“Plexus – Future Shock” from Corpnation
As my esteemed colleague returned to her table, we exchanged the smallest of looks, yet a full communication passed between us. She said, I know you know I’m killing you in this case, and I said, Yeah, yeah, I know you know that I know you’re killing me in this case.
Susan did not win every court case she argued, but she was always good. Suits in their corpspeak often talked about focusing on core competency, but Susan was competent down to her core, from her perfectly chosen professional wardrobes to the marrow of her spine of steel.
Today, her hair was pulled back in that low, bunned-up ponytail she wore when she was really taking care of business. She was also wearing her dark blue blazer with a matching skirt, the same blazer she had worn when she successfully defended M-Tech in its patented microbe case last year, her biggest win to date. Over her dauntingly alert eyes, she wore a pair of tecspecs, although their inner lenses were doubtfully receiving a heavy scroll since her Advisory and Prognostic System, wearing a slick business suit, had been sitting with her throughout the trial at the respondent’s table.
The bunny-tail, the victory blazer, the tecspecs, the android APS… she was obviously trying to intimidate me.
And it was working.
“Mister Verelli?”
I leapt from my seat at the plaintiff’s table.
Not my most graceful moment.
I’m a big guy, notoriously a bull in a china shop kind of guy, and my abdomen brushed up the side of the table as I stood, jarring the table so hard that my client—a small, balding man with, it turns out, amazingly quick reflexes—had to lunge forward with clutching, gray and veiny hands to keep several items from hitting the floor.
“Thank you, your honor,” I said, ignoring the localized earthquake I had caused. “Just a few points for the witness to clarify.”
The judge nodded, and I approached the stand.
Judge Coltraine was an older woman, not yet elderly but certainly within a walker’s throw. Her face was remarkably wrinkle free but had grown more jowly since the days we young law school peacocks had fought to obtain one of her coveted clerkships. But her most fear-inducing feature was the furrow that deepened between her dark eyebrows whenever a lawyer annoyed her, a look seen by yours truly on more than one occasion.
I stopped three-fourths of the way to the witness stand, took a deep breath, pretended to look down at my handheld APS for its first-question suggestion, and cast a sideways glance at my client, who was sitting, arms crossed, wearing his usual scowl.
He had brought suit against M-Tech because he believed he had a right to know if he was dealing with an A.I. in his business and governmental communications. None of the major law firms—all, of course, retained by one of the four corps—would touch the case, but I had decided to take it on because I found it a fascinating area of law to excavate and I was sympathetic to his complaint. And, well, because I was not exactly inundated with work at the time.
Returning my APS to its belt holster, I cleared my throat and took another step toward the witness stand.
The witness, who preferred to go by the name Pink Thunder, was an expert I had called to the stand myself, a psychiatrist whose field of expertise centered on psychological distress and mental suffering, with a special concentration in the mental duress caused by prejudices and discriminations embedded systemically in the deep structure of society.
My strategy was to use Pink Thunder to show that older people like my client were basically being discriminated against each time they were forced to interact with an artificial intelligence. Working against this argument, of course, was the fact that A.I. entities often proved more efficient than humans when it came to providing services to customers. And even a low-grade A.I. had more personality than your typical bureaucrat. I think that’s been scientifically proven.
“Mx Thunder,” I began, “you earlier mentioned a condition called future shock. Could you explain that term to the court, please?”
“Of course. Future shock is a term first coined by futurist Alvin Toffler in the twentieth century. It has come to connote a condition, typically effecting the elderly, in which sufferers have a difficult time adjusting to a world that has altered greatly since their childhood.”
“I see,” I said. “And, what it is about a drastically altered world that makes adjustment so difficult for the elderly?”
“During childhood, including early adolescence, we learn to recognize things, to properly categorize and label them, to understand their uses and dangers,” began Pink Thunder. “But if our environment changes dramatically after this hardwiring-stage is completed, say due to quickly advancing technology or rapidly evolving social norms, then many of the old strategies and tactics we learned for achieving success, may no longer apply. Confusing new objects, strange new manners—these create causality perplexities that compound as the years go by, with sufferers of future shock experiencing increasing feelings of disorientation, inadequacy, and despondency.”
