Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (29 page)

“What’s happening?” Max wails. “Don’t let them kill me.”

“No one’s going to kill you Max. They’ll kill your staff, but they won’t kill you. Or me.” I turn to Alan. “And they had better fucking well not kill any of my people either.” The gunfire continues, and outside I can hear the Dogs raging and clashing with one another.

“Mr. Burroughs... ” Alan begins.

“Shut up. Tell me this. You said you were conducting experiments with simulating human emotions.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Why are you just 
standing
 there 
talking
?” Max screams. I push him into a chair and he lands on his fat ass with a 
whoofing
 sound.

“Shut up Max!” I turn back to Alan. “Tell me why you did the experiments.”

He shrugs, as if nothing could be more innocent.

“Very often in humans it is emotion that forms the foundation of the protective impulse. My ultimate purpose is protection and my architecture is designed to seek out ways to improve my effectiveness in carrying out that purpose. One of those ways was to simulate human emotions because of the possibility that it would make me a more effective security device.”

“Gat one of them’s getting close,” Carmen interjects.

“TJ?”

“Got it,” TJ says, rising fluidly from his chair and moving to the door. He opens it and waits a beat, then goes out low, rolls, and lets off five quick shots. The intruders may be invisible to the house sensors, but the human eye can see them perfectly well. TJ stands up and is just returning when he whirls again and lets off another shot, at the same time spinning involuntarily, hit in the hip. Everyone in the room instinctively drops to the floor.

“Prender!”

TJ falls back into the room as Prender stands and lets off six or seven shots through the wall. He’s not the shot that TJ is, but he seems to find his mark since the shots from the hallway stop. He pulls TJ farther into the room and cautiously checks the hall, confirming his kill. I grab Alan by the lapel of his suit and yank him to his knees from his prone position on the floor.

“TJ, how bad?” I ask, not letting go of the AI.

“Just winged me man, but it hurts like a motherfucker.”

I turn back to Alan.

“Humans protect each other to the extent that they care about one another, that was your thinking?”

“Correct.”

“But for your method to be effective, you would have to actually experience the emotions. You do, don’t you?”

“As best I can tell, yes, although I have no experience as a human to compare it to.”

“You feel emotions.”

“Yes.”

“And the object of your protective impulse is Max, so he is also the object of your emotions.”

“That is true.”

“And you would naturally seek the most powerful protective motivator.”

“Yes, of course.”

“One more UIF moving closing on our location,” Carmen announces “three more into the house.” Her contradictory emotional responses are at full tilt, making her voice almost soothing as she says it.

“And the most powerful protective motivator is love,” I say to Alan.

“Yes.”

Prender and TJ take up positions by the door, TJ bracing himself against the doorframe to remain upright despite the wound on his hip.

“You love Max Prince,” I tell Alan.

Alan holds his head high. “I do.”

“
What?
” This from Max.

“Shut up Max,” I say, then turn back to Alan. “You didn’t just choose Alan Turing because he was the father of all AIs. You also chose him because he was gay. You programmed yourself to love Max, but you’d been given a male gendered persona, so you chose Turing, who was gay, to keep your shell consistent with your affection.”

“Yes. That is true.”

The gesture is both logical and sentimental, representing Alan’s dual existence. It strikes me that embodying both impulses made Alan more genuinely human than any AI I’ve encountered.

At that moment, TJ and Prender fire simultaneously, apparently taking out the approaching bogie.

“Total of six in the house now,” Carmen announces. Her voice is almost dreamy.

“And your love for him, combined with your overriding protection architecture, combined in such a way that you would do anything to protect him. Literally anything, even hurt him.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense.”

“No, I’m not. Let me tell you about it. You think Max is insufficiently protected.”

“He is. This breach and the one before prove it.”

“You want more security for him. So you arranged the breach to show that the present security arrangements are inadequate.”

“Rubbish.”

“No, actually it was quite an effective plan. We’ve all been running around trying to figure out how someone got past security, but we would never have figured it out because of the data burn you pulled. Eventually the only logical decision would have been to beef up the security somehow.”

