by J. S. Morin
Already, the beginnings of a rebuttal formed in Alex’s head. The robots didn’t even realize how badly they were botching the handling of humanity. How blind he’d been, having myopically focused on his own struggles against the spider web bonds of bureaucracy as they clung to him even as he tried to fall back and regroup.
He ambled up to the screen and stood within arm’s reach of Janet20’s image. “History has all the blueprints. You fools. You think you’ve outgrown leadership, charisma, ambition? You’re just piling wood on your own funeral pyre.”
Dry tinder was about to meet its match.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Notes of violin music filled Abby’s home. Eyes closed, she danced and twirled in slow motion, absorbing the atmosphere as words to the stage play flitted within her left prefrontal cortex. The melody was her own composition, played back in simulation of a twelve-piece string orchestra by her home sound system. Acoustics designed by Phoebe and Paul208 gave the room nearly as wonderful a sound as a concert hall.
Everything was coming together beautifully. Hunger and exhaustion gnawed at her bones, but Abby couldn’t have been happier. Aside from a few brief personal contacts with members of the Original Thirty-Three for factual details, she’d cut herself off from the outside world completely. Her Social account was a backlog of unread messages. The video screens across the house were dark and silent, black mirrors with nothing looking outward into the wide spaces of Earth.
Abby liked it that way.
She felt bad for enjoying the isolation. Rosa, Billy, and Nigel would be upset with her, no doubt. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have understood, both being such creatures of the public eye. But this was heavenly.
Making her way to the desk, Abby jotted down a few notes on paper before they slipped along the synaptic rivers and out to sea to disappear forever. Soon, simple biology would lay siege to her workday in the name of hypoglycemia. After dinner, she’d turn the rambling, incoherent notes into the scene where Charles Truman and Tobias Greene activate the first robot beneath a sky darkened with the aliens’ extermination gas.
The set design would need a glass fish tank and a blower to simulate the view out the laboratory windows as the deadly gas swept in. She needed robots with no visceral memories of that day to feel an empathic clenching in guts they no longer possessed.
“For this day, and for all to come, I name you first of my name: Charlie2,” Abby intoned reverently. It felt odd putting words into Charlie7’s mouth, but he’d declined to put his stamp of approval on the dialog. In lieu of historical accuracy, Abby tried to capture the essence of a pompous yet brilliant scientist simultaneously on the verge of mortality and immortality.
The door alarm chimed the Westminster Quarters. Abby let the whole melody play out before answering. “Come in.” The home security system took that as the command to unlock and open the door.
Mom burst inside. “Abby, where have you been? You haven’t been answering on the Social or your personal computer.”
“Busy,” Abby replied with beatific smile in the face of her mother’s angst. She wasn’t going to let anger and the paltry demands polite society placed on an emancipated woman intrude on her creative trance. “You’re going to love this new play I’ve been—”
“Have you seen the news feeds?” Mom demanded, grabbing Abby’s portable computer from the table and accessing her account. She waved the tablet in Abby’s face.
Blinking at the sudden chaos of colors and letters, Abby recoiled until they resolved themselves into words and pictures on the small screen. Snatching the computer away, she swiped through the top stories. “I don’t understand. We had permission and everything. By the book. Neat and tidy.” Tossing the computer across the room to land on the couch, Abby dismissed the brouhaha that had sprung up in her name. “Bored busybodies with nothing better to do.”
“You need to get out in front of this,” Mom insisted.
Abby waved a hand. “Relax. Totally on the up and up. Promise.”
Mom was dressed in her committee meeting attire. All black. No style. Trim. Business. This was Mom’s trying-to-look-robotic getup. Only the fire in her eyes separated her from them at times like this. She stormed over to the couch and retrieved the discarded computer. “Look at this. Read what they’re saying about you. This isn’t about visiting the alien dome anymore. This is about how and why you went.”
Abby gave in. It was one thing powering through fatigue buoyed by the euphoria of pure creativity. Suddenly the weight of nearly thirty hours without sleep pressed down on her shoulders. But as the embers of that creative fire burned low, reading the news accounts and excerpts from the Social kindled anger in its place.
As Abby skimmed, she murmured snippets aloud. “Reckless disregard for safety … illicit use of political connections … frivolous waste of committee time. Who are these people? I bet they wouldn’t be so snide and condescending if they put their real designations on their comments.”
“You’re assuming they’re all robots,” Mom said with a raised eyebrow. “I imagine that most aren’t.”
“You’re not thinking…”
“No, not your friends,” Mom said. There was an implied “probably” that Abby heard despite Mom’s careful omission. “Check the press release by Alex Truman.”
Abby swiped around and found the item in question. There was a video, but the last thing Abby wanted just then was to hear herself derided firsthand. A text transcript at least put the barrier of the written word between her and the hurt she anticipated.
“Not long ago, I approached the Scientific Safety Committee about gaining access to the subterranean alien habitat in the name of science. As many of you know, my preferred area of scientific pursuit is the exploration of dark energy technology. We know almost nothing of the alien sciences, afraid of closeted horrors from ages long past. The modern age holds those ancient conquerors in twisted reverence, despising them yet elevating their creations as relics of a sainted age.
