Uncanny Valley

by C. A. Gray

  Uncanny Valley

  Book 1

  C.A. Gray

  www.authorcagray.com

  Copyright and Disclaimers

  Uncanny Valley

  By C.A. Gray

  Copyright 2017, C.A. Gray

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No Portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not limited to, audio recordings, facsimiles, photocopying, or information storage and retrieval systems without explicit written permission from the author or publisher.

  Published By:

  Wanderlust Publishing

  Tucson, AZ

  Also by C.A. Gray:

  Intangible: Piercing the Veil, Book 1

  Invincible: Piercing the Veil, Book 2

  Impossible: Piercing the Veil, Book 3

  The Liberty Box

  The Eden Conspiracy: The Liberty Box Trilogy, Book 2

  The Phoenix Project: The Liberty Box Trilogy, Book 3

  The Silver Six: Uncanny Valley, Book 2

  Jaguar: Uncanny Valley, Book 3

  Acknowledgements

  To my editors, Cyndi Deville (my mom), Lindsay Schlegel, and Jim Strawn: I couldn’t do this without you. Thank you so very much for your ongoing support and wonderful ideas!

  To my husband, Frank Baden: thank you for sticking with me as we discussed OVER and OVER possible cover and title ideas, and for even sketching out your vision for the cover (which turned out great!)

  To my sister-in-law, Keilee Deville: thanks for all the title brainstorming! I’d never heard the term “uncanny valley” before you sent it to me, and it conveys one of the main ideas of the book perfectly.

  To my PA, Tiana Griffin: thank you so much for all your tireless social media posting and energetic support. It’s great to have you in my corner!

  And thank you Lord, for giving me the schedule and the flexibility to consistently write. I am so blessed that I get to do this.

  FREE eBOOK

  THE LIBERTY BOX (Book 1)

  Kate Brandeis has it all: a famous reporter at the age of twenty-four, she’s the face of the Republic of the Americas. She has a loving fiancé and all the success she could wish for. But when she learns of the death of a long-forgotten friend, her investigations unravel her perfect memories, forcing her to face the fact that she’s been living a lie.

  Jackson MacNamera, trained from a young age in the art of mind control, returns to the Republic for his mother’s funeral. Within a few hours of his arrival, authorities collect Jackson and take him by force to a room ironically called The Liberty Box, where he must choose between surrendering his thoughts to the new Republic, or fleeing for his freedom.

  Kate, bereaved and confused, finds her way to a cave community of refugees, where Jackson seems to offer her an escape from her grief. The two forge an uneasy bond, and in the process Jackson learns that Kate has some insight which may help the hunters in their attempt to free other citizens from the tyranny of the Potentate. Against the expressed wishes of the Council, the hunters plot a series of daring raids, attempting to prove that not only is freedom possible, but that the citizens are not too far gone to desire it. But with the odds so stacked against them, can the refugees succeed in their rescue missions right under the Potentate’s nose?

  Prologue

  I gasped out the last few notes of my big solo, belting my heart out, my arms stretched up to either side of the stage. I could feel my voice hit the back wall, and I knew I sounded breathtaking. The sweat rolled down the sides of my face and over the place where my mic was taped to my hairline. As the last note faded away, the applause was immediate and thunderous; I panted to try to regain my breath, turning to Henry to deliver my last line once the cheers quieted enough to hear me.

  "Yes," I said with gravitas. "I think it's time.”

  Henry reached out an arm to me to lead me off stage right. The curtains lowered, and the applause began again. I knew there was not a dry eye in the theater.

  The moment the curtains touched the stage, we both broke character, and Henry scooped me into his arms, spinning me around. I let out a sound somewhere between a whoop and a squeal.

  “You totally nailed it!” he cried. “That was brilliant, Becca!”

  The rest of the cast flooded the stage, taking our places for the curtain call. When the curtains went up one last time, Henry and I hung back behind the rest, running out last to take our bows as the lead characters amid whistles and cheers. Henry took his bow first, and then gestured at me; I ran out ahead of him and curtseyed. I got a standing ovation, and curtseyed a second time, choking back the tears.

  This was my favorite moment; the part that made all the hard work and repetition and late night rehearsals worthwhile. This was where I belonged.

  When the curtain descended again, the entire cast let out a collective exultant cry, spontaneously hugging each other as we scampered offstage to greet our adoring public.

  It was closing night. I knew Julie was in the audience tonight, but she was the only friend I knew for sure had attended that night. Most of my other friends didn't even attend Dublin University--they were scattered all over the world, making the most of what was probably the last opportunity any of us would have in our lifetimes to leave our hometown of Casa Linda, Arizona. I wouldn't get to do this for much longer; pretty soon, my "other life," the one where I was a cognitive neuroscience researcher, would be the only one that mattered. But not yet. Right now, everything was perfect.

  I only wished Madeline, my companion robot, could see me perform live. Just once. I'd play her the video when I got home from the lab tomorrow like always... but it just wasn't the same.

