Everything in the office is meant to put technophobes at ease. The furniture is hand-carved wood, the art on the walls are all originals, and there are files made of actual paper on the massive desk rather than a data pad. Ken is smart enough to know that it's an illusion, but he still appreciates the effort. The quiet ticking of an analog clock helps to settle his nerves, and he sinks into the chair in a more relaxed way than he had intended so that when the door finally opens again and the local Ambassador comes in he has to quickly straighten up and mentally check to confirm his body language is professional. Too late he realizes he probably should have just stood up.
The Ambassador doesn't seem to notice one way or another. She wears an older style of suit, another concession to the technophobes, but radiates competence and self-confidence. Ken can't decide how old she is, which he chalks up to rejuvenation treatments; at some point the lines start to blur and you can't say if someone is twenty or fifty. Behind the Ambassador a ball of pink fluff the size of Ken's fist zips along on tiny tank treads. She spins and looks at it with a withering glare.
"Hey. This is a no-robot zone, and you know it. Back off."
Ken shifts uneasily. He's not a fan of the robots, but it still makes him nervous to hear one yelled at - even if it is pink and fuzzy. "It's fine, madam Ambassador. I don't mind technology."
The Ambassador smiles as she sits. "Give it some time." She picks up a manila envelope and unseals it, sliding a small stack of papers out. "Let's see... ah. Mister Jeffries, correct?" Ken nods, mentally preparing his speech.
"Your request is granted. Let's schedule another meeting for next year, that should be enough time for everyone to either become miserable or decide they like it."
For a moment the ticking of the analog clock is the only sound, and then the tiny pink robot begins to thump against Ken's shoe while emitting a high-pitched growl.
"Just ignore him, he's harmless. Before we move on to other business, do you have any questions?"
"Well... um. Madam Ambassador, I'll be honest. I expected you to deny the request, it's taking me a moment to shift gears. You're actually prepared to allow us our own community? The robots... the AIs... they don't have a problem with it?"
The Ambassador laughs. "Mister Jeffries, the AIs couldn't care less. Here, watch this." She presses a nearly invisible button on the edge of the desk, and the image of The Prime appears in the air.
"Hey. I'm declaring it Sandwich Day. Fully recognized holiday, paid time off for everyone, double rations of bread. We'll have banners, parades, whatever. Repeating every year."
The silver head nods. "Whatever you say, Hotness."
The Ambassador presses the button again and the image vanishes. "Ugh. I told him to stop calling me that. Old nicknames die hard though, right? And I guess the ruler of Earth can call people whatever he wants."
Ken's mouth is too dry to speak. He settles for just staring at the Ambassador with his mouth hanging open.
"Ken... can I call you Ken? Ken, the thing is that the AIs won. It's over. With everything running smoothly, no war, and the population under control they've got an overabundance of resources. Your group's request, for a land free of AI interference? That kind of thing was only vetoed before because the groups were doing it so they could abuse kids without oversight, or start doomsday cults, or whatever. The proposal you drew up has all the proper checks and balances, so that's not a concern. In a year half of them will be miserable because they don't realize how much the robots do for us. Another half of what's left will have been kicked out for one reason or another, and then some percentage of the leftovers will leave because with so few people the community won't be the same. In the end, you'll have a tiny group of hippies living in trees. That's fine, but you won't like it for yourself. I can tell."
The fuzzy robot starts on a new strategy, attempting to scuff Ken's shoes with its treads. "Madam Ambassador... are you this... honest... with everyone?"
"Hah! No. No, I have to keep up appearances. That does bring us to the other business I mentioned a moment ago. Ken, I wanted to meet with you this fine holiday because I want to retire. I haven't broken the news to the AIs yet, because I wanted to hire a replacement first. What do you say? Cushy office, a stupid amount of power, and all you have to do is not be a dick or a pushover."
Ken's mouth opens and closes a few times. "Madam Ambassador... is this a joke?"
"Not at all. The area needs a new local Ambassador, and once you've been properly disillusioned by watching this project collapse around you... you'll be perfect. So. Go forth, try to start a new community, and call me in a year." She glances down at the proposal and frowns, "Or... ten months, actually. Tops."
She stands, and leans forward to shake Ken's hand. He attempts to thank her but is still stunned enough by the meeting that he only manages to mumble something. She scowls, but Ken is relieved to see it isn't directed at him. "Capslock! You leave Mister Jeffries' shoes alone or so help me..."
Ken excuses himself and heads back out towards the train. Had that meeting really happened? Surely she couldn't have just approved his proposal and offered him a job without even consulting with the AIs? No human holds that kind of power. As he goes to step onto the platform, Ken looks up and sees some drones hanging a banner across the street.
