chapter 43
TEAM 3, YEAR: 2095
Time Remaining: 2 Days
Spencer arrived at the lab early Saturday morning. The brilliant sun reflecting off the polished stone floor stabbed his eyes like daggers. The lingering scent of lemon floor polish overtook the aroma of the four steaming coffees he carried. The warm, sunny rays flooded the bland work room with a cheery feel—a stark contrast to how Spencer felt. His conversation with Delaney the night before had relieved some of his stress, but it again drove home the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that lay ahead.
Spencer found his coworkers in the lab waiting for him. Lisa and Kalen sat around Spencer’s usual workbench in the lab, Erik lay sprawled across the surface of another, hoping to catch a few minutes of precious sleep before engaging his brain for the day.
“Hey, Spence,” said Lisa. Her cheery disposition had returned after a good night’s sleep.
Erik opened his eyes and they locked onto the caffeinated offering Spencer carried. He rolled off the desk and took one of the cups.
Kalen kissed Spencer on the cheek and took a coffee. “Good morning, Sweetie.” She smiled and whispered in his ear. “You know I love you, but you look like crap.”
“Well, at least I know you love me for what’s inside,” he teased. He knew she was right, having taken a hard look in the mirror this morning after his shower. Fine lines had appeared around his eyes that had not been there four months ago. He hung his jacket over the back of his chair and handed the last coffee to Lisa as she vacated his seat.
The team worked for hours in silence except for the sounds of coffee being sipped, Spencer’s pacing and Erik’s subconscious foot-tapping. In the distance, the hum of the bots responsible for making the lab’s floor so irritatingly shiny worked their magic in other rooms.
Each person had selected one of the first four personality applications and began reprogramming them so the level of emotions it experienced were limited. This would ensure the robots could still express their feelings, but in a socially-acceptable manner.
By midmorning, Spencer had finished modifying Brad Jamison’s personality. He ran through the Real Life Simulator and began reprogramming another.
At twenty minutes after one o’clock, Erik stood to stretch. “I’d say it’s time for lunch.”
“Sounds good to me.” Spencer smiled slyly. “I do have the RLS results for Brad Jamison’s modified personality, but we can go for lunch first if you want.” He reached nonchalantly for the power button on his CI. His coworkers clamoured around the screen to read the summary.
Kalen gripped Spencer’s shoulders in excitement while she read. “Oh my gosh, Spence!” Her nails dug deep into his shoulders. “That’s amazing! It passed 155 of 157 tests! That’s phenomenal!”
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Spencer felt a weight lift from his shoulders. He pushed his chair back, stood and smiled. After months of endless work, he finally felt like he was taking steps forward instead of tumbling backward.
“Let’s queue the RLS with the Apps you guys just finished modifying. We’ll let them run while we grab a bite to eat.”
Spencer queued the three other modified personality applications and initiated the testing process. When the familiar progress box appeared, Spencer turned his CI screen off, grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and joined his coworkers at the door.
As the group walked back to the office from the diner across the street, Spencer’s mind had already begun planning the adjustments he would make to the next personality. As he mulled things over, he savoured the warm breeze and the sun on his skin. He had seen very little of the favourable weather that Tricity had enjoyed over the summer and missed it immensely. The girls were laughing at a racy joke that Erik had told, but everyone froze when the double glass doors slid open. The screens of all four coworkers’ CIs were on. Three of the screens showed the lock screen, but Ian had control of Spencer’s—he had forgotten to disable the “Guest” profile after letting Delaney control it the night before.
“Ah, Spencer,” said Ian, “I think we need to have a little talk.”
All four coworkers knew this situation had the potential to become explosive, having read the results of Ian’s Personality Application test. Kalen took advantage of Ian’s distraction and hid behind Erik’s tall figure. With her Icomm contacts, she sent a frantic text message to Delaney. Unsure of what else do to or whom to call, Kalen hoped that Delaney’s support of Spencer extended beyond the boardroom. At a minimum, Kalen knew Delaney carried enough authority that she could inject some objectivity and break up the possibly volatile situation.
By noon, Delaney had missed three phone calls from Logan, as she was continually reminded by the miniature, lime-coloured “3” in the bottom left corner of her vision. He had called earlier while she lay on the couch reading. His name had appeared just below her line of sight, nearly obscuring the words she read. She denied that call, as well as the two others that followed.
