by Hammond, Ray
The voice-over continued with still more facts about the ravaged country. Then the camera revealed Tye back in his study.
‘Next month, on Sunday, August thirtieth, I’m proud to say my company will start to change the world. Using new, totally benign and sustainable energy technology, we shall bring rain to southern Ethiopia for a period of at least six hours. We shall then bring rain once a week for a further month. My charitable foundation already has people in place to help the Ethiopian population make the most of this situation. Much of this year’s crop can still be saved if it rains before autumn.’
The camera zoomed back to a close-up on Tye’s finely featured face.
‘Will you pledge just one US dollar to help thirty million people? If a majority of you make this pledge, I can guarantee that it will rain in southern Ethiopia next month. We want to give two billion dollars to the Ethiopian people so they can rebuild their economy and their nation. If you, the people of the world, will pledge a total of one billion dollars, the Thomas Tye Foundation will match that with a billion dollars’ worth of solar energy systems, livestock and crop seeds specially modified for Ethiopian conditions and, most importantly, will send a team of four hundred trained field-workers to help Ethiopia and its people work towards achieving a decent standard of living. This will be the start of a ten-year programme that I will be proud to have my foundation oversee.
‘This v-mail has been sent in over two hundred languages to all three billion network addresses on this planet. I hope and believe you will now help Biya and her people.’
He leaned forward suddenly and pressed his right forefinger to the camera lens. An electronic halo shimmered around the dark outline of his fingertip like the corona of the sun in a solar eclipse.
‘Reach out and touch the world now. Touch your fingerprint-identification pad and your pledge will be automatically recorded. But send no money until we have brought rain to Ethiopia.’
Haley leaned forward and touched her pad.
‘Thank you, Haley Voss,’ said Thomas Tye with phoneme-perfect image morphing and a spectacular close-up smile. ‘Your pledge has been recorded. Join me on Sunday, August thirtieth, to see it rain in Ethiopia. Take care of our planet – you hear!’
The driving rock version of ‘It’s Our Planet’ rose over a slow sequence of images of Thomas Tye walking amongst the children of the Rift Valley. Haley smelled the instantly recognizable scent of ‘Abundance’ from her ScentSim as the anthem grew.
I hear, thought Haley.
*
The papers were full of it. It was headline news in every country. Every TV bulletin led with the story, but had to manage with scant details and hours of speculation from wholly ignorant ‘experts’. Mostly they resorted to running library footage of previous famines in Ethiopia.
Deakin scanned the printouts of various front pages that lay on his desk.
‘Tye Corporation Claims To Be Rainmaker,’ said the New York Times.
‘Tye Corporation Ready to Rebuild Ethiopian Economy With New Weather Technology,’ ran the Financial Times headline. ‘Ethiopian Market Closes 40 Points Up.’
‘Two Billion Dollar Pledge To Make Ethiopian Rain,’ reported the London Times.
‘Tye-riffic!’ screamed London’s Sun.
‘Tye-phoon!!’ opined the Asian Star in proleptic ecstasy.
‘Amelia Earhart’s Plane Found on Dark Side of the Moon,’ offered the National Enquirer.
But neither Thomas Tye himself nor any spokesperson from any part of the Tye corporate empire would say more.
‘Join us on August thirtieth,’ they kept repeating. ‘Just be sure you have made your pledge.’
Ron Deakin had called another meeting – the second in thirty-six hours – and he waited impatiently for the meteorologists to arrive. The unavailability of normal communications technology was making this investigation grindingly slow.
And, on all the main markets where it was traded, the Tye Corporation’s core stock made sharp gains.
*
‘OK, companions to nap mode, VideoMates to silent and all viewpers off, if you please,’ instructed Theresa as she took her seat.
