Agent of Truth

by Grant Piercy

  Burke paced the stage onscreen. The dead pixel followed him.

  “The purpose of this town hall is to level set,” he continued. “I’m sure you’ve read the reports, and I know you’re hearing it from the customers. Our phone lines are maxed out. Our Talos Support Agents are working around the clock. I want to assure you all—these blackouts are not the result of a hack.”

  I’d been in enough meetings and spoken to enough subject matter experts—they didn’t know what caused the blackouts. Saying it wasn’t a hack was premature, but Burke didn’t want to cause a panic.

  “We have a patch update that will be pushed out to our models very soon,” he said. This was true, but since the models were all essentially crashed, they had to be manually updated from a control console. This was going to require Talos Support Agents to walk owners through the install, step-by-step. The kicker was that this would only maybe work—since they didn’t actually know what caused the blackouts, the patch wasn’t a guaranteed solution.

  All this shit just made me tired. Listening to him talk, I focused only on that hypnotic dead pixel. The panic in the auditorium was palpable—people worried for their jobs, worried that somehow their department held some responsibility in the blackouts. You could sense the paranoia in the corporate offices. Eyes that wouldn’t meet mine, conversations cut short, all hands on deck.

  I was sure that no matter what, we’d be blamed. Training always ended up the scapegoat for some lapse in judgment in the field. Nobody ever wanted to take accountability for themselves.

  Even the reclusive Burke was trying to save his job, justifying the trust the board instilled in him. But Burke handled it with aplomb. He’d always been a calm and collected man. That’s what you expect from an executive. He ran his hand through his mop of brown hair and then rubbed his cheek, his face covered in stubble.

  You could see the slim tech bro this man used to be, but worn with age and sagging with the weight taken on in acquiring his multibillion dollar empire. And I was just trying to get my little slice of the pie too.

  “This isn’t just another day for our company,” he said. “This is a test of our true character. It’s not when times are comfortable that we’re able to really show our customers what we can do, but times like these, where we’ll do anything for their benefit. We’ll do everything in our power to make it right. We’re already thinking beyond the patch, beyond the Talos model, beyond the horizon that our competitors can’t see past. When it’s our feet held to the fire, we’ll not only come out the other end unburnt, but stronger than ever before, and with a greater purpose and passion. We will reach our vision of a world set free.”

  What followed Burke’s speech onscreen was an awkward, in-person Q&A session with a regional leader, one in every location the town hall was broadcast. Ours was a lead Talos information mapper out of Springfield. Predictably, most questions would be about the patch install and the cause of the blackouts, as if this little worm programmer was going to know anything of value.

  My thoughts drifted to Devon and the kids, to my hair appointment after work and wondering what to do for dinner. I wasn’t the only one in the audience disinterested and wanting to get back to work; most of the people were on their phones the minute Burke’s simulcast ended. I never thought an English degree would lead me anywhere so corporate, that a love of literature and creative writing would mean training denizens of a massive company. It’s the sort of career you fall ass-backwards into.

  It was another half hour before they adjourned the auditorium. Even after a town hall in the early morning, I was still supposed to commute to the office, just like I normally would. But there’d be no parking spaces downtown. I meandered to the parking lot, to my old Dodge, and sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Car: on,” I said, but the voice command was a bit twitchy. I had to be forceful. “CAR: ON!”

  Opal was in the passenger seat, my helper. She was company-issued to assist in getting twice the work done, but she doubled as a nanny, a maid, etc. Lily-white skin on a perfect body and face, enough for me to feel a pang of jealousy when I noticed Devon checking her out.

  “Opal,” I said as the car lurched awake. She didn’t respond, but the car’s nav system kicked on.

  “What is your destination?” the car asked.

  “OPAL!” I shouted, but again she didn’t respond. “Oh, what the fuck.” I leaned in to examine her face and her porcelain features, her eyes still clamped shut. I pushed her by the shoulder, then poked her cheek. “Goddammit, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Static glitched in my implant. All the air went out of my left ear. I slapped myself on the side of the head.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize your destination,” the car intoned.

  My control console for Opal was in my bag, another company-issued convenience. If she’d just been a retail purchase, I could control her with an app on my phone. But NMAC always had to do things a certain way, protecting company information and proprietary property.

  I stopped to take a breath.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize your destination.”

  “Shut the fuck up, car.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “CAR: OFF.”

  The car powered off without another word.

  Opal was a living statue in my passenger seat, her black hair framing her sleeping face like an unnatural Snow White. Then I noticed something in the parking lot. Others were frozen in place. Some stood on the sidewalk while others were frozen mid-stride. Angry company colleagues pushed and shoved frozen androids and gynoids inside their own vehicles.

  I stepped out of the car slowly, watching the drama unfold. Shouting mixed with awed murmuring in the parking lot as others tried to determine what had happened, blind to the obvious answer.

  This no longer felt like a random software problem. This felt targeted.

