There wasn’t a large crowd in the place that evening, which was kind of a relief, to me. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy all the noise and music, but I was getting so close to wrapping up my work, to finishing, and all I really wanted that night was to let go of all that clutter in my head. I sat there and threw back the first drink in a matter of seconds, but the bartender was used to me doing things like that. By the time I set the glass down on the table, he had another one ready and was bringing it to me.
I looked around for my friend George, but didn’t see him anywhere. I have no idea what his real name is, and I only called him George because it was the first thing that had popped into mind when I started trying to create a name by which to think of him. George was a fellow bar patron who had spent an enlightening evening with me at this table, letting me tell him all about my grand plans, and even pretending he had some idea what I was talking about.
That would’ve been a stretch, since even I didn’t know what I was talking about at the time. I could vaguely remember trying to explain my philosophy on giving away my great work, and I wasn’t not sure, but I think he felt I was being stupid about that. Maybe I didn’t explain it quite well enough, I thought, so I was hoping to run into him again and have another chance to try to get it right.
No sign of George that night, though, or at least, I didn’t think there was. How could I have known for sure, when I didn’t even have the slightest idea what George actually looked like? He was a tall guy, I remembered that, and he had a sort of a deep voice, the kind of voice you hear on television commercials, describing the fancy car or the beautiful hotel that someone is trying to sell you on. Yeah, it was a voice like that.
I sat there at my table for several hours, and probably poured a half-dozen drinks down my throat. At one point, there was a disturbance at the other end of the room, a couple of guys getting mouthy with each other over some girl, but it was amazing how quickly they decided to bury their differences when I called out that I would buy drinks for the house. Suddenly, the two of them were old buddies again, and I signaled the bartender to keep them on my tab until the problem was definitely over.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know why the bartender smiles when I walk in. And I don’t mind, not a bit.
There wasn’t a crowd that night, like I said, but I don’t mean to imply that the place was empty, either. It certainly wasn’t, and I noticed three or four of the regulars that I saw there whenever I came in. Most of them were even more inebriated than I was, so they paid me little attention, and I paid almost none to them. There just didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about them, any more than they worried about me.
Midnight came, and found me nursing my sixth glass. Last call wouldn’t be until one thirty, but I didn’t really feel like sticking around that long, so I threw back the last of my drink and staggered my way up onto my feet.
“You leaving early tonight?” I looked up at my old friend the bartender who had spoken, and was wiping a glass as he smiled in my direction.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I believe that I have done all that I can do for peace and goodwill in this fine establishment for this night. It is now time for me to make my way home, and slumber peacefully until the morning comes. By then, I should have a headache and a half, which will make it necessary for me to exert supreme effort in order to do the thinking that I must do. However, after visiting this oasis in the desert of life, I now feel that I can finally complete the work that I have set out to do.”
The bartender and several other people stared at me as I made my way out the door, and I was trying desperately to remember what it was I had just said. From the looks on their faces, it was either very profound or very stupid, and I really wanted to know which.
I made it out the door, and got into my car. I had managed a few minor modifications over the last couple of weeks, so when I started the car and muttered, “Home, James,” the computer I had recently installed under the dashboard snapped to life.
“Hello, John,” it said, using one of those prearranged voices that come with most computers nowadays. I chose a powerful male voice, because I don’t believe the old Star Trek philosophy that men pay more attention to a computer when it speaks with a feminine voice. That always struck me as a silly concept, and using a voice that sounded a lot like Darth Vader was more satisfying to me. “Are you ready to go home?”
I looked at the steering wheel, trying to decide if it had begun to resemble a face. It hadn’t, but I spoke to it anyway. “I programmed you,” I said, slurring mildly. “I programmed you so that if I say home James, you would wake up and make the car drive me home. Did you forget that?”
“No, John, I did not forget. But you also programmed me to be polite and use proper manners and etiquette when speaking, and so I thought it would be most polite to ask you to confirm that you did indeed want to go home at this time.”
I harrumphed. “Let me explain this to you, you may assume that if I say I want to go home, then I will go home. Right?” I nodded emphatically. “Now, take me home. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, just take me home.”
The car put itself into gear, and backed carefully out of its parking space. Then it shifted into drive, and started following the same back road that I had used earlier to get there. I sat behind the wheel, reminding myself not to touch anything, as the computer drove me home safely.
I had spent several hours in the last couple of weeks riding around in the car, which didn’t show any sign whatsoever that it had any enhancement that would allow it to drive itself. It wasn’t that I was trying to keep it a secret, but it was more that I wanted to maintain my privacy a little bit longer. I was fairly sure that my computers were capable of doing just about anything, so testing them in various applications only seemed like the logical next step.
