“That’s sweet, James. I want those memories even more now," she said with a crack in her voice and a huge smile.
Simon sighed at his workstation.
“Oh, and I don’t blame you, Simon, now I’ve had time to process. You were like an uncle for a long time too, you just became unwell. It could happen to anyone in the situation we were in; we should have noticed, we were in such close quarters. We were too absorbed in our own work to do anything about it. I was talking with Dad today about the way humans ignore the obvious problems as a way of dealing, even though it’s counter-productive. I’m starting to realise that even this group is capable of that, it must be a human genetic trait. I heard that your new future self managed to avoid becoming ill, which proves that help from your friends makes all the difference, it was our neglect that was to blame, Simon, not you.”
“Thank you, James, that means a lot to me," Simon replied. “It really does.” He was beginning to feel some remorse that he was the only one unable to share in the memories of those lost years, but he consoled himself with the promise of making new ones. If nothing else, Stan had taught him to appreciate the relationships that he had formed, old and new.
It didn’t take long to find Spencer’s backup as it began in an early nanosecond within the second. Simon started a copy process that would finalise by the time Victor was out of his seat.
The group had put the finishing touches to the android prototype while Victor lay dormant and they prepared to put it to the test.
“What kind of work are you able to get him to do?” Beth asked.
“Him? What kind of work do you want him to do?” James asked in return.
“Is he heavy-handed, or can he handle delicate tasks?”
“Delicate tasks? And you’re still calling it a he? Is there something you have in mind, Beth?”
“Oh, that’s disgusting! I just mean, could he assemble small electronic devices without damaging them?”
“The lady protests too much," James said to Simon, who didn't understand the interaction.
“I didn’t mean that at all.” Beth turned a darker shade of pink.
“Relax, I’m joking. I couldn’t resist.”
“You shit head.”
“I’m sorry. It’s possible that I’ve forgotten what’s socially acceptable, what with being with the same five people for decades," he said with a smirk. “We never had any privacy, so embarrassing each other was a daily practice.”
“Excuses. You just wanted to make me look like a perv, arsehole.”
“Maybe. In all seriousness, though, his fingers are quite dexterous, he could replicate the most intricate works of art if you asked him to. Anything that a human can do, to be honest, a lot we can’t too, obviously. There’s a compartment in his chest that can hold a swarm of nanobots, which are slaved to his processor, they can complete tasks with even greater precision.”
“Is he always going to look that... unfinished?” Beth asked.
The robot was approximated a human shape, but with exposed wiring amongst the carbon printed plates that made up its shell. The chassis’ segments didn’t meet at the joints — so as not to impair movement — leaving open spaces where the inner workings could be seen. Its head was of basic human shape, in a carbon grey like the other substantial parts of the shell. The eyes were just a pair of naked camera lenses in the centre of the sockets. Where its ears should be, there were groups of small holes to allow sound through the skull where the microphones inside could pick it up. The android was sitting in one of the headquarters stackable chairs in an upright position, hands placed on its knees, displaying unnaturally good posture.
“We can put a silicone skin on it to make it look more pleasing to humans," Spencer said. “It helps keep his inner parts protected too. The skin can be rudimentary, just to perform a protective sheath, or it can be made to look almost indistinguishable from a human until you get close up. Its body movement is also a big giveaway.”
“Creepy," Beth said.
“You want creepy, you should think about what James said earlier. It wasn’t long before people found more personal uses for them.” Simon said.
“I suppose there are a lot of new technologies that quickly get snapped up by the sex industry, the internet for instance," Beth said. “I have a virtual reality headset for gaming, they appropriated those almost immediately. There’s a lot of money to be made from people’s primal urges.” She changed the subject before she started to blush again. “How do you think that releasing these things to the public will affect the future? Bring the fall forward or push it back again?”
“I don’t think they’ll affect the population problem at all, I can’t see them increasing it," Simon said. "Could possibly reduce it, though, if jobs are lost due to their implementation."
