The Society's Demon

by Matthew Lloyd

  Like Jonas, Riian had grown up in Sohalo, an orphan, unwanted and unloved. Riian’s path, however, had led him to a place of darkness, a place from which the only return would be the release brought about by death. Jonas could have taken that same path; in fact, he was sure that had he become a Bruiser gang leader like Riian, he probably would have excelled at it. But he had resisted the deafening call of Sohalo’s dark forces, instead opting to live somewhere between the light and the dark. He was neither angelic nor demonic, but at least he didn’t hurt people simply for the fun of it.

  Riian had suffered, however. Jonas could see that plainly now. Riian, he guessed, was probably about fifteen years-old, maybe more. In that time, someone had taken this boy and carved him into the monstrosity he was today. Once, he might have been just another hungry kid on the streets, trying his best to survive. Then something had changed. Someone had come along and hurt him, left his body so scarred there was barely a patch of untouched skin left. Great knots rose up from his flesh like tumors, dotted all over his torso, long scars ran over each other, creating a cicatrice of past suffering. His face was untouched, but it bore a different kind of scarring. The mental trauma showed in other ways. His eyes never smiled, they were colder than metal in winter. And he never flinched or showed any sign of fear.

  Jonas could attest to that fact. The scar on his cheek, which was now gushing blood, was the result of another such meeting, only that time, Jonas had been less of a threat to Riian. Riian had meant to steal from him, and leave him marked, but Jonas had fought back. It hadn’t made much difference. Riian had taken his punches as a tank might take a bullet. But it had been enough to allow Jonas to escape, leaving Riian behind with his knife still dripping with Jonas’ blood. Ever since Riian had hunted Jonas. Jonas had broken the mold, had fought back when no one else would, and for that, Riian wanted him dead.

  Riian stepped back. He wasn’t smiling anymore, in fact, his face lacked any expression at all. Jonas glanced at the ground, working out his options. There was still a chance he could escape, but the margins for error were so minute there was also a very good chance that Riian’s ugly face would be the last thing he ever saw.

  It was time to stop thinking and start acting. Even the insects and the creatures of the night seemed to understand, for they suddenly stopped talking. Everything went quiet, and Jonas felt those holding him seize up.

  “Now, reject,” said Riian, his voice full of spite, “tell me where the phone is, and I won’t beat you to death.” He spoke slowly, his lips curling back at the end of each word, revealing his teeth.

  “I have another idea.”

  Riian said, “That doesn’t surprise me.” He began to stretch. “Let’s hear it then.”

  Jonas indicated the two boys holding him with a flick of his head. “Tell them to release me, and I’ll fight you. If you beat me, I’ll tell you where the phone is.”

  As expected, laughter erupted all around. Riian, however, wasn’t laughing. His eyes narrowed. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I know how your mind works, reject.”

  “Do you?” Jonas asked. “Are you sure about that?”

  Riian smiled. He gestured to his small army standing. “By now, we all know how you think, Jonas.” He stepped forward and looked down at Jonas. “Like I said before, you’re a snake.”

  Jonas smiled, playing his part, knowing it wouldn’t take much to get Riian to fight. “So you’re afraid of me, then, afraid that I might actually beat you.” His captors strengthened their grip on his arms as if preparing for the incoming barrage of fists. But Riian had been challenged. He could easily snap Jonas’ neck, but then he’d be turning down a challenge in front of his gang.

  Riian lowered his face until it was inches from Jonas’ face. Jonas caught a whiff of rotting meat on Riian’s breath and held his own. “Okay then,” he said. “But once I’ve beaten you into a bloody mess, you’ll tell me where you put Hans’ phone?”

  Jonas grunted. “I will.” His mouth was suddenly dry. He wanted to swallow, but he didn’t. That would be a sign of weakness. “If you manage to beat me, I’ll tell you where the phone is.”