She knew Logan would be concerned; she had not seen or spoken to him since breaking their date the day previous so she could confront Spencer. Now, she wanted time to process what she had learned before speaking to him. For weeks, she had kept her discovery of Spencer’s backpack to herself, unsure of what to do with the information. She had expected that talking to Spencer would make things clearer, but it only confused her further. While she now had a thorough understanding of what the three men were up against, what that meant for her and Logan, she had not yet figured out. And until she knew, she did not want to see him. What frustrated her the most was her inability to approach the situation from an entirely logical perspective. She could not separate her feelings for Logan from everything else and felt that if she could just do that, she would be able to come to terms with the situation.
Her brain felt like it had been bent. She cleared the missed calls reminder and set her phone to Do Not Disturb and went for a run to clear her overburdened mind.
Delaney got out of the shower and towelled off. She slid the small bean-shaped phone into her ear and turned off the Do Not Disturb mode. A green “6” appeared and the text message icon flashed beside it. She cleared the missed call reminders and nearly dismissed the text message without reading it when she saw it had not come from Logan. She dropped her towel when she read the message from Kalen.
“@ Neural Programming lab, Ian’s here. Come fast. PLEASE!”
Logan’s wheels chirped as he sped his car out of his garage. For weeks, Delaney had seemed distant but he had written it off as him overanalysing innocuous details. But in the last twenty-four hours, his worries were confirmed as she had become distant to the point of avoiding him. He assumed it was something he had done but could not think of what it could be. Whatever it was, he hoped he had not driven her away entirely. He wanted to fix it so they could get back to normal again. He had wanted to respect her space, but he now felt that may have been a mistake. Having decided to go to her now, he could not get to her fast enough.
The phone rang in Logan’s ear and Delaney’s name appeared in front of him. Relief flooded over him and he pulled onto the side of the road between two parked cars.
“Laney, where have you been? I’ve been worried about you. Did I do something…”
“Logan, stop. Listen to me.” Delaney’s voice spoke fast, but it was controlled and authoritative. “Spencer’s at the Neural Programming lab.”
“I know that. What else is new?” Her comment puzzled him. It seemed odd that she found this unusual.
“I just got a disjointed text message from Kalen. Ian’s there and I think there’s a problem.”
Logan swore under his breath and did a U-turn from where he had pulled over. The tires spun and squealed out in protest as the rear of the car kicked out hard, threatening to slide into a parked car on the opposite side of the road. The anti-crash sensors in Logan’s car detected the other car and his car halted its sideway movement so abruptly, it caused him to lurch h
ard in his seat. Traffic swerved to miss him and honked angrily. Oblivious, Logan hammered the pedal to the floor and his tires left a strip of rubber on the patched and aged concrete street. “I’m sorry Laney, I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“No! Don’t get involved in this, Laney. I gotta call Asher.”
“I’m meeting you there,” said Delaney again, unsure if he heard as the line went dead.
“Spencer,” Ian’s voice dripped with condescension, “I was wondering if you could tell me what’s going on here. I mean, I know you’re not retesting personalities because I seem to remember telling you countless times that you’re looking for problems that don’t exist. They tell me around here you’re a bit of a genius but, you know, I’m just not seeing it. You seem to have a hard time following the simplest directions because these look like RLS summary logs. So what’s going on?”
It seemed to Spencer that Ian knew exactly what was going on but preferred to take his time and savour the moment. Spencer felt like a mouse being toyed with by a cat before the big pounce. He could feel his composure beginning to crack. He knew that Ian saw him as an obstacle on his route to success. He knew he was in dangerous territory, but he had become fed up with Ian’s arrogance and ignorance. The last six months had worn Spencer so thin that he no longer felt intimidated.
Spencer walked up to his CI and the contents of the screen moved around rapidly. Documents closed and others opened. “You’re right, Ian. I’m not doing any testing.” His voice carried a defiance neither Kalen, Erik nor Lisa had ever heard from him. “Because I’ve done it already.” Again, he felt it prudent to leave out Kalen, Lisa and Erik’s names wherever possible.
“What do you mean you’ve ‘done it already?’”
