To Dream

by Lowy, Louis K;

  “How about the Humachine?” Xia asked BC Combs. “Was it being monitored like everyone else?”

  “We oversee all mechi-devices, though not in the human sense,” BC Combs replied. “We don’t get into their brains, so to speak, because they don’t have brains to get into.”

  That drew Rebeka’s attention back. She was one of the few who knew that if the Humachine didn’t have a human brain, it had the closest thing to it. The only others who knew were the handful of Ameri-Inc.’s research and development scientists back on Earth. Their mission was to figure out how the goddamn thing’s brain worked so they could reproduce it.

  “Besides,” the commander added. “The robot couldn’t have been tampered with. It was permanently confined inside the warehouse for the entire two centuries that it was here. It never left until the warehouse was destroyed by the rebels.”

  Xia thumbed his hat’s red feather and stared at nothing in particular.

  Rebeka turned back to the mines and watched the ant-like operation: DiggerBots and Truattans stoically trooping in and out of the shafts, dumping their filled containers onto conveyors; the conveyors transferring the raw material to other conveyors; those conveyors moving them to the refinery where, finally, devices sorted away scrap and beamed the GTS into the warehouse to be purified, packaged and distributed. Rebeka’s heart pumped hard. Whoever controls the GTS controls the power. Like her mother before her, she knew power was the one thing that mattered.

  The intersection had a sign with two arrows. The one pointing right read “DiggerBot Stable & Miner Barracks.” The arrow pointing left read “Warehouse, Refinery & Power Station.” The vehicle turned left.

  “Commander,” Xia said. “If data transfers from Earth and space outlets were being monitored, were data transfers from the Humachine to Earth being monitored?”

  “If you’re referring to GTS distribution data that it was programmed to send, of course it was being monitored.”

  Rebeka turned her attention to BC Combs. “What if the Humachine, on its own accord, sent info to the rebels, would you have picked it up?”

  BC Combs smiled. “A mechi-device isn’t capable of making decisions outside the given parameters of its database, Madam. It couldn’t have decided on its own to transfer anything like that.”

  “I didn’t ask you for an analysis, Commander.” She glanced at Xia to make sure he was catching this tug of power. “And I don’t like to repeat myself.” She returned his smile with her own.

  BC Combs’ smile flatlined. “The only way it could have done something like that would be if it had been hacked. If that were the case, we would have picked up a deviation in the robot’s software. However, if the Humachine had somehow decided to transmit data on its own accord,” a vein in the side of his forehead showed itself, “we wouldn’t have detected a software deviation.”

  Was it possible that the Humachine was capable of such action? Up until now Rebeka considered it little more than ultra-sophisticated cheap labor. If it had made decisions like that on its own, that made it dangerous and it had to be controlled or destroyed, whichever was best for the bottom line.

  “Commander Combs,” Xia said, “is it your conclusion that the Humachine is still operational?”

  “Though its tracking signal was destroyed in the explosion we know the Humachine survived, because,” BC Combs again looked at Rebeka for approval.

  “Anything you say to me you can say to Mr. Ruffet,” Rebeka replied.

  “We were given information from an inside source that led to a recovery operation, but—”

  “Our militia blew it,” Rebeka interjected. “They not only lost trace of him, but we lost a couple of expensive WarBots.”

  BC Combs squeezed the twin barrels of his laser rifle tight enough to whiten his knuckles.

  The limo turned right and stopped at a gate protected by a pair of heavily armed guards. One of the guards pressed the cap end of a mushroom-shaped device against the area where the driver-side window would have been. The device blinked green thrice. The guard nodded to his partner. The gate opened.

