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Richard had needed something to occupy his mind now he had finished at the institute. William Jackson had taken a liking to him that was indisputable. How had he liked Richard though? Surely, that was the question. Was it because William Jackson had genuinely felt he could use Richard’s skills or was it because he felt that he could manipulate the young man. Maybe it was both. Certainly, William Jackson had been more than happy with the introduction the head of the department had arranged for him.
~
IT WAS AT RICHARD’S alma mater when he first met the president. Richard had just obtained a PhD in robotics and he was brimming over with delight. Ambitious as he was, he had already been moving on to develop AI units for the robotic skeletons he had built. Richard had been sponsored by a couple of prestigious firms and now at his graduation ceremony, he was about to be sponsored again.
President Jackson had arrived at the graduation ceremony to give a speech. It was one of his civic duties, which he took seriously. During the course of his four-hour stay at the university, the president had spoken with the chancellor who had then introduced him to various chaired professors. Most notable was the Chaired Professor of Robotics, David Kennedy.
David Kennedy had greeted the president with the usual salutation, “Mr President.”
The president having performed a handful of ceremonies such as the one he was attending now had all his perfunctory lines pre-rehearsed. It was very simple really. All he had to remember was to tag professor at the end of the line.
“Very pleased to meet you, professor.”
The president did not have a great deal of time at the institute to visit all the faculties so the conversation was only destined to be short and David Kennedy was cognisant of the fact. That was precisely why Professor Kennedy had launched into an ecstatic precis of his faculties achievements. Then since the president had to position himself as the main speaker at the ceremony, Professor Kennedy had moved quickly onto his most notable students. The professor was ever keen to extol the virtues of the institute and also those of his Robotics department. He was hoping that he could schedule a preliminary meeting of the students who were obtaining their doctorates. The professor was delighted when the president was enthusiastic.
“Today we have an exceptional list of achievers,” Professor Kennedy said as they walked into the main hall.
The president and Professor Kennedy led and the small entourage of Secret Service personnel followed dutifully. It was fortuitous that the very student who the professor wanted the president to meet was standing in a group of three individuals.
“Richard Aiken’s research into soft body robotics has set him apart,” the professor said as they all marched towards the group.
The professor pointed out the student of his high regard.
“He has also been talking about continuing his research in Paris, France. Although this time, he has decided to move into artificial intelligence. As if we need another of our brightest jumping ship,” the professor said as if to assure the president of his undying allegiance to robotics.
The president and the professor took a few steps over to the group of students. The two Secret Service men stayed in the background on the president’s instruction.
The professor named the group of three, “Richard Aiken, Ramonde Curtiz and Susan Choi.”
All students were well aware of the president’s presence at their ceremony.
“Mr President,” Ramonde extended his hand as if to shake it with the president, then realising it might not be the appropriate thing to do quickly withdrew it.
Susan was next.
She smiled benignly but spoke clearly, “Mr President.”
“Mr President,” Richard said with an austere look on his face.
Richard had greeted the president in a very limited way. There was no warmth; it was all because he wasn’t fond of William Jackson’s politics.
The professor gave a brief account of each of their disciplines but at the end of the introductions, he singled out Richard Aiken. The professor turned his back to the students, towards the president.
The professor blatantly whispered to the president, “This one is with my faculty. I’d like you to meet him.”
The professor turned back to the students.
The professor then addressed Richard, “Just a few minutes of your time Richard.”
The professor gestured him over. The three of them then walked a few feet away from the others. All the time the men from the Secret Service maintained their vigil on the president, in absolute silence.
When the President first looked at Richard, it was with the greedy look of a talent scout. Richard had observed it. Richard was not totally naïve, he could see the faint glint in the president’s eye.
The President, being the most eminent, and the most versed in public oratory had spoken first. Although there were three of them, it was clear the president wanted to speak with Richard. The words flowed effortlessly from his facile political lips to the bright talent who was facing him. Everything was innocent in one sense but there was motive.
“I would like to offer you my congratulations,” President Jackson said.
