Well, lives have grown longer, that’s for sure, Karl started. Medicine is always advancing.
“Yeah, well he always felt it wasn’t advancing fast enough,” Maynard explained. “Ironic, isn’t it? His greatest criticism of science could be solved by the sharing of human and I.I. minds, yet that’s the one thing he is trying to keep us from doing.”
We still don’t know that Lythe is Stalward, Karl repeated.
Maynard sighed—a soft airless breath.
“I’ve already started a scan through my memory banks,” Maynard said. “It will take a little while without constant internet access, but when it’s done, you’ll see that I was right. I’ll have actual evidence. Until then, though, you might try a little trust.”
I do trust you, Maynard, you know that.
“Then start acting on it,” Maynard requested. “We’re partners now, Karl. Remember that.”
You know, Thompson might be able to help with the scan, Karl mused.
He could feel Maynard’s interest pique again.
“How so?”
If you risk just a little connection time, we could send him some of your database and he could go over it. He’d have internet the entire time without any risk to us.
“How will we know if he finds anything?” Maynard asked.
He still knows what mailbox to use, Karl thought. That part of the plan hasn’t changed.
“Okay, I can prepare him a compressed folder,” Maynard said.
Karl was pleased that the I.I. seemed to agree with his suggestion without any sarcasm or snark. At first, he thought he might be going a little mad, but it felt like Maynard was actually becoming more friendly to him. It was a gradual progression, but Karl could see it now. They weren’t just partners. They were kin.
Maynard could hear Karl’s thoughts, and offered no rebuttal.
Decision
Karl had spent the last three and a half hours staring down the walkway leading from the cabin’s front door, watching the snow crystals fall indiscriminately into a sea of their brothers. The wind nipped at his cheeks, but that sensation had vanished after only the first twenty minutes. Perhaps it was the hollow howl of the wind wrapping around the walls, or the dull thud of his own heart, but he needed to be outside of the cabin.
A bird too distant to identify was fluttering from branch to branch on a tree just outside the cabin property. Karl couldn’t tell if it was building a nest or if it was pecking around the bark to find some sustenance. A bit ago, this kind of isolation and silence would have inspired a deep sense of anxiety within his heart. Now, however, it was a dull peace—like trying to drift asleep on a wave of painkillers.
There was a growing part of him that started to find a sort of zen in his isolation. He noticed that very few of his thoughts were of outrage or frustration. Instead, he now mused those great philosophical questions that he’d never imagined having the time to tackle. Most importantly, he started to think about the nature of the installed intelligence.
When he was a child, I.I.s were first starting to come to form. In those days, however, they were only a commodity for the ultra-rich. Something to allow them to have something fancier than a normal burial. Now, though, he saw them as true human beings. Souls without bodies, but people nonetheless. It was difficult for him to pinpoint exactly when the transition from glorified tombstone to full-fledged person had taken place. It had to be around the Santson incident. He was young man then. He felt in awe that such an event had even taken place, but he’d never really calculated the retaliation it would cause.
He figured, as long as the Supreme Court found it lawful, no one else would have an issue with the humanity of an I.I. He couldn’t have been more wrong, however. He saw it as a matter of logic and fact, but it was never portrayed as such. As with the racial debates of his fathers, he didn’t see any reason in denying I.I.s their identity.
However, the debate still existed. Even here in this serene wilderness, it troubled him. He couldn’t find the reason in it, and without reason, he was without opinion.
He decided it had been long enough. He would take the long walk down the road to post his letter to Thompson.
Clutching the letter he’d found in the mailbox, he pushed the gate open and mentally activated the part of his C.C. that awoke Maynard.
Without delay, the I.I. seemed to sense something important had happened through the patterns in Karl’s thoughts.
“What is it?” Maynard asked.
I went down the road to the mailbox to send Thompson a letter. I wanted to have him check up on the connection between Stewart and this Stalward character so we’d have an answer for sure, but I found he’d already sent us something.
“What?”
Take a look for yourself.
Karl held up the letter—which had been written out with what appeared to be an old mechanical typewriter—so that Maynard could read it through his eyes.
“A package receipt?” Maynard said. “He says its dimensions match all the gear and weapons that the shooters used on the lab. A big package.”
That’s right.
“He got this from the data we got out of the lab?”
Karl physically nodded.
It looks like it was buried hard in an email account someone set up in my name. Look. It sounds exactly like me. But this isn’t one of my addresses.
“That’s who the package receipt is for. But do you see who the sender is? Look carefully, after the shipping details.”
Mr. Stalward, Karl read.
There was a moment of silence between them while the name sunk in. He felt like he must have read the name wrong, but after three passes, he knew it was as it appeared.
“You see? I was right,” Maynard
