Hercules III - 4. Chapter 4

Hercules III

Chapter 4

Revolt

After six years, Carlos and Stefan were not like normal young humans on Hercules III, mainly due to the green chloroplasts. Their light green faces were full of seriousness; yet the way they spoke belied years of searching across a multitude of frequency patterns for the unique array that only a dying bot could transmit. In the beginning it was very difficult to pick out a unique set of modulations that slowly painted a picture of one bot among many. By their fifteenth birthday the painted picture method evolved to recognizing snippets of carrier signal which enabled Carlos—and after a bit of training, Stefan, too, took up the new skill as well—to discover a wave pattern unique to each bot on the ship. Their target was the one bot that couldn’t maintain its assigned pattern of frequencies or remain aloof to human-speak around it.

Now, they were eighteen and true to every other human on the ship they looked a few years younger than they actually were. As they aged, the gap between actual and perceived age would grow to a point where, for them, around their age of five hundred, the gap will collapse; and within a period of five years their bodies would slowly age to where the actual and perceived ages were the same and the approach to death could be measured in weeks or days. What might happen with them being green was pure speculation on their part. They knew their full age of five hundred years was more than twice the age of regular humans. It was hard to picture being five hundred eighteen.

Finally, nearing the day when they would be eligible for a transfer out of Analytics, they had come to the conclusion they couldn’t leave. As they found out, anything other than what they were doing was next to impossible. They knew there were many barriers confronting whatever proposal they decided on. First off, the ship had more “normal” people than originally planned. Most of the people were agriculturists and lived out in the two wheels; but there was a sizeable population living in cities where the spokes extended down to the rims; a configuration that made it easy to patrol all areas of the ship without provocation.

It was in those cities where the anti-green movement began. Being green now meant being seen as abnormal and a detriment to the future of the ship. Some “normal” people were talking about segregating the greens from places where “normal” people congregated. Carlos and Stefan saw they might have trouble finding outside work just because of that.

Then there was the problem of security clearances. According to Mark, they had the highest clearance on the ship, the same level as the Ship Command Staff. If they found a job, they would have to tell possible employers their security status. Whoever might consider hiring them had to understand what might be good for him was more important to the bots. The security bots would be interested in the lives of everyone working at their proposed place of employment. This included all the managers, foremen, and all the workers; plus, security would run a series of random numbers to choose a few candidates for a deeper investigation that included family members. What kind of boss was looking for that level of interference in the trust he already established with his employees?

Plus, whoever might be willing to hire them might have something on their record that would disqualify them for existing on the ship. There were so many humans that snuck onto the ship; the bots were looking for any transgression by a human as reason to expel that person from the ship. For some reason the bots on Hercules III disliked executing humans in the old fashion way of removing the victim’s head from the body with all that blood splashing all over the furniture. Maybe that was why they preferred expelling humans at the nearest airlock. Wherever they might want to go would have to be cleared with the bots; and the local bots acted as if Carlos and Stefan weren’t going anywhere, ever.

Their skill set was searching the ship for bots that had outlived their warranties and might be interested in acquiring a pair of greens. There was a rumor running through the ship that the greens had a secret process to remove the green from their bodies, while at the same time extending their owner bot’s age limit by five to ten centuries. Even after six years—since coming to Analytics—of searching there was always one bot who thought their hidey-hole offered sufficient protection from the boys’ special search methods. Those bots didn’t take into account their database entry which revealed their total history since transition of their former human component. This major storage of artificial neurons and memory bits was ignored by the very bots it affected the most.

When the day finally moved into its week of occurrence, there was a noticeable deference in the way the bots acted around all the boys in Analytics. It was like they knew the boys, especially Carlos and Stefan, were obviously unaware of something the bots were going to do, like having a going away party. Although Carlos and Stefan could’ve mentioned something was going on by reading the bots’ minds, they decided to let it run to its inevitable conclusion. Unexpectedly, one of the secondary bots broke the, up until then, secret he was supposed to be keeping out of the digital vision of both boys; but the boys knew how to keep a secret and acted like they were oblivious to what the bots had planned. Besides, their work was so stressful, any diversion was looked at with outright eagerness.

“Mark, we need to talk,” Carlos said as he and Stefan began to hook up the digital recorder, the leads to the digital transponder, and to Mark’s input/output jumper ports for another day of searching for a defective bot. “After shift is okay, but we need to do it in the shielded room.”

“Have you come to a decision in regards to your future?” Mark asked. “You’ll need to advise the personnel office of your date of departure.”

“Can we talk about that at the meeting?” Stefan asked.

