by Sarah Lahey
Two years ago, Jin developed an information network that functioned alongside an ethical belief system—an AI with a moral code. It has the ability to evolve and learn from experiences, but it isn’t truly self-aware (she’s working toward that now). She called the AI Agent—a reference to humankind’s inherent need to project personality onto non-organic elements, like Tech, Autos, and an AI called Salt. Niels appointed Agent to the board of eMpower. It gets a vote. He gets a vote. He’s gendered male.
Quinn knows Agent. They spent time together in the early phases of his development. Jin needed to provide the AI with varied experiences, so Quinn was her lab mouse. Agent is the most advanced AI in existence, but he has no solid physical form; he’s an algorithm. His only feature is a warm holo glow that hovers over a Module.
“I didn’t realize you were here,” Quinn says as Jin draws closer.
Jin grabs her face with both hands and kisses her firmly on the mouth. She’s done this before, usually when she’s drunk. She’s a good kisser, and girls have soft lips, so Quinn doesn’t mind. But this kiss has an agenda; Jin has something in her mouth, hard and round, like a large nut, that she attempts to pass to Quinn, who initially resists, until Jin squeezes her meaningfully. After slipping the nut thing into Quinn’s mouth, Jin pulls back, makes eye contact, and gives Quinn a firm nod. So Quinn swallows the nut thing, or she tries to, but her mouth is dry and it gets stuck at the back of her throat. She coughs and coughs, but it won’t move.
Her left arm reaches around and slaps her violently on the back. Finally, it goes down.
“Are we really at this point?” Quinn rasps. “Swallowing secret—”
“Good,” Jin says, “that’s done and we’ll talk about that later.” Then she hugs her friend. “I tried to find you. Tried to get you out. It’s been shit here. I’ve missed you so much.” She wipes away a tear. “Sorry, whining, I know, your life’s worse, much worse. Just had no one to talk to. They moved us, the whole team, after the . . . event, we’re all at Accord. The largest Climate City.”
“They moved me, too.”
“At least you’re safe.” She pulls a loose strand from Quinn’s fibrous hair. “This is an interesting look.”
“Yes, trying something new. You like it?”
She grins. “Not particularly. Come on. They’re waiting. You ready?”
“For what?”
“Fuck knows. But he wants the G12. And he might want you as well.”
***
Quinn enters the conference room, and all eyes turn her way. Eight of the nine board members are seated at the table; Mori is conspicuously absent. Niels is here, of course, along with Agent and six appointed executives whom she can’t tell apart—all fit, well-dressed, middle-aged men. It’s 2050, where are the women? Even Agent is gendered male. They wear Bands that monitor their lifestyle 24/7; sleep patterns, heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, alcohol, and exercise units. Healthy employees are more productive. Healthy employees get bigger bonuses. Healthy employees make more Coin for eMpower.
Niels is seated at the far end of the table. He’s fifty-two and he looks twenty-five. She’s heard the rumors: intravenous blood, young blood, preferably teenage blood, if you can get it. It lowers the risk of cancer and Alzheimer’s, improves chromosome strength, and prevents aging. In 1950, two lab mice, one old and one young, were stitched together, interweaving their blood supply. The old mouse was rejuvenated and the young one deteriorated.
Niels has the same grey-blue eyes and air of confidence as Mori, but he’s not like Mori. Mori loves people; Niels loves Tech. It keeps him alive, literally. He doesn’t eat, solid food doesn’t passes his lips. Instead, he lives on a cocktail of microbes. So, he never shits—no bathroom breaks to interrupt his work. Quinn scans the microbe-munching specimen, and there’s no doubt—he looks great. He wears dark, microfiber pants tied at the waist with a silicon cord, a white T-shirt that fits him like cyber skin, and a high-neck, molded grey jacket. Then she sees the gloves: black net gloves, tied with silicon around his wrists. He’s yielded to fashion. He rakes a gloved hand through his glossy hair, reminding Quinn how fabulous he is compared to her. She’s a sight, with her rash and wild hair and dirty yellow climate suit. She holds out her arms and turns, in a small circle, so they get the full view, so they get to see what they’ve done to her.
