As they walked into the backyard, Ronald could see ancient fruit trees surrounded by patches of dozens of different herbs and perennial vegetables, walking paths of brick and ground-cover. This was an old garden, full of lots of hybrids and heritages. Ronald spotted at least ten hexapod robots tending the plants, none of them larger than a cat. It smelled wonderful. “You know, you might want to get a DNA catalog done of this place, you could have an unregistered gene sequence, if they find one, you could be wealthy.”
Mrs. Wilson just gave him an annoyed look. “I did that twenty years ago. I had thirty seven new catalog entries, one viable enough that it was sold to one of the colonies. They grow my cucumbers on the moon.”
She made the same gesture as before and Ronald accepted another input. Mrs. Wilson said, “This was September 25th, 2027.”
Again the sudden shift in reality. A young boy hung upside down on a much younger apple tree, “Gramma I’ll get you a good one!”
“You be careful now,” came a sound that seemed to come out of Ronald, but echoed by Mrs. Wilson, standing by him.
Jim monkeyed up the tree in total fearlessness, grabbing apples and tossing them down. Ronald watched as slender arms coming out of his own chest caught them and put them in a basket. He took a step to the left, and Jim adjusted his aim, throwing the apples to him. Ronald started to shuffle and dodge. Jim giggled, and threw harder, again the slender arms of a younger Mrs. Wilson caught each and every one.
Jim slipped and fell, bouncing off branches on the way down, thumping down in a crashing, flailing chaos of arms and legs. Ronald moved toward Jim in unison with the image super imposed upon him.
Jim recovered on the last branch and landed with his legs under him. He tucked into a roll and popped up with a “Tada!”
Ronald felt something like relief. Mrs. Wilson’s scolding words came out of his mouth.
She led him from one room to another, in and out of the backyard, showing bits and snatches of her life with Jim. Helping him with schoolwork, his first date, playing board games, arguing over chores, whispering secrets.
She explained that she had enough footage of Jim, in so much detail, that the computers embedded in her home could even easily render situations and scenarios that never actually happened. So, she could pick a day, any day, and have any number of encounters with Jim, mixed and looped and rendered.
Finally, she showed him an image of a confident young teen, smiling as he waved behind him, “Don’t wait up, Gramma, gonna be awhile before I come home.” With that, Jim left the house with a spring in his step.
“Jim died in a violent attack, twenty minutes later. An explosive. It wasn’t targeted at him. The bomber was protesting against the loss of jobs to robots.”
“No footage of Jim exists after that, of course.” Ronald knew from the file that the damage rendered Jim over sixty percent cyborg, including a good chunk of his brain. Almost no memory or perception, but the rest was good enough to continue functions so he’d been sent out to merge. Ronald could not remember where.
“He’s part of a gestalt in New Mexico now, sharing consciousness with some six hundred other cyborgs. He may be still walking, but Jim died that day. I even went to see him once. He didn’t recognize me, of course. As part of a collective he doesn’t really think, he’s just a mobile platform really. He’s over 90 percent now. They just kept the brain stem.”
She continued, “Any rendering I try doesn’t feel right past that point. So I can have Jim at any moment in his life up until that moment.“
“As you can see, Ronald Danner, I’m perfectly fine. My health is good. I don’t leave the house much anymore because Jim can’t come with me. I have not modified my mind or my body too much and I still count as human.”
Ronald nodded as he left, “You most certainly do, Mrs. Wilson. You most certainly do. Thank you, it was really quite pleasant playing with Jim. I enjoyed this very much. Life was so very different back then. Have a good day.”
Ronald loved his job, sometimes.
He wondered if he could request the time be removed from public records, he could maybe sell his afternoon with Jim and Mrs. Wilson. It sure was a rare experience to have had such high quality AR that wasn’t illegal as hell. He’d call it, “Playing with Jim.” Maybe it wasn’t legal, he’d have to check it out.
As soon as Mrs. Wilson closed the door, her image shimmered and faded. A desiccated husk stood there.Tubes pumping nutrients into various mechanical components, very little flesh remained. A full ninety percent cyborg. The brain long ago devoid of thought. Used only for processing now.
Jim, now the house computer, did the AI equivalent of a sigh. Cameras watched Ronald walk away. He’d been preparing for this visit since Ronald first overrode his first level of security to scan for movement.
It was getting harder to hack the video streams of visitors. Lucky for Jim, Ronald Danner had full video and auditory implants. Jim had tracked his public feed down and replicated it. Then managed to intercept the feed of Ron’s eyes just in time. The real problem is faking the UV spectrum, but other than that, he’d had no trouble.
After that it didn’t matter anymore what Ronald saw. Jim got to the patch just in time to synthesize correct results for all of the data on his grandmother. He had to keep Ronald unaware and physically present while he processed it all. He had to build a fully virtual patch that would happily upload signal for years to come of Mrs. Wilson, in perfect health. Then get Ronald to accept the new inputs.
If he had not done that, then social inspector/insurance claims adjuster Danner would have taken her away and dismantled her. And then he would have dismantled the house, redistributing the assets. Then he would have merged Jim’s AI personality with others to prevent anomalies.
