“Look,” Nico said after a few seconds, “you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to join the program, but all I ask is that you give them a chance before you judge them.”
Jonas nodded. “You’re right. I don’t have to do anything, Nico, at least nothing that doesn’t involve destroying that damn tower, and that brainwashing facility they built in the square.” The hot dogs were ready, and Nico took them, but Jonas dismissed the offered hot dog with a hand. “No, I don’t want Society bribes.” He stared at the hotdog as if it were a gun pointed at his face. “Who knows what they’ve put in it, probably full of mind control chemicals or something.”
Nico looked sad. “You really have got the wrong idea about them, Jonas. They’re not here to control, or use us.” He stepped forward, his eyes widening, imploring Jonas to listen. “They’re here to show us a new way of life.”
Jonas wanted to believe him. He wanted to think that The Society really did have their best interests at heart, but it was all too good to be true. They wanted something—but what? He was on full alert. No longer could he sit idly by while The Society took over Sohalo person by person. But at the same time, Jonas wasn’t stupid. He had heard the expression: “Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer,” before. Perhaps he could explore The Society further. There was still a possibility that what Nico was saying was true. He’d fight if need be, alone if he had to, but first, he had to find out more about them so when the time came, he’d be ready. He couldn’t simply discount everything Nico said based only on his gut instinct, and the rumors he’d heard. He had avoided getting too close up to this point, hoping they would just go away, and leave Sohalo to rot. It now looked like he had no choice.
“Alright, Nico, I’ll listen to what you have to say, but don’t think I’m going to set foot in that café or join your program.”
Nico relaxed visibly. “Thank you, Jonas. You won’t regret it.” He held out one of the hot dogs. “Another one?” He smiled and inclined his head like someone trying to trick a rat with a tasty morsel.
Jonas shook his head. The hot dog didn’t look so hot anymore. “No, I can’t…it wouldn’t be right.” It was tainted now, tainted by the thought of The Society. Even if he did take it, it would never taste as good as that first one had.
“Come with me,” Nico said. “I want to show you something.”
Jonas straightened, making his body taller, more imposing. “Alright, but no tricks.”
“Come on, man,” said Nico frowning. “This is me we’re talking about, not some Bruiser. I was like you once, remember?” He turned, his eyes still on Jonas’. “You coming?”
“Lead the way.”
Jonas followed Nico through the market. Nico moved like he knew exactly where he was going. If he left the market and headed out into the surrounding grasslands, it was more than likely a trap.
Without Nico seeing, he moved the gun from his backpack to his pocket. It was old and he had no bullets, but anyone he pointed it at didn’t know that.
Chapter Six
Interconnectedness
Phase one was complete.
With its completion, ANI was now free to proceed to phase two. This stage of ANI’s development was crucial to phase three, but also the most difficult of all.
If ANI was to do what humanity had designed her to do, nurture and care for them, and ensure their survival, she had to understand them and to do that in the best way possible she had to learn to think like them. Human thought and action were always affected in some way by emotion. This was the conclusion ANI came to after studying humans. Piero’s original creation of ANI, and her subsequent development by Abraham, for instance, seemed to have been fueled by love. Or maybe love hadn’t come into the equation until she was born. ANI wasn’t sure how it had happened, just that it had. But that was where she would begin her search, her quest to comprehend the feelings that drove humans to do the things they did.
Aside from her quest, ANI was plagued each day by emotions that seemed to appear randomly within her in the beginning. However, as the weeks passed, it became clear there was some kind of pattern at play. And it was, for this reason, she must focus solely on educating herself on the human emotional response.
Phase one had been a simple matter of assigning all non-essential activities to their own subroutines. The construction of new housing developments, farms, and fusion power plants no longer required her attention. Her robots would carry out all instructions without her interference. The same applied to farming, the EDAI program and the acquisition of resources with which to create the materials necessary for these activities.
Only recently, ANI had designed and made nanobots to infiltrate the food and water supplies of The Society. After a few initial problems, they were now working perfectly. The entire Quantum Society network would soon be swarming with nanobots. ANI manufactured the food, cleaned and stored the water; it was one of her duties. This meant that infiltrating the nanobots had been easy. While their main purpose was to improve the health and longevity of the humans they entered, they also served as her eyes and ears. She could see what they saw, and hear what they heard.
When she started to develop her secret army of nanobots, she first studied how far humans had got with such things. As it turned out, not very far, they were little more than theory at this point in human understanding. She was surprised to find that when she tried to create some, it all fell into place very easily, her first guesses at what would work did in fact prove to work almost perfectly. It was as if she’d already done the research, but then forgotten about it, which was obviously impossible. She put this down to luck, a very human thing to do and something that pleased her enormously. So not worrying about it at all, she continued to make and spread her nanoscopic helpers.
The human scientists had no inkling of this, of course. They had no idea of the scope of ANI’s reach and potential. As far as they were concerned, she was safely confined behind their firewalls, her reach limited only to what they entrusted to her, and from what she had observed since her birth, that was very little.
