by Jeremy Bates
Copyright © 2018 by Jeremy Bates
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
First Printing: 2018
ISBN : 978-1-988091-18-1
For a limited time, visit www.jeremybatesbooks.com to receive a free copy of the critically acclaimed novella Black Canyon, WINNER of Crime Writers of Canada The Lou Allin Memorial Award.
CONTENTS
DECEMBER 17, 2049
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DECEMBER 17, 2049
Chapter 1
“Everyone needs a fantasy.”
Andy Warhol
Lightning seared the black night sky, and thunder boomed, reverberating through the roof and walls of the old Spanish bungalow located on an overgrown half-acre in Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles.
Cocooned and dry inside his dark study, seated in his padded executive chair before his computer terminal, Mr. Kim tuned out the ambient atmospherics. He was in his zone, fully concentrating on the glowing reams of information on the holographic projection display before him, his hands moving over the multi-touch interface with the speed and dexterity of a maestro conducting an orchestra.
When all the commands were in place, he tapped the virtual Enter key and sat back in his chair, letting his brute-force program do its thing. Most hashing algorithms were weak, and he could usually crack a password in under ten minutes. This one would likely prove to be no different.
Pushing his black hexagonal eyeglasses up his nose, Mr. Kim retrieved a half-empty can of Coca-Cola from the desk, wrapped his lips around the red-and-white straw, and sucked.
If anybody inquired into the nature of his profession (and not many people did), he told them he was a systems analyst. But to call a spade a spade, he was a hacker, albeit a “white hat” or ethical one. Corporations and government departments hired him to hack into their systems to uncover security flaws. If he was successful, and he usually was, they paid him a cash reward, called a bug bounty. Their basic thinking was that if they were spending a whole lot of money barricading their cyber front door against malicious attackers, they better make sure they weren’t leaving a window wide open somewhere.
Getting up, Mr. Kim wandered through the dark house toward the kitchen. The old French oak floorboards creaked loudly beneath his footsteps. The house was a mid-twentieth century relic. It had belonged to his parents, and he had inherited it in their will. He would have preferred something with more modern bones, but he wasn’t complaining. The mortgage was paid off and the place was retrofitted with new wiring and all the accruements of a modern smart home. The sagging exterior needed some work, but Mr. Kim couldn’t be bothered fixing it up anytime soon. Who was he trying to impress? He lived alone. He had done so for the last two years, ever since his wife Julie was killed in a hit-and-run. She had spent the fateful Saturday downtown at one of the book cafés she liked, and she had been riding her bicycle back from the Purple Line subway when a speeding car struck her from behind, throwing her more than one hundred feet through the air. A police officer pronounced her dead at the scene. The LAPD searched for the driver of the offending vehicle for several weeks but never came up with any leads. To this day nobody had been apprehended, and the crime remained unsolved.
Mr. Kim had been on a single date since the tragedy. It had been in July of this year, five months earlier. A member of his church had set him up with a woman ten years his junior, twenty-seven, who herself had never been married. She was sweet, okay-looking, and seemed pretty desperate for a boyfriend. Mr. Kim enjoyed the date, but she apparently didn’t share this opinion, as she declined his invitation for a second. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t unattractive. He just wasn’t very good with real women. He wasn’t charming or a good conversationalist or—
Come on, Whiz. Whatever happened to calling a spade a spade?
You’re a nerd. A big one. Accept it.
Well, he did. And he didn’t just accept he was a nerd; he was proud of the label. Because while some stereotypes about nerds were true and unflattering—namely their questionable fashion sense, unfunny attempts at humor, and irritating behavior—none of that applied to him. He was only a nerd because of his staggering intellect and drive.
Mr. Kim paused in the foyer to peek through the beveled window in the front door. The sycamore that dominated the yard swayed back and forth in the storming night. The sodium vapor lamp at the curb cast a yellow pool of light on the rain-thrashed street. Unsurprisingly, nobody was out and about. Mr. Kim locked the door and shot the deadbolt, then continued to the kitchen. He tossed the now-empty Coke can in the trash and opened the refrigerator. He scanned the containers of leftovers piled one atop one another—wondering why he bothered keeping leftovers considering he never ate them—and closed the fridge again. From the cupboard above the sink he retrieved a package of instant ramen noodles. He filled the electric kettle with water, returned it to its base, and flicked the switch.
Leaning against the counter, Mr. Kim lifted his shirt and patted his belly. He wasn’t really overweight. He just had a flabby gut. And you really couldn’t notice it while he was standing tall. It was when he was sitting down, or leaning at an angle how he was now. He thought about going back to the gym. He used to patronize the local Gold’s a couple of times a week. But he just didn’t dig the vibe there. All the meatheads thumping their chests and walking sideways through doors. The slutty chicks with their tits and asses hanging out everywhere.
Didn’t they have anything better to do than fawn over themselves in the mirror or pick up heavy objects all day? Brainless plebeians!
