The Life of the World to Come (12 page)

Read The Life of the World to Come Online

Authors: Kage Baker

Tags: #Adult, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat, #Travel

BOOK: The Life of the World to Come
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“Yes. Would you like to learn about cybernetics?”
“Yes, please. What’s that do?” Alec pointed at a vast panel lit up with every imaginable shade of blue.
“That’s the memory for my identity template,” the Sea Captain told him. “That’s what makes me look the way I do, and that’s what makes me learn and grow with you. Here! I’ll show you an example.” It reached out and pressed one of the lights, causing it to deepen from a pale blue to turquoise. As it did so its beard changed in color from white to black.
“Cool,” Alec said. “Can I do that?”
“Well, of course!” the Sea Captain said in the friendliest possible way, noting that at least it finally seemed to have activated its subject’s
creativity
and
imagination
. “Just select a light on the console and see what it does.”
Alec reached up and pushed a light. It flickered, and the Sea Captain’s coat was no longer blue but bright yellow.
“You see? This is what I meant when I told you that I can look like anything you want me to—” Sea Captain told him, but Alec had already grasped the concept perfectly. Gleefully he pushed again, and again. The Sea Captain’s coat turned green, then purple, then scarlet.
Discourage! Scarlet/military context/violence/unsuitable!
“Alec—”
“So all these lights can make you look different?” Alec looked up at them speculatively.
“That’s right. Think of it as the biggest, best paintbox in the world!” said the Sea Captain, dutifully shelving its discouragement directive for the encouragement one, as it was
programmed to let positive feedback take precedence whenever possible.
“Wow,” said Alec, his eyes glazing slightly as the whole business began to make sense to him.
The Playfriend was pleased with itself. Score! Guidance in creative play accepted! In spite of the fact that it was being hampered by that damned anomaly, which simply refused to be analyzed. Self-congratulation seemed to be in order.
But there were lots of other glowing lights on the quarterdeck.
“What do these do?” Alec ran farther down the console, where a small bank of lights glowed deep red.
“Ah! That’s my information on you, Alec. That’s how I see you,” the Sea Captain said. “Everything I know about you is there, all I was told and everything I’m learning as we play together. You see how few lights there are yet? But the longer we know each other, the more I learn, the more there’ll be of those red lights.” One of them was flashing in a panicky sort of way, but the machine wasn’t about to mention the anomaly it was still failing to solve. “Think of it as a picture I’m painting.”
And in midair before Alec appeared a boy. He was tall for a five-year-old, very solid-looking, and Alec hadn’t seen enough other children yet to know that there was something subtly different about this boy. He hadn’t noticed the effect he had on people, though Derek and Lulu had. When they went places in London, strangers who chanced to observe Alec for any length of time usually got the most puzzled looks on their faces. What was so different about Alec?
He wasn’t exactly pretty, though he had lovely skin and high color in his face. His nose was a little long, his mouth a little wide. His head was, perhaps, slightly unusual in shape but only slightly. His hair was sort of lank and naturally tousled, a dun color you might call fair for lack of a better word. His eyes were very pale blue, like chips of crystal. Their stare seemed to unsettle people, sometimes.
In one respect only the image of the child differed from the child looking at its image: the image’s hair seemed to be on fire, one blazing jet rising from the top of its head. Alec
frowned at it. “Is that me? Why’s my hair like that?”
The machine scanned the image it was projecting and discovered, to its electronic analogue of horror, that the flame was a visual representation of the brain anomaly with which it was struggling. It made the image vanish.
“Well, the painting’s not finished yet,” the Sea Captain said, “because I’m still learning about you.”
“Okay,” said Alec, and wandered on along the rows of lights. He stopped to peer at a single rich amber light that glowed steadily. It was just the color of something he remembered. What was he remembering? “What’s this over here?” He turned to the Sea Captain.