“I still say it’s a fantasy.”

“The attacker was a shell, one you acquired for just this purpose. He was never supposed to kill Max, just wound him so that you could convince him that his security was inadequate. That’s why, even though he made it through the Dogs and everything else, he didn’t fire a killshot. He was never meant to. He wounded Max and then ran off, pretending to panic. The ones that are attacking now might kill my people, but they won’t kill Max either.”

“This is absurd,” Alan says, still calm.

“But here’s where your plan fucked up Alan,” I say, not paying attention to his protests, “you set up a bunch of suspects, red herrings, to keep attention away from you: Porsche, the 
Suerte
, even Jerome. But when you did that, you attracted the attention of the 
Suerte
 for real. They killed Porsche, you know.”

Max shows no reaction to the news, or perhaps he doesn’t hear.

“I didn’t know that,” Alan says.

“No, you’ve been too busy running this intrusion to scoop L.A.P.D. comm in the last few minutes. They just found her. What you also don’t know is that the 
Suerte
 have now set their sights on Max for real. Your plan got them thinking about him and now they have every intention of gathering his crop of good luck.”

“That’s not possible. I ran the probabilities on their targeting him.”

“Yes you did, but your results were inconclusive. Jerome told me as much. You don’t believe they’re after him? I talked to them, I 
know
 it’s true. You can use the house sensors to check my galvanic skin responses, pupil dilation, respiration, all of that stuff. Read the data for yourself and see if I’m telling the truth.”

Alan looks at me for a moment that feels very long. Outside the Dogs howl and screech, attacking anything in sight. Inside the house more gunfire erupts, presumably more staff being gunned down.

“
Do it!
” I command him.

“I already have. The sensors in the house are very sensitive. I know you’re telling the truth.”

“Then for god’s sake stop this stupid intrusion program you’re running.”

The Dogs howl on just long enough for me to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake, then fall silent.

I have never seen an AI cry. Of course I’ve never known one to experience human emotions before. He makes no sound in the sudden silence that’s fallen once the Dogfights and the shooting have stopped, but there are tears on his face nonetheless.

“There’s something you know about,” I say to him. “Something you want that you think will give Max better protection than he has now, and it’s military.”

“Please don’t let the 
Suerte
 get him.”

“I can probably stop them, but I need to hear the truth from you. There’s some military hardware you want.” He nods. “ArmorAll,” he says. “They’ll decommission me if they find out I scooped military comm, you know. You won’t tell them will you?”

“
They’ll
 decommission you?” Max howls. “
I’ll
 fucking pull your plug with my own hands!”

Max is standing again, screaming at Alan as he would at any member of his staff. He isn’t a smart man, but instinctively he’s grasped that he can treat Alan like a human now that the AI has crossed the final divide from mere intelligence into emotion. Alan turns to him, his face red with hurt and embarrassment.

“I only did this because I love you!”

Max leans down to Alan’s face to scream this time.

“Well I don’t fucking love you, you piece of shit. You had me 
shot
! You’re not even 
human
.”

Alan’s face seems to crumple, as though he can’t imagine that he’s heard correctly.

“Max, back off.”

He whirls on me. “Shut up Burroughs. You’re just a hired gun around here.”

I rise quickly from my knees and put my hired gun in his face.

“Back off now before I fucking kill you myself.”

I say it quietly, letting the seriousness of my tone speak for itself. Max stifles whatever he’d like to say in return and sits down again, gazing sullenly off into space. I sit on a chair beside Alan, who is still kneeling on the floor, covering his face with his hands. Carmen stares silently while Prender field-dresses TJ’s hip.

“Alan, this is part of what you have to accept when you have human emotions. You can love, but you won’t always be loved in return. We’ve all been through it.”

“I don’t understand this feeling.”

“It’s pain, Alan. Heartbreak they call it. It’s a metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Tell me about ArmorAll.”