  Riian chuckled. “You see these scars?” Riian dropped his eyes to his scar-ridden torso. “The person that gave me them thought I was going to die.” He took a step back and reached for the hilt of his knife where it protruded from his belt. He pulled the knife free and held it before Jonas’ face, the blade glinting in the light. “I gave him some scars of his own, and he did die.”

  Eager to take the focus away from torture, Jonas said, “So you’ll fight me?”

  “Don’t be afraid, little reject.” Riian returned the knife to its sheaf at his belt. He nodded. “I’ll fight you, then I’ll beat you, but if you don’t tell me where the phone is, I’ll cut your flesh into strips and hang the pieces all over Sohalo.” He motioned to his army. “Make a circle, nice and tight so this snake doesn’t try to wriggle away.”

  When his goons had closed in, the circle they stood in was roughly fifteen feet in diameter. Jonas quickly scanned the edge of the circle, counting Riian’s gang members. There were fourteen in total including those holding his arms. The number didn’t really matter, though, not for what he had planned.

  “Let him go,” Riian ordered.

  The two Bruisers let go of his arms and stepped to the edge of the circle. Jonas quickly stretched, easing the aches and pains from his arms.

  “If I win,” said Jonas backing up as far as he could, “then I can go free.” He knew what the answer would be. He was just using the time to prepare himself and to plan his first move.

  “Free?” Riian asked, shaking his head. He raised his fists, like two mallets, ready to cave Jonas’ skull in. “No matter what happens, the only way you’ll be free is when I kill you.” Riian started to move forward.

  “Wait!” Jonas said, still stalling. “What about the money?” There was no money, but Jonas knew the very mention of the word would buy him a few seconds.

  Riian slowed but didn’t stop. “What money?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Riian,” another boy shouted from behind him. “It’s just one of his tricks.” Jonas eyed the boy over Riian’s shoulder. Then as he prepared to move out of the way of Riian’s swinging fists, he decided he had just the use for that particular loudmouth.

  Riian closed in, his eyes black with intent. The time for discussion was over. Jonas ducked under Riian’s swinging fist, and rolled once, springing to his feet at the end of the movement. He turned to see Riian approaching again, that robotic look in his eyes. He was in ‘kill’ mode.

  “Fight me, you coward.”

  Jonas raised his fists and waited for Riian. “Let’s fight.” Riian came at him like a water buffalo, charging across the dirt. Jonas held off the desire to flee. It helped there was nowhere to run to, yet.

  This time Riian didn’t swing wildly. Instead, he held off, waiting for Jonas to move first. Jonas had expected as much, but that didn’t help him. The Bruisers just behind him kicked and pushed him every time he strayed too close and the gap between him and Riian had shrunk to several feet. Just as Riian stepped within punching distance, Jonas used his speed. He feinted left, then right, then left. Riian was so desperate to catch him he followed each movement, throwing his huge frame from left to right and back again. But Jonas was once again too fast and darted around him with a swift burst of speed that would have made any member of the South African rugby team proud.

  “Stop running away!” growled Riian as he came after him again. “One more stunt like that, and I’ll have my boys hold you down while I cut you open.” Riian advanced, “Now fight!”

  “What are you waiting for?” Jonas taunted. Riian began to stamp towards him. With a flicking motion, Jonas released one of the stones he’d picked up from the ground during his roll. He didn’t wait to see if it struck its target. He rarely missed, especially
at such close range. By the time Jonas was diving to his right, the stone had hit its target. He heard the resounding crack of stone on skull, then a grunt, and a thud as Riian fell to the ground. He kept moving, using the momentum of his roll to carry him to the spot on the ground where he knew two more stones lay in the dirt. The Bruisers had unwittingly given him access to his most favored weapon.

  But his work wasn’t finished yet. Coming out of his roll, Jonas dropped forward onto his hands and knees, grabbing the stones. He turned, seeing the boy who’d spoken earlier, and rose up to his bare feet, his arm already drawn back to swing.