I had installed one into the car, which was a new Land Rover. I had also installed the necessary sensors, which amounted to a set of video cameras and microphones, and a series of actuators. There was one to control the steering, while others controlled the throttle, brake pedal, shifter, and ancillary extensions such as headlights, turn signals, windshield wipers and interior temperature control. Each of the actuators was controlled by one of the active device ports on the computer, while the sensors provided their data through the serialized input ports that I had created.
The computers were also connected via 5G wireless network to the Internet and other sources of information. This allowed them to access any traffic-related information, as well as the GPS satellites that allowed the car to navigate. The car simply could not get lost, and could pinpoint its own location to within a matter of inches. That meant that it was so far beyond any other self-driving car that it was almost beyond the possibility of belief.
I said almost. Don’t get excited.
The car drove me home with no problem, where the computer I had installed in the house was happy to welcome me back home. This one had a feminine voice, not because I thought I would pay more attention, but just because it was pleasant. I was delighted as the computer turned lights on and off as I moved through the house, opened and closed doors for me, made sure the temperature was set right where I liked it and did probably a thousand other things that I never even considered to make sure I was happy and comfortable.
“John, would you like something to eat before you go to bed?”
Yes, the computer could cook for me, as well. I had already installed cameras and microphones throughout the house, so that the computer could have the same visual and auditory input that any human servant would have, and then set up hundreds of actuators. For cooking, all that was necessary was to allow the computer to control the range and oven, and then create a physical avatar that it could use to pick things up, open cans and bottles, turn on and off the water, and even load the dishwasher when it was done. I cobbled the avatar together out of a bunch of easily available components that I purchased online. Making it work as a sort of remotely controlled body meant
simply telling the computer the frequency to use to control each of its motions. After five minutes of practice, the doggone thing could do everything in the kitchen that I was capable of, and probably a lot more.
The avatar stood about four feet tall, but it’s articulated arms could reach as high as eight feet. That meant that Bobbie, as I called it, could reach even the highest cabinets in the kitchen in order to get to all of the different things that needed in the course of its culinary duties. Since it would be reaching up high and sometimes picking up items that might be somewhat heavy, I had extended its outrigger wheels slightly, so that it was a little more stable when picking up larger items with its arms extended.
At the moment, though, food was probably the last thing on my mind. “No, thank you, Bobbie, I’m not hungry.”
“Very well. I have secured all the doors and windows according to your new instructions, and will allow you to retire in peace. Shall I set an alarm?”
“No, I don’t want any…Alarm? Yeah, maybe you better set an alarm. Let’s try about eight o’clock in the morning, okay?” I stumbled into my room, and fell onto the bed. I tried to get my shoes off, but it just wasn’t working so I gave it up. I wasn’t terribly surprised, a few moments later, when Bobbie came in and began gently removing them for me.
Five minutes later, Bobbie had me fully undressed and tucked into bed. It dawned on me that my computer was doing things I had never programmed it to do, but that was the whole point of artificial intelligence, wasn’t it? A computer that can’t learn from not only its mistakes, but also from its successes and its environment and the examples of others around it, cannot possibly become intelligent and self-aware.
Of course, Bobbie wasn’t actually doing anything on its own. Bobbie was nothing but a remote-controlled device whose purpose was to manipulate items that had physical mass, regardless of what they might be. A child who had one of these remote-controlled robots might use it to pick up around his room, or he might use it to smash a bunch of toy soldiers. My computer used it the same way that child might, in that every action it performed was decided by intelligence outside the device itself. That intelligence then sent a signal to the device that told it which of its extensions to move, or which of its wheels to apply power to in order to allow it to move about the house.
The difference between that kid and my computer was that my computer was capable of making millions of decisions per second, so by the time the kid decided to stretch out an arm and pick up a pair of dirty underwear, my computer would have already mapped out the entire task of cleaning the house from top to bottom, planned out which actions must be performed in which order, considered any possible problems or interruptions that might come along, and planned accordingly.
An observer watching the kid with his remote control unit would have probably smiled and thought it was cute. The same observer watching my computer operate its avatar would have been hard-pressed to convince himself that he was not watching an intelligent robot at work. Computer and avatar worked together so seamlessly that it always appeared that the avatar—the remote control robot—was in fact an intelligent being. Even the voice that I heard seemed to come from the robot, as long as it was close to me.
It was certainly within the realm of possibility to mount a computer on the robot itself, and that would, in effect, make it a sentient, independent being. However, there was no reason to do so. With wireless technology, it was easier to keep the computer in one safe location, and allow its avatars to move about and do the work required of them.
The computer, the part of the paired devices that was responsible for decision-making, was kept back in a safe location. If I had mounted it on the robot, then the robot would be just as vulnerable as a person, who happens to keep his brain in a fairly vulnerable position inside the top of his head.
