Analog SFF, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  So Manny let himself be flattered into it, and he wasn't disappointed. He got to meet Daley, who was sweet and even a little bit cute, though she was far too busy to speak more than a few words to Manny the whole time. Although he wasn't speaking, he got a charge from seeing all the upturned faces, the ocean of humanity swirling in front of the stage. He'd never had much use for speeches nor much chance to make any, but he didn't see what was so difficult about it; having everybody listen to you talk seemed like something you'd have to pay to do, rather than get paid for.

  What didn't end up as fun as expected was the media attention he drew. After the rally, his ‘plant's phone attachment wouldn't stop buzzing. First was a reporter asking questions about the campaign. When Manny reluctantly agreed to talk, the reporter immediately launched into a detailed question based on a minor point of Daley's statements that Manny hadn't even heard. Remembering old HV shows, Manny tried to keep as close to “no comment” as he could. As soon as he hung up with that reporter, he got another call. This one was better informed and touched on topics that Manny actually knew about, but Manny was still careful about what he said.

  It wasn't until the fifth reporter that Manny got a question that made him think.

  “There are people,” the reporter said, “who distrust the whole implant technology on the idea that it will turn them into slaves to the machine. What do you think about that?"

  “Slaves like how? Like, you will be punished if you disobey the computer? Or like, the president says ‘frog’ over the network and the country says ‘how high?’”

  “Either one."

  “Interesting,” Manny muttered. He paused a long time. “I think the only time you get slaves is when you got a group with power and a group with no power. I don't think the ‘plants themselves are going to give us orders. Have you got one? Worked the whole public service thing? You've got a whole bunch of computers, each one looking out for its holder. Yeah, some do a better job than others, but even DoC ‘plants keep an eye on their guys’ health and happiness, right? So you've got all these negotiators looking at the facts. Such-and-such law is in effect, such-and-such action is being taken, that kind of thing. You see, programs, they're going to look at the facts and work out a solution. Human beings, they've still got prejudices."

  “So you're saying that computers aren't prejudiced?"

  “Not nearly so much as people. Network looks at a case, it don't take things like race into account. If someone's beating up on someone, don't matter who's white or black or Latino, male or female, or whatever. It don't matter how the victim was dressed. A network don't have old friends or fraternity brothers or an overpriced mistress or a secret coke habit to support. A network like we got doesn't get corrupted by money or power. That's a human thing. And it's humans who like money and power so much, they're willing to victimize other people to get it or keep it."

  “So you don't think you're in danger of being a slave to the computer,” the reporter said slowly. “But you are worried about the government?"

  “Dude, don't you get it?” Manny said, shaking his head. “We get watched all the time, we get our stuff searched at traffic stops and before you get on the bus, we got bomb sniffers on the El trains, we got cops who don't need a warrant anymore to shake you down or bust into your house, as long as they claim to have a secret judge's say-so, and if they seize anything, they don't have to give it back even if you're innocent. I don't worry about the government making me a slave; we're already there, man."

  The reporter continued unfazed; Manny didn't think that government control was news to him. “What about the implications of implants controlling minds?"

  “Well, I can only speak for myself, but my implant is just a tool. Helps me do things, keeps me out of trouble, and lets me give other people a helping hand when they need it. These are all good things. There's no mind control or network abuse. The only thing I see as trouble is when there's people who want to use other people's implants for their own purposes. The only time you get ‘implications’ is when there's some got too much power over others."

  Not a lot of his comments got put in the newsfeeds, but the ones that did were only misquoted slightly. Manny found the interviews very useful, if only because they helped him sharpen his own views.

  * * * *

  The elections didn't go at all well for Woodsley. The majority of his closest colleagues in the House and a few in the Senate, the ones he had the most pull with, the ones that had been most instrumental in bringing out the new partitioned implants, got voted out.

  The pro-implant lobby was gaining ground, and even the new president, regardless of how he sounded stern about implants in general, was known to prefer the older, nonpartitioned model as the desirable standard. Not long after the elections, all correctional partitioned implants were modified to remove the programming partition. It seemed like Woodsley was going to have to find some other way to shut the implants down. And down they must be shut, “for the freedom of the American people,” as he was fond of claiming.

  He thought he might have the chance to act when a young woman with an implant in Texas (the state had set the legal age for implants with parent's permission at sixteen) was reported by her implant for underage drinking. This was not unusual; many civilian implants reported on the criminal behavior of their holders as part of the Brother's Keeper software, which was coming to be standard issue. However, examination of the implant records showed that she had received warnings on two previous occasions, all without consulting the local authorities.

  But then Doyle came in and slapped an honest-to-god Texas newspaper down on Woodsley's desk. The old Senator scowled at the headline.

  “'Implants Acting Legally,’ my ass!” he muttered.

