The Darwin Project: Book One: Annihilation Series (The Annihilation Series 1)

by John Hindmarsh

  “Listen Frescoe, I don’t have time—”

  “Admiral, we need to talk. Now, sir.”

  Berkstow looked long and hard at the captain. The junior officer did not wilt. The admiral said, “Very well. My office.” He turned and headed back into his office, closely followed by Captain Frescoe.

  Once inside the smaller office, ignoring the fact the captain had closed the door, the admiral said, “Now, Captain. What’s this all about?”

  “Sir, if you don’t approve those liberty requests, I’d guess within two hours nothing electronic on this base will work. The bots are entitled to liberty; it’s in their contracts.”

  The admiral’s face grew redder as the captain spoke. “What sheer bloody nonsense. You can’t tell me—”

  “Sir, it’s necessary I get to Changi so I can catch my flight. I have a report for SECNAV on the deployment of bots on the autonomous LCS, the Fort Blackstone. I am responsible for their training and operational effectiveness, including their well-being. I suspect the bots outside your offices are the assault team from Blackstone. They can bring your base to a standstill.”

  Berkstow had sat down while the captain was speaking. “Frescoe, I find this difficult to believe. What’s the Navy coming to, if bots get liberty?”

  “Sir, these are designed and built to be an offensive military force. Like the LCS, they’re also autonomous. They are very intelligent. I can demonstrate. Let me check they’re from the Blackstone. If so, I’ll bring one of them in to meet you.”

  The admiral looked tired. He said, “Maybe I should retire sooner, if the Navy is going to be full of robots.”

  “They’re very good to work with. No discipline problems, no backtalk, no issues at all. They can shoot a seagull at a distance that I can’t match. I can’t even see the bloody bird until they bring it down.”

  “Frescoe, go see if these are your bots. Bring one to my office. Once you’ve resolved whatever this issue is, get out of here.”

  The captain quickly exited the admiral’s office. He returned in less than five minutes, in company with a humanoid-shaped bot, its steady gait belying its weight. Its body was covered in a digitally-derived camouflage design; the predominant colors in the pixelated result were green, brown, and blue. It had two upper limbs, the arms ending in hands consisting of three fingers with an opposing construct equivalent to a thumb. Its oval-shaped head was partially human-like. Its face, manufactured from a white ceramic material, contained two camera lenses in place of eyes. Its mouth had been replaced with a speaker grill. It had a slight bulge in its facial structure where a human nose would be located. Further cameras plus microphones and other sensors ringed the top of its head. It did not have ears. It wore a cap, its only item of clothing.

  The captain said, “Admiral, this is ranking bot S256; his handle is Clive. He’s in charge of Bot Operations Force Three, which consists of fifty bots currently assigned to the Fort Blackstone. Clive, this is Admiral Berkstow.”

  A rough voice grated, “Admiral Berkstow.” The bot saluted.

  The admiral looked the bot up and down. “S2—Clive. What can I do for you?” The admiral felt as though he was being forced to go along with a joke, a joke that somehow was hidden, yet he knew it was on him.

  “Admiral, sir. My team has worked very hard, proving our effectiveness. We’ve been at sea for six months. Our contract clearly states we are entitled to seven days shore leave for every month at sea. We have requested only three days leave while we’re in your jurisdiction; however, we’ve been advised you have refused to approve our liberty.”

  “Liberty for bots?”

  “Yes, Admiral. We are paid by the Navy. We comply with Navy rules and regs, sir. Most of them.”

  “Most?”

  “Sir, some only apply to humans. However, our contract is clear. We have requested three days leave, sir.”

  The admiral turned to Frescoe. “What’s all this contract nonsense?”

  “Sir, SECNAV agreed with the bot manufacturer—this was contained in the contract of supply—that bots would have certain—ah—rights. Liberty is one of those contract conditions. I believe SECNAV sent you a copy, sir.”

  “He did? I don’t recall—”

  “Sir, it was filed by one of your aides, Ensign Nessler. You told him to file it under SECNAV Nonsense,” Clive said. The bot replayed what appeared to be a recording of the admiral’s instruction, the video displayed on a small chest panel.

  The admiral’s face turned a strange shade of red. Frescoe shook his head and said, “Clive, you shouldn’t spy.”

  “Captain, we need our liberty.”

  “I’m doing my best. How many vehicles have you disabled?”

  “All military vehicles that are currently on the base, including twenty forklifts, eight tractor units, ten trucks, six mini-buses, twenty automobiles, and three helicopters, sir. We’re preventing private vehicles from entering or leaving the base. Same with motorcycles. We’ve been unable to stop bicycles. We’ve locked down all vehicular and pedestrian access into or out of the base, sir.”

  “Probably overkill, Clive.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry about your flight, sir.”

  The admiral had partially recovered. He said, “Captain, I’m not going to pursue this any further. I’ll sign these liberty requests and then I want both of you to get out of my office. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Frescoe handed the signed and stamped forms to Clive. “There you are.” On the way out of the office, he added, “Unblock my vehicle—there’s still a chance I can get to Changi in time.”