“Why don’t you sit down?” suggests Niels, “We’re here to help.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Two months. You left me there for two months.” She moves toward the table and the men shuffle back in their chairs. “If that’s the sort of help you’re offering, you can shove it up your shiny, food-free anus.”
“Calm down.”
“Fuck off.” The calm persona thing was never going to work. “And get to the point, because I’m not staying.”
Niels rises from his chair. “Do you know what Herostratic . . .” His chair is self-parking. It glides away from him and attempts to self-park under the table, but it hits his leg and has to reposition. They wait until the furniture is secure. “Herostratic, do you know what it means?”
“Of course, I don’t.” No one does.
“It means fame at any cost. The Greek, Herostratus, burned down the Temple of Artemis so he’d be immortalized. Famous forever. Didn’t care who he killed. You’ve been diagnosed with a self-destructive form of recognition-seeking behavior. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch it early enough.”
Is he serious? “That’s the best you can do? I knew about the Sky River but didn’t tell anyone so I’d be famous as the only survivor? Is that what you’re saying? You’ve had two months, and you went with Hero, Herostra . . .”
“Herostratic.”
“Whatever, you went with that? Agent, what do you make of all this?”
Agent’s holo glows bright. “Socrates said, ‘Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.’ But there is no evidence of heroic deeds here. I voted in your defense. I was the only one.” Great. I have a machine on my side.
“We’ve come to an arrangement with Hexad: You’ve been released into my care, pending observation and treatment. We think you still have something to offer, we want you to come and work for us.”
“Seriously?”
“Sit down, let’s talk about it.” He pulls out a chair for her.
She doesn’t take it. The chair parks itself back under the table.
“A legitimate offer,” Niels says. “Climate prediction—that was your area, wasn’t it?”
“Where’s your brother?”
“Your fiancé is safe. He got out, thankfully.”
“Didn’t he tell you? I called it off.”
Niels pulls back, now he’s off guard. Mori didn’t tell him the full story. He gives Quinn an unblinking stare, and she returns it.
“I have the G12,” she says. “It’s safe, and I checked it the day of the storm: no clouds, no rain, nothing. It doesn’t make mistakes. Very soon, I will relaunch it, and I will figure out what happened. Then maybe I will take the data to Hexad and see what they make of it. So suck on that.”
He blinks and shifts his gaze to the table. Suddenly it’s obvious—he knows the truth; he knows why the climate model didn’t show the storm.
“Leave me alone,” she says. “Whatever shit you’ve gotten yourself into, it’s not my fault or my problem. Release my data and my Coin.”
She exits the meeting and finds Jin asleep in a chair outside the door.
“Hey.” She slumps next to her friend.
Jin leans her head on her shoulder. “What happened?”
“Offered me a job.”
“Tactics. Don’t be fooled.” She tilts her head and whispers into Quinn’s ear, “Access. Special programs. My files.”
Quinn nods. Their security and access codes are similar, two digits apart, a considered decision made years ago in case they ever needed to access each other’s work. Jin has high-level clearance; she’ll leave the files open for Quinn.
“Let’s get out of here
, go somewhere we can talk,” Quinn says.
“Can’t, I need to rest. Go home, be careful, I’ll see you soon.” Jin kisses her on the cheek and waves her outside.
Twenty-Five
The gap between rich and poor—now it includes cool air and a garden view.
RETURNING TO HER HUB, Quinn meets Myra in the Skylift. She’s wearing the same outfit as yesterday—high boots, gloves, and a turtleneck—but today the fabric is a crisp snow white. She’s a negative of yesterday’s persona.
“Community service,” she says. “You haven’t signed up.”
Why does she care? “I just got here.”
“Eight hours if you’re employed, fifteen if you’re not. Gardening is still available. There’s a group meeting this afternoon. Eastern side of the Habitat. I’m signing you up.”
