Convergence_ The Time Weavers

by Dean C. Moore

  “Suicide would be more forgivable under the circumstances!” He couldn’t take his eyes off the giant robots. They were grabbing vehicles they were overtaking and lobbing them at the Maserati. “There are people in those cars!”

  “Relax. It’s hard to kill people any more. If their medical nano isn’t up to the task, the car cryopreserves them in event of an accident and it senses fatalities. They can restore bodies weeks, even months after the fact with the new cryopreservatives. The 3D printers can whip up whatever organs they need replaced on demand. The injectable neuro-webs can insert themselves in brains too damaged to mend themselves otherwise.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I blame it all on the Transhumanist Party. They have a majority in congress, you know? How they won out over the Greens, I’ll never know.”

  “Just be thankful Republicans and Democrats are a thing of the past, or the people in that car wouldn’t stand a chance. No back from the dead scenarios for them. Hell, you could argue, in the days of Republicans and Democrats, they weren’t alive even when they were living. Too brain dead to know how much they were getting screwed over by puppets dancing for an oligarchy pulling the strings from behind the scenes.”

  “Maybe now’s not the time for a discussion about the good old days.”

  The robots, unable to close ground on the Maserati, hopped on the freeway, morphed their feet into rollerblades and skated after Monica and Ethan. The skating sounds they made were somewhere between a train threatening to derail and nails on a chalkboard. It wasn’t like the freeway lanes were clear. They just rolled over or bumped out of the way anyone that got in their way. They didn’t much care about the multicar collisions they were causing to either side of them. The smart-cars being scrunched past their limits emitted wailing sounds not unlike babies’ cries. Their explosions, when they happened, didn’t even singe the paint job on the robot storm troopers. “Who got the bright idea that robots fighting our wars for us was such a clever notion, huh?!” Ethan squawked.

  “Don’t look now but the AI in this car has been driving for you since you’ve been unable to keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Oh, yeah, thanks, pal,” he said, patting the dashboard.

  “Okay, I’ve hacked our pursuers,” Monica said.

  “Took you long enough.”

  Monica sighed. “Military grade encryption it seems is now of a quantum nature. And virtually impossible to crack.”

  “I still say it took you longer than it should. But my sense of time passing might be a little off kilter right now.” He watched as the robot warriors on the ground, now providing protection, shot the drone planes out of the sky and the missiles they were firing. Ethan was surprised he could still hear a sound with all the percussive noise going on. That’s when he realized the car was performing noise-dampening for his benefit. When flaming shrapnel made its way into the car, little crab-like bots came out of hidden compartments in the interior, doused the flames, chucked the wreckage and assumed positions along the edges of the smart windows which opened up tiny turrets for their tiny guns. Evidently a car safety measure for driving through the wrong end of town, the little guys were more than a bit outgunned. Their algorithms didn’t seem to notice.

  “Maybe a nice leisurely drive through the country isn’t the best idea. Maybe we should consider taking an off-ramp into the city,” Ethan suggested.

  “They’ll have scenarios for urban warfare as well.”

  “Yeah, but with your hacking skills, maybe you can recruit some help, you know?”

  She thought about it as she came up on the off ramp. Decided he might be right. Took the hard right.

  Their robot warrior protection detail fell back on Monica’s direction. They would be a little too high-profile for the city, not to mention awkward in the tighter confines. But not before their stomping feet flicked mud at her. The debris made her skin crawl, as if a hot, wet, gooey slug was burrowing into the back of her neck. She flicked the mud clear and returned her attention to the steering wheel.

  FOURTEEN

  Orion peered out the kitchen window at the quadcopter drone spraying his lawn. “Honey, did we order a lawn fertilizer treatment?”

  “After all the money you spent on that damn lawn! And the tractor and Techa knows what else? You’re out of your mind.”

  “Maybe it was included in the package, huh? Guess that means I’ll get to fire up that tractor sooner than expected. Oh happy days!” He ran outside to wave down the droid copter. It buzzed its way over to him. “Are you fertilizing the lawn?”

  “Yep.”