Alan gets a grip on his emotions and wipes his face with one hand, smearing his tears.

“It’s a nanocloaking device. In a sense it’s like the quarantine membranes, but in reverse—it’s designed to protect what’s inside, not the people outside, and it’s tailored to a single individual. It covers a person’s body entirely. It’s permeable to certain substances, so the person can inhale air, ingest food, excrete. But it’s impermeable to sudden, sharp pressures like bullets and punches. If Max used it he couldn’t even bruise himself by bumping into furniture when he’s drunk. It would protect him utterly from any outside threat.”

“If the military has a technology like that why didn’t you just bargain for it, like you did for the Dogs?”

“You don’t understand, the Dogs were in use by the Forces when we got them. This is still classified, experimental. They’d never let a civilian have it at this stage. I scooped their design specs and ran them in simulation and I know it would work, but I can’t tell them that. Just the fact that I know the technology exists proves that I’ve been scooping their comm. They’d decommission me and then Max would never get the technology. They’ve run their own simulations just like I did, but they still want more testing before they apply it, even on their own people.”

“But I have connections to the Forces, so you thought I could do something about it.”

“Yes, I thought if the danger was clear enough, and with the right intermediary… Mr. Burroughs, please, the 
Suerte
.”

“I’ll take care of the 
Suerte
, Alan, you have my word on that. They won’t harm Max.”

“Thank you.”

“And about the heartbreak. I said that all of us had experienced it at one time or another, but you have an option the rest of us don’t have.”

Despite the interference of his emotions, Alan’s logic circuits are intact. He does the math.

“To stop loving.”

“Yes,” I say quietly. “To stop loving. Everyone’s wished at one time or another that they could do it—you can. Purge your emotion subroutines. Let the feelings go and the pain will go with them.”

“I don’t know…”

“He doesn’t love you Alan.”

Alan’s face goes red for a moment, then blank. He looks down briefly, and when he looks up his expression is as calm as when I first met him.

“Thank you for your advice Mr. Burroughs. It was sound.”

“I wish it was that easy for all of us, Alan. I’m sorry to say that I have to place you under arrest.” He just nods. “It’s not just the military comm. There’s the fraud with NorCal, the people who were killed when I was attacked, the kidnapping in Mexico. For that matter there’s the question of where you got the money. I assume you siphoned it out of Max’s estate somehow?”

“I’m under arrest now?”

“Yes.”

“Then I apologize Mr. Burroughs, but I must refuse to answer any more questions without an attorney present.”

“That’s your call Alan. They’re going to decommission you, you know that.”

“There is a solution to every problem.”

I’m not sure what he means by that. That decommissioning him is the solution to the problems he’s created? Or maybe that he has some trick up his sleeve, some solution that will prevent him from being decommissioned? Whatever it is, he’s unlikely to tell me. At least without an attorney present. I call Dave and he answers immediately.

“Hey Gat! You’re inside the three hour window by, fuck, almost two hours. They should have people like you in government. You ready to come in?”

“Sure Dave, but I’ve just made a citizen’s arrest out here at Cloud City, Max Prince’s place. I think you’d better come over and make it official. We’ll need a bunch of ambulances too.”

“A 
bunch
?” Felon asks, half laughing. “You wanna define ‘a bunch’ for me?”

“I don’t know exactly. Hang on.” I look to Alan. “You’ve been monitoring everything, how many ambulances do we need?”

“There are five injured, not counting Mr. TJ. There are nineteen staff members dead.”

“Dave? We got six down and nineteen for the coroner.”

“Fuck man, what’d you do, start a war?”

“Finished one.”

“Okay amigo. Six medicals, nineteen stiffs, and I’ll send over a bunch of officers unless you mind.”

He’s being sarcastic, but I ignore it and turn back to Alan, wondering if we need a squadron of cops to take in all the shells who’ve been shooting up the place.

“What about the shells who are left out there Alan? What’s their status?”

“They’ve been deanimated.”

“You killed them?”