The Spire

by Peter F Smith

  The sound of the cargo carrier bot emitting a low growl ripped her away from her trip into darker times. It wasn’t actually a growl, more of a vibration that the unit’s limited artificial intelligence utilized to let its human masters know that it had detected something of interest or as far as it was concerned, potentially dangerous. Her father looked at her and motioned toward the carrier unit. He was too busy reviewing the data from Tobor to be bothered with what was likely a false alarm. Maria nodded and accessed the drone remotely. In her virtual vision, she opened the carrier bot’s user interface and activated the alert window. Inside of it, three separate video feeds showed the people on the other side of the robot.

  One clearly was worthy of further inspection, a male servant who followed his young wards around as they chased each other playing a game of tag. Strapped to his hip was stun gun that worked just was well on circuit boards as it did on human nervous systems. However this wasn’t out of the ordinary as all the Spire families had protectors and nannies watching their younger children, and all of them were armed to a degree. The software on the carrier bot didn’t take such things into consideration. It merely detected a weapon and flagged him as a potential hostile. The next person was another man, clearly in his late fifties and therefore most certainly not a Spire noble or even one of their chosen supporters as all those people had long since received their anti-aging treatments and for the most part didn’t look a day over twenty four. The man sat on a bench staring uncomfortably at a wall. The bot highlighted the small pack he had with him and flagged it as a potential Improvised Explosive Device due to its size and the man’s mannerisms. The last alert dealt with the source of the man’s discomfort, and it took the form of a single young woman about Maria’s age, who was currently in the process of making out with not just one young man but also another young woman. Now Maria had kissed boys in the past so while she was by no means an expert in the field, she was pretty sure that the goal wasn’t to attempt to remove the recipient’s face.

  She could only imagine the conflicting emotions of the girl's handler as he sat at his little bench, probably trying to figure out what would bring him more lashes from the family's leaders? Failing to follow the orders of the father and prevent the young woman from cavorting around like a hussy in public or following her father’s orders and being lashed by one of the young girl’s other servants or issued a completely degrading and humiliating task by her as punishment? There was also always the potential that he could suffer from an “accident” and need to be replaced. She hated that such things happened but was all too aware that they did occur.

  Maria felt bad for the man but gave it no more thought than that. She cleared the potential threats from the board but left the robot in guard mode. As she was closing the window in her field of vision, her father was following Tobor into the villa through the large double doors. She trailed them into the grand entrance, the sound of her mother’s flats on the hard wood floors reverberating off the far walls and high ceiling. The lights throughout the space came online as the family made its way through the various rooms and hallways. Toby, however, walked through each space in the villa communicating with the local network to make sure the lights were off as it entered every area. Its sensor package hunting for those that may be lying in wait. Maria followed her robotic companion into her dark bedroom suite. She maneuvered herself to walk past it with the intent of flopping onto her bed when its arm jutted out and prevented her access.

  “I have not completed my security sweep Miss Patterson.”

  “Toby, you’ve already run all these scans twice, once outside in the court yard and the other when we entered the building. I’m bored and I want to relax so turn on the lights."

  The robot turned to face her and said, “If you are lacking stimulation then perhaps you should retrieve your luggage. The cargo unit has entered the main entrance."

  She placed her finger on the center of its chest. “Isn’t that what you’re for?”

  Its head dipped and she could tell that Toby was looking at her finger. It then turned back toward the center of the room and continued its third security sweep of the space. Maria stood there flabbergasted at what had just occurred. She was noticing that as she got older Tobor obeyed her less and less. She thought about that, maybe it hadn’t obeyed her at all but was merely humoring her all those times in her youth.

  “Go get your luggage Maria!” her mother hollered from her parent’s suite which her father had scanned on his own.

  Maria stuck her head out into the hall way and shouted, “How did you know what Toby and I were talking about?”

  “Because I know you!” her mother hollered back.

  Maria turned around and glared at Tobor. “Did you tell on me?”

  It ignored her question and moved into her spacious bathroom. She huffed and walked out to retrieve her baggage from the cargo bot.

  ___

  Dinner was a requirement in their family. Even though there was supposed to be a luau to commemorate the first night of the birthday celebration and the assembly, family dinner was not going to be displaced by it. Maria often found herself sitting at the round island located within the kitchen/dining area. Her father and mother danced around each other as they prepared the carne asada and tamales that her father excelled at making. Maria smiled as she subtly watched them, occasionally shifting her focus from the lesson on gene therapy displayed in her field of vision. This was her favorite time of every day.

  Father and Mother were often incredibly busy with both of them overseeing different aspects of their family’s empire. Maria had been drawn almost fully into their world, with few tasks off limits to her, it seemed as if every month that passed she had less and less personal time and unstructured family time. Moments like this were a welcome break from their hectic schedules and ensured that they saw each other and connected at least once through the day. It also let her see that her parent’s marriage was still a healthy one. The sweet banter they shared as they maneuvered around one another gave her some security that was needed for a young woman whose entire world was literally destroyed years earlier.

