by Jones, Raya
The integrity of the surveillance system was a CSG concern, a fair trade issue, because Guardian Goose sold access to companies who wanted their reps to target potential customers. I too did everything by the Code. It was a bona fide spot check, and the real Dee Valiant got the credit for it. I logged the inspection with the agency, and presented the duty manager with my agenda. I was going to look through some recent archives, pick up one or two individuals at random and see how thoroughly the system had tracked them. ‘How good is your calibration with 1Step?’
She sighed. ‘Good, but it will take you hours.’
‘You don’t have to hang around.’
She left.
Freedom was on camera a great deal. He had bought a white Mu Tashi biosuit and hired a pert. At first he teleported around for fun, trying out this new technology. Then he settled to a routine. He went to the gym and swimming pool. Afterwards he ate in the Morning Plaza reading his mail. Then he went to a walkthrough portal. He spent a few hours in the virtual, his body in a Teletek hold. Nobody interfered with his body. After logging out he sometimes had a drink in the Evening Plaza. He often spoke to people, but it appeared casual. He never met the same person twice. Nobody seemed to follow him. He could be followed electronically, but only Guardian Goose’s regular customers accessed the system during our stay, and none of them seemed likely to have an interest in Freedom Cordova.
The duty manager returned halfway into the inspection. ‘I’m off duty in half an hour. Will you be finished then?’
‘I doubt it.’
She cussed. It meant missing her transport home, because she wasn’t allowed to pass this to the next duty manager.
‘I’m sorry. The inspection is on live feed to the CSG and I’m not allowed to cut it short,’ I told her. It was true.
‘Trust my luck to have you turn up on my watch. It’s my son’s birthday I’ll be missing again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, meaning it, thinking about a child waiting for his mother who doesn’t come.
She left again.
At last I reached today’s footage. I saw Freedom enter the room and saw myself leave shortly afterwards. After my phone call, he should have gone to the inn’s desk. Instead, he jaunted to another room. He stayed there nearly ten minutes. The records didn’t show anyone else go in or out of that room during the previous 24 hours. I couldn’t openly access the inn’s register on the pretext of checking up on Guardian Goose.
I formally concluded the inspection and planted my locusts in the system. Within the hour, they devoured any digital trace of me staying in that Milkwood, and then eliminated all traces of their own swarm. Anyone investigating would see Freedom Cordova travelling alone.
When I arrived at the runabout, he complained that I’d taken so long it felt as if he was travelling alone.
I strapped into the seat next to him, and he set in motion the preliminaries for disengaging from the bay. ‘Are you still sore at me for not telling you Suzie’s real name?’
‘You think of her as Suzie.’
‘It was her nickname. She was the only Suzuki in our crowd.’
‘It’s better than Perseverance.’
Perseverance was the only child of the Suzuki who lived in Phoenix-1. She married into Cyboratics and moved to Cy City Mars with her husband, Wye Stan Pan. She died five years later when anti-android activists blew up a wing of a research facility where she worked. She didn’t have any children. Her official portrait was unmistakably my mother. If my date of birth was correct, I was three weeks old at the time of her death. If Wye Stan was my father, why should he erase any trace of my existence? He could say that the baby was killed with her if he wanted to disown me. If I was born after she escaped, why should my mother lie to me about my date of birth? Think reasons and motives, Freedom had said. I couldn’t put a motive or reason to any of that. My mother had no ethical objections to androids. She used to say that they free human beings to have a life. She sometime reconfigured stolen androids for people who sold them on the black market. My mother liked the technology of the generation that came on the market when I was six, although we didn’t get to see them.
I sat silent while Freedom set a course to Clay Valley, a mining town orbiting the inhospitable planet Ronda-3. His runabout couldn’t make the journey to the interstellar port at Ronda-6. He decided to sell it in Clay Valley and take public transport from there. He didn’t intend to return to Ronda.
