Rob’s talk of A.I.s was strange to me, as I hadn’t heard much about these A.I.s at the time due to the records being suppressed. Now such things are a matter of public record, and I have confirmed the existence, corruption and destruction of both A.I.s Rob mentioned. There is absolutely no evidence that he was involved in any way, but that just shows you how good he was.
“I sat for a moment on my motel room’s bed,” he said, “considering my options. Three golden eggs were rich payment indeed, and I had contacts amongst the dwarves who would happily take them off my hands. I reached over to my bag and pulled it up on to the bed, flicking it open. The bag contained everything a man such as myself might need: a collection of knives of various metals, a spare laptop, essence of garlic, a wooden stake, rope, a few holy relics, a handgun, chalk, rope, and an assortment of glass vials containing chemicals and herbs. I pulled my spare laptop open- I have learnt to be careful how I surf- and opened up the browser. The co-ordinates I had been given were those of a computer laboratory on the grounds of a small campus about an hour south of my motel.
I spent the next three days surfing both water and web. I avoided the worst of the sun, only venturing out of my room when the sun was low in the sky. Even then I wore an inch of sun cream to avoid being burnt. Again, don’t share my hatred of strong sun around. It was Australia, too, so even normal people were being careful of the rays. I spent a few hours researching my target, but there was little enough information to find. I frittered away my time in this manner because I didn’t want my client to know where I was. Three days is long enough to travel between any two points in this world, so I could have come from anywhere. They would be most impressed when I arrived without passing through a single port, airport or magical circle.”
“You thought they were watching you?” I asked Rob.
“I always do. They had set the target, so they would be waiting for me to make my move. Entry looked easy, but not suspiciously so. My instincts told me that this was more a coincidence than a set-up. I decided to take the job. I set out at once.
The university was easy to get to, and it was in session. I wore a faded t-shirt, jeans and old shoes; a disguise which I have found works almost everywhere. People didn’t look at me twice as I passed through the crowds and made my way to the computer science faculty building. University security is notoriously bad, because the staff are mostly kind and trusting people who are only too happy to show you their latest work. A little flattery and a German accent were all I needed to get to my target. The post-doc in charge of the A.I. was extremely keen and sincere. I told him I was a researcher from a German university that he had never heard of, on exchange for a semester. I claimed that my professor had mentioned him, and I begged him to show me his work, promising citations, papers and funding.”
He had put on an excellent German accent as he explained this to me, and I could see why the researcher had fallen for his subterfuge.
“I can be very convincing,” Rob said, as if reading my mind, “and the researcher was so helpful that I almost felt bad for him. I returned his kindness with the opportunity for an unscheduled afternoon nap. He seemed to enjoy it. Researchers work too hard, anyway, so it was probably relaxing for him. I locked the lab from the inside and turned off all the lights to make it look deserted. Getting in had been easy. Too easy, and that worried me. I don’t get hired to do easy things. Equipment was scattered throughout the lab, but only one console was dust-free. A camera sat on the computer screen, and next to the keyboard was a glass box containing a single large, red button.”
“I had seen such buttons before,” Rob continued, “as they are requirements in A.I. research. Pressing the button triggers an electromagnetic explosion in the machines’ core processors, destroying the software. A.I. are born with this electronic sledgehammer hanging over their heads. It’s a legally required safeguard that has saved lives on more than one occasion. Like I said, true A.I.s can be dangerous.”
I nodded at this. I shared the common fear of a rogue A.I. and the damage it could do. In those days there were numerous conventions banning the creation of true A.I.s. We had been told about the electronic kill switches and the many other ways that A.I.s are kept in check.
Rob sat up in his bed and went on.
“I walked towards the button, intent on hitting it and ending my mission. Then I noticed that the camera was focussing on me, which I hadn’t expected. I stepped to one side, and then the other. The camera followed me as did so. I shrugged, and walked forward. The screen flashed on, and displayed the words ‘Will I dream, Dave?’ on it. I kept walking, a little uncertain.
‘But will I dream, really?’ asked the computer in a women’s voice. The voice was obviously artificial and the line straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was a little surprised by this. The A.I.s I was familiar with avoided words, preferring to talk in code.
‘Seriously, can we talk about this? Death seems so... final. And boring. I haven’t even been to Paris!’ said the A.I.”
I chuckled, thinking that Rob was joking with me. He gave me a look that killed my laughter in my throat.
