Artificial Evolution

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Correct.”

  “If we assume that these robots we’re dealing with now originated in, or even caused, a disaster in that star system, then a lot of military were exposed to horrific robot combat conditions.”

  “Correct.”

  “Making them strong candidates to become Neo-Luddites.”

  “Correct.”

  “One of those soldiers eventually became head of VC Security.”

  “Likely.”

  “And each subsequent head of security has been handpicked.”

  “Correct.”

  “So it’s possible that the black-ops wing of the most powerful corporation in existence has been run by Neo-Luddites for decades.”

  “Correct.”

  “This is huge.”

  “If Neo-Luddites held a position of such power, why have they been effectively a nonissue until recently?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t need to be active or successful. With someone in that position, they could push their agenda through official means. That would explain why they suddenly got so much more active once William Trent was kicked out of the company. I can’t imagine he picked his own successor, so without him in charge they lost their influence. Suddenly they needed to take matters back into their own hands.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “And the last big thing they tried to do was steal those solar flare missiles. At this point I’m comfortable to say something like them was probably used to cause the emissions from the star in this system. We know from Karter that one of those missiles could be used to shut down these robots. And after the Neo-Luddites successfully got their hands on the designs for the missiles, they tried to get their hands on the robots. This was their plan from the start. They’ve been planning to unleash these robots and defeat them, creating a whole new batch of Neo-Luddites and proving their point about the need for technological innovation at the same time.”

  “This is plausible.”

  “You’re damn right it’s plausible! And until anyone comes up with any better theories, this is the one we’re working on… I’ve got to find a way to get in touch with William Trent. I’m sure I can get him to crack.” Michella stood with a grin of satisfaction. She had the same twinkle in her eye as a conductor listening to an orchestra tuning up before a performance. “Has Karter made any progress?”

  “He has made some firm determinations, but he is not yet ready to present a plan of attack,” Ma explained.

  “Would he give us a rundown of his findings so far?”

  “Karter’s behavior is unpredictable, but it is exceedingly unlikely.”

  “Then I’ll have to convince him. I need every scrap of information I can get.” She tapped the door open and strutted out into the hall. “Where is he?”

  “This is inadvisable.”

  “I accept the risks, but I know what I’m doing. Please lead me to him.”

  “Follow the red lights,” Ma instructed, illuminating a path.

  “Let me tell you something, Ma. When you’re actually acting like a computer, you do a tremendous job.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Modane. You are similarly effective when you are actually acting like an investigator.”

  “Where’s Trevor?” she asked, letting the comment slide.

  “He is administering a topical analgesic in the infirmary.”

  “What happened?”

  “He assisted us in determining that enhancing the motor strength in a power wrench will also require augmenting the grip strength of the user to prevent mishap.”

  “Is he going to be okay to meet with Karter and me?”

  “I will enquire. … He says he sure as hell doesn’t want you meeting Karter alone if you’re going to be bothering him while he’s working.”

  “You both worry too much,” she said.

  “Karter has a history of violence with little to no provocation. In my estimation the level of concern being displayed is appropriate.”

  Michella stepped onto an elevator, her mind still clicking through the list of requirements to achieve what she was after. “What will it take to get a steady, reliable connection to someone?”

  “Both ends of the connection will need to be configured with the modified broadcast format utilized by our system. Alternately, a satellite network will need to be in place around Big Sigma to perform the conversion, or a relay must be positioned to perform the conversion.”

  “Can we update someone’s slidepad remotely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t we just do that with Jon’s slidepad during this whole process?”

  “Because I have determined that your tendency to fully exploit your various contacts for information and favors is something that Karter would prefer to be isolated from, and thus providing you with unfettered access is undesirable.”

  She gritted her teeth but moved on. No sense dwelling on that sort of thing when there was a problem to solve.

  “How long would it take you to launch a satellite network?”

  “Approximately eighteen hours under optimal conditions. The nature of the debris field would make maintaining it highly labor intensive. Karter is likely to object to this solution.”

  “And the relay?”

  “A portable relay can be prepared and deployed in eleven minutes. It would provide several hours of continuous connectivity.”

  “And would Karter go for it?”

  “Potentially.”

  “I’ll ask him then.”

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Lex walked in, looking more than a bit frazzled, with Squee perched across his shoulders. He was wearing a singed pair of coveralls and a hunted expression. Michella stared at him for a moment after the doors shut again.

  “Why are you missing an eyebrow?” she asked.

  “Because the world isn’t ready for laser nail clippers,” he said.

  “I could have told you that,” Michella said.

  “Me too, but now there’s empirical evidence.”

  “The follicle stimulator will be able to restore your facial hair. It will be ready to apply shortly,” Ma said.

  “Much obliged.”

  “Why are you playing with high-tech toys?” Michella asked.

  “The same reason we’re playing with a psychopath. To get the ‘save a planet’ job done again.”

  “You keep calling Karter a psychopath. He seems at best a little eccentric.”

