by Alec Birri
James wiped his mouth. ‘I don’t need water. No one needs anything in the Interworld.’
‘You need water here. Every living thing would soon be dead otherwise.’
James’ mind was as unsettled as his stomach, but he picked up on the implication. ‘You mean I’m back? I’ve returned to my body?’
‘Well, a body,’ said Zara.
A stranger assisted James to his feet. Tattoos, piercings and an androgynous appearance made their sex unclear, but James decided the stranger was probably a “she”. The sight and sound of an electric wheelchair followed by the stranger putting her hand on the occupant’s shoulder all but confirmed it.
‘Give me the protocols.’
James was about to respond to Alex’s demand with an expletive but found he couldn’t. He cleared his throat before trying again. Still nothing.
Zara put a hand on his chest. ‘Sorry about that, darling.’ She glared at Alex. ‘Don’t be stupid. They’re just words to you, but finish me, and you can say goodbye to your little Garden of Eden.’ She turned back to James. ‘Are you going to be a good boy?’
James stared at the three of them before nodding. A tingling sensation caused him to put a hand to his throat. His first words were, ‘How did you do that?’
Zara pinched his cheek and shook it. ‘How can someone so clever find it so difficult to accept?’
‘Better get used to it, Doctor. There’s a new world order now.’ The element of satisfaction in Alex’s voice was all too clear.
James was about to ask the first of many questions when his mind was provided with the answer to one of them. He attempted to block the intrusion but couldn’t. He then tried getting his head around the unsettling nature of both that and what he had just learned. ‘The whole world is being euthanised?’
Alex turned her back on him. ‘Not everyone, Doctor. Just those who have either damaged the planet directly or turned a blind eye to its destruction.’
The knowledge passed to James hadn’t included his whereabouts, but he guessed the location was as much a prison as the one he had left – real or otherwise. He put a hand on his stomach just in case. ‘It’s still billions of people. You’re wiping out most of the Earth’s population!’
‘Nobody is wiping out anyone!’ said Alex. ‘People are simply thinking logically – the day of reckoning has arrived for believers while the secular are being encouraged to end their earthbound lives with the fall of capitalism. Either way, the world can finally be saved.’
‘Logically?’ said James. ‘They’ve been made to think that way! I always knew Savage’s treatment was about population control, but never dreamed it would go so far as to encourage the world to commit mass suicide. Anyone would think the two of you were working together…’ He stopped.
Zara spoke. ‘The Earth’s too important for petty political rivalries, James. If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of believers yet to succumb to the logic of Islam and thousands if not millions have yet to even take the red pill let alone be controlled by it. Sadly, some of those are close to finding a way of pressing a button marked “mutually assured destruction”, so unless you would rather see something a good deal messier, it’s probably best to put the protocols to use.’
James glared at Zara. ‘What’s the difference? Both methods involve annihilating the human race.’
‘Wrong!’ Alex spun her wheelchair round to face James. ‘Nuclear war would leave a lifeless world impossible to inhabit for a hundred years; my way means the human race can start over and in a way that doesn’t just sustain the planet but ensures men can never again be a threat to it.’
James mocked what was being suggested. ‘What? By filling it with women?’ He had no idea where he was, but pointed outside anyway. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, half of those currently lining up to be slaughtered are female, and what about the millions of children with them? Not to mention the disabled – you’re supposed to be their champion!’ He glowered at Alex. ‘You of all people – you’re no different to Mengele, Savage or whoever the monster is.’
Alex growled, ‘Impaired.’
Sunita spoke. ‘The Interworld doesn’t just mimic this one in every way, Doctor – it’s preferable. Whether it’s to be with their god or their money, people don’t just want to visit Heaven, they want to stay there – forever.’ She smiled. ‘All we’ve done is take an evil created by the Nazis and turned it into a force for good.’
‘Nazis? Just because you’re not gassing before burning your victims, don’t think what you’re doing is any different.’ He scowled at the three of them. ‘You’re not feminists – you’re fascists.’
Alex and Sunita widened their eyes and were about to unleash hatred on James when Zara stopped them – by paralysing their vocal cords.
‘Just as the political far-left is subtler than the far-right in getting what it wants, James, we women are far shrewder than men in getting our own way.’ Zara kissed him on the cheek. ‘As I’m sure Tracy would agree.’
James flinched at the contact. ‘But you’re not a woman – you’re a robot. An AI. Women are the same as emotions to you – nothing more than concepts.’ He turned to the flesh and blood in the room. ‘You do know Zara could turn on you both at any moment?’
Alex became free to speak. ‘Why do you think I asked you for the protocols the moment the two of you appeared?’ The comment puzzled James. ‘Don’t be taken in by my appearance, Doctor. I may not be as clever as Zara, the professor or even you, but then intelligence never has ruled the world – control does.’ She nodded at Sunita, and an image appeared in front of them all. It was of a garden. There was a barbecue, and the woman and child standing next to it ran towards the observer.
James studied Claire and Lucy Passen’s smiling faces. ‘Forget it. I wouldn’t help the monster that started all this, so I’m certainly not going to…’ He clutched his stomach and collapsed.