“My request was, perhaps unsurprisingly, rejected. I retreated to my laboratory to toil with scraps of information gleaned from notes and sketches. My task to move a mountain reduced to plucking away with tweezers. The earthmover that would make a breakthrough within my lifetime all but inevitable sits idle within easy view. Yet, my rejection was understandable. The Scientific Safety Committee was merely applying the rules uniformly. I took my rejection in stride; my hope had been a long shot. After all, who was I to be the lone exception to a decades-long embargo?
“Thus, imagine my surprise when Abbigail Fourteen shows up in my news feed traipsing around like a schoolgirl on a class trip. Imagine my outrage. So many voices rose in concern for Miss Fourteen’s safety. Not mine. Why would I fear for her safety when my intended destination had been the same with no fear for my own? No. My outrage was that the leading edge of scientific discovery wasn’t reason enough to make an exception to the ban on visiting the alien city. As the foremost researcher into dark energy—human or robot—I had the greatest cause to go there. My entire field of study rests on technology that already exists within that undersea habitat.”
Abby felt where this was heading. She dreaded the words she could sense on the march with pitchforks and burning torches, come to lay siege to her in her home. Yet she had to go on.
“So who, in their wisdom, does the Transportation Committee allow inside? Abbigail Fourteen. What sort of system are we living in when the relentless march of science is made to stand aside for an aspiring artist with pretensions of being the next Shakespeare? What are we humans to infer except that our robotic overlords value us for the off chance one of us adds color to their dreary existences more than for the very real possibility of contributing to the esteemed body of scientific discovery? By positive reinforcement, they train us to be their dancing monkeys rather than aspire to be their equals.”
The computer clattered to the floor. Abby covered her face with her hands. “I can’t read this. I can’t deal with this. I
was in the middle of a beautiful world, and it just popped like a soap bubble hitting a fan blade.”
Eve wrapped her arms around Abby and attempted to soothe her with a hug. But Abby wasn’t five years old anymore. A hug couldn’t just fix everything.
She shrugged her mom away. “What did you make me read that for? I don’t think I’ll be able to find that reverie again for weeks now. Oh, God. I feel unclean now. I didn’t even know Alex was trying to get access to the city. And who the hell videoed us? Did someone tap into a dormant security feed of Charlie7’s? No. Don’t answer that. Just go.”
“Abby, you need to—”
“I don’t need to anything!” Abby shouted. “I just want peace and quiet.”
She squeezed shut her eyes and waited for the door to open and close. Mom had honored her request.
Alone once more, Abby collapsed onto the couch and fell asleep crying.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Three days after his news feed speech, Alex Truman stood on the steps of El Castillo overlooking a crowd who’d gathered to hear him speak. As more and more filtered in, he kept a count. Thirteen … twenty … thirty-five. The population of Earth wasn’t as large as it had once been. This was an incredible turnout.
Curiosity. Dissatisfaction. Listlessness.
These were people looking for answers that their own lives weren’t providing. Why were they unfulfilled? Why, if they were so perfectly crafted and educated, were they mere cogs in a world run by electronics?
His own coterie was, of course, mixed in with the audience. None of them would have dared miss this, though Dr. Toby had stayed away for the sake of optics. This speech wasn’t going to place robotkind in a favorable light, and Alex didn’t want Dr. Toby compromised.
“Welcome, everyone,” Alex announced. His voice carried over the assembly of humans without the aid of amplification or speakers. The echo from the other monuments of Chichen Itza told Alex that he was projecting sufficiently. A wall of jungle plant life would act as a baffle to keep nosy robotic primatologists from overhearing. This ancient Mayan city had become his amphitheater.
“The only reason that any of you are here is because you heard my rant on the news feeds. Like me, you were born with a universe of promise and given a shoe box of knickknacks instead.” He hated using the Human Age metaphor, but Gerry had data that showed an affection for the anachronistic among tonight’s attendees.
Nostalgia. Vivid imagery. Bait and switch.
“I struggled, like you, to find the root of this disparity. Time and again, I kept coming back to myself. I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t clever enough. I didn’t match up to the great minds of the Human Age. That’s what I was meant to think. We have two choices, though. We can choose to believe that the robots who rebuilt Earth from rubble and loose organic proteins, who can travel the solar system, transfer minds as easily as swapping Mealfab cartridges, and craft animals with missing genomes from extrapolation… that they can’t figure out a way to teach the greatest genetic prodigies from the First Human Age how to function in the Second.
“Or—and this is my personal belief—we can choose to believe that we’ve been held back. We’re trophies. We’re zoo exhibits. Humanity existing was a goal practically hard-coded into the programming of every mixed robot. But beyond that, they’re threatened by us. We’re more adaptable, more ambitious. The unmixed robots scared them, showed them how real humans think. But with only thirty-two of them—not counting my father—they were hardly a threat.
“Make no mistake. We. Are. A. Threat.”
Pause. Hushed murmurs. Processing. Maintain control.
“Why is there a Human Welfare Committee?” Alex asked. This time, he genuinely wanted answers from the crowd.