  The dining experience involved her and her parents sitting around the prep island as they shared from the communal plates and bowls. When at home, Tobor was often invited to join them, and it had become common place for her parents to ask for its perspective on issues. Her father had explained to her when they first began doing this that the question and answer sessions served several purposes. First, it provided them an emotionless perspective on the event being discussed, and it also assisted in developing the robot’s artificial intelligence software. His particular version was more advanced than that loaded into the other robotic units that served the family or any family for that matter and the interaction between Tobor and the Patterson’s allowed it to evolve and make their robotic servant that much more attentive to their needs and adaptable to new and unique situations. So it sat there and they all shared what happened during that day with one another.

  Though on occasions such as this, where they had spent the entire day together already, often the conversation was focused on how they would approach the upcoming challenges. There were several trade disputes amongst the other Spire families that had led to some border skirmishes between their armies, both robotic and human. Her father was hoping to benefit from the situation but at the same time avoid creating more intense conflicts that would eventually spill over. Then, of course, there was the matter of discerning all the hidden machinations of the other families and that was often left to Maria and her mother, though her father was incredibly adept at catching random details from conversations and then drawing a larger picture of the global situation and the intent of the other families.

  Maria and her mother though had the ability to interact with the other families on a social level, something her father didn’t excel at. While he could lead men and women, he had never mastered the art of being accepted as one of them. Her mother, on the other
hand, had the ability to become the epicenter of any social gathering and thus was able to insert herself in situations of her choosing. Mom had on more than one occasion ruined people and potential alliances between other families with just a few carefully selected words.

  Maria had the ability to be a social butterfly like her mother if she so wished, but found herself desiring the more reserved behavior of her father. But everyone in the family had a job to perform, and hers was to mingle with the younger members of the other families. Despite Mother’s gift for gab and manipulation, she was working among other adults who for the most part knew they were all playing a political game. Whereas among the youth, this knowledge had not become common place yet. They were all too obsessed with popularity and giving in to their every want and desire. This left Maria wanting as there was often little to no challenge in manipulating her chronological peers and gaining the information she needed.

  So when dinner was concluded and her mother reminded her of the get together she had agreed to when they first arrived, she didn’t raise a fuss. She went to her room and dressed in a bikini top and shorts that were stylish enough to impress and assist her in controlling the attention of the boys and even a few of the girls, but with enough class to ensure that her father wouldn’t have a heart attack on the way out the front door.

  It’s not that she liked using her body as a tool to influence others; the opposite was true in fact. She secretly hated all those that leered at her; however, as her numerous strategy lessons had taught her, if you have a resource that will help you to secure victory, you utilize it. Little should be withheld if it was the difference between victory and defeat, life and death. Maria had no delusions about her family’s position within the world. Several had already been conquered and rather brutally. She was determined to not allow that to occur to her family, so she was willing to do pretty much anything so long as it didn’t make her feel as if she needed to shower away the shame after.

  As she exited the villa, Tobor fell into step beside her. She didn’t complain about its presence. Her family was the only one without servants. After her home had been breached right after the start of the riots and the entire staff killed, they didn’t have anyone left to work for them. With the mortality rate so high in North America nearly no one was left after the plague had burned through the continent, the few survivors they located engaged her family’s robotic forces in combat or were feral. The result of such encounters was always the same. Her father was also adamantly against slavery, unlike the family of the Hong Kong Spire which had used the cure her dad developed for the plague to save millions of people from the disease, but only temporarily. They modified the drug so that it had to be administered on a constant basis. Therefore if their people wanted to live, they served or the treatment was withheld and they slowly died.

  All of this meant that her family lacked human help, so while each house was allowed to bring a hundred servants to this event, the Pattersons only brought Tobor. At first the other families had refused to allow this stating that even a hundred servants would have difficulty protecting them if her father turned Tobor on them. In order to assuage their fears he suggested that they equip their people with stun weaponry, increasing their ability to defend against the robot should it be used against them. It had been a close vote, but Toby was narrowly approved to attend. Since her father and mother were staying in the secure villa until the luau, they sent Tobor to keep her safe.

  With Tobor faithfully keeping watch from a respectful distance, she lay upon a beach chair alongside her “friends” whose apparel choices were so revealing and suggestive as to make her own outfit appear Puritanical in comparison. Several of them were completely nude. The girls prattled on about the hardships of their lives and the difficulties they were having with the boys. Maria lay there with her eyes closed as she soaked it all in, the smell of the ocean water, the warmth of the setting sun, the gentle breeze dancing over her skin, and the various details that the girls were revealing without even realizing it. Lana couldn’t believe how strict her father was becoming with his conservation movement throughout their territory, requiring all his citizens including her to recycle and how he wouldn’t let her leave any lights on as she moved throughout their Spire.

