by Tal Turing
“We should speak about the boys, Paul.” She was waiting for him, curled up on a couch, her hair was dark, streaked with gray, she seldom bothered to resist the superficial signs of aging.
He nodded to her, knowing that she expected him to speak.
“For the longest time, I have expected one of them to move against me.”
“Just as you did to your father?”
“That was different. My father was incompetent, if it hadn't been me, many others would have taken their shots as well.”
“You suspect Steve. He has always been the brightest and the most ambitious. And he is completely without fear of repercussions, disturbingly so.”
“Well said, my dear. But recently I feel Edwyrd is the real threat. He was never easy to read but he was always predictable. Not any more, I think he uses his past predilections to anger and fury as a weapon, a form of psychological judo. I don't believe that he really is as moody and as mercurial as he once was but he still embraces that perception, strategically.
I encouraged his association with security as a way to increase my power but it seems to have worked the other way. He is already second in command and Barrett seems happy to let him do as he wishes.
And then there was this recent excursion into one of the border valleys. Apparently our Eddie went old school on the team, worked them the whole day, and somehow fortune smiled on him and they found a raider tribe, moving toward New Berlyn if you can believe it. He followed New Berlyn protocol to the ruthless letter and suddenly he is very popular with the other corporations at a time when I am not.”
“What surprises you? That he would follow orders? That he would protect New Berlyn? That seems in line with his character, he has always followed the rules. Doesn't that reassure you?”
“It would and it does. Until the day comes when his perception of those rules differ from my own.”
“Your sons seem to be of the same mind when it comes to this Techview asset. Why do they dislike her so? She is one of our own...”
“I had forgotten. It was so long ago. In an effort to light a fire under our boys, I intentionally did not say why we were sending her to the First City. If they had known it was for hospie training, they would never have felt threatened.”
“That was unfair. They were cruel to her, I am sure I was unhappy about it.”
“You were, dear. But she was leaving anyhow. What did it matter about the ones she left behind?”
“Techview will be unhappy if they learn how you have been testing her. You do not have such power as to redefine her basic duties, especially without informing her handler.”
“I should only have to do this once,” Patron sighed. “Now. What else am I missing?”
“There is a significant increase in complaints lodged against us at the Top Five meetings.”
“Why have I not heard of this?”
“Because they refuse to process the complaints.”
“That is the purpose of the Top Five. They only pretend to hear the concerns of the villages, they are more interested in keeping good relations.”
“There are other interpretations. Perhaps they have no interest in appeasing village unhappiness with Transom?”
“The villages do not discriminate. They see us all the same, a grievance against one is a grievance against all. What else?”
“All records of the altercation at Transom Club were sealed. I am ashamed that my eldest son should force untrained assets into stints as sexpies. What would be the point? It would only humiliate them.”
“Some men want only what they can't have,” Patron explained carefully. “That is the appeal to his club. But they know better than to abuse the girls or each other. I simply took advantage of it, agreeing to drop all charges and seal the transcript in exchange for negotiation bonuses. Even Steve seems happy now.”
“But there was so little resistance. And since then, things have changed. More communication with Techview, more communication among the corpers. Are you concerned that you are no longer looking in the right direction?”
Patron looked past his wife, into the flame of the imaginary candle which sat on a table near them.
“I was in Transom House Lobby earlier today. Some of the villager posts were abandoned. On a whim, I inspected one. I found a strange tarot card, used for telling fortunes, left behind on the desk. I turned one over - it was of a man, at least the body of a man, a fountain of blood where his head used to be.”
“The Decapitated Man. It is from the weather tarot. When one wants to take something over, you first aim for the head, the leader. You should know that my darling Paul.”
Miriam
“Where ARE you, Petyr? I haven't seen you in three days!” Miriam pouted over the communication link.
His response was slow in coming.
“Working at the laboratory. Just making some adjustments, minor corrections.”
“I can do that for you!” She insisted, her pretty lips pouting even though he could not see her. Then her face brightened. “Petyr, let's have lunch together. I will bring something to the lab. What would you like?”
“Impossible, my dear, I will be in with the Bugs.”
“I told you, I can do that for you. Since when do you do the dirty work yourself? It's dangerous.”
“Not for me, I have to go, we'll talk later.”
“Wait!”, Miriam stood, concerned, and then she took a breath, a moment to calm herself. She spoke. “The Transom Gala is tonight, we are expected. No one will be suspicious if we enjoy a dance or two together.”
“Perhaps, my dear, we will see.”
“You have to go, we have to go!”
“Miriam, I told you.”
Her face flushed and her upper lip trembled as the words formed in her brain. She hated herself for what she wanted to say, she would not be so pathetic. But the Bugs forced it out of her.
“Petyr, I need you...I can't stand to be without you for so long! Why can't we work on this together?”
