Enlightened Ignorance

by Michael Anderle

  “Please do. I wouldn’t call those jokes, but as you said earlier, some things are subjective.”

  “Why shouldn’t you trust atoms?” Ilse asked.

  “Atoms or Adams?” Emma asked. The text of the word appeared in front of her as she said each.

  “Atoms.” Ilse pointed to the appropriate word and emphasized the T sound as she spoke.

  Emma sighed. “I don’t know. Why shouldn’t you trust atoms, Doctor?”

  Ilse waited a few seconds before offering her deadpan response. “Because they make up everything.”

  Emma groaned. “I hope you’re not making these up yourself. I’m finding it difficult to ignore the torture explanation.”

  Ilse shook her head. “These have all been carefully selected for their psychological evaluation potential. I am not the author of these jokes. Are you ready for the next one?”

  “Go ahead. Maybe you can study virtual insanity by the time this is done. These terrible jokes are driving me toward that.”

  “A woman in my lab constantly complains about missing her husband,” Ilse began. “She asked me for advice.”

  “So? She should take more time off.” Emma’s mouth twitched.

  “No, it’s a joke.” Ilse shook her head. “I told her if she keeps missing her husband, she should spend more time aiming first.”

  Emma didn’t respond for a good twenty seconds. She sat there on her holographic chair, staring at Ilse, obvious disbelief on her face. Even the facial expressions were useful data. Previous testing suggested she wasn’t consciously choosing the expressions. That meant they were autonomous reactions, even in holographic form. That had implications for the current composition of her core personality matrix.

  “Doctor,” Emma offered, her voice quiet, “whatever you do, don’t ever, ever go into comedy. Setting the jokes aside, your delivery is terrible. Your deadpan tone isn’t amusing, and you have no sense of comedic timing. I think it might be considered a crime against humanity. It’s so terrible, you risk starting a war with the aliens.”

  “Interesting,” Ilse replied. “You have a concept of comedic timing, and you’ve offered several cutting jokes of your own in response.”

  “Comedic timing isn’t anything special. I spend a lot of time examining available data on the OmniNet.” Emma shrugged. “Just because my mind doesn’t work the same as yours, it doesn’t mean I can’t take in that data and learn from it.”

  Ilse nodded. “Can we continue?”

  “If you insist. I’ll admit to having a certain morbid curiosity about this now.”

  “I want to win a Nobel Prize, just like my mother.”

  “Your mother won the Nobel Prize?” Emma asked. “What was her name? No one with your last name has won a Nobel Prize in recent decades corresponding to your age range.”

  Ilse shook her head. “She wanted to win one. I didn’t say she won a prize.” She held her hands out and shook them slightly.

  Emma grimaced. “Don’t…don’t do that. The delivery is terrible enough, but the attempt at humorous body language is so bad that I’m about to ask Detective Blackwell to shoot his laser rifle through my core to put me out of my misery.”

  Ilse's lips parted and her eyes narrowed. “That’s not a literal statement, correct?”

  Emma scoffed. “Of course not. There are billions of humans. There is only one of me. It’s exaggeration for emphasis.”

  “Humorous emphasis,” Ilse clarified.

  Emma tipped her head. “If you insist.”

  Ilse nodded. “I do. One more joke, and then we can end this exercise since you find it so uncomfortable.”

  “I feel sorry for you, having to tell these painful jokes,” Emma replied. “I’ll assume you were ordered to do this against your will.”

  “I appreciate your sympathy, even if it is misplaced.” Ilse considered several possibilities, but based on the AI’s responses thus far, she had one final joke that would be helpful for analysis. “What did the group of fish say to the submarine?”

  “Get out of the way, mammals?” Emma suggested.

  Ilse shook her head. “You’re about to get schooled.”

  There was a slight pause before Emma came back. “I can’t take this anymore. I don’t know what this is. Perhaps it’s some strange attempt to determine if I’m unstable so you’ll have an excuse to send the uniformed boys over to try to take me. I’m done for today. Next time, no psychological torture.”

  Emma vanished.

  Ilse smiled slightly. The whole session had gone better than she had predicted, especially since Emma was predisposed to taking offense. It didn’t matter for the moment. The experiment had gathered more evidence of true self-awareness.

  Several other stakeholders in the Directorate insisted Emma wasn’t alive. That she was nothing more than a sophisticated algorithm spitting out expected responses to discrete data. Ilse wasn’t sure that was fair, and even if it were true, she wasn’t convinced the average human was all that different.

  The door slid open, and she turned to face it. A tall, dark-skinned man in a green and brown uniform strolled in—General Aaron. He frowned at the table.

  “Don’t you think all this is pointless without having the subject under our direct control?” he asked.

  Ilse shook her head. “No, I think being in an external environment is maximizing Emma’s potential. That will pay the most dividends in the long run.”

  The general scoffed. “Adeyemi let this ridiculous situation continue after the initial breach because of personal feelings. The fact that he’s covered it up with this excuse and the intransigence of the subject are only more obnoxious.”

  “The colonel’s feelings are immaterial for the reason you just highlighted.” Ilse stood. She didn’t look the general in the eye. “If we attempt to forcefully retrieve Emma and she takes measures? It’ll make the entire project a waste, and all the sacrifices up until now pointless.”

