need a sedative right away!”
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A.I. Apocalypse
Leon’s phone buzzed, beeped, and shrilled at him until he reached one arm out from under the flannel covers and swiped two fingers across the display to turn the alarm off. Eyes still closed, he shrugged off his blankets and stumbled towards the bathroom, a trip of only a few steps, hitting himself just twice along the way: once walking right into his closed bedroom door, and the second time on the corner of the bathroom sink. He turned on the water, and leaned against the white tile wall waiting for the water to get hot.
When he was done in the shower, he wrapped himself in a towel and walked slightly more alertly to his room, steam rising faintly off his body in the tiny apartment’s cold morning air. The superintendent wouldn’t turn on central heating for another month, regardless of whether it was cold or not.
It was quiet in the apartment, his parents already at work. He grabbed yesterday’s dark blue jeans off his chair and pulled them on. On his desk in front of him was an empty bag of cookies and empty bottle of soda, evidence of his late night Mech War gaming session. He dug in a pile of clean laundry his mom had deposited inside his door until he found his vintage I (heart) SQL t-shirt. It was obscure enough that no one at school would understand it. They’d probably think it was some new band.
He grabbed his phone and shoved it into his pocket. He thumbed his desk, unlocking the drawers, and pulled out a locked metal box decorated with stickers carefully layered over each other to form, in aggregate, a picture of a plant growing out of a heap of garbage. An artifact of a girl from last year, he both treasured and was embarrassed by it. In the depths of the box, he rummaged around until he found rolling paper and some non-GMO weed, which he put into a jacket pocket. He fumbled through the container again, anxiously looking for his cigarettes, until he finally found them on the desk inside the empty cookie bag. He shook his head, wondering why he had thought to put them there.
In the kitchen Leon shook cereal into an old cracked white porcelain bowl and followed with cold milk. He gently bumped his phone twice on the table, activating the wall display and syncing it to his phone. He surfed the in-game news and checked out his stats while he ate. He was ranked 23rd on his favorite Mech War server, up ten spots due to the new genetic algorithms he’d written for targeting control. He had some ideas for an anti-tracking algorithm he wanted to try out next.
When he finished slurping cereal, he grabbed his backpack and headed out the door. He locked all three locks on the front door. His Russian immigrant parents thought you could never be too secure. In addition to the electronic building lock and a digital fingerprint deadbolt, they had an actual antique key lock. Leon wore the key around his neck sometimes, and half the kids at school thought it was a curious kind of jewelry.
He made his way the few blocks to South Shore High School. Hundreds of kids streamed across Ralph Avenue, ignoring the cars. Drivers angrily honked their horns as their vehicles’ mandatory SafetyPilots cut in automatically. Leon ran across with a group of other kids, and streamed through the front door with them.
Leon made his way into first period, math. James was already there, wearing his usual army green flak jacket. Leon’s Russian heritage gave him blond hair and a tall, large frame, but James still had an inch or two in height and solid fifty pounds on him. He punched James on the arm as he went in, and James punched him back. The bell rang, and they hurried to their desks in the back row. Moments after everyone else sat down, Vito flew through the doors, and slid into his seat next to them, earning a glare from the teacher.
They may have been the three smartest kids in school, but they tried to keep that secret. They didn’t fit in with the Brains. Preppy clothes and drama club seemed ridiculous. Though the football team would have loved James, James would rather be playing MMORPGs. They surely didn’t fit in with the socialites, and their shallow interests. They weren’t skaters or punks. They might have been labelled geeks, but the geeks rarely came in wearing military jackets or ditched school to smoke pot. They were too smart, and had too much of the hacker ethic to fit in with the stoners.
No, they were just their own clique, and they made sure not to fit anyone else’s stereotypes.
Leon glanced over at Vito, who was fiddling with his ancient Motorola. Vito lavished care on the old phone. The case was worn smooth, thousands of hours of polishing from Vito’s hands. Even the original plastic seams had disappeared with age. When a component died, Vito would micro-solder a replacement in. Vito said that after a certain point, the phone just didn’t get any older, it just got different.
Leon daydreamed through the class, volunteering a correct answer only when the teacher called on him. In his mind, he was walking the ruins of Berlin in his Mech, replaying the scenes of last night’s gaming.
He thought about writing a new heat detection algorithm for his mech. The current generation of games all required programming to excel. Leon knew from history class that once the marketability commodity in games was gold and equipment. Now it was algorithms. The game made available the underlying environment data, and it was up to the programmer to find the best algorithms for piloting, aiming, detecting, moving, and coordinating mechs. There was a persistent rumor that DARPA had funded the game as a way of crowd-sourcing the all important algorithms used to control military drones. Leon couldn’t find any solid evidence on that assertion online.
No, maybe he should focus on a new locomotion algorithm. He’d heard that some mechs using custom locomotion code were coaxing ten percent more speed and range while keeping their thermal signatures lower. If that was true, Leon could sell it on eBay for top dollar.
Leon became more deeply immersed in the problem, and when the bell rang, only James whacking him on the head woke him from his thoughts.
“See ya later, Lee,” Vito called, headed off to another class.
“Adios.”
Leon and James walked together to to their social studies class.
“How are your applications coming?” James asked.
“OK, I think,” Leon said. “I just finished the MIT application. I aced the qualifying exams. Dude, it sucks
