Assisted Living

by E. M. Foner

  “Yes. I mean—”

  “I’ve added myself as a registered user,” Flower cut her off. “That’s the Eula. You have to scroll down to the bottom and agree to the terms.”

  “What’s a Eula?”

  “End User License Agreement.”

  “How do I scroll? Ohhh,” Julie moaned, sagging forward as the text raced past in a blur. “How do I stop it?”

  “The implant tracks your eye movements from the nerve impulses and pans the display area to match. Just get to the bottom and look directly at the ‘accept’ button.”

  “But I haven’t read it.”

  “Nobody in the history of your species has ever read a Eula. Are you going to throw up? There’s a bin under the counter.”

  “No, I just went too fast. I accept,” Julie said, mentally punching the button. “Wait, everything went away!”

  “As it should, but your heads-up display is now enabled should you call on its functionality.”

  “What’s it good for?”

  “Distraction, mainly. Here,” Flower said, and a menu appeared before the girl’s eyes. Before Julie could even read the options, the Dollnick AI took over and navigated through a series of submenus until another ‘accept’ button popped up and was accepted. Then the front page of the free version of the Galactic Free Press was suddenly superimposed over her vision.

  “Ugh. I don’t think I could get used to this.”

  “Try closing your eyes so you can see the heads-up display without any background.”

  “Oh, that’s not so bad. Whoa,” she cried, leaning forward to catch her balance as the stories began blurring past.

  “Stop trying to look for the bottom of the text or it will always do that. Pretend you’re reading from a book.”

  “This is going to take some getting used to.”

  “Which is why I suggest you practice in the comfort of your room rather than at work,” Flower said. “There’s a very patient young man standing in front of the desk waiting for you to open your eyes.”

  “Sorry,” she said reflexively, turning to look at the patron, and losing her balance as the virtual newspaper and the real world moved in opposite directions. “Turn it off, Flower.”

  The heads-up display vanished, and Julie reached out for the desk with both hands to reestablish her balance.

  “Did I wake you?” the young man asked with a grin.

  “No. I just found out I have a heads-up display and I was practicing, sort of.”

  “You have a high-grade implant? I’ve always wanted to get one but they were considered tacky on Bits, not that I could have afforded the cost in any case. Working at a library must pay better than I thought.”

  “It’s a long story,” Julie said, already regretting that she had shared such personal information with a stranger. “Can I help you?”

  “I heard that this library might actually have the best collection of twentieth-century Earth classics anywhere in the galaxy. I’ve read all of the really important books in electronic form, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to actually hold the original text.”

  “You’ve come to the right place. Did you have any particular titles in mind?”

  “Do you have Kernighan and Ritchie?”

  “Is that a title or two authors?”

  “Two authors. C.”

  “See? I guess.”

  “You guess you have it?”

  “I meant I could see it being two authors.”

  The young man looked at her funny. “The C Programming Language. It’s like the foundational text.”

  “C as in the letter ‘C’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me check.” Julie tapped the library catalog tab to life and entered the title. “Wow, it looks like we have a whole stack.”

  The young man grinned and extended his hand. “You got me, code girl. I’m Zick.”

  “Julie,” she said, giving a perfunctory handshake. “What’s a code girl?”

  “Come on, that ‘stack’ line was too perfect. You’re a programmer yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I can barely even operate technology beyond my old teacher bot. The only programming I’ve ever done is picking out books for the children’s reading hour.”

  “So you were serious about the K&R?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kernighan and Ritchie. Do you really have a, uh, pile of them?”

  “According to my tab, we have more than it makes sense to shelve. You can probably take a copy to keep, though I’ll have to check with one of the regular staff, and they’re all in a meeting right now. I’m just an intern.”

  “That’s my mom’s meeting. She’s trying to license the library a copy of our archives, and charging a token amount is just a trick to get them to accept it for the sake of additional backup. My mom’s a bit nuts about making copies.”

  “How come you aren’t at the meeting?”

  “I came to carry the display she’s using but I’m not that into electronic books. Are you seeing anybody?”

  “C’ing? Is that a programming thing?”

  “You know, like dating. Maybe I could buy you a meal and you could show me around the station if you aren’t hooked up already.”

  “No, not like you mean, but I just met you. Is everybody from Bits so—”

  “Aggressive?” Zick interrupted. “We all spent half of our lives playing games, if not more. After you’ve died a few thousand times, getting shot down asking a girl for a date doesn’t seem like that big of a risk.”

  “I always heard it went the other way around, though I’ve never really known any, uh, tech types.”

  “Geeks. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and everybody on Bits is pretty good at expressing themselves. Might be the pirate influence, you know.”

  “I’ll have to pass on that meal for now because I have a thing about eating with strangers,” Julie said. “I can’t really leave the desk to show you the books because I’m the only one here. I could describe where you’ll find them, but it’s at least a ten-minute walk through the stacks and you’ll probably get lost.”

  “I’ve got another forty-five minutes to kill while Mom makes her pitch, and I’m really good with quests.”

  “Quests?”

  “You know, following clues to discover hidden treasures, stuff like that. Don’t you game?”

