I don’t think I’ll be doing that, Karl thought. He cut off the display to his C.C. with a simple thought, then rolled over to drift off to sleep.
Karl
Looks like it’s going to rain, Karl mused as he walked over the weather-worn sidewalk. The gloomy light from the overcast sky did little to improve the man’s cynical mood. His humor was dark today, but no one else needed to know that.
He peered at his shoes as they made their way over the concrete. The man picked his bowed head up once the sound of a crowd started to waft into his ears. The voices seemed angry and energetic. Karl gave a short sigh, wishing he could turn invisible until he reached the lecture hall.
Not more damn anti-installers, he cursed to himself.
For the last few years, a group of protesters had made life a lot less quiet for anyone working in the installation industry. Karl didn’t often go out into public for his job, but there were always exceptions. It seemed as time went on, more and more protesters appeared at those exceptions until Karl could no longer step outside without having to weave around a wall of picketers.
Protesting used to mean something, Karl muttered in his head. It used to be about a horde of the downtrodden uniting against insurmountable odds. It was about raising up those who had not the means to do so themselves. Now it’s a national pastime. A sport. Something to fill the time.
Ever since the Santson case six years ago, people have grown more divisive over the installed intelligence issue. It was all the same arguments, just a different target. Ninety years ago, homosexuals were considered “unnatural.” Twenty years later it was the transgenders. Now installed intelligences were the focus.
Hey, geniuses, Karl thought, silently addressing the bigots, humans are animals. By definition, everything we do is natural.
Without much effort, he turned to his internal retina display and searched for alternate routes. The roads were congested, likely due to the modest protest. Satellite imagery showed people expanding from the alley to the street curb.
The only way out is through, he thought.
He knew he wasn’t going to pass the line of protesters unnoticed. Too many times had he tried to just carve his way through or sneak around, but it had never worked. The only foolproof approach was to blend and adapt. Karl had to meld with the bigots.
“They want to teach our young men and women that these computer programs are equal to them,” the woman leading the protest bellowed. Wearing a bright blue jean jacket with a handkerchief around her neck, she stood in a clearing within the crowd.
The herd of protesters blocked off all foot traffic. Frustrated people could be seen approaching the group, realizing there was no clear way through, then swearing as they looked for a detour.
Karl, however, didn’t feel the need to search for another way around. His approach saved him plenty of time.
“Is that what you want?” the woman continued. “Do you want your children thinking that they are only as good as a damn proge?”
“No!” Karl replied in sync with the audience. Ignoring the anti-I.I. slur, he pushed his way through the people.
“These scientists and lawmakers don’t seem to understand how dangerous this whole installation abomination is,” the woman said. She was starting to turn red in the face. “They don’t get that when you change the definition of a human being, you cheapen their value. When you claim some lights on a screen and a human are equal, you diminish the miracle of life. If anyone can create a ‘human’ on a computer, then what’s so significant about our own genesis? What does it say about the virtue of centuries of social progress if these zeros can just swoop in and reap the benefits?”
A number of cries came out from the crowd, but they varied so much that nothing intelligible was heard.
“But let’s put all that aside for now, shall we?” the woman hollered. “Even if you don’t look at the bastardization of the word ‘human,’ you have to look at the numbers. The more proges there are, the larger the unemployed workforce gets. These programs have likely taken your job—or the job of someone you know. The world can’t support a population boom. Not economically, and not ethically.”
Karl started to zone out a bit, making it more difficult to feign interest. He had heard all the same sound-bites and arguments for the better part of a decade. To him, it was all just ignorant white noise at this point.
He remembered being a high schooler when the installation industry had started to boom. At first, it was more like a mortuary service—something the ultra-rich would throw money at in order to preserve their loved ones forever. Historically, it had only been a novelty. Important people, scientists and politicians alike, were installed so students on field trips could ask them asinine questions over and over.
When Karl was young, it had always been that an I.I. could only be created after someone’s death. In the last moments of a person’s life, the electrical data that made up their personality would be downloaded with a neuroscopic recorder, then reassembled into interactive code by programming professionals. It was illegal, and borderline impossible, for an I.I. to exist while the person it was created from lived.
Then the Man With Two Bodies happened. It was only six years prior when an installed intelligence had been accidentally created before the death of Chris Santson. When the two of them had argued on live television, the world exploded. The theory had been that both Chris and his I.I. should agree on everything, since they have identical minds. Because they had not, it had spurred a lot of interest into what makes an I.I. tick.
With a bit of research and some genius creativity, it was discovered that installed intelligences were actually different individuals than the minds they had been created from. Like a tree branch—though
