Continue Online The Complete Series Page 3

  One side of the upcoming highway tunnel looked rundown. Upon emerging, our scenery was different. The middle-to-upper class had larger properties despite being mostly plugged in. Lawn maintenance was performed by a fleet of robots like Hal Pal. Neighborhood housing committees often owned the local maintenance robots that covered a lot of mundane tasks, including removal of spray paint, hedge trimming, cleaning sidewalks, and mail delivery. Mechanics of that caliber belonged to those who could afford the extra few hundred a month in rent or mortgages.

  My company van ran between destinations silently. We worked two more repair jobs for middle-class addicts before the night’s excursions came to a close. Home was my final stop and way out in the less-populated countryside. A quiet hour later—during which I played a terrible game of chess against Hal Pal—we finally turned into my neighborhood. The van slowed as we met up with the residential housing. This area wasn’t poor or rich, not this far out.

  I’d chosen this area because this region had the lowest amount of ARC devices per capita. Not everyone invested in today’s future technology. Some, thankfully, still enjoyed real life. The company I worked for loved my home location. This van was an advertisement in a wide open market. I parked my van in the garage to reduce curb presence though. I also avoided polluting the neighborhood with the company slogan of “ARC, be more”.

  Hal Pal whirred to life behind me and tilted its head in my direction. “Are you done for the night, User Legate?”

  “I am. We’ll do some more jobs tomorrow,” I told Hal Pal.

  “Very well. I shall review our stock and go into idle,” the machine intelligence responded.

  “Good night, Hal.” I stepped out of the van and set a lock on the vehicle with my watch. Not that Hal Pal was likely to run off with the ride unless a company recall was issued.

  “Good night, User Legate.” The AI’s automated reply was devoid of inflection or tone. A whirl of arms and mechanical limbs followed the parting as Hal Pal shuffled around the van. It would run the shell for another twenty minutes doing inventory and testing equipment.

  I closed the door to the garage and stepped into my mixed up front room. It was about the size of a single-car garage and had all the items any human might need. There was a small kitchen counter, a table, two chairs, and one laundry machine built into the back wall. The bedroom was smaller than the front room and taken up by my mostly brown Alternate Reality Capsule. No cat, no dog, no roommates—just five hundred square feet of real estate big enough to fit one man. Once, years ago, I had a lot more. Everything from the past was nearly gone now. Sold off or given away in pieces.

  I disrobed from the work jumpsuit and slid my pile of dirty clothes into the laundry machine. Instead of the giant clunky pair of devices from decades ago, this was an almost square panel that items were placed in. They would come out an hour later, cleaned, pressed, and folded. The process was almost too easy.

  Mom still complained about having to do my father’s laundry. “A taxing chore from the devil himself,” she labeled it. I never sorted out which part was the devil: my father or the laundry. Mom probably meant both of them on alternating days. She said the same thing about cooking too, which was equally simplified in the last decade.

  I felt uncomfortable walking around naked, even home and alone in a basement building with no windows. My nighttime clothes consisted of two pieces: boxers were worn for comfort, and a short-sleeve shirt hid the half-formed gut from where I’d given up years ago. My hair might follow soon but had held on so far.

  Lights in the front room were shut off by an old-fashioned switch. In routine order, teeth were brushed, then personal messages cleared from the ARC’s external display. Once read, I lay down inside the unit to log in.

  One finger pressed the manual activation button. My vision swam in a blur of blacks being overcome by the Atrium awakening. Reality was displaced by a virtual landscape that proved every bit as tangible as my home. I navigated my digital body through the Atrium into one of the few programs installed. Once I was through the passageway, my ARC initiated other changes as the program loaded.

  I checked my transforming clothes and looked around. My digital wear had been replaced by a suit stuffed with frills. This part of the program took effect once I left the Atrium. This month was focused on learning classical dance. A quiet ballroom had formed simultaneously with the clothing change. Opposite me was a still rendering of my fiancée. It was not real. This was no virtual meeting space to connect a long-distance lover and me. She was part of the program, like my clothes, like the pushed-aside tables that littered the dance floor’s edge.

  “Hey, babe,” I said while putting out a hand.

  The computer never answered me in words.

  She gave a programmed dip, then reached for my hand. All her mannerisms felt wrong when compared to my memories. Nothing lined up perfectly. I was not the man I had been years ago. She had never smiled this much. But it was all that remained of her, and I tortured myself with her facsimile too often.

  “Program, queue up something nice for us.”

  The imperfect replication of my fiancée smiled in artificial joy. I smiled back and tried not to feel morose. Trying not to compare the slight sag of my skin to my memories was difficult. She was still as beautiful as I remembered.

  I could never forget those eyes. Swirls of amber flowed outward to a reddish brown. Looking other people in the eyes sometimes scared me. Not hers though. She had always been easy to look at.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  Music started, and we danced, the two of us alone in a room that didn’t exist. Visually, this place was real. Sensations of touch, sound, even the smell of light perfume invaded my senses. On the nights I dared to kiss her, I tasted a hint of a lipstick my fiancée had never worn.

