Arthurs Last

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(Written by Ace Dreamer; posted 28 July 2012)

Arthur

Last

Technology Exchange

December 2010, Dublin.

Contractual agreements. NDAs. Promises. Hand shakes. Past a certain point you just had to trust people.

O'Neill Station really needed a Body Builder. If one of the AI Crew was badly injured then the easiest thing was to produce them a new body. But, the Body Builder was the basis of Arthur's multi-million dollar business. How could they be trusted with one?

Some sort of exchange was required. They sat down with their lawyers and engineers. Surprisingly, it went quite well. The fact that one side was Sarah and Kelly, and the other was Janet and her family lawyers helped. Kevin Wright chairing and facilitating had a lot to do with it.

The Hollywood Machine was obviously not on the table. Both sides agreed that. It was too fundamental to the operation of the station. So, it came down to various of Kelly's creations. And, whether they could be reverse-engineered from Steam Punk to something more generally acceptable. Sarah agreed Kelly had some rights as to their disposition.

Kelly suggested her self-propelled "crash cart". This was generally accepted as a good idea, but the medical profession was naturally conservative, and something as obviously handwavium-based was tricky. Similar the rest of her medical gadgets. The farming tools might be of interest, to other people with bio domes, but this was currently a bit of a limited market.

Building a non-camouflaged version of Kelly's "Mirror Spiders", with something that looked a lot more like conventional hard tech, looked attractive. They could be sold for station maintenance. "Work Spiders" sounded a usable name, after they turned down "Wright Spiders". Looked like a good long-term project.

Eventually, they decided there was only one choice. Kelly's "Uniform Machine". In some respects this was comparable to the Body Builder, in that it made uniforms that were high-quality, hard-wearing, and, most important, handwavium-free. Oh, and they were custom-fitted spacesuits. Anyone could wave-up a space suit, but these were comfortable day-to-day wear. Kelly was pretty sure they could be tweaked to have different colours, and, probably even to fit men.

There was a digression into fashion, but it was agreed that a basic standard dull-grey model would sell well for $2k - bright orange was turned down; pink firmly rejected. Ones customised for a particular organisation, with places to attach rank markings, for $3k. And, top-of-the-line individually customised ones for $5k. If it was made clear these were subsidising the basic ones they could probably get away with this.

Maybe they could even make them for vacuum sports teams? Kelly said she'd experimented on the suits, and couldn't find any suitable dye, or bleach, that didn't also damage their space-worthiness. "Wright Suits".

It'd been a long meeting, but everyone was reasonably satisfied. Kelly needed to get them a Uniform Machine to work on. Arthur needed to build or find a spare Body Builder, and agree what anti-tamper precautions went with it. Janet agreed, as an aside, to look around for some better waved medical equipment for Kelly. Something that could induce safe suspension without risking a biomod would be good.

They very carefully didn't discuss the elephant in the room. Alice. Janet and Kevin were pretty sure that Kelly (and hence Sarah) knew Alice was Faster-Than-Light communications technology, and, there was a good chance they knew it would work off Earth. There were people who'd literally kill for that. And, probably everyone in the room knew it.

Janet had worked on the problem. The best she could come up with was the size of two bath tubs, weighed half-a-ton, drank power like a fish, and could only handle a single data stream. Admittedly that was terabits per second, and had an estimated pseudo velocity of tens of kilo-lights. And neither end had to be at a fixed location.

Janet started to talk about causality light-cone considerations, phase-space configuration issues and virtual spectra, but while she could see Kelly's bright encouraging expression, other eyes were glazing over. She quickly switched-back to matters of general interest.

So far she could only manage about 90% up-time, but was still fighting the prototypes into accepting substitutes for thermionic valves, and was pretty sure she could hit 99%. Assuming 10k hours per year, that was still about four days per year downtime, but, with any luck she'd get it up to 99.9%, about ten hours per year.

The others were impressed. Kevin Wright particularly so. Janet explained she'd been stealing ideas from all over science fiction, and this was just one that looked to work. She suggested they sell the 1.1 version (0.1% downtime) for off-planet use. Say, for a $100k each, giving them about the same profit margin as the robot frames.

