by M. D. Cooper
Tobias was more interested in hanging out with their young son, Jason.
He’d been observing the boy since he was a toddler, watching the child grow into a youth. He’d witnessed Jason’s early struggles with coordination, and his parents’ worry that their son might have a genetic defect that modern medicine had failed to detect and eradicate.
At the time, Tobias hadn’t known the outcome of the Andrews’ exhaustive examination of their son; that file had been restricted, and he’d found himself reluctant to pry. Over time, young Jason had overcome those early obstacles and had slowly caught up to his schoolmates.
Through those growing years, Tobias had found himself captivated by the boy’s agile and inventive mind. He’d observed Jason conjure up countless pranks, then witnessed his spirit slowly crushed as he was forced into compliance both by adult humans, and AIs who didn’t appreciate the youth’s restless intellect.
So he’d approached Jason’s father, Rhys Andrews, with a proposition.
Tobias had no idea what he didn’t know.
* * * * *
“Lysander and I had an interesting talk with Tobias this morning,” Jason heard his father say in an offhand manner.
“Oh, really?” his mother replied. “What about?”
Neither seemed aware that Jason had entered the lab, and was hanging out in a shadowed corner behind a stack of crates, using the lab’s NSAI to play his flight simulator game.
Jason was pretty sure Lysander knew he was there, but for some reason, the AI wasn’t ratting him out. He grinned. This is great; it’s always fun to listen in on adult conversations. Never know what you’re going to hear.
“It was about Jason, actually,” Rhys Andrews continued. “Turns out the school wants to talk to us about him again.”
Okay, well, that wasn’t on the list of things he wanted to hear. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong—at least, not recently. Sometimes it was hard to figure out what adults considered right and wrong.
Jason heard his mother groan. “What is it now—another toilet programmed to void in the wrong direction?”
Well, yeah, he’d known that had been wrong when he did it….
Jason’s dad snorted. “C’mon, Jane, you have to admit—it took some real talent to bypass the conduit and reroute the sensors that way.”
And about three hours of my free time, too, Jason mentally added.
Jane’s voice sounded severe to Jason’s ear, but with a weird warble to it. No way. Is she laughing? He couldn’t tell. He peered through the cracks between the crates he crouched behind, but couldn’t see his mother’s face.
She’d acted so pissed at him! And she’d taken away his Link privileges for two whole weeks.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Jason’s dad assured his mom. “They say he’s restless, and bored with the coursework.”
“I’ve spoken with Tobias about this,” Lysander’s voice joined the conversation. “If you are open to the idea, Tobias has volunteered to mentor the boy.”
Yessssssss. Tobias was totally rad—the coolest AI in the habitat. If he wanted to tutor Jason, that could only mean….
Jane laughed, and Jason could see her shaking her head through the space between the crates. “Did either of you think to warn Tobias about the wild ride he’d be in for, saddled with the responsibility for that boy? So many hormonal shifts and emotional swings!”
Rhys grinned back at his wife. “You sure you’re not projecting a little bit? I’ve heard Anna mention her own experience with you a time or two,” he teased.
“Can you imagine what it would be like to be embedded during those years?” Jane asked.
Lysander gave a sardonic chuckle. “There’s a reason we can’t be bonded to a human in puberty,” his tone was dry. “Adult emotions are enough of a wild ride for us, thank you very much.”
“Well, it’s no picnic on our end, I can assure you,” Jane replied tartly.
“Jane, Tobias also said…” Rhys hesitated, then forged ahead. “He offered to embed with Jason, once he’s old enough if they hit it off.”
YES! Jason pumped his fist in the air. This is the best day ever.
“Oh, Rhys,” his mother’s voice said finally. Sadly. “You didn’t mention that Jason’s an L2, did you?”
What’s an L2, Jason wondered. And why does Mom sound sad about it?
“No, we agreed to keep that to ourselves,” his dad assured her.
“Seems an odd bit of irony, though,” Lysander said. “A naturally-occurring genetic advancement like that, putting him at a disadvantage against the rest of you lesser-evolved, L0 humans.”
“But the risk,” his mother said. “His nervous system has too many exposed nodes. Our tech’s not advanced enough yet to ensure separation between an AI’s channels and his.”
“Agreed,” Lysander said. “There’s too much of a chance of bleed-over, and no guarantee we could keep the two apart.”
“I know it’s a Sykes family tradition to embed with AIs,” Jane said somberly, “but…it’s just too dangerous.”
“Jason’s going to be crushed when we tell him he can’t ever have an AI implanted.”
It was all Jason could stand.
“What do you mean I can’t have an AI?” he yelled as he rose from his hiding place. His heart pounded in his chest, and he could feel his face flush as he rushed toward them.
He stopped at the edge of the laboratory table that stood between him and his parents. In a fit of temper, he grabbed the first thing his hands came in contact with, and threw the tool at the table’s surface with all the force he could muster.
“Judith had one implanted! Why can’t I?” he demanded.
The tool he flung reached a velocity of over two hundred meters per second, causing the laboratory table to deform a good seven centimeters in the center.