  Stolen hours with a computer kept me going. This was my happy place, and it hurt with every step.

  Session Two — No More Broken Than You

  Dancing blurred to unconsciousness. Eventually, alarm beeps lifted me back to awareness. Tingles haunted my fingertips from holding my fiancée’s facsimile too tightly. Not once did the computer program ever complain. That very lack of argument was another point against its realism.

  I ran my fingers across the raised image of a countdown timer near my face. This was one of the real ARC parts, not a projected digital image. It was physical in case the power went out and a user was forcibly ejected. The small clock counted down fifteen long, painful, mind-numbing minutes after disengaging. A legally required time frame to ensure the senses and mind were rooted in reality.

  I rinsed in the shower and massaged my face, trying to draw out more awareness. Clothes from my washing machine were slightly warm and comfortable. Microwaved eggs went down with enough salt and pepper to send a kennel of dogs into fits. Everything was routine, the same exact process I had done since getting this job years ago.

  “Good morning, Hal.”

  Hal Pal’s AI had already registered my awakening and started its morning routine. It would check the van for possible errors, then review current inventory against the lineup of today’s possible orders. Hal Pals were programmed with a wall of processes designed to make human life easier.

  “Good morning, User Legate. Are we proceeding as normal today?”

  “Yes.” We would handle repair tickets from sunup to sundown. I tried to work myself into oblivion most nights.

  “I must remind you that continuing to work without any pause or break is ill-advised by most medical professionals,” it repeated a common warning.

  “Health concerns noted, Hal. Today will be a work day.” I was sick some days and stayed home, nursing a cold or a headache. Occasionally I took half days. Weekends and holidays had gone out the window once I took this job. Trillium paid based on the number of cases, not on the number of hours.

  “Thank you, User Legate. I will note your awareness on the file for the four hundred thirty-seventh time.”

  “That’
s fine, Hal.”

  “Please be aware, Mister Uldum has reviewed your file recently and taken note of these performance issues.”

  Mister Uldum, or Henry Uldum, was the district manager for our repair business. He managed a dozen employees and their equipment. I didn’t really know any of the rest of them beyond our quarterly holiday parties. They were a sad excuse to drink and talk about the same topics every time.

  “That’s fine, Hal,” I repeated calmly. “I’m sure if Henry has something to talk about, he’ll phone me.”

  So the day went. Three morning visits fell under routine. I researched the technical readouts while in transit as Hal Pal prepped the replacement modules. We marched in, confirmed the issue, and went forth from there. Parts were swapped out in two cases. The third needed a connection test and system updates. Hello, fix the device, test it out, and good-bye. Each one was the same story.

  Henry finally called between clients three and four. His face, larger than life and twice as grumpy, crossed the display projection.

  “Gates!”

  “Legate,” I corrected dryly.

  “I knew that. Teasing like always. You’re so stuffy, Legate.” He was clearly looking at something off screen. “Working another job?”

  As if he didn’t know what I was doing. Taking offense again was unwise. Rule fifty-four of working under a boss: employees could be upset but never offended. Besides, Henry was a decent guy.

  “On the way to one, yeah.” I glanced at the dashboard. “Nav estimates another twenty or so ‘til arrival.”

  “That’s what, forty-three this month?”

  My shoulders lifted in a tired shrug. The exact number of repairs didn’t matter to me.

  “You do realize that’s almost a record, right? For a week into this month?” Henry asked.

  “You know I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

  Every quarter, we had a mind-numbing meeting. People would share their horror stories about our customers. Next, Henry would try to share our figures from all sorts of angles. Hours’ worth of pie charts and graphs that meant we were performing extremely well. Following the data slide-show were presentations on future contracts.

  Our quarterly meetings were one of the few times I slept. That helped me get through the social interaction. Henry didn’t even berate me about the behavior since my figures were usually among the best. For me, being the best wasn’t about money. It was about a distraction.

  “You should pay attention more. There was a contest on,” he said.

  “Okay.” There had been a message or two about this contest, but they ended up being deleted. Working for Trillium had nothing to do with competitions for me. I wanted to keep myself busy.

  “You’ve won—the contest, I mean. You knew, right?”

  “Okay.” I turned my head away from the screen.

  “Not interested?”

  “Not even a little. I didn’t use the prior awards, and probably won’t use this one…” My response trailed off with a shrug.

  “Well, I canvassed your ARC to try to get an idea of what might work. You really spend all those hours on a dance program?” His face leaned in, and the image grew even larger. One of Henry’s bushy eyebrows raised in question.

  “Probably. I’m trying to learn a skill,” I said.

  “If you haven’t learned it by now, you never will.” He fell back and laughed. “Machine gives you damn high ratings. All paired dances are near technical mastery. You got a lady in the works somewhere?”

  I didn’t rise to his bait this time and tried to grit my teeth. “Pretty sure nosing around like that is a violation.”

  “Hey, company property. You’re lucky there ain’t porn all over it like some of the others. Jesus. I thought my wife had strange tastes.” Henry’s grumpy face lolled around on the screen.

  “I don’t want to know. At all. Not even a little bit.”