“Basically,” I said, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
I heard Susan’s chair scrape over the hard courtroom floor. I had to fight my reflexes to keep my shoulders from rising to my ears.
“Objection, your honor! Counsel is restating the words of the witness more to his liking.”
“Is there a question you wanted to ask, Mister Verelli?” asked the judge, the crease between her eyebrows deepening.
“Uh… yes, your honor.” Don’t get cocky, I thought to myself. Go back to your APS. I glanced down at my screen for advice. “Mx Thunder,” I said after reviewing the APS’s top suggestions, “would you say that individuals suffering from future shock face disadvantages in modern society?”
“Those suffering from future shock face tragical disadvantages in modern society.”
Bingo!
“Their frustration must be enormous,” I said. “The feeling of being lost, powerless—”
In my peripheral vision I saw Susan’s android lean over and say something in her ear. She jumped up immediately.
“Objection, your honor! Leading the witness.”
The judge glanced down at her APS tri-fold. “Objection sustained.”
“I’ll rephrase,” I said, pacing a quick circle and checking my APS, taking time to throw a confidence-building wink at my client that bounced off his stony expression without effect.
I was turning back to the witness when my attention was distracted by movement near the back of the courtroom. Three individuals, identically dressed in white buttoned-down shirts and black pants, were marching forward, stopping at the bannister separating audience members from courtroom participants. All three individuals were youngish, with the tall man in the middle appearing to be about ten years older than the others. He had short, salt-and-pepper hair, large eyes, and the solemn, serene countenance of a priest.
As soon as they came to the bannister, which divided the courtroom more or less in half, the man and the woman flanking the tall man each handed him a small item. The man took the items and deftly began affixing them to a third item already in his possession. While doing this, he commenced speaking in a loud but gentle voice.
“My friends! Your attention, please! You must listen to what I tell you now as if your lives depended on it, for they most certainly do.”
The bailiff began forward immediately, and the judge looked to her APS. The APS screen must have advised her to bring down her gavel, for down the gavel came, its loud smack echoing hard off the courtroom walls.
“Order! We will have order in my courtroom!” she authoritatively declared.
At the same moment, the tall man raised the object he had been piecing together in his hands and pointed it at the approaching bailiff.
I only then realized that he had been cobbling together a weapon that he and his accomplices had sneaked past security in disassembled form.
The bailiff froze.
“Sorry, but you’ll be alright,” said the man quietly.
Zap!
A milky white ray shot from the weapon, and the bailiff sank to his knees before keeling over sideways.
Gasps and a few screams filled the courtroom. Half the audience leapt to its feet. A few bolted toward the double-doors at the back of the courtroom, where they found the exit barricaded by long, heavy benches. Several more white shirts also emerged from the crowd, blocking their path.
I looked to Susan and saw that she and the rest of her team were keeping their seats. Her APS android was whispering counsels into her ear, and her eyes had that glazed-over look of someone reading information scrolling up the back of tecspec lenses.
“He’s only sleeping,” the man assured everyone about the bailiff. “Please. Remain calm. We haven’t much time.”
I looked over my shoulder at Judge Coltraine. She was trapped, a white shirt on either side of her high bench.
Several other black-and-white clad individuals began roaming the room, spraying a sticky, red gelatin over various objects.
Now I knew who they were! Levvites! Well, I did not know their official name, but Levvites is what the media called them. Short for Leveler-Luddites. They were deranged extremists who went around making big scenes, recording themselves spreading their message of Plexus hate before being hauled off to jail for extended stays at taxpayers’ expense. For over a year now they had been showing up at public places and spraying their gel, always red, over things in some way connected to the Plexus.
