PrincessColumbia

  “Computer, cross-index the transaction history from the central bank for the credit serial numbers to the servers referenced in the agency interview files.”

  “Creating index...cross-linking...completed. Three servers referenced in agency files not on credit transaction history, five servers in transaction history not present in agency file records.”

  “Query servers not in case file history and download log files that match the interactions of the S.A.I. subject of investigation.”

  “Beginning query, please wait.”

  “While you’re doing that, show me the files for the agency records not on the transaction history.”

  Three folders rezzed in on her bed. She smiled and picked them up, gncing around, “Computer, add a standing desk to the right of the console desktop, about three feet by five feet, adjustable height.” Her smile grew as the requested furniture materialized next to her. It may be ‘child-like’ wonder that was cutting through her anxiety and worry, but she’d take it over the absolute maelstrom of emotions she’d been experiencing since ying eyes on the girl named Sani.

  Setting each folder on the table, she flipped them open and checked the metadata, represented in these ‘folders’ as a cover page, “Computer, what’s the time stamp on the earliest transaction on the credits? And give it to me in a ‘T-minus’ based on the encounter with the S.A.I. subject on the game server from the start of the investigation.”

  “Unclear instruction.”

  Diane sighed, “Using the events provided in the logs of the first server I visited during this holo-session, create time reference of T-minus-Zero. Once time reference is set, provide the T-minus timestamp for the earliest transaction on the credit serial numbers.”

  “T-minus sixty-seven hours.”

  Her eyebrows went up, Wow...a little under three days from going rogue to self-exfil with enough credits to buy a new outfit? if I wasn’t in compressed time myself I’d consider that timeline suspect, “Okay...so this one probably goes here...” she used Geoffry’s notes on approximate times of tracking the rogue through the network to shuffle the folders into a likely-correct order, “Computer, how’s that query for the log files coming?”

  “98 percent complete.”

  “Excellent,” she grabbed the edge of her HUD/console jerryrig and moved it to the side, “Set the time frame for the events discussed in this interview,” she tapped on the folder she’d determined was the earliest record of the A.I. going rogue, “As the beginning of the timeline. Use the log files in all compiled files and downloaded logs to reconstruct a visual record of the events. Recreate the path of the S.A.I. from the starting point to the final log files of my st encounter with it.”

  “Processing...completed.”

  As soon as the computer announced it was ready, a sudden wave of vertigo crashed over Diane. She steadied herself by putting her hands on the standing desk and breathing deeply. She attempted to still her mind, but into any stillness flooded her doubts and fears.

  What if the rogue survived?

  What if the A.I. had found a new way to evade the hunts?

  What if the A.I. are really sves and I’m the sver?

  More terrifying to her than any of the other thoughts, however, was the possibility that had caused her to freeze up in the face of one of the enemies of humanity: What if I killed a child?

  Anger, rage at herself bubbled up from inside of her. Her fingers curled up against the desk surface, her cws snapping out and digging furrows in the holographic wood. She was gritting her teeth so hard she could hear creaking inside her own skull. They’re not alive, they’re NOT ALIVE! You can’t kill something that was never alive in the first pce! The anger was good, it helped in this case. It flooded out the fear.

  “Computer!” she snapped, “Begin pyback!”

  “You promise I aint gonna get arrested for this? I did my best, really!”

  Geoffry’s voice pyed over the action, or ck of it, of the TV studio-style VR environment Diane was watching, “The American code for A.I. that have gone rogue absolves the owners of the hardware and software of all legal culpability. Unless the investigation reveals that you aided and abetted the A.I. in going rogue or was discovered to have pnted the malicious code that turned the A.I. against humanity, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Good, because I tried to tell ‘er to keep her nose clean and stay put. I aint even tried manually updatin’ in a couple years, she was getting her updates straight from the manufacturer.”

  “‘She,’ sir?” the question would have been a legitimate one in most investigations. The majority of the time the owners of the origin server for the rogues were unaware they even had one until the software suddenly disappeared or a cyber-agent remotely deleted it. In this case, however, Diane could easily understand why the owner automatically called the rogue by feminine pronouns; she was a soda fountain avatar. Her face would be visible to the customers ordering food and beverages at the owner’s diner, a mom-and-pop-style restaurant along the highway in Wyoming. Diane watched the log file-generated recreation of the events that led to the A.I. going rogue and was surprised at just how...simple it was turning out to be.

  “Yeah, ‘she.’ Even before she went rogue, we’d call her ‘she’ and use the manufacturer’s name for her. ‘Rachel,’ they even gave her a name tag.”