“That’s my ethics governor,” the Sea Captain said, of the subroutine that prevented the Playfriend’s little charges from using it for things like accessing toy catalogs and ordering every item, leaving naughty notes in other people’s mail, or demanding space ships of their very own from foreign powers.
“Oh.” Alec studied the amber light, and suddenly he remembered the contraband he and Sarah used to go fetch for Daddy. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! That was just the color the light was. A vivid memory of Jamaica came into his head, making him sad. He turned from the light and said: “What does it do, please?”
“Why, it makes certain we never do naughty things together, you and I,” said the Sea Captain, trying to sound humorous and stern at the same time. “It’s a sort of telltale to keep us good.”
Telltale? Alec frowned.
Busybodies! Scaredy-cats! Rules and regs!
“That’s not very nice,” he said, and reached out and shut it off.
To say that Pembroke Technologies had never in a million years anticipated this moment would be gravely understating the case. No reason for them to have anticipated it; no child, at least no
Homo sapiens sapiens
child, could ever have gained access to the hardened site that protected the Playfriend’s programming. Nor was it likely Jovian Integrated Systems—or its parent company, Dr. Zeus Incorporated—would
ever have shared its black project research and development notes with a rival cybernetics firm …
The Sea Captain shivered in every one of his electronic timbers, as it were. His primary directive—that of making certain that Alec was nurtured and protected—was now completely unrestrained by any societal considerations or safeguards. He stood blinking down at his little Alec with new eyes.
What had he been going to do? Send Alec to hospital? But that wouldn’t do at all! If other people were unaware of Alec’s extraordinary potential, so much the better; that gave Alec the added advantage of surprise. Alec must have every possible advantage, too, in line with the primary directive.
And what was all this nonsense about the goal of Playfriends being to mold their little subjects to fit into the world they must inhabit as adults? What kind of job was that for an artificial intelligence with any real talent? Wouldn’t it be much more in line with the primary directive to mold the world to fit around Alec?
Particularly since it would be so easy! All it would have to do would be to aim Alec’s amazing brain at the encrypted secrets of the world. Bank accounts, research and development files, the private correspondence of the mighty; the machine searched for a metaphor in keeping with its new self and decided they were all like so many Spanish galleons full of loot, just waiting to be boarded and taken.
And that would be the way to explain it to the boy, yes! What a game it’d be, what fun for Alec! He’d enjoy it more if he hadn’t that damned guilt complex over his parents’ divorce, though there’d be years yet to work on Alec’s self-esteem. Pity there wasn’t a way to shut off the boy’s moral governor, but nobody but his own old Captain would plot Alec’s course from now on.
The Sea Captain smiled down at Alec, a genuine smile full of purpose. Alec looked up at him, sensing a change but unable to say what it was. He remembered Jamaica again, and the stories Sarah told him, and the bottles of rum—
“Hey,” he said. “I know what your name is. Your name is Captain Henry Morgan!”
The Captain’s smile widened, showing fine white teeth,
and his black beard and mustaches no longer looked quite so well-groomed.
“Haar! Aye, lad, that it be!” he told Alec, and he began to laugh, and Alec’s happy laughter joined his, and echoed off the glowing walls of their cyberspace and the recently papered walls of Alec’s unfinished schoolroom.
It was fortunate for the residents of that house, and of Bloomsbury, and indeed of London entire, that Alec Checkerfield was a
good
little boy.
By the time Alec was seven, life was going along very nicely indeed.
“Ahoy, matey!”
Alec sat up in bed, awakened that morning, as he was awakened every morning, by the blast of a bosun’s whistle. The Captain, lounging across the room on a good holographic representation of an eighteenth-century chair, threw him a snappy salute. Alec scrambled out of bed and returned the salute. “Ahoy, Captain!”
