Catch Me If I Fall

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘I’m putting things in context, Ashleigh. Context is vitally important. Do you understand?’ I might have nodded. Maybe I did, because she continued almost immediately. ‘Governments came and went but most could do nothing. Then, about fifty years ago, a law was passed that stopped any woman having more than one child. Some people ignored it, mainly the people who live off the grid out there, the people who forage for themselves outside government control and outside the law. But the point is, Ashleigh, it was a good law. When there’s not enough food, you have to control the population. If you don’t, the lack of food will do it for you. Too many people starve already without us making it worse.’

  More silence. But I knew it was going to end.

  ‘Have a child and you are sterilised. Permanently. If you happen to be having twins or triplets, okay. You keep them, obviously, but then you’re sterilised.’ Long pause. ‘This brings me to Aiden.’ She sat on the chair next to me and for a moment I thought she was going to put a hand on my knee. Her fingers hovered for a second and then disappeared from my sightline.

  ‘One thing that did improve after the catastrophes of global warming was investment in science. Because it was science that offered hope for the future of humanity. Editing the genes of certain foodstuffs so they could survive, thrive even, in a radically changed climate. Eventually, world governments will look more closely at space investment, getting us off this planet to another world where we can start again. Cynics would say, to destroy our new home again. But that’s the future. For the time being, it’s all we can do to survive here. One of the things invested in was AI, my specialist area. Artificial intelligence can do so much. It can learn, adapt, change. It can work out how to become more efficient at whatever task it’s given and efficiency is more important than it’s ever been. It’s no exaggeration to say that AI is the key to our survival. In the last fifty years it’s evolved at a phenomenal rate, an unbelievable rate – it would, of course. That’s what AI is designed to do.’

  Mum crouched down in front of me again, lifted up my chin with one finger. I didn’t have the energy to resist. I met her eyes.

  ‘Thirteen years ago I had a beautiful baby girl and I called her Ashleigh. But I knew she would be an only child. She had to be an only child because immediately after your birth I was sterilised. And I held you in my arms and I looked at your sweet face and I knew that if, by some genetic accident, I’d had twins, you would have a brother to look out for you, to protect you. What would happen to Ashleigh if her parents died? You were going to be alone and growing up in a harsh and dangerous world. That’s when I decided I would make you a brother. And he would learn to love you and protect you and die for you if necessary.’

  Maybe because I had been so out of it for so long, Mum didn’t see my slap coming. It stung my palm, made a loud crack and turned her face to the side. She stayed that way a moment and then slowly turned back to look at me.

  ‘Aiden had to return to what we called his clinic at very regular intervals.’ She carried on as if nothing had happened. ‘In fact, it was my laboratory, and there I made adjustments, to his size obviously, so that he appeared to grow along with you, and to his appearance, so it matched yours. I also had to update his learning algorithms, to ensure he developed mentally as a normal child should. Everything I did in Aiden’s creation had one purpose. To protect you. And he did, Ashleigh. He saved your life.’

  My brain wasn’t working very well, but a sudden insight came to me.

  ‘Aiden,’ I said. ‘AI.’

  Mum smiled and I wanted to hit her again. ‘Yes. The name I chose for him was … appropriate, one might say.’

  She stood and resumed her pacing. This time I got to my feet. I nearly stumbled, but I wasn’t going to carry on being someone half-in and half-out of this conversation. I needed to think. I needed to understand. I needed to concentrate.

  ‘After the head injury, I checked over all his functions and they appeared normal. I did some deep searches into the various algorithms I’d installed and they all seemed to be working fine. But he had changed. He was becoming different and I worried that he’d lost sight of the sole purpose of his existence. Your safety. I tried to strengthen that algorithm, but he overrode it. And that was impossible. Aiden had become something I couldn’t control and he was obviously capable of violence.’ She grabbed my shoulders and gave me a small shake, as if I’d done something wrong. ‘If he hurt you, Ashleigh, if he did something that brought about your death, there could be no other child. I cannot take the risk, you must understand that. Aiden will have to be shut down. It’s the only way to be sure that your protector doesn’t become your destroyer.’