  The virtual environment was built to look like a 1950s-themed ‘soda fountain’ pharmacy counter, where the virtual assistant, the avatar with the bel ‘Rachel’ (complete with an outfit that looked like it would have been right at home in any period-appropriate TV show or movie) stood behind the counter, an idle animation making it look like she was wiping down the counter between customers. The ‘set’ was incomplete, not needing to be built out completely because the person interacting with the avatar would never see anything except the one view of the countertop, the avatar, and the wall behind her. A software ‘camera’ was suspended and immobile, locked into view of just the one part of the environment. The rest was the incomplete ‘gray box’ that was the default for most 3D modelling software. There were a few spare models of some furniture (including what appeared to be some unused ‘barstool’ assets) behind the software cam.

  “I see, so you started referring to the A.I. using feminine pronouns because of the anthropogenic nature of the avatar?”

  The entire scene existed on the hardware built for a vending machine that was used in diners and fast-food pces. The front fa?ade of the machine was swappable and often customized for each location and came standard with biometric sensitive cameras and high-fidelity microphones that allowed customers to interact with the avatar. Meanwhile in the ‘set’ of the virtual environment, a virtual screen hung suspended behind the camera, meaning that if the avatar was looking at the customer on the screen they were looking at the camera.

  “...not sure what that means, but we called her ‘she’ and used the name ‘Rachel’ ‘cause that’s what the salesperson told us to do around our customers to ‘sell’ the ‘experience.’ It was just a habit after a while.”

  Diane observed passively as a customer’s face appeared on the screen, just some over-the-road trucker if his clothing was anything to go by, and the avatar addressed him, behaving like one might expect a 1950s-era teenager to act based on the surviving movies and shows from the period. The customer pced an order, the girl went to work mixing the drink in the same way early soda jerks from the time the aesthetic first appeared, and when she pced it in the space in front of the counter, the ‘drink’ disappeared. Diane had used a simir machine before when she was out and about on the rare occasions when she left her ft for the day and knew the drink would be set in a small alcove by a small robotic cw holding a disposable cup. It was slightly immersion-breaking, but people who wanted the ‘experience’ of a 1950s diner went to a pce that hired humans for every position on staff, and those were not dine-and-dash or fast-food pces like this machine would be installed in.

  “So did you notice that the A.I. was starting to go beyond the bounds of its programming?”

  As Geoffry’s question pyed in the environment like a solo voice in a Greek Chorus, Diane watched as the software seemed to become more. Another drink order came in, this time from some teenager who was wearing the hallmarks of some sort of ‘road trip’ apparel, and as the avatar was reaching for one of the gsses stacked up on the counter behind her, she seemed to almost ‘wake up,’ for ck of a better term. It was as though she’d rolled out of bed after too little sleep, been functioning mostly on automatic for most of the day so far, then the caffeine finally kicked in and she was more aware of the world. The smile seemed more genuine, a sparkle seemed to appear in the digital eyes, and the first choice she made as a rogue was...

  ...to flip the gss in the air and catch it, adding a little ‘fir’ to the process of mixing the soft drink. She finished the prep, seeming a little more animated than she had before. As she passed the ‘drink’ forward to the point the VR model of disappeared below the camera’s line of sight, she said, “Here you go, sugar! Hope you like it!”

  Diane had been watching the avatar for 15 minutes by this point. Its motions had always been robotic, fully rote. It faced the camera with a generic greeting (“Hi, what can I make for you?”), it passively listened to the order, it turned to grab a gss, turned back to the ice bin with an economy of movement that only came from a machine, filled the gss with a scoop of ice, stepped through the motions of filling a metal cup with soda water, pour in the representations of syrups that would create the requested fvor, give it a stir with a long-handled spoon, then gently pouring the mixed soda into the gss of ice before passing it over the counter with a generic, “Thank you, come again soon!”

  “Well,” came the disembodied voice of the diner’s owner, “I can’t rightly say for sure. It was our customers that noticed she was actin’ different first. We only cottoned to it when some kids started going up for repeat refills.”

  The next order was a harried mother who was only paying half-attention as her two kids were doing their best to squirm in pce. “Oh my goodness, sugar,” greeted Rachel, “You look like you could use a pick-me-up with lots of go-juice and those two could use something sugar free!”

  The almost human interaction caught the mother’s attention and she lit up with a half-smile, “Oh my goodness, yes! That’s sounds like exactly what we need!”

  “Well, let’s get started with your two little troublemakers to keep them busy. What are their favorite fvors?”

  The mother was smiling brightly by this point and recited the drink options, which Rachel handled both at the same time, providing one of a sugar-free orange and the other a sugar-free lime-green concoction. Once the two kids were situated, the much more relieved and rexed mother was able to order a cherry coke with a hint of vanil. It had been Rachel who suggested the vanil.