“Thank you,” Richard replied as graciously as he could muster, not knowing what the president’s next comment could possibly be.
“I wish we could summons up your level of accomplishment in some of my political colleagues,” President Jackson said, meaning to make light of a certain element in the government.
William Jackson did not allow Richard to answer. Instead, he proceeded to ask another question.
“And what age would you be?”
That was a tricky question for Richard; he never liked to answer questions like that. He also didn’t understand why the president had asked it. Those questions always seemed a little too condescending for his tastes. Richard referred to the previous question the president had asked, hoping to deflect from the age question altogether.
“Yes, President Jackson,” Richard had said. “If you mean I should be conjuring up a new political cabinet with the aid of AI, I would be happy to oblige.”
Richard grinned hoping the president would get the joke.
The president smiled as did the professor. The president was amused that Richard had somehow compared his illustrious political colleagues to artificial intelligence. The professor, on the other hand, took comfort in the fact that a student of his was not only an exceptional student but also found the wherewithal to be amusing. The Secret Service men, by contrast, remained stony-faced. For Richard, it was an oblique reference to his sense of humour, something, which did not surface that often. That was when the president’s indisputable liking for him began to nurture. It just emphasised what a perverse man he was. When the president was not obsessed with control, certain other rather pleasant embracing characteristics came to the fore. The reverse was never likely to occur; Richard’s could never feel the same fondest for the president, he despised the president’s bureaucratic principles.
The conversation meandered and the president seemed at ease. However, behind that façade was a storm. Richard would only find some of the president’s intentions later because the rest William Jackson hid securely behind the closed doors of his presidential mind. One of the president’s intentions, however, did escape.
The professor saw that the conversation had excluded him to a certain extent and he walked back to where the Secret Service men were. The president saw this and quickly took the opportunity to speak candidly with Richard.
“We, and by this I mean the government,” the president lied, there was only him involved.
“We are looking at various projects which could probably well do with the expertise you have acquired,” the president, for the most part, lied again.
There was only one project, although one part was correct, he did need some external technical expertise on the matter.
In the corridors of the president’s mind the thoughts, which he had been harbouring for many months were finally coming out into the open. At least some of them. However, he still mired the most incriminating ones in the grubby depths of his unsavoury mind.
Then the president offered a position to Richard. Everything had been at breakneck speed, their meeting, the president’s appraisal of Richard then the decision. Everything had occurred speedily but by no stretch of the imagination too speedily. That could not have been the case because the president was so certain he had found an ideal candidate for the project he had in mind. It was a project, which had been lurking in his intellectual undergrowth for some time.
~
THE PRESIDENT’S TENTATIVE suggestion, during the first few minutes of their first encounter at the ceremony, had been realised. Richard stepped into a position at Springfield, an installation reconditioned with government money to suit the needs, which the president had in mind. Springfield had been a sprawling residence, completely reorganised by the president and various governmental minions. Richard was and would be the only human resident according to the president. There would also be a few droids. One of the president’s departments had found the reconditioned droids. There had been many failures in the early days and it was relatively easy to find droids, which had been dysfunctional, going for a good price. The department had also included a healthy collection of spare parts into the deal. They were older parts, which served the original designs and specifications.
That was the president’s first assignment for Richard. He would bring the droids back to a serviceable condition. That was how the president would introduce Richard into working at Springfield. It was a way to transition Richard from academic life. It was also a quick process because once he had fully repaired the initial droid the repaired unit would start to build up skills itself via its artificial intelligence. The repaired droids would then be absorbed into the workforce, so the effect was ever accelerating. It was droids repairing droids. It was not long before they reaped the rewards of the president’s plan. It was only a matter of a month before Richard and his ever-increasing workforce of droids had seven fully functional droids available. He was now in a position to advance his real work.
That had been Richard’s first assignment, and he had brought the droids back to life with a flourish. Richard had always thought of those initial droids as his worker bees. Once he had them, his contingent of workers, he then established a list of suppliers for the intricate parts needed for his next droid project. Now he was finally in a position to start building state of the art automatons. It would not be too long before Richard would have a chance to start his work in the area, which really interested him – the area of artificial intelligence.
