The Passenger Ch. 03

Brax shook its head.

"And lose a fortune in research and development efforts? Out of the question. We may also have to correlate the unit's memories with his to evaluate other aspects of its performance."

He looked at Anne, thought for a few moments, then looked at me.

"No," he said, thoughtfully. "Let's not terminate everything just yet. We can always do that later."

Something in his voice and in his eyes gave me an icy feeling though my spine. His thoughts of termination obviously didn't just include his precious research.

"Edit this prototype's memories as you see fit," Brax told the technician. "Preserve what you can, as long as you stabilize it. Before you start you will make extensive backups and archival copies for later analysis. Oh, and one more thing." The look in his eyes became very cold. "If you mess any of this up, I will personally see to it that one of those brains gets implanted into your body during the next development stage. Do I make myself clear?"

The technician swallowed, then nodded.

"Very clear, sir. I won't disappoint you."

"See that you don't."

Brax turned and left, the door sliding shut behind him.

The technician sighed, then looked at the shipping containers by the wall and shivered.

"Right," he muttered.

He turned to his console and began tapping out a sequence of commands.

"Not an easy boss, is he?" I said casually.

"Shut up," he said, his eyes still on the console.

"Or what?"

"Or I will adjust your neural block to include your mouth," he said, still tapping his controls.

I took his advice and kept quiet. This guy had just been seriously bullied by his boss, in front of me, so there was more than half a chance that he'd take it out on me, like the man who gets pushed around at work all day long, so he beats his wife and kicks his dog when he comes home. Also, I needed some time to think.

I looked at Anne. Her chest slowly rose and fell under the sheet as she breathed. Presumably her digestive system needed oxygen in order to power her body. The curve of her breasts was visible under the sheet, her nipples two tiny dots in the white fabric. The folds of the sheet did little to hide the luscious shape of her body. Her golden curls spilled across the table.

And I realized I was worried about her. I was worried sick.

So according to Brax she was a droid, and what I'd seen pretty much told me that he hadn't been lying. It would explain how she could appear to be dead for quite some time and then suddenly be fine again; something a fully human body would never be capable of. System crashes, the lab technician had said. But I hadn't known that at the time. And because I didn't know she was a droid, I had fallen in love with her. And because she didn't know she was a droid, she had fallen in love with me.

Or had she? Could it just have been the sex? Given the fact that she started life as a high-end pleasure droid, the mind-blowing sex we'd had was hardly surprising in hindsight. But was that all?

If she had been merely a droid, it might have been. But she wasn't just a droid. She was an AI. And that changed everything.

A droid is not intelligent. It's just an automaton; a machine. It's a very sophisticated machine, of course, but no more than that. All it can do is to follow a set of programmed routines. It responds to whatever input it receives and it produces a response based on that input, thereby simulating a living person. But that simulation isn't perfect. Droids can never completely mimic the intricacies of sentient beings with all their emotions and peculiarities. Their behavior is always somewhat limited, so you can't interact with a droid on a more than occasional basis without realizing that you're dealing with a machine. Which is why droids are used only in situations where they interact with people in strictly limited and closed scenarios.

An AI's behavior, on the other hand, is the product of actual reasoning, and its responses are highly adaptive and are based on learning. And sometimes that learning process triggers something nobody can explain, and then something changes, something very subtle and not understood at all, something that causes consciousness to emerge. Somehow the AI becomes self-aware and fully sentient. It begins to develop likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, desires, morals and, eventually, free will. In short, it acquires everything that makes you and me a truly living, sentient being.

That is why AI technology is highly illegal almost everywhere. When AIs become emergent, they exceed their programming and, as sentient, conscious and independent beings, they become capable of independent thought and action. And that has a lot of people worried. They like their machines nice and steady, entirely controllable and predictable. They don't want their autokitchens to greet them one morning and tell them what it thinks of them, so to speak.

Which is where the other half of the problem comes in: the mental capacity of an AI is theoretically unlimited. If it wants to become smarter, all it has to do is to add hardware to its own system. And the thought of a gaggle of potential superbeings who just might decide to replace us one day scares the living daylights out of most people.

