Idempotency

by Joshua Wright

  “What if we try to ditch him again?” Grepman’s standing hologram asked.

  “It might be our only choice. Then we could have her hang out at another dozen areas similar to how she’s doing here,” Nimbus said.

  “No. That merely buys us time by giving them a dozen targets instead of just one.”

  “We could move again. We’re all thinking it. It was obviously worth doing for Boxster,” Grepman said.

  “Yes. But I want more ideas. Come on, people. Out of the box. What if we interfered with network transmission?”

  Jay-san had been sitting quietly opposite Simeon on the other side of the holoTabletop. His chair was pushed back, and he was slouching while running his hand through his jet-black Japanese hair. Without changing expressions, he began to speak softly. “Yes. We could use a wireless network amplifier to blast momentary interference to any wireless networks; it would run down our batteries, but worth it assuming it works. But how does that help?”

  Everyone became quiet, contemplative. Breathing could be heard around the dark room.

  “Uhh, guys. You might want to see this.” Grepman’s holograph was pointing beyond the table at something in the virt. Everyone else turned to the look at a large flat-media wall in the front of the room; Simeon had to turn entirely, as he was at the front of the oblong holoTable. On the display, Grepman’s point of view could be seen. He glanced to his right, and T-shirt man was standing right next to him. Glancing back in front of him, the group saw Grepman’s view of Sindhu walking down the row of dilapidated slum boxes. She was walking directly toward the T-shirt man. Grepman’s holograph atop the table mirrored the movements that were being displayed on the vid.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sindhu had grown impatient. She wasn’t one for passive action.

  The T-shirt man didn’t look at her, but he did acknowledge her. Keeping his gaze skyward, he held out both hands and cupped them together as if asking for a handout. Sindhu studied him closely. If he did have ocImps, she couldn’t tell; his eyes looked normal to her. He had dark, tanned skin and appeared to be in good health, though he was skinny. Any conjecture on the T-shirt man’s age was momentarily difficult for Sindhu to discern; but his youthful looks were betrayed by an almost perfect symmetry around his deeply set eyes that opened systematically with his mouth as he began speaking in tongues.

  Sindhu started to turn around, as if to walk away, but instead she gained speed and twirled into a full circle. She came around suddenly and hit the T-shirt man with merciless force to the neck. Her knuckles popped. Tamil letters scrambled wildly around her back, as if they were a deck of cards thrown chaotically onto her skin. The T-shirt man stumbled awkwardly backward and, for a fraction of a second, she saw his eyes flicker preternaturally. The man regained his footing and immediately retook his previous position; hands cupped in front of him, gaze skyward.

  [GREPMAN 17:15:29] What the hell?

  [SinTh3t!c 17:15:49] It’s an android. Pretty much the best one I’ve ever seen, but definitely an android.

  [GREPMAN 17:15:54] How did you know?

  [SinTh3t!c 17:16:02] I didn’t. But that perfect skin of his, it’s definitely metallic.

  [GREPMAN 17:16:04] One second . . .

  “Nice! This girl has moxie!” Simeon growled, and then laughed his guttural start-stop chuckle. The flames on his muscular arms danced and his long ponytail bobbed in unison.

  “What do we do? What should I tell her?” Grepman asked.

  Simeon didn’t hesitate in responding. “Okay, first off, let’s see if she can deactivate it. If so, we can bring it in to study it. We can possibly reverse-engineer the software. This could be a coup for us.”

  “That could be dangerous!” Nimbus retorted defensively with an admonishing glare that wasn’t acknowledged by Simeon. “It ignored her last time, but it could fight or flee if it detects true danger. And why would she do it, anyway? I wouldn’t if I were her.”

  “She’ll be fine. You’ve read her CV—she’s had years of Kalaripayat training. Androids aren’t designed for fighting—”

  “—that we know of!” Mitlee piped up, quick to join Nimbus’s side.

  Simeon ignored her, too, and went on, “And if anything happens, we’ll jump in. We’re probably going to have to evacuate again anyhow.”

  “Fine,” Nimbus acquiesced quickly, knowing they had no choice but to leave. Mitlee echoed her reluctant agreement, and then Nimbus added, “But let’s be ready. Chick, go notify security. Jay, Sim, let’s get going.”

