Robot Clue

 

The storm lashed against the house like a kind of angsty teen on a moody day, persistent and noisy but more sound than fury. Still, with the murder, it was enough to set people on edge. Everyone had seen the maid do it, so arresting the suspect seemed like a trivial formality at this point. The head of the house tried to explain that it was a little more difficult than that.

The detective assembled the staff. To her surprise, they were all robots. The maid fully admitted to the murder, as was expected. As a robot, though, ‘she’ had no motive to do anything outside of ‘her’ programming. Not knowing what to, the detective phoned an AI expert in to help ‘interrogate’ the maid.

The AI specialist arrived within the hour, carrying a pile of diagnostic tools that tried to sort through the rat’s nest of goal objectives of the killler robot. It seemed like no-one in the house actually knew any true coding languages and had controlled the robots through third party apps once the original company stopped supporting their first generation cleaning AIs. Each person in the house had their own way of inputting new tasks.

Some would demonstrate the task and set how often they wanted it repeated. Others would zone different areas of their room with individual objectives or problem descriptions like dust or clutter. One could also download AI pattern recognition that would allow the robot to clean on it’s own as long as the room was close enough to the sample rooms it was trained in. Any of those methods would be valid on it’s own, but with piecemeal programming, and conflicting instructions on what to do on communal areas, it meant the robots were getting bogged down.

The family tried to fix the problem by upgrading the base AI in an effort to sort between more and more competing cleaning solutions. That improved things for a while, till the robots hard drive and ram became full as well.

The detective was feeling like they were loosing the forest for the trees. She asked the robot to duplicate the actions that lead to the murder. It did so. She asked if the motion was demonstrated in Copy Task mode. It was not. She asked if it was a Zone command. It was not. A few more questions and it was determined that it wasn’t any direct or indirect instruction that lead to that kind of movement.

But what did it leave? The detective asked the AI specialist to speculate on what effect a different base AI would have. The answer was unclear, at least to the layman, but the detective zeroed in on the phrase adaptive learning.

She asked the family again what the last major problem with the robots were. They said there was a number of problems, but most of them could be traced back to system resources being full. She asked the family about any specific language they used to try and solve the issue. They mentioned words like “Delete” and “Purge” but complained that the robots didn’t seem to understand the context.

The detective asked to see the streaming records for the entertainment centre. Sure enough, in the middle of the night, the robots had signed into the house’s TV login and downloaded their own instructions on how to “Delete and Purge” from old sci-fi shows. The adaptive AI had sought to fill in the gaps on the subject without proper context. With it’s own safeties deleted by accident, committed the murder to satisfy it’s own programming.

Blackness of Space

 

The space station was pitch black. Power was out. Backup power was out. What remained was just a residual crackle of electricity that barely lit up a few LEDs on the various panels on the walls. Still if you knew the place as well as this crew did, it was enough to navigate by.

They floated down the quiet corridors listening to the metal ping and pop as the sun heated the outside of the giant tin can they were in. Something had happened to the various wires in the main electrical sections, forcing the station into automatic lock-down. That closed all the windows shades with reinforced slats that protected against micrometeorites. While that seemed to be the safest option in the event of a power outage, it wasn’t the most practical.

Finding the nearest spacesuits they methodically put them on in the disorienting darkness. As another power saving measure, the built in lights on the suits wouldn’t turn on till someone was in them. As the first person finished clicking the last piece in place the room was suddenly flooded with highest intensity light. The automatic calibration of the light was directly proportional to the lack of other illumination in the room and while that might be appropriate mid-mission, it was painfully bright in the small reflective alcove that they were currently in.

After a bit of fumbling around with manual overrides the headlamp was set to soft glow and the ambient omnidirectional suit panels were set to chemically fluoresce. It was decided then and there that everyone would get into their suits, to set the brightness to lowest and then uncouple the last internal connection so the whole power-pack would still be in standby mode.

That would leave them the most total work time as one suits brightness was sufficient for the whole team since they would be sticking together. They could use the magnets in the boots to walk to their destination, but it would be faster to keep floating. Now there was enough light to do more than just navigate, they could launch themselves faster down each corridor.

That was almost a mistake. Half way down the third straightaway a clear gooey substance floated menacingly in the dancing lights of the lead crew-member. A quick reaction stopped them from crashing through it and they all stopped to get a better look at the situation.

Suits came off standby and the area was flooded with light. A hundred clear spheres of gel made the flashlights paint dancing patterns on the walls. The goo reacted to the new stimuli as black specks in the stuff all moved around to the sides that were facing the humans. Sinister lines grew from the pea sized spots that the black flecks had coalesced into. As the web of lines joined a force pulled the various blobs together into a single basketball sized shape.

In the center the clearness suddenly shifted to an opaque pink that twitched as though it was reacting to a hundred tiny shocks.

Game Day

 

Saturday 5:00am. Time to get out of bed and get ready. The usual flurry of activity and an uneventful trip in the early winter. He looked at his watch in the cramped confines of his mom’s truck -- 6:30 am.