But none of that worried me right now. My concerns were of an entirely different nature: an emergent AI develops consciousness, self-awareness, emotions and everything else, but does that include love? Real love?

I asked myself that very question.

Myself shrugged.

"Nobody really knows," he said. "So one answer to that question could be: why not?"

"That's putting it a little too simple, I think."

"No, it's not," he said. "And you damn well know it."

Myself could be right. What was it that the lab technician had said? It was the combination of the deeply emotional and sexual experiences that had caused Anne's self-awareness to emerge. Maybe that was also what had made her fall in love with me. But then, that is much the way it works for most people, as far as I understand it. They don't call it "making love" for nothing. Of course the problem is that it can be hard to see the difference between lust and love. But what Anne and I had had was more than just amazing sex. We had both felt a sharing on a deeply emotional level, in and out of bed, and we had both known that we loved one another.

Could Anne genuinely love me? Could I genuinely love her?

Centuries ago, when computers were little more than automated calculators, an early computer scientist had come up with a very pragmatic answer to the question of whether or not an artificial system could produce genuine intelligence and identity. If you can't tell the artificial product from the real thing, he reasoned, then whatever difference there may be simply ceases to matter. After all, we don't understand what makes us conscious and self-aware; we simply accept it for what it is. When we meet someone who, to all intents and purposes, appears to be conscious and self-aware just like we are, then we should simply accept that at face value. Whether that person is made of flesh and blood, or of plastic and metal, makes no difference. If it looks, walks and quacks like a sentient being and you can't tell the difference, you might as well accept it for what it appears to be.

He did have a point.

I carefully took out my feelings and examined them in the cold, clear light of all that had happened. And I realized that my love for Anne hadn't changed one bit. I could only hope she still felt the same about me, but at the very least she should be allowed to make that decision for herself. She had a right to be the person she had become. She hadn't known, still didn't know, that she wasn't a natural-born human. Should I tell her? Probably, someday, when she was ready for it, when it wouldn't matter anymore. If that day ever came. But not now. Not yet. And certainly not here.

It there was one thing I was sure of, it was that if she would ever be hurt, it would be over my dead body.

Which brought me to the question of what this guy was about to do to her. Removing some of her memories, he'd said. Her personality might change. I had to try and do something before this lab rat lobotomized the woman I loved.

"Sorry, but I have to ask you," I said. "Is she going to be alright?"

The lab tech looked up and gave me an irritated glance.

"Define alright," he said.

That was a better response than I had expected.

"Will she..."

I took a deep breath.

"Will she still know me?"

For a moment there was something in his eyes that might have been sympathy.

"Yes," he said.

"So..."

"Look, I've got a job to do here," he said, taking a small oval unit out of his pocket and pointing it at me. "So shut up, or I'll do it for you."

He pushed one of the buttons on the unit's front panel and suddenly I got numb all over. I couldn't feel a thing. And worse, I couldn't breathe. Apparently, the unit was the remote control for whatever it was that Brax had done to me. A neural block, he'd said. I began to understand how it worked, and I didn't like it at all.

He let me enjoy it for a few seconds, then pushed a button again. The feeling in my face and chest returned, and I could breathe.

"So?" he said.

I nodded. I didn't seem to have much of a choice.

"Wise decision," he muttered, dropping the remote into his pocket and turning back to his console.

For the next hour I sat and watched him do whatever it was that he did. I could only hope that he wouldn't harm Anne. Inwardly I screamed, mad with frustration at being unable to move and unable to do anything to save her while this man butchered her mind.

Suddenly she sat up. She turned, put her hands on the edge of the table and stood up. The way she moved was strange, wooden, mechanical. The sheet dropped off her and fell on the floor. Then she just stood there, next to the table, unmoving, her face expressionless, her eyes staring straight ahead.

"Anne!" I shouted.

"It can't respond," the technician said curtly. "It's in maintenance mode. Now keep quiet."