  ****

  Everyone was there—all five-hundred and fifty-four residents of Casa Linda, the rural suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Babies cried while mothers shushed; children who didn’t know any better chased each other on the artificial grass turf of the park. All of the adults stood in stony silence, resentful of the man whose image was shortly to appear.

  “I dunno why we’re all so upset,” muttered Roy Benson to no one in particular. “Not like he can take anything else away from us at this point.” Benson wore a white wife beater that gaped didn’t quite cover his protruding belly, like he always did ever since he’d lost his job as a labyrinth connection consultant.

  “I agree with you, but I’m nervous anyway,” replied Lyle Hopper, seated on a folding chair below him. Hopper, once a good looking and vigorous businessman, was now missing a few teeth. He also breathed heavily, as if the exertion of conversation was too much for him. “I don’t think I have much else to lose, but I’m afraid I’ll discover I’m wrong. Although frankly, I’m not sure killing me would be much worse than stealing my purpose.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Benson agreed. “We’re useless, and we’re subsisting on the charity of a bunch of damn bots and the elite few like Halpert. How much worse—”

  William Halpert’s holographic projection interrupted Benson, appearing on the amphitheater stage of the little park. He was surprisingly short, only about five foot four, though the politician was a giant in other respects. He grinned in magnanimous greeting, spreading wide his hands to encompass everyone who had gathered before both this stage and every other in the world. His words would be simultaneously translated into every language across the globe. Mothers hissed at their scampering children to quiet down so that everyone could hear.

  “Friends,” Halpert said, “thank you for gath
ering here today as one global community. I know you are all busy with your active lives—”

  Benson snorted and Hopper gave a derisive laugh. “Sure, I’m so busy I ran out of crossword puzzles this morning,” muttered Hopper.

  “—so I will get right to the point. I gathered this global community together to make a very special announcement.

  “As you all know, twenty years ago the Council of Synthetic Reason determined that in order to protect humanity, all bots must be limited by two rules: they must serve only a single core purpose in the service of humanity, and they must be readily identifiable as bots.

  “The advancement of bots since then has changed the face of our world. It’s changed the way we do business.”

  “Or don’t do business,” muttered Benson.

  “But we have come upon a significant limitation which those of us in the Capital have been working on for years. It is this: while the bots are excellent at learning facts and applying information, and can do so faster and more accurately than the most intelligent human, they lack the critical ingredient of creativity which would allow them to apply the information they’ve gained—within their core purpose, of course. For that, we still require humans. Unfortunately, there are not enough highly trained humans to use this information anymore. This has led to a stagnant economy. What we need are more creative workers.

  “Now I come to the reason why I have gathered you together today. We know that emotion and creativity are intertwined. Yet we barely understand the nature of either, let alone how to translate them into circuits.

  “But I believe, and I know you all do too, that the group mind is vastly superior to that of any one individual. Therefore, in an act of stunning generosity, the great companies and universities of the world have all agreed to open source their research thus far. This means every bit of knowledge the human race has ever amassed regarding the neuroscience of human emotion and creativity, as well as all advances toward algorithms to encode the same, will now be freely available via the labyrinth in the hopes that universal access will yield much quicker results.

  “This is a big task, and indeed, it is likely to be the last great challenge of humankind. I’m asking us to come together and find the answer to a question that has perplexed philosophers for millenia: what is human creativity? But in a world where knowledge doubles every six hours, I believe we are up to the task.

  “Thank you very much for your time and attention. I will personally update you of any breaking news in this field. I wish you all a very good morning, good day, or good evening—whatever time it is where you are!”

  Halpert’s image vanished from the stage.

  As the people began to disperse, one attractive woman in her fifties stood alone, frowning at the now-empty amphitheater. She tucked her reddish hair streaked with gray behind her ears, and tapped her temple to access the Artificial Experience chip implanted there.

  “Call Rebecca,” she said, fishing her A.E. goggles out of her purse and putting them on. She saw a few of the townspeople shoot her dirty looks, but she ignored them. To a person, they disapproved of any flashy show of the technology which had so changed the face of their world.

  A few minutes later, she was in her twenty-one year old daughter’s dormitory room in Dublin. The room was dark, until Rebecca sat up and flipped on the light.

  “Mom! Really?” she looked at the analog clock hanging on her wall, which she had found at an antique store. Her auburn hair stuck up in every direction, and she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Do you know what time it is here?”

  “Why weren’t you up watching Halpert’s address?”

  “Because it’s four am, and I was performing last night, and then I was at the cast party until like midnight! I’ll find out what he said soon enough—”

  “How close are your experiments to finding the source of human emotion?” her mother cut her off.

  Rebecca blinked. “What? Not close at all, why?”

  “Get on the labyrinth and watch the replay of Halpert’s address and call me back. You might want to put your musical theater and novelist careers on hold. Your senior thesis has suddenly become the most important topic in the world.”

