We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Read Online Free
Author: Dennis E. Taylor
picnic in the park.”
Dr. Landers tapped his tablet absent-mindedly. It was obvious to me that he knew the whole spiel by rote.
“In the next election, the public voted in the USA’s first—and only—overtly atheist president, Desmond Ahearn, mostly in reaction to the Handel travesty. Needless to say, the religious right went ballistic. In 2041, they staged a successful coup. And thus was born the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony.”
It took me perhaps a millisecond to parse out the acronym. I groaned. “How long do you suppose it took them to work that out?”
Dr. Landers frowned. “The official history doesn’t mention Ahearn or the coup at all, and Handel is credited with being voted in after running on a platform of creating a theocracy. And just so you know, Bob, criticism of the government is a felony, punishable by, er, re-education . It’s certainly something to be avoided. As a machine, though, you’d just be deactivated. Part of my job is to instruct you in right-thinking so you can become a good servant of the state.”
“Are you going to get in trouble at all? Some of your comments seem, you know, insufficiently respectful.”
“The Ministry of Truth, which is backing this venture, is surprisingly pragmatic. They are concerned with results, and have guaranteed us that they will not interfere as long as they get what they’re paying for.” The doctor frowned. “Some of the other ministries, maybe less so. We are cautious during any ministry visits.”
“Got it. So anyway, I get to live out my days operating a garbage truck or something, as a good servant of the state?”
“Ah, well, on that subject… You see, one of the first acts of the new theocracy was to declare all cryogenic facilities blasphemous and all corpsicles truly dead. They confiscated the clients’ assets—all those fiscal vehicles that you and others had set up to pay for your long-term storage. And finally they auctioned off all the cryo companies’ assets. Which included a bunch of deep-frozen clients with no legal standing.”
“Auctioned us off? Wouldn’t the properly orthodox thing to do be to bury us? Not that I’m advocating that right now, you understand…”
Dr. Landers looked angry for a moment. “Did theologues limit themselves to logical or consistent behavior in your day?”
“Point taken.” I considered the doctor’s explanation. “So I actually belong to someone?”
“To the company I work for, as a matter of fact. Applied Synergetics Inc. is engaged in a sort of economic competition with Total Cyber Systems to supply robotic servants to society. We attempt to integrate replicants into useful machinery, while TCS creates artificial machine intelligences, AMIs, from the ground up.”
I chuckled. Or tried to. What came out of the voice synthesizer was a long way from what I intended.
Dr. Landers winced. “That’ll get better. Don’t worry. By the end of this session, your voice will be indistinguishable from human. And to answer the unspoken but obvious question, AMIs at the moment are only authorized for very, very simple tasks with low risk or heavy supervision. Some years ago, some AMI-based pest-control equipment at a local mall had a psychotic break and decided people qualified as targets. Dozens of patrons were hurt, and several were killed before they deactivated the devices.”
I chuckled again. This time it sounded less like a printer jamming.
“On the other hand,” Dr. Landers continued, “replicants aren’t any better at multitasking than they were when alive. Which is why we add the GUPPI interface to offload tasks. And about four out of five replicants go insane when they discover what has been done to them.”
He looked in my direction with a wry expression. “Not to mention that most cryo subjects were wealthy, and don’t take well to the idea of becoming indentured servants in their next life.”
The image of some ex-CEO being told he would now be
Dr. Landers tapped his tablet absent-mindedly. It was obvious to me that he knew the whole spiel by rote.
“In the next election, the public voted in the USA’s first—and only—overtly atheist president, Desmond Ahearn, mostly in reaction to the Handel travesty. Needless to say, the religious right went ballistic. In 2041, they staged a successful coup. And thus was born the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony.”
It took me perhaps a millisecond to parse out the acronym. I groaned. “How long do you suppose it took them to work that out?”
Dr. Landers frowned. “The official history doesn’t mention Ahearn or the coup at all, and Handel is credited with being voted in after running on a platform of creating a theocracy. And just so you know, Bob, criticism of the government is a felony, punishable by, er, re-education . It’s certainly something to be avoided. As a machine, though, you’d just be deactivated. Part of my job is to instruct you in right-thinking so you can become a good servant of the state.”
“Are you going to get in trouble at all? Some of your comments seem, you know, insufficiently respectful.”
“The Ministry of Truth, which is backing this venture, is surprisingly pragmatic. They are concerned with results, and have guaranteed us that they will not interfere as long as they get what they’re paying for.” The doctor frowned. “Some of the other ministries, maybe less so. We are cautious during any ministry visits.”
“Got it. So anyway, I get to live out my days operating a garbage truck or something, as a good servant of the state?”
“Ah, well, on that subject… You see, one of the first acts of the new theocracy was to declare all cryogenic facilities blasphemous and all corpsicles truly dead. They confiscated the clients’ assets—all those fiscal vehicles that you and others had set up to pay for your long-term storage. And finally they auctioned off all the cryo companies’ assets. Which included a bunch of deep-frozen clients with no legal standing.”
“Auctioned us off? Wouldn’t the properly orthodox thing to do be to bury us? Not that I’m advocating that right now, you understand…”
Dr. Landers looked angry for a moment. “Did theologues limit themselves to logical or consistent behavior in your day?”
“Point taken.” I considered the doctor’s explanation. “So I actually belong to someone?”
“To the company I work for, as a matter of fact. Applied Synergetics Inc. is engaged in a sort of economic competition with Total Cyber Systems to supply robotic servants to society. We attempt to integrate replicants into useful machinery, while TCS creates artificial machine intelligences, AMIs, from the ground up.”
I chuckled. Or tried to. What came out of the voice synthesizer was a long way from what I intended.
Dr. Landers winced. “That’ll get better. Don’t worry. By the end of this session, your voice will be indistinguishable from human. And to answer the unspoken but obvious question, AMIs at the moment are only authorized for very, very simple tasks with low risk or heavy supervision. Some years ago, some AMI-based pest-control equipment at a local mall had a psychotic break and decided people qualified as targets. Dozens of patrons were hurt, and several were killed before they deactivated the devices.”
I chuckled again. This time it sounded less like a printer jamming.
“On the other hand,” Dr. Landers continued, “replicants aren’t any better at multitasking than they were when alive. Which is why we add the GUPPI interface to offload tasks. And about four out of five replicants go insane when they discover what has been done to them.”
He looked in my direction with a wry expression. “Not to mention that most cryo subjects were wealthy, and don’t take well to the idea of becoming indentured servants in their next life.”
The image of some ex-CEO being told he would now be
Readers choose
Allison Brennan
Jeff Laferney
P. W. Catanese
Tiffany Madison
Lauraine Snelling
Suzanne Clark
Viola Grace
Melissa Harrison
Simon Doonan