“Why am I doing this?”
“It’s your civic duty. Harmonia is a spiritual co-op, and community work is enriching. It fosters a sense of kinship with fellow inhabitants. You also get Vouchers; you can use them in the entertainment zone.”
“Do you volunteer?”
“Yes, I run the Building Information Tech and Consumer Help. BITCH. I’m the bitch.”
Took the words right out of my mouth.
“And don’t forget to vote. It’s compulsory.”
So much for democracy.
The acquisition of Vouchers is at the forefront of Quinn’s mind. With those she can buy alcohol at the end of the day, which, right now, she really needs. So much for never drinking again.
She arrives at her allotted garden bed on time. Several volunteers raise a hand in salutation; the rest look her over and then promptly ignore her. No one bothers with names or introductions; they keep their distance. Quinn understands. Her climate suit radiates a deficiency of some sort, possibly poverty, and she simply can’t be bothered to explain herself, given that she has no intention of staying in Harmonia and will never see these people again. She’s here for the Vouchers.
Val is the name of their group manager. Val begins with a spiel, “An Introduction to the Climatic Environment,” and he spends half an hour talking to her about the soil, the watering system, the importance of the sun and the life cycle of a cloud. Quinn gets the irony, but she doesn’t bother explaining her PhD in clouds. Instead, she falls asleep standing up.
Because she’s new, she’s put on weeds and soil tuning—no planting, trimming, harvesting, or sharp tools. She was also supposed to bring her own gloves. “Next time,” Val says. Eventually, while supervised, she gets to pull out a single weed. Unfortunately, she doesn’t do this correctly, and he feels the need to demonstrate.
“Bend at the knees, hover, stretch, grab, pluck, discard, check, then check again,” he says. “Important to always check again.”
Val is fond of verbs. He walks the perimeter of the garden, pointing out weeds that need plucking, and it occurs to Quinn that it would be a faster and more efficient process if he pulled them out himself. After three hours and fifty-five minutes, the group packs up their tools and leave. But Val won’t sign off on Quinn’s time. He says she needs more practice, that she must stay another half hour so she can perfect her weed-pulling technique.
I’m never doing this again.
She’s doubled over weeding when Hitch, the beer brewer, walks past. He is wearing a business shirt and carrying a satchel, and he looks like a grown-up with a proper, important job. He could be a Tech manager, Quinn muses, but then again, he can’t sync his module. Perhaps he’s a supervisor or an accountant or a manager.
Hitch sees Quinn. “Hello,” he says, offering a little wave.
“Hey,” Quinn says. “Thanks for the beer. It was delicious.”
He lingers. “Where’s the rest of your group?”
“Had to stay back . . . practice.”
He finds this amusing.
“It’s my civic duty,” she concedes.
“No. They can’t outsource labor—too scared to let anyone in; they might overstay their welcome. It’s a closed community. And those Voucher things, they’re a joke; you get one per shift. A hundred might get you a Titan.”
“A Titan?”
“Cocktail, house special.”
“I’ve been conned.”
“Yep. Worth more in Unus. It’ll get you a not-meal there.”
“This is the worst job.” Now she’s laughing.
“Find something else.” He brushes something from his eye. “You’ve got tech skills, right?”
“Yes.”
“Offer them as a social service. I’ll show you. How ’bout we discuss it over a Titan, my shout?”
“Okay, great.”
“Meet you at the Tiki Bar at five.”
“At five.” She grins; she’s found herself a drink and a companion.
***
Quinn settles on a deep green rattan stool at the end of the long bar at Tiki, an establishment modeled on a Robinson Crusoe–style tropical hideaway. The interior is decked out in wicker furniture and decorated with dozens of palms, cane baskets, and straw canopies. Wall-to-wall bamboo surrounds the perimeter and low-level lighting descends from the ceiling. The vibe is Low-Tech, tropical beach shack, tiki kitsch. The decor is credible; someone has done a good job of convincing Quinn she’s somewhere else.
