by Judyth Baker
Finished with the bathroom, she double-checked the strength of the lock on the door: it was a heavy lock. A second door led from the bathroom to yet another room. As she entered it, once again, an automatic light turned. Though she was tired and afraid, though she was emotionally exhausted and tense, what Jendra saw next astonished her and sent chills through her body.
It was a tiger.
Its yellow eyes glared at her, and its enormous mouth, glittering with long white teeth, gaped wide as it roared! As it did so, Jendra, overwhelmed, fainted.
* * * * *
“Please wake up,” CuCy was whispering … but no, she did not dare … she was finished with Cyborgs … without so much as a word, she fainted again…
“Please wake up,”
She opened her eyes, surprised that she was alive. What time is it? Was her first thought. Then awareness of where she was.… At the thought of the tiger, she shuddered, then sat up straight. Every bone in her body was aching. As she focused her eyes, she saw the outline of a robot. It could be the same robot – or a copy – but at least, she might be able to reason with it.
“Help me!” She begged. As she spoke, she noticed a long streak of rust down one of its arms. It had to be the same robot that had guided them to the Feral Human exhibit. She was aware that as a Zoo Guide, it would still carry the Imperative of No Harm to Humans.
As for where she was, she had no idea. She was lying on some kind of crude bed, with various tools, motors and machines stacked against the walls. She felt quite weak and drained. There wasn’t much light, but even so, she could see that the robot wasn’t in very good shape either. There was a big dent in its rotund head, and some oil was dripping from its loose, useless right arm.
“Are you awake?” The robot asked.
She closed her eyes, then settled back against a hard pillow. “No,” she lied. “I’m not awake.” Then hunger assailed her thoughts, and she pointed at her stomach, her eyes still closed.
“Hungry,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
“Wait,” it told her.
A long time passed, it seemed to her, before it returned, bringing a sack of delicious-smelling food. Slowly, she opened it. Slowly, she began to eat. Some of it was far too strong for her stomach: she nibbled on the whiter parts, which seemed to be some kind of bread. Without her asking, the robot then brought her a flagon of water.
“Now I will have them come get you,” the robot announced, turning on its wheels.
“Oh no!” She announced, kicking it with all her strength and knocking it over.
“O foolish human!” The robot howled out. “I am your friend!”
“The hell you are!”
Just then, two large shadows appeared: were they the Cyborgs? But then she saw it wasn’t so. They were humans. Nevertheless, she backed away, as they busied themselves in helping the robot. “Sorry, Robbie,” they told it. “We got delayed.”
“Look at me!” Robbie complained. “I’m practically in pieces!”
As they fussed over the robot, ignoring her, Jendra could vaguely recall that an antique robot called Robbie had charmed children a century earlier. Realizing that the two men were making no moves that were threatening to her, she finally dared to speak. After all, the food had to have come from somewhere, as did the water.
“Who are you?”
The older one, who had a dark, twisted beard, said, “We’re Ferals. You’re not one of us, and we don’t know what implants you have that might lead THEM to us, so we had to wait a while to see if you were safe.”
“She kicked me!” Robbie complained. “She broke one of my antennae. I don’t like her. Send her away.”
“As I recall,” the younger one said, “you told the lady, ‘now I will have them come get you,’ That made her think you were going to bring the Cyborgs to her. By the way,” the Feral said, “my name is Arthur. Like King Arthur. Do you know what percentage Cyborg you are? If you’re more than 15%, we’ll have to dump you outside.”
“Without my SPOCKs, I’m 15%,” she said.
“We already got rid of your SPOCKs,” the older one said. “I’m Sherlock. At your service.”
“How much time has passed since I came here?” She wanted to know. “I’m scared for my kids. Do you know if the kids are okay? Did they make it?”
Before they could speak, she started to tremble. “The tiger!” She said then, sitting up straight. “What about the tiger?”
“Oh, that?” Sherlock responded, with a grin. “Robbie, want to explain that to her?”
“No,” Robbie replied. “She’s been very rude to me.”
“I’ll tell her, then,” Arthur said, seating himself on the dirty floor. “You’re in a passageway under the Tiger House,” he told her. “But soon, we’ll take you to a nicer place. And we’ll fix you up, too, sport,” he said, turning his attention to the robot. To Jendra, he said, “Don’t kick him again. He’s a good guy.”
“So you have assigned it a sex? How weird!.”
“See?” Robbie put in. “Now she’s hurting my feelings! ‘Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’”
“He’s quoting from ‘The Raven,’” Arthur told her, when he saw her blank face.
“What’s that?” She queried.
“A famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe,” he replied. “You’re a teacher, we’ve been told. Don’t you know about Poe?”
She shook her head. “I teach a Compassion course. I also take students on field trips to the real world.” For some reason, that world seemed very far away now. “But please – tell me if the students are safe. That’s all I want to know!”