  I slammed my car door shut and kept tapping my left ear, eager to hear everything. I must’ve looked a mess, repeatedly slapping the side of my head, marching through the parking lot back toward the auditorium. My thought was to find the i-mapper who led the Q&A session to see if he had any ideas about this. Maybe I was the only one it occurred to—that we had been targeted, and maybe from within.

  NMAC Blackouts Prompt Share Drop

  By Joanna Heard, Chronicle Staff Writer

  NMAC shares tumbled again today due to growing concerns of recent “blackouts” of their popular synthetics. Recent occurrences of the “blackout” phenomenon have led many to speculate on the reliability of new models.

  The defect has been known to occur in the popular Talos X release, though many customers have reported a similar defect in older models. Jason Henry of Automata noted the problem could be in the operating system, though technicians across the industry are baffled.

  “They’re essentially becoming statues. An android or group of androids will be conducting normal daily processes and then freeze,” Henry said. “Obviously it’s not unheard of in the android world for them to freeze, but when multiple models in the same vicinity freeze at the same time, it’s a problem for the company.”

  NMAC has offered exchanges and rebates to customers angry about the “blackouts,” including an option to transfer data from one model to another.

  CEO James Burke made a statement today amid stockholder fears of the recent phenomena. “Our synthetics are the best on the market. These are incredibly complex machines with the greatest computing power ever known. All your data is secure and transferable. Our technicians are working around the clock to patch the issue.”

  The “blackouts” began on October 14 when mass, unexplained outages appeared to occur simultaneously in several cities, including New York and Chicago.

  Moving the “blacked out” statues of Talos models has been a serious issue for owners and city officials. Talos X models average 120 to 220 pounds, depending on customized features. Some abandoned models were reported stolen while others had to be ha
uled away. Secondary “blackouts” after the the initial reported date have occurred in other cities as well.

  The Office of Strategic Services denies that the “blackouts” are a result of a hack, though they remain on high alert ahead of the upcoming election. That personal, private information could be used to blackmail or alter votes remains a top concern after the results of previous elections have been questioned or overturned as a result of tampering. NMAC declined comment on this topic.

  4: retrograde (the architect)

  They discharged me because they couldn’t think of a reason for me to stay.

  Daphne pushed Mike Render’s wheelchair to the hospital entrance mostly in silence, the two of us simply absorbing the wordless ambient noise of voices drifting through the halls. Evelyn was pulling a car to the entrance.

  The doctors diagnosed Mike Render with retrograde amnesia as a result of his accident. They scanned his head using an MRI, marveling at how normal his brain activity appeared to be. They didn’t understand the problem. “Most of the time these things have a way of solving themselves.”

  Daphne had asked, “Will it help for him to be home, in familiar surroundings?”

  Riverside ’s resident psychologist had responded, “Studies show that there doesn’t appear to be any measurable, positive effect of being exposed to familiar stimuli. But it wouldn’t necessarily hurt either.”

  “We can’t afford to keep him in the hospital,” she responded.

  The ride to Daphne and Mike’s home was also mostly silent, a drive up 315 north to Powell, one of the sleepy suburbs on the cusp of Delaware and Franklin Counties.

  When they spoke to me, it was mostly in a condescending tone like adults speaking to a child. A sharp edge in Daphne’s voice suggested it was resentment—that she’d spent weeks worrying about her fianc é after his accident, and now she had to continue care she wasn’t capable of giving.

  I was merely a dispassionate observer of their lives, not an active participant. It was a familiar role.

  Clouds passed by overhead, the trees drifting by as we continued slowly down the road. Houses began to populate the landscape, a Stepford Wives version of America. People floated along sidewalks, moving from their jobs to their homes and back again.

  Mike and Daphne had a split-level home in a small neighborhood near the Columbus Zoo, which was on the western edge of Powell. It was cream colored with maroon trim. Something about it screamed that they’d inherited such colors from the previous owners. The neighborhood was surrounded by autumn forestry, a swirl of yellow and orange and brown that shifted in the wind.

  Daphne was right about not being able to pay the medical bills. Mike Render’s care had already landed them tens of thousands in debt. Before his accident, they were barely able to afford what was going to be an April wedding at a small location downtown next to the Scioto River with a clear view of the Columbus skyline.

  What had become of Michael Render?

  Imagine yourself trapped in a body that’s not yours, using faculties that don’t belong to you. Imagine a horizon in the distance that represents the vanishing point of your memory—sunlit illumination just beyond. What was once so clear had become fragments.

  I recall asking myself long ago if consciousness was truly something that could be transplanted into another body. The spark that consists of you, the collection of your mind and thoughts and memories, exists solely as the result of your chemical and biological make-up moving through time. Then I awoke in a synthetic body made of circuitry that exploded in possibilities. Then again I awoke to find myself in a stranger’s body, touching with his hands, seeing with his eyes. How did this happen? And where did he go?