“I think we can do it now, if you’re ready,” Mark said, “I’m sure scheduling will give us a few hours of shielding.”

Carlos let Stefan and Mark get ahead of him for the sole purpose of putting an extra shield on the conference room door. He wanted to make doubly sure the supervisory bots could not overhear what was being said. Mark stopped and spun his head around. A questioning expression became more pronounced as liquid metal filled in the blanks on his virtual face. Then he smiled.

“I’ve always wondered when you two would add that little tool to your repertoire,” Mark said as he sat on a chair. “No wonder the insistence for the shielded room. So, do we do this orally or strictly in our brains? I must insist that if we converse orally, you turnoff all your tools.”

“You mean we can stop this; turn it off?” Stefan asked innocently.

“Keep on using jokes like that, I’ll have to change your duty hours,” Mark said. “Do you two need some time in here so you learn all aspects of all your special talents?”

“I think we know most of them already,” Carlos admitted.

“I assume you didn’t find any acceptable employment outside our little room,” Mark said. “So, where do you want to go?”

“I think we’ve pretty much gone through all the positives and negatives of leaving. Our conclusion is probably what every boy in here comes to in one way or other,” Carlos said. “But, we still looked at what options there were in leaving, if it was only to two of the empty seats in navigation. Unfortunately, being a navigator cannot have as many opportunities as being up here.”

“I think what Carlos is trying to say is we really do enjoy working with you and look forward to that day when we are offered places in Robotic Service Consortium,” Stefan said.

“Is it that far in the future?” Mark asked. “Do either of you have any idea of your own futures?”

“We’ll live until we’ve been here for at least five hundred years or more depending on bot processes at that time,” Carlos said. “Our transition from a fully biological entity to a total electromechanical operation will be handled mostly on our own. At some point the staff will deliver two empty bot bodies in here then leave it to us to figure out how to move our minds to the new bodies. I’m not completely sure, but I think we might do it the regular way even though there might be easier ways to fully transition. I think all of it depends on bot culture when we are ready to transition. They might reject our application to transfer ourselves from a fully physiological entity to some carbon-based E/M device. I’ve done a few forward looking processes, but I encounter splits in our timelines and can’t figure them out. Do you have an explanation for that?”

“First of all, I might not make it to your transition day, it’s so far in the future, we cannot guarantee the outcome of any action that will occur now,” Mark said. “Those timeline splits are real. When you make a decision or you are a victim of some serious event, your timeline may split into a completely new multiverse. You can only go down one path. If both of you are doing the same timeline, when you come to a split, one of you needs to go down it until you reach another split or significant action. Mark your position then back out; only then can you be certain which timeline is the correct one. Whatever you do, do not close your observations too soon because that timeline might be shared with others. The last thing we need are humans and bots hung up down some timeline that ends in the middle of nowhere. When did you learn how to do forward looking?”

“A couple of years ago,” Stefan said.

“If you like, I can supervise you doing a forward look,” Mark said.

“I’d like that,” Carlos said.

“Stefan?” Mark asked.

“Oh, yeah, whatever Carlos said,” Stefan said.

“I thought the agreement was you had to turn off your talents,” Mark said. “I want to know why you violated my trust in you. Don’t give me the excuse that you don’t know how to turn off all of your special talents. You’ve been turning it on and off for as long as you discovered what you can get from a few digital rewards.”

“Uh, well, you see, back on Terra, certain people made what they called vids,” Stefan said. “Some of the vids were of one or more people doing things with each other. You know with their bodies. I like watching them when I get the chance. There it’s off.”

“If you and quite likely Carlos too, know how to split your mind so you can do one function while doing something totally different, what do you want from me?” Mark asked. “Oh, Stefan, they called it pornography.”

“I know that!” Stefan exclaimed. “What I want to know is about the static we hear whenever we go into cities looking for errant bots. In many ways it sounds like people talking.”

“Good perception,” Mark said, “but I don’t know anything about it other than it is probably people talking and thinking. Carlos?”

“Should we include humans in our searches of cities?” Carlos asked. “I’ve heard what only can be described as humans planning an attack on a bot. Then you hear the bot being attacked to the point of death, if bots can actually die. I’ve never actually heard a bot die outside of bot end of life maintenance. That may be a protective measure the bot puts in place to prevent further damage of their body or their remaining mental faculties. I know we’re primarily supposed to be looking for errant bots, but sometimes we don’t have responses from our search projections other than that noise from humans around them. Sometimes, if you listen carefully you can concentrate on the conversation. I’ve heard some intense interpersonal conversations recently that may be seen as criminal.”

“That’s spying!” Stefan exclaimed. “We’re not supposed to be listening in on human-speak or thought. We’re supposed to be looking for bots, just bots.”

