Never Forsaken

by Michael Anderle

  Las Vegas, Nv - USA

  The microwave ding sounded and Tom got up from the table. He brought back the chili con queso he had warmed up and turned the corn chips in Jeffrey’s direction, offering him a few. Jeffrey reached out and grabbed a handful, dipping his chip for cheese and munching the whole chip in one bite. No double dipping for him.

  He talked around his chewing, “We are getting closer to decision time for the most important aspect of this whole AI project.”

  Tom grabbed his Wagner’s Draft root beer and raised it in a toast. “I know, exciting right?”

  Jeffrey shook his head, “Pretty momentous, this decision could be great, or it could get us ridiculed for decades, hell possibly centuries.”

  Tom looked at his bottle, “Maybe this is too light? Need something heavier for this discussion.”

  Jeffrey agreed so Tom went to the refrigerator and brought back two Cokes. “Need caffeine for this discussion.” They clinked the two 1-liter bottles together, Tom reading the ‘Hecho en Mexico’ written on the side. “Why does this stuff taste so much better than what they bottle in the plastic?”

  Jeffrey put his bottle down, “Real sugar?”

  Tom shrugged, “Maybe, but fuck it’s good.”

  Jeffrey sighed, put the Coke on the table and looked back at his main partner on this project, “Ok, we’ve put this decision off long enough. Male or female?”

  Tom barked out his answer, “Female!”

  Jeffrey closed his eyes in weary acceptance, he knew they would have a disagreement, just not this fast. “Seriously? You want another female AI voice? Isn’t SIRI, Cortana and whatever the hell Google names their voice good enough for you, yet?”

  Tom thought for a second, “You know, I don’t know what they call their voice command. It’s just Google Now, right?”

  Jeffrey snorted, “Maybe they call it Julia, I don’t know. Stop dodging the question. Do we want to follow everyone else, or strike out on our own?”

  “Like they did in War-games?” Tom switched his voice to sound like an electronic computer voice, “Would-you-like-to-play-a-game?”

  Jeffrey stopped to consider his point, “Yes, I see what you mean. Plus, there is the whole ‘Dave’ from 2001.” Jeffrey thought about the whole male vs. Female issue. “Seems to me the idea is that a male voice can come across as more menacing.”

  “Yes, but then you have the female coming across as too mothering, “Here, let me lock all of the doors so you can’t leave the house, then you can’t possibly get hurt.” Tom thought for another second, “Great, she could decide we don’t need to leave the planet, and here I was wanting to get voice samples of James Earl Jones.”

  Jeffrey looked at the man, shock on his face. “Darth Vader? You want to put Darth Vader’s voice connected to our AI? Hell, why not use what’s his face, Hannibal Lector?”

  “Anthony Hopkins.”

  “Yeah!”

  Tom looked over at him, “What? You want to give him Mickey Mouse as a voice? If you made me squeak all of the time, I would certainly choose team evil.”

  Jeffrey calmed down. “This is our world shattering discussion and hang up? What if ADAM decides to research the actor or actress and then model its behavior on the actor or the part.”

  “Good point, no psycho killers, agreed?” Tom said.

  “Agreed. What about a scientist, like Einstein?” Jeffrey reached for another chip.

  Tom scratched his chin, “I don’t know. What if the scientist is just a theoretician, do those guys ever get any real work done?”

  Jeffrey smiled, “Lawyer?”

  Tom’s face scrunched up in disgust, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Tom smiled evilly at his boss, “Politician?”

  It was Jeffrey’s turn to be disgusted. “I hate you; I really, really hate you.”

  Jeffrey reached down with his chip, but the cheese was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The two men broke up, not deciding what kind of voice to give ADAM and went back to building 1. Jeffrey brought up the next point of concern. “Ok, we start with a core download to give the system enough information to start figuring out causality and questions to seek new answers. What should we inject second?”

  “What have you thought of so far, and what have you rejected?”

  “The classics, but then which classics? We could go for religious, the Bible, but then the whole Old Testament eye-for-an-eye thing. The Qur’an? No thank you. Plus, I don’t want the chance to put a God complex into the thing.”

  “So, we believe that whatever we feed it, will start it down the path we want it to go?”

  Both men sat there a moment. Tom looked up, “Why don’t we punt?”

  Jeffrey returned the man’s stare. “Call Nathan?” Tom grinned when Jeffrey reached for his phone.

  It took only two rings for Nathan to pick up, “Yes Jeffrey, is ADAM awake already?” Jeffrey snorted.

  “No, actually we are deciding on a path of input. Are you on speaker?” Jeffrey explained what the guys had considered doing and what their concerns were.

  “So you two have done what, moved it up the chain?” Jeffrey could hear the grin in Nathan’s voice.

  “Pretty much! What are your thoughts?”

  Nathan snorted, “Like this is my baby. I’m going to do what great men have done before me.”

  Tom butted in, “Punt it up the chain?”

