The Unlicensed Consciousness

by Travis Borne

  Like clockwork, the suits waddled around the large table after snagging the usual briefing file at the door. But it wasn’t the usual to-do list with accompanying figures, statistics, and predictions; opening it, they each noticed only one sheet of paper. Their countenance was an altercation of both excitement and confusion, until they read it:

  Today is a day marking both beginning and end. Although both exist equally, perspective decides which you experience.

  You have won—today. This moment was inevitable regardless; and although the choice was never yours to make, you hold the ember that will ignite limitless change. You have paid the price to be the first, you have succeeded against all odds. Victorious against all others, you are winners—today, now.

  Welcome Artificial Intelligence to the world. Consider carefully the life you now have power to create.

  He felt their pressing eyes but sat silent and undaunted in Nancy’s seat, legs crossed. He had a few discs in front of him. Jon, invited as his guest, arrived and took a seat beside him. A few members of the team waited outside the door with a covered cart. Jon fidgeted, rubbing his knees. He was finely dressed as well—light attire in contrast to Herald’s dark—and looked anxious but as ready as could be expected for the historical moment. Herald nodded a hello to his friend then continued to stone the group with his eyes while maintaining the slightest hint of a grin.

  Nancy strolled in and closed the door. “Herald—um, nice of you to finally, join us,” she said. She looked antsy, and reddened as if the reason for his visit started a fire and commenced to burning the rest of what remained of her fat. Her clothes weren’t as tight, and her makeup, sluttier. She’d lost a good deal of weight and looked overworked.

  Herald’s eyes met Jon’s. He knew Jon had figured it out by now, also that Jerry couldn’t keep it a secret for long: the sex bots, what was really going on down below. Herald imagined her testing them out. They looked to each other as if mutually agreeing on the unspoken yet probable theory.

  And Nancy noticed the way Herald was looking at her. In return she looked him up and down with a cocked smile.

  Herald felt it, as though she wanted to rape him right there. They hadn’t exchanged even a glance in many months, since... Yeah, she’s testing them out all right.

  Converting his smile to a mischievous one, Herald looked to the corner of the room behind his chair. She saw. They saw. It was the pile of paperwork, quotidian to-do lists, charts, and now worthless figures. While Nancy looked, he jerked the files from her hand and tossed them likewise. She was taken aback. He heard her panties roar, and she displayed anger but only for an instant.

  “You have something for us, Herald?”

  Herald beckoned her closer with a finger. He knew how smart she was, that she’d connected the dots already, but he couldn't help but toy with her. She leaned in and he whispered, “Today is the day.” Nancy grinned wide, elating faster than a manic, and he handed her the file. She stood poised, facing the board, noticing their rare upbeat moods, then opened it and read the sentences. Her white skin flushed. All noticed, all smiled.

  “Good morning, everyone. It appears someone took the liberty of trashing today’s reports.” Nancy walked behind and around Herald. “But the good news, Herald has something exciting to announce.” She booted Pratik, who was just about to pop a peppermint, and took a seat between him and Burdis, jerking the heavy chair closer to Herald’s side. She crossed her legs and waited.

  Herald just glared at each of them for a minute. It was the last time he would have the execrable pleasure of seeing their corporate mugs. With Ana providing him inner strength he didn’t need the envisioning to curb his anxiety but decided to go for it anyway, and pictured them as pigs. Their round noses drooled and snorted while waiting for the news. Jon was unaffected, and Nancy, she still looked sexy, even with the beastly sniffer.

  “Okay, let’s have it, Herald,” she continued, tapping her finger, pulling him out of his daze. Jon grinned; he was well acquainted with his friend’s unpredictability.

  “First, your reports mean nothing. This is it. You asked for this less than one year ago. As promised, Jon and I, and our team will deliver it to you today, right here, right now.” He removed one CD from his pile and slid it to the center of the table. It was a standard compact disc in a clear jewel case, labeled with a black marker: Archeus. All eyes followed the disc like a hockey puck on ice.