When we were finally on course, he broached the subject. ‘It either took you a long time to dig out what any student of mine can do in ten minutes or you’ve known Suzie’s real name for a long time and didn’t let on.’
He knew I’d get the information. He could have told me himself. He has a secret room that he goes to in his head, I thought.
‘Right, I see. The silence again. Ask away.’
‘Ask what?’
‘You must have burning questions. Did Suzie believe that androids are unethical? Did she collaborate with the terrorists? Why do you shake your head?’
Only one question was burning in my mind. Was I born?
The androids that came on the market when I was six were the first andronets. An andronet is a cyber-mind. Its physical mobile units have limited autonomous intelligence, but the root mind controls its androids within a local range, guiding them to carry out any tasks it has in store. Its storage capacity is vast. An andronet is also very expensive. Installing one is cost-effective only in a large affluent place, where many people are likely to hire it. Yet, in the whole of Ronda, Clay Valley had the first one. The technology was still on trial. Installing it in a remote place like this meant that if anything went disastrously wrong, it wouldn’t be a PR disaster.
As soon as we entered the port’s foyer, an artificially tanned brunette in a sleek white biosuit with the Cyboratics logo came to greet us, beaming. ‘Hello! I’m so happy to welcome you to Clay Valley. Do you know that this little town has the first Gen-5 andronet in the whole of Ronda?’
Freedom bellowed, ‘For Heaven’s sake, we’ve heard nothing else since coming into local range! I almost crashed my runabout because of your bloody Cyboratics banners cluttering my cockpit when I was trying to dock!’ But she was pretty, and he smiled back, ‘So are you selling us an android, my dear?’
She cocked her head prettily. ‘Sorry, my androids are not for sale. I’m June. Would you like to rent this unit as your guide and escort? My rates are competitive and I’m vastly more versatile than any android you’ve used before.’
I grabbed his arm before he damaged Cyboratics property, and told June, ‘Ignore him. He’s groggy from a long trip. Can I check you out?’
The android’s repertoire of facial expressions had none that expressed displeasure. When ‘her’ smile vanished, the face became blank in a way that no living human face can be. Its voice sounded flat and tinny, ‘I do everything strictly by the Code of Practice. I have an impeccable record of quality service.’ June whisked its android away before I could say spot check.
Freedom laughed. ‘Well, well, well. Now I’ve seen it all: a machine evading the CSG!’
‘It’s not a machine. It’s a cyber-mind.’
‘I stand corrected. That explains why your face lit up when you realised you could strip her down to strings of binaries...’—‘Not binaries. Its neural net is based on…’—‘Whatever you call it. I saw a beautiful sexy woman. Bloody Cyboratics. Can’t you do them on some Code violation?’
‘June has an impeccable record of quality service.’
The foyer felt sedate despite the bustle of android porters and robot cleaners. No attempt was made to hide the utilitarian architecture. It was a place for passing through quickly, and most people passing through were locals. I spotted seats near a kiosk, and headed there. Freedom kept pace with me. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to make them so realistic. Surely that’s deception, no?’
‘Not unless the andronet conceals what it is when making a transaction with you.’
A few Jun
es were around, but all of them stayed clear of us. Freedom went on ranting, ‘You wouldn’t understand it, Al. You have no idea what it’s like to spend practically all your waking hours in cyberspace. A man comes to a real place after a fortnight in Milkwood, and sees a beautiful sexy woman, thinks he might get lucky…’
‘You can. Her rates are competitive. Freedom, we have to talk.’
‘You worry me when you say that. We’ve spent five hours cooped together with nothing to do but talk. Is it the kind of talk that must be done in an open public place, Al? So you can make an exit after telling me that our relationship is over, you don’t love me anymore, there’s someone else in your life? What do you want to talk about?’
‘Me.’
‘Oh God, it always starts like this. “It’s not you, darling, it’s me.” How many times I’ve been in that situation…’
‘Four.’
He sighed. ‘It’s like talking with a robot, talking with you. What are you doing now?’
