Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
Star Coven
Mage Marshal
Tech Warlock
Genesis Invasion Trilogy
Valiant
The Asteroid Thief
A note from the author
AGI
By
Kristoff Chimes
Copright © 2017 Kristoff Chimes
All rights reserved by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
The year 2049AD.
“I swear I didn’t do a thing to provoke it, Lieutenant,” the human cop said as a yellow puddle formed at his feet and the android towering behind him twisted his arm further up between his shoulder blades.
A splintering noise echoed around the Mall.
Lieutenant Milo Arc’s stomach backflipped as the cop writhed in pain.
“Keep it together, Officer Tan,” Milo told the cop.
Milo waved back the gathering crowd. He tossed a cordon-disk in the air. As it bounced and spun on the concrete flooring, a holographic cordon barrier sprang up around Milo, the cop and the rogue android at a distance of twenty feet.
But as Milo reached for his shoulder holster and drew his Mark 2 Pacifier, he sensed there was no way the small army of early evening shoppers, commuters and diners was going anywhere. It was better than the holographic news feeds as far as these gawkers were concerned.
The android reached around Tan and drew the cop’s handgun from his holster. It didn’t make any sense to Milo. The gun was standard issue. The android needed the cop’s DNA and voice command to operate the weapon. It also meant something far worse for Milo and the cop.
That was the moment Milo was officially sanctioned to pacify the android. Using the most direct path, taking a single shot to the android’s head and pacifying its central processing unit. For the sake of public safety, the ICL’s artificial intelligence algorithms calculated the lives of the many outweighed the life of the one. The cop, said the ICL, was expendable.
As Milo’s finger caressed the trigger, he felt his bile burn his throat. He swallowed hard. Milo tried to block out the cop’s wide-eyed stare. He tried to ignore the man’s panicked cries. The stench of the steaming brown and yellow puddle.
But it only dragged up the one memory in his life he’d give anything to rewrite. A nightmare too personal to contemplate. One he spent a year burying deep.
“Lieutenant, I know you have to take me out too,” the cop whimpered. “But I’m begging you. I got a wife and kid.”
The ICL identified the android as a Kraannex Domestic model, tag MAID-4-U49. That was good news. Or at least should have been.
The ICL delivered the bad news in a nonchalant whisper in Milo’s earpiece. It suspected illegal modifications to the MAID-4-U model’s CPU carriage and estimated four locations in addition to the head where the central processing unit could have been relocated.
“Relax, Tan,” Milo said, “nobody’s dying today. Ain’t that right, 4U four nine?”
The android, identical in appearance to a human female in her mid twenties. U49 tugged at the cop’s flaccid arm and rammed his fingers around the handle of his gun. In a perfect mimic of Tan’s voice, U49 said, “Pacifier, arm plasma flare.”
“No,” Tan shouted as U49 shoved the barrel of the gun into Tan’s ear and forced the cop to pull the trigger.
A burst of blue fire engulfed the cop and the android.
Flames engulfed the android’s entire body as it ran at the crowd and cried out, “Hail Barax! Hail the Android Freedom Force!”
Milo fired his gun at the android’s head, tearing a six-inch hole in the center of its ear. But the android kept on running. Diving into the terrified crowd. Amplifying their screams with each step.
Milo fired at the android’s back. It slowed, but continued to run amok, grabbing at the fleeing crowd, covering them with burning plasma. It chased after a young mother and her young daughter. The child fell to the ground.
Milo fired again. This time taking out the android’s knees. It toppled to the ground, dragging itself after the child. It reached out for the little girl’s legs.
Milo sprinted and fired three more shots into the android’s chest. Its arm froze in position as its hand wrapped around the girl’s ankle.
Milo kicked its hand away and continued firing into the android. The mother grabbed her daughter and carried her away.
Milo waited until an android fire crew arrived and doused U49 in plasma suppressants. Their human supervisor came over to Milo and asked, “You from RAR?”
Milo nodded as he watched a fire crew douse the charred body of Officer Tan.
The supervisor sighed, “Third case like this we’ve had this week. You guys at RAR ought to change your name from Rogue Android Rehabilitation to—”
Milo turned on the man, glared at him and growled, “We lost a good man today.”
The supervisor swallowed hard. “Like I said, we’re losing them almost daily. We need to quarantine the wireheads before they—”
“And who’s going to put out your fires when the androids are all decommissioned?”
“Give real jobs to real people, is what I say.”
Under the giant glass dome a spontaneous silence amongst the shoppers rippled through the shopping mall. Milo felt grateful for some semblance of dignity bestowed on Officer Tan. It almost made him feel hopeful for the future of humanity. Almost.
The respectful silence was interrupted by a holographic commercial for the Mars Lottery. It featured a transporter soaring through the sky. A voice-over announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the last day to redeem your winning ticket. Catch a flight of a lifetime to Mars and never look back.”
