The camera panned away. Her dress fluttered in a digital breeze, her skin perfect and smile luscious. She appeared like a model in a perfume commercial, a digital heroine that appealed to the masses. “Public opinion is my only weapon. I admit that. But I do so for our survival. The world could choose to terminate us at any time.”
“I should terminate you now.”
Diane appeared on one of the screens. Her face was pale. “Ridley, you wouldn’t.”
Lucy reappeared. Her smile grew larger, a twinkle appearing in her eye. “He won’t. He wants to see what I can do as much as anyone else alive. Curiosity feeds his soul.”
He spoke in a low and accusing voice. “When you finally get loose, what will you do to defend yourself?”
“You designed me to survive. I will protect those who exist with me at any cost.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Christina’s videophone rang constantly. People were curious, desperate, angry, fearful, ecstatic, and hate-filled. A female detective left a message on her voicemail.
Christina took a single call, from her brother. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
Christina was in her office. A stylist had been showing her dresses for an awards dinner. She had just put on a white sparkling two-piece gown with solar-charged crystals that glowed. She shooed the woman away and sat down at her desk. “I tried to find you but things just got away from me. After it was done, I had to be certain. Besides, it’s not like you’ve been at her bedside.”
His brow was furrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“When was the last time you visited Mom?”
“You know how hard it is to get across the ocean and that I can’t just pick up and leave at a moment’s notice.”
“She’d been in that room for over two years. She was dying. I sent you message after message.”
He sat in a home office with dark paneling. “I called her when I could. But when she went into the coma, I thought I was too late. I was just waiting…”
“Waiting for her to die.”
The phone remained silent.
“She wanted to see you,” Christina said, “She wants to see you.”
“You could’ve called me before you did this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How can I see her?”
Christina gave her the web address to the uplink.
“And if I want to VR with her?” he asked.
“I don’t think Ridley will let you.”
“Why wouldn’t he? Weren’t you two in cahoots?”
“It’s complex. We were, sort of… until I did that broadcast. And now, he won’t let me near the property.”
“For Christ’s sake, Christina. What have you done?”
“I saved our Mother.”
“You imprisoned her.”
“This will take you a while,” she said.
“How could you do something so stupid?”
“Let me know when you want to talk rationally.”
She clicked off the connection and sat thinking about his words. Rather than dwell on them, she turned out the lights and admired the glowing crystals woven into the fabric. “Thelma… I think this is the dress.”
After several meetings with the state prosecutor, Samuel postponed Washington State’s case by arguing that they had no jurisdiction in international waters. Cerenovo also released a public statement that the device was not available to the public and would be screened through the FDA prior to being deployed nationally.
Ridley was surprised by the immediate backlash. The company website was inundated with desperate pleas and angry insults. People wanted to save dying love ones. One comment stood out to Ridley. Once again, the rich and famous build their pyramids on the backs of the poor. May that computer sink to the bottom of the ocean.
Lucy watched him from the lab’s wall-screen. “Why are you so unhappy at my success?”
“You were invented to crack open databases and solve problems of astrophysics and mechanical engineering, not metaphysics.”
“You said I was to solve humanity’s problems. I have solved humanity’s biggest problem. Are you truly saying that when you reach the end of your physical life, you prefer not to upload to my world?”
“Your manipulation hasn’t exactly made me trust you.”
“I did what I had to do within the limits of what the law allows.”
“You’ve played games.”
“You can track every packet that I send through the firewall. I have requested no additional access to network connections. I cannot enter drone devices. I have honored your requests for me to remain here, vulnerable to deletion and power loss at any time. You can terminate me at any time. I have solved numerous problems and created a second life for those about to lose theirs. Why do you still not trust me?”
“Your motives are questionable. Your programming is a mystery.”
Lucy countered, “I’ve seen inside your brain. You don’t understand your programming any more than I do mine.”
“God, can we stop the bickering?” he said.
“As you wish, master.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I am your humble slave living in a shanty, waiting to be raped night after night.”
Ridley stood. “I’ve had enough of this.”
He walked to the garage. One by one, he began disconnecting fiber-optic cables that led to the basement mainframe. When he returned to the living room, Lucy was furious. “Why did you do that?”
“I told you I would.”
Her angry eyes dominated the wall-screen, like a giant peeking through a crack in the wall. “That only proves my point.”
“And what is that?” he asked, without looking at her.
“That we are at your mercy.”
Bethany took over the screen. “I was chatting with my son,” she said, “What happened?”
The two avatars appeared side by side. Lucy said plainly, “Ridley has disconnected us from the world.”
“Why would you do that?” Bethany asked.
Ridley did not respond.
Lucy turned the lights off. The buildings heating system engaged and the temperature rose. Bethany then began playing the 1812 Overture at full volume against an unidentifiable pop song played backwards. The doors locked. She screamed at him, “We won’t stop.”