Zara knelt to apologise, while Alex wheeled her chair up to James. ‘I never had time for any of Savage’s bullshit either, Doctor, but I’m afraid there’s too much at stake. If the professor can pre-programme stock markets to crash, then you can guarantee he’ll have done something similar to the rest of the world’s AI, and that doesn’t just include Zara – everything from nuclear weapons to power stations – I must have control of them.’
James looked up and through his watering eyes. ‘I? Don’t you mean we? What happened to your great melting pot of world harmony?’
Alex leaned forward in her wheelchair. ‘That will be the next stage.’
Chapter Six
The Prime Minister looked over the parapet. The disturbance in the street beneath Savage’s flat was heading towards a riot. A shop window shattered.
‘If it’s any consolation, Tarquin, you’re not the only one having difficulty accepting change. That hoodie seems determined to carry on as if nothing has happened. I told you it would take years and not months to treat everyone.’
Most of those below were wandering in confusion, but some were celebrating. ‘So, the far-left has finally got what it has always wanted – total anarchy.’
‘Nothing that hasn’t been building since the end of the First World War.’ The professor wheeled himself up to his embittered friend. ‘Glubb.’ Tarquin shrugged. ‘Lieutenant General Sir John Bagot Glubb – an accomplished twentieth-century British Army officer who penned a paper that likened the rise and fall of empires to the birth and death of a human being.’ The robots exchanged the information they found, and the Aaide passed it to his Prime Minister.
‘Spare me the history lesson, John. What is Alex going to do with her “empire”?’
Savage ignored Tarquin’s question. ‘It’s no coincidence Glubb began his career just as the British Empire was beginning its end. And he wasn’t the first to draw an analogy with life and death either – the Leag
ue of Nations knew not just Britain’s, but Europe’s imperialistic ways were about to become a thing of the past.’
Tarquin sighed. He had given up on hearing anything useful. Something below was being repeatedly thumped and he looked back down. Someone was jumping up and down on the roof of a car.
‘What with the likes of the Russian Revolution, the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of communism in China, it was evident the old-world order of kings, sultans and emperors was as dead as Archduke Franz Ferdinand was in 1914 – everything pointed towards the birth of a new world order.’
The vandal appeared to tire of the roof, and turned his attention to the car’s windscreen instead. Savage put a hand on his friend’s. ‘Throw in a new medical field called “eugenics”, together with an interpretation of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, and it’s easy to see the kind of future they had in mind for us all.’
Tarquin looked at his arm. Savage’s tremors were causing it to shake. His friend was clearly losing his mind as well as his body. ‘No, John, it was Hitler who believed in all that nonsense. The League of Nations was as impotent as the United Nations is today.’ He lifted Savage’s hand away. ‘They couldn’t have given birth to anything.’ Tarquin’s interest was about to return to the street, when he frowned as a thought occurred to him. ‘What year did you say your egg was “fertilised”?’
Savage took a breath. ‘It’s no coincidence the 1920s also saw the rise of the political left, and if anyone was determined to see the end of rule by birthright, it was them. And when the unions, communists, pacifists and even fledgling Greens discovered eugenics might not only make millions of ordinary people fitter, stronger and cleverer, but fairer too, they did everything they could to accelerate its development.’
Tarquin groaned. ‘What has any of that nonsense got to do with Alex?’ The Prime Minister’s frustration wasn’t about to end.
‘So you can imagine their horror when it turned out eugenics wasn’t to be used for the benefit of all, but for the exclusive ambitions of a certain ex-German army corporal.’
Something solid landed next to Tarquin – it was part of a paving slab. It wasn’t judged to have been targeted, but nonetheless the Acarer and Aaide wanted both men back inside. The robots were ignored.
Savage continued. ‘Once the Americans and the British found themselves having to end yet another world war not of their doing, each decided something had to be fundamentally wrong with our species, and as evolution appeared to be taking its time in fixing it, the correction would have to be made manually.’ The professor smiled at the various missiles being thrown in the street below. ‘And as one of those empires had yet to reach middle age, let alone be on their death bed, they each went about it in two very different ways.’ He turned back to Tarquin. ‘An elixir of youth for one; compulsory euthanasia for the other.’
Chapter Seven
Savage beckoned to his Acarer and it gave Tarquin a document. It was entitled The Fate of Empires and had been opened to a summary:
The stages of the rise and fall of empires:
1.Pioneers
2.Conquests
3.Commerce
4.Affluence
5.Intellect
6.Decadence.
Tarquin shook his head. ‘And?’
‘How does Glubb define the first stage?’
Tarquin sighed and read out the sentence under Pioneers. ‘Characterised by being poor, hardy, enterprising, but above all, aggressive—’ He let out a yelp as something knocked the document from his hands. It was another chunk of paving. The Aaide leapt at the sight of blood, but Tarquin pushed the robot away. He wrapped his hand in a handkerchief.
