“Fuck you.”
“You wish.”
In a fit of anger, Karl picked up his half-filled cup of water and threw it against the wall. To his relief, the thing was made of plastic and merely sprayed its contents on his floor. Before the cup had finished clattering on the wood, he could feel Maynard laughing in his head. His bursting fury transitioned into hopeless humiliation as he leaned back and took in a deep breath.
“So are you ready to listen to me?” the I.I. insisted.
Karl started to count to ten inside his own head, one of the most common tricks in anger management. However, he hadn’t even made it to seven before Maynard interrupted again.
“Hey, come on. It’s important.”
“What?” Karl demanded.
“I told you already: I was murdered,” Maynard started. “I’ve been going over it all evening, and I need your help. The Center uses all the same networks we used in my day to develop the cerebral computer. You folk need that data to develop the mindshare process for C.C. integration, right? It’s a stretch, but there might be… things… left behind in old cloud storage.”
“What things?” Karl asked.
“Old research notes. Ones I wrote, or maybe someone on my team,” Maynard said. “I know there’s data buried somewhere—a locked folder or something on the lab’s intranet, perhaps?”
“Who knows?”
“Well I don’t yet, but once I do, I’ll need you,” Maynard answered. “What do you say?”
Karl pondered on the favor for a bit. He could sense the I.I. becoming anxious as he waited.
“If I look into this for you, do you promise to cooperate with my tests?” Karl asked. “No more distracting. No more arguing.”
“You got it,” Maynard said. “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
Karl was relieved. His annoyance had reached such a level that he might agree to anything for the sake of some peace. He figured that, come morning, Maynard would drop that weird game of his.
There was no doubt in his mind that it was just some petty game. Some sort of prank the I.I. was playing to keep his eternal consciousness amused. Karl could hardly blame him; if he were nothing but a mind on a hard drive, he would have lost all will to exist a long time ago.
“Can we start with some sleep?” Karl asked. “Please?”
The I.I. groaned with annoyance, but ended up agreeing to let the psychologist rest.
Just before Karl closed his eyes and succumbed to slumber, Maynard left him with one last thought.
“You’d go a little crazy if you couldn’t dream, either.”
Progress
“Lines have grown past early projections as the polls open Monday morning,” the voice on the radio spoke. “In fact, some have become so long that rest stops and water booths have to be set up for voters. So far, the assemblies have been peaceful, but police are still keeping a close eye on them to ensure public safety.
“Most voters are out today to voice their opinion on a new referendum that could potentially allow installed intelligences to run for public office. The bill was started by a proponent of the Humanist Party, but the language used in the bill backfired on the special interest group, opening representation up for digital personalities. Previous supporters of the legislation are now coming out hard against it, citing the initial premises of the Humanist movement.”
Karl heard the words as he worked, but they all rolled off his cerebral cortex like wine on wax paper. For once, Maynard didn’t speak while they tested out new lines of code unless he was providing insight on their project. He did hum, however, but Karl found it rather soothing.
“We’re finally going to get our boys in office and make some changes,” an enthusiastic voice came from the radio stream.
“How will you feel if installed intelligences are also able to be elected as representatives?” a female anchor asked.
The other voice laughed a little. “They won’t be getting on a ballot anytime soon,” she argued. “A human election is for human voters, plain and simple. We won’t be letting any proges represent us until we’re all speaking in binary.”
“There are plenty of people that believe I.I.s can improve the democratic process,” the journalist commented.
“Plenty of people believed in the Nazis, too. That didn’t make ‘em right.”
Maynard chuckled at the words and took Karl’s attention away from his keyboard. The psychologist was a little disoriented at first, like someone who had been pulled out of a dream.
“Can you focus, please?” he asked the man in his head.
“Sorry, but if you want my attention, you might have to put something a little less hilarious on,” Maynard replied.
With a simple mental command, Karl switched the station over to some classic rock, replacing the fanatical voices with electric guitar. Maynard expressed his approval as they continued picking apart their finalized software.
Over two hours passed before any further words were exchanged between them. Finally, Karl compiled their project and installed a prototype onto his cerebral computer. The entire process made the psychologist grateful that the days of wires and plug ports were long gone, though the image of a cord sticking out of his temple was amusing. Still, fiberless connectivity was nothing to sneeze at. Sometimes, he wondered how his parents remained sane with tangled wires everywhere.
Such clumsy design, he thought.
“Anything can seem primitive with the right perspective,” Maynard interjected. “One generation’s marvels are another’s punchlines.”
The I.I. had a point. There could one day come a device that made the cerebral computer seem like a VCR. Maybe even autonomous cars would become obsolete with the invention of teleportation or something similar.
What’s the lifespan of my own work? Karl wondered. It seemed like people were outliving ideas more and more frequently these days.
Karl cracked open his bottle of hormone stimulators, put two capsules in the palm of his hand, and threw them into his mouth. With a quick swig of water, they were down into his stomach.
“Alright, are you ready to give it a shot?” the psychologist