  “But it doesn’t cost any extra, right?” He whispered the next part conspiratorially, while throwing his voice, “Because the wife is having a conniption fit over how much I spent to get it looking this good.”

  “Absolutely free, sir.”

  “Now that’s what I call service. You’ve earned a lifelong customer with me!”

  “We aim to please, sir.” The droid flew off, back to its lawn spraying duties.

  Orion was about to go back in the house when he noticed all the neighbors getting their yards sprayed too. “I hope that droid wasn’t lying to me about what’s really going on here.” He headed back inside the house by way of the garage. Petted his brand new tractor. “Don’t worry, pal, you and I are going to be closer than me and the wife.” Whispering conspiratorially, “and spend a lot more time together, if I have anything to say about it.”

  He trotted back inside the house. “All is well, dear. Must be some promotion they’re running. Everyone up and down the street is getting their yard sprayed.” He was yelling at her to make sure his voice reached her wherever she was in the house. Much of their relationship had been carried on in a like manner for a while now, and he had to say, he preferred it this way. He was a spendaholic, and she was a miser. What were they thinking getting together in the first place?

  ***

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  “There’s something not right here,” Orion said, standing on the walkway in front of his ranch house spying the lawn.

  His wife was beside him. She was only ugly when standing next to him—in more ways than one; the rest of the time she simply registered as plain. But her oversized nose couldn’t compete with his narrow, tapering chin. His gently waving hair fell for him in ways that contributed to his beauty but her gently waving hair fell in ways that only subtracted from hers. She was ten years older and had let herself go; it was just possible she was transitioning from plain to frumpy. This kind of proximity between them—the kind that alerted him to the widening gap between them in more ways than one—almost never happened, like one of those Venus and Mars transits in the sky, like maybe only once every seven thousand years. “What do you mean? I’ve never seen such a gorgeous lawn,” she said.

  “But it doesn’t grow! It’s stunted somehow. It stays like this perfect height without me having to mow it.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re finally counting your blessings instead of your problems.”

  “Blessing! How am I ever going to ride my tractor?”

  She looked at him like he was mad. “It’s a robot, you idiot. You don’t ride it. It’s an EAV—Entirely Autonomous Vehicle. Didn’t you notice there was no seat?”

  “I thought it folded out or something, so it was protected from the rain.”

  “I swear, you spend money so fast you don’t even know what you’re spending it on.”

  “I’ll take it back then and get one I have to drive. I’m spending Sunday afternoons out on that lawn, I don’t care whether it needs mowing or not.”

  She returned her attention to the grass. “Maybe you bought an annual upgrade package without realizing. Maybe that’s what the spray treatment was about. They genetically altered the grass so it only grows to a perfect height. Maybe with the next upgrade it’ll shapeshift for us, you know, wildflowers in Spring, grass in the summer.” She took him by the arm, “Wouldn’t cornrows be lovely? Be nice to see the house make money fo
r a change instead of sucking us dry.”

  He looked at her with a sense of betrayal hardening on his face. “Can’t you let me have this one thing, woman?!”

  She let go of his arm. “Fine. Go back to the store and cancel the automatic upgrade package. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She marched back into the house, slamming the door and putting him out of her mind.

  “Damn right I’m going back to that store.” He jumped in his car, whistled at the robot tractor. “Hook yourself up to the car, please. I’m taking you back.” Eying it in the side-view mirror, he mumbled under his breath, “Traitor,” as the tractor drove out of the driveway and attached itself to the car’s tow hitch. He turned the car’s engine over and pressed down on the accelerator. The wheels spun and his front end went up, as he popped an unintentional wheelie. He let up on the accelerator until the front end of the car dropped back down as he clamped down on his jaw and his face flushed red. Then he pressed the button on the dash that said, “Smart Car Engaged.” This time, when he hit the accelerator, the tractor morphed over the car and he was speeding down the road so fast he was screaming, “Seat belt! Seat belt!” When the seatbelt engaged he managed to slow his breathing. “The wife’s right about one thing. I really need to start checking what I’m actually buying a lot more closely.”