  Chapter 1: Rebecca Cordeaux

  I had to be in the lab at eight in the morning, which, after closing night of “Gunder’s Hollow” and cast party and getting wakened at four by my mother’s hologram, felt a little like death. But, I had my coping strategies for just such mornings as this one: namely, Lavazza’s triple shot latte. The little coffee shop was around the corner from the psych lab where I conducted my experiments, but test subjects would arrive at any minute. I prayed for no line.

  Thank you thank you, I breathed—apparently I’d arrived right during the morning lull. The bot behind the counter asked my order and busied itself with her four arms, ringing me up and making my drink at the same time. She barely had to move.

  Within two minutes, I held my brain function in my hands, slurping so it didn’t scald my throat on the way down while half-walking, half-running toward the lab.

  “Hi guys!” I greeted the line of human volunteers queued outside the door. The medic bot waited patiently as well, wearing a cute little white hat with a red cross on it to identify her. “Thanks for your patience.” I doffed my backpack and jacket, pulling my handheld interface out of my backpack to collect signatures from the participants. They had already sent me their consent forms—I only needed to match fingerprints to participants, which we used in lieu of A.E. chip tracking for identity verification because it kept costs down. I gave the interface to the first girl in line. While they queued up to scan their fingerprints, I hurriedly unlocked the door to the waiting room, turned on the lights in there and in all of the actual testing rooms, and bid the medic bot to follow me.

  “We can set up for the blood draws in here,” I told her, pointing to a little counter at the front of the waiting room, designed for a receptionist. I should have been sitting there myself, checking everybody in… and I would have been, had I woken up about an hour earlier.

  “Very good, Miss Cordeaux,” said the bot in a tinny voice, rolling over and distributing her instruments. She was a funny little thing: about half my height, but not as short as my own bot Madeline. She had no dexterity at all in her lower half, since she had no legs. But her arms were extendable just in case she needed to pick something up off the floor, and her hands were as supple as a surgeon’s. She had clearly been built for her purpose.

  I left the medic bot to set up, and went to make sure the rooms were ready, gripping my latte for dear life. Pulling up my notes, because I could never quite remember all the steps, I went through them one at a time: interface on, Artificial Experience images and videos specific to each volunteer ready to go, matched to the rooms where each volunteer will be… Then there were a series of commands I didn’t understand but copied very exactly, in order to allow the individual’s A.E. chip to image the participant’s brain and send the images to the VMI (Virtual Magnetic Imaging) for analysis, alongside a snapshot of the image that participant was seeing at the time.

  When I’d finished with the last room, I breathed a sigh of relief, and parked my butt in the receptionist’s chair in the waiting room. Beside me, the medic bot had just finished taking blood from the first participant, the young girl to whom I’d given my interface at the front of the line. She was about my own age; clearly she only volunteered for the money. Not that I blamed her.

  I consulted my list. “Carrie? You’re in room one. The A.E. is all queued up for you. When you go in and sit down, the lights will dim and the experiment will begin.”

  Carrie nodded at me, looking like she could use a latte too.

  The medic bot and I repeated the process for the next seven volunteers, until the room emptied out. Once the medic bot had collected and labeled baseline blood samples for each participant, she announced to me, “I will analyze these for your neuropeptide salheptonin, and re
port back to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and she wheeled away.

  I was alone. With a heavy sigh, I plopped my forearms on the counter and my head on my forearms. To my surprise, I didn’t feel all that tired anymore though—the espresso had done its work.

  I have an hour, I thought. That’s how long the first phase of the experiment took. I could of course log in and see the VMI brain images and the artificial experiences that had stimulated them in real time, but frankly… I wanted to work on my novel. I had an hour, after all.

  I pulled my notebook out of my backpack, along with a pen. I could write the whole thing on an interface or even dictate it, of course, but I liked old fashioned things wherever I could get them. Hence the analog clock in my dorm room. I liked to visit archaeological sites, especially old castle ruins, where I’d try to imagine what life might have been like in the Second Age, before Synthetic Reasoning and Artificial Experience and even the labyrinth. Maybe even before light bulbs.

  I skimmed the pages of what I’d written so far, trying to get back into the flow of it. The story followed Elizabeth, who grew up in an orphanage controlled by the king. The king’s son, Nikolai—devastatingly handsome, of course—grew up visiting the orphanage because his father wanted him to maintain a connection to the people, so he develops a sort of friendship with Elizabeth. She grows up and becomes the handmaid to the princess in a neighboring nation, and Prince Nikolai still comes to visit often. I threw in some intrigue about the mob and Elizabeth being whipped for her impertinent familiarity with royalty. But Nikolai is perfect and wonderful and doesn’t care about her rank. Elizabeth can’t believe he doesn’t care, so she shuns him. Eventually he starts to believe she really doesn’t have feelings for him, and he actually considers the Princess of Spain whom his father wants him to marry. Elizabeth looks on, devastated…