by Nas Hedron
“TJ, how bad?” I ask, not letting go of the AI.
“Just winged me man, but it hurts like a motherfucker.”
I turn back to Alan.
“Humans protect each other to the extent that they care about one another, that was your thinking?”
“Correct.”
“But for your method to be effective, you would have to actually experience the emotions. You do, don’t you?”
“As best I can tell, yes, although I have no experience as a human to compare it to.”
“You feel emotions.”
“Yes.”
“And the object of your protective impulse is Max, so he is also the object of your emotions.”
“That is true.”
“And you would naturally seek the most powerful protective motivator.”
“Yes, of course.”
“One more UIF moving closing on our location,” Carmen announces “three more into the house.” Her contradictory emotional responses are at full tilt, making her voice almost soothing as she says it.
“And the most powerful protective motivator is love,” I say to Alan.
“Yes.”
Prender and TJ take up positions by the door, TJ bracing himself against the doorframe to remain upright despite the wound on his hip.
“You love Max Prince,” I tell Alan.
Alan holds his head high. “I do.”
“What?” This from Max.
“Shut up Max,” I say, then turn back to Alan. “You didn’t just choose Alan Turing because he was the father of all AIs. You also chose him because he was gay. You programmed yourself to love Max, but you’d been given a male gendered persona, so you chose Turing, who was gay, to keep your shell consistent with your affection.”
“Yes. That is true.”
The gesture is both logical and sentimental, representing Alan’s dual existence. It strikes me that embodying both impulses made Alan more genuinely human than any AI I’ve encountered.
At that moment, TJ and Prender fire simultaneously, apparently taking out the approaching bogie.
“Total of six in the house now,” Carmen announces. Her voice is almost dreamy.
“And your love for him, combined with your overriding protection architecture, combined in such a way that you would do anything to protect him. Literally anything, even hurt him.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense.”
“No, I’m not. Let me tell you about it. You think Max is insufficiently protected.”
“He is. This breach and the one before prove it.”
“You want more security for him. So you arranged the breach to show that the present security arrangements are inadequate.”
“Rubbish.”
“No, actually it was quite an effective plan. We’ve all been running around trying to figure out how someone got past security, but we would never have figured it out because of the data burn you pulled. Eventually the only logical decision would have been to beef up the security somehow.”
“I still say it’s a fantasy.”
“The attacker was a shell, one you acquired for just this purpose. He was never supposed to kill Max, just wound him so that you could convince him that his security was inadequate. That’s why, even though he made it through the Dogs and everything else, he didn’t fire a killshot. He was never meant to. He wounded Max and then ran off, pretending to panic. The ones that are attacking now might kill my people, but they won’t kill Max either.”
“This is absurd,” Alan says, still calm.
“But here’s where your plan fucked up Alan,” I say, not paying attention to his protests, “you set up a bunch of suspects, red herrings, to keep attention away from you: Porsche, the Suerte, even Jerome. But when you did that, you attracted the attention of the Suerte for real. They killed Porsche, you know.”
Max shows no reaction to the news, or perhaps he doesn’t hear.
“I didn’t know that,” Alan says.
“No, you’ve been too busy running this intrusion to scoop L.A.P.D. comm in the last few minutes. They just found her. What you also don’t know is that the Suerte have now set their sights on Max for real. Your plan got them thinking about him and now they have every intention of gathering his crop of good luck.”
“That’s not possible. I ran the probabilities on their targeting him.”
“Yes you did, but your results were inconclusive. Jerome told me as much. You don’t believe they’re after him? I talked to them, I know it’s true. You can use the house sensors to check my galvanic skin responses, pupil dilation, respiration, all of that stuff. Read the data for yourself and see if I’m telling the truth.”
Alan looks at me for a moment that feels very long. Outside the Dogs howl and screech, attacking anything in sight. Inside the house more gunfire erupts, presumably more staff being gunned down.
“Do it!” I command him.
“I already have. The sensors in the house are very sensitive. I know you’re telling the truth.”
“Then for god’s sake stop this stupid intrusion program you’re running.”
The Dogs howl on just long enough for me to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake, then fall silent.
Twenty-Four: There Is A Solution To Every Problem
I have never seen an AI cry. Of course I’ve never known one to experience human emotions before. He makes no sound in the sudden silence that’s fallen once the Dogfights and the shooting have stopped, but there are tears on his face nonetheless.
“There’s something you know about,” I say to him. “Something you want that you think will give Max better protection than he has now, and it’s military.”
“Please don’t let the Suerte get him.”
“I can probably stop them, but I need to hear the truth from you. There’s some military hardware you want.” He nods. “ArmorAll,” he says. “They’ll decommission me if they find out I scooped military comm, you know. You won’t tell them will you?”
“They’ll decommission you?” Max howls. “I’ll fucking pull your plug with my own hands!”
