Art Bébé says, 'Fade in:'
LASH IT!
The eways parallel the grid of the old streets, now canals. Night time on Lexington. She sits docked, not bothering to hunch behind the bike windshield while cutting up the traffic. Mutable Machine Unit 01 Miko is on song, her high-powered, hydrogen-fueled, electric motor effortlessly pulling through the power band. No one is going to hold them up. And certainly not this girl. But what was all this traffic anyway? Her data goggles confirm one of the worst night’s post-Tipping. Humidity 87%. Temperature 440 Celsius. Rain contamination 67%. The very air the consistency of a sticky tar. But what has she to care? She’d simply desensitized those of her throat and décolletage skin cells exposed to the night, too impatient exiting the garage to fasten her coat, leaving it to billow behind her. But Miko? She engages her internal comms.
‘Sorry about the weather, Miko, How about I promise you a wash?’
'A wash, Bébé, I don’t understand!’
‘You don’t,’ she answers, smiling. There had been genuine puzzlement in Miko’s perfectly modulated, feminine intonation, a good example of how Quantum AI isn’t there yet, Miko not expected to understand that she is already getting a wash in the rain. ‘Never mind, maybe someday you will,’ she hurriedly adds, but then it comes to her that she hasn’t helped with her proviso, forcing her to just as quickly explain, promising, ‘I mean, I’ll program an algorithm for you, no problem, call it biocleansing.’
Miko remains silent, a good thing, she thinks. She did not want to reopen the debate on why they are out tonight. Lash it!
It had been another day in her room at her studies when the real world lay outside. Frustrated, she’d taken the long elevator ride up to the BAAL Tower skydeck on the 112th floor to watch the sunset. The fiery-red ball had been barely been visible behind the chemically charged black cloud as it sank over the Greater New York Archipelago (GNYA). She waited till it had completed set, all the time watching the build of pollutant on the perimeter glass. The post-apocalyptic world! How had it come to this? She was a long way from understanding.
Returned to her docking bed, she’d resumed her studies in all the fields that had lately come to interest her, but her concentration had failed on every subject. She had to get out of the tower. She understood what she was doing. This was an overt act of rebellion, a mindset she had come to commit herself to more and more in all sorts of ways, and each time felt herself swell with pride at the sense of her own growing independence. The holo dome retracted from the bed, she’d sat up, looking towards her coat.
It hung on the floating, headless, mannequin torso by the door. Of functionally adaptive biofabric (FAB), the fabric could bend to her will, lengthen and shorten, tighten to her wrist, and clasp at her throat. It was the one item of clothing of which she was the most proud, and she’d practically jumped from the bed to retrieve it, swinging it over shoulders.
She’d then taken the elevator down to the garage on the 33rd floor and, across the acid-pitted concrete, found Miko parked in her bay, charge cable on trickle, poised, in her blue-gray and red, thick structural form, like a predatory insect ready to pounce. The twin data cables already snaking from either side of Miko’s body to slip beneath the coat and dock into her spine, settled in the seat, systems check complete, and the charge cable disconnected, she’d disengaged her telemetry from Dr Syber, had Miko fire the engine, and open the door to the night.
And right at that moment she should have drawn up a contract with Miko, a clause stating, ‘Suffering existential crisis, feeling particularly reckless, maybe even suicidal, prepare for anything.’ Only she hadn’t communicated a word. She’d relied on the fact that Miko knew her well enough. She had nanos governing all aspects of her anatomy and physiology. But her psychology? Dr Syber had certainly underestimated that aspect. Human moods were not so easily governed. No doubt she could engage her enhanced neural loom (ENL) along various neuro receptor pathways, breaking the uptake or release of whatever neurochemical was momentarily out of sorts, lift her feelings, but the desperation of this always stopped her. Sooner or later her continuing flux of mood would leave her bouncing around like a hapless marionette. But beginning on the ride, she had quickly come to feel better, less like a hapless marionette, more the puppeteer.
'Bébé, are you with me?' she hears from Miko.'
She returns what little part of her attention is needed to her data goggle telemetry.
'Yes, Miko, give me manual control.’
‘Ill advised, Bébé,’ she hears. ‘Not at this time. East 23rd intersection approaching. Oncoming traffic is heavy. I’m stopping.’
It is an uncontrolled node. She checks the CGI on her data goggles. Fast approaching on the intersecting inbound lane, three bikes front a stream of heavy and light vehicles. The bikes are tightly tucked in a single file. She feels Miko slow, and hurriedly yells, ‘No, I repeat, give me manual. I’m making the turn. There’s time.’
‘Bébé, I’m stopping.’
‘I said manual, Miko,’ she snaps back.
‘Manual override engaged, Bébé.’
She has three and half seconds to enter the turn. She plots an arc, calculating the initial braking strength, and then the exiting acceleration, all the time taking into account the friction coefficient of the road that would allow for maximum traction and stability on the front and rear tires. Making the turn, the first protest comes from the shuddering front tire, then the sliding rear, and finally, the front forks taking on all the worst aspects of Jell-O. But she gets around, beating the other bikes, already leaving them some distance behind.
‘Logging incident, Bébé,’ she hears from Miko.
‘Huh! Why?’
‘A hair’s breadth of extra drift would have colored the guard rail with my body paint. I could have bled to death.’
Had she heard right? Bled to death? ‘Miko, what was that!’ she exclaims. ‘Did you just evoke a simile?’
‘Simile, Bébé. Quoting the standard New World dictionary. Begin quote. A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid. End quote.’
‘Congratulations, Miko. You are learning?
‘Always learning, Bébé. Always evolving. Inherent within my programming.’
Yes, she thought, never mind that Miko hadn’t understood her earlier irony, that she was already being washed by the rain, artificial intelligence, just like life, is always evolving. She must never forget. Good to have been reminded.
Art Bébé says, 'Fade out.'
Art Bébé™ ©
Art Bébé™ ©
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