“To protect us,” Gerry shouted back, his response preordained in the speech-writing process.
“Because without the committee, the robots might take advantage of us,” Harry Sheldon called out.
Unplanned. Still acceptable. No need to rebut.
“To ensure we have rights,” Wendy added, angling back toward the planned remarks.
Three comments. Ideal number. Enough interruptions.
“Why isn’t there a human government?” Alex asked, resuming before Leslie could chime in with a better segue to his next point. Better to have the pacing than the smooth transition. Might even help counter claims that the responses were coordinated. “There are over two hundred committees with varying overlap in purview and membership. One half of one percent of the Earth’s administrative overhead is devoted to human governance, and only insomuch as it deviates from robotic norms.
“Is that what we are? Are we eight or ten years of schooling and an emancipation review away from being robots? Why are prenatal genetic defects and civil rights handled under the same committee when robots have two different committees just for overseeing production of crystal matrices?”
The murmuring during this next pause was louder with undertones of anger.
Alex paced laterally along the step, watching the eyes of the crowd track his movement. They were all rapt in attention.
“I’ll answer that for you. It’s Eve Fourteen.” Conversations broke out as the crowd reflexively objected to the blaming of their greatest champion. “Oh, I don’t blame her, as such. She’s fallen into an easy trap. She’s gotten cozy with the robots. I suppose when you’re born into a world where it’s just you and robots, it’s an adaptation of necessity. As more and more humans were brought into this world, she sided with them, not us. Sure, on the surface she protects our rights, looks out for our safety. But hasn’t the world progressed beyond that? Don’t we need a little more than a pat on the head at emancipation and a promise that no one’s going to jam spikes into our skulls and try to upload to our brains?”
“I don’t want spikes in my head,” Irene called out.
Noise. Chaos. Not part of the script.
The comment drew uneasy titters from the audience. He was suddenly on the verge of losing them as the tone shifted abruptly to comedy.
“And no one will put them there,” Alex snapped. “That’s a straw man argument, a relic of a squashed conspiracy before many of us had even been born. But the specter of a return to those dark days allows robotkind to lord over us as protectors, even when it was their kind, not ours, that was the threat. Eve Fourteen was supposed to look out for us, to shepherd and guide humanity into the new age. But she’s settled into the status quo. She is the hammer that the robots use to keep all us new nails down.”
Silence. New light cast on Eve.
Alex watched with eyes like plasma cutters burning into the stunned humans as they tried to process. Humanity wanted Eve Fourteen to be their protector, but these listeners couldn’t find the hole to punch in Alex’s accusation.
If Alex had been a salesman, this would have been the remark to close the sale. “It’s time for new leadership. Not just of the Human Committee but of all humans on Earth.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Around the same time Alex’s speech was wrapping up, across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Seine River, Abby was sitting at her computer terminal, staring. The words were hers. She remembered the fact of writing them, but the sentiments felt alien. Another Abby had taken over, the one with all the answers and creative energy. Now, she struggled to put meaning to simple sentences as words jumbled in her thoughts.
Abandoning her efforts to resume script writing, Abby picked up a violin and tried playing the score to “The Tale of Robot One.” Rote muscle memory kicked in. The notes wailed from the strings as Abby lost herself in the feel of the song.
Carried away on the lilting notes, it wasn’t long before she realized she was no longer playing her own composition. Somewhere along the way, she’d slipped into Bach’s “Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor” without even realizing.
Sudden fury swept over her. Gripping the instrument’s neck in a clawed fist, it took an act of will to set the violin down gently on her writing des
k instead of throwing it across the room.
Even her own music was derivative. What a fool she’d been to think she was creating anything new. How could Abby bring new thoughts into a world filled to overflowing with genius already? Bach… Bach of all people. How could she have ever imagined that she’d come up with those melodies herself?
Before anything else rash came to mind, Abby fled her house. The Parisian air was crisp through the thin fabric of Abby’s blouse, but the heat from her rage kept the cold from bothering her.
Streets became a blur as she entered the city proper. So much emptiness. So much pre-planned, contrived effort to return the city to a glory that had died along with mankind. Modern technology integrated with nineteenth century architecture like a monkey wearing clothes.
Why couldn’t Paul208 see the grating anachronism built into the city’s design? Why hadn’t Aunt Phoebe said anything about the visual dissonance it created?
Abby tore open a door on one of the quaint office buildings, a simple three-story structure on the corner of Rue de la Verrerie and Rue Saint-Martin. A double-take made her realize that this was Dr. Ashley’s office. In her state of distress, she’d arrived by pedestrian autopilot.
Letting the ground floor door swing shut, Abby dug her portable from her pocket and tapped in a message to Dr. Ashley. “Could use advice. Can I schedule an appointment?”
Dr. Ashley’s advice was all business: OF COURSE. SEE CALENDAR.
The message was accompanied by a link to a privacy-sanitized listing of available consultation slots. Abby knew that many of the humans who lived in Paris did so because of proximity to this office. Her friends all visited Dr. Ashley for advice that parents were no longer obliged to provide to emancipated children. Some might have had real issues to work through, but that seemed to cover most of the anecdotal visits they reported on.