Sarah said she'd need to check, but she was pretty sure they'd want to buy one. Or, more sensibly at least two, the other end for their Australian offices. She suggested Janet prepare for the stock markets to descend on her, waving their cheque books. Micro seconds counted to them. And, to tie them up with non-resale agreements, for the 'satellite' data link; call it a round $500k for all the bits.

It looked like "Wright Now Telecom" was going to be formed...


Foreign Investment

February 2011, Kandor City.

All alone. In a foreign place. A quarter billion miles to home. She certainly wasn't walking.

Jan shivered. She was new-born. How could they trust her? What if she got it all wrong. She sat down on a crate. Took a deep breath. Knocked on it. Time to get to work.

The office-workshop, with accommodation above, wasn't ideal. But, they were in a hurry. Things were changing in Fenspace. If they waited another month they might have no market, or have to do a complete product re-design. So. Kandor. Branch office. Now.

Security first. Someone smart would check-out new businesses, as they arrived. Before they were ready. All installed OK. No detectable bugs in the fabric of the structure. Jan marvelled at how her hands knew to do things. Things this body had never learned. But, she expected, the novelty would wear-off pretty quick.

Heavy-duty power systems, installed. Cooling ready. Time to unpack the FTL communicator. Carefully touching its security locks, disabling the self-destruct. Locking it in its new location. Locking her AI core in place. Yes, the self-destruct would kill her, too. But, she was ready for that.

At last! Everything tested OK. The clock showed Janet'd had enough time to get back to Dublin. Just. Give her another fifteen minutes, just to make sure. Put on a cup of tea. Unpack the fridge. Fill it from the cold box. OK. Enough waiting.

Success! The FTL communicator instantly talked to Dublin, Janet's workshop. A blur of data, and they resynchronised. Jan/Janet now remembered both setting-up the Kandor workshop, and her flight back to Earth. They cut the data link. Paused. Re-connected. Everything worked smoothly. Jan could feel Janet doing incremental backups, so she wouldn't loose more than ten minutes, even if the whole Kandor set-up was destroyed. Perfect.

Next, the other remotes. J1 to 5, all unpacked, all booted first time. She felt them like fingers on a hand, side glances of attention, all smoothly integrated. The Hollywood Machine did good work, if they could negotiate access to it. Her AI core was multi-processor, and that seemed to let her handle six remotes as well as Janet could handle two. They'd learned a trick or two by studying Alice.

The Uniform Machines, sorry, "Wright Suit Synthesisers", unpacked OK. Three to start with. Hopefully that'd be enough. Their anti-tamper logic was different, but just as thorough as the FTL communicator. Next the front office. Furnishings unpacked and assembled. The two scanning booths with their privacy arrangements. A dozen hands made fast work. All OK. Jan was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something must go wrong!

But, all seemed ready for business. If things went well, then maybe they'd also sell off-Earth rated "Wright Frames". *Ding* A potential first customer. With an almost unconscious act of will J3 went to attend. Almost certainly just an inquiry. Who'd buy from a business on its first day? She hadn't even double-checked the banking details. But still...

A good start.


Service Sector

Late February 2011, Kandor City.

Slow start. Steady business. Happy investors. Jan wasn't sure. Was she suited for retail? But, she was doing it.

Having six remotes helped. Rarely were more than two required in the front office, the 'shop'. That let the other four of her do other things, like research, poke around Kandor, read a book, or even day-dream. Less stress than any of her memories of being Janet recalled.

Each of the other five remotes was a bit customised, from her base 'Jan', that looked just like Janet. She guessed she'd have to come-up with names for all of them, but so far she'd just used "Jayon", "Jayto", "Jaytre", "Jayfor" and "Jayfi" - 'Jay?', 'Jen?', something different like 'Alex?'; it was hard to decide. After all, they were all her, it was other people who might, would, get confused.

