"Well, that was a scary fall, eh?" the man said, delightedly picking up the book he'd been reaching for, which fell along with several other books. "I'd been looking for this."
He then looked up at Fran and MaBrown, as if first realizing he had strangers in his place of business. He peered at them through his half-moon shaped spectacles, which sat on his mostly bald head behind his ears, where some white hair remained. His eyes were nearly black as coal, and seemed to hold one's gaze a little longer than was comfortable for most. He wore a dress shirt, with a black vest and dress slacks.
"Now then, who might you be?" he asked. His gaze held fast on them.
"I'm MaBrown, and this is Fran," MaBrown said. "We were told you might have been able to tell us some information. I’m a reporter, by the way. It would be unethical not to mention that before we proceed."
The man stared at them a spell, his expression almost expectant.
"A reporter, eh? Well, then you've come to the right place," the man said. "Name's Piotr Wineshack, pleased to meet you." He extended his hand, and MaBrown and Fran took it in turn. "Now, what's the nature of the information you seek?"
"Well," MaBrown said, pulling out his litebook. "It has to do with Company C. And robots."
Wineshack stared at them with the same expectant expression, but MaBrown and Fran could almost see the gears turning in his head.
"Oh, that," he said finally. "You guys better come have a seat. I was wondering when someone would ask about that."
MaBrown and Fran looked at each other, and followed Wineshack into his office toward the back, carefully stepping over the fallen books.
***
Isellia's XR tailspun out of control. She'd taken a hit on her starboard side, and the impact pushed her into an eddy. She felt the G forces clawing at her as she struggled to regain control of the ship. She pulled with the entire weight of her body body against the ship's steering column, its joints straining in their socket, but holding steady as it was built to. She'd installed one of the most expensive aftermarket steering columns in anticipation of her hyper aggressive style.
Then she'd cleared the final ring; a straight shot to the finish line lie ahead. One ship, the one that had nudged her into the eddy in the first place, edged past her on the starboard side. She'd nearly gotten herself straightened out. One final push, all her fuel, one big shot at victory, a chance to finally redeem herself. Just one push. Just...
Isellia blinked her eyes open. The twinkling stars through her cockpit window were replaced by the blinking lights of medical monitoring devices and the bright, white overhead lighting that she squinted to look at. Her opponent's XR was replaced by Porter's wheelchair. He slumped in it, exhausted, snoring with a small amount of drool on his chin.
"Gross, Porter," she said, but smiled to see him by her side.
Porter shook himself awake. It appeared he hadn't slept much recently, but had fallen into a deep, needed slumber. He absently wiped the drool from his chin, grimacing as he pulled his damp hand away from his face.
"Told you," Isellia said, grinning at him.
"How long have you been awake?" Porter asked, his voice scratchy with sleep.
"Just woke up," Isellia said, wiping sleep crust from her eyes. "What happened?"
"An explosion. They're saying terrorist attack. Oh, and they think you're dead by the way."
"They what?"
Porter threw a chip that had been tucked between his leg and the arm rest, tossed it onto Isellia's lap. "Front page, fourth paragraph."
Isellia flicked on the chip, which displayed a virtual newspaper layout in front of her. She found the story and mouthed the first few words. "Amongst the dead are Allister Barkley, Chipper Jones and Isellia Antoinette. Ghust LUX's condition is yet unknown at this time."
"Yeah, you didn't survive the explosion, apparently."
Isellia flicked off the reader. She looked at the bedding in front her her — her eyes traced patterns in the small, blue circles against the otherwise white bed sheet. "They're dead?"
"That's what it says. Did you know Barkley or Jones?"
She nodded her head. "Not Jones really. I remember seeing him around the circuit. But my dad knew Allister pretty well. They used to drink together a lot."
Isellia set the chip onto a small side table next to the bed. Porter looked at it, and left it, thinking Isellia would want to read it more later.