  “No. Our tour guide on Bits asked me the same question.”

  “There’s nothing to see on Bits unless you’re into gaming, and I know there aren’t any tours.”

  “A girl around my age started to show us around the museum but she didn’t seem to actually know what she was talking about. I think her name was Ariel.”

  “Ariel is on the junior rules committee and we had a thing going for a while. Showing you the scrap pile and pretending that it’s a museum would be just like her.”

  “Why did you break up?”

  “Irreconcilable differences. She’s like most of the population on Bits, trying to reconstruct the golden age of computing on Earth before the Stryx showed up. I’m as big a fan of the classics as the next geek, but for me, they represent a step on the path, not a final destination. I want to prove that we can hold our own with the other species on their turf.”

  “Can we?”

  “Not really,” Zick admitted, sounding somewhat deflated. “Nobody can compete with sentient AI when it comes to coding, and I’ve seen some of the stuff out of the Verlock academies that’s millions of years in advance of anything we could hope to do.”

  “The Verlocks are the oldest oxygen-breathing species on the tunnel network,” Julie said. “They’ve been traveling the stars for over seven million years.”

  “And they used to make some really cool weapons. I worked on the upgrade team for Time Wars, which is one of our most popular games.”

  “The Verlocks have time travel?”

  “No, but the gameplay is that the space-time continuum has been sabotaged and you have to chase
the bad guys through hundreds of millions of years to save the universe. Whenever a time shift happens, you end up in an alien spaceship from that era with the weapons they used and everything.”

  “Sounds complicated. How could you simulate ancient alien technology that’s way more advanced than anything we’ve ever created?”

  “It’s more about the look and feel than the physics engine,” Zick said. “I don’t want to get all technical, but it would be really tough to manage the scoring if we let players actually use the kind of doomsday weapons some species had. Most of them aren’t around anymore to complain that we’re just faking it with ray guns and cool sound effects.”

  “What happened to all those advanced aliens?”

  Zick shrugged. “Species come, species go. The Stryx are the oldest AI I’ve ever heard of. Some people say that they built the tunnel network because they got tired of watching biological species go extinct and they wanted to do something about it.”

  “How do you know all of this? It wasn’t on my teacher bot.”

  “The teacher bots only include the stuff that we’ve already figured out for ourselves,” Zick said. “If you want to learn more about galactic history, you have to read alien books or play games.”

  “Play games?”

  “Everything I just told you is from the back story for Time Wars. It rolls right after the sign-up.”

  “You goof! You had me thinking you were some kind of scholar!”

  “So how about that coffee sometime? You can tell me all about life on Flower and I’ll tell you what the pirates are really like. They come by Bits all the time.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Julie said. “If I explain where your book is, will you remember?”

  “Mind like a computer,” Zick said, tapping his temple. “Are the books in order?”

  “The catalog number is 005.133 K399C,” Julie read from the tab. “At least, that’s the number in one of the Earth libraries we have on board.” She frowned. “I think this is one of the college collections that was kept intact in case a human colony is willing to take it whole. If you can find shelves with a blue stripe over an orange stripe, you’re in the right area. Do you have a tab?”

  “Right here,” Zick said, producing a foldable model from his belt pouch. “Flower provided all of us with these cool Dollnick tabs our first evening on board. See this?” he continued, tapping an icon of a keyboard. “It gives us the option to code just like we were back on Bits with an old Frunge factory controller emulating personal computers for everybody, except this is a lot faster. I wonder what we’re actually running on?”

  “Probably Flower herself,” Julie said. “I don’t know anything about artificial intelligence, but she seems to have a lot of spare capacity. Go back a screen and look for a book icon.”

  “This one?”

  “That’s the patron’s version of the library catalog. If you put in the title of the book, it will draw you a map with the best route.”

  “This should be fun,” Zick said, turning and almost bumping into an elderly woman who had come up behind him. “I’m off on a quest.”

  “He seemed very nice,” Nancy commented to Julie. “Another one of your young men?”

  “He just joined the ship at Bits and he’s looking for old computer books. Did you read with the children at school this morning?”

  “Yes, I just brought back the books. I have a lunch date with Jack today.”

  “Flower’s Paradise business?”

  “I hope not. Just a date to get to know each other away from the others and maybe strike up a few sparks.”

  “Nancy!”

  “What?”

  “But you’re, you know.”

  “Old? I assure you I’m entirely aware of the fact that I’ll never see the right side of seventy again, but that’s no reason to stop living. Wish me luck.”

  Julie spent the rest of the hour organizing the returns in the temporary shelving area behind the desk. She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or not when Dewey came out of the meeting before Zick returned from his quest.

  “We bought a license for the collection,” the AI assistant librarian announced. “It was so inexpensive that I would have taken it myself if the library hadn’t been willing. All of the texts are out of copyright at this point, but the Bitters did an excellent job organizing and cross-referencing the content. The woman making the pitch said they got it all off of Earth’s original world-wide network before it was replaced.”

