by J. S. Morin
“I have an issue that I think concerns all humanity,” Alex said, spreading his arms for a camera he had to know was watching.
Eve remembered another failed emancipation hearing. Multiple hearings, in fact. Even now, watching Alex grandstanding, she wondered if he was still too immature to be on his own. It wasn’t that she expected him to starve or injure himself by careless risk-taking—even in his tinkering with dark energy, Eve’s instincts told her that he knew how to handle his science. It was the moral compass he seemed to lack.
It was only after his successful emancipation that Eve had learned of Charlie7’s coaching. That wily old bastard had informed Alex of what the committee members wanted to hear. That was why the contrite and humble young man who’d spent a year cleaning up his act melted away like a snowman in the rain upon receiving the committee’s vote.
Eve hadn’t bought the act. Something had felt off. But the rest of the committee had been taken in. Most emancipations were unanimous, but for Alex Truman, he bore the lifelong stain of Eve’s vote against him.
And now, here he was, in trouble with committees across numerous jurisdictions, looking for help.
“As you are all no doubt aware, I’ve recently made the alien city, colloquially known as Atlantis, my new home,” Alex said. His manner was less that of a petitioner for assistance as it was a choreographed showman. “Needless to say, hackles are up among committees worldwide. But that raises an interesting question: why?”
“Because you violated committee edicts regarding the quarantine of Atlantis,” Toby22 said bluntly.
“But what business is it of theirs?” Alex asked with a professorial finger wagging in the air. “No one was using the city. It contains invaluable data that could unlock a golden age of space exploration and energy production. It certainly wasn’t worry over my safety since that’s this esteemed committees’ sphere of concern.”
Eve had intended to remain above the fray as much as possible lest she appear to hold a grudge against a young man who was emancipated over her objections. But this was a step too far. “I suppose we could vote on a measure condemning permanent occupation of a site with delayed access to food and emergency services. There’s been no study of the alien city to certify it for habitation.”
Alex smiled from beneath cold eyes as he waited his turn to speak. “Well, aren’t you clever? Piling on instead of doing your actual job. You’re the Human Welfare Committee, not the Human Safety Committee or the Human Herding, Zookeeping, or Babysitting Committee. You should be standing up for my right to conduct research in my chosen field of study.”
“You are perfectly able to conduct dark energy research without transgressing against committee edicts,” Nora109 said.
“Says you,” Alex countered. “The Wright Brothers weren’t confined to a cave for their aircraft experiments. The Apollo Program wasn’t relegated to diesel fuel to get their spacecraft off the ground. No one told Oppenheimer: why don’t you try to achieve fission without those nasty radioactive isotopes? There are working prototypes in that city. There is extraterrestrial equipment on hand. There may be translatable data that plainly tells how all their technology works.”
“Why are you arguing this here?” Eve asked, folding her hands and leaning across her desk. “Why not make these arguments to the committees who are opposing your research? Frankly, aside from the personal risk you’ve chosen to assume in this matter—which I agree, you’re allowed to take on—I don’t care what you do down there.”
“Aha!” Alex said, index finger shooting high. “Exactly! You. Don’t. Care.” He turned and addressed the robots to Eve’s right without making eye contact with her. “You see? Eve’s not looking out for humans anymore. This is just a trophy appointment for her. She’d had it since the committee was formed, and she’s gotten lazy.”
Eve banged a gavel she hardly ever used. Its very presence on her desk was meant to be decorative, a cultural touchstone to the Human Era. “Out of order. The petitioner will refrain from ad hominem attacks.”
“Because they’re against you? Because there’s a General Oversight Committee guideline on committee conduct? Or is it just that my accusation struck a little too close to home?” Alex asked. “Frankly, I don’t care what the committee guidelines for hearing conduct say. I didn’t have any input. I didn’t have any representation.”
Nora109 chimed in with dry sarcasm. “Those rules predate your birth by seven hundred years.”