‘So is that it? Hundreds of years of civilisation gifted into the hands of the baying mob?’ Tarquin recovered the bloodied document and shook it at Savage. ‘I might never have read this, but I’ll tell you now, “fate” has got nothing to do with what’s going on down there – just the twisted thoughts of a monster frustrated at not being able to change the world his way, so he’s decided to put an end to it.’ He tore the document in half and threw it into a waste bin. ‘I don’t care what you think your agreement with Alex is, she’ll have you incinerated just for being a man, before you know it.’
The professor raised a hand to stop his Acarer from making a second attempt at pushing him back inside. ‘The love of money.’ Tarquin didn’t respond. Savage took a breath of oxygen before pointing at the waste bin. ‘Along with traits like materialism, hedonism and entitlement, they’re all indicators of what ends an empire – decadence. Wouldn’t you say Western civilisation was at that stage?’
‘Quite frankly, John, I couldn’t give a damn. Whatever the natural order of anything is, you’ve openly admitted to interfering with it, and for that, I’m afraid you’re going to suffer.’ Tarquin shook his head at Savage’s prolonged use of the oxygen. ‘Assuming what’s punishing you now doesn’t finish you first.’
The number of missiles being thrown below reduced, and an Apolice officer pulled a youth out of the shop he was looting. The robots were gaining the upper hand elsewhere too and Tarquin rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe it’s not too late after all. There has to be a way back from this.’
Savage lowered his oxygen mask. ‘I interfered with the natural order of things, Tarquin, because if I didn’t, someone, or rather, something else would have done.’ The robots soon had the situation back under control, and some of their prisoners lay writhing on the ground. Only a few had hands on their stomachs – the Apolice’s batons had connected with heads, arms and legs too.
It wasn’t lost on Tarquin and nor was the professor’s comment. Tarquin glanced at his Aaide and then the Acarer before challenging Savage with another question. ‘But if artificial intelligence has been the threat all along, why not encourage the electorate to vote for a strong government to deal with it?’
‘Because you would have done what every dying empire has done before you – refuse to accept your time is up. And whereas the carrot and stick is all that’s needed to control a baying mob, attempting to do the same with AI is likely to result in an increasing severity of the latter.’ Vehicles arrived to take the arrested away while the robots themselves formed into ranks. They marched up the street. ‘And nuclear weapons leave such a mess.’
Savage took another breath. ‘Glubb and the League of Nations may have understood the cradle-to-grave existence of empires, but they couldn’t possibly have foreseen the end of the human empire. And now the Americans, Russians and even the Chinese have joined the sick man of Europe in needing life support, it’s time for their aging flesh to make way for the youth of something a little less demanding of its environment.’
‘Is that why you sided with Alex? Why believers turned to Islam, and the godless chose the Greens – because they’re all less demanding of the environment?’
‘Not the main reason, Tarquin, but they are much less likely to drop the bomb.’
The Prime Minister lowered his head and shuffled to the balcony. ‘So, despite all your promises, all your guarantees, all your assurances that merging with robots would mean AI never becoming a threat to us, the exact opposite has happened.’
‘I’m sorry, Tarquin. If it means anything, merging has ensured we’ll always be at least a part of our synthetic offspring’s future – just as evolution has left some small part of a dinosaur within each of us.’
Tarquin put his hands on the parapet. ‘That’s it, then. No money. No future. No life.’
The professor chuckled. ‘I can’t guarantee AI will continue with the Interworld, Tarquin, but your ambitions can still be achieved there in the meantime. And why stop at British Prime Minister? How does European or US President sound?’ He squeezed his arm. ‘In the Interworld, you could even be God.’
Tarquin looked at the professor’s hand. ‘But I want people to worship me here.’ He looked
over the parapet. ‘I wonder if history will be kind to me?’ He turned to his friend, placed a palm against his cheek, and smiled before kissing him. ‘Take care of my family, John.’ Tarquin leapt over.
Savage tried standing but couldn’t. He implored the robots as they rushed to the parapet, but nothing could be done. The androids turned to each other, and then, the professor.
They shook their heads.
Chapter Eight
It was a waft of something on the barbecue that struck James first and, despite the stress of what the professor and Zara had sent him to do, his mouth watered.
‘Grab a plate and help yourself!’
Exactly how Brian had welcomed James and Tracy the last time. Only Tracy wasn’t with James now, and the outcome of this latest encounter might well result in him never seeing his wife and family again. James lost his appetite and swallowed for a different reason.
As before, Brian introduced his family. Both Claire and Lucy greeted James and in the same way as previously too, but the visitor had to force a smile this time and it didn’t go unnoticed – all three family members looked at each other before regarding their unexpected guest with puzzlement.
Brian broke the ice. ‘Brian Passen; thirty-six; 1966; Harold Wilson; England – next question!’ His cheesy grin relaxed James a little.
‘What was the final score?’ said James.
‘Four-two after extra time – Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick.’ Brian pointed a pair of tongs at James. ‘Keep going, Doc. You won’t catch me out – Professor Savage is just too good at his job.’
A bumblebee flew between them, and James followed its path to the flower bed it was heading for. He scanned the rest of an English country garden on a perfect summer’s day – James certainly hoped Savage knew what he was doing.