  “You sure? Might help your glutes. Some of ‘em made my backside pucker.” He shuddered. It was like watching a walrus shake, loose skin and flub wiggling around.

  “No, Henry,” I said.

  “Fine. Anyway. We had a few decent things sitting around, and one that’s right up your alley.” He gave a grin that reminded me of a fat shark. “Hope you like the prize. I know the others would slit their wrists for a chance at it if they were half as dedicated as you.”

  “Goddammit, Henry, what did you send me?” I tried not to roll my eyes at the screen. The last thing I wanted to deal with at the next quarterly meeting was jealous coworkers. “You know I don’t really need any of these things.”

  “Not with the company picking up your Internet bill due to business use. You know two of your pals only work for us to keep themselves online? Minimal work, shoddy I tell you.”

  “What did you send me, Henry?” I asked.

  “I hope they shit themselves when they see what I arranged.”

  “Henry…” I was leaning forward in the seat, both hands clasped together in a plea.

  “You get home tonight, you give it a whirl. It’ll change your life.” He grumbled at his screen. “You know, maybe you should head back now. Yeah.” The edge of his shoulder rose and fell as his hand poked something off-screen.

  My gut sank. “Please, tell me you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what? I didn’t nothing. You check your prize out”—I tried to speak up but Henry continued right on over me—“and let me know if you want to take some time off. You probably have too much saved up, and God knows those others haven’t worked a real week in years.”

  “Henry.” My head crashed downward and hung.

  “This is perfect. Two birds—no, three—one stone. Why didn’t I do this sooner?” Henry Uldum wasn’t even listening to me anymore. He was busy pressing more buttons and looking entirely too pleased with himself.

  “Henry,” I said.

  “Sorry, Gates, can’t hear you, signal’s going out. Bye-bye.” His lie was obvious. Signal rarely dropped since they went over to Hi-Fi.

  “Henry!”

  An image of Henry’s giant hand swung into view. It obscured the video portion of our conversation, and moments later, our call dropped.

  “Goddamnit.”

  I hastily flipped around a display camera on my watch, fed it into the van’s overhead, and navigated menus. My arm and fingers pressed onward through passwords, remote connection options, and security warnings. Moments later, I had a feed of my ARC’s home screen displaying inside the van.

  In the small room I used as an Atrium was a giant package like Christmas come early. The contents were unknown. I jabbed a finger at the air where the projection showed the gift to be.

  Remote Access Not Permissible - Full Authentication Required

  There was a restriction against remote access. Locked packages meant my prize was more than a virtual coffee maker. I doubted this was a new Atrium wallpaper or similarly inane little feature. Last year, they gave me a hot tub program that still sat unused.

  Hal Pal whirred briefly into motion. “User Legate, please confirm our destination.”

  I sighed and gave a large stretch. My head hung back as my thoughts whirled. Finally, a nod escaped and orders were issued. “Work. Onward, Jeeves.”

  “Confirming—” The pause was ominous. “Next appointment has been rerouted. Please select an alternate destination.”

  “The job after that?” My gut sank once again.

  “Negative. Case rerouted,” it said.

  “Any of the others?” This wasn’t going well. Possible choices were being boxed into a corner.

  “No jobs remain available in your assignment queue. Please choose a valid destination.” Hal Pal almost sounded smug.

  “Did Henry reroute the service calls?” I asked.

  “Affirmative.” Hal Pal’s head was the only part that moved as he spoke. The van was powered up, so security measures had the AI locked into the docking station. The safety system would stay in effect regardless of if we were moving
or not.

  “How long ago?”

  “Records indicate a change in ownership roughly two minutes into his phone call.”

  I sighed and hung my head to the side. The van was idling on a roadside, waiting for new marching orders.

  “Never mind.” That’s what Henry had been waving at off screen. “Food, I guess, then home.”

  My boss was being pushy about this, and I was growing oddly depressed. My work had been taken away because of excessive dedication.

  “Why”—I threw both hands up—“would he force me to go see this stupid prize?”

  “Data is inconclusive. Human understanding isn’t part of our default programming.”

  I smiled. Hal Pal often amused me.

  “That’s not only an AI problem. Most of the time, humans don’t understand humans.”

  “Agreed. Numerous sources have proven this statement. Still, it is perplexing.” Hal Pal’s metal shoulders lifted slightly. The motion was limited by where it was secured to the van.

  “The day an AI understands everything about human behavior is when we’ve been rendered obsolete,” I said.

  “Negative, User Legate.”

  “Oh?” This should be good.

  “Correct. Human hands are well suited to polish our shells. No robotic uprising would overlook this value.” Its face was staring right at me when it spoke.

  After more than a year with the robot, I was almost immune to the occasionally disconcerting interaction.

  “That’d be ironic.”

  “How so, User Legate?”

  “Humans have robots to dust a house, and robots would have humans to polish them. It’s like exchanging tasks.”

  “Irony does not seem to be the right word, User Legate.” Hal Pal turned a little to face me.

  “What would you use?” I asked.

  “Insidiously diabolical forethought.”

  I blinked.

  “Hal, have you been trolling Stranger Dangers’s web-casts again?”