"So what's it take to get some food around here?"
Porter looked at her with surprise. "Food? Yeah, we can get you something." He pushed a button a nurse had shown him. "You know, it's OK to take a moment to process everything. It's—"
"What am I processing?" Isellia looked at Porter with a blank expression — she genuinely was asking.
"I mean, most likely someone tried to attack you, right? No one knowns for sure whether it was a terrorist attack or a targeted attack, or what."
"Well, I have my bets," Isellia said. She could feel tightness in her side, and had started to peel away her bed sheets to have a look.
"Before you look at your side, you ought to brace yourself," Porter warned.
Isellia pulled the sheets down past her side, revealing a mess of bandages, most of it soaked red with blood. Isellia's eyes went wide, but she stared in silence at the bandages.
"Part of your ship," Porter said. "Went clean through you. Luckily it missed any vital organs. Doctors were able to operate. You should make a full recovery. But not for awhile."
"What about the race? Is there a do-over? What about my points?"
"You're worried about that right now?"
"Of course I'm worried about that right now!" Isellia had started to sit up to protest but felt the searing pain in her side, and rested back down.
"Yeah, you're going to want to not do that for awhile. Anyway, I read that they're going to award points based on where everyone was when the explosion happened. As soon as they figure out you're not deceased, you'll do pretty well. That gives you a serious nod for Grand de Lix selection. And with your comeback story, it should be a no-brainer for the committee."
Isellia nodded. "Nothing's a no-brainer for the committee, my pops used to say."
Porter chuckled. "I've heard something like that, too. I've been reading up a little bit."
"Becoming a race fan now?"
"Something like that," he said. "Now, the bad news. About your XR..."
"What about my XR?!" Isellia demanded, sitting up before the searing pain once again slumped her right back down.
***
Joey lurched forward as Wimprey shoved him from behind. His hands were held behind him by handcuffs that were all black, one straight bar with half circles on either side. They opened like an alligator jaw, and when closed on someone's wrist, the padding inside expanded or contracted to ensure a snug, but comfortable fit. Joey almost forgot about them at times, until he tried to catch his balance or scratch his nose.
They walked up stairs and down a long hallway. A soldier opened a door and Wimprey shoved Joey through it. Outside the door was the night sky, and they appeared to be on a private landing platform (as all landing platforms, and everything else, tends to be on Inner Circle planets). The platform was long, and at the end of it sat one of the largest ships Joey had ever seen. The black ship looked sprinkled with lights from various windows. It was almost hard to make out against the night sky.
"Move it!" Wimprey ordered, shoving Joey in the back with his ROU a little.
"Where are we going?"
"Never mind," Wimprey said, snide with overconfidence. He'd cowered before Rex and Celia before; they'd slipped his grasp easily, they mocked him, the beautiful assassin and the brooding fighter. But this time, he pulled one over on them. He daydreamed about having Celia in those handcuffs instead. Then he remembered his task.
"All the way into the ship!" Wimprey enjoyed having authority over someone. He always sought out promotion, advancement, and capturing one of Rex and Celia's crew was a good step towa
rd that. If he could bring that crew down, he'd have great rewards.
Nix watched Wimprey shove Joey up the gangplank, and could see his hands were restrained. His eyes narrowed as he watched them from a nearby landing platform. He took note of the ship — it was one of Company C's flagship cruisers. Not a military ship, per se, but armed enough to be one. A ship for officials in the Company when they traveled off world or to some official event. A sign to all: My ship's bigger. And it can planet land, meaning crew could disembark directly on the planet instead of taking shuttles to the surface, one of the biggest ship’s capable of such a feat.
"Better tell the others," Nix said quietly to himself, scurrying off into the night.
***
One-Lung Alice couldn't believe her luck. She looked herself over; what was left, anyway. Her head and torso remained intact. Her left leg she would later find in three pieces, one of which she would find behind a nearby building. She only had one arm left. That would need to be replaced completely.
