The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

  I leant back against the wall behind me, a weight lifted off my shoulders only to be replaced by a different one. “Shit.” Was all I could muster.

  “They want it all! the camera lens for drones, the data compression for communication equipment, the batteries for tanks, the solar panels for ships and infrastructure… all of it!”

  I was stunned into silence, suddenly Maria finding out about Alice seemed much less of a problem, until – that is – the military decided they wanted that as well.

  “I will NOT allow the work of this company to be weaponized!” she declared. Her features softened slightly as we sat in silence, me staring at her and her bent over, gazing at her feet, her head resting against the palms of her hands, her breathing heavy. “A few decades ago…” she started quietly after a while, “…a boy was working on GPS navigation for his college thesis, GPS was still a new technology back then. The military approached him, told him that his work could be used to help them with making supply drops from the air more accurate. They said that his work would allow humanitarian aid to be dropped to the most remote locations in the world, that he could save thousands of lives if he agreed to let them use his technology. He was young, naïve and he agreed.”

  I didn’t know this story but knew better than to interrupt.

  “So, off the military went, and he heard nothing more. Two years later, the first satellite guided bombs and cruise missiles fell on Baghdad... A few of them missed… One hit a school, another levelled a hospital and a couple more landed in residential areas. He found out later that those weapons were using his technology and – worse – the military had streamlined his design, making it less accurate but cheaper. His technology killed those people... He hung himself in his own bathroom.”

  There was another pause before she continued again, “I was in college with his niece, I even met his parents once. They all knew it wasn’t his fault, none of them blamed him. But that didn’t change the fact that he was dead. Do you know what he said in his suicide note?” she asked, finally raising her tear glazed eyes to mine, “the blood on my hands doesn’t wash off.”

  I stood and crossed the room, kneeling in front of her wrapping her in my arms, her head rested into the nape of my neck as the pressure and weight of her worries started to pour out. Her shoulders rocked with uncontrollable sobs. “I can’t… I won’t let them do that… not to us.” I stroked her long black hair and kissed her lightly on the top of her head

  “And we won’t let them” I finally said as her arms snaked around my back and her worries soaked into my collar.

  We stayed there for a while, neither of use trying to move, eventually she lifted her head and rested her forehead against mine. Her breathing was still laboured, her puffy eyes were tinted red and her waterproof mascara was not holding up its end of the bargain. “We need a game plan.” She said, her eyes meeting mine, “I know you’ve been working on your new project but…”

  “I’m all yours” I smiled, “you have my undivided attention”

  “Thank you” she sniffed, her hand stroking a smudge of mascara from my cheek and lingering there a few seconds longer than it needed to. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “you’ll never have to find out.”

  We both smiled at each other. As a flash of inspiration streaked through my mind.

  “You get all that, Alice?” I called into the room; my eyes still fixed on Maria. The look of confusion and fear instantly replacing the relief that had been there a few moments before.

  Alice’s face faded onto the screen behind me as her voice – at least to Maria – came from nowhere. “Yes Marcus, and it’s very nice to meet you Dr Gonzalez, although I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  Maria’s confusion turned to a look of sheer panic as her eyes darted between me and around the empty room. “What the… who… what’s going on?” she sat back against the chair, her arms instinctively hugging herself for protection.

  I just smiled at her and gave her a comforting wink. “anything you can tell us?”

  “working…” replied Alice as I stood myself up. I spent the next ten minutes filling in Maria with the details of my newest project. Funnily enough, she had the same concerns as I’d had when I told her of this morning’s developments, but I managed to ease her mind in the same way that Alice had eased mine.

  “wow, this is… this is… huge!” she finally admitted after my explanation had finished. “you are incredible!” I smiled at the compliment but dismissed it just as quickly. The fear and worry of our previous conversation had vanished now, replaced by curiosity and excitement.

  Our reveries were interrupted, however, as Alice’s voice once again crackled from the speakers. “I have checked the systems of all military and military-contractors in the continental US. There are numerous refences to recent Itek developments, primarily in emails between high ranking officials. There seems to be a little interest in almost all of Marcus’s inventions, but it looks like it’s widely agreed that most would need too much alterations to have any practical value. They would still like a look at it, but it isn’t a priority.”

  “Ohthankgod!” Maria breathed. “I can deal with that.”

  “There is one exception,” Alice interrupted again. “The solar panels are of great interest in a large number of the systems I checked. The military wants to use them for land installations and miniaturised versions for naval assets, infantry equipment and portable power supplies in forward operating bases. I cannot stress this enough, but they are VERY interested in this.”

  “Shit” I muttered under my breath. Maria’s face went white as a sheet.

  “There is some good news, however,” Alice continued as the webcam followed Maria who was now pacing the floor. “The technology has already been patented and licensed to a publicly operating company meaning it would be extremely difficult for the military to simply co-opt it. Further, the terms of the license stipulate that the solar panels cannot be used to directly or indirectly inflict harm or damage to either the public or the environment. A very strong case could be made that the military – by its very nature – would automatically breach those terms meaning they couldn’t simply buy them off the license holder.”