Through the forest of palm fronds, the bartender makes eye contact. Reluctantly, Quinn dismisses him; she’s on time, but Hitch is five minutes late. Another ten minutes slips past and now he’s fifteen minutes late. Perhaps he got caught up at work; she knows how that can happen—time slips away at the end of a busy day. Still, she checks the name of the bar: Tiki.
She checks her Band again. Now he’s twenty-two minutes late. Not a good sign, but she’s desperate, so she commits to wait another eight minutes, exactly half an hour.
The bartender makes eye contact again, walks over, and places a drink on the bar, directly in front of her. “The Titan,” he says. “House special: grain alcohol and goji juice with an ackee apple garnish.”
She shakes her head, wrong order.
“Your date, he’s not coming; there’s been an emergency, he sends his apologies.”
So Hitch is a no-show. She’s been stood up. It might be the truth. There could be an emergency: trapped in the office with an accounting problem; a glitch with the formulae, debits and credits won’t reconcile.
It could be worse. She could be alone here without a long, cool, alcoholic drink sitting on the bar in front of her. She stirs the drink with a bamboo swizzle. Goji berries are prolific, they thrive in the heat, and Quinn’s a big fan of the slightly sour fruit. Ackee apples, however, taste like stodgy cheese, so she spears the garnish with the swizzle, fishes it out, and begins to gulp down her drink. She orders another before she’s finished and charges it to Hitch’s tab.
Gratified, sitting alone at the end of the bar with her second Titan, a nice little alcoholic buzz permeating her senses, the reality of that afternoon’s gardening begins to fade.
A guy slides onto the jungle green stool next to her. She notes the line of vacant stools along the bar. He chose the one hard up beside her and tucks his lanky legs under the bench, his knees scraping hers in the process. She shuffles away.
“This one’s free, right?” he asks.
She nods. They’re all free.
A Bot jumps from his shoulder onto the bartop. It takes a human form, round head and square body, oblong limbs. It’s dressed in military apparel, a blue suit with red and white stripes. The Bot looks her way and then somersaults forward and backward, showing off.
Give a Bot encouragement, and it goes on forever. She offers a blank, indifferent stare, and it takes its cue, settles despondently, but quietly, on the bar.
The man grins at the AI and taps it gently on the head. “Good Bot.” He turns his attention back to Quinn. “Been in Unus, fifty-two at midday, so friggin’ crowded. The people funnel from the Loop is friggin’ archaic, thought I was gonna expire. Better here. Right?”
Her keen friend is white and young, open-faced, with a slick of blond hair that falls across his forehead. He orders a red wine Vocktail, a virtual drink, designed to fool his senses into thinking it’s a full-bodied Shiraz. Then he points to her glass and asks if she would like another.
“Sure,” she says. Why not? She has absolutely nothing else to do.
“Been here long?” he asks.
“Two days.” Presume he means the place, not the bar.
“Like it?”
“Impressive, but detached. Not real, if you know what I mean. Everything’s round—winding roads, squiggly buildings, like some sort of metaphor, communities and civic virtue, that sort of shit. Right?”
“Yep. Designed by an AI algorithm. Rumor is it was modeled on a VR game, digital simulations and virtual forms, nothing touched by human hand, as if you can’t tell. And we’re like slaves, brought here for maintenance, trapped in little cells with nice panoramas.”
“And the gap between rich and poor—now it includes cool air and a garden view?”
“Yep.”
The bartender places a wine goblet in front of Quinn’s companion. The glass releases invisible gas, mimicking the bouquet of his selected wine. Tongue-stimulating electrodes on the rim emulate the taste. He swirls the glass on the bar top, takes a sip, then thoughtfully considers the experience. He nods; he’s satisfied.
“I mean, this friggin’ planet is over. Right? We’re broiling and drowning in plastic and pollution, trapped on this friggin’ shit hole. Better off out there, in the stars. Right?” He offers her his wine glass for a midair toast. “To the stars.”