But she survived. She’d crash landed in the city, ship nearly disabled, and she was out of commission. She always survived, she thought, holding a small pin between her teeth while she tested the circuits on her arm stump. She could always replace parts, swap in a new leg, new lung, new heart. Her lung, in fact, is how she got her name in the first place. The casualty of years of tobacco use — cigarettes, chew, anything she could find — she got her name on the XR circuit because she kept smoking, despite only having one real lung. "Give me a second metal lung and I'll smoke through that," she would gripe through her raspy voice. No one bothered to correct her that her artificial lung was made out of synthetic fiber and silicon. Few argued with One-Lung Alice about anything.
She survived, but she was feeling old. She'd survived more than a century, and in some ways that felt long enough. She grew weary of people, and the galaxy, and the myriad ridiculous ways she found to entertain herself.
Yet part of her always wanted to survive, she realized. It surprised her that she delighted in the fact that she made it through the explosion alive. Alive enough to rebuild again.
And now she had another opportunity for entertainment. Exacting her revenge on Yardley and those other Company C clowns gave her one more reason to push on. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that the explosion was his idea. Isellia had proven a worthy opponent and had slipped away. Alice had been confident she would have been able to finish the job, but apparently Yardley hadn't shared her confidence. Shit like this is why she demanded an advance payment.
She'd make Yardley suffer, that stuffy snob.
"Better shoot straight, asshole," One-Lung muttered, making an adjustment to one of the servos on her remaining leg. "’Cause you can bet I will.”
***
Yardley, dressed in all white with a wide-brimmed fedora, sat drinking some sort of pineapple alcoholic concoction at a table in an outdoor cafe — he hadn't bothered to remember what it was exactly. There was the lightest of breezes — there usually was in Company C planets, the result of numerous climate controls that allowed the precise calculation of weather events. Most of the time one could expect a sunny but dull day with a slight breeze. Yardley sipped the yellow drink in a glass with a stem that twisted around itself multiple times, culminating in a wide mouth at the top.
His comm device buzzed, vibrating the glass table. He set the drink down, finding its spot by the outline of condensation on the glass surface, and picked up the buzzing device.
"Yardley," he said into it. "Oh yes, sir, taken care of. ... No I'm quite certain. ... Yes, the reports all say so, including those insufferable twits Jeft and Brill. ... No sir, I don't know. I suppose people love to hate them.
"... Oh, you captured one of the crew? A boy? Splendid news, sir. … Why yes, he will certainly help our plans. Now what can I — oh, well, I suppose I can see to that. It'll be difficult, the hospital is ... yes sir, I understand perfectly well, sir. Yes, I think that can be done.
"... Yes sir, of course you have a plan for complete elimination. And I fully understand, first thing's first, get rid of the driving force. ... Yes, without her, no more of this XR nonsense.
"Very good, I will see to it at once."
Yardley shut his comm device, and grabbed the glass one more time. He drained its contents, swallowing hard before roughly setting the obscurely shaped glass back down.
"Another sir?" a waiter asked.
"That'll be all," Yardley said, pulling the brim of his white fedora down lower over his eyes. "Duty calls."
***
"So what do you know about the original 108?" Wineshack asked, adjusting his glasses as he poured through an old book. Fran and MaBrown sat across a cluttered desk from him. Wineshack looked up after he spoke, his gaze held longer than most would find comfortable.
"Wasn't that that huge botched experiment?” MaBrown asked. “They made a batch of robots, they started thinking for themselves, they went crazy, started killing people, and the Company paid a bunch of bounty hunters to wipe them all out. Something like that right?"
"Close," Wineshack said, and he paused for effect, smiling at MaBrown. "You've got the basic facts, my boy, but you're confusing flaw with feature. The robots were supposed to become self aware. Just not quite in the manner Company C's robotics division expected."
"What did they expect?" Fran asked.