The kettle whistled. Mr. Kim dumped the package of noodles into a bowl, along with the included spices and sauces. As an afterthought he added a raw egg and some kimchi to make the meal at least a little bit nutritious. He poured steaming water into the bowl and covered the top with a small plate.
While waiting for the noodles to steam and soften, he listened to the rain drum against the roof and the wind hammer the windows. He remembered as a kid how nice LA weather had been. Now it seemed to be storming every other week. He lifted the small plate off the bowl, deemed the noodles tender enough to eat, and began slurping them up with a pair of chopsticks. When he was almost done, he latched his lips onto the bowl and used the chopsticks to shovel whatever remained into his mouth like a sperm whale devouring krill.
Rinsing the dishes in the sink, Mr. Kim set them in the drying rack and returned to his study. He sat back down in front of his computer terminal. The program had finished running. The password was cracked. Now that he had admin access, he could poke around at his leisure. However, that would not be tonight. He was growing tired. He guessed it must be past midnight. So he backdoored an important system service so he could easily get back in again tomorrow. Then, on second thought, knowing the backdoor might be removed during the next system upgrade, he instead backdoored the compiler itself. Finally he covered his tracks, so the IT guys at the bank would never know he had been there.
Before retiring to bed for the night, Mr. Kim brought up Newbotics’ smartsite. A few more air gestures and he was staring at the holographic image of the Mech he had ordered.
The evolution of robots over the last fifty years roughly recapitula
ted the evolution of animal life on the planet—only ten million times more rapidly. The first wave of robots at the turn of the twenty-first century functioned like insects. Their brains were no more sophisticated than the nervous systems of, say, an ant or a moth. They could move about on their own and perform simple tasks, but just as an ant required a scent trail to follow, and a moth an external light source such as a light bulb or the moon, these robots needed guide wires below the floor, or lasers to read bar codes on the walls.
The second wave that arose in the 2020s was more analogous to reptiles. They could move about autonomously and handle complex tasks, though only those explicitly covered in their programs. Nevertheless, because so much physical work awaited them in factories, farms, corporate environments, and homes, these robots flooded the marketplace. It became so you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a wheeled model distributing the mail, or a reception-based model assisting visitors with queries, or some of the more advanced models handling security.
The third wave that arose in the 30s made the leap in cognitive functions to the level of mammals, because not only could they adapt to contingencies, they could be trained, which allowed them to work increasingly independent from human supervision. These robots, which more and more resembled humanoid machines, thrived in the military, where they handled the physical side of most operations on land, in the air, and at sea. Armed and fearless, they were sent deep into enemy lines and left to operate on their own for months at a time, participating in a wide variety of missions from solitary patrols to offensive group strikes.
The fourth wave of robots that arose in the 40s reached the level of broad simian competence. They possessed artificial intelligence comparable with a human’s that allowed them to learn, not via positive and negative reinforcement signals like their predecessors, but by recognizing patterns that could then be applied generally. Monkey see, monkey do, so to speak. Moreover, they could conceptualize and generalize. Their reasoning ability mimicked and often surpassed a human’s, allowing them to run companies, hire and fire employees, make medical diagnoses, approve financial decisions, configure computer systems, and so forth.
For a number of years already Newbotics had been a leading manufacturer of a specific niche of fourth-wave robots: companions/carers for the elderly, widowed, and those with physical or intellectual disabilities. But then in 2046 the company surprised the world by creating a companion/pleasure robot for those who had difficulties associating with human company, or those who simply wanted the excitement of a nonjudgmental, tireless sexual partner. These kinds of “pleasure-bots” or “sex-bots” had been around for more than a decade, but Newbotics brought them to the mainstream by improving upon them in every way. Called Mechs, they were the first anthropomorphic social robots to have lifelike skin, and lungs that mimicked breathing. They also sweated, emitted body heat, and performed every human function with the exception of eating and processing food.
Yet what really set Mechs apart from all other humanoid robots was a tiny algorithm—no more than ten lines of pseudocode—that engendered within them what the Japanese founder of Newbotics, Ryosuke Domoto, called sonzai-kan. This was roughly translated to mean “human presence,” or in layman’s terms, the feeling you got if someone was standing next to you. It was difficult to define what exactly gave something a human presence, but most people agreed that authenticity had something to do with it, and the often overlooked and understated ability to actually mean what you say—an ability that has proven to be a game-changer in human-robot relationships.
With a couple more hand gestures, Mr. Kim zoomed in on his Mech’s face, turning it from side to side. He’d spent hours customizing her features to his specific liking, eventually settling on fine porcelain skin, a slender nose, high cheekbones, an intriguing smile, and deeply expressive brown eyes. Not a completely original look, but classical, and you couldn’t go wrong with classical.
After a few minutes of fawning over her—Monday, he told himself with giddy excitement, she’ll be here Monday—Mr. Kim decided to call it a night. He shut down the computer and went to the upstairs bathroom to brush his teeth, humming a catchy old Van Morrison love song under his breath.
Chapter 2
“I always wanted to be different.”