“Understandable,” Alex said, nodding along as if that simple fact were a profound revelation. “But what about now? Where do I go to make my opinion matter? I’m not on any committee. There’s a waiting list. Humanity is low on seniority around here.” He hooked a thumb at the door behind him. “Kabir4 had eight years on me. He could get onto the Human Welfare Committee before me. What sense does that make?”
“We’ve had a seniority-based system since the first committees,” Toby22 argued. “The system works.”
“For you, you old relic,” Alex snapped. “But not for humanity. Eve gets a pass. She put in her time. Time for her to step aside or be forced to make room for someone with more passion and fire for this job.”
Eve banged her gavel again. “Out of order. Calls for a vote of no-confidence must come from a committee member.”
Alex spread his hands. “How convenient. One human in charge. Sixteen robots to close ranks and keep her there. And for that matter, why are there still robots on this committee at all? It’s not like we don’t have enough humans to fill it. We should be looking after our own species. ‘Of the people, by the people, for the people…’ Do you robots even realize where you’re sitting? This was where the revolution in human governance took hold. Monarchies out. Democracies in. Who the hell decided committees were a government?”
Eve banged her gavel. “Strike the petitioner’s remarks from the official record. None of this is relevant to Human Welfare Committee business. We are not a pulpit for personal gripes about the committee system. I suggest you take up your grievance with the General Oversight Committee.”
Alex turned and headed for the exit. Without looking back, Eve barely heard his reply. “Oh, I’ll be taking this up with a higher authority, all right.”
It seemed a curious break in his adversarial showmanship until Eve realized that he was facing the camera broadcasting the hearing across the news feeds.
Chapter Thirty-One
Strawberry ice cream and tequila were the perfect remedy to Abby’s day. Dr. Ashley and Dad had given her a lot to think about, and her desserts had been carefully selected to postpone such deep, soul-exploring thoughts to some later date. On the video screen, a live-action rendering of Alice in Wonderland played out. Recorded in 2035, most film critics of the day considered it to be the authoritative version of the psychedelic tale.
Abby preferred this edition due to Malcolm Voigt’s performance as the Mad Hatter. She’d have willingly drunk anything that man put in front of her, tea or otherwise. They didn’t make them like him anymore. Through a tequila haze, Abby wondered whether there was any record of that DNA on file somewhere.
Too late, she decided. Someone ought to have cloned that body twenty years ago to have any chance at warming lonely nights.
In the midst of her third playback of the tea party scene, Abby’s computer chimed with an urgent alert. She threw a couch cushion over it. The chime continued, merely muffled.
If there had been any chance of an actual emergency, she’d never have dreamed of squelching the alarm. But Abby wasn’t the person anyone turned to when there was trouble. Plenty of rescue services were available for genuine trouble. Abby’s circle of friends tended to use the emergency setting for such frivolity as new pizza recipes and videos from the nurseries that were too cute to miss.
On screen, an anthropomorphic dormouse depicted in lifelike computer animation spouted somnambulant poetry.
The computer alarm continued. Designed for emergency functions, it refused to be simply ig
nored.
Abby dug her portable out from beneath the cushions and stabbed the “dismiss” button with her finger. But her traitorous eyes, too quick for her peace of mind, drank in the meaning of the words in Billy’s message before the text vanished.
EVE ON NEWS FEEDS CHEWED OUT BY ALEX. GOTTA SEE.
Abby most certainly did not “gotta.” It was bad enough knowing that little know-it-all was spouting off about committee favoritism. She didn’t need to witness it firsthand as he danced on the committee table in mockery of Eve Fourteen’s work.
Dammit.
Abby’s fingers had already tapped back to find the lost message. She explored the link provided and routed the resulting feed recording to her video screen, chasing away the luscious images of Wonderland. In their place appeared the bland, modern committee boardroom at Independence Hall.
The feed recording came with an advisory warning that the contents had been deemed unfit for non-emancipated humans.
