Beyond Human: The Iron Eagle Series: Book: Twenty-Eight

By Roy A. Teel, Jr.

“There is no way this is happening!”

Back Matter:
For Markus Levin, artificial intelligence isn’t just an interest; it’s a calling. As a child prodigy and now respected computer engineer and tenured professor at one of the world’s most reputable universities, Caltech, he was on the cutting edge of android development. Teo, his first prototype android, not only looked human, but assisted the elderly widow of one of his angel investors in her home. Thelma Brooks seemed relatively healthy but in the early stages of Alzheimer’s when she passed away suddenly while under Teo’s care. But as Jim O’Brian and John Swenson soon discover, her death was hastened by Levin’s android, and what seems on the face to be mere science fiction turns out to be science fact with a shocking twist.

CONTENT WARNING: PLEASE READ BEFORE DOWNLOADING ANY IRON EAGLE SERIES NOVEL:

***Content Warning: While the Iron Eagle Series can be read out of order as a stand-alone novel, the reader should be advised that backgrounds and details of the characters may be confusing if the reader choose to do so, as this series has a natural maturation. The Iron Eagle Crime novel series contains mature subject matter, graphic violence, sexual content, language, torture and other scenes and subject matter that may be disturbing to sensitive readers. This series is not intended for anyone under the age of eighteen, reader discretion is advised.***

Inside Flap:
Los Angeles Medical Examiner Doctor Jade Morgan had a close relationship with her uncle Wilbur before his passing but was no fan of his widow. The feelings were mutual on Thelma’s side, and she spent her days being assisted by an experimental android named Teo. As one of six units assisting the elderly and disabled in Los Angeles homes, Teo’s presence allowed Thelma to live comfortably until she died suddenly from seemingly natural causes. Upon deeper inspection, revealing videos of unusual behavior surface, and John Swenson and Jim O’Brian begin to unravel a development in artificial intelligence that will change the course of history, and not necessarily for the better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Narroway Press
• Release date: Mar 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781943107537

Book preview

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2021 by Roy A. Teel Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher. ®The Iron Eagle Logo is the copyright and registered trademark of Roy A. Teel Jr. and is used by permission.

NWP_1.psd

Narroway Publishing LLC.

Imprint: Narroway Press

P.O. Box 1431

Lake Arrowhead, California 92352

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Edition

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-943107-53-7

Teel, Roy A., 1965-

Beyond Human: A Novel, The Iron Eagle Series: Book Twenty-Eight /

Roy A. Teel Jr. – 1st ed. – Lake Arrowhead, Calif.: Narroway Press,

c2021. p.; cm. ISBN: 978-1-943107-53-7 (Ebook)

1. Hard-Boiled – Fiction. 2. Police, FBI – Fiction 3. Murder – Fiction 4. Serial Killers – Fiction

5. Mystery – Fiction 6. Suspense – Fiction. 7. Graphic Violence – Fiction. 8. Graphic-sex – Fiction

I. Title.

Book Editing: Finesse Writing and Editing LLC

Cover and Book Design: Priceless Digital Media

Author Photo: Z

DEDICATION

I am really quite close. I am very close to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me. It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential.

—Elon Musk/2018

ALSO BY ROY A. TEEL JR.

Nonfiction:

The Way, The Truth, and The Lies: How the Gospels Mislead Christians about Jesus’ True Message

Against the Grain: The American Mega-church and its Culture of Control

Fiction:

The Light of Darkness: Dialogues in Death: Collected Short Stories And God Laughed, A Novel

The Plane Trip: A Short Story

The Savior: A Short Story

The Iron Eagle Novel Series:

Rise of The Iron Eagle: Book One

Evil and the Details: Book Two

Rome Is Burning: Book Three

Operation Red Alert: Book Four

A Model for Murder: Book Five

Devil’s Chair: Book Six

Death’s Valley: Book Seven

Cleansing: Book Eight

Rampage: Book Nine

Dark Canyon: Book Ten

Deliverance: Book Eleven

Phoenix: Book Twelve

Pray: Book Thirteen

Equality of Mercy: Book Fourteen

Metro: Book Fifteen

Reaper: Book Sixteen

Encryption: Book Seventeen

Selfie: Book Eighteen

Suffering: Book Nineteen

Ransom: Book Twenty

Middlemen: Book Twenty-One

Suburban: Book Twenty-Two

Masquerade: Book Twenty-Three Anthem: Book Twenty-Four

Blood Eagle: Book Twenty-Five

Comforter: Book Twenty-Six

Savage: Book Twenty-Seven

THE IRON EAGLE

By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

— Stephen Hawking

962.jpg

Seal of The Iron Eagle™

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Ambush

About the Author

chapter_title_icon.tif

CHAPTER ONE

What kind of unusual readings?