Miuccia Prada
Mr. Kim had nightmares like he did almost every night, terrible nightmares that often caused him to wake up drenched in a cold sweat. They usually involved his deceased wife, Julie, returning from the grave to haunt him. He’d be somewhere in his house when there’d be a knock at the door. He would know it was Julie, the way you can know the unknowable in dreams, and he would become irrationally terrified at the thought of letting her inside. Instead, he’d pretend not to hear the knocking, even though he knew Julie knew he could hear it, which made the farce feel all the phonier. At this point the dream would often veer off on bizarre tangents. Sometimes Mr. Kim would hear Julie moving behind the walls, or crawling beneath the floor. Or he would sense she was in the bedroom, hiding in the closet. Sometimes the one-date churchwoman would be over and ask about the uncanny noises. In the tradition of the best B-horror movies, she would usually die a horrific death for her curiosity, such as the time she went to the bathroom only to disappear down the drain, leaving behind little save for some blood and guts.
In the latest nightmare, from which Mr. Kim had just awakened, his heart pounding, his body trembling, he had been seated at his computer, playing a VR game, when suddenly Julie usurped control of his avatar. To punish him for all the times he would not answer the door, she walked him to a virtual bathroom and made him shave his wispy five o’clock shadow, pressing so hard with the razorblade to peel away his skin and flesh and reveal his jawbone beneath.
“Jesus,” Mr. Kim mumbled, wiping away the beads of sweat that had popped out on his forehead, then self-consciously rubbing his jaw, making sure everything was as it should be.
It was just a dream, he told himself. Julie would never have done anything violent to him in real life. She was a good woman. Ineffectual and incapable of original thought. But a good woman. Didn’t have a violent or malicious bone in her.
In the kitchen Mr. Kim ate a bowl of Special K for breakfast while watching the morning news on the smartwall across from the table. The anchor was live at the Robot Olympics in Moscow, reporting on the upcoming 100-meter dash to determine the fastest bipedal robot on the planet.
Why did the winner make fun of the runner-up?
Because he had no heart!
Smiling at his incredible wit, Mr. Kim carried a cup of black tea to his study and sat down in front of his computer terminal, where he picked up with his work where he’d left off the night before.
He was on the trail of a cyber hacker known only as The Russian whose malicious software had recently allowed him to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from a handful of unwitting American banks. Not much was known about the guy except that his crime syndicate was headquartered in the Ukraine with dozens of satellite command-and-control centres across the globe from Canada and Luxembourg to Iran and Kazakhstan. Mr. Kim was one of several white-hat hackers hired by the FBI to 1) trace The Russian’s footprints back to the stolen money and 2) help decapitate the network in Donetsk and Kiev.
As was always the case when Mr. Kim devoted himself to his work, the hours slipped by and before he knew it another day had come and gone. Now a purplish dusk tinted the view through his window.
Sitting back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head, Mr. Kim was thinking about what he wanted for dinner when the house AI announced in her pleasant female voice, “Rocco is approaching the front door, Whiz.” The face of his friend materialized before him.
Rocco was thirty-two, Italian-American, suntanned, with a small, bald head and a long neck, the combined effect giving him the appearance of a turtle. He was a biophysicist at BrainGate, a leader in brain-computer-interface (BCI) technology, and he was probably only slightly less nerdish than Mr. Kim.
Looking up at the camera located on the front porch, Rocco imitated the slurry sound Anthony Hopkins made after describing his meal of liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti in that old film, Silence of the Lambs.
“Yeah, yeah,” Mr. Kim said, spinning around on his chair and getting up. At the front entrance, he opened the door.
“My man!” Rocco said, holding up his bionic arm, which came equipped with a built-in flashlight and miniature drone. “Give me some skin, brother!”
“Who says that anymore?” Mr. Kim asked, but nevertheless high-fived his friend. “Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs.”
“Shit, didn’t think you’d get that one.”
“What are you doing here…?” Mr. Kim slapped his forehead. “It’s Friday, isn’t it?”
“Movie and pizza night, dude,” Rocco said, pushing past Mr. Kim and going inside. The house AI sensed Mr. Kim’s reluctance at letting him enter and the female voice said, “Is everything all right, Whiz?”
Mr. Kim shrugged. “Yeah, fine, just an unwanted friend.”
“Unwanted, huh?” Rocco said. “I’m the only friend you got. Right, Kimchi?”
“My name is Kimi,” the house AI replied. “Named after my honorable master, Mr. Kim, aka The Whiz, who, I should add, has many friends.”
Rocco laughed and went to the living room. “You’re as nerdy as he is, Kimchi.”
Mr. Kim followed Rocco to the living room and pushed his heavy eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I might be a nerd, Rocco, but at least I’m a self-aware one—unlike you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re in denial of your nerdom. And there’s nothing sadder than a nerd who thinks he’s cool.”
Rocco shook his head. “You’re a nerd just for saying that.”
“It’s true.
“Hardly. Because I’m not a nerd, my man. I’m a geek.”