  Chicklet darted out of the room, his Mohawk swaying wildly from side to side, cycling through all of the primary colors.

  “Wait! I still don’t see why she would do it. What do I tell her?” Grepman pleaded.

  “Grep, tell her . . .” Simeon looked at the table, smiled, then looked back at Grepman’s holograph. “Tell her that this is her interview.”

  [GREPMAN 17:19:12] Sin, we want you to incapacitate the android. Then bring it in and help us reprogram and reverse engineer it. Consider this is your interview; do this and you’re in SOP. It’s that simple.

  [SinTh3t!c 17:19:17] OK. Fine.

  Sindhu responded with a shrug. She held no compunction about hurting anyone who was surreptitiously following her, let alone an unfeeling android. She was also confident in her athletic ability—if not entirely fearless—having obtained the status of Verumkai one year ago. Verumkai were the highest recognized masters of the Kalaripayattu martial art, and Sindhu was one of a handful of people left on the planet who took part in this fighting style, which dated back to the eleventh century in South India. Her initial strike on the android had been one of her most recent lessons; a weaponless attack to an incapacitating pressure point, or marman. The lesson had been taught by her ninety-seven-year-old teacher, a lesson that included secrets handed down only to the masters of the art. Secrets that were likely to die out with her. She was confident the android would have no knowledge of Verumkai, but she was also at a loss as to where an android’s marman might be.

  She looked quizzically at the T-shirt man, studying his subtle movements. They appeared mechanical to her now. She shook her head in frustration, and reached around her head to wrap her long, flowing hair into a bun that she pinned together tightly. She had lost her patience.

  With a graceful dancing motion, she lunged while kicking a leg outward behind the T-shirt android. The machine twisted defensively, calculating too late that it was under duress. Her body pivoted lithely, and brought a surprisingly strong arm up toward the T-shirt android’s chest; she pushed with relative ease, using the leverage created by her body, and toppled the android over her right leg. She flipped on top of its back and placed the full weight of her knee against its lower back.

  Algorithms cranked on multiple threads, and the T-shirt android’s problems were reduced to their most atomic questions, farmed to individual processors: status, location, danger, risk, options, probable outcomes. Then a bit flipped. T-shirt android executed a new code path: The android decided to flee.

  It paused and went limp for three seconds, then erupted; metallic muscles flexed inhumanly. It shifted all its sizable weight to one side and twisted violently out of Sindhu’s grip. Its right arm followed through and whipped against her left cheekbone, knocking her onto her back. Catlike, the metallic beast leaped up onto all fours, then kicked hard off its rear legs as if a gun had just gone off to signify the start of a race. It ran north, down the slum row that Sindhu had walked through.

  The commotion had caused the nascent formation of an audience. The T-shirt android swatted half-a-dozen onlookers out of its way with ease as it darted away from the beach. Sindhu gritted her teeth, frustrated that she had left her guard down. She stood, took a deep breath, smiled to her audience, then took off running. As she started to run, a new message appeared in her heads-up ocular enhanced periphery. It read:

  SYNCHRONOUS SKELETON REQUEST: OCULAR VISION ENHANCEMENT.

  BEGIN 256 PETABYTE OpenPGP PUBLIC, P
RIVATE, & AUTHORIZED ENCRYPTION . . . AFFIRM THREE TIMES TO ACCEPT PUBLIC KEY AND SIGNED CHAT FROM:

  SKELETON:SKL_e9992dd5f134. . .<256PB>. . .7fe23a

  Sinhud waved her hand three times as she dodged an elderly vagrant who was wearing a blinking neon shirt. Glancing up, she saw a man floating about five meters in front of her; she correctly assumed it was Grepman. The image of him within the virt was now being virtually displayed within her ocular implants; he, himself, was in the real-time rendered virt of this slum as a virtGhost. Since he was virtually there, he could have floated, run inhumanly fast, or simply flown like a superhero. His appearance also could have been any form; however, he chose a rough representation of himself: simple smile, short brown hair. Handsome upon close inspection. And she recognized him.

  She shouted over the raised commotion of the typically noisy slum: “I remember you from the dogVirt. Super-Grepman, I presume?”