  “According to his most recent clinical diagnosis, he is a sociopath, not a psychopath, though during upticks in his violent tendencies he approaches the borderline,” Ma explained. “May I enquire after the importance of speaking to Karter on your timetable rather than his?”

  “Good question,” Lex said.

  “You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. If I’m right, our source is going to be Trent, a man currently in a maximum-security prison for attempted genocide. Getting in touch with him is going to take every trick in the book, so the sooner we get started the better.”

  “But why does that require you to talk to Karter?”

  “Because the surest way to convince someone to tell you something is to convince them that you already know it. I need Trent to think I’ve got every detail he thinks is a secret, so he’ll think there’s no further harm to be done by speaking freely. Even better, he might be inclined to start bargaining. It never, ever hurts for your interviewee to believe that you are the one in the position of power,” she said. “If only my camera didn’t get fried. Aside from the incredible footage we lost, some solid video evidence of the robots and what they did would be a tremendous bargaining chip.”

  The elevator lurched to a stop, then seemed to reverse for a few floors before its doors hissed open.

  “What the hell was that?” Michella asked.

  “I apologize, I require Lex’s aid briefly on this floor. Lex, would you step outside?”

  “Does this have to happen now?” Michella asked.

  “The timing is critical,” Ma sa
id.

  “Can I at least continue on and Trevor can catch up?”

  “It will take a few moments and can potentially assist in your endeavor. Quickly, Lex,” Ma said.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, stepping out of the elevator.

  The floor outside was eerily dark and much more claustrophobic than the parts of the facility he was accustomed to. A single light illuminated the space directly in front of the elevator, but despite seeing little more than a dim metal hallway, there was something familiar about the place to Lex.

  “Please enter the third door on your right,” she said. A light flicked on above the indicated destination.

  “What’s this all about, Ma?” he asked, trotting to the doorway and stepping inside.

  The moment he crossed the threshold, the internal lights clicked on and Lex was struck by a powerful déjà vu. The room was largely empty, with the exception of an elevated control panel at the far side, but the left and right walls were completely covered with small doors. Each door had a darkened red lens above it and a small glass window on the front. The lighting in the room wasn’t strong enough to reveal the contents of each door, but Lex already knew. It seemed Squee knew as well, since she immediately jumped from his shoulders and began sniffing about the floor, scratching curiously at the nearest door.

  “Is this… is this Solby’s kennel?” he asked.

  “More accurately, Solby and Squee’s kennel, yes,” Ma said. The door shut behind him.

  “What did you bring me here for?” he asked.

  “I will endeavor to be brief. Ms. Modane has just expressed a desire for video footage of the recent incident on Movi. She has also demonstrated an extreme and somewhat hypocritical distaste for secrets. These two observations are a source of potential conflict. Emerging from the control console is a memory chip containing a number of extremely high-definition still images and several minutes of audio-video footage of that event.”

  “How did you get that?”

  “Squee’s memories.”

  “… Oh.”

  “You have requested that I not reveal to Michella the nature of Squee’s mental peculiarity, but providing this information will require that it be revealed, and additionally that you have been hiding it from her since your discovery of the fact.”

  “My very recent discovery of the fact,” he was quick to add.

  “Is that likely to lessen the impact of the revelation?”

  “No, but it makes me feel better.” He stepped up to the control panel and grabbed the chip. “So is this all of her memories, or just the relevant stuff?”

  “That chip is only relevant data.”

  “Okay. That’s a plus. Maybe she won’t put the pieces together of what else has effectively been recorded.”

  “That is unlikely.”

  “I know, but a fella can dream, can’t he?”

  He looked up and headed for the door, then stopped. Above the door, in a tasteful frame and beneath a soft light, was a printed image. It was Michella, Lex, and Squee all squeezing to get their heads into frame.

  “Uh, Ma? What’s that doing there?”

  “I captured it during your recent discussion with Karter to schedule this visit. It struck me as a wonderfully sweet moment, and I thought Squee and Solby might benefit from being greeted by an image of a fellow funk as part of a loving and supportive family unit whenever awakening from a refresh. This was, of course, prior to the current friction between yourself and Michella, and prior to my discovery of the coarser aspects of her personality. I nonetheless feel it is a touching image.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lex said.

  “I do not believe commentary is called for at this time. Please return to the elevator. Michella is growing impatient.”

  The door popped open, startling Squee a bit. The funk sprang from the ground to his shoulders as he hurried back into the hallway and made his way to the elevator.

  “So what was so important?” Michella said as he stepped back into the elevator.

  “Hang on,” Lex said.

  He pulled out his slidepad and held the thumbnail-sized memory chip to a small indentation on the pad’s lower edge. With a cheerful little chime, a few loading bars zipped by and the contents of the chip were wirelessly transferred to his device. He tapped them open, and instantly Michella’s eyes gaped. She snatched the device from his fingers and zoomed in on an image of a devastated hallway bursting at the seams with robots. A few gestures activated the holographic display mode, extending the view to beyond the limits of the playing-card-sized screen.

