“Isn’t ‘stimulus’ just another term for ‘wealth redistribution’?” the round man spat.
“Oh stop it,” the younger man responded, his tone seething. “The money won’t even come from the taxpayers. It’ll come from employers. If anything, it will create a whole new pool of income to add to the nation’s tax revenue.”
“Ugh,” Karl said to himself as he changed the channel again.
It’s so unattractive when grown men bicker like little children, he thought.
The argument had put him in a sour mood, even as just a spectator. He flipped to a mindless reality program for something to laugh at. It was one of those shows that gathered freaks together, with their willing consent, to reveal their personal affairs—from incestuous foreplay to toenail fetishes.
Even that show wasn’t immune to the topic of installed intelligences. The woman on the screen, according to the text, intended to marry the I.I. of her long-dead high-school sweetheart. She didn’t look any older than twenty-two—acne was even visible under her make-up. Her ginger hair seemed unable to stay contained in the ponytail she wore.
“Michaela, can you tell us all how you met your fiancé?” the show’s host asked. He was a middle-aged man with tall hair and rimless glasses, and his smile looked more plastered on than that of a ventriloquist dummy.
“Well, like I said, we went to high school together,” the girl replied. She had a sort of Southern drawl mixed in with her words. “He was in basketball, I was in drama. We fell in love freshman year, and it lasted throughout school, until—”
She started to tear up and needed a moment to dab her nose with one of her knuckles. The memory seemed to stir deep emotions within her, or at least the stage manager had told her to pretend as such.
“It’s okay, Michaela. Take your time,” the host urged.
She sniffled, but managed to choke her sorrow down and continue. “It was our prom night. We had just gotten back from the dance and started to drink, like kids do. He lost track of himself and he drank so much that he died of alcohol poisoning.”
“That’s terrible,” the host commented, his teeth gleaming in the stage light.
“I was so heartbroken, I thought I’d never be able to love again,” Michaela said. “Then one day, I was browsing through a catalogue of I.I. displays and thought to myself, ‘I could see Peter again!’ I mean, on his final medical bill, the insurance was charged for an installation. And I knew which bank he’d be stored in.”
“So when you brought him online, Peter proposed?”
“That’s right!” The girl seemed to transition seamlessly from crying to beaming with joy. “I know it’s not the same Peter that I loved in high school, but it’s closer than any man with a body could come.”
“Alright, we’re going to open this up to the audience,” the host stated, pulling the attention from Michaela. “Does anyone have a question for her?”
One woman raised her hand, and the host led the camera over to her. She stood up and took the microphone from the man.
“Uhh, yeah,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you how you two have sex if he’s a computer and all that.”
“Oh, ho!” the host said, feigning shock. “That’s a juicy one, and we’ll have the answer for you right after these messages!”
Karl didn’t wait for any more advertisements to appear. With a thought, he changed the video feed on his internal retina display to another channel.
It was another news station, but this one focused on local Denver news rather than the world as a whole. The two anchors smiling behind their shared desk had been with the show for the last ten years, Karl remembered.
The one on the left, a hefty man with a graying goatee and sideburns to match, started the broadcast with the show’s catchphrase greeting.
“It’s a new day for the Mile High City. A new day with new stories,” he said.
The anchor on the left took over.
“Today marks the sixth anniversary of the famous Man-With-Two-Bodies incident,” she started. “As you all may well remember, Chris Stanton was declared legally dead in the spring of 2062. His I.I. was activated shortly before it was revealed that Stanton was not dead, but had merely been declared so prematurely. The story caught like a wildfire, and before long, a live meeting between Stanton and his I.I. was scheduled to be broadcast all over the globe.”
The camera changed to the man, who retained a lighthearted demeanor beside an image of Stanton.
“It was during the infamous broadcast that something peculiar happened,” he said. “The man and his digital counterpart had a disagreement. What may seem like a benign happenstance to most of us shocked the scientific and human-rights world like a bolt of lightning. Experts joined together to make a unanimous declaration: installed intelligences were human beings of their own identity.”
Back to the woman.
“One by one, courts around the world declared installed intelligences legal citizens,” she said. “However, not everyone supported the decision. The scientific community didn’t speak for the government, any corporate hierarchy, or the religious community. Complaints stretched from the economic stress of having to pay I.I.s wages to the cultural discomfort of I.I.s in the congregation. These complaints blended together to create the ever growing anti-I.I. movement.”
“Now, six years later, that movement has formed into the Humanity Party, securing half a dozen state seats with eight more up for grabs this autumn,” the man started to conclude. “Millions of people are upset by the court’s decision all those years ago. Many believe it was made in haste and should be thought over more thoroughly, while others wish it to be scrapped altogether.”
“What do you think?” the woman asked into the camera. “How would this impact those I.I.s already welcomed into our citizenry? How would this impact you and your family? Please send us a message with your opinion, or simply comment on the