Jade was sitting with Jessica in the front row of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California. John and Sara were seated a few rows back with Chris and Karen as well as Jim and Cindy. The casket for Jade’s aunt, Thelma Brooks, was adorned with multiple flower sprays, and visitors were paying their last respects. Jade sat perfectly still as those who knew her aunt stopped to give her their condolences.

Doctors Markus Levin and Sophia Campos were seated near John and the rest of Jade’s friends as was Alice Walker, the head engineer for Levin Robotics Incorporated. Alice had discovered Thelma’s body at her home after being sent out to the house to check on her experimental assistance android, Teo, three days earlier. The church was packed, and as the services got underway, Jade and Jessica sat holding hands, neither showing any emotion. The service lasted a little over an hour, then the body was transported to Mountain View Cemetery where Thelma Brooks was buried next to her husband Wilbur, who had died five years earlier at seventy-six.

When the ceremonies were over, and the crowd dispersed, Jade and Jessica joined up with the others for drinks at Santiago’s. Jim was seated in his usual spot with Cindy by his side. John and Sara were near the head of the table with Chris and Karen. Javier saw the two women come in and poured two drinks and brought them over to the table. The old man didn’t say anything; he simply hobbled back to his seat and his paper. Jade took a sip of her drink and then a deep breath and said, Well, thank fuck that’s over.

Jessica started laughing, and John and Jim looked on as Cindy and the other women had looks of shock on their faces. Sara said, That was your aunt, Jade, your only living relative.

Yeah. So?

I thought you’d be mourning her death.

When my uncle died a few years back, I mourned. He was a good man, and I loved him. He took me in after my parents died before he married that old hose bag. I remember when he told me he was going to marry the bitch. He’d been a lifelong bachelor and was always in demand because of the money he had made in the oil industry. I was in my third year of medical school and begged him not to marry her, but he did it anyway. Thelma was one nasty gold digger. He would often confide in me after they married that death couldn’t come soon enough for him. It would be a respite from Thelma.

If he was unhappy, why did he stay married?

He was getting older. Money can only buy a man so much good will even with hookers. He had pieces of ass on the side, but he also knew that if he divorced Thelma, she would make his life even worse, so they lived separate lives until he died of a heart attack. She drove him there, too. She thought she was going to get his money. The joke was on her, though. I remember the will and trust reading. He left her a pittance to live on, and she was allowed to stay in his home in Pasadena until she died, but his whole estate was left to me upon her death. Oh, was she pissed. I remember the tantrum she threw in the lawyer’s office. She called me every name in the book, but even I was shocked that he left his money and property to me. I had no idea. We never spoke about it, and suddenly I was the heir to a large fortune.

I didn’t know your uncle was so well off, Jade, John said.

Yeah, well, there was nothing to talk about. I didn’t know he was leaving everything to me until his death. By then I had been living in your guest house for several years, and I still hadn’t inherited anything.

Karen asked, Did you know Jade’s aunt and uncle well, Jess?

Wilber was a great person. I really liked him. Thelma was a bitch, and it only got worse when they learned she had early onset Alzheimer’s. He didn’t want to deal with her, so he invested in Markus Levin’s robotics company that was working on assisted living androids. Thelma was pissed when she found out that he had not only made the investment, but that he also signed them up to be test subjects for the first Teo prototype.

John drank the last of his tonic water and asked, You did the autopsy. Do you have a cause of death?

Jade laughed. Well, if being a stone-cold bitch was a proper cause of death that’s what I would put on the death certificate, but for now we’re waiting for the toxicology reports to come in.

I’m sorry that things weren’t good between you, but now that they have both died, what are you going to do?

Shit, John. I don’t know. I love that house in Pasadena, so Jessica and I will most likely move in once the estate stuff is over. My uncle was worth millions, and he divested himself of his holdings other than the robotics lab years ago, so there’s a shitload of money coming my way.

Karen asked, Are you going to stop working?