  “I met the son of the woman making the presentation,” Julie said, omitting Zick’s comment about the price. “Sorry to rush off, but I’m supposed to go to my first Drazen martial arts lesson today.”

  “See you tomorrow morning.”

  Julie exited the library and went directly to the closest lift tube. The doors snapped opened and she found herself face-to-face with Bill. “How did you get there?”

  “I just got off work at the smithy. You’re on your way to the dojo, right?”

  “Jorb said noon on our clock.”

  “I’ve been waiting like five minutes in the lift tube capsule. Flower said it was a technical issue.”

  “Do you know what deck the dojo’s on?”

  “No. Flower?” he whispered.

  “Are you trying to subvoc?” Julie asked. “I can hear you and you’re moving your lips.”

  “Some of us haven’t had an implant as long as others. Flower?” Bill repeated out loud.

  “The dojo is located on this deck. I’m not a Stryx station and I don’t have that many horizontal crossovers available for lift tubes,” the Dollnick AI complained as the capsule set off. “If you weren’t so late, I would have suggested jogging there.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Fifteen minutes if you were in better shape. Tell Jorb you’d like to start a little later and jog there from work. You can swing by the library and pick up Julie on the way. While your theatre practice counts as a team sport, it wouldn’t hurt either of you to get some regular aerobic exercise.”

  “Yes, Flower,” they chorused sarcastically, and then grinned at each other.

  “I saw that in my thermal imaging, your teeth show up cold. And set aside some time this evening to go over our strategy for the next stop, Bill. It seems I may have made a minor error with the shipment from Bits.”

  “All of those cash-on-delivery packages?” he asked. “Jorb and Dewey both thought it was odd.”

  “My basic business concept remains sound, I just need to fine-tune.” The doors slid open and Bill followed Julie out into an area of the deck that neither of them had ever visited. “Go right, it’s about a minute’s walk—less if you were in better shape.”

  “Are you looking forward to this?” Julie asked Bill.

  “As long as he doesn’t make us fight each other. He was really good as a fencing teacher.”

  “The bunny wasn’t bad either.”

  “Listen. I’m sorry about getting sick on your sneakers. I guess I don’t have a stomach for rides.”

  “I forgot about that already,” Julie told him. “Don’t worry, we’re still friends.”

  “But I want to be—”

  “Late,” Jorb called from the doorway of the dojo. “I’m not one of those old-fashioned teachers who’s going to make you do a hundred tentacle pull-ups, but don’t let it become a habit.”

  “Sorry,” Julie said. “I shouldn’t have agreed to noon since that’s when I get off work at the library.”

  “Flower suggested that we push the time back a quarter-hour. Come in and get out of your work clothes so we can get started.”

  “You have uniforms for us?” Bill asked.

  “For beginners? Just strip down to your undergarments. The important thing is that your clothes don’t impede your movements.”

  “Not going to happen,” Julie declared, but Jorb had already disappeared back through the door. “I don’t think he heard me.”

  “I’ll explain it to him,” Bi
ll said, and entering the dojo before the girl, he caught up with the Drazen and began talking in an undertone.

  “Really?” Jorb asked at his usual volume. “You don’t think you can control your animal passions for an hour?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Bill sputtered, his face turning red.

  “Just kidding, but I can’t start formal lessons while you both look like you’re dressed for mining ore.”

  “They’re just blue jeans,” Julie said. “We wear them all the time.”

  “Do they make a shorter version?” the Drazen asked dubiously.

  “Shorts. What do your other students usually wear?”

  “Well, the girls in the finishing school wear the Vergallian exercise skirts that the headmistress supplies them, but Drazens generally wear fighting trunks and a smock, while the Grenouthians and Verlocks spar naked. Maybe I have a smock you can wear, Bill.”

  “Are you okay?” Julie asked their teacher, who let out a groan when he bent to check the contents of a chest.

  “Graduation exercises this morning,” Jorb said. “Thirty-two teenage girls flipped me to show their proficiency, and some of them didn’t quite pull back enough on their disabling blows to the throat. It’s a good thing I was wearing padding.”

  “Now I understand why you want to find other work.”

  “They only graduate four classes a year so the tests aren’t a big deal,” the Drazen said, straightening up with a grimace and tossing Julie a soccer ball. “I shouldn’t complain. Repetition is the key to repeatability and I get paid to practice falling. Sorry, Bill. I thought I had some extra smocks but they must be back in my cabin. Today we’ll just work on assessing your general condition so I can design a lesson plan.”

  “You want us to play soccer?” Julie asked.

  “Just put the ball on the floor and stand on it on one foot. I want to check your balance.”

  “There’s no way I can stand on that ball.”

  “Sure you can. Just do it quickly and don’t think about it.”

  “That’s impossible,” Julie said, kicking the ball back to the Drazen. “You do it.”

  Jorb shrugged and then hopped up on the ball, keeping his left leg held out in the air in front of the right. With his arms spread wide and his tentacle sticking out behind him, he executed a series of hops, each time rotating ninety degrees before completing a full revolution. Then he drew his left leg across his body with the knee bent and leaned forward to put his right elbow on his left ankle as if he were sitting in a chair.