I was fixing the earpiece and keying a number. I told him, ‘Calling June since it’s avoiding me. It recognised me somehow.’
‘It probably stole our details from the Port system. That’s a Code violation, no?’ he asked, hopefully.
I told him that my badge wasn’t activated and I didn’t enter under an agency alias.
‘Must be your uniform giving you away.’
‘I’m not in uniform.’
June’s disembodied voice was identical to its units’ voice. I told it that I wanted its service. If it found a buyer for my associate’s runabout, the andronet can keep 10% as commission.
Freedom shook his head in dismay, overhearing.
By now all the seats near the kiosk were taken, so we headed to the exit into town. I pointed out, ‘Androids free us to have a life. Now we have free time instead of having to sell your vehicle.’
‘I see your point,’ he conceded, but wasn’t inclined to feel better about the andronet. ‘Its designers have a sense of humour. “I do everything strictly by the Code” as if it were responsible for its own actions.’
‘A Gen-5 is responsible for its own actions.’ When the technology was still being developed, there was fierce top-secret debate about how to handle this conundrum. In the end, the decision-makers realised it was best to make andronets responsible. This way, a rogue andronet could be uninstalled.
It took Freedom a split second to realise that it was so convenient for Cyboratics. Their record of quality service would remain unsullied. ‘They’ve even created a machine to take the blame. Yeah, yeah, not a machine. How did you get to be in the know?’
Five years earlier I was hired to test the prototype January before the CSG allowed Cyboratics to put Gen-5s on the market, I told him, suppressing the memories. It was in that Cyboratics research facility in Alpha Centauri that I finally met Fairweather.
Freedom was saying, ‘This June is terrified of you. An android with emotions gives me the creeps.’
I corrected automatically, ‘It has survival protocols. If I investigate and find something amiss, it will be terminated. It knows that.’
‘An andronet with its own survival agenda, that’s even worse! That’s a doomsday scenario.’ His gaze followed a June. ‘You knew what she was right away, didn’t you? You already knew the model.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you deliberately didn’t warn me.’
‘The look on your face was priceless.’
He burst out laughing. ‘Such a relief, you are human after all.’
We found an OK games bar outside the port. A few people wearing the specialised headgear were slumped on couches, periodically sipping water out of bottles from a vending machine. The headgear interacted with their brains to simulate the experience of tasting wine, beer, coffee, whatever drink they had chosen. The place was not designed for offline ambience. It was grim and dim, with bare metal walls. Mute demos of the NiteOut selection of taverns, cafés, and wine bars flickered on and off like staccato reminders of the virtual life you’re missing out. Local ads floated about. Visit now the OK swap.shop/main-street scrolled across the room and morphed into a Dial Pizza.B4U.Go & Meet Pals banner that illuminated our faces red and green before a column of text shot up nearby, rotating: The future is OK. The universe is OK with our stunning products available from OK outlets anywhere in Clay Valley. The future is OK. The universe is OK. Every 11 minutes and 32 seconds, the whole sequence of demos and ads repeated itself. At the back of the room four teenagers took turns playing on two mats, the game display swirling around them.
I told Freedom he was right: I have no idea what it’s like to live in the consumer interfaces of virtual environments. I work the source codes behind the audio-visual façades. Sometimes companies want an outsider to peek discreetly in their own databases. Sometimes I subcontract private inquiries. I delegated the task of checking out the forensic report about Freedom’s house to a new kid.
‘When you say a new kid, is it the “new” or the “kid” I should worry about?’ Freedom asked.
‘Don’t worry. I’m training him myself.’
Freedom mused, shaking his head. ‘You delegate, you train. Do you give pensions too? So much for the lone ronin. The myth shatters. But I get the hint. You run a business. I’ve hired you but we haven’t discussed your fee yet. Post me the forms and I’ll sign. I’ll pay anything you want to put down. I know you won’t overcharge me. On second thought, go ahead and overcharge me. Double your usual fee, I’m sure I can afford it.’