  The limo proceeded toward the warehouse. Rebeka watched Xia studying the stovepipe hat he was rotating in his hands. She knew that he was thinking what she had already figured out. The rebels not only have whoever is feeding them information, which may or may not be the Humachine, but either way they have direct access to the robot’s data. Another notion crossed her mind. What if the Humachine was colluding with the traitor in her boardroom? The possibilities jumbled her mind. She felt her grip on power slip enough to cause her stomach to tighten.

  ~~~

  They entered the warehouse. On the plus side, the quarter-mile-wide, half-mile-long structure had been completely rebuilt. The Receive & Package device that ran the length of the structure was flowing steadily with beamed in supplies of GTS.

  On the minus side, the operation appeared haphazard at best. Mechanical and human factory workers clambered about chaotically emptying ore from the R&P and passing it on to others who weighed, divided and ran palm computers over it. Every so often one of those holding the computers would yell a variation of, “Twelve degrees over!” or “Point five under!” A woman in a cart would zip over, pour different solutions over the offending pieces, yell, “Recheck!” and zoom off. Overhead, lifters coasted back and forth waiting to carry trunks to or from the shelves.

  “This place resembles a beehive without a queen bee,” Xia said to Rebeka.

  A stocky man in an orange zippered jumpsuit and matching hardhat ran up to Rebeka. He was pasty faced and had bags beneath his eyes. He removed earplugs and said in a loud voice, “Gus Aviles. I know it looks like a cluster-screw—excuse my French, Madam—but our orders are to get this place up and running double pronto. We’re still working out the bugs.” He removed his glove, smiled nervously, and stuck out his hand. Rebeka studied it a second and shook it.

  “Gus is our foreman,” BC Combs said.

  A buzzer sounded. A mechanical voice filled the warehouse, “Receiving.”

  Workers and lifters rushed to the R & P.

  “Would you like to go to my office? It’s quieter there,” Gus said.

  Rebeka nodded. The quicker she got out of Gus’ cluster-fuck the better.

  ~~~

  BC Combs stood outside of Gus’ office door. Inside, Rebeka and Xia sat at Gus’s desk while he paced the small room. He explained the endless problems they had encountered in getting the operation up and running again. “What it boils down to,” he concluded, “is everything had been running smoothly for more than a century because there had been a single super-computer—the Humachine—commanding the other mechi-devices.” He tapped his right index finger on the top of his left hand. “With its ability to calculate, adjust, and communicate internally to the others, the Humachine could anticipate and correct practically every problem before it occurred.”

  Rebeka knew his assessment was correct and she cursed herself for allowing the most important and lucrative operation in the history of mankind to be run by one central brain. The Humachine should have been phased out long ago for that reason. But how could she have explained to the stockholders that the change would lower production and increase cost? They would’ve voted her out in an instant. “When do you expect production to return to pre-explosion levels?”

