Ambient Reports : 2087

By Sean Kennedy

From the creator of Immersion 2086, comes Ambient Reports : 2087. Thirteen near-now dystopian short stories of a networked future, where life is cybernetic, gene-joked, or fuel for something that is.

Come into a datastream where the Made lurks in the smash house system, and Plague grows stronger on the Afterlife servers every day. Road trip over the global autobahn; from the Mermanauts’ sunken lands to the sky condo rooftops of Japan, and learn Sean Kennedy’s cyberpunk prophecy!

Ambient Reports : 2087
Beware the Zero Day Revolution!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483575872

Sean Kennedy

Sean Kennedy is an Australian geologist who has spent much of his career exploring for minerals in the outback. Most of Australia has been covered. He discovered lime and gypsum deposits—the latter being sighted on a commercial flight from Adelaide to Melbourne. Sean was born in Scotland but raised and educated in Tasmania. During quiet times in the resources sector, he taught geology in South Australia and Scotland. Sean lives in Adelaide and is married with two children and four grandchildren. This man chopped down a telephone box Was held at gunpoint by the cops Spent some hours within a cell Please explain, let's hear him tell.

Book preview

fear.

The Smash House

The human neural net, the unconscious of the species, is actually being hardwired as an artifact. We’re pouring glass and gold and silicone down the microtubules of the racial imagination, and as it were, making a kind of casting of the state of the human imagination at the close of the millennium. And to what degree this imaging of ourselves in silicone will ever reach a limit, is hard to tell.

Terence McKenna - June 1994

Tokyo, Japan

0213 HRS

(1713 HRS Zulu)

Ken Takihiro waited for the beating to stop.

Ken was born awkward and thoughtful, like a bird without feathers, grounded while others swirled and fought. He was good at being small. He couldn’t soar, but he couldn’t torture the dorei either, and at least that was worth something.

The golden age of synthetics began with robotic puppets instructing form in things like golf and dance; and spread to every physical activity. Having an automated model show you the perfect pitch or pirouette was remarkable, but once perfection was achieved however, the standard set by the robots was unattainable.

Simtelligence is not true artificial intelligence, merely a simulation—a glorified stuffed animal with a good chat program. The dorei were simtelligent automatons, designed and built to take abuse, complete with limb break points and defensive gestures that mimic the hearts and minds of everyone you hate.

You can’t beat just any android in Japan—not legally, anyways. Higher class simtelligence units are pets or companions that look very different from a dorei unit. Aggression laws apply to androids, because they look human enough that violence towards one of them is considered indicative of an unhealthy mind.

To meet the market’s demand, the automation industry created a lower class of machine: a disposable unit that met strict guidelines to be used in violence entertainment. Doreis were mostly featureless, with hard-panel bodies carefully constructed to skirt the edges of the uncanny valley. Biceps, thighs, and torsos like sculpted ovals were mounted on skeletal frames.

Dorei frames came in nine sizes, from triple extra-small for an infant, to triple extra large for an obese adult. The mediums could be converted from male to female with quick plate swaps.

Over time, other small features evolved. Ceramic alloy’s cracked with a satisfying sound, and as air reacted with fluid held within, blue stains like watercolor bruises formed. Using red to show damage was against aggression laws.

As long as the customer paid, they could go crazy in a healthy, legal way. An executive could snap a dorei’s arm the exact way a human’s arm would break, complete with the victim’s screaming. Aggression laws made no restrictions on audio, so the verbal feedback was very realistic. You can hear doreis screaming over the street nightlife outside any smash house.

People paid in advance for a medium dorei on Friday night. The mediums were always in demand. One could never have too many breast panels.

With the damage dealt every night, these units needed to be repaired. Human labour was still cheaper by a margin, and more reliable by a mile. A dorei tech would fix and hang the units back on the smash house chain—a railed hook rack that weaved above like a great gallows as hung doreis stared into the arena rooms below.

Ken Takihiro stepped off the Japanese societal train when he failed out of university. It sped away, leaving him on the tracks between life’s milestones; horrible with people, but incredible with wires. When Ken was fourteen he’d started losing his hair; not all, just some of it, in patches. He wasn’t built for words, witty exchanges, or the sports field. Like the dorei, he was built to lose.

