by Gerald Huff
When his union rep had informed him about the 5000 months ago, Jacob had been passively resigned to his fate. But the trauma of his father’s death and Cheryl’s insistent, steely jabs triggered a visceral response. Jacob broke away from his team and strode toward the techs, grabbing a three-foot length of steel rebar from a barrel on the way.
They had partly unboxed one of the machines and stood in front of it now, eyes opening wide at his approach. “Get out of my way,” he said, with as much menace as he could muster. He hoped nothing in their job description required them to defend a robot.
They stepped aside.
Jacob channeled his growing rage into a barrage of blows on one of the RezWeld’s exposed sensing arrays.
It was a sturdy machine, built for the rough environment of an ironworks, but soon the array was a tangled mess of wires and electronic chips.
Jacob’s hands ached. He started to drop the rebar, then clenched his fists and began hitting the robot harder.
Two sentry droids were the first security to arrive. “Jacob Komarov,” one of them announced through its speakers. “Stop destroying company property!”
Jacob continued to batter the RezWeld. The sentry warned him twice more, then deployed one of its Tasers.
Jacob felt the initial stab of the probe. Then brightness exploded all around him.
Jacob woke up half an hour later in a holding cell, his hands zip-tied together behind his back. The room was roughly eight feet square, with a smooth concrete floor and rough cinder block walls. It was bare except for the cot he was lying on. And a medium sized wall screen, which displayed a female avatar feigning concern. “Hello, Jacob. Are you feeling okay?” it asked. He could make out a full sensing array strip at the top of the screen so it actually knew more about his state than he did.
Jacob shook his head, trying to clear it. “No, goddamn it, I am not okay. What the fuck are you?”
“I’m a lawyer AI working for your union. I am representing you in the case of destruction of company property.” He grimaced as memories of the layoff and his attack on the RezMat 5000 welding robot filtered through the fog of Taser recovery. A thought occurred to him.
“Can you research things?”
“Yes, of course, I am fully capable of legal research.”
“Do you have access to the current union contract with Harding?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Can you find anything in the contract that would prevent Harding from replacing union workers with automated welding robots?”
“Checking.” Jacob found the avatar’s fake furrowed brow intensely annoying. “No, there are no such clauses. Harding may determine the most economical way to perform its tasks. There is, however, a clause requiring one month of severance for the employee in the case of a human job replaced by automation.” One lousy month after years of grueling work.
“I have been negotiating with the company AI about your case. I have an offer for your review.”
“What kind of offer?”
“Harding will drop the criminal charges if you pay for repairs to the robot out of your severance and agree to never return to this facility again or refer to Harding in omnipresence.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You will be arrested, and given the evidence I have analyzed, you will be convicted. Minimum sentence of six months. I should also inform you that your probability of obtaining work after a conviction for destruction of corporate property is approximately one tenth of normal. And given your education, training, and available job positions, there is a high probability you would be unemployed for three years or more until you can retrain and move out of the probationary window.”
“Fuck it. I’ll take the offer.”
“I believe that is the wisest course of action, Jacob. I will negotiate your release from the facility as soon as possible.”
“Take your time,” Jacob said. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
CHAPTER TEN
SANTA BARBARA - OCTOBER 1
Roger was so deeply engaged with the final simulation results that Allison had to chime three times to get his attention. “What? Allison? Was that you?”
“Yes, Roger. Sorry to interrupt, but Frances Chatham is requesting a holochat.”
“Ah, okay. Put her through.” He rubbed his eyes before donning the hologlasses. It had been an intense ten days since he’d gotten the assignment from her. He spun around and a few seconds later Frances materialized into view. She wasn’t in an office, it looked more like a living room. Of course, it would be late evening in London.
“Hello, Roger. I wanted to do a last check-in to make sure we’re ready for launch tomorrow.”
“Hi Frances. Yes, well, I’m just putting the final touches on the programming. But it will be ready in a few hours.”
“Brilliant. I also wanted to express my thanks. Your network will be a big part of our success in the coming weeks.”
“I hope so. As we discussed, this is not exactly a straightforward brand you’re launching. I’ve had to run over a dozen simulations with millions of synths. Just wait till you get my bill for cloud compute!”
“Well I’m not concerned about the cost. But I am curious about your technology. Why did it take so many iterations?”
“The idea matrix in your brand is quite complex. But beyond the complexity, the biggest problem is that it doesn’t conform to standard orthodoxies or ideologies. It’s a blend of ideas that pulls from all across the spectrum. The synths tend to mirror the human population, which means they are polarized. It’s easy for them to respond for or against people and brands that match or oppose their views. But in the early runs, a large percentage of the synths couldn’t figure out how to respond and be consistent to their life story, so they didn’t.”
“Fascinating. So how did you solve it?” Frances asked.
“In the end I had to introduce new parameters into the response algorithm that allowed for selective brand matching. Essentially, I let the synths only respond to a few ideas in your brand rather than requiring a very high percentage to match. And of course, I had to bias them towards the parts of the brand that they agreed with.”