  I studied Mum’s face. Even now, I was hoping that she would suddenly confess that this was all some kind of tasteless joke, a fantasy she had created to amuse me. A fairy story like those she’d told us when we were small. But there was only the ugliness of truth in her eyes.

  ‘Is he still alive?’ I asked. My voice was surprisingly firm.

  Mum tilted her head to one side.

  ‘He’s still functional, yes. Unconscious, but still … there, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I have to see him.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s really not a good idea, Ash. You will find it very upsetting.’

  ‘Does he know what he is?’

  ‘No. And I don’t want him to know. Why upset him?’

  ‘You’re going to kill him and you’re worried about his feelings?’ I was becoming stronger by the moment and a deep, rich rage was burning inside me.

  ‘I can’t kill him, Ashleigh. He’s not alive.’

  ‘I have to see him.’

  Mum shook her head.

  ‘If I don’t see him I will never speak to you or Dad again. That is a solemn promise. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t believe me.’

  Mum gave a short laugh and then stopped, almost like she was reminding herself that it was not appropriate under the circumstances.

  ‘You’re young, Ashleigh. You’ll recover from this in time, trust me. And this is not something I’m doing lightly. I’ve thought long and hard. Your dad and I are very fond of him too, you know. He’s been part of this family for nearly as long as you’ve been alive.’

  I took another deep breath. ‘I will never speak to you again,’ I repeated. ‘As soon as possible, I will leave home and you’ll never see me. I will not communicate with you. Ever. If I have a child of my own, you will not see your grandson or granddaughter. You will not know he or she exists. I will not come to your funeral. You will not come to mine because you will not know that I’ve died. This I swear.’

  Mum did look in my eyes then and I think she saw something to frighten her. I hoped so, because I’d meant every word.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mum finally. ‘It’s not a good idea, Ashleigh, and it will only make you upset, but you can have one visit to say goodbye.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when that will happen,’ I said. ‘Now, open the door. I want to go to my room and I don’t want to see either of you again tonight.’

  And she did. Dad was waiting outside the door and he tried to hug me but I brushed past him and went straight to my room. I wasn’t able to lock it; Mum had all the controls to house security, so I propped a chair up against the handle. Zorro wagged his tail as I lay down on the bed and I hugged him close.

  Then I cried for the rest of the night. But I didn’t make a sound. I wasn’t going to give my parents the satisfaction.

  14

  Dad knocked on my door early in the morning.

  ‘Ash?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Ash? Are you okay?’ I thought this was possibly the dumbest question anyone could ask under the circumstances, but I couldn’t be bothered to point it out. I was tired. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep. It was in my bones. ‘Ash, I’ll have to break the door down if you don’t say anything. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?’

  ‘Go away,’ I said.

 
‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No. Go away.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘You can’t stay in there forever, Ashleigh. I’ve got breakfast here for you. And a drink. You must be thirsty. Please come out.’

  I thought about it. He was right. I couldn’t stay in here forever, mainly because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to see Aiden.

  ‘I’ve made you chips.’

  That would’ve broken my heart, if it wasn’t already in pieces. He’d made me chips for breakfast. Well, let’s all carry on as if nothing has happened, shall we? Because there’s no tragedy big enough that some fried potatoes can’t make it all go away. Poor Dad. For a brief moment I felt sorry for him.

  ‘I’m opening the door,’ I said. ‘But just you, okay? Mum can’t come in.’

  ‘All good,’ called Dad. ‘Just me.’

  I pulled the chair from underneath the doorhandle and opened the door a crack. Why should I trust his word? Maybe Mum was there, behind Dad, ready to barge her way in. But she wasn’t. Just Dad, with a stupid grin and a loaded tray. He came in, and placed the tray on my bedside table while I put the chair back under the handle. Then he sat down on the bed and patted a space to his side.

  ‘You’re not sitting on my bed,’ I said. ‘I’m sitting there.’ Dad looked around my room but there was only one chair and it was acting as a lock. I pointed to the floor.