He classified those initial droids as level 0, the workers, but level 0 or not he had started his operation with them, and they would be prominent in every construction going forward. It was not long before he had his first success with a level 1 droid. Now and probably for evermore his level 0 droids would build the robotic bodies. It was at that stage that he had fully immersed himself in the intricate assembly of the AI units. The construction of the droid body parts had devolved to the lowly workers; it was a mimic of a human situation, almost a class system.
Richard had mentioned the same thing to the president during one of his frequent visits to Springfield. The president had come purely to understand the progress at Springfield, although true to his inscrutable political mind he always gave Richard the impression that he had also come to see him.
Richard when speaking to the president maintained his respectful protocols. It was early days of their partnership at Springfield, and he was definitely junior to the president.
“Mr President. I could not help but notice one thing when building the newer droids. The droids are not human, yet they all fall into a human pattern. Repetitive tasks for the worker droids and those with minds that are more flexible, and by that I mean me, doing the more intricate tasks. That is really a hybrid system, a human and droid mix, but I am sure when I develop my new droids the same will happen. We will have a class system, lower droids doing mundane work and higher functioning droids doing more complex tasks.”
That was the very antithesis of what the president believed. The president thought that everything should be on a level playing field. Now his protégé, Richard, who the president had helped to a position in Springfield, was contradicting him even if he probably didn’t know it.
“Firstly Richard, they are not ‘my droids’ they are ‘our droids’. Secondly, all droids are created equal.” Then the president stopped, not knowing whether he had made a faux pas or whether his words had made sense.
Richard added something, which he thought was relevant.
“If I upgrade the AI unit in a worker droid he can do a more complex job.”
“Exactly. Humans call that education, increasing the intellectual capability,” the president said, feeling a little happier with his reply.
Without thinking, Richard had automatically assigned the level 0 droids to more repetitive tasks. The fact that he was relocating some droids to menial tasks didn’t bother him. Why should it? It was just that it felt odd that his droids even in their early stages had assumed human hierarchical characteristics.
As he had envisaged, he slowly divorced himself from the task of building the bodies of the droids. That was a repetitive task and one best suited to the level 0 and level 1 droids. By the time he was due to build his first level 2 droid, he had moved exclusively into just building the AI units. He was so very pleased with his very first level 2 droid that he named it. He called it Craven, from the word to mean a coward. Richard had called his first level 2 droid a coward. The irony was that it was Richard being self-deprecating for Craven, which was a nonsensical contradiction in terms. If Craven was not sophisticated enough to ridicule itself, his creator was able to offer the option.
Craven may have appeared limited but it had some very exotic features. It was the first time that Richard had assembled a droid with rudimentary thought penetration.
Fabrication of the level 2 droids had started slowly. Construction of the body of the droids went ahead in an orderly fashion. The level 2 droids body parts represented only a few minor changes to the level 1 droids and they were soon absorbed into the new production schedule. Richard, as an exceptional distraction from his AI work, had helped to facilitate the necessary changes. The worker droids swiftly assimilated into the new manufacturing practices, and having a small amount of understanding from constructing the level 1 droids, along with their simple AI units, they were able to self-instruct themselves.
It was the new cerebral network designs, which had initially held up the process. ‘Cerebral networking’ had been Richard’s name for the complex networking task inside the AI unit, which linked together all the droid’s functioning parts under the AI unit controller. Richard had laboured over the AI units for ten days, eradicating the problems. As the work gathered pace Richard noticed continually that the president was taking more of an interest. He would be speaking to Richard intermittently during the day on his communicator and normally managed to visit Springfield at least once a week. That was odd because Richard thought that the president, who he knew loved to micro-manage, would be on his case continually. Richard knew the president was eager to get the operation off the ground. However, Richard only had to remind himself that the president’s matters of state took preference, even if actually that was not the case. If Richard had been a fly on the wall, he would have swiftly ascertained that another one of the president’s sterling qualities was his ability to delegate.