  “Exactly, and the person I need is in the house. Both literally and figuratively. I don’t think you have met her, but she is the one who runs this whole thing.”

  “Bethany Anne?” Both men were curious. They knew of Bethany Anne and had been instructed of her concerns, but neither had spoken with her, just with Nathan.

  “Yes. One minute.” The phone was muted on Nathan’s side. It wasn’t too long before the phone was un-muted and Nathan was back. “Jeffrey, Tom, let me introduce you to Bethany Anne. Please give her the same overview you gave me. Maybe the four of us can wrangle this question.”

  Her voice was pleasant coming over the speaker, “Hello Jeffrey, Hello Tom. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. What’s going on?”

  Tom liked that the head honcho didn’t sound pretentious, but rather down to earth. He explained how ADAM worked at a high level and how what they fed the software could potentially affect the learning process to sentience.

  Bethany Anne spoke slowly, like she was forming her thoughts while speaking, “Soooo, let me understand. We feed the software Mein Kampf and we get a digital Hitler?”

  Tom said, “Not exactly, we are going to have to work on the sense of ethics with you, eventually. However, we don’t want to skew the direction unnecessarily.”

  She replied, “So, we want to give it a broad education. I know this might sound off the wall and trust me, I have a reason, but what about using Science Fiction? Some of the classics dealt with ethical issues and large societies and the chance to meet alien cultures. The best and worst of humanity are in those stories.”

  The two men looked at each other, trying to figure out what the software would do with the stories.

  “Guys?”

  Jeffrey jumped back in, “Sorry, both of us were trying to figure out what the software might do in that situation. You are suggesting we give it stories and let it ‘read’ about potentials and results of humanity? What about just feeding it history?”

  This time, Bethany Anne snorted, “Because I don’t want it to make a judgment on reality. I want to have a discussion about stories. I would have a hard time arguing; say the stupidity of World War II and the atrocities over the last eighty years. I would rather have what-if discussions. Much easier to converse when the facts aren’t available.”

  The talk lasted another hour, but in the end they decided to follow Bethany Anne’s lead. They also decided to leave off the last couple of hundred years of history in the core data load.

  —

  Ecaterina was sweating, trying to keep up with Pete’s team. She had
taken Bethany Anne up on the choice to train and went to Pete. Everyone in Pete’s group knew she was with Nathan which guaranteed nothing but politeness from the new recruits.

  Pete; however, wasn’t willing to cut her any slack. She felt as though she had gotten out of shape because of muscles that were in revolt and rebellion. Her body was one large sack of pain and completely devoid of following even the simple muscle commands.

  Like stand up.

  She lay on the mat, breathing through her pain, eyes closed trying to get her stomach muscles to stop cramping. She could feel someone walk onto the mat with her. If that prick told her she should, ‘stop being a whiny human’ one more time, she would eventually get her muscles in control enough to flip him off. Maybe a ‘fuck you’ would be enough? That is, if she could stop the effort of breathing enough to waste the time to speak. Back to the flipping him off idea it was.

  She opened her eyes to see Bethany Anne’s face inches away. “Sh….Sh…..Sh…. Shit!” She continued panting while Ashur went over to the other Weres who stopped what they were doing and all greeted him like a rock star.

  “How’s my little out-of-shape Romanian ducky doing today, hmmm?” Bethany Anne stood up and reached down. Grabbing Ecaterina’s outstretched hand; she pulled the woman up off of the floor but had to help steady her so she could stand.

  “Dying, I’m dying here,” she continued the effort to get her breathing back under control. “That guy is a sadist. An animal.” Bethany Anne looked up to where Ecaterina was trying to point, unsuccessfully.

  “Who, Pete?” Bethany Anne watched as Ecaterina changed from a sort-of pointing hand to a sort-of thumbs up gesture. Bethany Anne waved Pete over. He came over and smiled as Ecaterina finally arched her back and seemed to get herself under control.

  “Yes, my Queen?” Pete said.

  Ecaterina rolled her eyes, not him, too? She was still a little sore over the Pepsi incident but not sore enough to sneak any Pepsi’s back into Bethany Anne’s personal fridge. For now, they stayed in the main kitchen fridge.

  “How is wonder-butt doing here?” Bethany Anne smiled as Ecaterina tried to get her finger to flip her off, finally she used her left hand to pull up her right middle finger.

  Pete watched Ecaterina while answering Bethany Anne’s question. “Pretty fantastic, I would say. I trained her like you asked, making sure she was being pushed like a Wechselbalg. For a human, she ranks pretty highly. Probably has more stamina than Scott actually.”

  Ecaterina’s mouth dropped open. She was being trained against the TQB guard’s abilities? She didn’t know if she should be proud of herself, or trying to locate the nearest gun to shoot the both of them. She would probably accomplish shooting her foot off because she couldn’t lift the damn thing at the moment.

  “What about the other three?”

  “Not even close to John and Darrell. John for obvious reasons and Darrell because he came back from the sand-pit and never stopped pushing himself. Eric has good days and bad. But overall he is still pretty solid and she would need another month to catch him.”