Professor Keane had gathered her ‘A Team’ of researchers in the Network Control Center. The projection system was switched off and she sat in a low chair in the middle of the holo-image pit, where she was lit by a gentle but unflattering overhead light. The researchers sat in a banked semicircle around her, all with a CatPanion, a Furry or some other sort of intelligent companion on their laps or on a seat beside them. All these ‘creatures’ were development platforms for beta personalities now undergoing development by the researchers. Theresa always found it difficult to bring this team together. So many of them were unconventional individuals who did their best thinking on beaches or on clifftops or in their hot tubs. Some of them were so deeply involved in their relationships with their companions that they found it hard to focus on the outside world. Indeed, some rarely left their apartments and contributed their thoughts, criticisms and software over the team’s private network.
‘First, I want to welcome our special guest, Doctor Calypso Browne.’ Theresa inclined her head to where Calypso sat in the front row, the only person in the room without a companion and whose well-tailored dark trouser suit marked her out from the collection of brightly coloured T-shirts, shorts and sandals worn by the others. ‘Doctor Browne acts as a personal physician to the Thomas Tye household and is also a consultant psychiatric paediatrician. Thanks for coming to join us, Calypso.’
Calypso bowed her head in acknowledgement, grateful that the professor had not mentioned her earlier claim to fame. Perhaps that part of her life was finally disappearing into the past.
‘Now, I have an interesting ethical question for us to consider,’ Theresa continued. She had Sandra on her lap and was gently stroking her sleeping CatPanion. ‘But first, consider: how many Furries, CatPanions and other companions has the corporation or its licensees sold worldwide to date? Anybody have a figure?’
‘I think it was about three hundred and fourteen million, last time I heard,’ ventured Rory McCullum without looking up. He was one of the world’s leading theoreticians in artificial personalities and Theresa had lured him from the Turing Institute in Glasgow. She noticed he had recently become deeply attached to the very large shocking-pink Bugs Bunny-style rabbit called Beau who was asleep in the seat next to him. Companion bonding was both fashionable and strongly encouraged within the artificial-personality research team. Rory was in the process of knitting a maroon cable-stitch cardigan for Beau, and his size eight needles never ceased clicking as he spoke.
‘But many of those are only first- or second-generation.’ He deftly cast off a row of purl stitches from one needle, starting a new line before he continued. ‘Those didn’t have network-communications abilities and they didn’t upgrade themselves automatically.’
Theresa nodded. ‘Tye Consumer Electronics and its various licensees have been selling companions for about four years,’ she explained. ‘CE is now even getting requests for Furry personality transfers. Some children who have had one type of Furry for several years – a caterpillar, a rabbit, whatever – think they’ve grown out of the physical envelope of their companion but they want to keep the Furry’s personality. Do you see any objections to us doing this for our customers?’
‘At a price, I hope,’ put in Liane Stevens, former associate professor of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland.
Theresa smiled. ‘Of course. But are there any concerns here about the concept of transferring a Furry’s personality to another container? Let’s imagine that a little girl of seven has owned a Furry – a soft pink rabbit called “Lucy”, say – for three years. Her Furry has been everywhere with her. It has seen everything she has seen, heard everything she has heard and it has listened to all her problems. The Furry has learned from its owner and its abilities to harness that information have improved with every remote
upgrade that has occurred as our Anagenesis-network personalities evolve and bequeath their hard-learned experience to their more corporeal cousins. Every sight and sound of their owners’ lives is recorded, and not just in the companions’ local memories. They are also uploaded to our FMR – our Furry Memory Retrievatory – in our data warehouses on this island. As part of that project we’re creating a database that will contain a complete audio-visual record of every Furry owner’s daily life; it will become the ultimate anthropological resource.’
They nodded, listening carefully. Those who had been on the team since the beginning could sense that the time had finally arrived for some of the big questions to be faced.
‘Do we just carry out a transfer as requested and send her a PonyPet or whatever she wants with precisely the same personality and memories? What would be the impact of her lifelong companion and friend appearing in a completely different guise? And do we deliver the new “Lucy” only when the old one has been returned to us? What would be the psychological impact of the two Lucys being together with the owner in different physical form?’