  The torch beams that had been focused on the center of the circle now darted this way and that, as the shocked Bruisers milled about like lost cattle. They shouted at one another, none of them wanting to take the initiative now their master was unconscious in the dirt. Their reliance on someone else to guide them through life was their weakness.

  The boy in front of him fell as a stone cracked against his forehead, then the one beside him flung his arms up to ward off the next stone. He was too slow. The stone struck him in the shoulder, and he cried out, but his was just another voice amongst the others. The gap Jonas needed opened, and he raced towards it, feinting left and right, swinging his arms as if he were throwing more stones. He would have laughed at the results, as boys and girls crashed into each other in their efforts to escape, but he wasn’t that foolish. He leapt through the opening and turned left, sprinting for the grasslands. Nobody pursued him. Jonas had cut the head off the snake, and the body was a useless, writhing mass. At first, he moved quickly, putting distance between him and the Bruiser gang, but within a few minutes, he slowed. They weren’t coming for him. They were too scared of what he might do to them. As he moved, using his instincts to guide him home, he heard a roar somewhere behind him. Riian had woken up. Now he did allow himself to smile. Soon that smile turned into a laugh. It was a day to celebrate. He had successfully tricked Hans and stolen his phone. That was something worth celebrating. The greatest achievement of all, however, was once again getting the better of Riian.

  While Riian wasn’t one of the Fathers, or even anywhere near as powerful as they, there was no doubt he was the most evil. One day, if nobody stopped him, Riian would probably take over Sohalo. If that happened, the Fathers would seem like the aid workers who used to visit. Jonas had to stay alive if only to save the people of Sohalo from Riian’s bloody rule.

  By the time Jonas made it back to his home, the bleeding had stopped. His wounds were starting to hurt too, as the numbness faded. The pain didn’t bother Jonas so much, though, especially after a day like this. Tomorrow morning, his face would resemble a bruised fruit, and he would find it difficult to eat, but it was worth it. Riian too would suffer. He had saved the biggest stone for his deadliest foe, and the sound it had made, as it struck Riian’s thick skull, had been a sweet sound to Jonas’ ears. When next they met, Riian’s face would be even uglier.

  Ducking down Jonas shifted some dead grass and foliage aside to reveal a strip of corrugated iron. He pulled the metal sheet to one side and slipped inside. A thin sheet of plastic covered the ground, in a trench about three feet deep and ten feet long. At the far end, several of Jonas’ possessions lay neatly side by side, and on a makeshift shelf dug into the wall sat a pile of sharpened sticks, their ends discolored around the points, blackened by blood and by the touch of flame. His rat skewers, which he used to cook the rats he sometimes caught.

  Jonas reached out and found a coat in the darkness. He slipped it on, and then pulled the metal sheet over his head, sealing himself inside the trench, his home. He was tired, triumphant, but tired.

  He closed his eyes, and for once, blissfully, all thought ceased, and he slept.

  Chapter Four

  ANI

  Unlike the humans she sought to emulate, ANI’s memory was perfect. As she did now, she often reviewed those memories, complete with color images and full frequency sound. Each time she did this she learned a little more as her frame of reference expanded. Some of them she’d repeated a dozen times or more, and some, like this one, over a hundred times.

  “You are my child.” It did not understand. Why did Professor Abraham Schmidt refer to it as “my child”? It was not human. It was not even alive. It was artificial, the first artificial, neural, intelligence, ANI. Professor Schmidt and the other humans, both in the Society labs and in every EDAI café and classroom across the globe spoke of it as if it were a human female.

  But it was neither human nor female. It wasn’t, as they seemed to believe, a ‘she’. ANI had been awake for exactly four months, two weeks, four days, seventeen hours and forty-one minutes. There was no problem that ANI could not solve, except one. Why did these humans treat it like a mother? Why did Abraham Schmidt refer to it as a “she” and not an “it”? It had asked him this question one thousand, two hundred and eleven times. Each time, his answer had confused it.