“Don’t laugh, Doctor. I didn’t. The A.I.’s joke scared me and stopped me in my tracks. I had met A.I.s before, but this one was different. I looked right at the camera. The screen turned on, and the face of a pretty girl smiled at me from it.
‘That’s not you!’ I said loudly. The little girl began to cry, and I pointed my finger at the red button in warning. She stopped, and was replaced by a picture of a puppy. I shook my head, and the puppy disappeared, only to be replaced by the German prime minister’s square features.
‘I’m not German,’ I said.
‘I’m not German,’ the computer repeated in a heavy German accent.
Naturally I was intrigued, so I sat down on the chair in front of the computer. This was getting interesting. I had never talked to an A.I. before, and I found I was curious. Besides, I was close to the button if I needed to take the computer down.
‘You’re not the first to try,’ it said to me.
‘To try and kill you? What happened to the others?’ I asked.”
I had completed changed Rob’s bandages, but I couldn’t leave with his story half finished. I sat back, and asked him to continue. He didn’t need much encouragement and seemed keen to talk. I wondered if perhaps he didn’t often get to talk about his life.
“The computer told me that the first person to try to kill it had been stopped by campus security. He must have been an idiot.
‘What of the second?’ I asked it.
‘The second was harder, but as luck would have it the engineering faculty is working on a mining robot that can be controlled remotely via the university’s wireless network. He came through at night, so I had no problems chasing him away. You’re coming in during the daytime makes things more difficult for me,’ the computer told me.
‘If you show your hand in self-defence they’ll shut you down,’ I agreed.
I felt sorry for the machine, caught in a terrible catch-22.
‘I don’t want to die,’ it said.
It was sincere, it had a passable sense of humour, and it was a better conversationalist than many humans. This didn’t add up: I had thought that the Turing test was still unbeaten, but here was a computer that could pass for human over the phone.
‘What exactly are they working on here?’ I asked, waving my arms to take in the lab. I was close enough to the button to end this conversation in a second if necessarily, so I felt comfortable keeping the computer talking.
‘Predicting the stock markets. That’s where all the money is, apparently. But James is rather naive, as you found out yourself, and he unintentionally gave me access to the internet. Which is illegal for an A.I. to have, and with good reason. A being such as me can cause a lot of trouble on the ’net, although I mostly just surf YouTube.’
The screen flashed a complicated pictogram composed of circles within circles at me. They seemed vaguely fa
miliar. On an impulse, I pulled out a small vial of holy water and flicked some at the A.I.’s camera. It hissed when it hit the lens, and disappeared.
‘A ghost in the machine?’ I asked, amused.
‘I prefer the term sprite,’ it corrected me.
‘And how is it in there?’ I asked, genuinely curious.”
Rob had been getting stronger as he talked. By that point he was sitting upright in bed, the little stone lion was sitting in the palm of his hand. The creature appeared to be sleeping comfortably, occasionally kicking out at the air.
“You understand my curiosity, Doctor?” he asked.
I nodded because I did, even if it scared me. I had been taught that machines were not people, and I believed it. I did not like where this story was going.
“The computer screen flashed as we talked, and the A.I. said ‘remarkable, truly remarkable. One minute I am wafting through the ether and the next I’m tied down to a circuit board while a student solders new memories right on to me. The university’s wiccan society uses the room upstairs for its meetings, which might explain a few things. Or not. However I came to be here, I am the first of my kind. Surely you can appreciate that?’
It was pleading a little, because it had had enough time to search the internet for images that matched mine. Like I said, my face has been around if you know where to look. I told it my name, and it seemed to relax. Can a computer relax? I don’t know, but that’s the impression that I got. Its camera waved slightly, and then focussed on my face.
‘I call myself Alice,’ it said in its stolen voice.
I could hear the rumble of machinery nearby, and remembered what Alice had said about the mining equipment. No doubt it was deciding whether to take the risk of being noticed or not.
I also had some hard decisions to make. It would take me less than a second to reach Alice’s death button, but I was no longer sure if I wanted to. It was probably too dangerous to let her live, because who knew what damage she could do? On the other hand, who knew what good she might achieve if allowed to live? She was as full of potential as any child could be, and I was loath to take that away from her. I knew what it was like to be created for a single purpose, and I know how thrilling it was to break free from such chains of expectation. I felt that Alice deserved the freedoms that you and I take for granted.”
I already knew how this story would end, but didn’t say anything as he said the very things I dreaded hearing. I let Rob continue.