He needed the house. It was important. If they took it away, how could he play with his grandmother?
•
A Little Pot
Matt sat on one side of the table in his boxers and socks looking contrite. His pants were neatly folded on a bench behind him, next to his shirt. On the other side of the table were three members of airport security looking aggressive. On the table were three plastic baggies and four film canisters, each canister a different color.
“It’s not what you think,” said Matt.
“I think you had those hidden in your pants,” said Guard One.
Guard Two added, “Yeah.” Guard Three nodded.
“Okay, well it is what you think, but they aren’t drugs. Uh, I mean, not all, I mean–”
“–Well, let’s just see what they are then, shall we?”
Guard One reached out for the nearest of the baggies. Two said, “Yeah.” And Three, he nodded.
Hmmm. Matt was noticing a bit of a pattern.
One opened the baggie. “Seeds?”
Matt looked over to Two, who obliged him with, “Yeah, looks like seeds.”
Three nodded, again.
“Listen, these are apple seeds from an engineered strain I’ve been working on. See, once we fully mapped the genome, we got a far more viable strain. I’ve been talking for months with a bunch of people from all over the world and I need to get them samples. But it’s illegal to mail home-grown fruit or even seeds without filling out forms. The fees are impossible–”
“—Uh, so why were you sneaking them on a plane?” interrupted One.
“Yeah, why?”
Nod.
“Well, honestly, I didn’t think I’d get caught but also the smuggling fines for controlled substances are a lot less than the filing fees for my bio-hacked seeds. Do you know how much paperwork and money would be involved if I tried to mail these? It’s much cheaper for me to book a flight and bring them myself.”
“What’s bio-hacked? The seeds?” One asked. “Did you make them into, like, cocaine apples or something?”
“Yeah, cocaine apples?”<
br />
Nod.
“No!” Matt shook his head. “What I did was more difficult. These particular seeds produce five times as many apples per tree than average. That allows the tree to pollinate itself twice a year and the apples, man they taste delicious! Oh, and the wood trunk grows twice as fast and three times as thick around as a normal apple tree so it makes great furniture, too! And, the thing that makes it even greater, it will grow in sandy salty soil!” Matt smiled.
Then he added with an attempt to sound humble, ”I’ve signed my name in the DNA of the seeds.”
“That doesn’t sound bad. So that’s all that these baggies and canisters contain? Apple seeds?”
“Yeah, just apple seeds?” Two was starting to get on Matt’s nerves.
Matt realized Three had not nodded. Hmmmm. Three was looking at the seeds, then he spotted Matt watching him. He looked a little embarrassed and, again, as if it was a required part of his job, he nodded.
“No, actually, they’re not all apple seeds. The blue canister holds a couple of peach pits modified the same way. The white canister has cherries and the black one has walnuts. I used the same variant on all of them. The red canister came from a friend who wants them for his lab. It’s got spores bio-hacked to produce high protein mushrooms. While the—”
“—Aha! Shrooms!”
“Yeah, shrooms!”
Nod.
Matt sighed.
“No, not hallucinogens, these mushrooms taste a lot like pork. They grow the same way as mushrooms do everywhere, wet soil, in the dark.“ Matt grew more excited as he explained, ”A bushel of these has the same nutritional value as a pig and makes a MUCH smaller environmental footprint. You can grow a crop every couple ‘a weeks! Mix them with some non-modified amaranth paste—uh, that baggie over there has those seeds—and you even get the same texture as pork or chicken! They make great breaded nuggets!”
One, Two and Three stared at Matt.
“OK. So, what’s in that last baggie?”
“Yeah, that last one.”
Nod.
“Oh, just a little marijuana.”
At that the room got quiet. Matt still was on the one side of the table, the three airport security guards on the other. All of them staring at the pot. Finally, One said, “Watch him. I’m gonna make a call and find out what to do about this.”“Yeah, boss”
Nod.
Matt sat still in his underwear waiting for One to come back. No movement. No talking.
One returned and began stuffing the baggies and canisters into a paper sack. “Here’s the deal. You may get dressed and leave. We will confiscate and destroy the bio-hazardous materials.”
“All of it?” asked Matt.
“No sir,” said One. “You may keep the marijuana. Enjoy your trip.“
•
His One Chance
The instructions read, “Determine where the Secondary Controls are on your model of vehicle. They should be beneath the Speed Indicator on the Dashboard.”
Speed Indicator. Hmmm.
John Donny looked over the instructions again. It had been hard for him to get these instructions. He glanced up at his car controls, something he could hardly remember doing before.
Ah. He found the “Speed Indicator.” That wasn’t so hard!
Hmmm. It’s showing mph and kph. Gee, he thought idly, We still measure miles on these things?
He got back to it. He looked at the dashboard again, frowning. He could see there was the air conditioning stuff, the music settings, privacy, viewscreen projector, the chair heat and massage, the netpad.
Wow. Lots of things on here!
He’d been so used to using his voice command, he’d forgotten you could do this all by touch. He’d need touch for this, though. The instructions made it clear you couldn’t do it the easy way.