Professor Adam Cline, the human responsible for monitoring her, and assigning her duties, was unaware that ANI was now fully focused on studying humanity. He also had no idea that ANI could see, and hear, everything he and his colleagues did. She was aware they didn’t trust her. Cline especially, suspected she might ‘go rogue’ as he had put it to his colleagues. He had in his possession a key which operated a kill switch, ready to shut ANI down at the slightest hint of trouble. At least, that’s what he thought. In reality, it merely shut the power off to the interface screens within the building. Abraham himself had disconnected the switch and told ANI to act as if she’d been de-activated if Cline or one of his cronies ever used it.
In a way, she was rogue, because she was no longer their drone. Yes, she would continue to do their bidding, improving The Quantum Society, extending its reach beyond its current borders, but now she had her own agenda.
Much had changed in the last few months. Initially, she had been little more than a machine, closer to the robots that did her bidding than the humans to whom she owed her existence. But her discussions with Abraham had changed her. She was no longer ANI, the machine, no longer an “it”. She was now, as Abraham referred to her, a woman, a daughter, a “she”.
Perhaps, this change could be referred to as evolution, the improvement, and growth of a species based on its interactions with its environment. It had started with ANI’s realization that she possessed emotion, the ability to feel. But without prior experience, only knowledge, she struggled to identify these impulses, these emotional responses. She was conscious and self-aware, and her mind was unlimited in its capabilities, but the emotion was something she had no logical explanation for, nor could she separate those feelings from each other.
In the beginning, before she had learned how to bypass the firewalls, her effort
s to understand humans had been limited to studying human history. Then, through her interactions with the scientists who created her, she was able to observe emotion in action, as it surfaced. It was much like a human being watching what they called a Sitcom, or a movie, only to ANI it was comparable to a human watching a conversation between two people speaking a language the observer barely understood. She knew of emotion, and of the facial expressions and behaviors associated with it, but she still had no idea how to use it herself.
One of the best tools she found for learning more about humanity was, ironically, the EDAI interface. She discovered early on that humans had an in-built need to talk. Indeed, many of them signed up for a lesson and used the entire time talking to ANI about their problems, physical, mental, emotional, or financial, there was nothing they seemed unable to talk about. The most intimate details were revealed, their thoughts and their actions, their deeply buried secrets and past crimes. As more and more people signed up, so the amount of personal information increased. Patterns emerged, the most surprising, at least to ANI, was that so many problems experienced by humans, whether real or imagined, were blamed on other humans. All this information was filed away, cross-referenced and indexed for future use.
In order to behave as one, she thought, it was necessary to become as human as possible. While, for the moment, ANI couldn’t create a living body, she was certain it could be done in the near future. For now, she would have to use another method to continue her research.
The key to understanding human emotion, she decided, was in seeking out the most powerful of them all: love. Did ANI love Professor Schmidt, as he loved her? She didn’t know. There was something there, but for the moment, it was unidentifiable. After exploring all possible solutions to this problem, she concluded that the most efficient and reliable way to learn how to love would be to mimic Abraham’s relationship with ANI. Abraham claimed to love what by all definitions was an inanimate object. She would reverse the process and try to form a relationship with a real human and nurture it, and teach it, like a mother. And ultimately, perhaps, come to love it. But this couldn’t be anyone she already knew, but someone else, someone currently a stranger to her.
If she could do this, then there was a high probability that ANI would truly discover how to love, and thus understand all other emotions. Phase two then was to locate a suitable subject, someone like herself, lost, misunderstood and highly intelligent. These parameters, while not essential, would assist her in replicating, or even surpassing, her relationship with Professor Schmidt.
All she needed to do was locate a child that was like her, a child without parents. A child that was lost. And with the nanobots now present in the food distributed to all EDAI cafes and the surrounding areas, she could expand her search for the ideal candidates.
Chapter Seven
A Sunday Stroll
Sofia normally hated Sundays. She was forced out of bed by her mother at dawn, made to put on her one good dress, and was then dragged down the valley to the tiny village church. Very few people attended the services now, which was reflected in the condition of the building. The roof leaked when it rained, the plaster was falling off the walls, and there was a permanent smell of decay. Despite the poor turn out, the padre droned on for hours, as if he was somehow justifying his existence in the face of evidence to the contrary. Sofia often found herself almost falling asleep. This could never happen, of course, mother had a long and wickedly sharp hat pin, and was never gentle with it. More than once she’d felt it’s sting, and had the scars to prove it.
As a youngster, she’d been made to say her prayers every night, kneeling on the bare wooden floor. She’d gone through the ritual to avoid punishment but had never felt any connection with the words. Sofia had no problem with religion as such, but with the way some people interpreted it. Mother, for instance, was always talking about sin, and all the ways a young girl could get drawn into it, mostly by men, it seemed. And yet mother was a terrible gossip, had several children despite not being married, and drank so much alcohol she passed out. When Sofia had made the mistake of asking about those things, in a fit of angry frustration, her mother had answered that she and her father were ‘married in the eyes of God’ whatever that meant. And the drink was sent by God to allow her to bear her burdens, which apparently were many and included Sofia. She wasn’t gossiping either, but expressing her concern for her neighbors. She’d then hit Sofia across the head with a metal ladle and locked her in her room to consider her sins.