And she felt the full angst of the Bugs as they turned all of their attention to this exchange and her interpretation of his response. She tried to convince herself and them that this was all within his personality.
“I have everything under control here, my dear. There is nothing you can do to help me. I am relying on you to take care of your end. We still have only partial funding and I need more. I am readying a final presentation for our sponsors and I need Donnie's full support, is he satisfied?” The Doctor asked expectantly.
“No,” she sighed with exasperation. “It takes him and his partner so long to make the simplest of decisions, Petyr. Their first subject is cooperating but they have realized that he is not that useful and they want another subject. We should tell them that...”
“Then get them one, Miriam” the Doctor insisted. “I expect you to get that done.”
And he ended the call. She sat quickly even as she felt her guts tear inside, she doubled over from the pain.
“He's just busy, that is all!” she insisted and she wished she could reach into her head and scrape the things away. And then they punished her for that thought. “I should go to him, despite his orders, I don't think he understands how to work with the virals, not as well as I do.” But that was heresy and the Bugs would not allow it.
Little AI
When Cynnamon returned to Transom House, she went straight to her room, locked the door behind her, pulled her travel bag into a chair and started to empty its contents. The strange events of the last day would have to wait, sleep would have to wait, everything could wait.
It was while she was sitting in that empty interrogation room that she made the connection. These AI upgrade messages, which she had shrugged off as annoying spam, seemed to always arrive when she was in her room. They did not arrive when she was working at the restaurant, nor when she was out in the border valley nor during the whole time she had been interrogated. She received them only here...and at SkyTran station. And the one thing
in common between those two locations was her luggage. The source of the communications must be within her bag.
“Where are my med patches?” she whined, her acting lost on the empty room.
She took each item out of the bag and placed it on the bed until she found an object she didn't recognize, a piece of jewelry which did not belong to her. The necklace was a golden mesh which held two ornate, jeweled pendants, one which looked like a beetle and the other like a dragonfly, their eyes like translucent opals. The piece was attractive but perhaps a bit gaudy and heavier than she would expect. It did not seem particularly valuable. She placed the piece on the bed and emptied the rest of the bag but found nothing else out of the ordinary.
She replaced the contents of the bag, excepting the necklace, walked to the simple mirror on the back of the closet door, and put it on. It was then that she received a second AI ping. She smiled. She was right, though it had taken her a while. She looked at herself in the mirror, took a breath and responded to the ping.
Her AI was suddenly flooded with a barrage of informational texts and there, in front of her, in the virtual world, she saw him.
He was small and humanoid but clearly artificial, like a toy man with sensors rather than eyes. He spun around and chirped in her AI space, looking at her expectantly.
“What are you?” she laughed.
The little android waved its hand in the air, indicating options which formed in the space above.
AI-Ext-5R455 – Standard Mode
AI-Ext-5R455 – Surveyor Mode (Advanced)
“I see the text, but what does it mean? Or is that a silly question little man? Where did you come from?”
Cynnamon held out her hand until it was beneath the creature and then she pulled him, in the virtual world, closer, so she could inspect him. He chirped happily.
The creature continued to prompt her.
“I know, I know, you are offering me an AI upgrade. Are you a sophisticated advertisement? Or...are YOU the upgrade?”
She was prompted again to accept the upgrade along with a dizzying amount of instructions and explanation – a manual.
“Yes, I could read your text, but I have questions. Are you a product of Daneel Tech?” she asked. But it did not respond. It spun around, waved its little arms and clicked again, resending the barrage of informational texts, not one of which mentioned the manufacturer.
"Normally, I would insist on some answers," she smiled even as she touched the top of the little creature experimentally. "But you happen to have caught me at a time in my life where I need to be more...flexible. Let's try the standard mode. I accept."
Please sit down.
A voice formed in her head, within her sensory implants and she heard a beep as her existing AI powered off.
“You seem to know what you are doing,” she said to the little creature.
Do not be alarmed. Vision and hearing will be temporarily suspended.
Then her vision started to shimmer and darken, her hearing faded. Her heart skipped a beat, she was helpless to stop the process now, her sensory implants could override even her own senses, a thought that occasionally had unsettled her over the years. She saw a message scroll into the blackness.
AI-Ext-5R455 – Pairing process started.
In the middle of the blackness, a string of messages scrolled by as the world came back into focus again. She gasped.
She didn't see the door ahead of her as she did before. Now she saw the entire room, all at once; the door ahead of her, the shelves to the right, bedchamber on her left and, remarkably, the portions of the room behind her. She could even see the floor and ceiling, all at once.
Her hearing was now returning and she could hear her own rapid heartbeat and breathing. She slid her fingers against each other and the sound of her skin rubbing against itself filled her ears. A group of people walked by her room, in mid-discussion, and suddenly their faint words were amplified.
She stood and her entire field of vision changed, she took a step and the scene seemed to melt into the direction of her motion, the same scene but from a new viewpoint. She stumbled and although her head snapped downwards instinctively, her vision of the room remained the same.