‘And of them me-me-meeting each other,’ added Robert, the group’s speech simulation expert.
Theresa smiled. ‘Good point, Robert. All Furries love to communicate. What would “Lucy A” make of “Lucy B”? We can model that here – one for you, I think, Liane. But, first, let’s consider the impact on children. Doctor Browne?’
Calypso shook her head, feeling out of her depth. But she also felt distinctly uneasy, as if something was wrong here but she wasn’t sure what. She herself had made contact with the eminent professor after Jack had talked to her about Jed’s recent behaviour. He said there seemed something uncanny about the Furry’s ability – as if it understood more than a mere toy should. Calypso had to agree – she felt the same way. She was also wondering whether Tommy’s obvious devotion to an increasingly percipient bundle of fabric, plastic and computer circuitry was wholly healthy. These were two concerns she had articulated to Professor Keane during a video exchange one evening.
‘I do understand your worries, Doctor,’ Theresa had replied. ‘Most parents buy these toys without realizing that they are introducing their children to potential lifelong companions.’ Later in the conversation she had invited Calypso to attend this current discussion with the research team responsible for developing future generations. Now that she had confronted some of the issues Calypso felt less sure that she was qualified to help.
She weighed Theresa’s question carefully, aware that she was speaking in front of some of the brightest intellects on the planet. Then she thought of Tommy – and the obscenity of the concepts they were discussing swam into sharp focus.
‘I must suggest that the ideas you’re discussing are incredibly dangerous,’ she began, struggling to keep aggression out of her voice. ‘Children do love these companions, but they aren’t best equipped to distinguish between real pets and . . . and machines. Replacing one Furry with another companion that has exactly the same personality would be criminally irresponsible. It would be better to allow the first companion to go through something that appears to be closer to a normal death – like the demise of a pet dog or cat – rather than to provide a replacement that makes death seem impermanent. That could traumatize a vulnerable child – one who is seriously ill, perhaps, or who has suffered from their parents’ divorce, or has actually lost a parent or a brother or a sister. You must consider the children’s feelings – you can’t consider them simply as an upgrade market!’
There was shocked silence in the room. Calypso felt intense hostility directed at her. Then she thought of an even more concrete objection.
‘If a family called me as an expert in a lawsuit raised against Tye Consumer Electronics because of trauma caused by a companion transfer – or even malfunction – I wouldn’t hesitate to testify about the potential danger to an unformed psyche.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Theresa dryly. ‘Comments?’
‘The Doctor’s concern about companions’ apparent immortality may become irrelevant, given the research into human longevity that’s being undertaken elsewhere on this island,’ observed Liane Stevens with just a hint of acid in her voice. ‘The way things are going, it won’t be just Furries who will seem to live for ever. Some of the owners may also live for hundreds of years and that presents us with a far more important concern. We know the capability of companions is improving exponentially, not just because of our deliberate design improvements but also through the evolutionary improvements within the community of network-agent personalities that are passed on automatically to companion toys. How will a balance be retained between increasingly clever Furries and owners who, whilst becoming more experienced in life, are almost certainly no more capable? How will owners keep up mentally with their companions over a long period? That’s what we should be worrying about, not the issues of personality transference between different models of companion envelope.’
‘But, what ha-ha-happens when a companion’s owner does die?’ asked Robert. ‘If a child has an accident or a fatal disease, what ha-ha-happens to the companion that has shared all their waking moments and has all their common memories stored?’
That too silenced them. All, with the exception of Calypso, were probably thinking about how their companions would continue after their own deaths.
‘No one can access a companion’s memories but an owner,’ said Rory McCullum quietly. ‘We built that in to all of them from the second generation. It needs the owner’s voice print to activate a core command in a companion.’