Jessica looked at Jade and smiled. Jade said, I have no plans to retire. I still love what I do. It’s just more money for our nest egg and will give Jess and I the freedom to stop working anytime we like.

Jim stubbed out his cigarette and took a drink of his beer and asked, What about this Teo thing? What the fuck was that all about? I mean, the thing looked human, but it’s a fuckin’ robot, right?

Yes. I’m not sure what will happen to it since it’s a prototype. I assume it will go back to the robotics company and then be placed as a caregiver in another home. That is a question for Markus more than me.

Do you know Mr. Levin well?

He’s one of those computer geeks. My uncle met him when he was a grad student and really liked what he was doing with artificial intelligence. When Markus finished school, he was teaching full-time and trying to start up his own company. My uncle dropped several million dollars of venture capital on him for a hefty number of shares in the company. I know they were close at the time of his death, and while my aunt hated Markus, she grew to love the technology that was caring for her. She developed a weird relationship with Teo after my uncle’s death.

Relationship? What the fuck kind of relationship can you have with a robot?

It’s AI, Jim. Teo is a robot that works autonomously. It learned my aunt’s likes and dislikes and adapted to her attitude. They became very close.

Jim finished off his beer and opened another. So, your aunt had the hots for a robot?

That’s as good a word as any. I don’t know that much about the relationship. I just know that before my uncle’s death he told me that she referred to Teo as the husband she always wanted, obedient and giving, all the things she told my uncle he wasn’t.

Sounds like the Alzheimer’s was more advanced than you or anyone else knew.

Maybe. When we got on scene, Alice Walker, the head engineer at the robotics company, was at the house. She was called in to check on some issues that Teo was having, and she found my aunt dead.

What kind of issues? John asked.

I don’t know. It was moot. My aunt was dead; Alice was in shock when we arrived. Jim and Margo arrived before me to be supportive, though I know Jim wanted to see my reaction to her death as he knew I hated her.

Jim laughed, and John pressed, So, you don’t know what type of issues this android was having before your aunt’s death?

No. Why would I care?

Artificial intelligence is a booming field these days. Sandy Cutler has been working with it in her lab and in other aspects of police work, like biohazard situations. We’re working to take humans out of the loop, so if the unthinkable happens, it’s a robot who is impacted and not a human being.

I still don’t understand what that has to do with my aunt. She had a robot. Big deal. It was a prototype. If you want to know more about the issues with it, ask Alice or Markus. They could answer your questions. For now, a toast. Everyone raised their glasses. To my dead bitch aunt and to the memory of my uncle.

6906.jpg

Alice had been quiet since discovering Thelma Brooks’ body a few days earlier. Teo had been brought back to the lab and was being put through the paces. They had been talking about wiping its memory and deploying it to a new test customer. Markus and Sophia had made time to meet with Alice to go over the situation to learn what they could about the issues it was having at the time of Thelma’s death. Markus had called a meeting of all of the heads of his departments to speak about the loss, then he and Sophia held a private meeting with Alice.

The three were sitting in a conference room, and Markus asked, What do we know about the malfunctions in the Teo at the Brooks home?

Not much. Sophia asked me to do some diagnostics on the unit after several unusual readings.

What kind of unusual readings?

Teo had reportedly talked back to Thelma and wasn’t obeying commands. I ran a remote diagnostic on him, and there were a few anomalies with the processor, so I went out to the house to change out some parts and found Ms. Brooks dead.

So, the unit wasn’t following her commands?

That’s what she said, but she was mentally ill, so there is a good chance it wasn’t Teo. There could’ve been problems with the types of commands she was giving. She was losing more and more of herself over the past year, and while Teo was trying to cope and learn, her commands were getting harder to understand. It could have gotten confused. Teo and Thelma had a close relationship, so if there was a malfunction that could be what happened. I think we would be better served by not putting these units with people with diminished intellectual capacities. Our units are designed to learn and interact with humans who remain logical and lucid. When you start losing that type of communication, it could have devastating effects on both the android and the owner.

Markus crossed his arms after Alice spoke and looked at Sophia. Did her Teo give her medication?

Yes, Markus. We integrated that into its program two years ago. Since Mr. Brooks had passed, and Thelma didn’t want a human caregiver, Teo was medicating her.

This could be a real issue, Sophia. The AI isn’t reliable enough to dispense medication. If it mixed something up that caused Thelma’s death, it is going to be devastating for the company and the program. People are getting killed in self driving cars, and we are experimenting with a whole new technology that has cognitive reasoning and learning capabilities; however, an android should never be trusted to give a person medication.