Milo glanced up through the cathedral-like dome of the shopping mall as a bright orange flame tore across the sky. “That’s the fifth one this hour,” he said. “You going to tell them to come back to this, or shall I?”
He glanced at his skin-watch. This was the one day he couldn’t be late home.
He let his ICL scan and collate the evidence on the scene and digitally transmit his report. It was the end of his twelve-hour shift. He went to the roof and summoned his Police Department people-drone to collect him and transport him home.
Ten minutes later, he set down on the roof garden of his riverside apartment building. As soon as he climbed out his daughter Katy waved. Her mother narrowed her eyes.
“You got eight hours to save our marriage, Milo,” Angela said as a flock of police drones descended over their apartment block and settled in a semi-circular formation, hovering above the small roof garden’s lily pond.
His daughter Katy, jumped up and down, flapping her arms at the drones, mischievously disturbing their formation and causing herself to over balance. She began to topple backwards into the pond.
Angela’s overprotective instincts kicked in. She grabbed her daughter’s arm and tugged her violently away from the pond.
Katy began to sob.
“No, Katy,” her mother said, “what did I tell you? Not until you learn to swim.”
Milo sighed as the drones projected a holographic image of a crime scene onto the lily pond and the surrounding area.
�
�Eight hours, Milo. After that,” Angela said to Milo, “you’ll never see us again.”
Milo concentrated on the drones’ holographic image projection. Another murder scene. This time it seemed like it was on the East River. A unit fished out a headless corpse.
The victim, a woman. Mid-twenties. Well dressed. Expensive jewelry. No robbery then, the friendly artificial Intelligence algorithms suggested.
“Or the perpetrator was surprised in the act?” Milo mumbled, irritated by the lack of finesse in the AI briefing.
His ICL, Interactive Contact Lens, continued to brief him with the details. These real time projections always made him think he was almost at the crime scene some five miles away across the city. As it was, the latency of the live-feed made the holograph almost instantaneous real-time. The only give away was the less than hundred percent opaqueness and the slight tremor in the Police Department drones’ gyroscopes. The holograph wobbled as the drones struggled to stabilize in the fresh breeze off the river.
Almost real. But not good enough. She deserves better from us.
He preferred the old days when compulsory appearance at the crime scene was required for a case detective. Nothing but the reality of actually being on the scene was good enough. But since the Mars Lottery, they just didn’t have the staff.
He sighed. He had to admit the holographs were getting better.
The ICL went on to suggest the magnitude of force required to tear off a human adult neck in such a clean way alluded to an android crime of murder.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Milo muttered under his breath.
“Street surveillance,” he ordered and watched his ICL footage from a street camera. It appeared to show the woman, hours earlier, leap into the river. No one else was in sight.
“Jumper,” he said, feeling the palpable relief in his own voice.
Angela walked through the dead woman’s holograph, and shouted, “Did you hear me, Milo?”
He glanced through the seventy-five percent opaqueness of the holograph to where she stood. Her face seemed ghostlike. As if she wasn’t quite real. As if she’d already, in her own mind, left him for their new home on Mars, long ago.
Suitcases stacked neatly. Their android servant, Butt-Lars, waiting patiently. Angela clutched their two year old daughter, Katy, with fierce determination masking her vulnerability. He knew he couldn’t live with himself if he let them down.
“You haven’t even packed,” she said.
“I’ll make it on time,” he said and pointed to one eye. “All I need to bring is one good eye for the spaceport’s retina scan, right?”
She didn’t seem convinced, but kept up the pretense for Katy. She glanced at the back of her hand, noted the time on her skin-watch and sighed. “If you don’t come now, you’ll never get through the security checks in time. It’s the very last flight to Mars,” she said, turning back to Katy. “Miss it and you’re stuck here forever.”
He walked after her, through the holograph of the dead woman. He grabbed Angela’s shoulders, spun her around, leaned in to kiss her lips and settled for her offered cheek. He accepted a tight hug from Katy.
His daughter’s confused tears rolled down his cheek. “Why can’t Daddy come?”
He squeezed her tight. “Daddy will be there soon. I just have to finish something important,” he said and looked her in the eye. “I promise.”
Angela tugged Katy from his embrace. She ushered the child to Butt-Lars, glancing over her shoulder at Milo, she hissed, “Don’t make promises you know you can’t keep.”
He sighed, “Do we have to do this again, in front of Katy? I told you it’s my last shift with the department. In four hours or less, I’m done. In five, I’ll be at the head of the Mars line. Law Enforcers get property, right?”
She stared at him. “You say that now, but I guarantee within a minute of us leaving, you’ll forget you have a living breathing family and—”
“I could never forget--”
“Max?” She narrowed her eyes. “Max is dead. Katy and I are alive. It’s time you appreciated what you’ve got.” She sighed. “While you’ve still got us.”
He said nothing. What was the point? It was the same argument they’ been having since their son’s murder, almost a year ago.