"HAPPY SANDWICH DAY!"
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Story 198: Limited Options
This is another that was first published at 365 Tomorrows.
"I can already tell you aren't interested in the admittedly confusing equations I've taken the time to write out, which is fine. So to give a quick and imprecise summary I will use the tired metaphor of Schrödinger's Cat, where a cat is placed in a box with something toxic that will be released with a fifty-percent likelihood, triggered by radioactive decay of something else in the box.
"In the Many Worlds interpretation the universe splits, and in one the cat lives while in the other it dies. Obviously we only get to see one of the two, but both happen somewhere. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until a measurement collapses the wavefunction to just one option at random. In the Stockholm interpretation, the cat falls in love with the scientist that locked it in the box.
"Nothing? Well, my wife thought it was funny. At any rate, while the Copenhagen interpretation is currently the most accepted there are problems with all of the theories and they are all devilishly hard to test. In large part this is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one, until we can get more data. Rather, until they can get more data. I already have it, and know the answer. I'm just not sharing it yet.
"Imagine, for a moment, that the Many Worlds interpretation is correct. That means that entire universes are unfolding constantly, an unimaginable number of them every moment. Some have speculated that we could find a way to travel between them, see the alternate versions of Earth that might have been. That's a pretty thought, and something that might come to pass someday, but what I've discovered while working towards it is far more productive – and profitable.
"The device you see before you provides limitless free energy. This one prototype could power every device in the world at once if you could find a way to plug everything in. Every instant our reality is remade along with an infinitely expanding fractal cloud of others, and this device just... nips one in the bud. All the energy of the big bang, for free. All for just one lost option, one that will never be missed.
"Destroy the universe? Not this one. No, it's quite safe. Technically speaking it destroys a universe every ten seconds or so, but they're more like proto-universes. It's not a big deal, really. It very nearly collapses them before they exist. Very nearly. Honestly, you don't need to look so horrified. We're talking about free energy here. This is the holy grail of science. It's... excuse me?
"No, I told you it's perfectly safe. It can't break in a way that would do any more harm than a transformer exploding – You would have to deliberately turn it into a bomb if you wanted it to do anything serious. Well, yes, in theory. I'm not sure that's a productive use of free energy, but I suppose with the right design you could release a minute fraction of the harvested energy as an explosion before the device obliterates itself. Call it one-one millionth of a percent, enough to level New York. No, no. The state.
"But we've gone off-topic. Back to the matter of free, clean energy for... Pardon me, but I'll thank you to put away those guns."
"I can already tell you aren't interested in the admittedly confusing equations I've taken the time to write out, which is fine. So to give a quick and imprecise summary I will use the tired metaphor of Schrödinger's Cat, where a cat is placed in a box with something toxic that will be released with a fifty-percent likelihood, triggered by radioactive decay of something else in the box.
"In the Many Worlds interpretation the universe splits, and in one the cat lives while in the other it dies. Obviously we only get to see one of the two, but both happen somewhere. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until a measurement collapses the wavefunction to just one option at random. In the Stockholm interpretation, the cat falls in love with the scientist that locked it in the box.
"Nothing? Well, my wife thought it was funny. At any rate, while the Copenhagen interpretation is currently the most accepted there are problems with all of the theories and they are all devilishly hard to test. In large part this is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one, until we can get more data. Rather, until they can get more data. I already have it, and know the answer. I'm just not sharing it yet.
"Imagine, for a moment, that the Many Worlds interpretation is correct. That means that entire universes are unfolding constantly, an unimaginable number of them every moment. Some have speculated that we could find a way to travel between them, see the alternate versions of Earth that might have been. That's a pretty thought, and something that might come to pass someday, but what I've discovered while working towards it is far more productive – and profitable.
"The device you see before you provides limitless free energy. This one prototype could power every device in the world at once if you could find a way to plug everything in. Every instant our reality is remade along with an infinitely expanding fractal cloud of others, and this device just... nips one in the bud. All the energy of the big bang, for free. All for just one lost option, one that will never be missed.
"Destroy the universe? Not this one. No, it's quite safe. Technically speaking it destroys a universe every ten seconds or so, but they're more like proto-universes. It's not a big deal, really. It very nearly collapses them before they exist. Very nearly. Honestly, you don't need to look so horrified. We're talking about free energy here. This is the holy grail of science. It's... excuse me?
"No, I told you it's perfectly safe. It can't break in a way that would do any more harm than a transformer exploding – You would have to deliberately turn it into a bomb if you wanted it to do anything serious. Well, yes, in theory. I'm not sure that's a productive use of free energy, but I suppose with the right design you could release a minute fraction of the harvested energy as an explosion before the device obliterates itself. Call it one-one millionth of a percent, enough to level New York. No, no. The state.
