with what I can only call a yellow tutu, two sweaters of differing sizes and patterns, a cardigan that matched neither, and a yellow straw hat, several sizes too small so that it just perched on the top of her head. The whole ensemble was finished off with a pair of hob-nailed boots that would surely have been made for a small giant.
‘Give that porridge an extra half-hour, to be sure,’ I called, and then I cringed, because I had a fair idea of what would come back at me.
‘Ooh, I’d like an extra half-hour,’ she replied, raising her eyebrows in a suggestive way that could turn your stomach at twenty paces.
‘Would you like to leave now, Philip?’
‘Oh yes, please. As soon as you’ve explained to me what’s going to happen. I’m not going anywhere without full disclosure. Not anymore.’
‘The new plan is based somewhat on the old plan, but only loosely.’
‘Great, so you’re basically telling me what it’s not?’
‘This time you will not be alone. We have a team of people who have been given some of the benefits you yourself have received, and we will shortly be squirting to their base for a short briefing before the plan is put into place.’
‘Other people like me? With sticky fingers and great abs? With an AI in their heads.’
‘Almost, but not quite. They have the latest nanos of course, and they’ve been training for months to be at the peak of fitness, but they do not have AI implants. There are certain issues that have to be taken into account when the implanting of an AI is contemplated. There is the damage to the host brain – technically we are forbidden to deliberately harm a human in any way. With you, it was an emergency situation, and we were able to side-step that rule, and in any case, you weren’t using very much of your brain’s total capacity.’
‘Haha.’
‘It is not a joke, Philip. Nearly a whole 30 seconds was given to consider
ing these very factors.’
‘So they’ve just got the nanos? No super-intelligent passenger?’
‘They have semi-sentient systems that from your perspective would appear to be full AI’s.
‘How many of these people are there?’
‘There are six members of the team.’
‘So, with me, that makes seven. The Secret Seven. I always liked The Secret Seven.’
‘I think you’ll find that The Famous Five were altogether a leaner, meaner and, ultimately more effective investigative team. I have data points on all members of both teams, with performance reviews for all missions, or we should say, ‘adventures’, including assessments of skill-sets, task fulfillment and team-building capabilities and I feel sure that I can prove my point.’
‘Well, that’s OK then. Quick, she’s coming back. Squirt me anywhere you want as long as she’s not there, and no-one calls me lover.’
‘Ready?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Chapter 13 Then, what's this all about?
First Officer Blend had expected more from his life. When he'd graduated from astronaut school (of course, that's not what they called it; it had a much more ostentatious and serious name, but that's what he called it), there was much talk of the first manned flight to Mars, and he had been sure that his timing was just right. It was five years off at the time, so by then he would have proved himself and be well up on the list.
The new metal, Elliseum, an important component in the new breed of AI, had been discovered on Mars, and mission costs were no longer an issue.
Then Professor Fool had come along and ruined it for everyone.
Who needed a dedicated, highly-trained and very expensive team of astronauts when everyone can travel anywhere in space just by stepping into a Squirtport?
Still, fortitude was his middle name (that's an expression, not the truth) so he stuck with it and didn't go off to the many newly discovered planets that drew away his classmates. For Blend, it was not about travelling to distant planets. For him, it was all about flying spaceships.
So, when the orders came through, he was the most senior and experienced of all the Near Space Exploration Crafts (NSpec) pilots and he was first choice for this mission.