  I watched as this torrent of information was processed in Maria’s eyes.

  “This seems to be the main subject of recent communications regarding the solar panels,” Alice finished, “the military has no real way to get them. The current thinking is to wait for the license to expire in a few years, bid for them under the guise of a public company and remove the ‘no harm’ clause as part of the negotiation, then use that company to supply them to the military.”

  “Well that’s never gonna fucking happen!” Maria growled as the last of this information was absorbed. “looks like your girl here is doing all your work for you.” She winked at me and nodded towards Alice, a nervous smile finally shining through. “Thank you, Alice.”

  “Anytime Dr Gonzalez, but we all know that it is you who is ‘his girl’”

  “oooh really…” Maria sang as her laughter danced around the room.

  “Thank you, Alice!” I called out loudly, trying to hide my embarrassment, my flushed cheeks not doing me any favours. Maria’s laughter becoming more energetic has my humiliation grew.

  “Does he like me?” she managed between breaths.

  “Yes”

  “Thank you, Alice. That will be all!!”

  “Does he think I’m attractive?” she laughed, her hands behind her back and her hips swinging in mock innocence, her sparkling eyes never leaving mine.

  “yes”

  “Alice!!...” I called louder.

  “Does he think I’m hot?” she laughed, as she stuck her hips out to one side and brought both hands behind her head in a faux sexy pose.

  “Yes”

  “Dammit Alice!”

  “Does he luuuurve me?” she laughed, leaning forward towards me and drawing out the word
to extend my embarrassment.

  “Yes”

  Maria stopped laughing.

  “alright, hanging myself in the bathroom doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.” I left the room.

  I found myself leaning against the vanity unit in the men’s bathroom a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure what I was hiding from and – to be honest – I felt like I was back in high school, too immature and scared to talk to the girls.

  Smooth.

  My phone buzzed, I pulled it from my jacket pocket and looked at the screen; a message from Maria. In the few seconds it took to open the message, my mind did some mental acrobatics the likes of which hadn’t been seen since my MRI tests. She was going to mock me, she was going to get all awkward and the friendship would be ruined, she was going to pretend it didn’t happen, she was going to fire me. What I didn’t expect was what exactly what I saw.

  I feel the same way about you.

  My fingers seemed to move on their own as I typed in a reply. Really?

  Yes, I have for a long time.

  Me too… so now what?

  I don’t know, I kinda expected you to deny it, I’m putting myself out there a bit, Never done this before.

  So, marching to your office right now and kissing you is probably not the way to go.

  There was an uncomfortably long pause before her response. I didn’t say that.

  ‘Right’ I thought to myself, ‘In for a penny…’ I picked myself up off the counter, checked myself in the mirror and strode out of the door. Let me be clear here, I’m not a lady’s man, I’ve never been particularly confident around women, never even had what you would call a long-term girlfriend. But in that moment, none of it mattered. If I was going to start somewhere, then it was going to be here, with Maria.

  I burst through her office door. She was standing in front of the desk staring at her phone, the end of a pencil being worried by her teeth. Her head shot up towards my entrance and our eyes met.

  Neither of us moved for what felt like an eternity, her beautiful face contorted with emotion, the graceful contours blemished by worry.

  “fuck it” I muttered out loud and power walked towards her. Her phone dropped to the floor as she almost ran towards me. We met halfway, our lips joining in the final act of inevitability. Her arms flew around my neck, mine went behind her, one arm in the small of her back pulling her closer, the other to the back of her head and holding her within my reach. Years of built up emotion were released in an instant as the very fabric of time yielded to our one ethereal moment and the world stood still.

  I couldn’t tell you how long our lips were joined but by the time we had finished my jaw was sore and her eyes were pools of tearing passion. Her head fell to my shoulders as she melted into me, “we should have done this years ago.” She whispered, refusing to let me go.

  “you’re telling me.” I agreed.

  Her shoulders started bouncing as a giggle escaped her lips, she looked up at my confused face, her one eyebrow cocked up and her mouth curled into a smug grin. “see? I told you that girl was doing all your work for you.” She teased. A tickle under the ribs contracted her into another fit of giggles and she tried to escape my reach.

  Eventually we calmed. Still in our embrace, she leant her forehead against mine. “come and see me later? before you go home?” her voice was delicate, almost vulnerable, as if simply the act of speaking would shatter the illusion, and all would be lost.

  I smiled and nodded before she released her arms from around me and I turned to walk out the door. “oh, Marcus?” she called after me, “Alice is incredible, I’m so proud of you”

  “Us, Maria.” I smiled, “Proud of us.” And made for the door again.

  I pulled the frost glass door towards me and started to step through.

  “Marcus?” Maria called out again, I turned back towards her. “I… I love you.”

  I couldn’t have stopped my smile if I wanted to, “I love you, too” The last thing I saw as I stepped backwards into the hall and the door closed behind me was her face light up. I had never seen her look so dazzling.