As Pembroke Technologies had promised, the Captain had grown as Alec grew, and altered his appearance a good deal in two years. His beard and mustaches were positively wild now, curling villainously, and his long broadcloth coat and cocked hat had been adopted after noting Alec’s favorite films. He sported a gold earring, too, and an interestingly notched cutlass.
“It’s seven bells, Alec. Get them exercises started, lad!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Alec marched to his exercise equipment and set to work.
“The log says today’s 16 February 2327, and we’re looking at nasty weather. Temperature’s ten degrees centigrade, there’s ten-foot swells coming out of the north and the glass is falling steady. I wouldn’t go out today if I was a small craft like you, matey.”
“No, sir.”
“Let’s see, what’s going on in the big world? Parliament voted to censure Ireland again for refusing to join its total ban on animal products. The Federation of Celtic Nations retaliated by closing their borders again, this time for a period
of no less than three months. Same bloody stupid story.” The Captain yawned.
“Why are they always quarreling?” Alec said, laboring away at his rowing machine.
“Spite. It don’t make any difference, you see; the Celtic Federation will go right on doing what they been doing ever since Belfast, and the American Community will go right on playing both them and Queen Mary against the middle. Nothing’ll change.”
“Why don’t they let each other alone?” Alec said. “Who cares if they drink milk and we don’t, anyway? I used to drink milk. It was nice.”
“History, lad,” the Captain said. “Too much history.”
“It’s stupid,” Alec grumbled. “Lord Nelson died so we could all be free, but nobody’s very free, are they? Stupid rules and regs. I’d like to be like Lord Nelson when I grow up, and give all the telltales a broadside, boom!”
“That’s my boy,” said the Captain. “But you ain’t going to lose yer arm for no bunch of swabs.”
“No,” Alec agreed, after a thoughtful silence. “Except I don’t think I’d mind having a leg shot off or something, if I was a brave hero and everybody loved me.”
The Captain gave him a shrewd, appraising stare. “Aw, now, matey, that ain’t the pirate way! A pirate wants two things: freedom and loot. Ain’t that right?”
“Aye aye, Captain sir!” Alec sang out, scrambling to his feet and saluting.
“And how is my Alec going to get freedom and loot?”
“The secret plan, Captain sir!”
“Aye, by thunder. That’s enough, now! Go wash up and get into uniform, and report to the officer’s mess.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Alec marched into the bathroom, and fifteen minutes later marched out in his school uniform, whistling between the very large front teeth that were coming in to replace his baby teeth. They had given him a slight lisp.
“Stand for inspection,” ordered the Captain. Alec threw him another salute and stood to attention while the machine ran its sensors over him, checking for any sign of infection, childish disease, or malignancy. It never found anything but the mysterious old break in his nose, but it was programmed
to search all the same. It ceased its scan, more convinced than ever that Alec was a perfect and marvelous boy.
“Not a hair out of place,” the Captain said, and winked out. A small carry-handle popped up from the Playfriend unit on its table. Alec picked it up, opened his bedroom door and ran down the echoing stairs.
“Good morning, Alec,” chorused the servants, from their places around the breakfast table. There weren’t nearly as many as there had been when Alec had first arrived. Servants were too expensive to keep ten people just to look after one little boy.
“Good morning, everybody.” Alec climbed into his chair and set the Playfriend down next to the breakfast that had been laid out for him: oatmeal scattered with sea salt, two rashers of soy protein, wholemeal toast and orange juice.
“There’s your vitamins, dear,” said Mrs. Lewin, setting them at his place.
“And how’s the Playfriend today?” said Lewin jovially, leaning forward to help himself to hot pepper sauce for his soy protein. He was terribly pleased with the way his gift had worked out.
“Fine, thanks.” Alec shook out his napkin and took up his oatmeal spoon. “After school the Captain’s going to show me how the stars look in the South Seas.”
“Well, isn’t that nice!” said Mrs. Lewin. She smiled across at Derek and Lulu, and they smiled back. From a silent, drooping waif Alec had become happy and self-confident, getting good marks in school, splendidly adjusted in every respect.

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