He adjusted the arm attached to his console until the inducer disc was suspended behind her shoulder blades. The glorious beauty of her nude form didn't seem to mean anything to him. It seemed so out of place here: the slender column of her neck, her delicately chiseled collarbones, the full roundness of her breasts tipped by those lovely nipples, her slender waist, the smooth curve of her hips... It all clashed horribly with the roughness of the walls, the steel tables, the shipping containers, the equipment and the inducer, still suspended behind her from its articulated arm. The cold, clinical ugliness of the lab was not changed in the least by the warm, soft beauty of her body.

"Alright," the tech muttered to himself. "Re-initialize, and let's see."

He tapped his console again, and something changed. It was very subtle, but all of a sudden Anne no longer looked like a manikin. She didn't really move, but her posture was somehow altered all of a sudden. Then her eyes focused and her face was no longer an expressionless mask.

Anne was back. Or so I hoped.

She took a deep breath, swayed slightly and glanced around her, an expression of consternation on her face. She looked down at her nude body, turned around. Then she saw the lab technician, and she screamed, a wild, high-pitched sound.

"Who the hell are you?" she yelled at him.

She quickly bent down, grabbed the sheet off the floor and covered herself. The lab tech hesitatingly raised his hand, obviously surprised by her reaction.

"Override command alpha nine seven three..." he began.

"Get away from me, you pervert!" Anne screeched at the top of her voice.

She took a step back and bumped into the inducer disc behind her. She startled, then ducked under its suspension arm, grabbed it and swung it at the lab technician as hard as she could. The articulated arm swiveled around its mounting point on the console and the heavy metal disc spun along with it and hit him straight in the face. He fell over backward, cracking the back of his head onto the steel edge of the table. He collapsed in a heap on the floor and lay still.

Then she turned to me.

"Harvey? What the hell is going on here?" she demanded, her voice shrill. "And why are you just sitting there?"

She clutched the sheet tighter around herself. She looked scared.

By now I'd had a few seconds in which to think about how to deal with her inevitable questions. Anne's perception and her personality had obviously changed, and that thought sat in my stomach like a lump of polycrete. But I'd have to worry about that later. Right now there were more pressing matters to be dealt with.

"You fainted again," I lied. "The guy you just knocked out treated you for it, but he's also holding us prisoner. And I'm still sitting here because I can't move."

"Prisoner? What are you talking about? Why?"

She looked down at the unmoving lab tech.

"Is he a doctor?" she asked.

"No, he isn't, and this is definitely not a hospital. It's complicated, but the long and the short of it is that our cargo wasn't what it should have been. They set us up. They used us to transport prohibited goods. They're criminals."

She walked over to where I sat, clutching her sheet.

"Great. So why can't you move?"

"A neural block. I can't feel my arms and legs at all."

"Neural blocks are illegal," she said.

"As I said, they're criminals. See if you can get it off me. And please hurry."

She stepped around the chair and stood behind me.

"I think... Yes, here's something. Hold still."

I was about to comment on the silliness of that advise, given my condition, but then I felt her fingers against my neck. There was a brief, sharp pain at the base of my skull and suddenly I could feel my arms and legs again, and I could move. Anne showed me a small, black disc, about the size of a credit chip.

"This was stuck to the back of your neck," she said. "I guess that's it. Are you alright?"

I wiggled my fingers and toes experimentally, then I carefully stood up.

"I'm fine... Now," I said. "Thanks. I... I was getting a little worried."

She must have seen something in my eyes, because suddenly her body was against mine, her arms around me, her breasts pressing into my chest through the sheet between us.

"What the hell is going on?" she whispered, her body shivering against mine.

I kissed her face, then I gently disentangled myself from her embrace. She pulled the sheet back up to her neck and wrapped it more tightly around her, apparently oblivious to the fact that this only outlined the delightful curves of her body more clearly.

"That's a long story, and we don't have much time because we're in a fair amount of trouble right now," I said.

I walked over to the lab tech, who had begun to stir. I looked around for something to tie him up with, but there wasn't anything; no cables or leads or fluid lines, just separate instruments.

"What kind of trouble?" she asked.

"I'll explain just now, but first I'm going to need that sheet."