“I see.” Frances paused. “Roger, would you say in general that your synths make positive contributions in omnipresence or are they more inclined to be negative?” Allison, ever attentive, brought up a sentiment analysis of the last thirty days of synth activity worldwide. “It looks like close to seventy percent negative. Why do you ask?” She hesitated. His overlays indicated a rise in anxiety. “Did you,” she began, “get a chance to walk through the VR program itself?”
“No, I only worked from the text briefings. Synths can’t themselves experience VR so I focused on what they would be reading online. What’s up, Frances? You seem concerned about something.” Roger was worried that he might have missed something important to the launch.
“No, no, that sounds fine as far as the synths are concerned. I, well, I think you might find the VR interesting. Personally.”
“I see.” Roger wasn’t quite sure what to make of this exchange. “Well, I’ll be first in line to engage when it’s online. But for right now, I should probably get back to this final bit of engineering.”
“Of course, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again, Roger.”
“You’re welcome. Have a great launch!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LONDON - OCTOBER 2
Bradley Childress, RezMat’s Chief of Intelligence and Special Operations, checked in with the CEO’s assistant and proceeded through two old fashioned wooden double doors into his office. He noted that the ostentatious decorations of the prior occupant had been swiftly altered by the new CEO David Livingstone into a more spare, modern look.
“Bradley, come in. Do have a seat,” said his new boss, gesturing to a set of four executive chairs surrounding a round steel and glass table. They sat opposite each other.
“Ver
y well, Bradley. I believe my predecessor met with you weekly at this time to stay up to date on security threats and countermeasures?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Splendid. But please call me David. And what format did you usually follow?”
“There’s a written summary in your inbounds, David. Covers both physical and digital security issues. In person we usually go over critical issues and decisions.”
“Ah, so sorry to have missed that. Quite a lot in my inbounds. What would you like to discuss today?”
“Well, sir, despite your recent appointment, public opinion is turning quite decidedly against us.”
“David. Please. What kind of data do you have on that?”
“Well, David, we’ve invested in very advanced psychometric AI programs, and their analysis of omnipresence indicates a negative twenty-two-point shift in sentiment in the last two months. We’re rapidly cementing our position as the number one corporate villain, which is not a good spot to be in, especially for government contracting. Cognitive textual analysis indicates the public thinks your appointment is purely symbolic, since you’re a long-time RezMat insider.”
“Well, I do expect it will take time for my actions to filter through to public opinion. RezMat does have quite a lot to own up to and repair work to do, as the recent scandals indicated. I understand we have an omnipresence program called ProNet in place to counteract this kind of surge in opinion?”
“Yes, we do. We’ve been using it sparingly to moderate the impact, and—”
“Why sparingly? If this groundswell is as bad as you say, shouldn’t we be more aggressive?”
“This is an extremely valuable asset. If we engage it too quickly or too strongly we risk detection, which would be altogether another scandal.”
“I see. I encourage you to push the limits on that a little, Bradley. What’s the point of the program if we can’t use it when we most need it?”
“Yes, well,” replied Bradley reluctantly, “I’ll speak with the tech lead on that.”
“Now, then,” continued the CEO. “Does anything in this groundswell indicate imminent threats to the company?”
“David, we’re being probed twenty-four seven, thousands of incursion attempts per hour. Not to mention internet-of-things-based denial of service attacks daily. So yes, I’d say there are a lot of bad actors out there.”
“I may have come up through marketing, Bradley, but even I know what you’ve described is just the cost of doing business today. Do you have any specific information on who’s behind these attacks? Competitors? Governments?”
“No, sir.”
“And Colossus? Any hint of penetration into Building 42?”
“No, sir. One of the fundamental tenets of that program is no internet links whatsoever into that building.”
“Good. And any evidence that there are actual physical threats to our facilities or employees?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well, then. I’m sure your team can handle these cyber issues. I want you to inform me as soon as the risk profile changes and any of this moves into the real world.”
Bradley returned to his basement operations center three floors below street level and signaled to his senior analyst, Jill Samborn, to join him. She closed the glass door to his office behind her and took a seat at his conference table.
“I’ve got some bad news,” she said, before he could start to brief her on the meeting.
“Bloody hell, I just got back from the CEO, Jill.”
“So sorry, Brad. We discovered a vulnerability in one of our transportation contractor’s systems. There was an exploitable VPN tunnel.” Jill was referring to the virtual private network that RezMat established with its vendors that enabled them to share information securely.
“Damn. What did it have access to?”
“Nothing financial or engineering. We’re still investigating, but there may have been backups of some operations data.”
“Of what kind?”
“Logistics, staffing and shift schedules, production runs.”
“Bollocks. Do you think that was targeted or just hoovered up accidentally?”
“Looks accidental. They grabbed everything in an exposed folder and ran.”
“Any location trace?” asked Bradley.
“Zimbabwe, supposedly,” answered Jill.
