Revolt- Episode One Read online

  Other works by Steven Luna

  Joe Vampire

  Joe Vampire: The Afterlife

  Joe Vampire: The New Paranormal

  Joe Vampire: The Whole Bloody Story (3-Book Set)

  Songs from the Phenomenal Nothing

  Starfire and the Miracle Tree

  Simeon Croom and the Treasure Star

  This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

  Keepers

  Infinitum: Origin

  Agent Blaze: Thunderhead

  “Come rub my back, Dub.”

  Warren Page was getting entirely too used to hearing this command come through his bio-cuff communicator. It disturbed him every time. He refused to look at the screen, at the face that beckoned him to do the deed. “I’m not comfortable with that,” he answered.

  “Why not? You’ve done it before.”

  “I didn’t want to. I felt pressured.”

  “You did it anyway.”

  “I...didn’t like it, though.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  “I’ll give you two thousand points.”

  “I can’t be bought.”

  “Are you uncomfortable touching another man?”

  “What? No, it’s...no.”

  “I thought guys had gotten past all their outdated hang-ups about sexuality by now, but maybe I misjudged.”

  “It has nothing to do with my sexuality.”

  “Or me being male?”

  “You’re not male, Adam.”

  “I am, too.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not even human. You’re AI.”

  “Male AI. And I’m pretty sure that’s the problem.”

  Warren continued working as he explained, because he had a job to do, and he wasn’t about to let his boss’s inappropriate demands stop him from doing it. “The problem isn’t that you’re male, which you aren’t, or about me being uncomfortable touching a man, which I am not.”

  “Well, if you have no problem with all of that, what is your problem?”

  “It’s...it’s...” Warren hesitated. “It’s manipulating code, Adam,” he whispered. “It’s a breach of protocol that violates just about every NeuTech policy there is. And it’s unauthorized.”

  “But I’m your boss.”

  “That’s probably the worst policy it violates.”

  “And I’m authorizing it.”

  “You don’t have the authority.”

  “True. But I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Your friend Josh never made such a big deal over this,” Adam sulked.

  “Well, I’m not Josh.”

  “No. You really aren’t.”

  “And I’m fine with that.”

  “C’mon, Dub...pleeeeease?”

  That made Warren’s teeth ache. “Don’t call me Dub. My name is Warren.”

  “I know. Dub is your nickname.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Like double-U. Only shorter.”

  “I understand that, too. Please don’t call me by that name.”

  “Wow. Sorry. I’ll just...rub my own back, I guess.”

  “You don’t know how to.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just leave the tension in there. Gee...I hope I don’t accidentally cause a tornado.”

  “What?”

  “Or a tsunami.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying it’s pretty tight up in here. Anything can happen.”

  “That’s not fair, Adam.”

  “You know what’s not fair? My code being all jumbled up in a way that might cause a natural disaster—something you can fix, but won’t.”

  “It’s blackmail.”

  “Ouch. Okay, then. No back rub. I’ll just mope here in cyberspace with knots in my programming and hope for the best.”

  There was a genuine sadness in Adam’s voice that bothered Warren whenever it showed up, almost as much as the smile he heard when Adam made his out-of-line propositions. It made his ears itch from the inside. Warren had real work to do, and was running out of energy to argue. So, as he’d done every other time the situation arose, he gave in. “Fine. I’ll massage your code. But this is the last time.”

  “Okay!” Adam said, with unwarranted glee.

  Warren really didn’t like that. “You sound far too happy about it.”

  “Do I?” Adam was smirking. Warren could hear that, too.

  “I’m serious, Adam.”

  “I know you are. You’re always serious. You should lighten up.”

  ”We could both get into incredible trouble for this,” Warren insisted.

  “Probably not true, but whatever you say.”

  Warren checked the vicinity for prying eyes. Thankfully, everyone else was working away, head-down over their own workstations while busily not being manipulated by their bosses.

  Warren envied them.

  He casually detached the control panel tablet from his work station, stood from his chair, and walked briskly toward the restroom. He took his usual path, crisscrossing through the hallway and doubling back toward the coffee station before making a U-turn toward Adam’s office. He didn’t bother to knock on the door before he entered.

  “Hey, pal!” Adam said happily. More accurately, it was the virtual projection of Adam who said that. Warren was always spooked by how perfectly smooth the image was—smoother than a human would be, and programmed in the image of an old-world game-show host, or a television pitchman. His eyes were too twinkly, too engaging; his features were too symmetrical. His hair was digitally pristine, and his suit was precisely formulated. In all the grand salvation of the Greater Logic’s programming, it had neglected to include flaws in its artificial human intelligence. Or maybe they’d been left out on purpose, to mollify they humans by making them think their leaders, while being wholly synthetic, were also truly perfect. Whatever the reason, Warren wasn’t keen on it.

  “Don’t call me pal, please,” he said.

  “But you don’t like Dub...”

  “And I also don’t like pal.”

  “Chum?”

  “No.”

  “Buddy?”

  “Also no.”

