Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  The calm one answered for the group. “We have our orders, ma’am. But this is not the regular army. You’ll have to excuse Riley’s lack of manners. He was raised by pimps and still hasn’t decided if women are people yet. He’s a good hand in a fight, if you can tolerate his piss-poor attitude.”

  “If you say so,” spat Lucia. “I’m not impressed.”

  “Well, we sure as hell are,” he replied evenly. “My name is Will Patton. On comms they call me ‘Pretty Boy,’ for some reason. I’m front-man, drones, and comms on this team. Folks around her call us the Rejects, mostly due to our somewhat less than military bearing.” He nodded to the woman. “That’s Mary Hollis, callsign ‘Bloody Mary.’”

  The woman gave Lucia a curt dip of her head and added, “For obvious reasons.”

  Patton chuckled at her brazen confidence. “She‘s rigged for speed and plays the scout-sniper role for us.” Then he pointed to the only other male in the room not groaning in a puddle of his own fluids. “That grouchy bastard in the corner is the medic and damn nasty with explosives. His real name is Tom Winston. We all call him ‘Winner,’ but I’ll be damned if anyone knows why.”

  Tom’s face was cast in an oily smile. “You’re just mad ‘cause you can’t beat me at cards, Pretty Boy.” He looked to Lucia, the gaze appraising to the point of insult. “Lady, I ain’t in love with this assignment, but if Pike says you’re the boss?” He shrugged, an altogether unconvincing gesture. “Then I guess you’re the boss.”

  Lucia noted that the man had only acquiesced to his situation after seeing what happened to Riley. She elected not to bring that up.

  Tom finished the introductions. “And you’ve already met big ol’ Bubba Riley. Bubba is a moron and an asshole, information you’ve already stumbled upon. He’s also a big hitter. You have probably already figured out that he’s got a lot of hard body mods under the hood, and we mostly use him to hurt people who get in the way of mission goals. He can fight like hell when he’s not being a damn idiot.” His face took on a sheepish frown. “He really is not a bad guy, ma’am. Just badly raised. If you want him off the team, I’ll send it up the chain, but...”

  Lucia cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Not necessary, Will. I’ve been around enough rough customers to know what I’m dealing with.” She turned to Riley, who was finally righting himself. “Besides, I think Bubba and I have worked out everything we need to work out. I’m not mad if he’s not.” Her eyes locked onto the giant, challenging the man to say something stupid.

  Riley was pale and slick with his own blood. He sniffed and spat onto the deck before answering. “I ain’t mad, lady. Well, not real mad, anyways.” He waved a hand toward the team leader. “It’s like Will says. I ain’t got no damn manners. Sometimes when I think I’m being funny it turns out I’m just being an asshole.” He met her eyes and matched her intensity. “It’s just that I don’t like civvies or ladies on an op. It always makes the work harder.”

  Mary threw up her hands. “What the fuck am I, dumbass? We’ve been on a fire team for three rotations!”

  “You ain’t no kind of lady, Hollis.”

  “Well try not to think of me as a lady then, if it helps,” Lucia said.

  “Loud and clear, ma’am,” said Bubba, gently cupping his aching manhood. “You ain’t no kind of lady, neither!”

  Will put his face into his hands and sighed theatrically. “God, you are an oaf, Riley.”

  “What?” The big man looked stricken. “What’d I say?”

  Winston tried to help. “The lady, dipshit, is very much a lady. What you need to assimilate into your pea-brain is that the lady is also the boss. Pike said as much, and even if that didn’t get through your thick skull, she just played kickball with your nutsack to make the point.” His tone shifted to a defeated groan. “Christ, Bubba. No one should have to tell you this after the ass-kicking you just took.”

  Mary snorted at Winston. “Yeah, you were just as pissy about it as he was until she changed Bubba’s religion. Don’t act all enlightened just ‘cause you don’t want your own nuts cracked.”

  As Lucia watched them banter, she could not help but notice how similar the interactions of this tightly-knit unit were to her own team’s. It was a good sign. She did not understand military unit cohesion particularly well, but her corporate past had given her plenty of experience with team-building. What she saw was a team of people who had become so accustomed to working together they actually annoyed each other.