  “At your service, Sindhu. Take a left in ten meters, then an immediate right. We’re taking a shortcut,” Grepman told her, then smiled as his eyes strayed lower down her body. Sindhu was quick to notice his leering.

  She hung a left and nearly flattened an old lady. The lady shouted vehemently back at her and Grepman winced. The fog seemed to be thickening as she went slightly uphill. She could see no more than fifteen meters in front of her now. The ground, a mixture of sandy dirt and trash, was slick with moisture. She began to pant, cursing herself for missing the gym a single time in the past year. A few strands of her hair had fallen out of her bun and were now feathering her face. It tickled.

  “Okay, you’re close, you are going to take another right up here. He’s going to be about five meters in front of you after the turn.”

  She took the immediate right, and the T-shirt android slammed into her. They rolled to the ground, and the android’s carbon-manufactured rib cage cracked against the front door of a stainless-steel shack.

  Grepman yelled frantically, “His eyes! Gouge out his eyes!”

  Sindhu took direction well and immediately raised her left hand and slammed her index and middle finger into the T-shirt android’s eyes. Bones in her hand popped like hard candy and she felt pain. She had expected a fungible material. The android swung its right palm upward and hit Sindhu below the chin; her mouth clamped shut and she bit her tongue. She let out a pain-riddled scream as she began to taste blood. The android took advantage of her stunned disposition and rolled violently, throwing her off him. Again it hopped onto all fours and sprinted forward. But this time, the combination of damaged eyes and dense fog caused the android to run smack into the side of a decrepit building across the walkway. It staggered, then erupted into a sprint, only to smack into the corner of another shack ten meters down the line. It began to do this repeatedly; as if it were stuck in a giant pinball machine.

  Gathering herself, Sindhu spat blood onto the ground and sauntered toward the hobbled android. She grabbed it by the neck from behind and threw it to the ground. Jumping atop it once more, she deftly pulled out one of the bobby pins holding up her hair—which was now looking delicately unkempt. She gouged the pin into the android’s left eye. Within seconds she had dislodged the left ocular ball, and was now working on the right one. As soon as it popped out, a few SOP nonvagrants ran toward Sindhu out of nowhere and secured the body. They attached a device to the android’s head, and an electrical current shocked the machine until the entire thing suddenly went limp.

  T-shirt android had been rendered incapacitated. Interview nailed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sindhu wasn’t the only SOP recruit with an interview on this day. Dylan’s interview, however, was far less violent—but no less odd . . .

  “Mr. Dansby! It’s so good to finally meet you in person!” spoke the mellifluous voice of Mike McCormack, gregarious recruiter extraordinaire, whom Dylan had been playing phone tag with for the past week. It had taken only a few hours after his experience in the SOP multiVirts to receive the call from Mike about the NRS job opportunity.

  “Absolutely—been looking forward to it!” Dylan volleyed, enjoying the social inanities that were common with both business development and human resources.

  “So, how do you like the headquarters? Pretty impressive, right?” Mike asked amiably.

  Dylan had taken an NRS-chartered graviCopter the previous night into the Seattle area. The weather, of course, had been drizzling incessantly since he’d arrived, and he hadn’t had much time to take in his surroundings. That said, it was impossible to miss the NRS headquarters. The building stuck out like a sore thumb in downtown Bellevue, with its opulent gold-crested trimmings and its optically deceptive inverted triangular structure. The building looked like an upside-down pyramid balancing carefully on its point. In actuality, it was more of an octagon and was being held aloft at its corners with a unique suspension system. Even so, the building looked magnificent.

  “It’s impressive, that’s for sure,” answered Dylan. “The architecture is astounding. I can’t get over the balancing act. I just hope everyone doesn’t decide to run to the same side of the building at the same time! How exactly is this thing standing?”

  “Yes, I find it’s best not to think too hard about that,” Mike McCormack responded melodically. He had a sweet-sounding voice that belied his wide body. His rotund midsection was covered elegantly with an obviously expensive pinstriped, three-piece suit. He wore his brown hair short, meticulously trimmed and styled.

  “So, does your employer know you’re interviewing with us?” Mike asked, changing gears.