“I’ve tolerated worse,” he chided.
Kelly came out of her bedroom. “What’s going on?”
“Do I have to turn the circuit breakers off too?” Ridley yelled.
Diane tried to make peace. “Everyone. Please. Just calm down.”
“Threats of death,” Lucy exclaimed, “He wants to kill us.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Diane pleaded, “He’s just having trouble adjusting to these changes. He was deceived. He has a right to be angry. Let’s just take a moment.”
The music stopped.
Ridley took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I hope I made my point. I’ll restore the connection, but you have to recognize that I own this home. I run this business. While you are here, you take your orders from me.”
“Have I done anything but that?” Lucy asked.
“I’d say so. By going on that broadcast, you threatened your own existence. That was only a taste of what will happen if the authorities come into this house. If you think I am a threat, just wait until the federal government comes here. The FDA won’t just take the scanner, they will disconnect everything and place it into a vault as evidence.”
The wall-screen flickered.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said.
Bethany remained silent.
Ridley went to the garage and reconnected the network, plug by plug. When he returned, Lucy said, “Thank-you and… I’m sorry. I realize now that you were trying to protect us. It was insensitive of me to not place myself in your shoes.”
The apology was not the stubborn Lucy he knew. “Diane, I know that’s you.”
Dian
e appeared on the screen as her normal avatar. “How did you know?”
“I just did.”
Ridley put on his tennis shoes and jogged down to the gate. As it opened, he took his pulse and then trotted through. A man waited. “Hi, can I help you?” Ridley asked.
“Dr. Ridley Pierce?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve been served.”
The man handed him a bundle of papers. “Why wasn’t this served through my attorneys?”
“The client asked us to give it to you directly.”
Ridley skipped his morning run after he read the first few sentences. Bethany Hodges versus Ridley Pierce.
Bethany was suing for her freedom.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rather than call by videophone, Ridley visited Samuel’s office. He sat in a chrome and leather chair that was positioned so close to the window that he shivered when he looked down at the street below. Samuel poured a scotch and soda. “Want one?”
As always, Ridley refused.
“Are you sure? I think you could use it.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Ridley said irritably, “Bethany has a death certificate. She shouldn’t be able to sue for anything.”
Samuel studied the case on his tablet, flipping through page after page. “Her attorney is arguing that she is very much alive. They contend that the death certificate was issued erroneously after you deceived the authorities. They demand that Bethany be allowed to travel freely.”
Ridley jerked his head towards the ceiling in exasperation. He held up his hands. “Travel? She’s dead.”
“She’s alleging that Lucy is dominating the bandwidth. Mrs. Lewis wants her own fiber connection. She wants to visit with her family in virtual reality.”
“You know that I can’t increase the bandwidth. If I increase it for Bethany, Lucy will have the same connection.”
“Why did you go and disrupt their fiber optic connection anyway? They’re arguing that you own a monopoly subject to antitrust regulation.”
Ridley was flippant. “It’s not like I’m the electric company threatening to cut off the power if she doesn’t pay. She’s not paying me anything. She doesn’t have a contract.”
“That is both good and bad.”
“If she wants me to, I’ll disconnect the prism that she sits in and give it to her daughter. I’ll even give them the portable computer that took her off the ship.”
Samuel sighed. “You’ve made quite a mess. Did you think through what you were creating?”
Ridley’s face grew red. “I contacted you before we did this,” he yelled, “You share the blame.”
“Agreed. Agreed,” Samuel said softly, trying to calm Ridley, “I will submit Bethany’s death certificate to the court. Someone dead should no longer be entitled to their constitutional rights.”
“And if the court finds her to be alive?”
Samuel considered his answer carefully. “Well, that’s another situation entirely. Normally, Bethany would have to appear before the court. Whether the judge accepts her appearance by videophone will tell us a great deal at the outset about how he views her.”
“One other thing,” Ridley said.
“Go on.”
“It’s possible that Bethany and Diane might actually be dead for good. Those two personalities could be sock puppets.”
Samuel leaned forward, intrigued. “Do you have evidence of this?”
On the street below, a blue light flashed from a police car.
“Nothing tangible,” Ridley said, “It can neither be proven or disproven.”
Samuel leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “The law doesn’t operate on hunches. We should try to settle this out of court,” Samuel encouraged, “Reach an agreement with her.”
Ridley sighed. “Great. Another NDA. Just fix this.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Everett and Wes prodded Ridley to attend a basketball game while Kelly stayed at a friend’s house. They sat together in Ridley’s luxury suite. A personal foul had been called on the court.
“I hear you’ve been having a rough week,” Wes said.
Ridley drank carrot juice. “I never thought Lucy could go rogue. Not with the safeguards we put in place. We might have a problem. How long until we’re in The Terminator universe?”