“Bastards cover their tracks well. So now we’ve got to decide whether to scramble the operations of the whole damned company because of a leak.”
“You think someone’s going real world? Do we have any evidence of that?”
“Nothing other than dark web chatter,” said Bradley.
“Hard to imagine they’d turn the whole place upside down based on that.”
“Get me a report of everything that was taken. I’ll send a message to the new boss, but I suspect you’re correct.”
“Oh, yes, how’d the meeting go?” she asked.
“Fine,” he replied, still distracted by her news. “He wants us to dial up ProNet.”
She grimaced. “We’re on the edge there already, Brad.”
“I know. Maybe we can look into engaging some of the less active agents?”
“Hmm, perhaps. I’ll try a slow ramp and monitor.”
“Good. And Jill, let’s do a full audit on all contractors, yes?”
She nodded. “We’ve got more than five hundred VPN integrated partners. If they have AI negotiation agents in place to approve the scan, our security software can sweep them all in a day. But there will probably be contract changes.”
“Understood,” said Bradley. “But we can’t afford more leaks like this. Not now. Run it by finance and get the contract parameters.”
“Will do. Anything else?” He shook his head. As she walked past his wall-sized display of a global map, he couldn’t help but think of every one of the hundreds of lights representing RezMat assets as a vulnerable target. His PNA buzzed. A call from Building 42. Bradley pushed a button to close his office door and accepted the video chat.
“Yes, what is it Patrick?” he asked the security shift supervisor.
“I’m afraid we’ve had another protocol violation sir,” said the red-headed man on his screen. “One of the technicians was exiting the facility with a thumb drive. We barely caught it.”
“First offense?” Bradley asked.
“Yes, sir. Graham Clarke, hired just four months ago.”
“Very well, write him up and impress upon him the seriousness of the offense. And well done, Patrick, thank the scanning team for me.”
“Aye, sir.” The security supervisor rang off. Bradley sighed. The secret Colossus program in Building 42 was a massive success for the company, but it remained an ever-present source of anxiety for him. The risk of unleashing an existential threat to humanity at any moment if protocols were broken did not sit lightly on his shoulders.
CHAPTER TWELVE
VIRTUAL REALITY - OCTOBER 3
LOS ANGELES
Tenesha woke up earlier than usual due to a huge argument in the apartment upstairs. She tossed and turned for a while, then gave up, climbed out of bed, and padded out to the living room.
Her roommate LuLu was sitting on their ratty couch with a VR headset on, turning her head this way and that and talking to someone. It didn’t sound like any game Tenesha had played.
She tapped her friend on the knee. LuLu pulled the headset away from her face. “Oh, Tens, this program is so cool, it’s so different. I’ll send it to you, you gotta play it.” LuLu asked her VR player to send Tenesha the link, then continued her odd virtual conversation.
Tenesha tried to rub the sleep from her eyes and wandered into the small kitchen. She opened and closed a few cupboards, then decided she wasn’t very hungry, so she headed back to her bedroom. She found her own VR headset and put it on, then called up LuLu’s link. “Start program,” she said.
WASHINGTON
Se
nator Harry Paxton was reading an AI-generated news briefing in the back of a Waymo when his daughter Rena sent him a vidchat request. He smiled and said, “Accept.”
“Well, you’re up early, Rena,” he teased. It was nearly 11 a.m. in Chicago.
“Hilarious, Dad. I’ve been up for hours. Well, at least an hour.”
“I suppose you were up late hitting those e-courses, right?”
“Uh, no comment?”
“Just kidding, Rena. I know you’re doing great in your classes. What’s up?”
“Well, I just ran this interesting VR program that seems like it’s right up your alley.”
“That seems unlikely. Most VR programs make me feel a little nauseous.”
“Oh, this isn’t a game or adventure program. It’s, well, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s intellectual.”
“Wait, an intellectual VR program? What does that mean?”
“It’s about history and the future and technology. Oh, Dad, I can’t tell you. You just need to try it. I’m sending you the link.”
“Sure, why not. I’ve got at least twenty minutes left in this Waymo.”
“Great, it’s in your inbounds now. Gotta run, let’s talk later!”
She disconnected before he could even say goodbye.
He only had a lightweight VR headset with earbuds in his briefcase, but it would have to do. He put it on, called up the link to Sara’s Message and said, “Run program.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
Tenesha stood in what looked like a small farming village. There were a couple of dozen mud brick huts with thatched and rusting corrugated tin roofs. As she turned her head she could see more of the village all around her. Families were preparing a meal over crackling fires.
The VR visual quality was excellent, even on her headset, which was two generations old. The audio was also spot on, omni-directional and perfectly synced to the actions of the people as they chopped vegetables, stirred pots, and tended fires. What was even cooler was how the program activated the basic olfactory features in her headset. Everyone thought of them as a gimmick, but somehow this program was generating odor molecules suggestive of dirt, burning wood, curry, and, faintly, manure.