I know an autopsy was performed, and Jade told me that they would run toxicology reports, but we might not know the results for several weeks.

Markus sat back in his chair. Jade now owns all of her uncle’s shares in Levin Robotics, and it is a substantial holding. Before her uncle passed, we were talking about doing an IPO, and we are in that process now. If this situation turns out to be android error, that could destroy everything we have been working for.

Humans program the machines, Markus. It would still be a human error.

No, Sophia. We install the program. The units are autonomous and learn at super high rates. That’s what makes my technology so unique. There’s no one pulling the strings. The units report back to the labs each day and self-check, but for all intents and purposes they are a new life form.

chapter_title_icon.tif

CHAPTER TWO

You could find yourself on the receiving end of something really unpleasant.

Jade and Jessica were preparing several autopsy reports and reading over others when they received a call from the state’s crime lab. Bil l Low was the head of the lab. The fact that he was calling meant there was something serious going on. Jade put the phone on speaker, and Jessica shut the door.

Jade, the labs just came in on your aunt.

And?

She died of an overdose of digoxin.

She wasn’t on that drug. My uncle took it for his heart condition, but my aunt didn’t have a heart ailment.

I’m just telling you that overdose is the cause of death. I think you need to talk to her caregivers because this is serious. If she wasn’t on this drug, you might have to rule this a homicide.

The only caregiver my aunt had was an experimental android called Teo.

She was involved in Levin Robotics experimental android program?

Yes.

Then you better get ahold of the authorities because this doesn’t look good.

And tell them what, Bill? That my aunt was murdered by an android? The machines don’t work like that. Levin’s units do look and sound human and can do many wonderful things, but, in the end, they are programmed by humans to interact with them.

Look, Jade, I’m calling as a courtesy. I have to report my findings to Levin Robotics since she was in their experimental study. You need to report this to law enforcement, so they can open a file to try and learn how this happened.

She had to have confused her medications with my uncle’s. That’s the only thing I can think of.

Did you treat her death like a crime scene?

No.

Has anyone been in the house since your aunt’s death?

Not that I’m aware of.

Well, you might want to get over to the house and check it out to see if she had digoxin in her medicine rotation. She did have early stage Alzheimer’s, right?

Correct.

Then there may be nothing sinister here, just an old woman confused about what medication she was taking. No matter what, this needs to be investigated from several fronts — yours, law enforcement’s, and Levin’s, especially if there was no human interaction in her day-to-day living.

My aunt wasn’t that far gone, Bill. She was doing rather well, and her cognitive function wasn’t so impaired that she would mix up medications. She had her moments but nothing like the end stages of the disease. Jessica and I will go over to the house and check it out. I don’t think I need to bother law enforcement with this.

It’s a suspicious death, Jade, and from what I have read you had a ton to gain from it.

What the fuck? Are you suggesting that I had something to do with Thelma’s death?

I’m suggesting that you have a motive to want her dead. If you call in the cops now, that motive will be reduced dramatically. If you don’t, you could find yourself on the receiving end of something really unpleasant.

6891.jpg

Jim and Margo were sitting on the smoker’s bench when Jade called and said, Jim, I need you and your CSI team at my aunt’s house right away.

What’s going on?

The toxicology reports came back this morning, and it appears that my aunt died of a drug overdose.

Okay. Have you been back to the house to look for a note or anything?

No, but Bill Low just gave me the news, and the report is being sent over to me as well as to Levin Robotics.

Why would he send the forensic toxicology report to Levin?

The android taking care of my aunt was the only thing that was around her, so they need to know how my aunt died. She had a drug in her system that she should never have been taking.

What was the drug?

Digoxin.

Did she have a heart condition, or was she in heart failure?

No. My uncle was, so the medication could’ve been left over after his death.

Okay. I’ll go out with a few team members and look around. Are you coming?

Jessica and I will meet you at the house.

After Jim hung up, Margo asked, What was that all about?

Jade Morgan called to tell me that her aunt died of a digoxin overdose.

Interesting, but why are we going out there?

It’s a formality. I’m sure it was an accidental OD or a suicide. Bill Low called with the toxicology reports, and he probably told her to call the cops because she has a motive to kill her aunt.

He thinks Jade murdered her aunt?