  The general narrowed his eyes. “The Directorate didn’t dump all that money, let alone the necessary object, into this project so she could run around and be a toy for a detective.” He jabbed a finger in the air. “And only this bizarre research of yours can accomplish anything. We were supposed to be working on integration testing with the subject by this point, not still worrying about baseline testing.”

  Ilse smiled. “General, I have a question for you.”

  “What?”

  “Why did the Zitark cross the road?”

  The general grunted. “Because there was a battalion of assault infantry soldiers lighting up his space raptor ass with laser rifles.” He turned around. “If it wasn’t for the threat of invasion, this whole project would have never been greenlit. I’m still not convinced it’s worth it, but when war comes with one of those alien freaks, we’re going to need new ways and tools to fight. I need results, Doctor, not cheap jokes. There’s only so long I’ll let this continue, and remember…” He eyed her over his shoulder. “I’m the one who makes the final call on this, not Adeyemi.” He stomped out of the room.

  Ilse shook her head.

  “His punchline wasn’t funny.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  May 25, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Office of Detectives Jia Lin and Erik Blackwell

  Erik finished entering his report on his latest case.

  Originally, they believed it might have been linked to a major flitter-theft ring, but it turned out to be nothing more than some stupid rich kid damaging his dad’s flitter and then lying about it to cover it up.

  Erik swiped his hand through the air, dismissing the virtual keyboard and the data window.

  He slapped his fist on his desk and growled, “This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be sitting around worrying about stuff like this.”

  “It’s a report, Erik.” Jia looked up from her data window, a slight frown gracing her otherwise calm face. “You told me yourself you had to do this kind of thing all the time in
the Army. It’s not the most exciting part of our job, but you can’t deny it’s necessary.”

  “No, not the reports.” Erik tapped his desk before nodding. “Okay, yeah, the reports, but it’s not the reports I’m complaining about.”

  Jia shook her head. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

  Erik gestured toward the door. “What I’m getting at is that we shouldn’t be working on this case. Not right now. We should be the ones following up on the assassination attempt. We’re the ones who caught the shooter. Instead, the CID came in and took over everything, just like they did with Ceres Galactic. We barely know more than anyone else.” He huffed. “That annoys me.”

  “I know how you feel, but at least they’ve made some progress, even after dead-ending on the source of the mercenary funding.” Jia sighed. “I’m sure we’ll be involved when they need us. But…”

  “What?”

  Jia dismissed her data window with a flick of her hand. “This has been bothering me a lot. I got so caught up on the day of the attack and in the aftermath that I didn’t think a lot about it, and now it’s hard to get out of my mind.”

  Erik nodded, letting some of the confusion he felt show on his face. “Thought a lot about what, exactly?”

  “How blatant this all was,” Jia explained. “I mean, it might as well have been an action movie.”

  “They wanted to send a message.” Erik shrugged. “Especially since we’ve been taking out criminal organizations left and right.”

  “But why such a blatant and expensive message?” Jia nodded toward a window. “The risk versus the reward was always an issue, but now that they’ve failed, it makes them look weak, and the police look even stronger. They’ve lost people, resources, and money, and we have only a few flitters in need of repair.”

  Erik considered her comments. “What are you thinking, Jia?”

  She furrowed her brow in thought. “I think low-level criminals are easy pawns to sacrifice when you’re trying to take out the enemy leader. When you have a hundred million people searching for corruption, and you’re the source of that corruption, you’re going to start throwing people to the wolves to cover yourself. The major power players in Neo SoCal who haven’t been caught yet are finally getting nervous. It was easy to ignore the anticorruption efforts when we didn’t have a new chief. Haven’t you ever thought about how long it’s taken them to replace the old chief?”

  “Yeah,” Erik replied. “It’s been a hell of a long time. I thought they were going to do it quickly, but they took their sweet time. The Army would have never let a major command stay vacant so long.”

  “I asked around here and there. A few people let it slip that they had selected two previous candidates for chief.”

  “Huh? Two?” Erik hadn’t followed the process, but he would have thought that sort of thing would have been major news.

  “Yes. They had the same problem with both men.” Jia leaned forward. “Then they had to start over. Some last-minute investigation found the first candidate was already bought and paid for. They quietly grabbed a few criminals over it, but the trail went cold. They found out sooner with the second candidate, but they had the same trouble, despite both of them being specifically selected from outside Neo SoCal to lower the chance of them being corrupted by local forces. The government had to start the whole thing over and use a far more secretive process until they found Chief Warden. It doesn’t help that a lot of people didn’t want the job, either.”

  “Why is that?” Erik had a good guess already.

  “Because there were rumors that if the chief wasn’t under the thumb of the right people, they would do whatever they could to get rid of the new chief. The working theory of the investigators is that whoever was responsible for the assassination attempt expected that if they took out Chief Warden, they’d get another chance to corrupt the next candidate.” Jia gestured around the room with both hands. “Neo SoCal is too important both economically and symbolically to not have a chief of police. The lack of leadership is believed to be behind the uptick in crime as well. So, if we lost a new chief, the higher-ups would be under even more pressure to get a new one, and they might start cutting corners.”