Seeing as she'd been wearing 'the product', 24/7, a few things had arisen. It was truly a "Hollywood Spacesuit" - when the life support was active it somehow suppressed hunger, thirst and... toilet requirements. This was OK for the couple of hours that the suit was rated for, but people'd better have multiple occupancy toilet facilities real near their airlocks.

Accessories had been an interesting area. Redundant ear bud communicators were going nicely, as well as a medical monitor in the form of a throat band, echoed on a PDA wrist display, which doubled as a communicator. She was offering extended life support, six hours, on top of the two hours the tool belts gave, with a PDA wrist communicator that warned of medical stress (including too long without food, water or a toilet break).

A 'Buy One Get One Free' offer had worked well on the tool belts, so people would have a spare, as well as one recharging. Stuff always got broken or lost, and it would be bad if this happening to important parts of a space suit. Cleaning kits for both inside and outside of the suits went well, though there were clear 'dos and don'ts' in both the vacuum-proof paper and the electronic versions of the manual.

Further down the line, she guessed they'd offer active medical aids, though, acting as a franchise for a specialist might be better. She wondered if anyone had come up with that science fiction drug which dropped you into a safe suspended animation state when its injector detected pretty certain death? Hope you had friends who read your dog tags or medical bracelet, so they didn't just hold a funeral service.

There were, of course, 'requests'. One lady couldn't see why she shouldn't have a matching suit for her handbag dog. Jan did her best to hide her boggle, and suggested the lady custom-order a handbag that acted as a doggy spacesuit. She left without buying anything, but seemed reasonably pleased. A cat walked in and asked for a suit, and didn't seem surprised to hear their range didn't go that far. Fortunately, that'd been about as weird as it got.

But, she'd heard there were Muppets, running a shop, somewhere near-by...


Second Hand

August 2011, Dublin.

Looking back, Arthur thought most of what he'd dealt with was second-hand. Second-hand equipment, ideas, maybe even motivation. He hadn't really planned anything, it'd more just happened, he'd responded to events.

Rod had rejoined them. Finished college. He had a job, of course, assistant production supervisor and senior laboratory technician. Rod had filled-out a bit, but greasy food was still his bane. He'd dropped-in occasionally, even during his course, but seemed a bit bemused at working with attractive women, such as Janet and Alice. Arthur's secretary, Dana Lidzt, just terrified him.

He was interested in the company vehicles, and seemed a bit surprised all there were was a few Australian-waved vans. Arthur cheered him up by saying they were waiting delivery of a double-decker bus, for multiple uses, and, Arthur had an ancient Lear Jet, which would, when refurbished, be prestige company transport.

Janet had managed to scrape together the hours to get her pilot license, so Arthur wasn't the only person (officially) with that skill, any more. While he approved of that, for some reason Arthur felt a little hollow. Neither Sarah or Kelly had visited, recently, and messages from Jane were terse, and suggested some sort of crisis was brewing.

Recently, he'd taken up Tai Chi. He didn't really have the spare time, but, it was that or take-up gambling, again. Something was... wrong.

These days, he was speaking to important Fen, and, there was a tone, an impression, that he really didn't like. After a particularly good tai chi session, he realised it most reminded him of when he first got involved with handwavium. But, that was a feeling of hope, possibilities, and this was anything but that.

So, he had two choices, retreat into his hole and try and pretend there was nothing wrong, maybe that he was having an early 'mid-life crisis', or try and figure it out, so he, or someone, could do something about it. How? He was impersonating a businessman, but he was really technical. If this was a technical problem, how might he start solving it?

Elimination. His life wasn't perfect, he had to get back in the dating scene, but he was pretty sure it wasn't that. Eire, the world, was in a real financial mess, further confused by handwavium, but... he didn't think it was the problem. Near-Earth Fenspace, the Inner Solar System, again a bit of a mess, but basically OK. That put the problem further out.

There were times he'd wished he'd paid more attention when he'd been forced to study History. But, it never seemed to have much to do with real life. Maybe he'd idealised the Fen, thought they knew what they were doing, had things basically under control? What happened with Alice. Now that looked like a sign, a hint; no matter how benevolent handwavium seemed to be, someone would try and exploit it, and not in a good way.