“What the hell did he say?” Abby wondered aloud.
It wasn’t long before she got her answer. Not that she favored censorship in any form, but possibly it wasn’t the best news feed to be showing children. Certainly not the children of the committee chairwomen, who would have preferred not seeing their own mother eviscerated publicly.
Yet Abby couldn’t stop herself. The images seemed less real than the hatter’s tea party. And as with the tea party, all the words made sense in isolation, yet their greater implications were a jumble. But this wasn’t a fanciful world conjured from an English gentleman’s imagination. This was Earth, and the Human Welfare Committee had only wrapped up their meeting a few minutes ago.
Billy must have been keeping up with the live feed. How ghoulish of him. She tapped out a message in a private Social channel to tell him exactly that.
“Oh, sweetie, you can’t take it personally,” Billy replied in voice recording.
With a sigh, Abby connected a call. If she was going to hear Billy’s voice, it was going to be less awkward without the asynchronicity of trading recordings. “How can I not?”
“You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Billy insisted. “Alex would be birthing kittens over Rosa if she’d been the one to go spelunking beneath the sea.”
“But Rosa never would have gone.”
“If she’d come up with a new design for exploration wear, you bet your sweet dimples she would have.”
Abby scowled. “It’s still voyeurism. You’re only watching for the spectacle.”
“Am not,” Billy protested. “My grievances need airing too. I could be creating human-sized buildings instead of trying to solve an amphibian housing crisis.”
Point taken. Alex wasn’t the only one whose career aspirations had been thwarted by the current system.
“Ooh,” Billy said excitedly. “They’re broadcasting a live speech from the steps of Liberty Hall.”
Abby hated herself for switching it on, but like Billy, she couldn’t resist the spectacle.
Plus, it was newsworthy.
Alex stood on camera, three steps above the small crowd of humans watching him. By the slight shudder in the image, the recording device wasn’t being held by a robot—or anyone who knew how to switch on a stabilizing feature for that matter. “Friends, I come to you as a man not defeated but hopeful. I think, perhaps, the worst the Human Welfare Committee could have done was to have disguised their true nature and convince the various committees I’ve offended that I deserved a free pass.”
Abby sipped at her tequila—crinkling her nose at a drink never meant to be sipped. She could think of a number of worse outcomes for Alex Truman. Trussing him up and throwing him in front of the Scientific Ethics Committee, for starters.
“But, to their credit, the Human Welfare Committee kept true to their nature. They are an organization by robots, for robots, and any benefit they currently provide to humans is either bland administration of common resources or a salve to assuage robotic consciences. They like knowing that they’re taking care of us, that we need them.”
“What about Eve Fourteen?” someone in the audience yelled.
Abby didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. She tapped in a text message to Billy, whom she assumed was watching, asking if he knew.
WENDY CHANG. HOLLY19’S DAUGHTER. RUMOR IS SHE AND ALEX ARE A THING.
Figured. Planted question.
But Alex was already replying. “Eve doesn’t know what being human is like. She was raised thinking she was a science experiment, the only one of her kind. Sad story. I truly pity her childhood. But that hasn’t done her credit in representing humankind. She’s known robots all her life. She’s more comfortable with robots than with her own kind.”
“She’s friends with your father,” Leslie de Saito called out. That was a voice Abby knew. Abby had spent a summer mentoring the girl when she still thought she might want to be a musician. One summer with Abby had cured the girl of that.
Alex smiled ruefully. “Time was, everyone was friends with my father.” That drew chuckles from the crowd. “But Eve Fourteen is as much robot as she is human. Perhaps she was a fine choice to bridge the two species. Maybe she was always meant to be a temporary holdover until someone better came along. But over time, she’s taken on so many enhancements and upgrades that she can hardly be deemed human at all. Clearly, if anyone has crossed the line from human to cyborg, it’s Eve Fourteen.”