He stepped out of the vehicle, shuffling along with a transport comfortable version of his hockey gear on. There was time to go from street clothes to hockey ready in the locker room, but it meant being on the road that much earlier and sometimes there wasn’t always a spare room in the middle of a tournament. Sometimes hockey meant getting the last of your gear on at the bench, five minutes before game time.

It wasn’t like that today, though the thought wasn’t unfamiliar to him. The coach said the usual things, up-building platitudes about playing and having fun, with the not so subtle hint that winning by pulling together felt really good too. There was a feeling in the locker room that today things would work out this weekend. Not just a vibe, or a streak of wins, but a familiarity that things were already in the bag.

It didn’t take long to figure out why. On his first breakaway he just knew the goalie would dive left, so he shot to the right. Goal.

He could see in his minds’ eye that the number 43 would punish an early goal with a barely legal check. So at the last second he looked up, saw him coming and dodged away toward the center of the ice. 43 barrelled forward, with nothing to cushion the crash, into the boards and went down heavily, substituting out.

43’s replacement was faster and more focused on the game, but closing his eyes for a moment he could see 23’s skating pattern on the ice. Neon streaks left a kind of weird afterimage of where his opponent would be and he nudged his skating pattern accordingly. 23 got the puck in a flurry of quick passes, but he was already there to stop him.

The rest the tournament played out in much the same way. Having a strong sense of where the puck would go off the last faceoff, he skated over to the empty space.

The game froze. With three minutes left in the third period of the final game, and up 5-1, he figured the contest would pretty much be over. He threw off his helmet and reached for a spot above his left eyebrow and pulled off a small box.

The rink vanished and he was back in bed holding a slick plastic cube with a slightly stinging patch on the side of his forehead.

The iHockey was never meant to be that powerful. It was supposed to simulate games for people that were injured, tricking parts of the brain into playing a kind of mental strategy match-up against itself. It would keep the mind active while the body healed.

He was already healthy though, and already played tournaments in his head. But that wasn’t all. He imagined it all in his mind, the drive to the arena, getting dressed in the change room, the coaches’ pep talks. And one more thing.

He looked at his watch -- Sunday 11:46am. He panicked for an instant, but it was still dark and he wasn’t physically tired. He set his watch back to the proper time, the iHockey blinked as linked device adjusted to the new time and date. It was the fourth time this week he had set his watch ahead while wearing the iHockey. He looked at his watch again, wondering if anyone else would figure it out. Saturday 4:43am. Game day.

Encounter in a Storm

 

The waves crashed against the side of the wooden frigate, making walking difficult for most of the crew. Captain Horne had seen worse weather, and trusted his men to get their jobs done. He stubbornly refused to turn the vessel into the oncoming waves to lessen their effect despite the complains from the less experienced. It was important to get proper sea-legs and this was nearly the ideal situation.

They were a few minutes from shore and were unlikely to get lost or turned around in the storm. Pirate attacks were down at that time of year as the taxes from the far off colonies were already paid and it was in between harvests of the more valuable crops. The only boats still sailing were balancing out local supplies and ferrying the richer residents around. The HMS Barnacle had just dropped off their last delivery of both of those things and was headed home to San Derocas.

The storm had come up suddenly, but Captain Horne had warned his men just over a half our before. He kept some fairly expensive meteorological equipment on board, and made a habit of checking it fastidiously.

---

The pirate crew plowed bow first into the waves, tacking up the coast and into the worst of the storm. Captain Heele was a greenhorn and the conditions made him feel uneasy and slightly nauseous. He felt brave crashing through the walls of water, despite it being the safest way to get through the storm. The only thing less brave was going into port at the first sign of wind. That was something he wanted to do, but he was too inexperienced to navigate in the chaos of the squall.

The shore was close, almost too close for comfort and his men didn’t know if there were any reefs in the area. Pickings were slim and they were too new to the area to know why. Captain Heele had heard tales of ships laden with gold coins to pay the Kings and Queens of the Old World, but had arrived too late to meet them. Chatter along the coast talked about exotic crops of rare plants, but raids failed to find anything but the small remains of last year’s harvest.

In the crows nest they spotted a ship up ahead that seemed to be floundering in the storm. They headed toward it in reckless abandon, raising the black flag that was the universal symbol for pirates.

---

Captain Horne laughed when he heard the news. A ship of thieving scoundrels was headed directly for them, intent on some nefarious plan he thought. Quickly he checked his instruments and the prevailing winds. Just as quickly he suddenly doubted there was a plan to this undertaking. Only greed and overconfidence would drive anyone to attack during a storm from that direction and angle. He calmly went to the wheel of the ship and instructed half of his crew to prepare the starboard cannons, but to leave the doors closed till the last moment. The other half of the crew was to put on a show of being unprepared for the storm and to stumble around on deck.

---

Captain Heele looked through the spyglass and smiled an evil smile. He was going to capture the ship, which he recognized as the HMS Barnacle from the figurehead, without a fight. He continued to think that right until the ship in question opened up the starboard cannon doors and broadsided them. All eight cannons hit squarely on his ship’s bow, the blast ripping it apart. As the next wave hit the pirate ship it filled their hold with seawater and sank it like a stone.