  Another would have thought this just minutia to be ignored, but Maria saw it as details that indicated that the Howard’s were low on resources and might be open to a trade agreement with her father in order to secure more. It wasn’t enough to just lay and listen, however. The others expected her to contribute to the conversation. So she did, but with forethought and intent. She often used these opportunities to plant information that would manipulate the young ladies into reporting back to their parents what she had said and hopefully eliciting the desired outcome for her family.

  Eventually however, the girls tired of laying on the beach and decided to enter the ocean. As they left, they encouraged her to join, but Maria avoided this by explaining that she wanted to work on her tan. This seemed to satisfy most of them, but she heard a few girls snickering under their breath about how ridiculous it was for her to try to tan since her Hispanic heritage meant she already had a slight tan to begin with. Maria was well aware from the way her mother looked that her skin could be a far healthier shade. The long winters in the North East tended to deny her the sunlight she so loved making her more closely resemble her father’s complexion rather than her mother’s. Her thoughts were disturbed by the finger that gently ran its way up her outer thigh. She opened her eyes and methodically turned her head to look upon Nathaniel Chen, the oldest son of the Chen Family, which controlled the Hong Kong Spire and just happened to be the most direct competition that her family had.

  “If you want to keep that hand, you’ll put it someplace else Nathan."

  He grinned, “Oh, I can think of some places I’d like for it to be,” he said, moving toward her chest. She quickly knocked his hand away and glared at him.

  His grin morphed into a smirk. “Hey, I’m the birthday boy for this shindig. Aren’t you supposed to give me a present?"

  She locked eyes with him. “One of several birthday boys,” she corrected, “and my present will be not breaking every one of your fingers."

  “Not the sweetest gift ever but at least it involves some wrapping." His sly smile stretching up to his thin eyes.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh with a wit and moves like yours, it’s amazing any of these girls ever say no to you."

  He ran a hand over his smooth scalp and flexed his muscular bicep as he did. “Oh, none of the other girls have ever said no to me.”

  “Never met a walking STD they didn’t like, eh?" she respond acidly.

  “I like your attitude, something so enthralling about it."

  “You’re only attracted to me because you can’t have me.”

  “For now,” he smirked and stood up, dusting beach sand from his shorts. His oiled brown skin glistened in the sunlight, and he stretched placing his physique on display for her and the other girls. “I like our little game too, but if we keep playing it for too long, I might lose sight of why I control my temper around you."

  She closed her eyes and laid back. She could feel him leering at her form. “I hear loss of a sight is a problem boys have when they play with themselves for too long."

  For a moment there was a long pause and then he shuffled away, muttering a curse under his breath, marching off toward the surf and his next conciliatory conquest. Maria always felt a twinge of guilt after these meetings with Nathan. The last time she had refused him he had found himself a pretty little redheaded girl from the London Spire and after their rendezvous she had apparently fallen and hit her head, or at least that was the story she had told all the girls. His ability to project his lust and frustration with her onto whatever young woman happened to be willing to share his bed apparently knew no bounds. But in the end, she didn’t feel too guilty. Everyone knew that Nathan was a psychopath in the making based on how he treated others, and
one need only look at the family tree to be able to project how he would behave. His father was a man who had no issue treating his family as poorly as his servants and enemies. Maria had seen more than a few bruises on Nathan’s body. His behavior was merely a symptom of a greater disease that lurked within the heart of the Hong Kong Spire.

  Something else was bothering her, however. He seemed awfully sure that things between them would change in a short time. While he had never lacked authentic or even false confidence, this was something new, and it unnerved her that she wasn’t sure what it meant. She decided that she would use this evening’s conversations with the girls and attempt to learn as much as she could about his intentions.

  ___

  The start of the Luau was marked with fireworks, and hundreds of Spire family members danced in the light they cast down from the starry night sky. This was the start of the three daylong celebration marking the birthdays of all the children since the last get together. For those days the servants of the various families would cater to the children’s every desire. Food and spectacle were plenty as the teenagers drank their way through much of the island’s liquor stores. Games and rides littered the island for the younger ones and those whose family values or even their own morals prevented them from indulging in drink. For the last five years, during each of these gatherings, Maria could be found with the younger children. Helping to keep them safe and practice a moderate amount of control over their mischief. Even though they had keepers with them at all times, they quickly learned how to intimidate them by observing the older kids and thus often were able to do whatever they wanted. Maria, on the other hand, was another “upper,” as she had learned the servants referred to them, and that meant they couldn’t boss her around, but she could tell them what to do, to a degree that was.