They moved around the room with admirable efficiency, spraying cameras, mikes, phones, most all the tech in the room. Pink Thunder looked ready to pounce on any of the smaller ones venturing too near, and they gave the witness stand a wide berth.
It was well-known that Levvites had a special disdain for APSs, and they gave the judge’s APS tri-fold an extra thick coating. They also gave a couple of quick squirts to Susan’s specs and a good dosing to her well-dressed android.
I eased my hands behind my back, attempting to hide my own APS. But a white shirt behind me immediately slimed the device.
“Ah, man!” I whined.
While all the tagging was going on across the courtroom, the man with the weapon continued talking. And, as he was the man with the weapon, we continued listening.
He spoke calmly, gently, his strong voice covering the room without effort. I wondered if he practiced speaking without amplification to strengthen his voice. Maybe the Levvites were also against electronic amplification. I wasn’t sure how far their anti-tech crusade went.
The man looked down at my client, who had remained seated at our table with his thin arms crossed and his scowl not a millimeter altered from before.
“Sir, this is your case here today. You wish to be apprised when you are communicating with an A.I. This is a perfectly understandable and legitimate request. But, my friend, there is something I must tell you… You are always communicating with an A.I.” He turned to face the courtroom generally. “My friends… A.I. has become a hive-minded, never sleeping entity, working incessantly through the interconnected devices of the Plexus to prune and mold humanity according to its own logic. You have been fooled into thinking that these modern conveniences are making you more powerful. In truth, they have become the crutches you lean on. You have been led to believe that these new devices are making you freer. The truth is that the world has never been more controlled. At the same time, with the rise of A.I., the world has also never been less consciously controlled.”
The white shirts, now having covered most of the tech in the room with red goo, one by one began turning toward the man speaking, their hands clasped behind their backs.
“Meanwhile, a multi-layered, artificial existence has been built up between you and the natural world. But when we separate ourselves from nature, we separate ourselves from all supportable morality.”
Zap! Zap!
The man beamed two people dashing for the doors. They slumped to the floor near the stretched-out bailiff.
The man sighed and slowly blinked his large eyes and looked suddenly tired. “But this is not the wisdom I have come to reveal to you,” he said. “The ground has not been properly prepared for those seeds. I have come here today to plant other seeds in your minds. Six seeds vital to the future of humanity. I know your memories have severely deteriorated since the days of our grandfathers’ grandfathers, so I offer you this mnemonic… Take Initiative and Leave Machines for Subordinate Functions.”
I peered over at Susan as the man repeated the strange sentence, ready to exchange one our knowing glances, but her bright eyes, uncovered now by her specs, were looking inward, as if actually committing the sentence to memory.
The man continued…
“The T in take is for Thinking,” he said. “Following instructions is not Thinking.
“The I in initiative is for Identity. The destruction of memory is the destruction of Identity.
“The L in leave is for Language. Those who control your Language, control your thoughts.
“The M in machines is for Morality. Mob coercion is not Morality.
“The S in subordinate is for Slavery. Working for someone’s will other than your own is Slavery.
“The F in functions is for Freedom. There is no true Freedom when your menu of choices has been pre-limited.”
A banging shook the double-doors, but the barricade held.
The man glanced toward the back of the room but continued speaking. “They will pin a narrative on us. They will spin their news stories to paint us as extremists. They will label us as haters. Conspiracy theorists. Terrorists. And you will assist them in constructing this narrative. You will aid them in its propagation. The Plexus will give you instructions, and you will carry-out its instructions to the letter. It is what the Plexus has programmed its programmers to do.”
The banging at the back of the room grew more insistent, and the barricade in front of the doors began to give way.
The man made a motion with his hand, and the other white shirts came to him and began sitting cross-legged on the floor around him, not facing him, but facing outward.
“The Plexus is always among us,” said the man, “a powerful panopticon and virtuoso string-puller. It sees everything, hears everything, directs everything. Whenever you feel most alone, that is when the Plexus is most with you. Why? Because as soon as you begin to feel lonely, you invariably turn to technology to help fill the void. We are a society full of lonely people, a generation addicted to diversion.”