“I’ve created my own set of testing scenarios and I’ve run the Personality Apps through them. The results are worse than I imagined.” He opened a summary file and read bullet points from the report. “Look at this. ‘Unstable behaviour, extremely aggressive.’” He opened another report. “‘Will not respect human authority.’” Another document appeared on the screen. “‘Extremely violent, little disregard for human life.’” Spencer looked away from the screen and glared at Ian, his voice growing louder. “How can you look at these and still say there isn’t a problem?”
“All of these tests are unapproved and unauthorized, and therefore, any results are invalid,” Ian shot back. “All of this data is tainted.”
“How are they tainted?” The incredulity in Spencer’s voice drove it up an octave.
“Are you a trained psychologist?”
“You don’t have to be a trained psychologist to design real-life scenarios!”
“My tests were created by a registered psychologist…”
Spencer cut him off midsentence. He looked back at the monitor and pulled up another summary. “Could it be this psychologist?” At the bottom of the summary, the familiar red type flashed, “Personality 018—FAIL.”
Ian took a step toward Spencer. “Your tests mean nothing. You’ve wasted valuable resources and you’ve endangered the careers of your coworkers.”
“Ian, how can you say they mean nothing? Look at this.” Spencer pulled up the modified personalities test results. “Look at this personality before. It was dangerous before but if you limit its emotional range with some minor tweaks—look at the results. The worst that can happen is a small verbal outburst and it may get a little depressed. Isn’t that better than the alternative?”
Ian looked as though his head may explode. His already reddened face deepened several shades and a vein in his temple pulsed. “If you alter the emotional range of the personalities, that won’t be true AEI. It will undermine the project and what the stakeholders have given us funding for. Funding, might I remind you, that pays your pricey little salary.”
“Ian, I think you realized at some point that the results would be bad. I know you’re not a dumb guy. I think you were too arrogant to admit that the project mandate needed to be modified, so you had some shallow tests put together that would give you the results you wanted to see.”
Ian saw that as they argued, Spencer had deleted the guest profile from his CI, taking away Ian’s ability to control the device. Ian lunged for Spencer’s CI and Spencer blocked him.
“Get out of my way, Spencer!” Ian yelled. “You have been a pain in the ass since you started this project. You’ve wanted these robots to fail from day one and you’ve been undermining me every step of the way. I don’t know why I didn’t get rid of you sooner.”
“Are you really this ignorant? You have a chance to save your ass and look like a hero right now by fixing this project. How can you not see that? How can you not see that this would have been an absolute disaster if this hadn’t been uncovered? People would be killed.”
“You don’t know that! You don’t know that any robots would behave like this, even if what you claim is true,” yelled Ian.
“Even if I am wrong, what does that say about you, believing that’s an acceptable chance to take? You’re betting with people’s lives!”
Backed into a corner by logic, Ian cycled back to the beginning. “Spencer. You’re wrong. All this data is tainted. It’s all garbage. I’m throwing it out, and I’m going to do the same to your career if you don’t get out of my way!”
Logan and Asher peeled into the visitor parking lot in front of the NRD main entrance at the same time. They skidded to a halt at angles in the handicap parking spaces. They charged out of their vehicles and sprinted toward the door. Logan’s door stayed ajar and he ignored the open-door chime as he raced toward the building’s entrance. Inside the door, they found Delaney waiting for them.
“Laney, I don’t want you getting involved in this,” pleaded Logan angrily as he strode past her. “Please!” He knew there was no use and it was too late anyway. He knew she would never walk away from him knowing he was distressed to this degree, regardless of what it was.
They took the stairs two at a time and sprinted down the hallway toward the Neural Programming lab hearing angry, raised voices.
They entered the room to find Ian trying to push past Spencer. When Spencer stood his ground, Ian wound up and planted his fist on Spencer’s cheek. The smacking sound echoed across the room, and Spencer fell backward from the blow. He collided with the desk knocking his CI to the ground. The projected holographic screen danced oddly in midair as the CI bounced on the floor, then went out.
Chaos broke out in the lab. Kalen screamed and kicked a chair out of her way to get to Spencer, now laying dazed and crumpled at the base of the desk. Blood poured down the side of his face from a cut under his eye. Delaney barked at Ian, unable to believe what she had just witnessed, but she was jostled out of the way by both twins who lunged at Ian. The chair that Kalen kicked hit Ian in the side of the knee and he collapsed to the floor. Seeing Spencer’s CI, he scrambled on his hands and knees toward it. He snatched it off the floor, stood triumphantly and a smile grew on his face. Distracted by his prize, Ian failed to notice Logan leaping over Spencer and Kalen on the floor. He punched Ian square in the jaw. Ian crumpled to the floor like a house of cards on a windy day. Spencer’s CI flew out of his hands, skipped across another workstation and landed hard on the floor, face down. Lisa, standing to the side of the melee, leaped forward and grabbed it, as well as the other three CIs before they met a similar fate.