“Carlos, why do you think the talking is criminal?” Mark asked.

“There’s a human in Spoke 5 Radial 1 city who seems to be a leader of a group that keeps talking about taking control of the ship and pointing it back to Hercules I, which you and I know isn’t where our old ship is now,” Carlos said. “I’m concerned about their plans of killing bots—I believe they are responsible for the “death” of at least two bots—and possibly doing harm to our ship; a lot of people could die if there was a hull breach, not to say they’re anticipating such an action. If we can intercept more of their conversations with others and get into their minds, we might be able to save bots and maybe the ship, too.”

“You need to work on getting into the ringleader’s mind,” Mark said. “If you think of a practical method, we might be able to turn his mind against him; or if deemed necessary, cause a confusion cascade through his thought processes. You have the tools necessary for that function.”

“Where do I come into this plan?” Stefan asked. “If we’re going to start spying on our resident humans, shouldn’t we ask for a mission change from the ship’s command staff?”

“Let me take care of all the mission changes,” Mark said. “As far as spying on humans, I suggest we only look for troublemakers, like these humans Carlos has found. Stefan, if you need to know techniques for filtering noise out of voices, I’m sure Carlos can help you with that.”

********

For as long as he could remember, he had the image of his father picking him up from a hospital where he had two jacks inserted in the back of his head. He, as he has done since that day, reached behind his head and ran his fingers over the two boney prominences and along the small jumper wire between them that gave him the authority to be in Spoke 5, Radial 1. He wondered how it was on Hercules I. Surely all of the bot technology here on Hercules III hadn’t come from the first Hercules.

According to the signal produced by his jumper wire, he was Jeblee 98967SW in the bot database. Introduced to prospects, he was Jeblee 98. His closest friends called him Jeb. He could count the number of his friends on both hands, sometimes more than six, sometimes less than five. He didn’t look for friends, but they continued to come to him, practically beseeching on bloody knees. Personally, he counted himself solely as a human freedom seeker, but definitely not a freedom fighter. That was the task of the prospects. Yes, the prospects would lead the charge. They would be the ones who died.

The freedom he sought was a return to Hercules where humans surely still outnumbered bots; not like here on Hercules III where there were so many bots it was not unusual to see bots standing in place because they didn’t have anything to do. They’d already culled two of these useless bots. Now, it was only a matter of taking control of the ship, turn it around, and head back to Hercules. They’d probably have to enlist the services of the bots in Ship Command, but that would be easy to do because he knew where to locate their access codes. If everything went as he thought it should, it all could be accomplished within an hour.

Unexpectedly the chimes for Jeb’s door announced the presence of a visitor. He flicked the door switch on the sofa’s arm. Outside, his friends Roderick and Bland stood where the camera could get a clear image of them on Jeb’s display in the living room. Jeb pressed the switch for the door lock and watched the two men, part of the inner circle of friends who were going to give him the answer to his request for support. For some reason, he wanted his friends to accept his plan for taking control of the ship.

“Roderick, nice to see you,” Jeb said as the two men came into the room and sat on the two overstuffed chairs opposite the sofa. He could tell by their nervousness the inner circle had come to a decision to withhold their support of his intent to fight the bots. “Bland, do you have the answer I requested.”

“You won’t like it, Jeb,” Bland said. “We took a vote and we’re unanimous about not supporting your actions. We couldn’t see it doing anything other than aggravating the bots into killing everyone who participates in your revolt.”

“I see,” Jeb said. “At least you came to give me your decision.”

“We know what will be the bots’ action,” Roderick said. “Frankly, I’m not interested in being kicked off the ship without anything to protect me from the vacuum.

“We, the prospects and me, will succeed in the fight,” Jeb said. “I just don’t know what to do with you. We were friends, but now we’re not.”

Roderick and Bland got up and walked to the front door. Roderick looked at Jeb for a moment and then followed Bland out the door.

Jeb stared at the door while thoughts of his inner circle of friends not wanting to go along with this endeavor clouded his mind. The one thing they were sure of was the bots’ ability to catch those humans that were involved in a revolt. None of the inner circle was interested in being ejected from the ship. Oh, there would be a trial first and reviews by the human leaders on the ship, plus, a review by selected bots; but it always ended with the leaders of the revolt being forced into a garbage port and being ejected into the vacuum of space. The alternative to ejection was having their minds turned into a jumble of disconnected random thoughts. The bots put these men to work on bot run farms in the outer reaches of the two rings where they’d live out their now shortened lives.