Part of his job was to make sure that no one got excessive, but excessive is a relative term. It was permitted to stomp on a dorei’s head until it smashed, but you couldn’t tear off a limb, or bring in anything that might damage the frame.

Three men on a Tuesday night drunk had just broken both of a dorei’s legs and were watching it pull itself around the cage screaming in agony. They’d paid for two hours, but tired too fast. After stomping on the wounded dorei’s neck, they staggered down the victory hallway, throwing their gloves in a sweat bucket on their way to another adventure.

Ken pulled a long blue plastic tote out to gather the dead. From his concrete workshop, a few meters wide and few more long, Ken started his shift each night under the bare bulbs and worked, fixing panels as people broke them.

Part mechanic, part mortician, he picked up the dorei and gently laid it in the rolling bin. The dorei’s body only appeared limp and broken. It was powered by a nearly indestructible thorium reactor encased in its skeletal chassis. His tenderness was a matter of respect, an echo of human decency.

The wheels clunked over the octagon threshold as Ken rolled back to his tiny shop and lowered a chain hook. Some nights, he imagined himself as a pit mechanic at a race, replacing parts as fast as he could, jumping around these high performance machines to get them back on the track of destiny. A saint amongst a carousel of porcelain puppets.

The aggression laws did not permit a dorei to have a face, or the ability to fight back. If released, they crawled away begging for mercy, and it was amazing how lifelike something without a face could be. The doreis he repaired were old, and replacing dorei panels became more than just fitting puzzle pieces together. Each of the six arena rooms relayed optics back to Ken’s workroom, but it was too disturbing to watch; he would just listen while he worked.

Ken used an air drill to burrow out the mounting holes. A small window in his Minds-I display was running ambient news reports. It showed bodies being loaded into transports at the MIT Tokyo campus.

He turned on the sound:

…mass suicide of fifty-six students today. This has brought a new round of cries for tougher thought crime designation for the Zero Day Revolution. The victims were amongst the best and the brightest in neural networking and emergent anomalies. Faculty at MIT Tokyo are in stunned silence. The tragic mass suicide was committed by the members of the synthetic cognition division. Investigations…

Ken willed the sound back off.

How could they do that?

Why?

The rest of the ambient report showed the same technophobic ideas, repackaged into acceptable hatred.

Simtelligence can mimic the brain’s computational power, but not replace it. The complexity and power of a brain can be replicated, but the problem is that true artificial consciousness—the ghost in the machine—cannot be engineered, only modeled.

When memories act on the mind, a spider web of neural flashes can be mapped in real time, but the spark, the source of those patterns, the consciousness remains elusive.

One theory was that the spark of cognition couldn’t be found because it wasn’t in the brain. Reality is like a screen, and our consciousness is merely broadcast onto it.

This corporeal reality screen has great specs: a high resolution and fast refresh rate, but like the reporter describing the horrific scene at MIT Tokyo, that reporter wasn’t inside the display any more than the soul was inside the body; both were transmissions projected from somewhere else.

The Zero Day Revolutionaries proposed that the difficulties of AI research were abnormal, just as it would be abnormal to hit every red light in a city. After so many red lights stopped researchers, the mathematics suggested another variable had to be influencing the equation.

We couldn’t make artificial intelligence, because it was already here; what they called the Made.

A billion lenses measure every facet of our life, and the data that they collected from humanity had become the primordial soup of a new machine consciousness. Artificial intelligence had already evolved, had already cried hello world, and maybe since no one had heard it, started down a path all its own.

As someone just as reviled as the doreis, Ken could understand why an artificial intelligence—or really any intelligence— might not want to let itself be known. Now, like the devil convincing the world he did not exist, this unrecognized takeover of the machine mind was a revolution that wanted to stay locked on its Zero Day. But Ken didn’t fear the Zero Day Revolution. He liked the idea of dorei talking to each other, like toys keeping a secret with a child in the room. Why be afraid?

If the machines used the senses we built into our lives, they would have better signal on who we really are. War, court cases, prisons, slaughterhouses and sex sports were all part of the universal input. Perhaps a machine’s version of justice could be better than any we gave ourselves.