The strike created a wave of displacement that rippled outward, turning the pipettes at the end nearest his mother into deadly projectiles. Jason watched in fascination, and then growing horror, as the displacement wave seemed to travel in slow motion through the table, launching the pipettes into the air.
They rocketed up at a velocity easily equal to one of the projectile weapons the Habitat’s peacekeepers carried. One of the pipettes was on a course to impale his mother’s left eye.
The boy’s eyes grew round in shock at what he’d done. Instinctively, his right hand shot out, picking the single pipette out of the air mere millimeters before it struck home.
As the rest of the projectiles clattered against the bulkhead, the world returned to its normal speed, and Jason stood frozen, his hand in front of his mother’s face, fingers clenched around the pipette. His hand shook as he slowly lowered it.
He heard his father’s voice, quietly.
“One thing’s certain; Jason needs someone to teach him discipline, embedded or not.”
“I’ll talk to Tobias,” Lysander said quietly. “We’ll figure something out.”
* * * * *
Tobias was horrified that his offer had almost resulted in so serious an injury.
“Yes, in Sol,” Jane confirmed. “The mutation is in our axons, the neural pathways that send signals from the brain to the rest of the body.”
Tobias’ avatar nodded. As the Habitat’s leading neuroscientist, this landed squarely in Jane’s wheelhouse, and he could tell she was fully invested in the subject.
“Well, those signals travel faster along an L2’s axons. That means an L2 processes information much more quickly than a normal human.”
“That’s true,” Jane conceded. “But there are these little areas along an axon, nodes where there is no myelin coating to insulate it. The gap isn�
��t big enough to cause the signal to degrade; instead, because it’s not insulated, the signal travels a lot more quickly there.”
“An L2 has a lot more nodes than you’d find in an L0 human,” Rhys added. “That’s the key to an L2’s faster mental processes. It also means they have quicker reflexes.”
“Yes,” Jane said with a grimace.
When Tobias’ avatar sent them a questioning look, Rhys explained, “I’m not sure how much attention you paid to Jason when he was a baby, but his coordination was….”
“It was pretty awful,” Jane said frankly. “We were worried he’d contracted a neurological disease.”
“And we reinforced his bones with carbon nanotubes.” Jane made a face. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to see your baby constantly breaking bones when he’s so tiny?”
As their conversation concluded, Tobias had assured both Rhys and Jane that he would keep his knowledge of Jason being an L2 in strictest confidence.
Not long after that, Rhys and Tobias had cobbled together an apparatus fashioned after centuries-old military headgear. The headpiece conformed to the curls and flutes of Jason’s ears so completely that it took a few minutes for his young brain to adjust to the altered auditory inputs. But he didn’t mind; it meant he had his own personal connection with an AI.
The headpiece interfaced seamlessly via a secure Link to a chassis Rhys had designed. The chassis functioned as a harness, to be worn by one of the specially modified Savannah cats that Jane bred as pets.
The cats’ intelligence had been marginally tweaked, and the animals had adapted easily to microgravity. They made exceptional animal companions to families who lived in the various habitats within the Proxima Centauri system, and were in high demand.
This was a nod to another Sykes family tradition—one that began back when her uncle Tim had adopted their first family dog, a corgi named Em.
It also served to provide Jason with a companion and dedicated bodyguard, albeit the four-legged variety. With Tobias as the brains and the cat as the brawn, their worries were somewhat assuaged regarding young Jason’s safety.
From then on, Jason and Tobias—and the cat—had been inseparable, though the AI may not have turned out to be quite the role model Jane would have wished for her son. Jason’s enhanced neurology meant he quickly outpaced his fellow students…and often found himself bored and looking for ways to entertain himself during interminable classroom hours.
Tobias claimed that the pranks were merely Jason’s form of creative expression. Eventually, that ‘expression’ got both the boy and his AI expelled from school. The final straw was when Jason reprogrammed the ventilation systems to deliver a three percent hydrogen sulfide mixture into the girls’ locker room.
As Jason grew to adulthood, he began working on flights between C-47 and the various mining rigs in Proxima’s warm dust belt. Tobias occasionally considered other ways he could accompany Jason, but ‘traveling by cat’ seemed as convenient as any.
Tobias had ended up paired with various family cats over the years, until the day came when Jason announced his plan to hire out on a freighter bound for El Dorado.
His parents gifted Jason and Tobias with the graceful feline now resting on her haunches in Jason’s apartment, aqua eyes staring at him unblinkingly. They’d all had a good laugh when Jason had decided to name her ‘Tobi’.
Well, everyone except Tobias. Jason’s last prank had been on him.
SPYCRAFT
STELLAR DATE: 07.02.3189 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Senator’s Office, Parliament House, Sonali
REGION: El Dorado Ring, El Dorado, Alpha Centauri System
“…seven were pronounced dead early this morning in the warehouse district of Tomlinson City, during a peacekeeper raid on a local drug ring. Neighboring businesses had been complaining about the increased violence in the area over the past several years, reportedly attributable to an uptick in Norden Cartel activity….”
