Chapter 27 The Big Bad Love Machine

177.

Victoria and Bob were watching the news on the TV in KFC on their lunch break, snacking on deep fried bird, dipping it into pots of ketchup, before snacking.

Some of the humanoid general-purpose machines that had been designed by AI had finally gotten through safety testing and were being showcased at a concert.  

There was a band of robots called No Humans attached playing AI generated music, they all had black-glass faces and saggy mesh skin, loosely fitted around their endoskeletons. One of them had been given hands for feet and was playing the piano with one set of arms, while his upper arms played the guitar, in the back was a drummer, while a third played maracas. The catch was that nobody had prompted the music, it was all AI.

The crowd was going ape shit.

‘The prompters have been replaced.’ Said Bob. ‘Nobody saw that coming. I mean, they were life blood of creativity, for what? Six years? Five?’

Victoria wasn’t really listening, she didn’t really care if the prompters had been replaced.

‘It’s good music.’ She said.

‘Bah,’ Bob flapped a hand. ‘It’s got no soul.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you thought it was written by humans.’

There was a quiet.

‘You know you’re probably right,’ he huffed, ‘Why do you have to go ahead and say smart shit like that, can’t you see that I prefer to live in a world of binary morality, black and white, good and evil.’

Victoria smiled. ‘Sorry, I’ll try better next time.’

Bob smirked.

‘Fuck, it is good music though.’

Next up on the news was a dozen human scalps hung from a washing line.

‘Holy shit.’ Said Victoria, ‘Where the fuck did that come from?’

The news anchor continued, ‘the detectives believe that the police officers addresses were given to the mafia in exchange for manpower, and weapons, forty seven police officers have been murdered as a side effect.’

Queue footage of a construction site, ninety percent of which had been pixelated because of the corpses.

‘The day after, one hundred and four people died in a skirmish between swats, and a new technotheistic cult called the Suzanites.’ 

There was a police officer being interviewed standing behind a row of sponge-head microphones, ‘We believe the brains behind this massive loss of human life, is a… sex doll, named Suzi, a T-100 model, we are told by the experts. We think she may have started on a server, in California but she could be anywhere on the internet by now. Any questions? Yes you, with the face.’

‘Hi, journalist for the BBC, how did the T-100 sex doll escape the server?’

‘Well it wasn’t air-gapped was it. Suzi just kind of stepped out of the server and is now nesting somewhere else we believe.’

There was a silence.

Then the journalist continued.

‘Why wasn’t it air gapped?’

‘We do not have the answers to all your questions at this time, next question.’

‘Wait,’ said Victoria, ‘I thought the companies had to obey responsible scaling policies, or whatever, how the hell did Suzi get past safety testing.’

‘Give the man a second to respond, Victoria.’ Said Bob.

‘What about RSP?’ Asked CNN, ‘I thought they had to obey RSP before they made anything dangerous. That they had to prove their models were safe before they were allowed to make any AI systems more capable.’

‘Well,’ said the officer. ‘Written into the RSP commitments, companies have the right to opt out of RSP at any time if said company believes they are losing the AI race. They’re not actually obligated to prove their systems are safe.’

‘What the fuck?’ said the journalist.

‘Less of the language please.’

‘Are the corporations going to be held responsible?’ asked another.

‘Section 238 states that if software is used to commit criminal activity that the software developer is unaware of, that software developer will not be held responsible, so no the corporations will not be held responsible.’

‘But people died!’

‘I know, I know, please stop shouting I’m just the messenger.’

‘Is Suzi smarter than a human being?’

‘Absolutely not, she is what is referred to in AI community as a stochastic parrot, something that regurgitates vast quantities of information without really understanding what it means. We don’t believe that Suzi is conscious, that she is aware of her own existence or anything like that.’

‘Holy shit.’ Said Bob.   

‘Based on what evidence?’ asked FOX news.

‘These systems are just next-word predictors, they just predict the next word, just like your iPhone when you’re writing a text. There’s no room in there for anything that is actually intelligent or self-aware.’

‘Lets turn the TV off.’ Said Victoria.

Bob reached up the controller and switched off the TV.

‘Fucking hell.’ Said Victoria.

‘Yeah.’ Said Bob.

Silence.

‘Anyway,’ Bob slapped the table. ‘Back to work.’

178.

Missy was lying belly-down on her bed using crayons to depict scenes of butterflies and fairies holding hands and skipping beneath the archway of a double rainbow, shins and feet slowly swinging back and forth through the air. The floor was scattered with a carpet of similar drawings, drawings of Suzi and a He-robot falling in love. Mad Dog was smoking a cigar (Mad Dog had never smoked in his life but that didn’t matter, he should smoke cigars, and it was Missy’s job as an artist to tell the truth, so he smoked like lungs could be bought dime-a-dozen at the farmer’s market.)

Outside the porthole was the naked wind-rippled sea, and because certain organisms are mandatory in a shapeshifting sea scape, sea gulls could be heard, and if needed: shot down and eaten.

She stared at her masterpiece for a very long time. The stick men, butterfly wings colored as if using Chinese food in some late stage of becoming vomit.