“Cheery thought. Machines were taking human jobs long before the release of androids, there’s no way of knowing how that affected the population either.” Spencer said. “If people use them for that other purpose we just discussed — like they did the last time around — that could reduce the populace too, which is disturbing but it works in our favour. No doubt there’ll be those who expect a Terminator-style uprising, that would also make our job easier, I suppose. But even Stan’s plan would be preferable to that.”
“Well, let’s put that to the test. We just need an industrial compactor in case it goes haywire.” Simon said.
Beth looked a little anxious, there were too many video games with similar situations.
“Don’t worry, if he does go on a rampage, the nanobots can get in his head and take him out. He won’t be able to ‘kill all humans’. One or two maybe, but not all.” Spencer consoled Beth.
“Concerns mitigated.” Beth laughed.
Simon went to his workstation and gave the android the order to stand up, to which it swiftly conformed, to Beth’s delight.
“Oh shit, it didn’t actually hit me till it moved. It’s an actual frickin’ robot person.”
Simon stared at the android, then back to the screen.
“I can’t for the life of me think of a single thing that I want it to do as a demonstration.”
“Errrr...” Spencer droned with dramatised thinking face.
“Hmmm...” Beth said as she looked around her.
“There’s not really a lot to do around here," James said. “I don’t think watching it pick stuff up and put it down again would be a great example.”
“I could use a cup of tea," Beth said.
“He can do that," Simon said. “He has a learning mode, you can show him how to do something, and he’ll replicate your actions accurately, but he already knows how to make tea, we sent a file from the future with quite a few of the activities he learnt there. The voice command should already be in his software, just ask him.”
“How do I ask him?”
“Well, this unit is called Isaac. Just say his name and tell him to make the tea. It doesn't matter where you place his name in a sentence, he'll know you're addressing him. Looking in his direction while you give an order will also work, even without using his name."
“Isaac, make me a tea please.”
“Absolutely madam," Isaac said and moved to the kitchen area to switch on the kettle.
His joints moved with no sound, which Beth found interesting, she expected a whir of some kind. His footsteps weren’t particularly clunky either.
“Great, so we have a robot butler now. Is that who we are?” Beth asked.
Simon shrugged.
“Leaves me more time for work.” he said.
Chapter 37
Victor woke from his merge, sat up and removed his helmet. James was beside him waiting for signs of recognition. Victor stared into space for a moment, a smile slowly appearing on his face. He turned to James and grinned, then stood and pulled him into a bear hug.
“I might need a moment," Victor said. “There’s a whole lot of emotions coming in at once.”
“Take your time, want
to have a sit down over there? Isaac will make you a cup of tea.”
“Coming right up, Sir," Isaac said.
“Oh, Isaac’s back? Hey, Isaac.”
“Good day, Mister Peterson. How was your nap?”
“Enlightening. Thanks for asking.”
Isaac went back to making tea. Beth stared at the room around her; a robot was making tea while everyone ignored it — like it was normal — and the family drama unfolding was like none prior. She was amazed and excited to be a part of it, she looked back at the time when it felt scary and was further astonished by how quickly her feelings had been turned on their head.
“James found my alternate backup, Vic," Spencer said. “I’ll get in the chair now, and it should be finished by the time we welcome your daughter back into the fold.”
“Excellent work, James," Victor said. “The band’s almost back together. We have a new member now too. We just have one left to enrol, not including Simon’s other side, which I assume he doesn’t mind losing.”
“Yeah, you need to get out there and charm her into coming back here," James said.
“Well, now I have all these memories of her, I think I know how to sweep her off her feet," Victor said. “It might be as easy as telling her the truth right from the start. She’s either going to believe me as soon as I show how well I know her or she’ll think I’m a crazy stalker.” Then, after a moment of thought. “Actually, that might be fifty-fifty, probably not the best course. I just want this done swiftly, I’m in a bit of a panic that she might find a new guy sometime soon. I came in at the end of a relationship, she wasn’t looking for a new one when we met, that might give me some time.”
“I told you this would be easier if we just kidnapped her.”