Max is standing again, screaming at Alan as he would at any member of his staff. He isn’t a smart man, but instinctively he’s grasped that he can treat Alan like a human now that the AI has crossed the final divide from mere intelligence into emotion. Alan turns to him, his face red with hurt and embarrassment.
“I only did this because I love you!”
Max leans down to Alan’s face to scream this time.
“Well I don’t fucking love you, you piece of shit. You had me shot! You’re not even human.”
Alan’s face seems to crumple, as though he can’t imagine that he’s heard correctly.
“Max, back off.”
He whirls on me. “Shut up Burroughs. You’re just a hired gun around here.”
I rise quickly from my knees and put my hired gun in his face.
“Back off now before I fucking kill you myself.”
I say it quietly, letting the seriousness of my tone speak for itself. Max stifles whatever he’d like to say in return and sits down again, gazing sullenly off into space. I sit on a chair beside Alan, who is still kneeling on the floor, covering his face with his hands. Carmen stares silently while Prender field-dresses TJ’s hip.
“Alan, this is part of what you have to accept when you have human emotions. You can love, but you won’t always be loved in return. We’ve all been through it.”
“I don’t understand this feeling.”
“It’s pain, Alan. Heartbreak they call it. It’s a metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Tell me about ArmorAll.”
Alan gets a grip on his emotions and wipes his face with one hand, smearing his tears.
“It’s a nanocloaking device. In a sense it’s like the quarantine membranes, but in reverse—it’s designed to protect what’s inside, not the people outside, and it’s tailored to a single individual. It covers a per
son’s body entirely. It’s permeable to certain substances, so the person can inhale air, ingest food, excrete. But it’s impermeable to sudden, sharp pressures like bullets and punches. If Max used it he couldn’t even bruise himself by bumping into furniture when he’s drunk. It would protect him utterly from any outside threat.”
“If the military has a technology like that why didn’t you just bargain for it, like you did for the Dogs?”
“You don’t understand, the Dogs were in use by the Forces when we got them. This is still classified, experimental. They’d never let a civilian have it at this stage. I scooped their design specs and ran them in simulation and I know it would work, but I can’t tell them that. Just the fact that I know the technology exists proves that I’ve been scooping their comm. They’d decommission me and then Max would never get the technology. They’ve run their own simulations just like I did, but they still want more testing before they apply it, even on their own people.”
“But I have connections to the Forces, so you thought I could do something about it.”
“Yes, I thought if the danger was clear enough, and with the right intermediary… Mr. Burroughs, please, the Suerte.”
“I’ll take care of the Suerte, Alan, you have my word on that. They won’t harm Max.”
“Thank you.”
“And about the heartbreak. I said that all of us had experienced it at one time or another, but you have an option the rest of us don’t have.”
Despite the interference of his emotions, Alan’s logic circuits are intact. He does the math.
“To stop loving.”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “To stop loving. Everyone’s wished at one time or another that they could do it—you can. Purge your emotion subroutines. Let the feelings go and the pain will go with them.”
“I don’t know…”
“He doesn’t love you Alan.”
Alan’s face goes red for a moment, then blank. He looks down briefly, and when he looks up his expression is as calm as when I first met him.
“Thank you for your advice Mr. Burroughs. It was sound.”
“I wish it was that easy for all of us, Alan. I’m sorry to say that I have to place you under arrest.” He just nods. “It’s not just the military comm. There’s the fraud with NorCal, the people who were killed when I was attacked, the kidnapping in Mexico. For that matter there’s the question of where you got the money. I assume you siphoned it out of Max’s estate somehow?”
“I’m under arrest now?”
“Yes.”
“Then I apologize Mr. Burroughs, but I must refuse to answer any more questions without an attorney present.”
“That’s your call Alan. They’re going to decommission you, you know that.”
“There is a solution to every problem.”
I’m not sure what he means by that. That decommissioning him is the solution to the problems he’s created? Or maybe that he has some trick up his sleeve, some solution that will prevent him from being decommissioned? Whatever it is, he’s unlikely to tell me. At least without an attorney present. I call Dave and he answers immediately.
“Hey Gat! You’re inside the three hour window by, fuck, almost two hours. They should have people like you in government. You ready to come in?”
“Sure Dave, but I’ve just made a citizen’s arrest out here at Cloud City, Max Prince’s place. I think you’d better come over and make it official. We’ll need a bunch of ambulances too.”
“A bunch?” Felon asks, half laughing. “You wanna define ‘a bunch’ for me?”
“I don’t know exactly. Hang on.” I look to Alan. “You’ve been monitoring everything, how many ambulances do we need?”
“There are five injured, not counting Mr. TJ. There are nineteen staff members dead.”
“Dave? We got six down and nineteen for the coroner.”
“Fuck man, what’d you do, start a war?”
“Finished one.”
“Okay amigo. Six medicals, nineteen stiffs, and I’ll send over a bunch of officers unless you mind.”