  Daphne asked me if I remembered anything from being inside the house. Warmly lit beige interiors with various pieces of art deco framed on the walls. A portrait of the Chicago skyline hung above the couch, Willis Tower and Grant Park in black and white. A movie poster from the film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) depicting the robot Gort terrorizing a city while holding a woman in its clutches. And of course, a picture of the two of them, cheek to cheek, smiling from a picture frame—probably engagement photos taken not long ago.

  “No,” I responded. “But it’s a lovely home.”

  Why Mike Render? Why this body?

  She began to cry.

  “What? What did I say?” I asked.

  “We... we’re not going to be able to get married in April, are we?” Daphne said. “All that money we put down for the pavilion. The deposit for the caterers. Everything.”

  Evelyn stood in the corner without saying anything. Her eyes were wide like a deer in the headlights. Daphne’s tears trailed down her cheeks as she sat on the couch.

  All the things around us that just belong to the past. Ghosts lived in that house, and it felt like I was the one wearing the sheet and walking around.

  I tried to reassure her. “My memory might come back.”

  “How? Do you know what room is ours? How to work the telescreen? Do you know the daily routine?”

  “Daphne, he just got here,” Evelyn said. “You can’t expect it all to come back. You heard what the doctors said—you need to be patient. These things usually work themselves out.”

  “But what do we do in the meantime? He’s like a stranger in his own home.”

  A p assive observer, like I said. They spoke around me instead of at me. How do you fill your days when you don’t know who you are?

  She continued, “Is he just supposed to sit here with the things he doesn’t recognize? Sleeping next to a person he doesn’t know?”

  “Books,” I said. “Movies. Music. All the things I used to love. Share those with me.” It was the best thing I could think to say. After all, I was an architect. I reviewed all those relics of pop culture and determined which ones to keep and which ones to erase. Aside from passing the time, as they were suggesting, all these things could familiarize me with what kind of person Mike Render was. My time would eventually run out—if it became clear that Render might never return, what would Daphne do then? Would I be abandoned?

  She turned on the telescreen, which was connected to the Knowledgebase. I was painfully aware of the small camera at the top of the large screen. She typed and swiped at the master control tablet, which made me think of the master controls we used to program or analyze synthetics back at Home.

  “This was your favorite movie,” she said. “It’s called The Godfather.”

  Come on, Mike. So basic.

  She let it play and told me to just sit with it. Like a parent trying to occupy a child.

  She and Evelyn disappeared out the back door, leaving me alone with the day of Connie’s wedding and Marlon Brando taking requests. I approached the window to the back yard to see what they were doing. Daphne was daintily smoking a cigarette, tears still shining in her eyes. Evelyn said something I couldn’t hear.

  I attempted to access the master control, but there was a lockscreen. The film couldn’t hold my attention. The sound of Mike and Daphne’s ticking clock filled the spaces between bits of dialogue.

  Evelyn came back into the house, tapping away on her phone.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “She’s upset,” she replied.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Making phone calls. Cancellations. Trying to get refunds if she can.”

  I didn’t have a response for her. I stared at the movie, music swelling as the decapitated horse’s head filled the screen. Dusk shone outside, illuminating the neighborhood houses in a golden sheen. Across the way, a family exited their smartcar, a man, woman, and child.

  In the film, the movie producer waking up in blood screamed. Outside, the family looked so familiar, and understanding began to dawn on me. Before I could react in any way, the back door opened, and Daphne came inside. With a hard stare, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat,” I responded, eyes drifting through the blinds at the family enter
ing their home. “What do I like?”

  She rolled her eyes and went to the kitchen to rifle through the refrigerator. My attention returned to the house across the way, the two-story gray house with a single-car garage. The smartcar parked in the driveway. I didn’t even register the looks on their faces—they were just a family going into a house.

  “You’ve always been a fan of tacos, and we have some ground beef.”

  “Tacos sound delicious,” I said.

  “Evelyn?” she asked, peeking around the corner.

  Evelyn’s head bobbed up and down in agreement.

  “Then tacos it shall be.”

  I rested my chin on my hands, staring out the window at the house across the way, mind racing through scenarios. Had I been sent because of Daphne and Michael’s proximity to them? To make sure they didn’t reveal any of the information they had on the old project?

  No, that was too rudimentary an answer. Trapped in this body with its damned limited capacities without any way to out-think them. How could I even hope to comprehend such maneuvers? Like sunset, with some grand illumination just beyond the horizon.

  Regardless, I knew that I must speak to that family. I had to look in their faces and hear where they had been.

  MyRead/agent_of_truth: one body

  User: Agent_of_Truth

  “God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body.” I Corinthians, 12:18-20

  Hello again, True Patriots.

  I want you out there to think about perfection. Specifically, I want you to think about the perfection of the human body. God did not require mechanical parts to create our bodies. With that, the Transhumans seek to pervert God’s perfection. We are perfect machines, our bodies perfect containers for our souls and our consciousness.