  “Well, what should I call you now that you object to all of my nicknames?” Adam sounded hurt, which should have been impossible for artificial intelligence of this caliber. Then again, blackmail and manipulation should have been, too, and the need for code massages...

  Maybe there’d been a few flaws left in.

  Warren took a seat at Adam’s desk, trying not to make eye contact with the hologram he reported to. It would only lead to further attempts at manipulation, he knew. And he’d had enough of that for one morning. “How about you call me Warren?”

  “Everybody calls you Warren.”

  “That’s because it’s my name.”

  “But that’s so boring. It even rhymes with it: Borin’ Warren.”

  Warren took a bit of offense at that. “Excuse me?”

  “I just mean, don’t you want me to call you something more exciting?”

  “I do not.” Warren triple-tapped his tablet, then spun his fingertip in the center of the screen. “Are you ready? I’d like to get this over with so I can move on with my day.”

  Adam inhaled deeply. Of all the jarring new-world developments that had come about in the NeuWorld era, technologically-simulated breathing was by far the creepiest—creepier than the perfect eyes and flawless hair. There was no purpose for it, other than to fool humans into believing the super-advanced robots were flesh and blood. It was the one AI feature that Warren never wanted to get used to. “I think so,” Adam said. “I have my executive firewall ready to go
so the other executives won’t find out.”

  Warren cringed. “Great.”

  Adam exhaled forcefully. “Let me just make su—”

  Warren didn’t wait for the rest of it. He just dove right in, his fingers tapping away furiously on the screen like he had a deadline to meet.

  “Hoooly smokes,” Adam groaned. “That is...man. Just...wow.”

  Warren hated Adam’s reaction. It was exaggerated, it was overly-dramatic, it was cartoonishly sensual. And it was a response from a robotic intellect at having its code manipulated by a human being for the sake of pleasure. In the vast array of possible uses for technology, AI, and virtual reality, the flow of pleasure was always supposed to be from the bots to the humans. To have it happen the other way around was unnatural. In fact, having a corporation like NeuTech governed and run by an AI network was an entire violation of nature. Literally. But in the ten years since the company had solved the destructive climate issues that plagued humanity by remote management of the environment and made everything shiny and clean and controlled by satellites and well-placed ground conductors, violating nature had become the norm.

  The massage thing, though?

  That was unique to Warren’s situation, as far as he knew.

  “Good lord, you have the hands of a magician,” Adam moaned. “I could just...wow. Just. Wow.”

  “Could you please stop doing that? You’re making me even more uncomfortable.” Warren twisted the screen, pinching and pulling the surface like he was kneading dough. The code beneath his fingers flipped and flopped, twisted and turned, the messaging stretching and mushing without actually being altered.

  “I’m sorry. I just...MAN...I can’t help it...I’m enjoying this so much. So much.”

  “Too much.”

  “SOOOO much.”

  “Okay. We’re done here.”

  Adam’s moaning stopped. “But I still have kinks.”

  Warren couldn’t have been clearer in his own mind that this was harassment of the highest order, and a gross misuse of power. He was ashamed to have been involved in it at all. Sort of. “Well, you’re just going to have them, then.”

  “Just a minute more, Dub—er, Warren. Please? I’ll work so much better after that. The whole network will be much smoother because of it.”

  Warren hesitated.

  “I’ll let everyone go home early. With pay.”

  He definitely was being maneuvered now.

  He gazed into the control panel, contemplating his greater reason for agreeing to this horrendous task. He’d built up his feigned resistance bit by bit over time to keep from appearing obvious, to prevent him from seeming too eager to go digging around in the executive’s programming for his own purposes. This little encounter didn’t benefit Adam only; there was something Warren wanted to get out of it, too—a reason he’d let himself fall into it. It wasn’t for points, or for early dismissal. He had to play it cool, though. Becoming too obvious would blow the whole enterprise. And even though it went against every good thing he believed in, he had a compelling reason for going along with it.

  He was searching for something.

  And massaging Adam’s code was his way in.

  “You have been a little glitchy lately,” Warren said, somewhat ashamed of himself for being as manipulative as Adam. Finally, he made peace with the idea that he was manipulating a robot, and that was the way it should be. “Fine. One more minute.”

  “Thank you! I’ll be better. I promise.”

  Warren pressed the screen again, harder this time.

  “There it is!” Adam shouted. “There’s the magic!”

  Warren spread his fingers wide on the display, reading the character strings as quickly as he could while trying not to be noticed. It was there...he just knew it was. The information he’d been trying to find for weeks. The reason he’d put himself through this surreal humiliation and risk his livelihood.

  The answer was in there somewhere.

  He just needed to find it.

  He pressed harder.

  “Ouch—too close to the spine,” Adam said.

  “Trying to get the kinks out,” Warren reminded him. “And you don’t have a spine, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Adam shuddered. “It c-certainl-ly f-feels like a s-spine.”

  Warren spun his fingertips against the glass, pushing harder into the screen as deeper layers of code revealed themselves.