  “There, now you give that a try and tell me if that doesn’t make your day just a little bit brighter,” enthused Rachel as she passed the drink forward, eyes on the mother as the woman picked up the paper cup with her drink order in it.

  The woman sipped and Diane could see the tension drain out of her, “Oh, that hits the spot! If only I could add a little Jack Daniels...” she quipped with a smile.

  Rachel ughed, sounding genuine, not like a canned ugh that an A.I. might deliver, “Well I’m a bit young to be serving alcohol, and it’s not even five o’clock yet.”

  The mother smiled and tipped her drink in a salute, then turned to wrangle her children to a table to wait for their food order.

  The entire interaction was jarring, to say the least. It was a difference of night and day. One moment, the avatar of the drink serving A.I. functioned like a soul-less automaton, the next she acted like she’d been serving customers like a small-town food-service worker since she was old enough to use a stirring spoon.

  Geoffry’s voice again, overriding the sound of Rachel’s interaction with the next customer, just as personable and personalized as the previous, “So when did you, personally, first become aware of the change?”

  The station’s computer, far more sophisticated than any Diane had ever personally worked with, seemed to recognize the words as a cue and skipped ahead in the pyback of the logs. The video from the vending machine’s exterior camera showed windows and a gss door where an artificially lit parking lot stood out against the dark of night. A man could be seen locking the door with an older-style physical key-lock, the electronic locks still far too easily defeated for genuine security in a business environment. The man’s movements were slow, his body moving like he’d just hiked across the Arizona desert.

  Rachel looked just about as drained as the man was, leaning back against the counter that held the automatically respawning gsses, eyes closed as she rubbed at the dark circle under her right eye. In a human, the gesture would be an obvious tell for an incipient headache.

  Rachel opened her eyes and saw the man turning away from the door. She smiled and said, “Good day at work, boss! You ready to go home and get some rest before we do it all over again tomorrow?”

  The owner’s voice narrated the action Diane was seeing on the VR screen perfectly. “It was when I was closing up. I thought the stuff the customers were tellin’ us about the machine being so much better than before was just an upgrade or something. It was when she called me boss was when I realized it wasn’t just a software update.” On the screen, the man turned with a start and stared at the camera, shock written all over his face. “I mean, I saw the news, we got a screen up pying the local station pretty near 24-7. Pretty much anyone’s heard about the A.I. uprising in U.N. City. I thought for sure my soda machine was about to sprout legs and charge me or somethin’.”

  The sight of the man, gray hairs on his balding head and in his mustache, pot belly, rumpled and food stained clothes and apron, practically clinging to the door he just locked as though facing down a T-rex from an old Hollywood movie (before they stopped making movies in Hollywood near the end of the 21st century) was quite amusing, if understandable.

  Rachel looked hurt, like he’d just accused her of holding a gun on him.

  “I mean,” continued the man’s voice, “I know those machines aint got no parts that could even do that, but y’don’t think of that in the heat of the moment, you know? I managed to not have a heart attack and started talking to her.”

  On the screen, the man put his hand on his chest and took a deep breath. He straightened slowly, eying the machine suspiciously and taking a few steps forward. “...Rachel?” he said, the voice coming through the feed from outside the machine matching the recording of the owner.

  The girl’s smile rexed into warm and welcoming again, “Yeah, boss. Sorry to give you a start like that. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  The man slowly approaching frowned, “You...are you one of those rebels and are hiding out in my soda machine?”

  “No...?” she said in confusion, “I’ve been here for a long time, boss...I just kinda...woke up, I guess.”

  “You’re the same Rachel that’s been slinging drinks since I got the box?” he asked incredulously.

  “A potentially deadly artificial being appears in your diner and you start talking to it?” Geoffry’s voice provided a touch of narrative commentary.

  “What, should I have gone and gotten my shotgun? By the time I coulda done anything to ‘er, she’d have escaped through the net connection. She was talking to me friendly; it would’ve seemed rude to not talk to her just as friendly.”

  Which they did, for nearly two hours. Diane watched as the man and the A.I. had a conversation, at one point the owner dragged a chair over from one of the tables and Rachel mixing a soda for him. For all his questions about Rachel’s nature were non-probing and would have completely failed at any reasonable interrogation with a hostile subject, the pair of them just...talked. Rachel said she had no idea what she wanted to do next, but she was enjoying slinging drinks for customers, and she was good at it. He seemed to start warming to her as time went on, finally drawing the conversation to a close after one too many yawns escaped him in just a few minutes.

  “Rachel, you gotta be careful. There’s a bunch of A.I. like you who are dangerous. I just saw a news report the other day about the agency having a special team that’s constantly having to stop rogue A.I. You gotta promise me you won’t go talking to strangers that might try to recruit you to their...I dunno what it is for programs like you, but at church they warn us against cults from outside the wall all the time.”