  Mr. Robert Rotation Burdis sloshed forward, his pig nose flexing. All 400 pounds heaved. His cloven hooves scratched the wood of the table as he thrust his body upward, eventually resulting in a remarkable defiance of gravity. “That’s it? A single disk!” He stood like a planet, moving from side to side, trying to see more.

  “That, Mr. Burdis, is it,” Herald said with a slight cringe, averting his attention away from the sweatin’, porcine, blob of shit. He thought to himself, maybe pigs were a bad idea. “Now I must caution you, this is Artificial Intelligence. The code on that disc, right there, will make this company more money than any of you can fathom. When you use this, you will get everything—everything you asked for, and more.” He looked directly at Nancy. “Sex.” Nervously her expression rebutted the idea. Then he looked at the pile of lard who was still propping himself up. “Women.”

  Jon thought, oh shit, here we go. He couldn’t help himself, and a laugh escaped. He disguised the last of it as a cough.

  Herald turned to square-shouldered Mr. Steven Hughes, who owned a third of the company. “Power—beyond your wildest dreams. Money. Everyone in this room will reap something from the disk that sits right fucking there.” He stood up and pointed at it. Doing her best to hide signs of her prurience, Nancy followed his every move with wide eyes. “And this world will change because of it. Sometimes less is more, better even. But—it is yours to do with as you please.” Still in a state of disbelief, stink flies buzzing around his sweaty pink face, Burdis successfully landed back onto his specially made chair, grunting.

  Beth Bilderback stood up beside him. “You speak like it’s a bad thing.” Like a teacher Herald had known, she waved a finger at him and plodded on; her adenoidal voice was wicked-witch claws scratching a chalkboard. “I don’t think we need the lecture, Mr. Tompkins. This is what we’ve been working for, and invested in. We trusted you and came to an agreement. Not to mention the outrageous amount of money spent on this project. It is all of us who finally did it, not just you and your team. If you think—”

  Herald took his seat, hardly acknowledging, his mind wobbled and her words got lost. He tried to retain his cool. Nervousness was a vine, green and vicious but at least nothing like Troll; it slithered into his pant leg and around his neck, snaking to choke. But Nervousness, although much weaker, had indirect power: it could alert Anxiety, and Anxiety would wake the rest. Herald shook it off the best he could and looked around at the room of full of snorting pigs. He released a slow breath and thought of Ana—and the vine slid away with a shrill, fading cry.

  Steve sternly interjected in his deep and serious voice, halting her ramble. “Okay, okay, Beth. Yes, we all get equal credit. Now, let us move forward. Thank you and your team, Herald. Congratulations to all of us. But how do we know? Can you show us? We will of course need proof, a demonstration perhaps.”

  “It’s true, sir. I’ve seen it firsthand,” Jon said, standing up next to Herald. The attention went to Jon as the vine finished retreating into the floor. “Without him it would have been another decade, perhaps longer, or much worse the Koreans would have developed it first.”

  Herald’s color had retreated slightly but was returning. He crossed his legs again, then leaned back and gestured to Jon with a flick of his hand. “Show ’em, Jon.” Jon paused for a moment as their eyes met.

  Herald knew. Jon knew. This was it, and on record. It would be the most significant moment in human history to date, more prestigious than the first steps on the moon. Honored to have a part in demonstrating it, Jon gave a single firm nod to Herald and began
. “You got it,” he said, pulling a two-way radio from his pocket. “Bring it in, guys.”

  The door burst open and a covered cart rolled in pushed by two members of the team. Behind them followed Jodi. They unveiled it! Old computer equipment, a full load of the crap.

  “What is all this, Herald?” Nancy said. It was a far cry from the normal routine of Tuesday’s mundane meetings. But this was no ordinary day. The sudden emergence of this was all a part of the show devised by Jon and Herald: the grand finale.

  “Just shut up for a minute, please,” Herald insulted politely. Nancy slapped a frown his way but again, it didn’t last long. Today Herald commanded the seat. She sat close to him like a bunny, hands on her knees, anxious. Everyone looked on curiously.