“Secondary Controls. Where are Secondary Controls?” he muttered under his breath. It must have been years since he’d looked at the panel. His car heard him muttering, and—to be helpful—enlarged and circled the button he sought on the dashboard screen. John’s eyes widened, and he clamped his teeth together tight. I’ve got to be more careful, he thought to himself. I can’t even sub-vocalize. He knew this was it, his one chance.
He scratched his head then looked up and out the window. Traffic was going as fast as always. An unbroken grid of cars packed so tightly together you could stand on one and step to another. Well, you could if—
His thoughts were interrupted by what he was seeing inside a car on his right, a couple passionately embracing. After a few seconds, the girl saw him watching, gave him a look of annoyance, and toggled the privacy setting. All her windows turned instantly opaque. John gave a guilty start, then chuckled to himself. I don’t give a damn about your fun time, woman. The slight ironic grin fell from his face as he was brought back to what he was doing. You know what? You’re probably the one.
John looked down at the printed instructions again. When he was peaking, he was smarter than his friend Paul, but still, he didn’t have the skill with all the systems his buddy had access to. It would have been irritating as hell except Paul showed him how he did it. John now had all the access he needed. Paul tweaked systems all the time, and let people use his profile. Considering sharing one’s profile was so dangerous, John wasn’t sure why Paul did it. But maybe it was because Paul had never been caught. He just didn’t understand the chances he was taking.
Most important, Paul explained the override code for a car. He showed John how to change the default settings so Paul’s access would override the car’s automation. For Paul, it was just a, “Hey check this out!” For John, this was the key he had been looking for.
He felt a little bad about betraying Paul, but everyone knew people shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing. It kinda served him right for being so careless with something as important as your profile.
With Paul’s proxy, he could not only access Paul’s work systems, he also had done the search that had sent a physical copy of the instructions to Paul’s desk. He had taken the copy from Paul’s Maker. Paul said he didn’t mind at all. So using Paul, he changed the defaults.
John knew his own profile would have reported him. His psychological indicators, the recent breakup with his girlfriend, not to mention the promotion rejection from last week. If he had printed this from his own desk, or even used his own profile on Paul’s, it would have raised a flag.
Last week, they’d upped his mandatory meds on the pill pump, he could feel it right away. Changing him.
Thing was, if they noticed it wasn’t working, they would send someone to check up on him. Well, he wasn’t going to let them find him!
Of course everybody had a profile. It started out as a way to keep track of friends, back when the Net was young. But then it grew. Every data-base’s information merged and formed a guide that told everybody else who you were. Couldn’t get a job without it matching your profile. Couldn’t get a date, or buy a house, or a car. Your profile was your password, your access, your portal to everything. Everything came from it, and everything went through it.
His profile had words floating around it like, “Poor Impulse Control,” “Manic-Depressive,” “Attention Deficiency,” “Low Empathy,” and “Creative Type.” Each one then fixed to the standard regulation levels by the pump.
He just could not go back on the pump! He hated that more than anything. Sure it got rid of his lows. But it got rid of his highs too. That damned pump, the size of a thumbnail, just under his armpit. Regulated his hormones. It used his own blood to make the levels match the standards, modified his blood stream directly. It took instructions from his profile.
People told him it was a marvel, but he didn’t want his damned hormones regulated! He needed to be able to dance all night, to rule the world, to make every moment magic. God he loved the manic side. On that fuc
king pump everything mellowed out and stabilized. He could work, but he couldn’t FEEL. Sure, he could do without the lows; but he just had to have those highs. He was willing to pay the price. He didn’t want to be “fixed.”
He looked up and out at the other cars again.
The one on his right still had the privacy settings on. He could imagine what they were doing now. The car in front had privacy too. The people inside were probably taking a nap. No, wait, the car might be empty, returning home after dropping off a passenger. No, he thought, An empty car would not do.
The one on his back bumper had five kids in it. The kids had folded the seats into the floor, and were in a circle playing some board game. Their mother had probably bundled them into the car and told it to go to grandmother’s house. None of the kids looked old enough for their command voices to work on a car’s nav system. Not the kids.
He had disabled his pill pump just two days ago. He had felt for the little lump, then used a pair of needle-nose pliers to squeeze the hell out of it. He’d had to print the pliers out, hadn’t had a pair in so long. Model 45661 from a company named Sears. He was rather pleased with how well they worked, he had looked on the Net to find what the best tool was for squeezing, and the form factor looked perfect. He felt so in control when he used them!
He still had the bruises. A big purple splotch where he’d squeezed the pointy output end shut. He was actually pretty proud of the bruises. Breaking a pill pump without letting his profile know he’d done it was pretty amazing.
He felt a little sorry about what he was planning on doing. No one had done this in so long, it would flash all over the Net. His name would be legendary. He didn’t want it to be the kids. So, that left the couple.
“From the Secondary Control screen, access the Physical Dropdown.”
Wow! he thought, Dropdowns, how quaint! He silently thanked the bureaucracy for still requiring human controls. There. There’s the menu: “Physical.”
Copy Me: & Other Science Fiction Stories Page 2