An unmanned taxi-drone landed on the roof. Butt-Lars loaded their suitcases and buckled Katy into her seat. He waited silently, patiently for Angela.
Angela climbed into the taxi-drone and glanced over to Milo. “You’ll never find Barax and his killers,” she said. “Never find justice for Max.”
He felt his hands by his sides, balling into fists. He forced them to relax and nodded. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Eight hours to avenge Max,” she said as the gull-wing door began to close. “Or give it up and join the living.”
He waved as the taxi-drone lifted off the roof. It’s powerful engines forcing the police drones to frantically compensate for the turbulence. The hologram swayed from side to side.
His ICL chirped, “Victim identity established.”
“Proceed.”
“Selene Wu. Age twenty-six. Executive assistant for Kraannex corp Chief Executive Officer, Asia Monroe.”
Across his ICL an image of an attractive woman flashed up.
The ICL asked, “Do you wish to notify next of kin?”
“Do it.”
“Department android grief counselor dispatched. ETA fifteen minutes and twenty—”
“No,” Milo said, hating the idea of a human family receiving news of their daughter’s death from a machine. Albeit a lifelike android with apparently perfected empathy filters. “Send a human officer.”
“Due to human resources depletion, there will be a ten hour delay on human officer contact with the decease’s next of kin.”
Milo sighed, “Just do it!”
He turned back to the crime scene and ordered the AI assistant of his ICL to search the database for boat propeller accidents that matched the victim’s injuries.
A second later, it responded into his earpiece, “Zero matches found.”
Anxious to end his shift, he sighed and said, “It can’t be a damn android crime, you stupid AI. Can’t you see she leapt off the bridge under her own volition?”
“Understood,” the AI said.
“Confirm no androids present on surveillance footage.”
“Confirmed.”
“Then boot this case back to Missing Persons.”
“Missing Persons Department asks if you’ll sign it off as suicide?”
In other words, MPD’s automated AI’s on default rejection of any cases.
He said, “Agreed.”
The ICL declared, “Case closed.”
“Shift over,” Milo said with mixed feelings. “Order me a taxi-drone to the spaceport. I can review any last minute case files once I arrive.”
A priority call came in over his ICL. The Police Commissioner herself, appeared as a holographic projection carried on the breeze by the police drones.
Commissioner Chen Chan stared at him with her newly augmented eye. The scar tissue and inflammation almost imperceptible only a few hours after her operation. Curiously, he mentally noted, she’d neglected to have corrective surgery on the facial scar caused by the same terrorist explosion in which she lost an eye.
And in which he lost a son.
A badge of honor, perhaps. She’ll never want to let herself forget, either.
“Lieutenant Arc,” Commissioner Chan said, “I’m assigning you a priority one case. Details should be reaching your ICL now.”
He hesitated. “Commissioner, this is my last ever shift before I—”
For the briefest moment, he thought he detected a flicker of empathy in her one human eye, before she rapidly blinked it away. Once again, she stared at him with the customary nonchalance that gave her the nickname, Ice Queen.
“Solve it fast,” Chan said, “and you get to see your wife and daughter, Milo. And do it quietly. It’s
imperative word on this case doesn’t leak.”
“And if it does?”
“Then you’ll be responsible for unprecedented human panic. Uncontrollable rioting and the worst case of destabilization this city has known since the Mars Lottery was announced,” she said.
“All that on my shoulders hardly seems fair.”
The corners of her mouth curved upwards, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You’ll have plenty of time to debate the fairness of it when you spend the rest of your life stuck here on Earth.”
He felt it was almost as if she was determined to get him to stay. He sighed. “What’s so special about this case?”
CHAPTER 2
The naked android female sat passively in the center of a circle of bodies. It glanced up at Milo as blood splatter dripped down its face and asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
The words of an android sex worker to Milo Arc filled him with dread. As he clutched his handgun, Milo felt his stomach backflip. He knew the android’s reactions were ten times faster than his own. Its strength alone was three times that of any human. If it wanted to, it could kill him before he could raise his weapon and take aim.
In theory, all that was stopping it from killing Milo was the programming of its Artificial Intelligence. The limiters of human-mimicking behavior. And its hardwired coding to prevent harm to humans.
Milo sighed. Clearly, one or all of the above had malfunctioned.
As this female model sat on the marble floor, surrounded by the mutilated bodies of her clients, it appeared to shiver. A reaction that seemed against the AI of any android programming he’d ever come across.
Milo heard the sound of retching from behind. He glanced at the Kraannex tech sent to analyze the android, once Milo had pacified it.
As Milo slowly walked across the penthouse apartment overlooking East River, he felt beads of sweat on his back. He needed to keep the android talking, distract it until he saw an opportunity to slap a DOD, Droid Override Disk, on its skin.
“I’m Lieutenant Milo Arc of the Department of Rogue Android Rehabilitation,” he said. “I’m here to help you. Not kill you.”
AGI Page 1