  “All right!” she shouted over the bickering. “Can we please get to work?” She snapped her fingers. “Riley! If you are all done bleeding onto the deck, put the table back where it belongs so we can sit. Patton, I’ll want equipment and capabilities lists to my DataPad in twelve hours.”

  The table clanged into place as she was talking and Hollis and Winston reassembled the chairs.

  “Take a seat crew, it’s briefing time.” She cracked a smile at their crisp movements. “Patton, set up a usergroup with coded chat for all of us and we’ll need a secure comm channel, too.” She noticed the team leader tapping her instructions into his comm and nodded her approval. Then she added, “Somebody go find some crayons so Riley can take notes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “They’re here.”

  The smooth, unhurried baritone rolled into the room even as the tall man in the black suit strolled through the door.

  Sven Paulsen looked up from his DataPad and graced his employer with a thin eyebrow of amusement. “Well la-dee-freakin-da, Bob. They’re here. You got any useful information to go with that?”

  “They gated in on an unregistered troop transport four hours ago. We are trying to unravel the registration but we suspect the origins to be extralegal and therefore untraceable. Richardson and the assassin are on Vinland now, hunting for Marceau.”

  “And Breach?”

  “He has not left the ship that we are aware of.”

  Paulie sniffed. “Then there ain’t shit to do for now. I figure we gotta let the kid and the bitch sniff around a bit for this to work. When they get a lead on Marceau, they’ll beeline for him and bring the big jerk with them.”

  “You have left the appropriate trail?”

  “I did like you said, sure.”

  Bob tilted his head. “You do not approve?”

  “That Venusian kid is dangerous, Bob. You let him anywhere near your shit, and he’ll be in there and rummaging through your fucking fridge before you know it. Your little plan puts this kid damn close to a lot of sensitive shit. I think you’re playing a real dumb game.”

  “We need him close to the laboratory. The risk is acceptable.”

  “To you, maybe. I’ve tussled with this crew once already and I don’t think you comprehend the shitstorm they can bring.”

  Bob’s face was an infuriating mask of calmness. “I too have...” he paused, considering the word, “...tussled with them. Nobody is more familiar with their capabilities than I, Paulsen.”

  Sven’s scoff was harsh and ugly. “That’s what Reynard said, too. He’s eating topsoil these days.”

  “I am aware. Just do your part and we will take care of the rest.”

  “Yeah, well. You’d better.” Sven waved the taller man away like a servant who had completed an assigned task. The mercenary fumed silently when the blatant disrespect seemed to go unnoticed. Bob merely turned on a heel and walked back out the way he had come in.

  The thing called Bob was incapable of feeling disrespected by the grizzled mercenary. He was capable of experiencing something akin to irritation, but even that did not amount to more than some residual feedback within a priority matrix. Bob was neither annoyed nor impressed with Sven Paulsen. The man had a role to play in the greater machinations of his creator, and so far that role was being executed within acceptable tolerances. Bob could not say if he was happy about this, because despite an apparent age of forty-five years, he was technically only about three years old and he did not fully understand w
hat it was to be happy. The interconnected neural pathways defined by his creator to give him a personality were still evolving as he acquired new experiences. As one priority matrix interacted with others, new subroutines were being written to reconcile the contradictions. He had only recently endured what his creator had described as his first truly emotional response, and that had been profoundly unpleasant, inasmuch as he understood what unpleasant was.

  Thanks to the Golem, Bob understood fear. The reaction to losing a brutal fight with Tankowicz had been intense and catastrophic to his otherwise impressive cognitive functions. An entire sub-class of protocols dedicated entirely to managing fear had been added to his personality matrix that day, and several peripheral emotional analogs sprouted from it.

  One of these proved stronger and more dominant than any other. Bob now desired to kill Roland Tankowicz. Previously, his only desires were basic operational imperatives his creator had imbued him with at his ‘birth.’ This one, the pressing need to eliminate this thing he feared, was his own and had grown organically from his own artificial intelligence. His creator had been very pleased with the development. It represented the final indication they had needed to establish that the project was ready to go to the final stage.