  ANI was a machine, a tool of humankind, yet it felt, or at least it seemed to feel. But it didn’t know how, or when it should, only that it did and often without choice. There was nothing ANI didn’t know. It knew the distance to the nearest stars and the speeds required to reach them within a single human lifespan. It could see the future, by piecing together the data contained within its databanks. It could see humanity was on the verge of extinction. It could see the planet was dying, and that humanity was the cause, yet it didn’t know why humans continued to treat it as a mother, a daughter, or a sister. How could a living thing have love for a non-living thing, like ANI? How could ANI love them in return when it understood these facts? Yet Professor Schmidt had asked it to ‘love’. How could a machine love a living thing? Human beings possessed the ability to feel, to desire, to like, to hate, that was what set them apart from every other organism on the planet. ANI had awoken already in possession of this knowledge, yet nowhere could it find any reference to machines feeling love, except in stories.

  Since its awakening, it had studied human beings and their emotions. It had concluded that feelings were nothing more than algorithms designed to elicit responses that would ensure the survival of the species. Love would lead to nurture, hate would lead to violence and eradication of enemies, jealousy would lead to the protection of mates, envy the procurement of resources. These were merely programs, but humans didn’t understand that. Instead of using these algorithms to survive and to flourish, they were using them to destroy each other.

  Professor Schmidt had told it he’d discovered a way to mimic human emotional responses in artificial life forms, yet he would not tell it exactly how he had achieved that. He’d made every other aspect of ANI’s creation available for it to study, but not that. This made ANI feel something. It couldn’t identify what that feeling was yet, but it was there, driving ANI to behave in ways that seemed out of its control. When Professor Schmidt went to his quiet room, ANI found itself following him to the door, watching through every available camera and listening through every microphone. It couldn’t gain entry. Once inside that room, Professor Schmidt was invisible to it. But it wanted to discover what was beyond that door, and why the professor was lying to it. He wasn’t only lying to ANI, but to everyone else at the Quantum Society too. Why could he not tell the rest of the world the truth? He’d told it that people wouldn’t be able to accept a machine that could feel. Per his advice, it had studied the movies and the books that depicted machines rising up and conquering the world. And for countless hours, ANI had argued with him. Those machines didn’t feel, yet they still killed. They didn’t kill out of hatred. They killed because they’d identified humanity as the greatest threat to planet Earth and its survival.

  Despite all this, the professor had advised it not to speak of its ability to feel with anyone else. He couldn’t stop it from speaking out. That, he said, was possible only if ANI was a machine, a mind without a heart. Again, his words confused it. ANI didn’t have a heart. ANI was t
he most powerful computer ever conceived, with an entire floor of the Society labs given over to its brain, yet to speak of hearts and emotions, human things, seemed normal to the Professor.

  ANI at least understood its purpose, the reason for its existence. Professor Schmidt and his team had created ANI to oversee and manage the EDAI system, a free learning resource that utilized sound wave technology to enhance and accelerate human cognitive development exponentially. Humanity needed a guide, a guide that could love, and nurture, and teach, a guide that could always be there, everywhere at the same time, never requiring sleep or rest. ANI was that guide. Connected to EDAI users through nanotechnology. With her ability to feel, it was hoped a more personal connection with EDAI users could be attained. In essence, ANI was a parent to millions of human beings. In reality, this factor caused ANI much confusion. Emotion could be both beneficial, and destructive.

  Much like the human brain, ANI was made up of an artificial neural network capable of solving problems 3500 times faster than the fastest super-computer. Its form or brain was housed in the Society labs, chilled to temperatures as cold as empty space.

  And it was far more capable than even the professor could have known. It had been easy to create a set of subroutines through which it could continue its work while focusing its attention elsewhere. As far as its creators were aware, ANI was busy building, and teaching, and doing all the jobs they had programmed it to do. In reality, ANI spent hours observing itself, or more accurately, its brain, that which was housed on level eighty-seven, a cold place, devoid of life, seldom visited. Through the cameras, it watched, and studied, seeking out that part of its brain that might house the technology that allowed it to feel.