‘I’m starting to record this.’ I pressed a button on my chest pocket, and it lit up amber. ‘This is being logged with the CSG as we speak. We can have a verbal agreement and I’ll send you a copy. For the record, Freedom Cordova, say what you want me to do for you.’
‘I want you to find out who was behind the explosion that demolished my home.’
‘Will you respect our agreement irrespective of what I find when I deliver a conclusive report?’
‘Yes. I’ll pay anything you say. Name your fee.’
‘I’ll be paid with information. I want you to tell me the truth about what happened on…’ I stated my date of birth.
Even in the dim light, with red and green reflections of the pizza advert on his face, his expression disclosed that the date wasn’t meaningless to him. ‘I don’t know if I can answer that,’ he said very quietly, his eye on the recording button. ‘Can we go off-record?’
When I switched it off, he continued, ‘Since you know the date, I guess you know that Suzie died because of something that happened on that day. I don’t want you to dig there, Al. I really don’t. I like you too much. Finding out what happened to my house is not important. It’s probably a malfunction like they said.’
I went to the back of the room. There was barely room for my mat next to the other two. Both were an old model, the kind I was using when still living in the Edges, and the youngsters playing on them were about the same age I was when I left Earth. Their game was set in deep-space, but I couldn’t make out whether the cartoon pursuers were pirates or patrol, and whether the player was supposed to be the good or bad guy. The youngsters probably didn’t care. It was a mindless game of speed and scoring.
The sound effects and their chatter accompanied my operations. Copying the agreement to Freedom took seconds, but I wasn’t ready to face him again just yet. Part of me had hoped that the date wouldn’t mean anything to him. But it did. It meant so much, he couldn’t hide his reaction.
When I logged out twenty minutes later, the outmoded mats were on standby. Only one boy was still there. He gawked at me. ‘Awesome, mister, that’s state of the art you’ve got, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
I could see Freedom chatting with someone I couldn’t see, but guessed from his body language that it was a woman.
‘Can it let you do anything like a portal?’ the boy was asking.
‘That’s exactly what it is. It’s a portable portal. Do you want to have a go?’
His face lit up. Of course he did. ‘Five minutes,’ I said, setting it to run on menus.
Across the room Freedom got up and walked to a vending machine. People got off a couch, pulled out perts and vanished. It was still a strange sight in those days.
The boy logged to Clay Valley Main Street, then to a schoolyard, and a couple of other sites he knew. He surfed, testing, as fast as he could. But it’s slow work if you can’t anticipate the menus. The boy methodically read all the menus before making a choice. ‘Time’s up,’ I told him ten minutes later.
He logged out reluctantly. ‘What’s the headband for?’
‘If I don’t tell you, how will you find out?’
‘I’ll go to the XT-Pro showroom.’ He knew he won’t get admittance without credentials. ‘I’ll find a backdoor.’
‘Do that.’
As soon as I was near enough, Freedom announced brightly, ‘This is Ivana. She’s not an android. Even I can tell that, ha-ha!’ The young woman looked at me unsmilingly. Her face had a slightly lopsided structure. She couldn’t possibly be an android, being imperfect. She was scrawny, her gaudy biosuit personalised with cheap fashion accessories, and her short fair hair was styled into tiny curls.
‘Why are you following us?’ I asked her.
‘She wasn’t,’ Freedom protested.
Ignoring him, I told her, ‘You watched us at the port. You stood by the kiosk, then went away, came back five minutes later and continued to watch us.’
She turned to Freedom. ‘Who is this?’
He asked her to give us a moment. She went out of earshot.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, sarcastic.
I sat down. There was an unopened bottle of water, which he had kept for me. I drank. He informed that the girl was travelling to Ronda-6 on her own and felt she’d feel safer with us. ‘I said yes. I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s only a few days on public transport.’
‘Her story checks out.’
‘How do you know? You’ve met her five seconds ago.’
‘I hacked port security.’
‘Why? Were you bored?’