  “Hmmm, going to have to make sure Gabrielle works him more.” Pete grimaced, he didn’t mean to point out Eric had bad days. It was something that just occasionally happened, but even trying to throw in a bone to help Eric out would only get Bethany Anne’s attention honed in on the subject. Pete shrugged, what didn’t kill you, made you stronger.

  Bethany Anne called Ashur back over and helped Ecaterina to limp back to her temporary room here on the Ad Aeternitatem. The Weres had been moved in order to get accustomed to the boat they would be protecting. All of them had been ‘sworn in and sworn at’. Pete took them all aside, individually and collectively. He would allow nothing less than the best they had in them. They were the first generation, what would be the greatest generation of Wechselbalg Guardians. They would be setting the standard every Guardian would need to meet for generations to come.

  In Pete’s eyes, every one of the new team, from Tim and Joel to Rickie, Joseph and Matthew found themselves measured and wanting. They would measure up or they would die trying. Pete’s expectations for each of them, unique to their own accomplishments to date, were stretch goals. Even Tim found himself working to reach a goal above his own expectations.

  To live is to believe. They would be the hardest, fastest, meanest guardians ever before them, and ever after them. They would never accept defeat.

  Over the next century, the core beliefs Pete instilled and these men accepted became the cornerstone of the Guardians. Even when killed to the last fighter, the enemy would know to expect another group to come again to take the position and their brothers bodies. Often, if a position was held by the Guardians, the enemy would try their damnedest to go around. Occasionally, they just decided it wasn’t worth it and would go elsewhere.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  While Ecaterina was cleaning up, Bethany Anne worked with Team BMW and heard the firsthand account of what happened and what they had figured out.

  With further insights which Bethany Anne was able to provide with TOM’s input, the team did confirm the information Marcus and William had surmised was the problem. She stayed an extra hour, detailing new technologies for Marcus who was able to grasp the concepts, if not the details. Marcus could not figure out how she was able to review such technical documents and figure out the solutions so quickly.

  It wasn’t until Bethany Anne admitted she was communicating with a technical representative of the alien’s technology to help the men that Marcus both understood and then sat down, completely overwhelmed.

  “You are speaking with an Alien?” He sat on the chair, trying to come to terms with the communication.

  She starred at Marcus, not understanding his seeming inability to accept she was talking with an Alien. “You have seen the space ship; I’ve taken you through it once. Well, to be truthful certain parts. However, you have a problem believing I’m communicating with an Alien?”

  He looked up at her, “No! No, I don’t doubt you’re doing it.” He waved his hands at the blue-prints and calculation sheets on the table the men had been working on. “I can tell that a lot of this is over your head.” He looked back at Bethany Anne, his neck coloring, “No offense intended.”

  She smiled, “No offense taken, Marcus. I’m not a rocket scientist, I just know someone who is.”

  I’m a pilot.

  You’re an alien whose whole naming structure begins with the answer to a mathematical problem. I’m thinking I can throw in rocket scientist as the least of your accolades!

  Well, since you put it that way, I suppose I am.

  Having made TOM feel better about himself, she continued. “If I could, and we really should have figured out a way to do this already, I would give others access to communicate with him. But I warn you!” Marcus looked up at her eyes, “He can be a handful and a bit of a smart-ass.”

  William snorted, “Sounds like he fits right in.”

  “Yeah, he fit in just fine, I’m sure he will fit in again.”

  The men had no clue what she meant by that comment.

  After her conversation with Bobcat’s team, she and Ashur took Ecaterina to her Bethany Anne’s home in Key Biscayne. Coming out of the closet, Ecaterina was surprised to see a man sleeping in Bethany Anne’s bed, even if he did look a little under the weather. She hissed to Bethany Anne, “You’ve got a man in your bed!” Bethany Anne looked over at the bed as she walked to her suite door.

  “Yeah? That’s Michael. He got messed up pretty badly in Germany. He’s sleeping, getting himself rested up and healed. Right now, he’s a sort-of invited guest.”

  “Yeah, but he is kind of cute in an older-man sort of way.” Ecaterina was staring at Michael, making no effort to leave the room. Ashur went to the foot of the bed and lay down. Bethany Anne walked back over to stand next to her.

  “Yeah, as in much older. You realize he is probably as old as your great, great, great, great…” She stopped for a se
cond, counting on her fingers, “How many years is one generation? I’m not sure how many greats to say frankly. Fuck it, he’s at least a thousand years old.”

  Michael’s voice interrupted the two of them, “And he is trying to sleep, not listen in while two women describe him as an old man!” Ecaterina put a hand to her mouth, her eyes flying open.

  Bethany Anne smiled, she had listened to his breathing and heart beat, so she had known he was awake before they left the closet. “Well, don’t be a bump on a log then, codger-boy. The blood will be here tonight; we will get you back in action soon. So continue resting and let your betters talk about you while we pretend you can’t hear us, ok?”