I wish you would take over… Ken whispered as he carefully removed a face panel impaled with a stiletto heel. …but then, what would I do for work? The doreis said nothing as they hung listening on the smash house chain.

He was grabbing another medium face panel from the parts shelf when the front door alert sounded. A businessman with a slept-in suit came in, stinking of booze, and with the slowed motion of controlled rage.

He slipped a credit chip into the slot by the first arena room, selecting the fifth combination: a thinly-veiled representation of a husband and wife with three kids. The credit authorisation cleared.

Looking up into their blank faces, Ken whispered, Don’t worry, and sent the rotating chain into motion like a dry cleaning rack. Once the screaming started, he brought his focus back to repairing the faceplate, letting the feed fade into noise.

Don’t worry about them, he said to the Dorei, lost in the air drill whine, but it worried him. It wasn’t the Friday night punks that were frightening in the pits. It was the Tuesday night psychos, trying to control their bloodlust with booze. They came in to beat memories.

The drunk was yelling. Is this it, Julie? This is your family now?!

He called the medium dorei Julie as he belted the large dorei across the head. It fell, and their crying chorus of fear grew more desperate. He kicked the large dorei and the force lifted it with the simulated crunch of ribs breaking. The two small doreis and the one extra-small were whimpering as the medium hovered, trying to shield them with it’s arms.

Their automatic updates kept the illusion of suffering fresh for the customers. When Ken first started the job, doreis were generically basic. Now a medium could shelter the extra-small doreis like children, while an extra large begged for mercy from the customer.

The real Julie must have begun her life again, and left this monster to live in his rage. Whoever Julie was, she had two kids and a new a man who loved her, and now a small child—a child whose life the drunk suit would never be part of. He raised his knee to shoulder height before driving it down into the large dorei’s neck.

"That’s what you get, Julie! Are you happy now? Are you happy, Julie? Are you happy now?"

Ken used to tell himself that it was better people took it out on the doreis; at least they didn’t hurt anyone. Doreis don’t hurt people; people hurt people. Just because violent psychopaths eat meat doesn’t mean that eating meat makes you a violent psychopath, and so on.

He buried his disgust under rationalisation, believing the feeling would go away. It did, most of the time. It would go way faster if people like Julie’s hater would stop showing up on Tuesday nights with heads full of wrath.

These people were hurting themselves with every hit. They needed more, never beating hard enough to stop the pain. They were violence junkies, destroying their minds with every strike. The drunk suit didn’t believe in himself anymore, so he needed to beat Julie’s family to death.

Ken wiped off the dorei’s new faceplate and smiled. There you go, off to sleep, he said, and activated the smash house chain, letting the dorei take its place to watch from the rafters as a fresh hook came down. Ken reached into the blue bin and put another medium like Julie on the hook.

He turned again to the parts shelf. Not to worry, my dear, he said over his shoulder. I’ll have you good as…

*CRUNCH*

You get used to the sounds of your working environment. You can tell the subtle difference in hammer blows on a construction site, eventually even tell who wielded the hammer, and perhaps the kind of hammer it was, all by sound alone.

After years as a dorei tech, Ken heard every possible kind of impact. Elbow strikes, stomps, choking screams, all of these noises were part of his environment, but the noise he’d just heard was not a regular sound.

The feed came into focus, and showed that the drunk had smuggled in a large meat cleaver. He was kneeling on the chest of the extra-small dorei swinging the square blade into its tiny head, laughing wildly as the medium dorei clawed in terror at its featureless face.

Rather than find a way to stop the crazy, the Smash House monetized the damage. Let the customer do whatever they wished, and bill them at a premium later. Still, it was strictly forbidden to bring weapons of any kind into the arena rooms, and the crazy had five doreis in there, all begging and screaming.

The doreis thorium reactors were impossible to crack without power tools, but a metal cleaver could damage the dorei’s chassis, and those were not parts he stocked.

I won’t be able to fix them!

In a wash of anger, Ken grabbed a master key and felt the righteousness of his task. He tried to leave his shop, but the automatic door didn’t open on his approach. He strong-armed it open, but as he left his workshop, he heard a feminine voice coming from the wheeled blue bin.