Abby gaped at the screen. When her outrage ebbed to the point where she could think at all, she hurled her half-empty glass at the screen. Glass shattered. “How dare you! None of us would be here without Mom.”
“Eve Fourteen could have been a true messiah for humans. She could have led by example. But how many humans have been born in the Second Human Age? Two. Neither is even emancipated yet. The rest of us were all vat grown. Eve could have given birth, even to a clone, to show that humans make humans. We should take the robots out of our species’ reproductive process. Even if it’s just full ownership of the cloning facilities. But as usual, Eve has fallen on the side of the robots.
“I say she’s grown too comfortable in her position,” Alex said to a chorus of cheers.
“I say Eve Fourteen no longer represents the humanity we wish to become.”
More cheers. Abby’s stomach churned.
“I say it’s time to shake up the Human Welfare Committee.”
As the cheers echoed once more, Abby doubled over. The combination of outrage and tequila clashed in her stomach, and she vomited on the floor of her living room.
Glancing up at that smug face on the screen as the heaving stopped, she spoke to Alex in absentia. “I won’t let you get away with this.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alex waved to the camera. It was time for the scheduled broadcast to end. The few who knew what was going on all filtered out of the crowd along with Gerry on the video recorder. Grassroots movements were hard enough to fake without loyal flunkies clustering around at the end to slap one another on the back for a job well done.
His flunkies were better trained than that.
But what Alex hadn’t been expecting was for Nora109 to burst out of the doors to Liberty Hall. “Alex Truman, what’s gotten into you?”
The voice had the same effect on his nerves as biting an ice cube. Dr. Nora had that same archetypal voice. It belonged to her. Nearly a millennium of misuse by misguided mixes did nothing to change the fact that it belonged to the original. It was the voice he remembered from infancy, singing him ridiculous songs. The same voice had argued constantly with Charlie7.
With a quick glance into the crowd to verify that Gerry had noticed the outburst and resumed recording, Alex fixed Nora109 with a patently false smile. “Civic spirit,” he replied with a lift of his chin.
Nora109 came closer than polite discourse usually dictated, casting a shadow over Alex in the early afternoon sun. Her voice lowered to the point where he could only presume she meant for the exchange to remain priv
ate. “That woman has done more for you than you’ll ever comprehend, and I don’t want to hear about the capacity of that intellect of yours. It’s willfulness that blinds you to Eve’s contributions.”
Opportunity. Exploit misplay. Privacy requires two parties.
“Contributions?” Alex scoffed. “There are twenty-eight residents of the Sanctuary for Scientific Sins—a paradoxical name if ever there was one. What’s Eve done for them? She’s banned genetic treatments that might give some of them—perhaps all of them—a chance at a normal life.”
In fairness, striking a blow at the sanctuary was an attack of opportunity. But Alex had come prepared. He and his staff had dug deep for points against Eve Fourteen and her allies. The Sanctuary of Scientific Sins was Nora109’s Achilles heel dating back to when she’d run the place.
She wagged a finger in Alex’s face. “Those poor dears suffered enough without someone using them as lab rats. Every one of them is well looked after and as happy as we can make them.”
Asymmetrical arguments. Errant focus on non-disputed issue. Punching at shadows.
“But not healthy,” Alex replied. “The Human Welfare Committee requires consent for medical procedures—”
“For which you should thank Eve.”
“But the committee chairwoman holds the power of consent for the patients at the sanctuary and denies them treatment.”
“They can’t understand the implications,” Nora109 explained as if Alex were somehow unable to grasp the concept.
Condescension. Must look good on camera. Excellent.
“It would be unethical to subject them to treatment that might upset them and which they can’t understand.”
“Interesting logical loop, isn’t it?” Alex asked. “Abdicates the responsibility of evaluating medical treatments with an objective eye. Delete the requests as they come in, regardless of merit, dust your hands, and sleep well that night.”
He waited to pounce when she pointed out that robots don’t sleep. To her credit, Nora109 at least knew to dodge that obvious trap.