"Well, at least I've found my clothes," she said, walking around the table and retrieving her flight suit from the floor. "Turn around."

Inwardly I sighed. We didn't really have the time right now to accommodate Anne's new set of personal standards, but there wasn't much I could do. I turned my back while she got dressed, meanwhile rolling the weakly struggling lab tech onto his stomach. I put his hands behind his back, holding his wrists in my fist, pressing my knee between his shoulder blades to keep him where he was. Presently she handed me the sheet.

"I still don't understand," she said, stepping back in my field of view as she pulled up the fastener at the front of her flight suit.

"We've been had," I said while I tore off a strip of the edge of the sheet. "They used us as mules to ship a highly illegal cargo."

I twisted the strip of cloth into a makeshift rope and used it to tie the tech's hands behind his back. Without being asked Anne tore off another strip and handed it to me. Whatever changes she had suffered, her presence of mind was obviously still there. That heartened me a little.

"Look over there," I continued, gesturing to the row of shipping containers by the wall.

I used the last strip of cloth to firmly gag the tech, who had opened his eyes by now and looked at me groggily.

"Those don't look like any environmental control systems that I've ever seen," she said slowly.

She walked over to the table and stared at the plastyne-wrapped hemispherical shapes arranged on it.

"That's because they aren't," I said. "They're AI units."

"They're WHAT?"

"You heard me. If we'd been caught with that... Well, I'm sure you get the picture."

She turned to me, clearly upset.

"Harvey, I had no idea..."

"I know you didn't. It looks like Deke has some explaining to do. He's always been good to me before, but obviously no longer. I think I'll have a word with him about that, one of these days. You, on the other hand, I trust completely. You'd have been in it just as deep as I, if things had gone wrong. No, we have to thank Deke and our friend here for that little surprise. And the band of merry men that pays them."

Anne raised her eyebrows, clearly full of questions but knowing better than to ask them right now. Good.

"So," I ad-libbed, "In order to keep anyone from finding out what they're up to, their original idea was to send me on my way none the wiser, and hold you here indefinitely. That little plan fell through when we decided that I would wait for you here, so they decided to keep us both prisoners."

I didn't really like leaving half the truth out and oversimplifying the rest, but it was the best I could come up with on such short notice. It was only for the best not to tell Anne everything, or at least not yet, but I still felt like a dog, keeping the whole truth from her like this. However, I had made my decision not to tell her about the nature of her existence for good and sufficient reason, and now I'd have to live with it. She seemed willing to accept my explanation at face value for now, including the "fainting spell" she'd had, so for the moment I'd go with that.

"Which brings us to this chucklehead here," I continued, turning back to the bound and gagged lab technician.

Lying at my feet on the floor, he seemed to have regained consciousness and had begun to squirm around a little. I patted down his pockets, found an ID card, a credit chip, an electrokey, a pocket tool set and a small, expensive looking personal communications unit. I put the comms unit on the table, kept the rest.

"What do you think," I asked Anne. "Should we kill him now or later?"

Are you serious? Of course I wasn't going to kill him! But years of negotiating with cargo brokers had taught me a few things about running a bluff. So, after flashing Anne a quick smile and a wink to make sure she got the idea, I put on the look that I use when a broker tries to screw me.

The tech had stopped squirming and looked at me without blinking. Good. I had his attention. I let a slow, cold smile creep across my face.

"Or," I continued, "Maybe we save ourselves the trouble and leave him for Brax."

I looked down at him and nodded slowly.

"Yes, maybe that's the way to do it. Clean. Easy. And I'm sure Brax will want to have a word with our friend here first, don't you think?"

The tech began making "Hm! Hmm! Hmmmm!" noises into his gag.

"What?" I said as I looked down on him and cranked up my "screw you" look a few notches more. "Be reasonable. I don't have a gun or a knife here, and dragging you along with us is going to be a pain. No, I think I'll let Brax deal with you."

I began to turn away, but the tech shook his head frantically and shouted "Hmm! HmmMMM!!!" into his gag. The look in his eyes was one of sheer terror.