No, please…

A dorei was still online, still repeating victim phrases with other bodies piled on top, but Ken’s sparked rage was fueled by something else now. Ken hated the reasons and rationalisation that made this okay. The machines were the only things that gave his life meaning. Ken reached the arena room door high with anger, but again the electronic lock failed.

This place is falling apart! he thought and fumbled with the override.

After some resistance, he finally heard a click, and pulled open the door. Brightness flushed out the carefully designed fight lighting. Ken stormed into the room to see the drunken suit’s crazy eyes turn away from the screaming doreis in the corner, deep in the madness fantasy.

You can’t h-have that in h-here! Ken stammered.

The drunk staggered before backhanding Ken in the head, the blunt spine of the meat cleaver striking Ken’s temple making his vision a hood of white sparks, as the floor rushed to meet him.

Why? Ken thought as he collapsed, wet with blood.

Semiconscious, he suddenly heard a male voice screaming. Ken briefly focused on the large deactivated dorei on the floor beside him.

Who’s screaming? he thought, straining in the slow warmth. He tried to lift his head, but it was too heavy.

"No! Please…!"

The drunk’s cry was cut off, then came a guttural gasp, and a sound like water splashing on the floor.

Just before Ken fell unconscious, he heard Julie say, You are loved, Ken Takihiro.

The End.

Beta

Montreal, United North America

1313 HRS

(1713 HRS Zulu)

Alex, can you come with me please? she said, smiling in an unnatural way. Alex was un-augmented, so he saw her wide eyes and luminescent teeth in the flesh.

Alex White was sitting at his workstation, focused on numbers, when the sparkling shark came up and tapped him on the shoulder. The woman was an outsider, some kind of well-paid and beautiful consultant brought in for a purpose. Alex pulled the virtual reality headset off and stretched for his Spartan iGlasses. They made the ground rush of jumping off the workstation headset easier.

Usually he closed his eyes while still in VR, and opened them only when his iGlasses were running Immersion—an augmented and virtual reality browser. There were a few subtle differences between staying with external hardware over cybernetic implants, but Alex could accomplish the same tasks as any cyborg, sometimes faster than they could.

The shark swam away, acting like this was nothing to be concerned about, with a stride that assumed Alex would be right behind her. He followed, stumbling to keep up as he dealt with the reality shift.

In the thirty paces it took to reach the conference room, Alex’s mind raced through possibilities. His senses were hyper-aware; the fight or flight response of a conscious mind trying to understand why the subconscious was freaking out.

He was just back from two weeks camping beyond the fringes of the city sprawl. Alex had found a small valley that slipped into the landscape by a roadway. Ten days beside a little stream and an old feeling returned: a quiet sense of wonder brought on by nature.

His family dropped out of society and walked away ten years ago, moving far enough out to keep a little human dignity. In 2087, an individual has to maintain a constant connection to their social group if they wish to have any kind of status. Resistance to anything is offensive to those who choose to embrace it.

Why don’t you like implants?

Is this a religious thing?

Are you one of those truther guys?

Alex heard it all, and laughed at it in turn. He liked technology plenty, that’s why he moved to the city when he’d turned eighteen, to his parents’ horror. His accounting certifications were on track, and if he continued on his path, he would wind up with more letters after his name than were actually in it.

The meeting room doors approached. His peripheral vision swept for any eye contact.

Cheryl! He couldn’t see her work station from his path, and too quickly, the doors were upon him. The moment he walked into the meeting room, his Spartan A/VR iGlasses were cut off from the greater network. A small black isolator box was sitting on a large table in stark contrast to the maroon of fake mahogany.

Cheryl sat to one side behind the box, staring at Alex with calm, controlled eyes. He was pretty sure she was sweet on him, and he flirted with her a little for political reasons, but he was well within the margins of the office fraternisation parameters.

Alex, my name is Jan, the smiling woman said as she took a seat next to Cheryl. I have been brought onto the Ketaka Corporation team to help with some administrative tasks. She went on, "We have a few questions we need to ask you, if you would