“They’re safe. We’ve saved them all! Soon to leave the Emerald Isle for a safer place.”
“NO place is safe from them,” Jendra said bitterly.
“You need to have more faith in the human race,” Sherlock told her.
“I have faith in nothing.”
“You asked about the tiger–“
Tired and uncertain as she was, the words sent a cold shiver down her spine.
“It was a robot,” Sherlock told her.
To her amazed gasp of disbelief, he began to explain the matter,
“For decades, all tigers have been extinct. All we have is their DNA. Their frozen DNA. We Ferals have been running this attraction for many years, The robot tigers gulp down fake meat. We took the meat for ourselves, you see. The outsiders never guessed. They heard the tigers roar. They saw them show their teeth. They observed them fighting each other. A long established non-profit charity owned the zoo. When we took it over, we found out the tigers were all fake. We exiled the corrupt owners. But we needed the meat to keep coming.”
“The scam was called ‘Save the Tiger,’” Arthur put in. “But the corrupt CEOs just wanted profits, so they killed all the tigers. Their skins became rugs in their mansions. To take their place, robots were built, wonderful robots. How would anybody know the difference? The money they saved in raw meat, alone, which was supposed to fill dozens of freezers, was used instead to purchase half of Ireland as a “game preserve.” Then they simply annexed the rest of it. As for us, we, who loved our country were driven underground, until we revolted.”
“We took everything over by getting control of one CEO after another, and at the same time, we have been running an underground railroad to save Feral humans,” Sherlock revealed. “The extermination order was in the works, so we had to act faster than we originally planned.”
“But they got your children!”
“All good things can come to an end,” Arthur quoted. “Yes, we have to leave now. But we’ve prepared other places, and if necessary, we can even wait it out, underground, for a long time.”
“You are welcome to come with us,” Sherlock offered. “Your students have asked us to bring you along.”
“So they are okay?”
“Hell, yes.”
Jendra thought about it. She didn’t have to think about it very long.
“Hell, yes!” She answered. “That is, if it’s okay with Robbie.”
Endnotes
1. Boundless. “The Limbic System.” Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 10 Jul. 2015. Retrieved 14 Jul. 2015 from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/biological-foundations-of-psychology-3/structure-and-function-of-the-brain-35/the-limbic-system-154-12689/
2. http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/a/aa042205a.htm Retrieved July 14, 2015
3. There are natural inequalities, and man-made, unnatural inequalities to consider. Our heroine was aware of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961science fiction story, “Harrison Bergeron.”
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”
In that brave new world, the government forced each individual to wear “handicaps” to offset any advantage he had, so everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of bird shot. Those with above-average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts “to keep them … from taking unfair advantage of their brains.”
But Harrison Bergeron, who was far above average in everything, was a special problem. Vonnegut explained, “Nobody had ever borne heavier handicaps. … Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses.” To offset his strength, “Scrap metal was hung all over him,” to the point that the seven-foot-tall Harrison “looked like a walking junkyard.” The youthful Harrison did not accept these burdens easily, so he had been jailed. But with his myriad advantages and talents, he had broken out. An announcement on TV explained the threat: “He is a genius and an athlete … and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.” http://spectator.org/articles/35897/poverty-equality Retrieved July 14, 2015.
4. In 1996, a standardized version of American History became available: it has become the official version for teaching AP college history in high schools, developed “by the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles under the guidance of the National Council for History Standards. [funded by] the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education.” The author is therefore certain that this version is therefore wholly unprejudiced and devoid of any tincture of bias. http://www.nchs.ucla.edu/history-standards Retrieved 4/18/2016.
5. Cyborgs would theoretically be denied access to quantum computers to keep them subservient to humans, but eventually Cyborgs would gain enough self-awareness and intelligence to defend themselves. With their access to the quantum computer, the human imagination, once a source of innovation and wonderment to the 100% Cyborg, would now seem to be merely an unnecessary and quaint anomaly. Humanity itself would be redundant. However, the final phase of the Cyborg Revolution would not take place until 2120, when all humans became reduced to a species of algorithmic interactions stored in cryogenically sealed data systems.
Who or what AI gets access to the quantum computer is important.
“In a classical computer, information is represented in bits, binary digits, each of which can be denoted as “0+1.” The power of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the number of qubits. Rather than doing computations sequentially as classical computers do, quantum computers can solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results. Imagine being able to open a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence at the same time. Though the analogy isn’t perfect – because of the complexities in measuring the results of a quantum calculation – it gives you an idea of what is possible … ” “Quantum Computing Is About to Overturn Cybersecurity’s Balance of Power” May 11, 2015. http://singularityhub.com/2015/05/11/quantum-computing-is-about-to-overturn-cybersecuritys-balance-of-power/ Retrieved July 14, 2015.