  ***

  LATER THAT DAY

  Orion pulled up his driveway as slowly as possible, practicing his faces in front of the rearview mirror. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t wipe away the look of disappointment.

  The wife didn’t give him a chance to step out of the car. She rushed him as he put it in park. He hit her with one of the stiff-upper-lip faces he’d been rehearsing on his way home. He couldn’t get it to hold more than a few seconds before sighing. “Don’t tell me they won’t give you your money back on the tractor?” she said.

  “Nope.”

  “Never you mind.” She was already tapping away on her cell phone. “You didn’t marry into a family of lawyers for nothing.”

  “It’s no use. The guy says no one makes tractors you actually drive anymore. To try my luck at an estate sale, or an antiques road show.”

  “I don’t care. He still took advantage of you. You don’t hand an Indian a bottle of liquor. You’re supposed to know better.”

  Orion grabbed the keys out of the ignition and climbed out of the car. “It’s okay. The salesman said it’s multi-featured. He’s sure we’ll find some other use for it.”

  “You’re such an easy mark, I swear.” She had the phone up to her ear now, waiting for one of her relatives to pick up at the other end.

  “Says it can build us a haunted hay ride tour for the neighborhood kids on Halloween, a miniature golf course for the rest of the year. It can even hollow out the ground, turn the property into one sprawling fish farm, or sic permaculture on the land, so it grows food with zero input from us past the initial set up. It’s one of those shapeshifting robots organized around the theme of self-sufficiency for back-to-the-landers.”

  “Seriously? Those are all some serious moneymakers.”

  Orion heard someone saying, “Hello? Hello?” at the other end of the cell phone.

  “Maxi? Yeah, tear up the divorce papers. My useless husband, as it turns out, has something more valuable than common sense, dumb luck.” She hung up the phone.

  ***

  A WEEK LATER

  “What the hell?” Orion said, walking into the kitchen. There was a bonanza of fresh fruits and vegetables everywhere he looked. The most gorgeous succulent varieties he’d ever laid eyes on. “Why did you get so much? It’s going to spoil before we can eat it all.”

  “The UBI farmers were handing it out for free,” his wife explained. “Said the latest batch of GMO seeds yield perfect fruits and vegetables that never spoil, in or out of the fridge, and they were given the seeds for nothing. Some county-wide project. Looks like no one’s going to be paying for fruits and vegetables any longer anywhere on the planet, if the experiment takes off.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “The seeds are infused with nano that interacts with the soil, upgrading it. Damn things will grow in clay, sand. They’ll grow out of the cement and asphalt if you make the mistake of dropping them on the driveway. They produce the missing bacteria in the soil based on whatever the soil needs. And they’re drought resistant to boot. And you never have to buy more seeds, like you do with traditional GMO crops.”

  “Fuck me.”

  She came up and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You, my dear husband, are turning out to be a better lucky charm than anything in my gypsy arsenal.”

  He grabbed an apple and bit into it absently as he stared out the window at the robo-tractor, currently in miniature golf course creating mode going about its business. “I don’t know what’s more hypnotizing, seeing that thing work at such breakneck speed, or imagining all the money I’m going to be able to spend with the extra revenues he’ll be generating for us.”

  “I’ve frozen your assets and your account, and I’m handling all the money from now on. So I wouldn’t waste your time staring at him. Better off dreaming about all the money you’re never going to be able to spend again, just so you have some kind of outlet.”

  He lowered his eyes and shook his head slowly, mumbling, “Maybe one of that robot’s other value-added features is burying the wife alive in the backyard for me.”

  ***

  Orion stood gesturing with one hand at the hologram in front of him, eating his peach with the other hand. The fruit’s juices trickling down his face and hand mopped up by the nano deposits left on him from his shower this morning and the soap he’d used. They would neutralize body odor better than any deodorant for twenty-four hours as well. Right now he was more appreciative of the fact that the drying juices wouldn’t be pulling at his skin and distracting form his concentration.