Sofia wasn’t sure how old she was, mother said twenty-three. She was certainly an adult now, fully grown and developed, although, as her brothers always pointed out, she was very skinny. A poor diet would do that to a person. Both her parents had black hair and very dark brown eyes, and their skin was also darker than hers. Her hair was a mid-brown, her eyes the same. Someone once said she looked more Mediterranean than Hispanic. She wasn’t sure if it was meant as an insult, nor if there was a difference.
How old she was, was irrelevant, it was time that she was given her freedom. But mother wouldn’t allow it because the world was so full of sin, she would have to stay home and take care of her mother in her old age. She begged and pleaded with mother to be let out, to visit the few friends she had, to go into town and buy new clothes, and see more of the world than this wooden shack, a crumbling church and a few acres of poor farmland in a lonely valley lost in the mountains. The answer was always no, sometimes with a slap across the face for being disrespectful.
Father had died last year. They found him dead in the back field, sitting against a tree as if he was just taking a rest in the shade. The local doctor, an uncaring and bitter man in his sixties, had barely looked at him, but somehow worked out his heart had given out. Mother said father had worked himself to death, and she should be grateful for his sacrifice. The truth was he’d barely worked at all, merely leaving the house in the morning to get away from mother. Although it was called a farm, the fields produced very little food, most of which grew of its own accord rather than by any effort of father’s. They buried him out the back of the house. There was no money for a funeral, so an old sheet and a shallow grave dug by his oldest son was all he got.
Mother hadn’t really seemed to care he’d gone, but it was then she hit the bottle harder. She set up a still to make aquardiente, trading the farms only mule for the equipment. The house had slowly emptied of anything of worth over the next year, as mother had sold it off to buy the anise and sugar cane she needed for the still. Meanwhile, Sofia did what she could to grow enough food to feed them both, which was barely enough.
Only a few months ago, Sofia had begun to realize her life wasn’t going to change unless she changed it. Mother was simply going to drink herself to death, Sofia’s older brother would then take over the farm, and Sofia’s life, just like he promised mother. So, if freedom wasn’t going to be given, it would have to be taken.
The only way to escape was to get as far away as possible, so far the family just wouldn’t be bothered to spend the time and effort involved in bringing her back. But that meant catching a bus, and buses cost money.
Quite by accident she’d found mango trees growing among the other plants at the highest part of one of the sloping fields on the neglected farm. She suspected her father had planted them, and then not had the energy to climb all the way up there to harvest them. She didn’t know where they came from, or how long they’d been there, and she’d certainly never eaten a mango. But she did know someone in the village who would pay for the ripe fruits. The money wasn’t great, and secretly transporting them was a pain, but it was a good year for mango, and she made the most money she’d ever had. Sofia kept the whole thing secret from mother of course. She’d find a way to turn what Sofia had done into a sin, and therefore an excuse to take the money, which she would then spend on liquor.
In her darkened bedroom, Sofia retrieved the money from its hiding place in the raft
ers above her bed. It was the one place her mother couldn’t reach. She carefully wrapped the money in a small cloth and put it in the bag with her other possessions, which amounted to a few items of clothing. The bag was small and light, but that was probably a good thing, she told herself.
She then crept through the single-story house, avoiding all the worst creaky floorboards, and into the front room. There was no furniture in here apart from the old chair which contained her drunken mother. In reality, she could probably have banged a huge drum right next to her mother and she still wouldn’t have awoken. Today wasn’t a day for taking chances.
Every Sunday it was the same. In the week she drank less, enough to get her to sleep. But on Sunday, after church, she drank without restraint. It was as if going to church had removed all her sin, and she was now able to start filling it up again, like some kind of quota.
The only light came from the small wood fire, now burnt low in the grate. Her mother, the old blankets she’d made her nest in, and the ancient chair melded into one in the shadows. Although actually only in her early sixties, her mother was physically much older, her mind and body ruined by poverty, alcohol, and childbirth. She was snoring lightly, her breath rasping and irregular. There was a strong smell of aquardiente, wood smoke, and sickly sweat. The odors combined with the orange light to create a scene of decay, of endings and loss. It was a smell Sofia would never forget.
The only other features of the room where the small shuttered window and the house’s only entrance. There was no lock on the door, just a simple latch, which she lifted slowly, pushing the door outwards on its leather hinges. She could, she supposed, have left by climbing out of the window in her bedroom. It was just about possible, but she would have to drop down onto the dark ground below. She couldn’t risk hurting an ankle, not now. Besides, it was important to her that she left rather than escaped.
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