SE#5

 

Eric Reginald pulled his baseball cap down tightly and flipped up his collar, repeatedly, as he walked down the street. He did it one last time as he stopped before the front of the retro-bar. Then, as the door closed behind him, he felt safer, better hidden by the dim lighting produced by the interior window filters. The artificial light gave the old-fashioned wood and red felt a smoky glow in the darkness of an artificial dusk. It was a soothing alternative to the sunlight of a new day—as would be the alcohol.

He wasn’t supposed to drink, but the news from his agent in the evening and the confirmation from his lawyers in the morning had driven him to it. He didn’t want to be seen; he didn’t want to be interviewed; he didn’t want to talk to his wife about it—he wanted to drink. Regardless of his condition, his injury, he was going to drink. 

Just a few. Then he would face the post-lunch press-conference.

He sat at the mahogany bar on an uncomfortable bar stool, marveling at the synthetic scent of cigarettes and the actual man, not a machine or robot, behind the bar. He ordered his drink and the man poured it by hand. All manual, thought Eric, just like I always—

Eric didn’t want to think about that. Instead, he asked the bartender to put on the sports channel. A little screen, just a bit wider than the bartender’s head, appeared in the middle of the image of wood on the wall behind the bar. Not quite old-fashioned enough, Eric thought. Then he ordered another drink.

His eyes glazed over, only partly watching the screen. His head began to throb. He didn’t know if it was from the stress or bad interactions between the alcohol and his medications—but he was finally, effectively distracted by the screen: it was showing clips of his old races.

They’ll be gone one day, won’t they? Eric thought. So will I. I’ll be a big news story for a while, this time for all the wrong reasons, and then I’ll disappear. For good, this time. No coming back from—

Eric’s thoughts stopped. He saw on the screen an anchorman for the sports channel, a man whom he knew well. He saw a studio setup different than all the times he’d been interviewed there. It all seemed more serious and intimate, with low-lighting, lower than the foggy retro-bar, and a smaller set. Then the camera changed angles, and Eric saw the biggest change: a child seated in an oversize chair, his blue eyes looking blankly into the camera.

Eric realized that he knew this boy, but he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t understand it. Not until the bartender looked at Eric, recognized him, then turned back to the screen and increased its volume. Then Eric could hear the boy clearly and he believed it.

“My parents did more than blackmail Mr. Reginald,” the boy said, his affect neutral, as if he were discussing as simple a fact as his breakfast. “They’re behind the cause for the blackmail, the AI enhancer. And they can prove he never used it.”

“Son,” the interviewer asked, leaning forward, his voice tender. “You’re just saying this because you’re a fan of Mr. Reginald, right?”

“No.”

“Then you can prove what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“My parents aren’t good at anything. They can’t do anything but cheat or steal, they’re not like Mr. Reginald.”

“That’s not proof, Brady.”

“Oh no, that’s not proof. That’s why I had to do it for them.”

“You’re not saying—“

“I am. I installed it. I put the device in Mr. Reginald’s car. They made me do it. But I have to make up for my sin and I have to stop them. It’s the right thing to do, even if they are my parents.”

The lead agent entered the interrogation room, its gray, stone floor and gray, stone walls echoing his footsteps. The air had the quality of a forest in sundown from four little lights, one for each wall, near the ceiling. He had always wondered at that light choice, had always thought red would produce a better effect on the subject, but it wasn’t up to him. Just as it wasn’t up to him that the room was much too big, nearly the size of a basketball court; just as it wasn’t up to him what information he had on the subject; just as it wasn’t up to him that, this time, the subject wasn’t shackled to the steel table or steel chair—just as it wasn’t up to him to ask questions of the System. Instead, it was up to him to use his human understanding to ask the right questions—to get the subject to reveal, intentionally or not, the truth.

The agent pulled out the steel chair from underneath the steel table, but remained standing. He took off his transparent visor to get a good, clear look at the man sitting across from him. Without all of the visor’s readings and its slight reflection of the room’s four little lights, the agent could focus on his purely human view.

The subject, Rupert, had opted for no shower or clean clothes, his hair matted, his attire dirty and browned, his beard scraggly and patchy. His eyelids drooped, the eyes looking off to the side as if the agent wasn’t even there. In fact, he showed no reaction to anything, simply slouched, hugging himself. The System had confirmed what the agent could now smell, and, given that the man had been found near a sewer drain, the agent made a logical deduction: this is just a professional wino, he thought.

But he had to see it through. No one, not even the agent, was allowed to ignore the System’s flags, no matter what his human senses told him. So he sat down, put his visor back on, and placed his palms flat on the table, as if he were ready to push himself back up and leave at any moment.

The man, his head bent to the side, his arms wrapped around his body, turned his gaze upward and looked right at the agent.

“You should just do it,” he said.

“I should do what?” the agent asked indifferently. 