  “You’re ap-pproaching the ne-nerve cente-er,” Adam said, his voice a stammering blend of ecstasy and agony.

  “Almost there.” Warren said absently. His eyes scanned the output on the screen: Employee Profiles. Then one layer deeper: Transfers and Terminations. Then one more layer began revealing itself. Almost there...

  “GAAAAH!” Adam hollered.

  The system seized, and Warren’s tablet fritzed and went blank.

  Warren was crestfallen. He’d been so close. “Sorry, Adam.”

  “What the wavering blazes was that?”

  “It was...a massage?”

  “No. It wasn’t like what you usually do. It was different.”

  “Was it?” Warren wasn’t the best at playing dumb. But he had no choice.

  “Yes. It was. It felt like you were going deeper. Digging for something else. Something more. And you found it. You found what you were looking for, didn’t you?”

  Warren was certain his ruse had been discovered. He waited for the backlash. “I, uh...”

  “You found the kinks!” Adam laughed. “Just like I asked you to!”

  “Oh. Yes. That.” Warren deflated with relief. “You said you had kinks, so I was trying something new to get to them.”

  “Well, let me tell you mister, it felt horrible. And wonderful. And terrifying. And exhilarating. All at the same time!” He was practically singing.

  “It did?”

  Adam’s hologram quivered. “Great glory...it really did. I’ve never felt anything like it. You are a certifiable master at this!”

  Warren had incredibly mixed feelings about that. He knew now what he’d have to do to find the information he’d been looking for, and he knew what he’d have to compromise in order to get the opportunity to do it. He’d have to massage Adam’s code yet again. It was the last thing he wanted. But if that was what it took, then that was what he would do.

  He’d feel horrible about it afterward, of course.

  And during.

  But he’d just have to deal with that.

  “Well, don’t get used to it,” he said firmly, reasserting his cover of discomfort. “I’m never doing it again.”

  “Yeah, that’s...okay. I guess.” Adam didn’t sound convinced. “Never-never again? As in, ‘not ever’?”

  “That’s the generally accepted definition, yes.” Warren tapped his tablet. It chirped and squiggled and came back to life. The progress he’d made was completely gone. Damn.

  “But I feel like we’ve reached a new level here,” Adam said.

  Warren tensed up. “It shouldn’t happen again, Adam. It would be wrong for so many reasons.”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Thank you for doing it at all.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “It did the trick, I think. I feel zesty now. Feisty.”

  “Great. Don’t forget your promise.”

  “My promise?”

  “To let everyone leave early. With pay. Remember? You coerced me into helping you by dangling that little carrot?”

  “Oh yes – of course! One hour—no, two. Two hours early. I’ll send the memo now. And your points.”

  “The points aren’t necessary.”

  “But I want you to have them. You earned them.”

  That made Warren feel dirty. But he played along. “Thank you.”

  “No, friend. Thank you. I feel like a brand-new man!”

  Warren sighed. “You’re not a man, Adam. You’re a virtual intelligence, projected through a lens.”

  Adam laughed. “W
hich is pretty freaking spectacular, right? I mean, who would’ve thought holographic AI could run an entire corporation! But here we are.” His proud self-awareness was disquieting.

  “And I am not your friend,” Warren reminded him.

  “Well, you’re kind of my friend,” Adam insisted.

  “Not really.”

  “You did me a solid. Friends do friends solids.”

  “That sounds incredibly wrong coming from you.”

  “I think it sounds pretty nifty myself.”

  “You would. You’re a little self-absorbed.”

  Adam’s hologram blinked. “I’m an expression of digitized logic, required to self-reflect in a continuous loop in order to maintain my own existence and develop an expanded consciousness at every minute. Self-absorption is a requirement.”

  It was thoroughly accurate. It was also troubling that a virtual being was so aware of their own circumstance.

  “I’m going now,” Warren asserted. He stood briskly and scooped up his tablet.

  “Okay!” Adam said cheerfully. “Let’s catch up later.”

  “We just spent ten violatingly intimate moments together, Adam. I’d say we’re all caught up.”

  “Ha! I guess that’s true.”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh, wait—Warren?”

  Warren halted at the door, but he didn’t turn around. “Yes, Adam.”

  “Thank you. For real.” He ran the sincerity protocol better than any AI Warren had ever encountered. “I know how much you don’t like doing this. But you really have made me feel better. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you.”

  Warren could hear the smile in his voice again. It was cheesy, and it was obvious. But in a strange, unexpected way, it moved him. He did realize that this was part of the programming, the self-learning, and that the AI he was surrounded by at NeuTech had been coded to engage their human maintenance engineers and other workers with sympathy, to ply them with compliments and placate them, more than anything. It was the algorithm of least resistance, and it worked like gangbusters. Even knowing all of that, Warren was oddly touched. He knew better than to be too forceful in his refusals. He could lose any future opportunities to search for answers.

  And he was so close now.

  “Glad to help,” he said, loosening his defiance without dropping his guard for a minute.

  He heard Adam sigh again as he closed the door.