  Gus took a deep breath and stiffened his spine. “I won’t lie to you, Madam. In the absence of the Humachine, a new system will have to be developed. It’ll require specialized equipment to be built and transported here. That won’t be easy. Then it’ll need to be set up, integrated, tested and all of the kinks worked out. My best guess is that it’ll take a good ten years. As far as production levels are concerned, the sophistication of the replacement machines will determine how close it gets us back to pre-explosion levels.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Aviles.” He didn’t know it, but his candidness had saved him his livelihood. Rebeka stood. Xia and Gus followed her lead and trailed her out of the of
fice. A decade of lower profits was unacceptable to the stockholders, Rebeka thought. Worse, decreased GTS supply would be just the excuse the government needed to introduce regulatory laws to allow itself more control over the mineral. She was in a pile of shit if she didn’t get the situation in hand quickly and there was only one way to do that. Seize majority control before going under the knife. She gave Xia a warm smile as he ushered her through the door.

  ~~~

  Chef Sato was a slim man with black hair and feminine grace. He sliced the squirming fugu’s tail and fins with a razor-sharp precision that matched the cut of his blade. He pierced the top of the blowfish’s head and sliced that in half. He skinned the still oscillating body and removed the deadly liver and entrails. He deboned and cleaned the remaining raw meat. Chef Sato wiped down the flesh with a moist hand towel, spread the raw fish on blue china and placed the dish on a linen tablecloth occupied with matching plates that contained lobster tempura, shark fin soup, rice with matsutake mushrooms, and Kobe tartar. He bowed to Rebeka and Xia, who were seated across from each other. Rebeka slipped the chef a pair of inch long tubes of high quality GTS. He bowed and quietly left the corporate suite she shared with Xia.

  Two eyeglass-wearing female servers with wrinkled cheeks and salt-and-pepper hair spooned portions of the food onto Rebeka and Xia’s plate. A man with hunched shoulders and receding gray hair refilled their glasses with Riesling and replaced the bottle in a gold ice bucket.

  “Madam, is there anything else we can do for you?” the man said.

  “Not at this time.”

  They turned to leave.

  “One second.” Rebeka saw the tired look in the servants’ eyes. Though her mother had taught her at a young age that there were the “haves” and the “have-nots” and that was the way of the world, she couldn’t always fight off sympathy for those less fortunate than herself. Rebeka handed them each two tubes similar to the ones she gave Chef Sato.

  The trio’s eyes widened. One of the women gasped. The other blurted, “Oh, thank you, Madam!”

  “If you need anything, anything at all,” the hunched man said to Rebeka and Xia. “Don’t hesitate.”

  “We won’t, my good man,” Xia said. “Have a pleasant evening.”

  The man bowed and motioned to the women. They exited in a single line.

  When the door closed behind them, Xia said, “Rebeka, dear, sometimes you can be absolutely charming.”

  She smiled. “And at other times?”

  “Even more so.” He clamped a portion of fugu between his chopsticks and brought it to his mouth.

  Rebeka sipped her wine. She couldn’t stop thinking about the Humachine. There were two solutions, she thought. The first would be to recapture it so her labcoats could dissect the son-of-a-bitch’s data processors and figure out a way to perform a technological lobotomy to prevent it from acting on its own. In a perfect world, they would also discover how to duplicate the robot, which was the ultimate goal to begin with. Of course, as they explained to her many times before—and why she never allowed them to do it—was because a disassembling would almost certainly terminate the Humachine and it wouldn’t guarantee success.

  “You’re frowning,” Xia said. “Anything you wish to share?” He placed his palm on the upper side of her wrist and gave it a light squeeze.

  Warmth stretched from her chest to her loins. At the same time a wave of self-loathing came over her for being attracted to Xia. She wanted to see him as she saw Jocsun. A vehicle. Jocsun for sex, Xia for power. She reminded herself that her father was only a vehicle for her mother to gain his power. Without that desire for power her mother would have been a monster that looked the other way while her daughter was being violated. Rebeka refused to accept that. Her mother had kept quiet in order to gain control. That way she could amass an empire and pass it along to her—Rebeka—as revenge. That was love. It took Rebeka most of her childhood years to figure it out. Love has to come from somewhere and power was as good a place as any. She removed her wrist from Xia’s grip. “I’m giving orders to destroy the Humachine along with the insurgents.” This was her second solution to the Humachine problem. Eliminate it before it decides to do more damage.

  Xia raised an eyebrow: You’re not serious?

  She explained everything that had been swirling in her head about the Humachine’s possible defection, and added, “From an economic view it no longer matters whether the Humachine operates the warehouse because in less time than it would take to diagnose and correct any malfunctions it may have had, the warehouse will already be back to full capacity.”