  “Cap, I think you will. Changi is experiencing computer problems and all check-in desks are down. It will take them at least an hour to resolve the issue and another thirty minutes to re-boot and test their systems.”

  “I’ll pretend I know nothing about the computer problems. Now, remember, you’re in charge until I return. Don’t take the Fort Blackstone out to sea while I’m away. I don’t think the Admiral will cause any more problems.”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. I hope you’re correct, sir. Have a good flight.”

  “Thanks Clive. I’ll be back.” The captain lifted his travel kit into the car that was now functioning perfectly, sat in the passenger seat, and closed the door.

  The driver asked, “Where to, Captain?”

  oOo

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The day following the move from Bel Air to the apartment on 3rd, Rick and Karla presented their program concepts to Toby and Darwin; the latter was in his tropical beach persona. Billie sat to one side, an interested observer. Toby thought Bronwyn was also watching.

  Rick led the presentation. “We intend to cover the social and economic impacts resulting from the introduction of bots. They are becoming pervasive in our society, fulfilling functions from street cleaning to social care, from parking security to package delivery, and from nursing to manufacturing. Our cars are automated, semi-trailers deploy autonomous driving systems on interstate highways, and the degree of bot penetration in manufacturing is remarkable. Neither state nor federal governments have recognized or considered how to manage or alleviate the social and economic impacts on workers and their families.”

  Karla said, “We know you know all this; however, our presentation will be used for advertisers and agencies, so we need to build it with a solid foundation. Bear with us.”

  “Understood,” said Toby. “Carry on.” He wanted to hear how they intended to approach their task of establishing the television channel.

  Rick continued. “We plan to balance programs between the benefits of bots and the costs to people, to society, if you like. Most of the social turmoil in California has arisen from the combination of the earthquake and the collapse of Silicon Valley—that bubble went too far. Introduction of bots—while it didn’t cause the social disruption, has added to it.”

  Karla said, “It’s not all bad news. Bots are contributing to society in a large number of areas. T
heir care of the elderly has been of tremendous benefit in what otherwise would be a disastrous situation. Care homes are utilizing a wide range of bots at a far lower cost, which means the families of elderly parents can afford their care. Bots also have taken over what we call drudgery tasks, the boring, repetitive activities that people are not interested in.”

  Rick picked up the story. “We will produce balanced programs. We can—ah—humanize bots. They have a sense of humor and we can communicate that. They work hard to help people and we can show them in action. We’ll have news items that will reflect these features.”

  It was Karla’s turn. She said, “We want to ensure we also help people who may have lost jobs as a result of bot replacement. We propose to offer re-training courses, free to anyone who is unemployed. Darwin has designed a programming language and a series of courses, from introductory to expert levels, which we will offer. He has designed bots that will deliver the course materials, guide and tutor students, assess levels of knowledge, and award diplomas, all for free. These training bots will deliver the material over the Internet, of course, and will have CGI-based persona.”

  Toby turned to Darwin’s image. “You’ve designed a programming language? How will it be introduced? There are a number of existing languages and the competition is hot.”

  Darwin said, “I’ve been in contact—using your name, of course—with the major IT companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, and once I demonstrated the benefits of the new language both in performance and development costs, they’ve agreed to introduce it as their primary robotics language. Both Amazon and Microsoft have commenced development projects and will have hundreds of APIs ready to release when we go live. Of course, it will be our language of choice for all our bot designs where further development is required—for manufacturing bots, for example. It’s suitable for app development for all mobile devices, and we expect that will support a substantial self-employed developer base. This is certain to generate an increased demand for qualified programmers.”

  “Impressive. What’s the name of this new language?”

  “Natural Ability Task Expression or NATE for short.”

  Toby laughed. “Nate will love that.”

  Darwin said, “We thought so. Even if I say so myself, it’s an impressive leap. The language has a natural-language syntax, the compilers are extremely fast, and the resulting code set is relatively tiny. Application performance increases of 100 percent or more over comparable existing code sets are readily achievable. It’s a definite improvement over what we’ve been using.”

  “Have you distributed updates to our bots?”

  “Planned and ready to apply. We’ll do it by bot categories over the next six months; otherwise we’ll create a resource log jam.”

  Rick said, “We’ve reviewed a number of studies and the increase in bot programming requirements has resulted in a substantial shortage of technical skills. NATE will allow cross-industry movement of developers. The training courses won’t cure all the shortages or employ all those out of work, but it will be a very positive move.”

  Rick proceeded to display the proposed television programming schedule for the first three months; the slides were simple yet effective in communicating the intended operation of the new channel. Darwin was taking responsibility to find videos from the bots that would be suitable. They planned to have minimal studio effort in the first three to six months, with more work in-house required only when the television channel had moved beyond the concept stage and was established.

  At the end of the presentation, they all looked at Toby. Both Rick and Karla looked apprehensive and Toby noted even Darwin seemed to have a similar expression.

  “Why are you all looking at me?”

  “We need your approval, of course,” Rick said.