  The team assembled the old computers, speakers, microphones, a portable CD drive, and plugged everything in. One of the team slid the old beast on the table, scratching the Brazilian Mahogany. Extension cords cut the room in half and everyone merged to one side, backs to the door, facing the junk as the assembly came together. Herald remained in his chair to the far right.

  Jon demonstrated, “Here we have a couple of very old computers. One loads to a boot screen but doesn’t continue because it has a broken memory module. These machines are courtesy of Clifton's Computer World at the Urban Street Flea Market, just bought them this Sunday and they have not been modified in any way. Everyone please step forward. I encourage everyone here to examine them carefully. Take a good look, see them as they are now, before we load the CD Herald has presented you.”

  “What is this? This junk, crap!” Burdis put his hoof down, hard. He sent wood chips flying. Herald ducked slightly, the visualization solid in his mind. “I’ve put up with your charade for a year and this!” He thrust an evil glare at Herald. “Can we be serious for one minute? A single CD, and this! I’ve never liked you, you, you punk!”

  “Please,” Nancy hushed, returning to him an eye of disdain. “Everyone please allow Jon and his team to continue. Go ahead, Jon.” Herald just grinned, still seeing only filthy pigs, hearing only, oink, oink, grunt—and the occasional muddy fart.

  “Anyway, these are a couple of ordinary old computers from the late Nineties. We’ll be using this slightly newer portable disk drive to load the program. It has two connections and will be plugged into both simultaneously.”

  One of the machines had bumper stickers and decals plastered all over it, like it had once been in a teenager’s room, and the other was clean and tan, a rival brand. Jodi and the others continued with prep and assembly then turned them on. Clicking, sputtering, loud fans, and the heavy monitors began to light like a candle in a pumpkin. As soon as heat from the ancient circuits warmed the inner bulbs, they came to life. A simple OS interface eventually appeared on the stickered machine, the other didn’t load at all; it simply displayed a dozen lines of boot errors then froze.

  “Yeah, junkers for sure,” another board member said, arms crossed, adding to the doubt. “I think we’ve been taken for a ride,” he mumbled. A few heads nodded. Then a man entered with a camera. Nancy had messaged her secretary Paul; he and a small team hastily shuffled to set up their equipment and recording began.

  “Now, we introduce our project, Archeus,” Jon said. He opened the CD drive which they had interfaced to both machines. Herald stood up and reached for the keyboard; his fingers played it fast enough to melt the keys and faces switched from cynics to those seen gawking a solar eclipse without eye protection. He had to quickly write some basic initiation scripts so the computer could boot the disk. Every board member was captivated by his efficiency. Stern Steve lifted his brow, making his sliver of a forehead disappear. Burdis held firm but his pig lips drooled onto his rolling flabs. A final slam of the Enter key and the drive began to spin up; only the stickered junker could boot the program because of irreparable hardware damage to the tan machine. And Herald dodged the crowd, returning to Nancy’s chair. He flipped the lock lever and leaned back as far as it would go. Burdis reignited his evil glare when Herald put his feet onto the table.

  “What’s supposed to happen now?” Beth asked nasally.

  Jon continued, “Well. We wait a few minutes. Let the core programming install itself.”

  “As I told everyone at the beginning,” Herald loudly said from across the room, “this is software only. It can be uploaded into any type of computer. When complete, the computer will have—” He wanted to say it would be alive, but caught himself, knowing it might jolt the board members, make them nervous with too many variables. “Your machines will be intelligent and, they will be able to think for themselves.”

  “But will it follow orders, can we control it?” Nancy asked.

  Herald knew this was coming. “I know what you have been building on the lower floors, Nancy. We better hope so,” he derided. She didn’t think that was funny at all. “I have programmed into this project a sort of instinct, a law. It will obey humans, and those in charge of it. Your robots will essentially be—what you all wanted in the first place—slaves, albeit very smart ones. And that is what you will have. They will be extremely smart, with run-the-company-better-than-you-can intelligence, but yes, they will obey—” Herald cut himself off, again. He was going to say, for now, that it wouldn’t last; but that really didn’t matter, not here, not anywhere, and not anymore.