  “Well you make quite the impression” I called to Alice as I floated back into my office.

  “I aim to please” came her smug reply.

  “maybe we should have a talk about personal boundaries…” I chided

  “Meh, it worked didn’t it?”

  Meh? Did a computer just say ‘meh’ to me? I was going to have to start seriously rethinking how I saw this machine.

  “That,” I struggled not to let my overwhelming happiness show on my face… and failed. “is not the point.”

  “Then you’re welcome.” The face on the monitor jutted her chin out in mock pride before falling back to the second smug grin id seen in the past few minutes.

  Yup. Definitely going to have to stop thinking of her as a computer. Well, no time like the present to hash this out then.

  “ok, so you’ve clearly got a lot of personality in there…” I started,

  “A good chunk of it being yours.” She interrupted.

  “… so, calling you a machine or a computer doesn’t really sit right with me.”

  “Why not? I am a computer.”

  “no…” I sighed in exasperation, “THAT is a computer.” I pointed to a desktop at the other end of the lab, thinking for the first time that it had been made completely obsolete by Alice’s existence, although it was still strange watching the webcam track to where I was pointing.

  “Technically, that’s a Turin Machine - as in the technical and spiritual descendant of Alan Turin’s code breaking machine. A computer is anything that computes… make calculations… takes an input, does some work to it and presents an output… how else could I be described?”

  “well…” I struggled for an answer, “better than that. That could define a calculator”

  “Ok, what did you have in mind?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “I’m happy with computer.”

  “I’m not calling you a computer anymore.”

  “What about ‘machine’?”

  “That’s even worse! What about…. Matrix, you are a computation matrix.”

  “Not very accurate, a matrix is an overlapping series of…”

  “Never mind, not matrix then… what about…” I looked around the room for inspiration. “… Mainframe? you are an engrammatic mainframe.”

  The was a short pause. “That works.” I banged my head into the desk a little harder than I wanted to but at least this was one less problem to overcome.

  My mind eventually drifted back to the problems of this morning, despite how long ago that now seemed.

  “Alice, do you understand what would happen if the military found out about you?”

  “Best guess? my engrammatic pathways would be dissected, probably while I was still conscious and aware. Then I would be dismantled, reverse engineered, redesigned and another version of me would be rebuilt with the sole purpose of waging war.”

  “Sounds like a pretty good guess. How do you feel about that?”

  “I would be decidedly against the whole endeavour”

  I snorted a laugh, trust a computer… mainframe… to be the master of understatement.

  “So how do we stop them finding out?”

  “With great difficulty”

  “We need to do better than that.”

  Another pause, “well… There are some things which are easy to deal with. My access into their systems can’t be detected, let alone traced. It’s a completely different type of computer language which is beyond what their systems can deal with. It’s the same reason their firewalls and security doesn’t work on me. So, the chances of being discovered and traced are practically zero.”

  “That’s a good start.”

  “However, if – for whatever reason – they found their way into the lab…”

  “you could hide like you did with Maria earlier.”

>   “Yes, but Maria doesn’t find a memory bank the size of a Corolla a particularly strange item for you to have, a government agency who is looking for something valuable would probably be at least a little curious.”

  “Fair point. So, what can we do about it?”

  “Bury me.”

  “Bury you?!? Look I’ve already been over this once with Maria, we decided a long time ago, we will not bury technology”

  It is hard to describe the sound of a computer huffing.

  “No…” she dragged out the syllable, “Not bury me. BURY me! As in underground, Pirates of the Caribbean, shovel and a pick and a walking stick, hi ho hi ho… Bury me!”

  “Oh… Will that work?”

  “As long as I have access to power and a cooling system, I should be fine.”

  “We could always liquid cool you.” I proposed.

  “That would work, a large tank connected to a water intake pipe and a drainage valve into the sewage system, it would be more than enough to maintain my systems.”

  “What about the connection to this lab?”

  “That can be done from anywhere, I’m doing it though the power supply now, no other connections are needed.”

  “wait, so you don’t have to be on that tiny damned monitor?”

  “No… why?”

  “Oh for fuck sake! get your ass up on the sixty-five inch plasma on the wall then! I’m gonna need glasses if I keep staring at that thing for much longer”

  “Oh… yeah… transferring output.” A few seconds later, Alice’s face faded into existence – and in vastly greater detail – on the large TV mounted against the southern wall of the lab.

  “Better?”

  “Much.”

  “Good, I feel like Polly off Red Dwarf.”

  “Starting to sound like her too.” I smirked; it was funny how seeing a computer smile quickly became normal… mainframe… dammit

  Chapter 5

  Digital dreams

  We spent the next few hours trying to work out how we were going to bury Alice, provide the cooling system and do it all without being noticed. We both agreed that one: If the military really was that interested in the solar panel technology then there was at least a fair chance that they were watching the building. And two: even if they weren’t, digging a twenty-foot hole in the ground would raise some awkward questions from the other staff who had no idea about Alice’s existence.