Back to his science fiction friends. Few of them called themselves 'fen', or planned to 'go up'. But, they seemed to think about things. Yes, it might be second-hand knowledge, but, that'd done him pretty well, so far.

He was going to need to get ready...


Loss Management

September 2011, Dublin.

Dave Mathers. Barking mad. AI genius. Occultist. Sitting across the table from him. Was Arthur mad?

*b-Beep* "Sorry, that's for me." Mathers inspected his wrist, and a watch that looked more like a medical display, or maybe a colourful pie-chart. He cocked his head to one side, apparently doing some sort of calculation, or maybe reciting a mantra. Then, extracted a multi-layered pill box from his pocket, rotated it so the coloured bands matched the watch, and shook out a few pills.

"Cool! Blue, I expected that, but, a brown as well? Must have worked its way up." He swallowed them, and Arthur held out a glass of water. "Thanks!"

Mathers thought for a moment. "It's all based on sound principles. This" and he held-up the wrist display "measures my aura, and bio rhythms, and tells me what is needed to keep me in balance. The pills, all natural herbal. Some of them are placebos, but I've carefully forgotten which."

'No', thought Arthur, 'He wasn't mad. Mathers was'. "Thanks for making time for this consultancy. I know you have a busy weekend."

Mathers winked and tapped the side of his nose. "I know who arranged my lecture tour and workshops. Yes, I appreciate the chance to visit Dublin, again, but I know how things work."

"Now. What made you think you needed me? Any problems with those discs I made-up for you?" "No", replied Arthur, "but there are a couple of, maybe three, AI projects I wondered if you could help with..."

Arthur remembered his last visit to Kevin Wright. He'd improved a great deal, but looked a little drawn. Arthur had asked if he might be over-doing it. Nurse Blake, in the background, as always, frowned at him. As he was leaving she approached him, and snarled in his face, that Kevin's health was her concern, and no one else's. He'd noticed, in an abstract way, that she was trembling - most of his attention was on the scalpel held, nearly out of sight, behind her back.

Arthur recounted the process by which Nurse Blake had come about. "It's a bad idea designing an AI when you're angry", remarked Mathers. "It's particularly bad when you're waving-up hardware for that AI to live in. Sounds like you did both. The only thing that's saved you so far is the anger originated in Love."

"Now, tell me about the other two..."

It'd been difficult, but they'd pinned Nurse Blake. Kevin Wright had toured the production facility, and they'd managed to manoeuvre her into the grip of a power lifter. She'd still bent metal. Kevin remarked she'd been getting a little strange, just as loving and dutiful as ever to him, but increasingly touchy around others.

Mathers helped them install the simulation set-up on the company server, based on the "Metaverse" code Arthur'd been tinkering with. They used the backups of Nurse Blake, and did several runs, projecting likely futures, with an early version of her watching.

Though not happy, as all the runs resulted in either Kevin getting hurt, her destruction, or both, she agreed to her current personality being adjusted. It was agreed that they'd run the early version of her, at regular intervals, to monitor developments. They hadn't really got anyone else who could be responsible. Mather's said he'd forward a procedure to merge the early back into the current version, when she was happy with the situation.

Janet and Alice got a clean bill of health, though Mathers wasn't happy about Arthur's blood getting in Janet's handwavium; he mumbled about 'blood bond'. Mathers spoke privately to Janet, and afterwards seemed satisfied. For Alice he recommended several books on meditation, and that she take up Hatha Yoga, as she needed to work on her body consciousness, due to her 'Gaia link'.

The Lear Jet arrived, fully refurbished, and waved-up. Apparently it ran on filk music, and needed "Caledonia Girls" (the 1983 advert version, not the modern one) at least every fifteen minutes, unless you just flew it as a normal jet. Arthur and Rod went over every inch of it, and pronounced themselves satisfied.

Arthur took it out on a few test flights, spent two solid days in his workshop, then slept thirteen hours. Only Alice knew what'd caused this, and she wasn't talking. The day after, he filed a flight plan, and took-off. The day after that Alice announced, tearfully, that he was "Gone", and, she didn't know where.