“That’s the wrong thing to do to the woman I love, but thanks for the input. It has to be her decision.”
“It was her decision, she already made it. It was Stan who took away her options. We’re just putting it right.”
“And we will. With her permission. She’s a different person now. She’s had time for her path to unfold differently; she may not want to diverge from that path now. I have to give her the choice.”
James sighed. “Okay. Is there anything else we can do to make this easier? We recorded videos in the future, will we be able to download a copy of one of those as proof, like we did with the backup?”
“You know that’s not a bad idea. I just need to remember a good one, a lot of them were just logs of our work, but some were personal.”
James looked at Isaac. “We had an Isaac in our alternate timeline too.” He thought for a second about how they’d still chosen the same name for the android, even in a different reality. “We recorded Mum’s last birthday party. Can you remember his last backup transfer?”
“I don’t think I did his last backup, it might have been your sister.”
“We wouldn’t have to remember the last one specifically, just any backup after her birthday.”
“That’s right. I definitely remember doing one of them, I can remember the timestamp on the backup too.” Victor said. He spoke to Beth, who may have been confused. “The android’s memory storage is regularly backed up, like a smartphone, so if there’s a fault in his hardware or we have a newly upgraded droid, we can restore his programming and data. Isaac’s eyes are cameras so he can record what he sees at any time, which he did at any family celebrations. He sends both his backup and any media he creates via an entangled photon pair to the drive, we should be able to pick those up.”
“I definitely did one of the backups after her birthday, and I remember the time," James said.
“I remember a couple now too," Victor said. “The readout on the backup showed seconds too, I remember the specific second. We should be able to pick it up pretty quickly.”
He entered the search parameters into the software and set it off to look for transmissions, the search only took fifteen minutes. Since android backups weren’t much larger than a few terabytes, with media files included, the quantum computer managed to downloaded Isaac’s within seconds.
“The file is definitely an android backup. I’ll have a tinker and see if I can extract the photos and videos from the backup archive.”
Victor typed at the keyboard and worked the mouse for a few minutes. “Got them," he reported.
“Excellent," James said. “How many?”
“Well, it looks like there are thousands of photos, maybe fifty or sixty videos. We’ve got some media to browse through, may take a while.”
They scanned through the video and photo files together, James on Simon’s workstation and Victor on his own. Beth had ordered three new terminals for the extra members of their crew, which would arrive tomorrow, for now, they were sharing workstations. After their search, they found some helpful personal videos that should show Sarah how well they knew one another. They illustrated how close the family were and it was extremely apparent how much Victor cared for her, and she for him. One was Sarah’s birthday celebration, but they also managed to find parties for each of the other family members, along with other intimate and emotional moments. The photos also did an excellent job of capturing the love shared by the whole family, including the extended family.
“You know, maybe I shouldn’t physically approach her with these, it may be too intense emotionally. I can send some of the less confusing media files as attachments to her email, let her look over them for a while, so she doesn’t feel pressured. I’ll put my phone number in the email so she can call me when she’s ready to know more.”
“That’s probably an excellent idea.” James concurred.
Chapter 38
Sarah Martin was relieved to finally have a quiet moment for checking her emails. She was System Administrator for Harrogate High School’s IT department and had spent most of the day fixing the building’s network issues. The network was in need of repair most days lately, and Sarah had been telling the bureaucrats that ran the school that it would be cheaper to fully upgrade the system than to spend so many hours getting the old hardware running again. The constant refusal of her suggestions was the leading causes of stress in her job, and she was glad to be able to sit down, have a cup of tea and check up on the backlog in her digital inbox. Then, once the tide of messages was sufficiently drained, there might be time do some reading on that nanotech that she’d heard about in the news, it sounded like groundbreaking stuff, and Sarah loved to keep abreast of the latest developments in technology.
She pulled up her email client, which showed both her personal and work messages. The client brought up a list of all the latest unread emails with the subject fields shown in bold. One such subject instantly caught her attention, and she performed a double take.