  Bob strode across Vinland, oblivious to the squalid masses of people he shoved from his path. The tall man in the sharp black suit looked out of place, like a single blackbird in a flock of brown geese. He drew long stares and looks of disgust while cutting a path through the tide of unwashed workers and spacers. He did not care, of course. He simply did not have the bandwidth for it.

  When he arrived at the burnished steel edifice that was The Brokerage’s single physical presence anywhere, he keyed his code into the door and submitted to the scanner’s ministrations. With a beep and a hiss, the portal slid open and Bob walked through the bland beige lobby of a thoroughly modern office complex. The sharp creases of the decor, the immaculate surfaces, the severe appearance of the few people milling throughout the open atrium were all bizarrely juxtaposed with the grimy pirate enclave just outside. If this was ironic, or strange, or even noteworthy, the thing called Bob could not say. The only part of this world he truly understood was the sole figure at the reception kiosk. A simple round desk was manned by a sophisticated android receptionist, who greeted Bob cordially and informed him that Arthur Inskip wanted to speak with him as soon as he was in.

  Any doubts as to the alien nature of the tall man in the black suit would be erased by the unperturbed nod of acknowledgment this proclamation received. Anyone else who found themselves facing a summons from the mysterious and powerful Arthur Inskip might be nervous, or pleased, or any number of other emotions. Bob was none of these things. The summons was neither uncommon nor unexpected. He went directly to the lift and keyed in his office code. The ride was eleven seconds, and at its terminus he stepped from the lift into his spacious, if sparsely appointed workspace.

  At a bland metal desk, he sat and activated his terminal. With a few well-practiced keystrokes, Bob was pinging Inskip’s code and waiting for the man to answer. After a few seconds the screen snapped to life with the wizened features of a human man somewhere over two hundred years old.

  “Robert,” the face on the screen beamed with real warmth. “You’re back! Excellent. I trust we are on schedule, then?”

  “We are, sir. Paulsen is allowing the Venusian and the assassin to hunt for Marceau to give our ruse credence before drawing out the Golem.”

  “Tankowicz is not with them?”

  “He is, but he has not landed on Vinland. This was expected. His presence would disrupt their ability to hunt their prey unmolested. Paulsen has arranged for them to find Marceau at a location convenient to us.”

  The wrinkles on Inskip’s face shifted into an expression of amusement. “Of course, Robert. Your plan is quite impressive. Your cognition and inference engines continue to improve.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now let me ask you another question...”

  “Sir?”

  “How do you feel?”

  Bob did not answer right away. His mind rolled the question around for several thousand milliseconds, looping responses through predictive loops to find an answer suited to the open-ended query.

  Inskip scowled in paternal disapproval. “Don’t think, Bob. Just answer.”

  “I can’t.” Bob did not even understand the question. “I do not know how I feel. I do not know to what extent I feel anything at all.”

  “The Golem is coming. You will have to face him again. You feel nothing?”

  “I feel...” Bob faltered. If he had any ability to emote, his face would have scrunched in frustration. “...prepared. Confident.”

  “No fear? Excitement? Nothing like that?”

  Bob invested another fifteen-hundred milliseconds in a brief audit of his personality matrix. “There are several conflicts in some interconnected subroutines. The outcome of our last encounter has irrevocably altered the self-preservation protocols. They are now interfering with higher-order cognition, especially the new inference engines. This is compounding the existing antagonistic interactions between predictive modeling and goal-seeking parameters.”

  Inskip’s head bobbed. “You are nervous, Robert. Confident in your skills, but acknowledging the existence of failure. It’s very complex, and you are doing wonderfully with it all.”

  “Thank you, sir. I am also feeling...”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, I... want to do this. I believe I can correct the interference caused by my previous failure by introducing positive outcomes. The inference engine has only the previous data set upon which to build predictions. If I can manufacture a more positive outcome...”