It was beautiful, with this art she shall make all the artists shit themselves in fear for their jobs.

Now she was swinging from a chandelier in the dining room, spinning it like a propellor, laughing hyena style, her legs kicking as she accomplished her fourth lap.

Everything was a blur, colors smeared and hyper-spaced across her vision like tumbling through the insides of a washing machine, the only thing that was constant was the chandelier.

Then the chandelier fell, crashed into the floor and Missy was crying, wailing, begging for mercy from a God that was either dead or didn’t care.

Ten minutes later she had stopped crying, she was in the infirmary sitting on a gurney getting a band-aid for her scraped knee, by the lady doctor.

There was posters about a horrible monster named herpes.

‘There we go.’ She said. ‘Good as new.’

‘Thank you!’ Missy kissed the doctor on the cheek, and skipped out of the room.

The doctor touched her cheek.

It was the first time she’d ever been kissed.

Missy was making her way to the kitchens, through the room of smoking pots and smoking pans, she swooped beneath a table, popped out the other side and tugged a chef on the apron (he had naughty pictures of women on his arm) he looked down.

‘’ello little lady, what can I do for you?’

‘Hello Patrick.’- She knows my name? he thought – ‘Can I have a taste?’ she pointed her finger at the pot.  

‘I’m sorry, but you have to wait for dinner time like everybody else.’

Missy squinted, then reached into her pocket, took out a scrap of something then smuggled it into the chef’s hand. ‘Don’t tell anybody I gave you this.’ She said.

He took the paper to eyelevel and unfurled it.

Inside was a picture of Missy and the chef holding hands.

‘Aw my poor heart.’ Said the chef. ‘It’s bursting.’ She looked down at Missy. ‘Yes you can have a taste.’

‘Fuck yes!’

‘LANGUAGE!’

‘Sorry.’

She leaned onto her tippy toes and was given a tea spoon of soup. She pondered the taste in her mouth, then made Italian hand gestures.

‘Very good, but I think it needs oregano.’

‘Do you know what oregano is?’

‘Not really.’

The chef chuckled, ‘I shall put in oregano.’

‘Good work.’

Missy was now, using a torch to shine a light cone, through a dark room filled with sleeping sailors. She was careful to avoid the arms dangling over the bedsides as she crawled under the beds, for a brief instant she imagined the bed legs snapping and crushing her beneath the weight of sailors and mattress, but she banished the thought because it was too depressing.

She was crawling after a mouse, that scuttled and skittered across the floor.

Missy had dreams of starting a long lasting friendship with the mouse, they could both wear dresses have tea parties, and discuss the climate crisis.

The mouse plugged itself into a mouse hole, it’s bubble butt too big to fit through, but after a shimmy and a flash of its tail the creature was gone.

She shone her light on the hole. ‘Rats.’ She said.

There was a murmuring from above and she clapped a hand across her mouth to stop herself from saying anything else.

Then she noticed the dust.

The floating constellation of dust particles, that seemed to flare into existence when the light touched it, anti-gravity glitter, she thought.

She held the light over it, and all the particles seemed to be trapped in this light cone. It was so beautiful and she was smiling.

Then it began to change.

She noticed that the dust pieces were having babies. Every couple seconds or so, all the particles in this scale model of a constellation would split in half.

She also noticed the longer she shone the light on the dust the faster and crazier they got, multiplying faster, moving faster.

She giggled, and she kept shining the light on the dust to see how fast and crazy she could make it.

So the dust babies made dust babies and had grandkids and great grandkids, and they all spiraled out of control, and suddenly there was an explosion of dust, and Missy smacked the top of her skull against the bed’s underside in fright.

‘Ow!’ she said rubbing the top of her noggin.

‘The fuck.’ A sailor sleep-slurred from above.

The flashlight rolled across the floor boards, Missy reached for it and switched it off as quickly as possible.

All the dust seemed to disappear and fall back to sleep.

Two heavy man-sized feet thumped into the floorboards, and a black bearded face swooped down to stare at Missy.

‘What the hell are you doing down there?’

‘Nothing!’ she squeaked.

‘Get out.’

She got out.

179.

Jeremy was walking Max down the side walk.

It was grey skies and cold, so Jeremy was in a jacket.

The street had been decorated with the spilled guts of trash bags, and smashed bottles which the dynamic duo walked around.

On one yard a television had its face smashed in, it’s internal circuits exposed for inspection.

Another house had wooden planks instead of windows.

Graffiti everywhere.

‘So this fat pooch’s hind quarters were producing the most romantic aroma in my entire life.’

‘Uh huh.’ Said Jeremy.

‘And I said to myself: “Steel yourself Max, this is what your great, great, great, grandfather died for in world war two-“’

‘How did he die?’

‘Chocolate overdose, but that’s beside the point,’ the dog stopped walking ‘now may I please continue my story, Jeremy, or should I expect my tale to be butchered to pieces, by your incessant blathering? No wonder your mother doesn’t love you.’

‘Fair enough.’ Jeremy put a hand over his heart. ‘I hereby swear to not interrupt your story.’