  During investigation by the Texas authorities, it became clear that rather than acting entirely on its own, the network had been making ample use of precedents, balanced by prevailing attitudes toward the crime in the local society and the relative seriousness of the offenses. Given the conditions surrounding the teen's previous drinking incidents, the local judges agreed with the network's course of action, but that didn't mean they were any happier about the network having acted.

  “In the opinion of the justices, humans clearly established the laws and set up the precedents, sir, and the implants merely judged the actions of the implant holders based on the record,” Doyle summarized after Woodsley got tired of reading the tiny print. “The pro-implant side is happy with the decision, claiming it makes it possible to be a normal human and make mistakes and not be ratted out by a mechanical cop in your head."

  “Assuming you're not already a parolee, eh?"

  “That's a natural inference, sir. At the very least, it would free up court resources from dealing with minor infractions, while still maintaining a record in case the situation escalates."

  “Whatever they are, son, they're still machines, and they're just not capable of making the subtle judgments necessary in these cases."

  “Well, begging your pardon, sir, but that's exactly what we programmed them to do.” Doyle shrugged off Woodsley's venomous look and continued. “The first correctional implants had to be sophisticated enough to balance shadings of the law, particularly in reference to local community standards. It's just that now they're applying that programming outside of the correctional system."

  “I liked it when computers acted like machines and just did what they were told."

  “Technically, sir, they are doing what we told them to do...” Woodsley silenced him with another glare, then tried not to think about it for the rest of the day.

  It was especially galling to Woodsley and his confederates that the implants could do all this, and yet could not be convinced to make exceptions in truly unique cases, such as when a favor could be earned or redeemed by some careful manipulation of the technicalities.

  The implants tended to see things as essentially one thing or the other, befitting their primal binary natures. Most humans, on
the other hand, and politicians in particular, despite advocating a clear black-and-white moral outlook, often found it necessary to finagle the gray borders, and the implants not only made that difficult to accomplish, they also made it easier for the public to determine that such finagling was going on. Obviously, the masses thought it was great, all this fairness and equality and readily accessible information and whatnot, but it made getting the real business of governance done more difficult.

  It was clear to Woodsley that another approach would have to be devised.

  * * * *

  Almost four years after his first Incident, Manny was heavy into pro-implant activism, to the point where he could make his rent through speaking fees. He was now a voice in the movement, which got him dirty looks from the cops when he touched base with his parole officer, but he could handle that. It would all work out if the bill passed to finance mandatory implants in police and fire rescue personnel; the law enforcement-issue implants would greatly enhance unit coordination, as had been proven in the field by SWAT teams and military special ops units the world over, and allow nearly limitless legal references so one could cite the details of the specific statute the perpetrator was violating. They would also make taking bribes and abusing suspects nearly impossible. Needless to say, this whole business made the implants and their carriers very unpopular with a certain segment of the Chicago PD and others across the country.

  Frankly, Manny was doing too well, personally, to worry about the theoretical hatred of theoretically dirty cops. He'd finally been taken off house arrest, though he was still on parole; he had an almost normal level of freedom, and an “off” switch to his network connection. Ironically, the loosened restrictions allowed him to get a software upgrade so that he could telecommute to the office job he'd found. He didn't even have to leave the massive steel-framed monstrosity of a rocking recliner (inherited from his great-aunt) to earn his rent. And he didn't use the “off” switch as often as he thought he would.

  In all honesty, Manny was a little overwhelmed. What had he done to warrant this kind of attention? He'd gone to jail, volunteered to have tiny machines build a monitoring device in his head, and then just tried to keep a job and keep out of trouble. Sure, the implant helped a lot, and he still felt they were going to be very important very soon. Still, he was just a Mex-American guy from Chicago. He really had nothing going but his wits and enthusiasm. Apparently, those were enough, if you had the right tool to employ them with.

  Of course, there were other reasons to stay involved. There was a certain Ms. Daley who had finally gone to the House during the midterm elections, and was establishing herself as a committed and tenacious fighter for what she believed in. As he was first getting involved, Manny kept crossing paths with her; one day he finally stopped and took a good long look. And was powerfully reminded: damn, she's cute.

  Manny thought he'd outgrown all that useless teenage machismo, but he found himself swaggering after a successful rally. Instead of developing that stereotypical physical and emotional toughness, he poured his competitive energy into activism, hoping that would catch her eye. From there he could find other angles to work, even though he was way out of practice. He didn't need a warm-up relationship; he knew what he wanted, and he was going for it.

  So that's where he was, approaching the next presidential election, and pursuing Anne Daley in a low-key, backhanded sort of way. When the opportunity arose, it made a kind of perverse sense to volunteer to be the voice of the implant network at one of the pre-election pre-debate Issues Specials some of the HV companies were sponsoring.

  Computers aren't particularly photogenic. The nature of implant technology was innately organic, especially with the new semibiological processors, so it was important to give it a living face. An implant holder would have to step up and become the face of the movement, the voice of the network. And that's where Manny came in. There were people better looking than him (though he wasn't unattractive), but nobody had the kind of history he did.