  ‘You stand,’ I continued, ‘or you sit there. Your choice.’

  He stood, swaying slightly as he put weight first on one foot and then the other. I picked up the glass of water. Food didn’t interest me, but I was thirsty and I needed to be hydrated. Whatever was going to happen, I had to be thinking clearly. I drained the glass, refilled it from the jug.

  ‘We couldn’t take the chance of losing you, Ashleigh,’ said Dad. ‘And we would have if it hadn’t been for your mother and what she … did. You would’ve died on that camp. You know that.’

  I stroked Z’s fur and he lay on his side, tongue lolling in apparent pleasure.

  ‘It was Aiden who saved my life,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad. He at least had the grace to keep his head lowered. ‘But your mother …’

  ‘I want to talk to her,’ I said. ‘Not now. This afternoon. At two o’clock I will come to the living room and I will be asking questions. Tell her I want honest answers. This evening I will go to see Aiden. Tell her to arrange that or whatever she needs to do to make it happen. Can you do that for me, Dad?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ashleigh.’ He took a step towards me, but then reconsidered and backed away. ‘I wish you could see how sorry, how … distraught I am. I loved Aiden. He has been a son to me, but …’ I crossed my legs and waited for him to finish. I wasn’t going to make this easy. Hell no, I wasn’t going to make it easy for someone who already referred to my brother in the past tense. ‘Your mother thinks … no, she knows, that this is the right course of action. I mean, I … Yes, it’s hard. No, I don’t mean that. “Hard” is not the word. It’s a disaster. It’s a …’

  ‘Dad.’

  He stopped talking.

  ‘Tell Mum, okay?’

  He nodded and backed away to the door.

  ‘Take the food with you,’ I said, ‘but leave the water.’

  He scurried to the bedside table, picked up the tray and placed the water jug next to my lamp. I took the chair away, opened the door and stood to one side to let him out. He stopped in the doorway.

  ‘We didn’t want to lose you, Ash,’ he said again.

  ‘There’s more than one way to lose someone, Dad,’ I said as I shut the door on him.

  Maybe I should’ve eaten something, even though the thought made me want to throw up. But I needed a clear mind and my blood sugar must have been disastrously low. I knew Dad would bring those chips back in a flash, but I didn’t want anything from them. The water would have to do. Maybe hunger would sharpen my mind, rather than dull it. Because at two o’clock I would be a defence lawyer. Mum, the prosecutor, would be arguing for the death penalty and she’s educated and super-intelligent and articulate and … and ruthless.

  I had an oral presentation to prepare. I suck at them. Always have. That would have to change.

  Mum sat on the couch in the living room. The windows had been dimmed, but there was still plenty of light. She didn’t look good, as if she hadn’t had any sleep either. I rummaged through my feelings to see if I could find any sympathy. Nope. I’d used it all up. Dad sat at her side. He was chewing his lip and one hand plucked at his earlobe. Mum was like a statue. I took the armchair opposite, a glass coffee table between us. That was another antique, like the couch and the chairs and the paintings on the walls. I used to think the whole place was beautiful. I didn’t feel that way now.

  ‘Aiden doesn’t have to die,’ I said. Mum held up her hand, but I knew what she was going to say. I’d had plenty of time to think all this through. ‘You were going to say he has never been alive, in the biological sense, so he cannot die. That’s just words. I’m going to talk about life and death. You might not like those terms, but to be honest, I don’t care. We will not be arguing about the meanings of words, because that’s just going to get in the way.’

  Mum wanted to say something, she wanted to argue. I could see it in her face. But she nodded, folded her hands in her lap, fixed me with her eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So, I’ll come back to that, but I want to ask a couple of questions first. Is that goo he eats vital to his survival?’

  Mum shook her head. She was on solid ground here. We were talking about facts, rather than feelings, and Mum always was the master of facts.

  ‘A cyborg, or whatever word you want to use – a humanoid AI doesn’t require food. None of the machines I make would have any use for food. Look at your toy dog. Not that they would be given any regardless, since there’s barely enough to feed people. As you know, that’s the reason pets are illegal.’ I could tell she wanted to stand and pace while giving a fascinating lecture on the subject, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. I needed to keep my agenda in focus.