Logan stood over Ian as Asher pulled the project manager to his feet. “What is your problem, Ian? Spencer’s trying to save your fucking career!”
Asher restrained Ian’s arms behind his back and Delaney wondered if this was to subdue him or open him up for another shot from Logan. Erik, sharing the same thought, caught Delaney’s eye and they both dove for Logan before they could find out. Spencer came to and tears poured down Kalen’s face. Logan shouted a string of obscenities at Ian, who spewed back threats of firings, treason and prison terms, while Asher held Ian and smiled broa
dly at the chaotic scene unfolding around him.
Seeing that Erik had a firm grip on Logan, Delaney stepped into the centre of the room and whistled loudly. She looked at the startled faces around the room staring back at her. The emotionally-torn, distracted woman from the night before was not present in this room—the woman in control now was the Delaney who inspired just a little bit of fear in everyone. She turned to Ian. “Ian, what the hell is this? Why are you assaulting your employees?”
“Spencer has gone behind my back and altered the tests and modified the personalities.” He sounded like a petulant child whose toy had been stolen in the sandbox. He tried to wiggle free from Asher, who pinned his arms harder against his back. Ian winced.
“So what I’m hearing is you’re angry at him for doing his job. You agreed in the meeting that additional testing would have been welcome, but you voted against it because we didn’t have time, did you not?”
Sensing she was undermining him with logic and unable to spin a response, he deflected her question. “What are you doing here Delaney? It’s Saturday.”
“Working. Tying up some loose ends before the presentation on Monday.”
Logan looked at her confused but said nothing.
Ian knew better than to take on Delaney. Her reputation at NRD was pristine and she had good relationships with a lot of big names in the robotic engineering community. He knew he would have to work around her and he felt caged. He twisted violently in Asher’s grasp. “Let go of me this instant!”
Asher looked at Delaney and she nodded. It incensed Ian further that he was not in charge of the situation. He took several steps away from Asher and Delaney, out of both their reach. Seven sets of eyes scrutinized him as if at any moment he may turn into a giraffe.
“You four,” he pointed to Spencer, Kalen, Erik and Lisa, “are fired. Get out.” All four stood stock still.
“And you,” Ian said looking at Logan and smiling maliciously, “you’re fired, too.” He looked to Asher. “You too. I can’t tell which one of you is which, so you’re both gone.”
The room fell silent. Ian looked pleased with himself and he adjusted his outfit that had become dishevelled in the chaos. He reset his sunglasses in his hair. Spencer took this opportunity to catch Delaney’s eye and pleaded with her to do something. With her back to Ian, she motioned with her eyes for him to go.
“I’ll see that security collects your belongings from your offices and ships them to you.”
The six of them left the room in silence. The lab door closed behind Asher, the last to leave the room. Ian and Delaney launched into a yelling match that echoed down the glass hallway and was still audible as the group waited in silence for an elevator.
As the elevator neared, Asher laughed and watched the numbers above the door. “Jesus Loge, I hope you don’t ever piss her off. She’ll kill you.”
Logan responded with silence. His mind replayed the last half hour. Certain things about Delaney were not adding up.
Still shell-shocked, the group collected outside the NRD main entrance in silence, except for Asher, who let out a whoop of joy and jumped into the air, delighted to be released from his employment contract early. Lisa still clutched the four CIs as if her life depended on them. Kalen eyed the bleeding gash on Spencer’s cheek and dug through her handbag for a tissue.
Asher slapped Spencer so hard on the back he buckled forward. “Way to take one for the team, Spence!”
Logan’s eyes looked unfocused. “What the hell just happened?” He needed answers to questions he had not yet formed. “Why is…? How did Delaney…something is different about her. I don’t know why. Did I just get dumped? I have no idea what’s going on.” His keys fell out of his hand and onto the ground.
Spencer had never seen Logan so rattled or hurt. He knew he would have to explain to Logan what Delaney knew but now was not the time or place.