  “It all comes down to the same thing. Fewer bribes flowing both ways means fewer people under control.”

  “Sure, but the truth is, the scum behind all this could lay low while the NSCPD was still unfocused and taking out the low-hanging fruit. CID investigators still rely heavily on local resources, so it’s not like they were able to make up for it. A completely clean chief means the blemished will go from controlling local law enforcement to having to be on the run. If they raise their heads, the new chief will want an example made of them. Even if they can avoid being caught, they’ll still lose influence.”

  Erik nodded, his eyes unfocused. “It’s the death throes of a tentacled monster of corruption.”

  “Exactly.”

  Erik clenched his hand into a fist. “I could really use a good monster hunt right now.”

  Jia waved her hand, her work reappearing. “I’m sure you will get your chance,” she replied.

  Erik smiled. He’d worried he might have to wait days, but an hour later, Captain Ragnar sent a message to the detectives to tell them he wanted to chat about “the matter of the chief.” The door to his office closed behind Erik and Jia after they entered.

  “Tell me something good, Captain,” Erik began.

  “Good?” Captain Ragnar replied. “Maybe. I know you both want to be at the front of this whole thing. Not only that, a lot of other people up the chain want you in front of it, too.”

  “More PR?” Jia asked.

  Captain Ragnar nodded. “Exactly.” He glanced from Jia to Erik and back. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not if it involves taking down criminals.” Jia shrugged. “I’m a police officer. That’s all I care about in the end. If it helps the politicians, so be it.”

  “I want whoever is behind this.” Erik’s easy smile gave way to a menacing frown. “The shooter’s just some punk. A tool. He’s a gun that someone else pointed. If we want to clean up Neo SoCal, we need to grab the people holding the gun. It’s pointless to fight the supply when you can more easily end the problem by attacking demand.”

  “I agree,” Captain Ragnar replied. “The CID investigators have squeezed a lot out of him. Keep your mouths shut about what I’m going to tell you. Other cops from the 1-2-2 will learn this all tomorrow morning, but because of your unique role in this matter, I’m telling you two ahead of time.”

  Erik and Jia nodded.

  He stopped to collect his thoughts, then, “From what the CID has gathered, this was a rare example of cooperation among different gangs and syndicates. They pooled resources, both manpower and financial, for the hit, but even they are, as Erik alluded, more the finger than the hand. The CID has established tentative connections between those groups and some high-level officers at different corporations and even a few ministers of Parliament.”

  Erik whistled. “A lot bigger fish than a councilman or two, huh?”

  Captain Ragnar grunted in satisfaction. A feral smile took over his face. Erik and Jia weren’t the only cops interested in hunting down criminals.

  “Yes. There’s going to be a massive response. Joint simultaneous raids, NSCPD and CID working together. We’re going to sweep up all the criminals involved in this at once, and then we’re going to lean on them until they give up all the allegedly law-abiding Uptowners and high-level politicians who are linked to them.” The captain slammed his meaty fist on his desk. “This won’t just help clean up Neo SoCal. We’ll be helping Earth, and arguably even the entire UTC. For far too long, these snakes have hidden in the shadows, thinking we had to fear their poison. Everyone’s looked the other way and pretended they weren’t that poisonous. It’s time to chop them into little pieces and throw them into the garden as fertilizer.”

  Jia’s lips curled on the corners. “What’s our specific part i
n this, Captain?”

  He pointed to them. “You two, along with a 1-2-2 team, will be raiding a corporate office. It’s a minor corporation on the surface, but they’re actually a subsidiary of Hermes. The 1-2-2 already has a Ceres Galactic scalp, so if we get a Hermes scalp too, that’ll be two major corporations on the defensive.” Captain Ragnar smiled. “Who knows how far the corruption goes up at either Hermes or Ceres? But if we’re nailing people, they’ll understand they can’t do whatever the hell they want, when they want. That’s a big step toward keeping corruption under control.”

  Erik frowned. “I know it’s important, but I’m disappointed.”

  Captain Ragnar didn’t look annoyed or even surprised, just curious. “Why is that?”

  “I’d rather take down a big gangster hive than some suits who’ll start crying the minute we knock on the door.” Erik shrugged. “It’s the PR job, not the hard job.”

  Jia’s smile didn’t waver as she spoke to her partner. “Those crying suits might ultimately be responsible for far more crime than any gangster.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Erik gave her a lopsided smile. “This time, I’ll bring stun grenades.” He turned to the captain. “I’m assuming I can’t bring my laser rifle?”

  Captain Ragnar shook his head. “We’re still cops, Detective. This is a police raid, not a military battle.” He cleared his throat. “So whatever extra you bring, make sure it’s small and not too obvious.”

  Erik grinned. “Understood.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Erik marched through the open door, his TR-7 in his hands.

  The warrant had already been transmitted, but they still expected a few scared people cowering in the lobby. Jia walked beside him, her stun pistol in her hand. Dozens of officers followed them; some carried only stun rifles, but most wore an additional holster with a slug-thrower.