6. “Quantum mechanics is now being used to construct a new generation of computers that can solve the most complex scientific problems – and unlock every digital vault in the world. These will perform in seconds computations that would have taken conventional computers millions of years. They will enable better weather forecasting, financial analysis, logistical planning, search for Earth-like planets, and drug discovery. And they will compromise every bank record, private communication, and password on every computer in the world – because modern cryptography is based on encoding data in large combinations of numbers, and quantum computers can guess these numbers almost instantaneously
The [new] D-Wave Two computer has 512 qubits and can, in theory, perform 2^512 operations simultaneously. That’s more calculations than there are atoms in the universe – by many orders of magnitude … The company will soon be releasing a quantum processor with more than 1,000 qubits.… Quantum computers … it will be as transformative for mankind as were the mainframe computers, personal computers, and smartphones that we all use. As do all advancing technologies, they will also create new nightmares. The most worrisome development will be in cryptography. Developing new standards for protecting data won’t be easy.” IBID.
7. We can assume that pain receptors for robots will become a viable idea because robots with live cultured neurons are already in existence: they have biological brains which consist “of a collection of neurons cultured on a Multi Electrode Array (MEA). It communicates and controls the robot via a Bluetooth connection.” These robots are developed at the Cybernetic Intelligence Research Group, part of the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading.…”The robot’s biological brain is made up of cultured neurons which are placed onto a multi electrode array (MEA) … a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells. This is then used to drive the movement of the robot. Every time the robot nears an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes. In response, the brain’s output is used to drive the wheels of the robot, left and right, so that it moves around in an attempt to avoid hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer, its sole means of control is from its own brain.” ZD Net, Aug. 13, 2008. www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-a-robot-with-a-biological-brain/ Acquired Jan. 21, 2016.
8. Science News ‘Off switch’ for pain discovered: Activating the adenosine A3 receptor subtype is key to powerful pain relief’ Date: November 26, 2014 Source: Saint Louis University Medical Center Summary: A way to block a pain pathway in animal models of chronic neuropathic pain has been discovered by researchers, suggesting a promising new approach to pain relief. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141126132639.htm Acquired 10/12/2015.
9. Minecraft is great for teaching young gamers key skills like problem solving and creativity, but it’s not just humans who can learn a something from it. Researchers have used the computer game to teach robots these same skills in a faster, more efficient way … [An ] algorithm … enables a robot to look at all possible paths of actions and variations, then decide the best course for it all. With this in place, the robot can learn to understand that key things like washing clothes doesn’t require kitchen utensils.
To test this, they wheeled out Minecraft. The researchers controlled the character as it put a gold block into a furnace without touching the lava. The algorithm began to learn the specifics of this through trial and error. When the same task was introduced in a more complex setting, the character went through a much smaller set of scenarios to get the j
ob done based upon the past experience. Fascinating research with a bright-yet-terrifying future of self-aware robots.” Quote from http://newrisingmedia.com/all/2015/7/14/robots-learn-to-solve-problems-faster-by-playing-minecraft. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
10. “Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization,” was published in July, 2009 in Nature Physics. The research was carried out by an international team led by Oxford University scientists. http://phys.org/news/2009-07-transparent-aluminium-state.html#jCp Retrieved July 9, 2015.
11. The study of cosmic microwave radiation has advanced the understanding of dark matter density inequalities as a clue to the creation of galaxies. “Cosmic microwave radiation points to invisible ‘dark matter,’ marking the spot where jets of material travel at near light speed, according to an international team of astronomers. Lead author Rupert Allison of Oxford University presented their results yesterday (6 Jul, 2015) at the National Astronomy Meeting in Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales … the team … were able to locate dense regions of dark matter … where the powerful radio jets are more common – a deep-lying correlation between the most massive galaxies today and the afterglow of the Big Bang. Mr Allison commented: “Without dark matter, big galaxies wouldn’t have formed and supermassive black holes wouldn’t exist. And without black holes, we wouldn’t see intergalactic jets. So we have found another signature of how dark matter shapes today’s universe.” http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2015/07/cosmic-microwave-radiation-points-to-invisible-dark-matter-2491836.html (Retrieved July 14, 2015). The idea presented in “Save the Tiger” is that human brains could conceptualize re-directing sectors of the material ejected from denser dark matter regions to create large, useful objects in space almost anywhere wished, whereas Cyborg brains using unimaginative 0-1 binary processing would not. But the story’s heroine is about to get the surprise of her life.
12. From Dune (movie, 1985), based on the classic science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, we see how secrecy can work its evil: Guildmaster: We foresee a slight problem within House Atreides. Paul, Paul Atreides. Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV: You mean of course Duke Leto, his father? Guildmaster: I mean Paul Atreides. We want him killed. I did not say this. I am not here. Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV: I understand.