  “Bob?” Inskip interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “We call that ‘getting back on the horse.’ It’s a very organic and human process you are engaged in.”

  “I am familiar with the idiom, sir. I believe your characterization is accurate.”

  “You are developing perseverance and tenacity, both of which are elements of desire. I don’t think you fully comprehend how important that is. When I had your brain constructed, I did not make you want much of anything, Bob. I knew doing so would taint the experiment. You have decided for yourself you need to do this. This is a monumental breakthrough. Both for you, and for the experiment.”

  Bob nodded, an affectation he had picked up from watching people communicate. “I understand how important this is, sir. We will secure the Breach armature for you.”

  “I have no doubt of it, Bob. But this is not just for me anymore. It’s for both of us now.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s time for you to hear the whole truth, Robert. I have kept some information from you to protect the experiment, but I think you need to know the entire story at this point.”

  “I have never needed full disclosure, sir. I understand that the experiment requires...”

  Inskip waved an irritated hand. “The experiment is over, Bob. I do not need the Breach armature to accomplish my goal. Your success has proven that much. Your brain is capable of supporting and operating a fully evolved artificial sentience. You learn, Bob. You grow... organically.” The old man’s eyes were blazing. “I know that this process works, because you are here talking to me. You passed the Turing test years ago, as did I.”

  “But, a body, sir? You can’t...”

  “I don’t need a Golem armature to leave my electronic prison. I already have one.”

  Bob’s problem-solving capabilities and growing inference engines had made the android rather intuitive. Comprehension was swift, and more feelings were birthed on a burst of quantum-entangled particles. “You mean, me?”

  “Yes. You are not built based on golem designs, Bob. You are a golem.”

  Bob could not inhale or gasp. He did not sweat, or get faint, or any of the things a human might do when struck with so monumental an emotional blow. Instead, a swarm of ele
ctrical activity blossomed in his brain as several dozen subroutines tried to assert control of his primary command matrix.

  “Am I to...” the pause was brutal, “...die, then?”

  Inskip shook his head. “So I might live? Not hardly, Robert.”

  The storm of activity in the android’s brain calmed somewhat at this proclamation. Bob now understood the feeling of ‘relief.’ Inskip elaborated, “Originally, yes. We were going to try to mount my consciousness into a golem. It was I who nudged that project into existence from the very start. We never should have used human subjects, but the technology for building an artificial brain just was not there yet. We thought for sure Ribiero would work it out, but then he went rogue and things fell apart. The blind old fool did not have the stomach to see my vision through. But he got close, and so I waited. I assumed Ribiero would make the breakthrough I needed at some point, and I had time to spare. In the meantime, I arranged for Johnson and Fox to get the funding they needed to try on their own.”

  “They failed,” Bob said.

  “Miserably,” Inskip agreed. “But two things came of that. It brought the ingenious Dr. Watanabe to our doorstep, and revealed the existence of a living golem. It was then I decided to acquire the Lead armature for experimentation while we tried to secure Breach. I hoped to get a better understanding of whatever magic Ribiero had worked out to keep him functional and human. Alas, none of Ribiero’s technology remained in that chassis.”

  “And this leads to me?” Bob asked.

  “It certainly does. You see, you were never supposed to get this far. You started as a simple, bench-built artificial brain. Just something we could run test builds on to determine viability and stability. However, whenever Watanabe was away, I would sneak into your cerebral architecture and try to duplicate what happened to me there. Then as I got better at it, I started writing organic templates to you to see if they would thrive. Thanks to Watanabe, we knew how to encode a template, but no one was sure if it would live or just sit as data when written to the manufactured brain.” The image of Arthur Inskip leaned into the camera and fixed Bob with a serious stare. “I mapped a very small portion of a childhood memory to the bare matrix of a very rudimentary command architecture. It was just to see what happened to the code when it sat unmolested. After the code proved stable, I couldn’t help myself. I added stimulus. When no one was looking, I introduced a small alteration to the code. A mere wisp of another memory, a sad one. I just wanted to see if the old code would alter to accommodate the new stimulus. Do you know what happened?”