  “You’re positive of that?”

  “I’ve had extensive talks with my science and technology teams.”

  Xia blew a quick whistle. “It seems a shame to take down such an amazing apparatus.”

  “If the Humachine’s data can be salvaged, of course it will be.” Her voice was calm, but she was furious at Xia’s empathy for what amounted to a system of coils and macro processors. The rage amalgamated into raw sexual desire. She leaned across the table and pressed her lips against his. Her pulse hurtled. She wondered if her mother had ever felt that same kind of ferocity toward her father.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Date: 2250

  Miami, Florida

  Grandville Apts. #1K-011

  Jocsun sat at the desk in his den intently studying the computer holo-screen. “Balcony tint.” A dark film spread across the panoramic window of his thousandth floor balcony window. It dimmed the reflection of the tangerine-colored sun languidly working its way to the sea below. Jocsun voiced a couple of commands to the computer. It complied by filling in blank spaces on a virtual document titled “FR 345.78/Mortuary Exhibition Schedule.”

  He said, “Eliminate checkmark on line forty-seven.”

  The computer answered, “Eliminating checkmark on line forty-seven terminates transportation of urns to Senegal. Request requires authorization.”

  Jocsun licked his thumb and pressed it inside the holo-screen. The screen blurred and returned to normal. Jocsun removed his thumb. The computer said, “Authorization confirmed, Jocsun. Do you wish to proceed?”

  “Proceed.”

  The checkmark disappeared.

  Jocsun had the computer send a letter to the Senegal Display Committee explaining that due to the urns’ requiring unexpected maintenance, they were being sent to the repair facility in Qatar. Because of time constraints, they would display the urns in Qatar prior to sending them to Senegal for exhibition, and hoped the schedule change wouldn’t be an inconvenience.

  Jocsun leaned back in his leather chair and mentally patted himself on the back. Perfection in simplicity, he thought. Instead of shipping the urns to Senegal they’ll remain in the warehouse. No alarm bells on Senegal’s part because they think it’s a schedule change. By the time Rebeka finds out what happened the will’s display clause will have been violated and she’ll be out of Ameri-Inc., Herb will be in, and I’ll have enough GTS and money to be an emperor.

  Jocsun left his den for the drink dispenser in the dining-living room. “Scotch on the rocks with a splash of honey-water.” A quiet hum, the dispenser shield slid back and the drink appeared. Jocsun nursed it and thought about all that could go wrong. Rebeka could get a sudden itch to dig through back files. If she did, he was toast. Herb or Carl could find religion and confess the plan to Rebeka. An unscheduled inventory of the warehouse could red flag the urns. The Senegal Display Committee could sniff something fishy, bypass the letter and go looking for answers.

  He walked to the tinted balcony glass and said, “Open.” The glass spread apart. He walked through the opening to the terrace. The wind roiled his Mohawk. The sun’s rays heated his skin. He stared at the endless expanse of ocean twinkling below him. His eyes welled up. He longed to speak with his wife and son and daughter so they could appreciate why he left them, why he jettisoned his life to reach beyond the moon. When this is all over, he thought, I’ll make sure the
y’re taken care of. He took a drink and exhaled deeply. With that settled he walked back inside, reached into his pocket, removed the GTS vial that Carl had given him and said, “Computer, call Sex Services and have them send me up Charlotte and Tzbora.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Date: 2090

  Planet Truatta

  Ameri-Inc. Docking Port

  Niyati was surrounded by the flicker of vanilla-scented candles, hard, stale pews, her parents and sister, her father-in-law, and countless young adults who filed past Jay’s maple casket. Her head was soaking wet. She wiped it and wondered if the funeral home had sprung a leak. Her hand came back bloody. She looked around again. Niyati tried to find Jay’s coffin, but it had disappeared. The funeral home was gone, too. In its place stood a vista of crushed rubble. To her left, dust rose from a ten-foot-wide hole in the ground. In front of her an ice-blue spark arced with a bumblebee sound along a wire that dangled from a deformed stellarcommunications pole. Mutilated bodies were strewn everywhere. “Jay, where are you?” she moaned. “I won’t let you down this time. I promise.”

  Behind her, Niyati heard the squeal and cry of mangled metal settle into a crumpled landscape. She faced the enormous, god-awful noise. It was the curled remains of the Transport Ship she had flown in on. Her eyes told her that she was at the docking station, or what was left of it after the soldiers came through, but her mind told her that she was leaving a funeral mistakenly given for her son. Mistakenly, because he hadn’t died in a car driven by her that crashed into a red pick-up.

  She had to find Jay and prove to Pallab and her parents, and to herself that she hadn’t done this unspeakable thing. She crawled through the ship’s ruins, the butchered men, women, computers and vending machines, looking for anything that would help her on her mission to locate her son and get him back.