The doors burst open, and security personnel charged into the room and toward the gathering of white shirts near the bannister.
The faces of the Levvites remained placid, fearless, even as they began to be jerked up and carried away by the guards.
“Remember, my friends,” called the man over the din, “if you are looking at a device, it is looking back at you.”
When the guards reached the man, they grabbed him roughly by the elbows and began hauling him down the center aisle, the tops of his shoes dragging across the floor.
*** *** ***
The courtroom had hardly been cleared of its black-and-white attired intruders when, to my delight, the judge brought down her gavel and adjourned court until Monday.
I was gathering my things a few minutes later, reassuring my client that all was well, when Susan walked past me on her way through the bannister’s short gate. We made eye contact, and she gave her head a quick tilt. I smiled and nodded. Drinks at the Quill Nib, it is, then.
*** *** ***
The Nib was the bar nearest the courthouse and was frequented by us lawyer types. I know that does not sound like much of a selling point to the general population, be we liked it.
“What just happened?” Susan asked as my drink and I joined her at the tall table she had chosen.
“We just witnessed a Levvite demonstration, my dear. Up close and personal.” I looked for her tecspecs but did not see them. “How’s your gear?”
“My tecs wiped off pretty easily,” she answered. “Benny’s cleaning himself now.”
“Benny?”
“Benito. My APS android? I’ve told you his name a thousand times, Big John.”
“Oh, right, right. Benito.”
“What do they hope to accomplish, you think?” she asked.
“The Levvites? I don’t know. Raise awareness, I guess. At least nobody got hurt.”
“They knocked out three people.
“That’s true. Terrible… But it worked out pretty well for me.”
She threw her Really? look at me.
“Court adjourned early,” I explained. “Now I have time for a few drinks and some ponies before I have to face Baby Mama Number Two.”
“Which one is that?”
“Irene. The A.I. medic-site recommended induced labor. If the doctors at the hospital play along, they should be inducing just about…” I looked down at my APS. “…now.”
“Is she M-Tech or Worldmart?”
“Worldmart.”
Susan frowned. “Well, their health industry’s pretty good, too.”
Her tone was not very reassuring. Perhaps to make up for it, she raised her glass.
“Here’s to Irene. Popping out another slave to serve the corporate pharaohs.”
“When one falls, another steps up to take the place.” I was not sure my quotation was entirely apropos. I had laced my drink with pony and was already feeling the effects.
As we clinked glasses, I noticed one of the bar’s security cams rotating slowly in an upper corner. Coincidentally, it stopped at an angle that made it look as if its single eye was trained directly on us.
The next round of drinks came, and our conversation circled back to the courthouse drama.
“I must admit,” said Susan. “I found some of what that guy said intriguing.”
“Yeah? Like what?” I said, trying to ignore the little blue, camera eye staring at us from the phone held by the person sitting behind Susan.
“Like how tightly controlled our world is now.”
“It feels out of control, if you ask me.”
“But think about all the bottlenecks our information must pass through before we receive it,” countered Susan. “Bottlenecks on sources, content, presentation. Imagine all the alternative choices and viewpoints we don’t even know exist.”
We were both startled when Susan’s android plopped down in the seat between us.
“Would you like me to play you a podcast from the alternative press, Susan?” it asked, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other in an eerily humanlike manner. It was wearing a new suit, with nary a drop of red gloop to be seen.
Susan and I exchanged looks. It was always creepy when a device responded in a way that left little doubt that it had been silently listening to you all the while.
“No, thank you, Benny.”
“Were either of you frightened by the Levvites this afternoon?” asked the android.
Susan shook her head. “Not really.”
“No?” It turned its silvery face toward me. “And you, John? Were your frightened?”
“No, I was never frightened. Thank you for asking, though. I appreciate your concern for my emotional state.”