Mostly left to his own devices and with the invaluable help from Sharlene, his contact in Asia, Richard managed to organise the operation. Sharlene an inveterate traveller had moved to Asia from Europe. She was Richard’s main contact for the component suppliers there. He had spoken with her that morning. She had contacted him.
Richard announced himself, “Yes, Richard.”
Richard had answered the communicator like an enthusiastic bright button you would expect to find at a prestigious technology company. His seeming openness belied the very secret project on which he was working.
“Hello, Sharlene here.”
Richard knew why she had just given her name, even if there was now a large holograph of Sharlene hovering about five feet from Richard’s communicator. It was a reflex action. It was due to the initial problems with the communicator protocols. At one time, it was never clear whether the holograph would form or not. Communicator manufacturers had recently solved that particular technical issue. Communicator protocols now worked in unison; there would always be a holographic connection. Unless one of the parties involved in the conversation had locked the device, there was no real reason to give your name at all.
“Richard,” Sharlene said rather frantically.
Sharlene was being melodramatic. She behaved that way on a regular basis, probably thinking it made her sound more alluring. Sharlene continued in the same tone.
“New consignment. Hot parts from a wicked innovative supplier.”
“Do we have the normal specifications, Sharlene.”
“Sure,” she said, knowing full well that specifications were often missing.
“None?” Richard replied.
“Sure,” Sharlene repeated. “Well y’know we have a description of what they do. What they are capable of.”
It was the usual hit and miss affair with Sharlene, although in all reality it was not her fault at all. Parts from rogue suppliers, which invariably cost a pretty penny, came with no guarantees. That was, at least, normally the case. That was why Sharlene was such a good catch. She gave a guarantee with them, even if the one occasion Richard did have a problem he had a hell of a job to get her to resolve it. Richard knew Sharlene’s value, though. Sharlene had somehow wheedled her way into Richard’s affections and also his wallet. She supplied all Richard’s components through a network of contacts. Forgetting the money she charged, which she so modestly called, “her cut,” Sharlene was indispensable to Richard’s operation.
To be fair the components did normally function, even if Richard felt most of the suppliers were normally flying by the seat of their pants. He could only imagine what she did to get such perfect components, but then he looked at her holograph in front of him. It was always easy to work with a femme fatale.
The latest batch of components was just the start of how things would develop over the next few months. There were other things going on. The president had just started to become a little pushy about deadlines and progress in certain aspects of the project. Richard knew there was an election later in the year, but what else was there? The president was also becoming more pressing about security. Then there were the president’s desired additions to the droids he was assembling. Richard felt the way things were going that there was something imminent coming. Strangely, with the president badgering him to do things Richard had started talking to the president more informally. He now called him Mr Jackson.
Then the fabrication of the droids evolved. It was the time when Richard had first re-allocated responsibilities. He had originally used only level 0 droids to build the droid bodies, those were his first worker droids. Now he was using level 1’s. Richard was talking with the president how he was allocating the building of the droid bodies to those worker droids. Richard’s was taking to a full holographic image of the president in his lab.
“Mr Jackson, I will be taking on my usual role with the next generation droid. I will be tackling the AI unit with Craven. As you well know, the AI unit is the kingpin to any future success we have. Craven will offer amongst other things some of his fast calculation capabilities and memory resources.”
“Other things? We still have the understanding that Craven is fully secured?”
The question the president had asked was rhetorical. It was rhetorical because Richard had always been insistent that he had removed the appropriate parts from Craven’s AI unit to make him secure. Nevertheless, William Jackson always wanted an answer to that same perennial question. The look on William Jackson’s face had relayed that fact.
“Of course, as per normal,” Richard answered.
Richard and his trusty level 2 droid, Craven, would take on the responsibility of the AI units which would propel them into a new domain. Richard was not apprehensive at all, he relished the excitement of breaking new ground, of exploring avenues, which no one had ever explored before. With the new batch of semi-organic components he was receiving, there could be surprises. With new batches, there had been surprises before.