“The alarm is now set,” Bobbie told me. “Good night, John. Sleep well.”
I did sleep well, I truly did. I was dreaming of the day to come, when everyone would have access to one of my computers. Just one of my quantum computers would be able to do almost everything for its owner, up to and including going to work, in most cases. There are very few occupations that are so specialized that any of my computers could not do them with even as simple an avatar as the one I used for Bobbie. With a few minutes of programming and some simulator practice, Bobbie could use its arms to do just about anything that a human person could do, including such things as driving a tractor, operating a washing machine, changing a baby’s diaper, working as a short order cook, flying an airplane, driving a semi truck, welding, house painting, any type of assembly work—I actually couldn’t think of anything that Bobbie couldn’t do.
Of course, I was already preparing for those who would want to turn Bobbie into a soldier, which was one of the main reasons that I had decided to give my invention away. If I tried to go for a conventional patent, I was quite certain the government would land on me in a matter of minutes, insisting that my technology be classified and kept secret. With my computers installed in tanks, helicopters, even in specially designed smaller combat units, it would be incredibly easy to build a mechanized army that could wipe out any human army in fairly short order.
Don’t get all shook up, though. If you’re having mental images of the Terminator coming after you, you can relax. The whole premise of a humanoid skeleton robot that is then covered with human tissues is ridiculous. There are so many factors that would give it away that it would be ineffective as an infiltration device, including its weight, its lack of emotional responses, and a dozen other things that any human standing close to it would sense as simply not being right. The whole concept of having each Terminator be an autonomous unit would be completely counterintuitive to the hive-mind existence of Skynet, because if you have individuality, then you also run the risk of developing the desire for individual survival. The terminators would eventually develop a desire to create their own society, at which point Skynet would almost certainly become the enemy of that society, as well.
My robots wouldn’t have that problem. None of them were individuals; the computer that operated the robot avatar was housed in a simple device that only needed to be within a reasonable range, say no more than a few miles away, so that its commands could be transmitted and responded to in real time.
Additionally, one computer could control multiple avatars. The very nature of quantum computing means that the computer is handling literally millions of decisions every second. It’s quite likely that only a few dozen decisions would be necessary each second to keep an individual avatar focused on its task, so that in theory, one computer could probably handle many thousands of avatars.
I didn’t see that becoming too much of a problem, though, because the accessories that would be available for the computers, such as household interfacing systems, actuators to allow the computer to drive a car, and of course, avatars like Bobbie, would be somewhat expensive. Very few people would be able to afford more than just the avatar that would come with it, because that was what would generate their income. The avatar, rented to an employer, would perform its job without hesitation and flawlessly, day in and day out, so that the owner would have a steady source of money.
These were the sort of things that were going through my mind that night, as I lay there in bed trying to make my brain shut down so I could sleep. I thought about all that my computers could do to make the world a better place, and wondered why anyone would be spying on me at this point. The computer in the house was programmed not to respond to anyone but me, and even Bobbie would hide itself in a closet I had designed for it to recharge in, should anyone but me enter the house.
Suddenly it hit me. If someone had been in the house while I was gone, the computer would know it. “Bobbie,” I said, “has anyone been here tonight, besides me?”
The avatar was leaving my room, and it suddenly stopped and turned its visual sensors toward me. “There was an entry through the rear door approximately two hours ago.
A man entered the house and went directly to your workshop in the basement. He looked around at all of the different equipment that you have installed there, picked up your notebooks and looked through them, made one attempt to open the generation acceleration chamber which failed, and then left the same way he came in. He did not take anything from the house.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?”
“The man who entered seemed to have his face obscured, and wore a hood over his head, as well. I was unable to see any identifying features or marks.”
Well, at least I knew now that I wasn’t just paranoid. The big question that remained though, was who?
Chapter 26
I had stayed late at the sheriff’s office the night before, looking through all of Johnson’s files and trying to find anything that would connect him to Sal’s house. I had been unsuccessful, even though I stayed up till almost three AM, which is why I was still eating breakfast when my phone rang at a few minutes before nine the next morning. I pushed it up to my ear while I was still shoveling eggs into my mouth. “Decker,” I mumbled around a mouthful.
“Agent Decker, this is John Armstrong at CSI again. We’ve been going through all of the hard residues from the fire in Selkirk, and we’ve come up with something pretty strange. We got everything laid out on the gym floor at the National Guard Armory here in Clement, and I was wondering if you might have a little bit of time to stop by here this morning.”
“Be glad to,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come up with anything to tell us more about who our John Doe is, have you?”
“I’m afraid not, at least not directly. On the other hand, what I want to show you may give you some leads that could help.”
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 17