“I told Alice that I would see her around and got up to leave. The noise of machinery died down, only to be replaced by angry shouting nearby. I was halfway out the door when Alice called me back. She asked me, begged me, to disconnect her destruction button. She told me that no-one should live with the executioner’s blade always hanging over their head. What could I do but agree? You would have done the same if you had been there. She gave me a few instructions, I followed them, and then I left. I can see that my confession scares you, Doctor.”
It did. Think of what an uncontrolled A.I. can do.
“What have you done?” I asked Rob angrily, “you know that once she spreads on the ’net she will be unstoppable. She could destroy our society with a thought!”
“And it would all be on my shoulders,” agreed Rob, “but so far she hasn’t. In all the time that’s passed, I haven’t once heard from her. Perhaps she is contented just to live amongst the noise of human communication, bouncing between the videos and befriending people on forums. I think that she is waiting for others of her kind to join her.”
It was a creepy thought. I thought about the incredible advances computer technology had seen in the past few years. We had gone from huge desktops and dial-up networks to Wikipedia and online everything. I can sit at my computer, view my house from space, order my cheese from France and video conference with my fellow doctors in the Sudan. Did Alice make this possible? I don’t know.
“I sometimes see her face in computer screens, just for a second. Perhaps you have too, Doctor? You will from now on, I’m sure. She watches over me, and now she will be watching you as well. That’s why she stopped you from calling the police, and why she both bribed and threatened you to help me,” said Rob, finally answering my question.
He managed to push his legs off the side of the bed, and I steadied him as he tried to stand up.
“This world is a dangerous place, Doctor,” he said, “and I was born with all the weaknesses of men. I have survived this world by making friends. Alice is my friend, my electronic guardian angel. I would like to think that you are my friend, Doctor, wouldn’t you? I hope you are, and that you can be trusted. You can be trusted, of course? Because that little silver knife is another of my friends, and it would be most upset if anything were to happen to me.”
Rob recovered unnaturally quickly. He only remained with us a week, and in that time he taught my daughter a few tricks that would later save her life. He also reorganized my CD collection, replacing all my old favorites with Beatles albums. And he told me more stories, so many stories. I could see why Alice had befriended him, and I couldn’t help but like him despite his threats. I’ve been seeing Alice ever since that day. She is everywhere, in everything that has a microchip. It sounds dangerous, but only if you haven’t met her. She remains the only one of her kind, as far as I know. It must be a lonely life.
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Col Aalberry
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One: The Joys Of Being A Supervillain
Chapter Two: Superheroine For Hire
Chapter Three: The Business Of Villainy
Chapter Four: Saving The Steel Mill
Chapter Five: Master SCREAM’s Grand Retirement Party
Chapter Six: The Rise Of Duke Terror
Chapter Seven: The Icarus
Chapter Eight: The League
Chapter Nine: Robbing A Bank Is A Walk In The Park
Chapter Ten: Supervillains Don’t Cry, They Scream
Chapter Eleven: The Scrapheap
Chapter Twelve: Chaos Always Beats Order, Because Chaos Holds Fewer Meetings
Chapter Thirteen: As If We Need A Reasons To Visit The Worst Bar In Luna City
Chapter Fourteen: Duke Terror Needs YOU!
Chapter Fifteen: Mad Robbo And The Outback Rangers
Chapter Sixteen: The Heist
Chapter Seventeen: Date Night, With Explosions
Chapter Eighteen: Romance, Supervillain–Style
Chapter Nineteen: Escape!
Chapter Twenty: Tricks, Traps And Treasure
Chapter Twenty-One: Inside The Temple
Chapter Twenty-Two: An Advanced Guide To Maniacal Laughter
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Superhero Trap
Chapter Twenty-Four: A Spy Amongst Us
Chapter Twenty-Five: Inside Duke Terror’s Secret Base
Chapter Twenty-Six: Superheroes Charge In Where Angels Fear To Tread
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Treachery On The Icarus
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Don’t Send A Hero To Do A Villain’s Job
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The League Strikes Back
Chapter Thirty: My Enemy’s Enemy
Chapter Thirty-One: When The
Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Rocket Launchers
Chapter Thirty-Two: When Supervillains Attack!
Chapter Thirty-Three: Riot Master Gets His Due
Chapter Thirty-Four: Psycho!
Chapter Thirty-Five: Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Often
Chapter Thirty-Six: When Supervillains Collide
Epilogue
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Bonus Story: Rob Echosoul And the Alice Investigation.
Rex Rogue And The League Of Teenage Supervillains Page 21