If members of his inner circle were too scared of what the bots might do to them, he’d look for support from those prospects that didn’t worry about being ejected from the ship. After all, it was only a matter of having sufficient numbers of humans to overwhelm the bots guarding Ship Command Center.

********

“Hey Stefan listen to this,” Carlos said as he pushed a packet of data across the jumpers. He continued to monitor the revolutionary as he waited for Stefan to come to the same conclusion.

“Do you have access to this human’s full identity?” Mark asked. “If we can get sufficient evidence, we should be able to wipe his mind of his insurrectionary thoughts.”

“He only has a level one jumper set,” Stefan said. “If we attempt a cleansing process within his brain, there is the high likelihood he’ll become addled prematurely. The way his brain is wired we should be able to bring him into a hospital saying his jumper cable has become defective. We’ll have a bot police contingent do the apprehension because the human might not be willing to go freely. Once in the hospital, we have two choices. We can remove the deceitfully faulty plug-in and gain access to all of his thought processes and remove all of his thoughts about attacking bots or we can simply addle his brain. In either case, we can remove his threat to the ship. Before we act, though, we’ll have to get Ship Command to study the situation. Myself, I recommend addling because if it is done right, we could get a new service semi-bot. Once we get him into surgery, the bots can decide to do one or the other.”

“Whatever we do decide on, we need to do it soon as he has something coming up in the next day or two,” Carlos said. “From what he was thinking, he’s going to try an attack on the Ship Command Center within the week.”

“I’ll advise my superiors,” Mark said. “You two keep this renegade under a high degree of surveillance. Until we get him into a hospital, he’s your responsibility.”

********

Jeb lay in bed past the time he was supposed to start work. Today was the day everything bot wise was going to change. His prospects were all fired up to start killing bots and the humans who worked with them, the greens. For years to come the story of Jeblee 98967SW will inspire the free children of Hercules I and of course Hercules III. The time the bots were going to start dying was a few hours away. The few rooms of his apartment were starting to fill up with prospects. If someone asked him how he felt, he would say he was proud of each member of his team. But he alone would bask in the hero worship in the name of Jeblee 98967SW.

Suddenly, something was going all wrong because the silence that previously filled his apartment was quickly turning into shouting and screaming. Then the unmistakable sound of some sort of bot weapon discharging an electro-bio beam that evaporated large chunks of the humans’ bodies. He went to the door to his room and watched bots severing the heads of his fallen prospects. There was a crunching sound from the opposite wall and more bots poured into the room from the hole they made in the plaster. His prospects were trying to rally against what he recognized as bot police. He remembered seeing them once in an article attached to an email produced by Ship Command. He remembered opening the message and being amazed at the sound of a human having his head vaporized. He remembered being confused at the sight and sound of the execution because he thought humans were usually ejected from the ship.

He felt light pressure around his right wrist and looked up to see a bot holding him; another approached from his left and firmly grasped his left wrist. Their faces were flat liquid metal that quivered when they turned their heads to look at him. He knew this wasn’t going to end well.

“Are you Jeblee 98967SW?” asked one of the bots.

“Yes,” Jeb whispered.

“You will accompany us to the Institute of Justice,” the other bot said.

“Willingly walking with us will be advantageous,” the first bot said. “We have the necessary weapons to incapacitate you.”

“There is little I could do willingly,” Jeb said. “I’m surprised you’re taking me to the Hall of Justice.”

“What makes you think we’re going to the Hall of Justice?” one of the bots asked. “You do not get to go to the Hall of Justice until your prosecutor determines the severity of your crime. At this time you will be charged with inciting to riot; and although it is normally a capital offense, extenuating circumstances sometimes sway the judicial staff to recommend lighter sentences. If you did not listen correctly, we are taking you to the Institute of Justice.”

“What’s lighter than death?” Jeb asked.

“You could become a bot or you might have your memories erased,” a bot said. “There are many sentences that can be imposed that do not require expulsion.”

“What do you mean by saying my memories can be erased?” Jeb asked.

“All of your mind’s memories can be erased,” the bot said. “In normal circumstances, you end up with a modified mind of a ten-year-old human. You will be given tasks suitable to your level of understanding and you do not have to become a bot. We have our standards of service capabilities, if you go that way, you will never become a full service bot. You will live until your normal approximate age of death; or if deemed appropriate, you may want to transition early. In many ways this is one of our better sentences.”

“In many ways, being turned into a bot may be the better option,” the other bot said. “If you are deemed to be guilty of capital agitation to commit mutiny, but you have extenuating circumstances, you may be offered a variety of sentences that do not include outright expulsion from the ship. After all, you were not found to be committing your crime at the time of apprehension.”