  Out the windows of the studio attached to the greenhouse he could see the Robo-Landscaper putting the finishing touches on the miniature golf course and even playing golf with one of the neighborhood kids, after taking his money in a bet that he’d win. Orion shouldn’t have encouraged the robot to do some gambling on the side for him, but now that his wife had clamped down on his purse strings, he was exploring alternative outlets of revenue.

  Doris, the old ball and chain, stomped into the studio with no sense of interrupting his workflow. “What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you so productive before.”

  “It’s these fruits you keep feeding me. The more I chomp into them the more mental energy I seem to have. It’s like my mind is racing with ideas, and the more it races the faster it goes. I’ve figured out how to make us a pile of money.”

  She dropped the laundry basket. “Oh, yeah?”

  He had figured out lots of ways to make them money to feed his spendaholism. He figured he’d tell her one way to keep her happy, while he employed the other ways in his secret black market economy meant to operate entirely under her nose. “I’m pulling together breakthroughs in several fields of study to come up with the low hanging fruit. These are inventions that someone should have come up with already, but they’re just not connecting the dots. I feel like a damn thief in the night.”

  “My husband, a Convergence Tech Wizard? I should be so lucky.”

  “See here?” He showed her by manipulating the hologram. “The bacteria in these vats are growing superfood for fish, makes them healthier, bigger, and better brain food come their time to be consumed by humans. You combine that tech with the one they’re using to grow these fruits and vegetables we’ve been eating,” he highlighted that for her with the hologram display as well. “And you take those two things and combine it with the anti-radiation bacteria and plants they’re using to grow food on Mars and on spaceships,” again he demonstrated with the hologram. “And you combine that with the geometric-rate of expansion of the nano and microbots used to make more 3D printers and 3D ink, again for the Mars and Moon bases,�
� again he demonstrated. “And voila, you can terraform Mars pretty damn quickly. You just keep stirring in more CRISPR-created gene cocktails into the mix to diversify your ecosystem. There are other terraforming ideas for Mars out there—no shortage of them—but we can do this today at virtually no cost, versus fifty years from now at very high cost.”

  His wife nodded, and smiled. “It must be the fruits and vegetables. They’ve turned you into a Convergence Tech Wizard, all right.”

  “You sure? Shouldn’t you be morphing into super-you then? You’re eating the same foods I am.”

  “Maybe if I have a second to apply myself to anything but housekeeping and chasing after your gambling debts, I can find out what it is I’m good at.” She winced. “And I can get rid of these incessant migraines.” She massaged the back of her head at the point where it attached to her spine.

  “So buy yourself a maidbot for the house and for playing nanny. I’m sure you can find a model to do chiropractic and skull manipulations for the migraines. Free yourself.”

  For the first time in her life, he could see she was tempted. “Come on, loosen those purse strings a little. It won’t kill you.”

  She looked up at the army convoy moving down the street bordering their property, and some of the units breaking off and heading up their driveway. “I should have known it was too good to be true.” Orion followed her attention out the window and gasped. “This is some citizen-funded science that’s flown upstream of government and corporate control, that’s what,” she said. “And now they’re coming to shut it down, whatever the costs. They’ll burn this place to the ground, the rest of the county too. And they’ll bury us alive. One way or another, no one’s escaping Clark County to tell the tale.”

  “Relax, I got this.”

  She shook her head at him as if he were daft and, resigned to her fate, picked up her laundry and left the room.

  Orion wasn’t planning on talking his way out of this. He knew his wife was right. The corporations didn’t mind if there were only a handful of Convergence Tech Wizards out there and they all worked for the corporations. That gave them a competitive edge, kept the bulk of entrepreneurs as consumers of their products for however much inventions they were creating on their own which had less far-reaching potential. But a groundswell of creativity of this kind, uncontained, would threaten any sense of control. It would amount to a totally decentralized economy, a no-one-in-charge world. With Adam Smith’s “free hand” of the marketplace alone determining what was needed by the people themselves. They would create their own supply and demand. No middle man needed. The corporations would destroy the world before they let that happen. But there were no more corporations. Then it dawned on him. There was one. Verge!