"But we've gone off-topic. Back to the matter of free, clean energy for... Pardon me, but I'll thank you to put away those guns."
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Story 197: Sight Unseen
This story was originally published in Daily Bites of Flesh 2011 from Pill Hill Press. (April 3rd)
When everything is over and the police have released him, Greg will watch his copy of the security tapes. He'll rewind and play the part where they set foot in that lab over and over again, trying to pinpoint the moment where Sarah dies. He'll zoom in far past the point where it does any good, the low resolution of the cameras making the extreme close-up look more like random static, and advance frame by frame with the shapeless fuzzy inkblot of Sarah's face looming larger than life on the screen. One frame, she'll be there. The next...
The security tapes won't pick it up, but in person Sarah makes a sound as she is pulled out of view. It could have been a scream, but having just exhaled her lungs are empty and so all that Greg hears is a squeak, like a scared mouse. Later he'll have those tapes to fixate on, to obsess over, to watch again and again until his wife leaves him and his friends stop calling. But right now he just stares. A hundred empty cages, once used for storing lab animals, line the wall Sarah had been standing next to. Only a handful of the rusted cages are large enough for a person and none at all offer any place to hide.
"Sarah?" Greg calls, hoping against all evidence that she might reply from some unseen corner of the abandoned facility.
She was still new to the job, trying to earn some easy money to help with college. When the alarm tripped Greg said it would be a nice simple way to ease her into the job. The research facility, once a popular target for animal rights activists, was now only used for the occasional rave. He explained to Sarah that there were cameras but the tapes were stored locally and so they would still be going in blind, but that didn't worry him; chasing drunk college students off of vacant property was just good fun, and would give him a chance to show off for the new kid.
"Sarah!" Greg yells again, a hint of panic entering his voice. The remaining fluorescent bulbs flicker and buzz, casting a weak glow through the film of dead insects in the fixtures. For a moment the only other sound is his breathing, and then the chewing starts. There's a wet tearing, and the popping crunch of bones. There's no source, nothing in the room but Greg. Later, watching the videotape, he'll think it sounds like someone on the other end of a phone eating cereal. The maddening sound ceases for a moment and without fanfare a shoe lands, from nowhere, in the middle of the floor. Greg can tell instantly that Sarah's foot is still in it.
Seen only later is the fact that after Greg runs out, screaming and sobbing, the shoe vanishes again as suddenly as it appeared. And the chewing starts back up.
When everything is over and the police have released him, Greg will watch his copy of the security tapes. He'll rewind and play the part where they set foot in that lab over and over again, trying to pinpoint the moment where Sarah dies. He'll zoom in far past the point where it does any good, the low resolution of the cameras making the extreme close-up look more like random static, and advance frame by frame with the shapeless fuzzy inkblot of Sarah's face looming larger than life on the screen. One frame, she'll be there. The next...
The security tapes won't pick it up, but in person Sarah makes a sound as she is pulled out of view. It could have been a scream, but having just exhaled her lungs are empty and so all that Greg hears is a squeak, like a scared mouse. Later he'll have those tapes to fixate on, to obsess over, to watch again and again until his wife leaves him and his friends stop calling. But right now he just stares. A hundred empty cages, once used for storing lab animals, line the wall Sarah had been standing next to. Only a handful of the rusted cages are large enough for a person and none at all offer any place to hide.
"Sarah?" Greg calls, hoping against all evidence that she might reply from some unseen corner of the abandoned facility.
She was still new to the job, trying to earn some easy money to help with college. When the alarm tripped Greg said it would be a nice simple way to ease her into the job. The research facility, once a popular target for animal rights activists, was now only used for the occasional rave. He explained to Sarah that there were cameras but the tapes were stored locally and so they would still be going in blind, but that didn't worry him; chasing drunk college students off of vacant property was just good fun, and would give him a chance to show off for the new kid.
"Sarah!" Greg yells again, a hint of panic entering his voice. The remaining fluorescent bulbs flicker and buzz, casting a weak glow through the film of dead insects in the fixtures. For a moment the only other sound is his breathing, and then the chewing starts. There's a wet tearing, and the popping crunch of bones. There's no source, nothing in the room but Greg. Later, watching the videotape, he'll think it sounds like someone on the other end of a phone eating cereal. The maddening sound ceases for a moment and without fanfare a shoe lands, from nowhere, in the middle of the floor. Greg can tell instantly that Sarah's foot is still in it.
Seen only later is the fact that after Greg runs out, screaming and sobbing, the shoe vanishes again as suddenly as it appeared. And the chewing starts back up.
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