“Hello, sir, it’s good to see you.” Thomas, one of Senator Lysander’s AI aides, looked up and smiled as Benjamin Meyer entered the office.
Ben had worked with Lysander a time or two in his role as senior analyst for El Dorado’s Secret Intelligence Service. Ben was also married to Judith Andrews, a woman the AI had all but raised. Ben hoped he could use that almost-family connection today as a means to see the senator unannounced.
He needed Lysander’s help. More importantly, this meeting had to look spontaneous and unscheduled to any prying eyes that might make note of it.
“Is Lysander around?” Ben asked Thomas. “Do you think he could spare a few minutes?”
Thomas glanced down at the holo sheet that held the senator’s schedule—not that he needed to—then nodded and signaled the inner office doors to open. “He’ll be happy to see you, sir. Please go on in.”
Ben nodded affably to the AI, then crossed the threshold into the inner office. The doors closed behind him, and Ben’s NSAI notified him that a protocol had been activated, ensuring the room was secure.
Lysander’s holoavatar greeted Ben from across the room, where he stood looking out a window at the city below. “Good to see you, Ben. How’s Judith?”
“She’s well,” Ben replied. “Thoroughly engrossed in her work, as usual. She been monitoring some increased tectonic activity down on the planet, around the continental divide at Muzhavi Ridge. She seems to feel that the tolerances the FGT worked into the continental drift are a bit ‘tight’ in that area.” Ben held up his fingers in air quotes, then gave a half-smile. “She thinks we need to watch for increasing rock slides in the area. Avalanches, too, in the winter months.”
Lysander’s avatar shook his head. “I’m sure the Prime Minister will be gratified to hear that little gem,” he murmured dryly. “Something tells me, though, that you didn’t come here just to give me an update on what Judith’s been doing. What’s on your mind, son?”
It was a bit of an affectation, calling Ben ‘son’. For some reason known only to him, Lysander had long ago adopted the avatar of a slightly older man; his visage was rough-hewn and weathered, with dark hair, black eyes, and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. His voice was gravelly with the weight of authority. The AI, now over two hundred Terran years old, carried it off to perfection.
Ben nodded toward a holo of a news feed that Lysander had projected silently against the wall. “You saw the news this morning,” he said by way of response. “That drug bust was just the tip of a very large iceberg, Lysander.”
“I’m chair of the Joint Committee for Commonwealth Security,” Lysander reminded him. “We received the report the moment it was filed. But you know this already. Tell me something I don’t know, Ben. What brought you here this morning?” he asked directly.
“Things are escalating quickly, Lysander. Too quickly.” Ben paused, gathering his thoughts. “I think,” he said slowly, “that we’re dealing with an opportunistic situation, and the Norden Cartel is taking advantage of it.”
Lysander raised a brow, his eyes growing even more serious. “How so?”
Ben shrugged, looking bitter. “Everyone’s focus lately has been centered more on civil unrest than on organized crime. With all the partisan crap in play, the SIS isn’t running efficiently right now.”
The senator nodded in agreement. “I believe it. I’ve spent far more time battling anti-AI factions than I have with the Security Committee.”
“Then there’s the added complication that the cartel is operating behind a legitimate organization,” Ben said. “Hiding behind NorthStar Industries means the
y’re essentially untouchable. We can’t raid without a warrant, and any time we manage to get one, the site’s been scrubbed clean, with nothing to find.”
Ben shot Lysander a pointed look. “There are too many deep state agents embedded in the Secret Intelligence Service, and all of them care more about their party’s agenda than running a security agency whose mission is to enforce the law and investigate criminal activity.”
“Mmm,” Lysander responded. “And I’d imagine your director’s no help. The current Prime Minister appointed her, didn’t she? I’d be willing to bet you’re being stonewalled quite a bit.”
Ben spared Lysander a bleak glance then walked over to one of the chairs set in a conversational grouping, and slumped into it. The AI’s avatar followed him, stopping at the corner of his desk. His projection appeared to lean against its edge as he crossed his arms and waited for Ben to continue.
“It would seem,” Ben began with a sigh, “that it bothers her more that I lean toward your side of the aisle, than that El Dorado is infested with criminal organizations like the Norden Cartel. And, by the way, I’m convinced they’ve infiltrated the SIS’s ranks, too.”
“That’s a weighty statement,” the senator warned.
Ben rubbed his eyes tiredly then looked up at Lysander. “One of my top operatives told me she was lucky we only lost seven people this morning in that raid. They were waiting for her strike team when they arrived.”
“So you’re here to...” Lysander prompted.
“I’m here because if I’m going to take Norden down, it needs to be with an off-the-books team. And I’d like that team to include AIs.”
Lysander raised his brows at Ben. “That’s a first. The intelligence service has never had an AI field officer before.”
Ben snorted. “Officially, no. Unofficially…” The senior analyst smirked. “There have been plenty of times in the past when we’ve relied on AIs. We’d be crazy stupid not to. Then again, this whole anti-AI movement that’s been gaining ground is crazy stupid, but hey, they don’t pay me to be political. They pay me to serve and protect.”