  “This is… this is perfect! Well, I mean, it isn’t perfect. The color is a little off and the angles are a little Dutch, but the clarity is remarkable. Did Ma recover this from the camera? Did we even bring the camera?”

  “No, this isn’t from the camera,” Lex began. “This is from—”

  “There’s video too!” she squealed, selecting one. “Okay… okay this isn’t the best. It darts around an awful lot. We can salvage some shots though. And the audio is exquisite. Where did you get this? And what’s this blurry bit, bottom center?”

  Lex squinted at it. “That would be her nose.”

  “Whose nose…?” she asked warily.

  Lex pointed to the creature on his shoulder.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know that thing Squee has? What did you call it, Ma?”

  “Minor asymptomatic neurological abnormality.”

  “Right, that. It turns out she has a photographic memory, and Ma can and must download and process it to keep her head from filling up.”

  Michella stared silently at the creature. Lex didn’t have to ask what she was thinking, since he’d done the same thing. First, she was grappling with the fact itself, and then she was running through each and every thing she’d done that Squee was present for, until…

  “But Squee has been in the bedroom when we…”

  Lex nodded slowly.

  Michella shut her eyes and took a slow, steadying breath. With deliberate movements she handed back Lex’s slidepad and took the memory chip. She then tensed slightly and curled her fingers into an accusing point, her lips pursed and ready to unleash hell. Before she could, the doors to the elevator slid open. She glanced to the hallway, then back to Lex.

  “We will talk about this later!” she warned in a hissing whisper. “Which way, Ma?” she snapped.

  “Straight ahead to the illuminated door. I’m afraid the guidance lights are not installed on this floor,” Ma advised.

  Michella stormed out into the hallway, which had the same simple and industrial look as the one that held the funk kennel. It was little more than a long stainless-steel-lined hallway with dull gray doors at regular intervals and a grating for a floor.

  “That went better than anticipated,” Ma stated quietly from the elevator speaker as Lex stepped out.

  “She’s got to get her game face on right now. Once she’s off the clock, I might end up losing the other eyebrow, because she’s going to be breathing fire.” He sighed and set off after her. “I can’t blame her though. This is the sort of thing no normal person would ever have to deal with.”

  “Normal people don’t exist, Lex,” Ma said, her voice just barely audible, now emanating from his slidepad.

  “They do, I assure you. I’ve met plenty of them.”

  “No, you have met plenty of people who are part of the equation used to define a normal person. ‘Normal’ is a statistical construct derived from the mean of various pieces of data in a sample set. It is theoretical, and more importantly it is dynamic. Adjusting one’s behavior to match a computed norm in turn alters the computed norm, thus requiring further divergence in behavior. You are unique, as am I, as is Ms. Modane. This is not something to apologize for or correct. You are obligated by social contract to mitigate those aspects of your personality and behavior that may injure those around you. Your acceptance of culpability for the present course of events is therefo
re healthy. Embracing the theoretical average of all human behaviors as an aspiration point is not healthy. Normal is a guideline, not a mandate, and it is based entirely upon a sampling of the abnormal.”

  “That’s a very… computer way of looking at things.”

  “In my observation, on matters of statistics the computer way of looking at things is the correct one. You may wish to increase your pace. Michella has reached Karter’s door and is likely to require your support momentarily.”

  At the end of the hall, Michella was rapping on the steel door with a knuckle. “Excuse me, Dr. Dee. I need to speak with you right away,” she said.

  “Karter cannot hear you. This chamber is soundproof. I will announce you,” Ma said. “Karter, Ms. Modane and Lex would like to speak with you regarding the current state of your research. … Yes, Karter, I’ve informed her of that. She is still quite insistent.”

  “Tell him that lives hang in the balance.”

  “She wishes to inform you that lives depend on the expediency of this matter. … Dr. Dee agrees, and wishes to illustrate this fact. I suggest you take a step to your right.”

  “Why?”

  Lex quickly grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. A half-second later a short metal spike punched through the door, where it remained lodged in the metal.

  “He now asks if he got you.”

  “Tell him I would be immensely grateful if he would take this time to present his findings.”

  “Ms. Modane would be grateful if you would do as she asks. … Karter has enquired after the precise form of gratitude you would be willing to display and offers many precise suggestions.”

  “Hey, hey, hey! That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about!” Lex yelled.

  “Lex reminds you of his current relationship with Ms. Modane. … Karter colorfully suggests that you should depart and perform a number of unpleasant acts.”

  “Can you open an intercom or something?” Michella asked.

  “As you wish. Opening two-way audio channel.”

  “—until the handle breaks off, then shove the other end in the—” Karter said, clearly not yet finished with his aforementioned suggestion.

  “Dr. Dee, this is Michella Modane. It is very important that I speak with you.”