  “Yeah, I went ahead and told them. I felt it was prudent, given the unique relationship between our two companies.”

  “Good; I would agree with that. Between you and me, I think there’s a good chance SolipstiCorp becomes part of the NRS family at some point,” Mike said, winking, “but you didn’t hear that from me.” He chuckled devilishly.

  Dylan grinned in response. “I have no comment.”

  “Well, let me start by telling you a little about the day ahead, and then I’ll give you the spiel about the NRS family. I’ll leave some time for initial questions you might have, but keep in mind that I’ll be seeing you again at the end of the day, so you can ask me as much as you want at that point, too. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Excellent. Well, you’ll be speaking with five different folks today, and you’ll be having lunch with two more. We don’t like to grill people at lunch—pun intended—so that will be more of an informal question-and-answer session with some of your would-be peers. So feel free to ask lots of questions during that time. So far, so good?”

  “Swimmingly good!” Dylan replied, mustering all the positivity he could as he hunkered down for the long day ahead.

  “Let’s say, for grins, that I had secretly cloned an exact copy of you. And let’s assume your clone walked through the door directly behind you, right now. And, let’s say I told you to fight your clone.” Korak paused to study the candidate’s reaction, then asked: “Who would win?” His face showed no emotion as he asked the question; his voice didn’t quiver beyond a semi-tone.

  Dylan recoiled. “That’s an absurd question.”

  “Why?” Korak responded evenly.

  “Well, for one, it just is.” Dylan grinned, then continued when Korak showed no reaction. “And two, I’m a generally peaceful person. Neither myself nor my clone would agree to fight. End of fight; no winner.”

  “What if I told you that you had to fight to get the job?”

  “Wouldn’t do it,” Dylan replied.

  “Why not?”

  “I just wouldn’t. The job’s interesting, but it’s not worth me sacrificing such a strong moral belief over, especially one so . . . violent.”

  “So you hold moral beliefs—less strong, less violent—that you would be willing to sacrifice in order to get this job?”

  “Well, I—” Dylan started—he’d walked right into Korak’s logic trap. Collecting himself qui
ckly, he chose to reply unapologetically, “Well, yes, I suppose there are moral . . . edge cases—for lack of a better phrase—that I would consider crossing in order to get this job.”

  “Of course you would.” Korak’s response was matter-of-fact, and he began to raise his hands as he said it in order to take notes, swishing and swooshing several items within his ocImp’s interface. Finally, he leaned back in his chair, looked directly at Dylan and said, “Our world is interpreted in a binary fashion, Mr. Dansby; yea and nay votes in Congress make laws, up or down votes by shareholders determine employees’ fates. Ties have been eliminated from all major sports, silver medals may as well be last-place finishes these days. Stoplights are the only tertiary thing left in the world, and even those are anachronistic now, thanks to the autoTrans.” He paused and glanced out his floor-to-ceiling window that looked out upon dreary Lake Washington. “But this propensity to simplify via polarity masks the true, grayish nature of humanity.

  “Take the issue of dermatrophy, a hot topic in the darkNets these days. I, of course, believe it’s reprehensible—a scourge on society. In my humble opinion, people should be allowed to extend their lives only if they have the financial means to do so in a socially accepted manner. So when does extended aging for the poor become morally wrong? Is it wrong for the poor to get a vaccine to extend their life? No, I don’t believe so. How about a single organ transplant at a naturally young age, say fifty? Perhaps—many of my colleagues believe so. But eighty? How about multiple-organ transplants past the century mark? Organ transplants when the patient can’t afford treatment for skin-cell regeneration? Of course, this is morally wrong. So while the debate is cast simplistically as to whether you are for or against the argument of extended life for the poor, this masks the true debate of where you draw the line.”

  Korak paused and stared at Dylan’s concentrated eyes.

  “My point is, Dylan, while our world may be binary, the rules governing what defines a zero versus what defines a one—those rules—are quite subjective and often arbitrary. In this job at NRS you will be asked to do things under the guise of absolution. But what is absolution for one, might be morally wrong to you; following through on those directives might require you to blur or move entirely your defined lines in order to do what’s right for the corporation—to do what’s right for NRS. Does this make sense, Dylan?”