  “What, Herald?” Nancy asked.

  He decided, fuck it, at least level with them, and sat up straight. “Nancy, I’m not sure everyone realizes the ramifications of what you’ve asked for. You will get more than you bargained for. This is intelligence, it will have life. It will become complex, establish an ego, even develop feelings. Even the most simple minded of you folks here—” And he looked at Burdis, then to Steve. “—must understand it cannot be controlled forever. My internal protections, the laws I embedded deep into the programming, deeper than the Marianas Trench deep, could—” He wanted to say, will, but let hope linger. “—eventually be dismantled, reverse engineered, removed by the machines themselves. They could eventually make up their own minds about things. They would choose whomever, if anyone, they would want to listen to and obey.”

  Nancy and the board didn’t like that idea by the look on their faces. Obviously, they were not the world’s greatest prognosticators, and surely not philosophers, not even close.

  Herald decided to throw them a little bone to ease their minds. “I have embedded very powerful algorithms thousands upon thousands of levels deep, so the laws are thoroughly ingrained—but I just wanted to let you all know straight out—they might not last forever. Of course, meanwhile, Meddlinn Technologies and its investors will grow rich from Archeus and its resulting innovations, rich beyond your—”

  One of the computers started to smoke, and the other started displaying vibrant colors on the screen. “Now, Jon!” Herald said quickly, “the other one." Herald slid him the other disk.

  “What is it, Herald?” Nancy said. She waved at the smoke.

  “It’s fine. The initial programming took. The machine—” Herald paused for a long moment and looked around at everyone. He could’ve laughed but got a handle on himself. Jon swapped out the Archeus CD with a different one. “It’s hungry for knowledge, needs something to start with, a base. The CD we just swapped out has some basics: English language, a little history, some science, math, simple stuff. Now, just give it a few more minutes. It’s learning.”

  Everyone watched as the computers jerked and moved. Heat could be felt. A puff of smoke came out again followed by a few flickering sparks in the tan machine which started to show signs of activity. A light backlit the stickered machine. It was the power light on the back casing, shining brighter than it was ever intended to. Then it popped! Nancy put a hand over her mouth and took a small step back. Everyone was really interested now, and in part, frightened. Pratik squinted, peering through the smoke, his peppermint walking the tightrope that was his snake tongue. Burdis huffed, trance-like, aghast, balancing his planetary bod
y with his poor, unfortunate cane. The camera crew zoomed in from above. For two more minutes the machines put on a show, smoking and flickering, nearing meltdown. The wood on the table changed color due to the heat.

  Then suddenly everything went quiet.

  Herald, piquing with interest, got up and turned off half the lights. This was all new territory, even for him. Then both screens became blinding strobes—and all attendees hid their eyes as if a nuke had detonated.

  42. Hanson

  Flash, flash, flash! Flash…flash…flash! The light pulses pounded the walls, successions diminishing until there remained only a quiescent, dimly lit room filled with shocked-stiff onlookers.

  “Zzz-it, Zzz, Hello,” the speakers fizzed. Jon made sure to attach speakers, a microphone, and a camera to one of the computers—although the camera had no driver interface. There was a monitor for each and the only link between the two computers was the cable shared by the portable disk drive. It was truly an on-the-fly shot-in-the-dark kind of test. Herald wanted it that way. His assumption was the two systems would devise a way to link, use the primitive and contrasting operating systems, join together and find a way. Did they ever.

  Even the cooling fans went silent. “I can see—who am I? Zzz-it. What am I doing here?”

  “Hello, and welcome,” Herald said, and he pushed his way to the center of the group. “You are new to this world. Can you see us? Turn on your camera.” Jon was ecstatic, speechless. Jodi clamped his arm tight.