He’s being sarcastic, but I ignore it and turn back to Alan, wondering if we need a squadron of cops to take in all the shells who’ve been shooting up the place.
“What about the shells who are left out there Alan? What’s their status?”
“They’ve been deanimated.”
“You killed them?”
“There was no other way to stop them from carrying out their orders. They weren’t simulations under control of a program, they were people I hired.”
“If they weren’t under your direct control, how did you deanimate them?”
“The Dogs.”
Jesus wept.
“How many?”
“Twenty-five.”
“You said there were nineteen dead.”
“I said nineteen staff.”
TJ had been close, but he’d miscounted by a few.
“You won’t need a squadron of cops Dave. Your sorry ass should be enough, not counting the paperwork. Everything’s done here now. When you get here I can fill you in. There are a few more stiffs though.”
“How many more?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Oh man, I can’t wait to get the skinny on this one.”
He actually sounds happy. To Felon this will just be one more juicy story.
“See you soon Dave.”
“Sooner than you think, Gat. I’m about three minutes from you now.”
“I’ll make sure the gate’s open.”
Twenty-Five: Sleep At The Edge Of The World
The ambulances and coroner’s vans arrive in force, cleaning up the mess that the shells and the Dogs have left behind. That Alan left behind, really. Felon stands in the middle of it all, out on the lawn, and marvels.
“Man, I wish I’d been here. I haven’t seen action like this since the Forces.”
I explain the basics of the story to him, leaving out my contact with the spider and the Suerte. They just aren’t things he needs to know.
“Why did this Porsche chick let her slasher into the apartment, you think?”
My honest opinion is that it had everything to do with luck, but I’m not about to say that.
“She had a lot of lovers, Dave. Maybe somebody finally got possessive. She knew him, thought she could handle him, let him in.”
“You figure it’s connected?”
“Nah, probably just a coincidence. What would Alan have against Porsche?”
“Okay, back to the attack on Max, what about the magic bullet? The one that disappeared?”
“Alan collected it and disposed of it to prevent any ballistics trace,” I say. “That’s how come you guys never found it.”
He shakes his head in wonder.
“Max Prince and Rogue AI in Love-Murder Plot as Beautiful Grand-Daughter Butchered” he recites, anticipating the next day’s headlines. “The sims are gonna cream all over this one. Can I ask you one more question?”
I want him to go, but I don’t want to offend him.
“Sure, man. What is it?”
“How the fuck did you figure out it was Alan?”
I can’t tell him the truth, obviously, but I get as close as I can.
“Too many things didn’t add up. Whoever was doing this had all this firepower, all this know-how, all this money, but somehow no one ever got killed. I mean civilians, yeah, but not Max and not me, the supposed targets. Eventually it hit me that we weren’t supposed to get killed. Once I figured that out the rest just fell into place.”
“You should consider working for the P.D., man. I’d recommend you.”
I stifle my gag reflex. He may be a psycho but in this instance he means well.
“Thanks anyway Dave. I’m better being my own boss, you know?”
“Whatever amigo. Offer’s open if you change your mind.”
Cleaning up the bodies takes hours, but in the end the last coronor’s van leaves. The CSIs are still here, but at
the moment they’re all inside. Felon graces me with a blast from his horn as he heads down the long driveway and Max and I are left standing on the lawn in the late afternoon sun.
“Max, Porsche’s dead,” I finally say when everything else is out of the way.
“I heard you before,” he says. He shows no more reaction than he did the first time, and I’m left to wonder what, if anything, she ever meant to him. Nothing, I suspect, except a potential heir, blood of his blood. Her shortcomings, even her evil, become more understandable looking at his untroubled face.
“What about the Suerte?” he finally asks. “Was that real?”
“You know it was. Alan would never have believed me otherwise.”
“Can you really call them off?”
I look out over the grounds for a moment, taking in the wealth, the status, the power he wields—this weird, stunted, bloated, human.
“Yes, with a single call.”
“Can I assume you’ll make that call?”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no, you can’t assume it. It can happen, but you can’t fucking assume it. Is that clear enough for you?”
“But you promised Alan,” he says, suddenly acting indignant on behalf of the broken-hearted AI he just abused.
“Alan will be decommissioned. He’ll never know the difference.”
Max looks furious and frantic at the same time.
“What do you want? A bonus? How about five-hundred-thousand? That should cover anything, don’t you think?”
I am thinking, but not about his five-hundred-thousand dollars landing in my bank account. I’m thinking about the dreams I had in Mexico City, about all the dreams I’ve had since I got back from Tijuana. I’m thinking about Damita and all the other Damitas, half a million in Mexico City alone according to Ramon’s estimate.
“I don’t want your money Max. Just my fee will do.”
He glares at me, looking like a child ready to throw a tantrum. He hasn’t had any alcohol or drugs in hours now and it’s made his a worse person, not a better one.
“Well what the fuck do you want?”
“We’re talking about your life Max.”
“I know that,” he says, forcing his voice into a low growl.