Fascinated, Cyn walked towards the door while watching both the door approach and yet the rest of the room recede. She slipped one hand up and in back of her neck, a corresponding blotch appeared in her three-dimensional view, moving as her fingers slipped along the back of the necklace.
But the empty spot disappeared away when her fingers moved to the front. She guessed why and closed her eyes, the dark spot returned. She was seeing through the advanced AI but also with her own eyes. Already she felt the onset of a headache but she decided she could handle it.
She opened the door and slipped outside and into the hallway, her walking erratic, as if inebriated. Upon reaching the end of the hallway, she turned around and tried walking back. She repeated the exercise again and again until her could walk without leaning against the wall of the corridor.
Cyn walked up the stone stairs, which led to the lobby, and held the railing tightly as she came into view of the large chamber and all the motion within. Her new AI picked up identities just as before but she was also aware of voices emerging and fading. She slipped into a chair and watched the world from her new, augmented viewpoint.
Pur was manning the information desk and Cyn looked over at her, Pur's avatar becoming enhanced as she did so, her conversation with a young corper becoming discernible. Even Cyn's excellent hearing would not have been able to make out their words at this range especially considering the competing noise.
She focused on two men in a different corner and now the previous voices faded in favor of these new targets. It was a helpful feature for most, but Cyn was omnaudient and would have not been confused to hear both conversations at once. She would need to figure out how to make it do so, later.
Suddenly, a metal chair slid from a transportation cart that was being pushed across the floor by a young man. The chair, the item in rapid motion, was highlighted in her field of vision as if drawing her attention to it. She saw the metal chair tumble toward the hard floor and she knew that the sound would jar and echo the entire room. Her eyes closed and her hands reached toward her ears. The sound reached her but was muffled almost as quickly as she could hear it. The location of the sound was also highlighted in her field of vision and she was even prompted to replay the disturbance. The AI gave her many options and up til now she had declined them. This time, she allowed it and was treated to a replay of the event: she watched again as the chair slid, tumbled and then slammed fully onto the floor, the chair slapped the ground hard and then clanged, clattered and echoed all at a reduced intensity level.
She stopped and looked at the time. Tonight was the big Transom Gala and she had no idea if she would be working the kitchens, serving drinks or even attending as a guest. She shut off her incoming feeds; she still had at least two solid hours and she was determined to spend the entire time learning as much as possible about this new AI.
Lynda
Lynda sat on the floor, her back against the locked portal, her bare legs curled beneath one thigh, her face littered with yellow squares generated by light from an opening in the attic sifting through the grating which comprised the ceiling of her cell.
In front of her, in the center of the room, was the odious examination station, it was also her bed when she could stand to place herself within its grasp.
Yet again, she sat on the floor of her cell and asked herself why had she ever agreed to visit a corper clinic with her ex-boyfriend, a man who had gone from seemingly kind and considerate to petty and self-absorbed in the space of a couple weeks. Why couldn't she see his true colors earlier? How many girls had come to her over the years with similar stories? Love truly was blind.
But she remembered the reason she had let him bring her to that clinic, even though he had repulsed her in those final days. The abortives she had been taking
were not working, she had taken three different kinds and none of them worked; and she could not bear the prospect of raising a child with this awful man. She had hoped that perhaps a corper doctor could give her something better...and she had to admit..she wanted to see the look on his face when she asked for it.
But she had been the one who had been surprised and now here she was, a prisoner in some Transom medical facility. And worse, that little man, the Doctor, would be making his rounds and would add to her frustration and anguish.
At first, she thought he was just naive, unaware that she was being held against her will, his demeanor was so calm and unconcerned; she couldn't believe he knew. But he did know and she had come to hate him even more for his calm apathy. He was like a mannequin, without feeling, without a soul. He unsettled her.
She was staring up into the rafters, the space beyond the broken web of a ceiling when she heard his foot steps. She crawled back toward the examination station as the door slid open. She wondered about the girls who had previously relied on her, who would help them? Who would listen to them?
“Lynda,” he observed as she looked back, so she could watch him even as she crawled away, finally reaching the machine in the room's center. It was then that her hand, upon reaching the foot of the metal beast, found the end of a piece of wire which protruded from underneath. It was a thick, bare, wire and she let it press into her skin as she looked up at the odious man.
She did not reply, as the man walked into the room. This time she did not even bother to look at the open door. She had tried to escape once but now she knew better and as if to confirm her suspicion, a large man passed silently by the entry. That man had enjoyed teaching her a lesson, she did not want to give him a second chance.
“Your pregnancy is coming along marvelously,” the Doctor announced, “It is almost time to transfer it to a fetal incubation chamber. Your ordeal is almost at an end, and then you can be reunited with its father, a happy family. Aren't you pleased?”