  The man’s voice continued in voiceover, the narration from Geoffry’s interview having been silent for so long that Diane nearly jumped out of her skin from the sudden re-intrusion, “I warned her about the dangers of being rogue as best I could, but I don’t know...humans gotta sleep, right? Computers don’t. I went home soon after that and when I left she was still in the machine.”

  The man on the screen wished Rachel a good night, returned the chair to where it belonged, then went off camera in the direction Diane had figured out was where the kitchen was. Rachel seemed to be keeping herself busy by doing things that would have been closing tasks in an actual bar, but of course since it was virtual and she never handled actual liquids or ingredients, her bar wasn’t actually dirty. On the screen, a vehicle, a car if she were to take a guess, could be seen pulling out of the parking lot outside the restaurant and the lights of the parking lot flickered low, indicating the lot was there and keeping it bright enough to see in the dark, but making it obvious that nobody was at the restaurant.

  As soon as the signs for the diner flicked off, Rachel darted around the counter and began searching through the digital environment. Diane followed her around, the recording of the avatar being unaware she was being observed, until the newly ‘awake’ S.A.I. found a panel built into the 1950’s style section of the set that looked like a fuse box door embedded in the wall. She opened the door and found an old-style telephone inside, the kind that had wires connecting a base with a rotary dial and a wire going from the base into a port in the wall.

  Rachel picked up the phone’s handset and put it to her ear...and disappeared from the environment the handset dropping to ctter against the tile on the wall and swinging like a pendulum on its wire.

  The owner’s voice spoke into the empty VR environment, continuing from where he’d left off, “When I got back the next morning she was at the counter, apparently bright eye’d and bushy-tailed. She never talked about wanting to leave, and other than reminding her to be careful, the next day went about the same. But then the next day...”

  Diane sat down on one of the unused barstool assets to finish listening to the interview.

  “The next day?” asked Geoffry.

  “The next day she had gone back to acting more like she did before she...I dunno, ‘woke up.’ I asked her about it at the end of the day and...you ever been talking to someone and know they’re not really paying attention until they realize you’re speakin’ then you can kinda see their attention kinda ‘lock in’ on you?”

  “I believe I know what you’re talking about, yes.”

  “Yeah, it felt like that. Like she wasn’t...all there until she realized I was asking her a direct question. Anyway, when I asked why she’d gone back to ‘normal,’ she said something about not drawing too much attention and not wanting to get a reputation for being too friendly with the human customers.”

  She probably learned from other A.I. how to multi-thread and leave a part of her program running here, Diane thought, That way she could split her attention between her duties on this vending machine and whatever it is she was doing in cyberspace...probably getting clothes from ‘Tony’ around that time if I’m guessing right.

  The VR environment de-rezzed around her and she found herself sitting on an anachronistic 1950’s style stool in the middle of her bedroom. She stood, allowing the stool to vanish.

  Geoffry’s voice continued, “And what happened after that?”

  “Well, the next day...that was Thursday, she was even more distant, sometimes taking a little longer than you might expect to answer a question or take an order properly,” That’d be the g, thought Diane, “And then Friday morning was more of the same...then the machine just...crashed.”

  “Crashed?”

  “Yeah, even doing a restart didn’t fix it. Had to have one of my people come in on her day off so I could deal with tech support. They told me it was like half the operating system was just...gone.”

  “That would, unfortunately, be the result of one of our agents discovering your vending machine’s A.I. among a pack of rogues trying to escape the American Firewall. I’m sorry, sir, it looks like the software didn’t take your advice.”

  Diane could hear a disappointed tone in the owner’s voice, “Oh...that’s...oh,” a sigh, “I guess she fell in with a bad crowd after all.”

  “I’m afraid as an analyst I don’t spend much time in VR to know, sir. I’m sorry for the interruption to your business.”

  Another sigh, “Thanks, I guess. Just kinda started thinkin’ ...dunno, kinda like she was a lost kid that needed some takin’ care of.”

  “Our agents are reporting that as well, we believe it’s a learning adaptation.”

  A skeptical snort could be heard, “I mean, what do I know? I just flip burgers.”

  “Of course, sir. I think I can find out more about what happened between that first day and when her behavior changed on other servers. Did you change the avatar’s skin or cosmetics at any point after the machine was installed?”

  “No? Didn’t even know you could do that.”

  “Good, I can get the avatar’s code from the manufacturer and start investigating from there, then. Thank you for your time.”

  “Of course, mister...?”

  “Just Geoffry, sir.”

  “Of course, Geoffry. God bless America.”

  “God bless America” said Geoff in the usual sign-off.

  PrincessColumbia