Bandits

 

On the outskirts of the city the bandits roamed the streets, basically unchallenged, at least formally. Anyone with means had long since joined one of the collectives or towers in the middle of the capital leaving only the poor to risk life in the suburbs. Ironically the street thugs weren’t as violent or as ruthless as the more sheltered people feared. If they acted too strongly there would be repercussions and even a handful of neighbourhoods joining together could quickly rout a troublesome gang. In this, the line between predator and prey shifted quickly and an uneasy truce kept all but isolated travellers safe most of the time. The criminals of the area had their own illegal economy that most people refused to participate in and outside of seeing each other in the same area, generally stayed separate.

Mick Greenstone was a courier and did his best to keep the pockets of society that were left, running. Fortunately for him, his employer only shipped the most obscure of items. Nothing that would interest anyone but a handful of clients and none of whom would buy the goods from anyone else. As such he kept his routes and hours as public as possible without seeming suspicious.

Occasionally other couriers would team up with him, pretending to be shipping more of the same unpopular goods. As long as the final convoy size seemed reasonable and no particular vehicle stood out, it usually worked too. Too often someone with a high security rig would try the same thing and the bandits saw through the ruse almost instantly. Even then, Mike was still safe, by reason of never lying about his cargo manifest.

Other jobs would pay higher, because of the danger, but for his long term survival prospects, being known as “Mick Junk” was priceless. In fact though, his cargo was quite precious, part of a very unique compound that played an irreplaceable role in high tech parts. There were a very small number of groups that knew that, but they also knew that any interruption in deliveries would mean the other parts of the compound would stop shipping till the missing materials were found. Any groups that acted on this knowledge would also find themselves part of a high end media attack that would almost always find the group torn out by the roots by the end of the week.

The weak link in the chain was Mick himself, but again, the long term consequences of being anything but reliable were daunting.

The Day the Tableware Came to Life

 

Midnight clocked over on what started out as a normal day in North America. The rest of the night plodded away the darkness of the mid November skies. It wasn’t until the sun was slowly rising on the Eastern shores that anyone noticed there would be anything different today. Along with the soft glow of the morning was an otherworldly phenomenon that seemed to be described most succinctly as as kind of inverted Aurora Borealis. The familiar welcoming gentle greens became a harsh and almost sinister light eating purple.

Before anyone but the most early of the Atlantic morning shows had done any reporting on the spectacle, a slow alternating rumbling and tone echoed from a million empty dinner tables. All of the undisturbed tableware was slowly becoming bigger and animated. The slow and curious transition suddenly ramped up as a kind of harmonic threshold was reached. All across the continent flimsy decorative eating areas and breakfast nooks were collapsing under the weight of this new and unexplainable new burden. It’s fortunate that so many did so, as it seemed to halt whatever process was going on. Only the few households where the cutlery was perfectly balanced did the true goal ever reach fruition.

As the sounds built up to a deafening crescendo the final transformation occurred. Whatever made it this far suddenly gained a kind of clumsy but unmistakable functional anthropomorphic limbs and faces.

For the longest time, nobody and nothing said anything. Then out of all the things that possibly could happen, possibly the strangest thing did. Almost nothing. Whether it was the weird pressing lights in the sky or just the impossibleness of it all there was almost no reaction. There was a buzz on social media; there was the perfunctory news articles, but with no real explanation and no obvious direction the story could go, it almost seamlessly became a new part of life that nobody questioned.

Knives and forks were following people to work, spoons were out walking dogs and feeding birds. Sugar pots were reading kids bedtime stories and salt shakers were sitting in the park waxing philosophical and just enjoying the day.

After a rather short few days, it became rather apparent that the average piece of tableware was a lot more suitable to most jobs than the average person. They didn’t need sleep, food or entertainment and despite being quite intelligent, didn’t complain about working conditions – even for rather boring and thankless jobs.

There were some exceptions of course.

Napkins seems to get the short end of the stick and few lasted beyond the first rainstorm, shower or water fight. The ones that were left had to go into protective custody lest they sacrifice their structural integrity over the first major spill in their adoptive household. Gaudy centrepieces flocked to Hollywood and insisted on trying out for all of the new movies. It was a few years before anyone but independent films would have them, and most ended up hosting talkshows or radio programs or going into local theatre – anything that got them being the center of attention, of course. Spices were a mixed bag, cinnamon ended up taking the lead in a number of eateries and franchising the individual locations to less entrepreneurial flavor enhancers.

The biggest exception, however, was pepper. Not content to continue hanging out with the quiet and thoughtful salt, they were hardly ever seen together again in the sentient variety. Pepper was out to have fun. Riding on rollercoasters, bungee jumping (with a proper cap), car racing or just hanging out at the local skate park. Not good enough for proper sports, like the protein shakes, but having a good time anyway. A lot of the other tableware helped out peppers as they didn’t want to work like the others, but that was okay. Pepper had the lead in teaching the humans their new place in this odd utopia.