"They expected the robots to still follow orders, but to do so with some awareness. They wanted the robots to be able to understand syntax. They wanted them to understand more than just the literal meaning of words. Are you familiar with the Chinese room theory?"
Both MaBrown and Fran shook their heads.
"OK, so you have a room and in that room, are a bunch of people. You have someone feeding Chinese symbols into the room, and people in that room have a decoder. They compare the sets of Chinese symbols with patterns on a chart, and that gives them a response. They return that response. From the outside, it almost appears that the room collectively understands Chinese. After all, they are responding to all the queries asked of them."
"What's Chinese?" MaBrown asks.
"Oh!" Wineshack looks taken aback. "Someone needs to study their Old Earth history! Let's substitute Sasugan then. So, does the room actually understand Sasugan? Of course not. They can only decode the sets of symbols they're given. They don't actually understand the meaning of what is being said, or the meaning of their responses.
"So that's what a typical robot does. It doesn't really understand anything, just decodes sets of instructions. But these 108 were different. They were designed so that they would understand the Chinese. Or the Sasugan, if that analogy makes sense."
"But isn't all language decoding?" MaBrown asked.
"Yes! But," Winshack said, pointing his finger toward MaBrown excitedly. "It's at a much stronger level, when you understand a language. In fact, that's how language works. If you learn a new one, you start by simple decoding based on your own language. When the words in the new language start taking on their own meaning, that's when you really start to understand your new language!"
"So what does this have to do with what we asked about, Mr. Wineshack?" Fran asked. "What about these accounting discrepancies I found?”
"Ah, now the interesting part! I came across a patent a few months ago, and I pieced together a few other patents I've put together. And well, look, doesn't that sound like a new type of AI for a robot?" Wineshack handed Fran a set of documents.
Fran read through the documents. She recognized the Company C style, and she noted some of the invoice amounts that were also included in the stack. "There's my missing money. They're building their robot division in secret, for some reason, and they wanted to keep it off the books, and they didn't expect me to — well, that means I found something they didn't want me to and — but that means when I brought it to their attention, I — Uh oh."
"Sounds like they didn't just want you to leave on a vacation."
"We better tell the others. I
may have put everyone in danger."
"I don't know, they seem pretty good at finding danger on their own," MaBrown said.
"Stop back any time!" Wineshack called after them, as MaBrown and Fran rushed out of the front door.
***
Everyone sat in Isellia's hospital room. She'd briefly forgotten her anger about her XR when she learned what happened to Joey. One anger replaced another. Celia, Rex, Kenpur, Jeanna, Dirk and Nix, all sat with their heads down, silent. Porter was stunned into silence.
"He wanted to help," Kenpur said. "We did what we could to keep him out of harm's way."
Porter looked up at him. "Well a fine job you've done of it," he said in a flat, even tone. "Isellia's in the hospital, Joey been kidnapped. I hate to think what you have in store for me."
Everyone noticed the obvious — that Porter could have included the loss of his legs in that diatribe — but no one said anything. Porter slumped forward in his chair, face in both of his palms.
"All right," he said after a moment. "What's happened, happened. As soon as we get out of here, we get the kid back. We get you a new XR, and we carry on. We have to —"
Porter stopped talking as a doctor walked in. She wore the same long, white coat as the others, but something about her caught Porter's attention. Her hair seemed different than the other doctors — not the usual pulled straight back ponytail that most of the women wore. It came out like a blonde shock of energy from her head, like the sun itself had blessed her face.
She gave Porter the slightest of looks before moving toward Isellia — he couldn't help but feel a tinge of attraction, which surprised him. He'd gone some time without female contact, but lately he seemed to be finding a lot of it.
"How're you feeling, hun?" she asked Isellia, looking over her vitals on the machines next to her bed.
"Fine. Ready to get out of here. I got stuff to do."
Robot Awareness: The Inner Circle Page 15