  Plus, it wasn't like he really had to do anything himself. The deal was, he'd go on HV, and experts would ask him questions. The network would provide a consensus answer, and then he'd just read the responses out loud. The network would do all the work, he just had to smile for the camera and read his lines off his built-in teleprompter, maybe translate the typically terse, functional prose into something a bit more like human conversation. Easy. He'd spoken at rallies many times and never had a problem facing crowds. Stage fright was something he'd heard about, never experienced.

  So why was he suddenly nervous?

  Anne Daley came up to him as they were patting his face with dusty pads. She smiled, almost shyly. “You look great, Manny."

  “I should hope so,” Manny mumbled, trying to meet her gaze around the bustling crew. “Risked my parole to rip off this suit.” Which was a lie, of course, but Manny frequently tried to minimize the impact of his checkered past by joking about it; it usually worked.

  Anne laughed. The implant put out Body posture and pupil dilation indicate she would be receptive to a date offer.

  Manny muttered to himself through a smile, too softly for even the makeup people to hear, “I can tell that myself, you...” Then he chuckled. He could have used advice like that fifteen or twenty years ago; would have made high school easier. The implant didn't respond, but it also gave no more advice.

  When the makeup was done, Manny had to report to the set. Anne wished him luck and shook his hand. He clasped his other hand around hers and gently held it while he leaned a bit closer. “Can we have dinner together sometime? Not a political function."

  Anne blushed furiously, but she nodded and seemed about to speak when the production assistant broke them up, hustling Manny off to the set.

  The lights were very bright, so Manny couldn't see the cameras, but he had a clear view of the eight politicians and experts, set up like a tasteful Match Game panel some distance away. The moderator sat nearby, between the panel and the Voice.

  The introductions went well. The moderator explained the premise, and introduced each of the experts and Manny. He didn't know whether to wave or speak to the moderator or the camera, so he just ended up smiling and nodding in the general direction of the panel. Maybe that's why he was nervous—no real focus for his attention, no target audience for him to communicate toward, other than his questioners, who weren't so much his audience as his opposition. Just focus on the panel, he thought to himself, and the cameras will shoot you as they can.

  Anne was not on the panel, but one of her Congressional allies was, and he tossed out an easy ice-breaker of a question.

  “Currently, I'm linked into a network, which is comprised of every implant currently weblinked in this city and other cities via internet lines,” Manny said. “It's primarily implants, because they're all sophisticated agents with specific open programming architecture, and by their very nature, each represents one individual. However, the network taps conventional computers as well, largely for database resources and sheer computation power. Currently, there are approximately six hundred seventy-six thousand separate units comprising this local network, with other networks in other cities providing advice.” He paused, as a new block of text arose. “That number is not every implant in the city, of course, just those who choose to participate in this endeavor."

  “How does one operate the network?” was the next question, asked by an academic-looking guy, apparently to help lay the groundwork for other questions.

  “Operation is not the proper term. The network is there at all times,” Manny responded, “so it's more like one participates in an ongoing process. In a situation like this one, members of the network have indicated an interest in these proceedings, and they volunteer their processing power and their opinions to the cause. Others have chosen not to. It's all a matter of what sort of choices the implant holder makes."

  “What about the ‘sophisticated programs’ that run the implants? Don't they control wha
t the network does?” This woman was an anti-implant leader, and she asked the question with a scowl on her face.

  Manny smiled back at her as sweetly as he could. “The programs are merely advanced agent programs like you all use every day. Their basic nature remains the same. With regard to complexity, you should already be aware that commercially available agent programs long ago passed the Turing test. Numerous citations support this conclusion.” This was news to Manny, but he tried not to let his surprise show as he read his lines. “However, as with animal intelligence research, every time a goal is achieved, the bar is raised. Rest assured that humans still remain the sole sentient species, at least within their own definitions."

  Manny almost frowned. He was one of those who had always taken the naturalistic interface at its surface value; if it responded like an intelligent being, he'd talk to it like an intelligent being. Still, he never expected an implant to sound sarcastic like it just had. He worried that his read of the sentence had slowed down at the end, but nobody seemed to notice. Still, he muttered under his breath, hoping the microphones wouldn't pick it up, “Cool the speeches, stick to topic, would you?"

  “Why is there so much opposition to the idea of a closed-off portion of the implant program?” This from an old guy in an expensive suit. “I would think that national security interests would be better served by having a dedicated area of the program for government use only."

  “Actually, Senator, it was originally national security that dictated the open structure,” Manny said, somewhat impressed that the implant recognized the man before he did; now that he had a frame of reference, he pegged the guy as Senator Woodsley. Not his favorite candidate, but better than his competition the last election, so he got votes by default. Manny covered the basics about open operating systems, privacy, and reliability. “The government found this transparency very useful in their efforts to spy on their own populace.” Manny grinned as he said that; it's not like everyone didn't know it, but you so rarely got to say it on HV, and he relished the opportunity.