Rediscover Your Blue Ranger Crush, it read. When she was young, she had a crush on the Power Ranger with the blue coloured costume in the TV show. She'd never told anyone about that. She clicked on the email, which she was sure was just spam triggered by her search history, despite having no memory of a related search. The main body of the email popped up, and she noticed that the there were several attachments. She began to read the text.
Hi, Sarah.
She took note that the message had used her name, of which spam usually had no knowledge. She read on.
You might find this email hard to believe, but I'd like to request that you keep reading, it could change your life for the better.
Let me guess, she thought, a prince of a country I know nothing about needs me to take some money off his hands, and he needs my account details to send it to?
I'm not a Nigerian prince of any kind, and I'm not trying to get your account details,
Oh.
I'm just a guy you once knew very well, you just don't remember me at all right now, but we can rectify that. There's a time when we know each other better than we know ourselves.
This spammer's quite the charmer, but he got his tenses muddled. There's a time? Doesn't he mean there was a time?
How else would I know your childhood crush?
Good question.
I don't really know how to put this to you without losing your attention, so first I'll show you a photo that will probably confuse you, and maybe scare you a little, but please keep scrolling after the photo to learn more. I've left some space here so that you didn’t see the picture before you'd read this, please scroll down some.
She scrolled down as requested, a little disturbed by the tone of the email, which she assumed was some kind of practical joke from a friend. Once she reached the photo, the prank became more elaborate. There was a picture of a man she'd never met, though he looked familiar to her. What made her most uneasy was that she, herself, was also in the picture. She and the man were sitting beside each other at a table — the photographer appeared to be seated on opposite side — in an embrace that definitely implied affection from both sides. She looked at the photo for some time, trying to make out the telltale seams or light differentials that indicated Photoshop magic. She couldn't see any, so she continued to scroll down, striving to find an explanation as to what this prank had intended to achieve. She read the next block of text.
No, it's not a photoshop, and it's not a prank. If you found the photo difficult to believe, then please scroll down to the video, they're a lot harder to doctor.
She scrolled down, feeling like the white background of the email might as well be the dirt of a rabbit hole. Sarah found the video and reluctantly clicked play. The scene opened on a table; the surface of which contained a cake and a meagre supply of food. Poorly made banners with ‘Happy Birthday Sarah’ printed along their length adorned the plain grey walls. After the photo, she thought she could predict where the scene was going — and the festive sign seemingly confirmed this — but another banner hung beside the first, which made her suspect that this may be a shared party, as it read 'Happy Birthday, Mum'. She tried to convince herself that the congratulatory words were directed at another Sarah since she had no recollection of ever having witnessed this scene. A pair of late teens entered the picture to stand at either end of the table, then a man led a blindfolded woman into the frame, her face hidden by the scarf that blocked her vision. Everyone's clothing appeared strange, but she couldn't quite place her finger on why. The man removed the blindfold, and there were shouts of happy birthday from in and out of shot, some followed with 'Sarah', others with 'Mum'. The cries barely registered with her as she was too busy staring at the newly unveiled woman, the woman wearing her face. It was most definitely her own countenance, but a little older looking, there were more wrinkles on her face. Was she a relative? An older sister she didn’t know she had? Whatever it was, this couldn't really be her; she had no memory of the party in the video. It couldn't be her, but she couldn't see that anyone would go to so much trouble to painstakingly counterfeit this video either, it would cost a heap just for the effects. She'd watched movies where they'd inserted actors who had already passed away, or made old stars young again and knew that they cost many thousands of dollars to achieve. This was more convincing than any of those movies. She watched the movie until the end of its five-minute runtime. The people around the table seemed like a very affectionate group of family and friends. She was still having trouble believing that the Sarah from the video could even be her, so it felt like she was a voyeur into someone else's life, but the life she watched did make her feel a warmth she couldn't understand. Their conversation was fun and humorous, they all seemed to be enjoying their time together, but some of their conversation was puzzling. There was talk of bunkers and securing the hatches which roused her curiosity.
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