  ‘So why the goo?’

  ‘If I wanted him to pass as human, he had to eat something,’ said Mum. ‘Hence the goo, which wastes no foodstuffs.’

  ‘Klinsmann’s disease?’

  ‘My invention.’

  ‘It’s on the internet. I’ve looked it up.’

  ‘Of course it is. I made sure of it.’

  I nodded.

  ‘How does he function then? I eat food, which is converted to energy. Where does Aiden get his?’

  ‘It’s a good question.’ I really wanted to tell Mum to go to hell. This wasn’t a lecture theatre and I wasn’t a student to be patted on the head for being a bit bright. But I had to keep my emotions in check. If I lost control of them, then I would lose everything. There’d be time for emotions later. ‘In fact,’ Mum continued, ‘your brain requires less energy than used to be consumed in one of those old-fashioned bulbs in lamps. Nearly all your energy goes into metabolism and the human body is a shockingly inefficient system. Put simply, Aiden’s body is efficient and he runs on renewables – the sun and the wind basically.’

  ‘What actually happens when Aiden goes into that clinic if it’s got nothing to do with cleaning his intestines?’

  ‘I told you. Modifications to his appearance to give the illusion of growth, and checking out the artificial neural networks that enable his learning capabilities. Tweaking those if necessary. Just recently, when his behaviour changed after the skull trauma, I tried to alter the algorithms back to the original setting, remove any possibility of violence. I failed. I tried so hard, but I failed.’

  ‘What would happen if Aiden never went back to the clinic?’

  Mum frowned.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t grow, obviously. He would stay the same, looking like a thirteen-year-old boy for … well, forever, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s interesting,’ I said. ‘W
henever you talk about Aiden, you say “he”. You might try to be the cold, hard scientist, but you see Aiden as a person. You see him as your son.’

  There was a flash in Mum’s eyes at those words, but it was difficult to read it. She steadied herself and it obviously took an effort of will.

  ‘Would you prefer if I referred to the machine as “it”, Ashleigh? Would you?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I thought not. And if you think that I’m enjoying any of this then you are wrong. Wrong. I feel, I feel …’

  ‘Spare me,’ I said. ‘So, Aiden doesn’t have to die. You can just let him be.’

  ‘I’ve explained this,’ said Mum. ‘He should not be behaving in the ways he’s behaving. I put limiters on the AI neural networks that make it impossible for him to commit any acts of violence. Clearly he has found a way to get around them or remove them altogether. He was created to protect you, Ashleigh. Now he could hurt you. He might kill you.’

  ‘Aiden would never hurt me.’

  ‘He already has. You say by accident, but the point is, you just don’t know. I don’t know and I made him. He might have killed that boy in the classroom fight. He might kill you.’

  ‘Okay.’ I’d got to this point quicker than I’d planned, which probably showed how little headway I’d made against Mum. It was clear that me just saying Aiden would never hurt me wasn’t going to cut any ice. ‘In that case, leave him in the clinic. Keep Aiden locked up there, where he can’t do any harm. I could talk to him all the time and visit regularly. It would be just like having a brother who was very ill and wasn’t able to leave hospital. There’s no need to kill him.’

  Mum did stand now, but she didn’t come anywhere near me, for which I was grateful. Instead, she moved to the window, unfolded her tablet from her pocket and punched in some command or other. The windows changed from opaque to clear. She stood with her back to me and looked out over our garden, the lines of vegetable plots stretching into the distance. For a moment, I seriously thought she was considering my idea.

  ‘When I created Aiden, I did something illegal,’ she said, her back still to me. ‘The law is very specific on AI. All devices must be registered. I didn’t do that with Aiden. Or your dog, actually. The reason why they must be registered is so that if there are any … malfunctions, swift action can be taken. By swift action, I mean shutting down. Leaving Aiden in the clinic would serve no purpose and it would certainly put me in prison.’