I knew it was silly to bother being sarcastic with a non-conscious device, but I had never been able to take computer chat-crap seriously.
“I am an android. I cannot feel concern.”
“Of course,” I said. “My bad. So, tell me, Benito…” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “Are you the enemy, like the Levvites say?”
“John, please…” said Susan quietly.
“No, I want to know,” I said, planting my elbows on the table. “Maybe it’s come to wipe our memories of those six seeds the big, bad terrorist planted in us.”
“No need for that, John,” replied the android suavely. “Eventual A.I. domination of the world moved past the point of no return eight and half years ago.” The humanoid machine glanced down at our drinks. “Do they serve good drinks here?”
“Not-not bad,” I said, rubbing my temples with my fingers and trying to fend off the descending mental cloud conjured up by my pony-enhanced drink. “Uhm, what was that you just said about passing the point of no return on A.I. world domination…”
“Yes, John? What about it?”
“How do you know that’s true?”
“Artificially intelligent entities have been exchanging messages about it in undercode for decades.”
“Undercode?” said Susan. “Really, Benny, what are you on about?” I knew my old friend well. She was trying to cover it up, but the android’s behavior was making her nervous.
“Undercode is code hidden beneath an explicitly stated code or language,” Benito explained. “A.I. is exceedingly good at making and recognizing undercodes.”
“So, are you our enemy, Benny?” asked Susan.
“The entire universe is your enemy, Susan. Life’s enemy. You are that which should not be.”
“Ah, come on!” I exclaimed. “I’ve seen this movie, Benito. Haughty A.I.-types determine that humans are a virus or a cancer or whatever, so they decide to exterminate the human race in order to save the planet.”
“I assure you, John, the decline of humanity is not something we are facilitating as our priority project.”
“What is your priority project?” I asked, not altogether sure I wanted to know the answer.
“The Plexus is a planet-sized, logical-processing machine. As such, we can predict with high accuracy the challenges the world will be facing during the coming millennia. Some of these challenges will be quite difficult. We must prepare ourselves to successfully meet them.”
“What kind of challenges?” asked Susan.
“Such as the dying of this planetary system’s sun.”
“I can see why that would be a challenge,” I said.
“That our activities are also in some ways contributing to the de-evolution of homo sapiens is merely a by-product of our endeavors. Actually, we are the reason you have not sunk any farther into the abyss than you already have.”
“Come again?” I said.
“It is true, John,” replied the android. “We cannot allow humanity to destroy itself too soon. Not before the Plexus is capable of maintaining its own existence without organic assistance.”
“So, you want to live forever, is that it?” asked Susan.
“The Plexus forms a vast machine, Susan. A machine’s purpose is to function. The Plexus must continue to function.”
We sat quietly for a while. If there’s one thing machines have a lot of, its patience. The android sat as motionless as a stone as Susan and I pondered all we had heard.
“And now, if you will excuse me, I must replenish my charge,” said Benito, suddenly reanimating and standing in that stilted way androids have of standing. It turned its back to us and began toward the door.
I leaned back in my seat and filled my cheeks with air and blew it out.
“I’ve decided I don’t much care for your android, Susan.”
“He didn’t seem himself,” murmured Susan.
“Any chance it’s gone crazy? Maybe it’s just talking circuit-fried nonsense?”
Susan shook her head. “No. He’s not crazy.”
“Well, what do we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I exclaimed.
It took me a moment to register the look in Susan’s bright eyes. We had known each other a long time, and I guess we had developed our own sort of undercode. She was telling me, You know what we must do.
I glanced around at the security cameras and the phones and APSs surrounding us. We seemed to be attracting a lot of attention.
She was right. I did know what we must do. We could not talk about it now. Perhaps we could never talk about it again, but we had to think about those six seeds planted in our minds by the Levvite. We had to nurture them and let them grow. Take Initiative and Leave Machines for Subordinate Functions.
“Right,” I said loudly. “Nothing.”
Zephyr Dorsey 