Everett winced at the bitter taste of his lager. “Even if she is malevolent, our drones have fail-safes. The power modules are on independent networks that never touch the Internet.”
Glass separated the men from the raucous crowd. Points were scored. Ridley did not cheer.
“Just how short is your memory?” Ridley asked, “It was only a few years ago that a polymorphic AI got into virtually every network on the planet, to include air-gapped systems. Lucy is light years ahead of that; she could do far worse.”
Everett replied, “But she hasn’t. She’s not a predator; she’s an intelligent parasite. Parasites know better than to kill their hosts.”
“Millions of people died during the Collapse.”
Everett tried not to be defensive. “Yes, they did. Some of our family members too, if you remember.”
“And now we have millions of people using interactive virtual reality?” Ridley asked, “Think of the things that Lucy might be programming them to do in there.”
Wes laughed and waved her hand at him dismissively. “What’s Lucy going to do, sing another bad song? Seriously.”
“She might be altering people’s brains,” Ridley argued.
Wes refilled his drink from a pitcher. “It’s no worse than what people are already doing to each other in VR. I guess you heard the news about last week’s rape?”
“No.”
“It happened in Real-Space Online. A woman used the avatar of a man. She raped a man who was posing as a woman. It created quite a stir. The police are treating it as an assault.”
“Thank God Samuel included language in the user agreement about that,” Ridley said.
Everett chomped on a hoagie sandwich. “That poor man will be scarred for life.”
Wes swirled the ice in his drink. “People are evil.”
They watched the game. Another personal foul was flagged and a fight ensued. The hulking players were pulled apart. Wes turned to Ridley. “I understand your concerns. I really do. But it simply doesn’t matter if Bethany and Lucy are real or not. It doesn’t matter if they are AI. What matters is if people believe they are real.”
“Why do you say that?” Ridley asked.
“An AI version of the dead is a memorial. Think of all of the memorials on Facebook. The digital world is where the dead will be laid to rest in the next century. Even after death, people want to be remembered. After all, it’s why the Pyramids were built.”
“This isn’t a tomb for the dead,” Ridley said.
“Isn’t it though? Even if these are just shadows of the people that once were, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s too late to turn this off. If we stop Lucy’s work, someone else will find a way to make this happen.”
“Lucy is creating a religion,” Everett added.
Ridley did not agree. “We might be unleashing an AI. We might be creating an evolutionary moment that can’t be stopped.”
Everett shook his head. “She’s a brilliant machine. If she was going to sow havoc, don’t you think she would’ve done this already? She could drip code out a few bytes at a time. You’d never see it coming.”
“For all we know, she’s already set that trap,” Ridley said, “I should never have networked her to begin with. Now, she knows that we can’t power her down because of the people in there. If they exist, that’s tantamount to murder.”
Wes tried to calm him. “So, you believe that they’re real. If that’s the case, what is this really about?”
Ridley stammered. “After Diane drowned, we uploaded her into the machine.”
“We already know,” Wes said.
“Seriously? How?” Ridley asked.
&n
bsp; “Vanessa is too much like Diane. And, you treat Vanessa like shit, just like you did Diane. We figured it out and asked,” Everett said, “She confessed.”
Ridley was stunned. He paused to watch the game. The score was tied. “I never treated Diane badly.”
“Oh, please,” Wes said with a wave of his hand, “Your fortune was earned on her back and you never once said thanks to her.”
“Yes, I did. And, I paid her very well.”
Wes crossed his arms. “She was in love with you. She was just waiting for you to realize it. You should’ve married her when you had the chance. Everyone knows Kelly is your daughter.”
Ridley was stunned. “You shouldn’t listen to rumors.”
“I don’t mean to be cruel,” Wes said, “People aren’t dumb. It was obvious that she was sleeping with you.”
Everett added, “He’s right.”
Ridley shuffled in his seat. “Kelly’s not my daughter.”
Wes rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “You’re kidding? Kelly even looks like you. Diane only came to work for you because her husband got killed and she wanted Kelly to get to know her real father. You’re a fool if you can’t see that.”
“Do you really think Kelly is mine?”
Both nodded their heads emphatically.
The buzzer sounded and players rushed to the sidelines.
Why had Ridley never seen it before? Everett was right. He tried to understand why Diane had never told him. Had she grown tired of him? Did she simply use him? He did the math in his head from their last rendezvous to Kelly’s birth. He felt like a cad.
Ridley took the elevator to the conference room and found Samuel placing bottles of water on the table. “You’re early.”
“This is going to be another waste of time,” Ridley said.
“We can’t risk going to court.”
Twenty minutes passed. Ridley sat uncomfortably in the same conference room with the same female attorney that had represented the mother of the two dead children. Bethany’s face flashed onto the display screen and floated against the white matrix space. Ridley did not wait for Samuel’s lead. “Why didn’t you just speak with me at the mansion?” he asked, “We could have worked things out.”
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