“Get back up and walk out of here. You’re right. This is a waste of time.”

“That’s up to me, sir,” the agent replied, unphased by the man’s reading of his body language. “Now, explain to me your first flag, the incident on the plane. That was in—“

“It’s not up to you.”

“Sir, you may not have been informed, but I am the lead—“

“It’s up to the System.”

“Many things are up to the System.”

“Indeed.”

“So let’s get to your first flag. By the System.”

“We can just skip all of that,” the man said, leaning back, his whole posture changing, his arms crossed authoritatively, his back and neck and head straightened alertly. “All of the flags were up to the System.”

“Of course the System determines what to flag, Rupert,” said the agent impatiently, using the man’s name too soon. But before he could make a mental note of the error for his visor to record, Rupert interrupted, his voice taking on a deep and quiet tone.

“No. The System made me do it. The plane, the bank—all of it.”

Samantha held the leash tightly as she walked the dog, keeping it in the corner of her eye at all times. She was still getting used to this present from her husband, a surrogate child to help alleviate her separation anxiety. She'd been reluctant, but she decided to take the dog with her this morning as she went to the vintage toy store down the street. It was her son’s first day of school and his birthday, so she wanted to get him something special while practicing using the dog.

She didn’t know why it made her so nervous. It’s just a fuzzball with little legs and pointy ears and a bobbed tail. She thought of how a friend had said it looked like a Corgi except for its completely white coat, and that corgi’s are particularly smart. The thing looked back at her at times, as if to check if she would keep going with it, and she’d wonder if it actually thought things like that, if it could read her body language, if it could tell, somehow, that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it.

Gratefully, she saw the toy store around the corner. She’d never been before, wasn’t a vintage enthusiast like some of her lady friends. But they had all assured her that she would find something unique and fitting for her son.  Her son should have something from the past, they’d said. Something grounding him while surrounded by constant technological overload. 

Samantha entered the toy store and a little bell hanging from the wooden door dangled above her head. No technological overload here, she thought. A slightly older man smiled at her from behind an old manual register that sat on a glass counter. Samantha thought she noticed him drop the smile as he looked down at her feet, but, when she looked back up at him after checking the dog, he was smiling and verbally welcoming her to the store.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m trying to find a special, vintage toy for my little one.”
“We don’t have dog toys, ma’am,” he said, affecting a scowl—then winking, interrupting her explanation. “Is your child a boy or a girl, ma’am?”

She told him of her boy, his age, his interests—primarily swimming in the gravity pool and solving crypto-puzzles—and the man’s eyes lit up. He stepped out from behind the counter, its door swinging back and forth, and walked to a wall with slender rectangular boxes hanging. He was telling her of an old puzzle game made years ago, a classic—but the dog kept pulling her arm. She looked back and saw the wooden door of the counter swinging back and forth.

“Here it is!” the man said, turning Samantha toward him. His eyebrows were raised high over his big eyes and he gripped a box in both hands. She noticed that, despite his wide frame, his tired walk, and his thinning hair, he had the eyes of a precocious boy. Like the smart eyes of her little boy. Surely this man picked just the thing, she thought.

The man walked past Samantha and her dog and through the swinging door. He did it with little whirl and a flourish of the box, but it caused the door to swing more widely than before. The dog reacted, pulling on the leash and growling lowly every time the door swung forward—then sitting and whimpering every time it went back. They kept on, the dog and the door, alternating faster and faster, the dog pulling harder each time the door opened, until Samantha could barely hold onto the dog with both hands on its leash.

She had no idea what else to do, she was trying to listen to the store owner, but her normal whispers weren’t working. 

“Excuse me for one moment,” she said to the man before kneeling by the dog. “Yard Bot, Emergency Shutdown.”

In response, the dog’s front half slumped down, its front paws folding, along with the back paws, under itself. The head bent down, folding into the torso. Then it beeped electronically three times. 

Samantha stood back up to apologize, but the store owner was coming back through the swinging door that had started all of this. His face was red.

“Get out of here!” he began to shout, his arms waving back and forth as if to dispel a foul odor. “You think I want machines in here? This is a vintage store for a reason! Get out! You didn’t even warn me! Look at that thing, that monstrosity! No, you can’t have the chess set, no, get out! Go get your son a holo-game or a robo-cat or—just get out!”

Samantha, flustered, her new robo-dog in her arms, standing outside of the store, told herself that she would have to take this up with her husband. 

More than that, however, she kept wondering, even though she told herself she shouldn’t, she couldn't help but wonder why the man with the big eyes had reacted that way. Sure, he may be an Anachronist, she thought, but I've never seen one of them act so rudely. And, with a husband like mine, I've seen some things…

Then she remembered she still needed a toy. She put the dog back on the ground, pushed its reboot button, then, when it had unfolded itself, she let it walk her to the nearest toy store. A techno-friendly toy store.