‘But what should ha-ha-happen to those memories?’ insisted Robert. ‘After all, we store a copy of every owner’s voice print so we’ll be able to access them.’
‘Surely the next of kin should inherit the companion and be given access to its memories,’ said Liane.
Theresa shook her head. ‘No, we can’t allow that. Everybody’s memories and their shared experiences with their companion are highly personal and very private. We can’t allow anyone else to access them.’
The researchers were silent again, nodding as they contemplated their own experiences shared with their companions. Calypso’s mind was reeling at such cavalier discussion of personality transference and the archiving of hundreds of millions of life experiences. She wanted to scream, to shout at them, to make them see that human personalities and experiences are not commodities.
‘I th-th-think maybe we should erase all memories when the companion’s owner dies,’ suggested Robert.
‘You mean bury the pet with its owner?’ snorted Avi Becchar, whose speciality was emotion simulation. ‘So they both have to go together? I seem to have heard that one somewhere before.’
*
‘Ethiopia Appeal Tops Four Billion,’ screamed the New York Daily Post. ‘Global Pledges Set To Break All Records.’
‘Over one billion people are now reported to have pledged money for the Ethiopian Appeal recently launched by Mr Thomas Tye, President of the Tye Corporation,’ read the BBC’s senior news announcer. ‘A spokesperson for the company has said that promises of nearly five billion dollars have already been received. Such a universal response to an appeal for charity is unprecedented. A spokesman for Oxfam states that aid on this level could transform the future of Eastern Africa. On its re-release, the song “It’s Our Planet” has become the world’s number one downloaded track once again. All proceeds also go to the Ethiopian appeal. On the world markets, all companies with business interests in East Africa are currently experiencing a sharp increase in valuation.’
So, it seemed, Thomas Tye had touched the world. The Tye Corporation’s PR agencies were operating in full flood, but their efforts were unnecessary as pledges continued to pour in. The world’s population wanted to see Thomas Tye produce rain on cue and, under his leadership, they were happy to help feed the starving. The largest number of people ever united in a single cause were turning their thoughts to 30 August and to the peopl
e of Ethiopia A fourteen-year-old white girl in Cape Town, suffering from a brain tumour, sent 200,000 Rand to the Cape Town Herald in aid of the cause, then spent a night on the networks in various Thomas Tye chat rooms gaining emotional support before setting herself alight as she replayed her hero’s appeal one more time. She left a caption to the recording of her self-destruction that said simply ‘For The Planet’.
The frenzy continued and the Tye Corporation’s stock rose another ten points!
*
Michael Chevannes switched off the engine of his United Nations four-wheel-drive Toyota and climbed out into the crystal-clear sunlight. The noise and dust that had been his constant accompaniment on the grindingly slow ascent disappeared and there was the sudden and immediate pervasive silence that only exists at great altitude.
Although it was mid-afternoon and the tropical sun was still high in the sky, the atmosphere was cool and clear. It was the thin air up here, Chevannes realized. On the advice of the logistics manager at the UN compound he had deliberately spent an uncomfortable, cold and cramped night in the back of the vehicle 6,000 feet below in order to give his body time to acclimatize. If he had attempted to ascend the mountain in a single day he would now be suffering from completely debilitating nausea and dizziness. The GPS and hypsometric display in his RayBan Electros showed his position as 14,657 feet or 4,500 metres above sea level. Despite making his ascent in carefully timed stages, he felt his breath coming in short gasps.
Only one road zig-zagged up Monte Camanchaca, a medium-size peak in the Peruvian link of the great Andes chain. The recently constructed road was surprisingly wide, broader than many of the country’s secondary roads, and surfaced in thick black asphalt. On the winding journey across the lower slopes he had passed through a few Aymaran villages and waved at an occasional vicuña shepherd and his flocks. Once he had been forced to stop as a vast herd of furciferine deer bounded across his path but he had seen no sign of human life for the last 8,000 feet.