The latest components Sharlene had shipped would be specifically for the AI unit with which Richard was working. They would not be for an earlier class of droid or repairs for a damaged droid. They would be for the latest step in droid technology. To Richard, it was acutely exciting because he and maybe only ten other people on the planet would get their hands on the technology. Richard could not be sure but Sharlene had hinted that fact to him during one of their communications.
The components had arrived in a container suitable for near frozen items. Richard wanted to hold them like pieces of silver, but he couldn’t. For the moment in their near frozen state, they were fine. However, if exposed to normal temperatures he knew that the parts needed to have their life-sustaining fluid running through them.
“Is that life Craven? I mean, is that life-sustaining itself? Could you call them alive?”
“No.”
Whether Craven meant ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was basically immaterial. Whatever Craven said didn’t really gel with reality. When Richard meshed the new components together, they would serve the same purpose as a human brain. There were vast differences though. His AI unit would be equivalent to an alien brain. It would not know the human condition. There was also the complication that in order to obtain the best performance it was important to design the network of the components in an optimal way.
It was birth, which defined the human brain’s capabilities. It came complete. His AI unit was a collection of parts and those parts could be interchanged. Who would know what parts were missing, or for that matter, what extra facilities Richard had inadvertently introduced? Richard had started the assembly of the AI unit with a cavalier attitude, knowing he could make changes later.
~
BEFORE PRESIDENT JACKSON knew it, that ridiculous idea which he had been harbouring in his head for a while, started to materialise. Except that, because it started to materialise it ceased to become ridiculous.
The president had come into Springfield that morning with his usual drone car. He was in Richard’s spacious personal lab at that precise moment. The conversation from the president up to that point had been normal, maybe a little dry. Dry, except for his now ever insistence nag about the special attributes he had requested. The new components from Sharlene, to service the president’s request, had already arrived. Some were still lingering in the deep-freezing unit. They would stay in deep freeze until Richard could infuse the semi-organic components with the fluid, which would allow them to exist at normal temperatures.
Richard explained to the president, “The new components have been, delivered as you know Mr Jackson. I am in the process of making additional cerebral network designs to incorporate them. The new components will replace some of the old ones so it is a necessary task. It will, however, take extra time.”
The president uncharacteristically coughed, he looked a little detached as if he had something on his mind. It must have been the case because, to Richard, it seemed that the president had just ignored what he had said.
“Richard, I would like to say something.”
“Yes, Mr Jackson,” Richard said.
Richard still felt the president had secrets. In his bones, Richard still felt there was something behind all the secrecy that was going on. Richard may have suspected something, although he could not imagine what the president was about to say.
The president continued, “As you know politics is not an easy job.”
Richard gave no response.
“My poll ratings have taken a dive because I preside over a particular brand of politics. I am a conviction politician and I am always aware that my views can be taken badly.”
Richard listened to the president disbelievingly. He didn’t like the president’s politics. It was a point, which he had never made clear to him. Richard didn’t believe the president’s political philosophies and there was no way that he ever thought he would, well at least this side of the grave.
“Richard, in these modern times one should resort to modern practices. You are the epitome of everything modern and, by the way, good as well.”
The president thought he had better throw in a word or two of encouragement, just to keep Richard on his side. He used the same hoary stance on every human communication he entered into.
“A normal presidency is not long enough. It is ineffective in accomplishing the plan one has for the country.”
Richard started to scratch his head, metaphorically speaking. The president had two terms as president; he had not completely served one. Richard was not sure what the president was trying to say but thought it prudent to help him along.
“Yes, Mr Jackson.”
The president had started to say something but then froze. It was either that he was about to say something which did not make sense, or he had cold feet. The president had obviously been mulling over some action in his head but then stopped. He stopped but it must have been a satisfactory conclusion because now he was now smiling. Then his rather sordid skills as a politician came to bear, he changed the subject or rather changed what he was about to say.
“So Richard, I am just saying that if you think you have problems constructing this latest droid, then you are not the only one with problems.”
The president had obviously finished what he had been saying for the present. The president knew it and knew why. However, Richard was still wondering what William Jackson was about to say and why he did not say it.