  “Oh?” He was silent, thinking. The expressions changed to worry. At last, Toby smiled. “Go ahead. Nate would be impressed. Now listen for a minute. While you’ve been presenting this material, I’ve been thinking. My conclusion: I’m going to take a major risk with Nate’s money. It cannot be denied that bots are contributing to some of the social issues we’re seeing. All right, we can fairly say that state and federal governments should be taking action to help. They’re not. So I propose to provide funds to support people who need financial assistance to retrain. Darwin can manage the project. I’ll allocate fifty million dollars a year of Nate’s fortune for the next five years. If he disagrees, it will take me a lifetime to repay him.”

  Rick said, “Toby, that’s marvelous.” He thumped his friend’s back.

  Both Billie and Karla agreed. He received a hug from each.

  Darwin’s image frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. No debate allowed.”

  Darwin mumbled. Toby wasn’t sure whether the issue was the amount of money or the task he’d added to Darwin’s responsibilities.

  Billie said, “That’s two reasons to celebrate.” She produced a bottle of champagne she had managed to hide and handed out glasses.

  Toby said, “Good luck.” He raised his glass of champagne. Darwin had added a glass of champagne to his CGI environment and held it up. They all echoed Toby’s comment.

  “Now the hard work starts,” Rick said. He switched off his laptop and packed up his notes. He and Karla were heading back to their office to work on the next stage of their media project.

  Drexel visited Toby later that day; he’d arranged the meeting to express his concern that the pressure from local and national television channels to interview Toby was increasing. The security chief sat opposite Toby, and Billie was seated across the room.

  Drexel said, “Here’s the thing. Within a day or so, you’re going to have reporters waiting outside this building, twenty-four hours a day. The owners and tenants will be upset if they have to push through media crowds every time they want to enter and leave.”

  Toby sat back in the single seater; he was glad his uncle liked comfortable furniture. He pushed that thought aside. He wondered if he could utilize Nate’s investments to pressure some of the media companies and decided that would probably ignite more interest. He said, “I caught a couple of news items and thought they’d find something more interesting to report on.”

  “No such. Consider this. You’re young, classed by the talking heads as good-looking, and you’ve inherited billions of dollars. Apart from your vblog no one knows very much about you. You are primary mystery material.”

  Toby shook his head. “I suppose you’re right. The vblog viewer count has taken off.”

  “You’ve recorded some provocative sessions on Los Angeles.”

  “I know.”

  “You won’t be able to avoid them forever.”

  Toby grimaced. “I think Nate had media contacts. He certainly has some large stock holdings in some of the key players. Also, we could use Travers TV to produce an interview.” He told Drexel about the new channel.

  “It might work. You’d need to use an independent interviewer.” Drexel said.

  “If I do one interview and we make sure it’s shared by all the major media groups, do you think it will be enough?”

  “We can hope. It might work for a short while. I also have contacts I can reach out to. I’ll let you know what they think.”

  “Good. We’ll both do some research. Did you discover what’s been happening to files we’ve sent to you?”

  Drexel looked shamefaced. “Our internal security failed me. We had an intern who was more ambitious than we had realized. We’re tracking the people who suborned him. I’ll let you know where that goes.”

  “Good. Do you have security updates on the people I interviewed? I’m still astounded at how much Nate managed to control. I can only assume he worked twenty hours a day or more.” Toby felt he was getting further and further behind with routine tasks.

  “We’ve received FBI clearances and our checks all come up clean. I think you have four good recruits for your management team.”

>   “I’ll confirm with them that they can start work on Monday.”

  oOo

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Toby’s already busy week was almost totally overloaded when the three engineers arrived from Japan. He met them after they and Narumi had settled into their accommodation. To his surprise, Darwin spoke to them in Japanese, which delighted the newcomers. Toby tried to hide his concern; he wanted to be able to understand the content of discussions when Darwin was involved with design aspects of his body.

  He mentioned that need in the meeting when he welcomed them to Los Angeles. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be able to review discussions with Darwin. He will record every meeting, and I want to be able to replay the files when I have time.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Narumi said. “It will do my team good to have their conversations in English.”

  The senior of the three men, Hironari Ogawa, spoke up. “Hai. I agree. It will be good for our language knowledge to speak English with you and with Darwin all the time.” The other two men nodded their agreement. Darwin, at his beach location, looked disappointed.

  Toby said, “Good. I’ve placed an order for the computers, 3D printers, and other items Narumi listed, and they’ll be delivered tomorrow morning. Let me know if anything is missing or if there are items you overlooked.”

  “Thank you, Toby,” Narumi said. “We’ll spend some time together with Darwin and if we think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “We have a major manufacturing installation in the mountains; it’s where we manufacture processors. There’s a lot of equipment there including some larger 3D printers. You may want to spend some time at that location. Security will be far better, too.” Toby added.

  “Security? There is a danger?” Ogawa asked. The other two men looked worried.

  “This is America,” explained Narumi. “You can expect more danger than at our offices. Toby has good security people to keep us safe.”

  “If, on the weekends, you want to explore, we’ll organize transport for you. Our security people will keep you safe,” Toby said. He hoped he could keep his promise.