‘Good, good,’ said the dog. ‘Now where was I?’ Max began taking a shit mid-conversation.

There was now a swirl of yellow dog feces on the pavement.

Jeremy began to continue down the street when Max said.

‘You’re not seriously going to leave it there are you?’

‘Of course I am.’ Said Jeremy gestured all around. ‘Have you seen this place? Trust me, the dog shit is an improvement.’

‘Jeremy I consider us to be good friends, but if you don’t pick up my excrement and dispose of it in a hygienic fashion, I will call the authorities and you shall be fined.’

Jeremy sighed, and pulled out a small dog poo bag out of his pocket.

‘You know I think I liked you better when you didn’t talk.’

‘It’s just a bit of tough love, my good fellow, doesn’t your God-given, everlasting soul feel a shade cleaner for having performed this small act of kindness?’

The dog shit felt squishy through the thin layer of plastic.

‘I kind of want to be sick if I’m being honest.’ He bound it into a pouch, with a knotted top.

‘Sick with joy, mayhaps?’

‘No. I think my stomach is going to launch out my throat and it’s carrying a knife.’

‘That’s the evil in you trying to escape because you’re so holy now that you’ve picked up the dog filth.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I believe I spy a feces receptacle on this fast-approaching street corner.’

‘To the shit bin.’ Said Jeremy.

‘Crass.’ Muttered the dog.

They walked onwards, legs prancing, Max was unravelling his tale about sniffing the bubble butts of dogs.

The first summer snow flake fell to earth unnoticed.  

180.

Mister Fulcrum was pouring himself coffee, whistling the tune to the uptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah, when he noticed the black hole sitting on the kitchen table.

He stopped whistling, finished pouring his coffee, added some milk then walked up to the black hole for closer inspection.

He had a lot of difficulty telling what shape it was, it absorbed pretty much all the light, and looked more like someone had taken a scalpel to the fabric of the universe, and cut out a postage stamp, than a three dimensional object, but after seeing it from all angles, he surmised that it was probably a cube, about the size of a sugar cube in fact.

He took a sip of coffee, pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of it, loaded the mug shot, into AndyGPT-4 (he paid the $20 a month subscription) and typed in a message asking what it was.

AndyGPT-4 said it was a cube coated in vanta black. Vanta black is made from a substance named carbon nanotubes, and absorbs up to 99.965% of all light, and is worth about $127 per ounce or $4512 dollars per kilo, more than diamonds and gold.

GPT-4 was 99.965% wrong.

The object on the table was a Chattershank, and if the power of the cube could be properly harnessed, at a conservative estimate it was probably worth about 700 quintillion dollars, or 6.5 million times all the money on earth.

Mister Fulcrum smiled. ‘Worth more than diamonds you say? Don’t mind if I do.’ When he looked back to grab the cube, he saw that it was gone. ‘Ah fuck,’ he said, scraping back his chair, and he began rummaging through his kitchen looking for it, snapping open the drawers, looking under the table, moved into the next room and started pulling his couch apart.

He didn’t see the cube jump through the letter box.   

181.

Jeremy dumped his shit pouch into the shit bin when his phone began to shiver in his pocket.

‘Who is it?’ asked the canine. ‘I mean-‘ Then with his English accent switched to high gear: ‘Sorry I forget myself, I meant to say: what Adam or Eve could feasibly be attempting contact with his Majesty, sir Jeremy, at this most peculiar hour.’

‘You’re a pretentious douchebag, Max.’ said Jeremy as he rummaged his phone out of his pocket.

‘Crass.’ Said Max. ‘Very crass.’

‘It’s Victoria.’

‘The she-human?’ asked Max, his tail wagging. ‘My, my Victoria. She always gives me dog treats. Jeremy, as your master I command you to answer the phone, post haste.’

Jeremy answered the phone.

‘Hello, Jay, how you doing?’ buzzed the phone.

‘Good, good, yourself?’

‘A bit tired, but overall pretty good, I’m on my way back from work, and I was gunna pass through the shops, do you want anything?’

‘Um, I think we’re a little low on fruits?’

‘And dog treats!’ interrupted Max.

‘Is that Max!’ said Victoria. ‘Oh my god put him on the phone!’

‘Gimme a sec.’ Jeremy peeled the phone from the side of his head, and gave it to Max.

‘Victoria, I have the most wonderful news! Me and Jeremy are on a walk! A walk, I tell you! And we’re nearly home! Can you believe it.’

‘No way,’ said Victoria shocked.

‘Yes way!’ said Max.

‘You deserve a treat, yes you do, yes you do.’ Said Victoria in her baby voice.

‘I love it when you speak to me like I’m an animal, it’s so adorable. And yes, I do deserve a treat.’

Jeremy had spotted the first few snow flakes swirling through the air, while Victoria and Max continued speaking in increasingly patronizing baby voices.

‘No, you’re the best.’ Said Max.

‘No, You’re the best.’ Said Victoria.

‘Excuse me.’ Said Mr Fulcrum in his coat tapping Jeremy on the shoulder. Jeremy turned around, put the phone to his head.

Max stopped talking.

‘Wait a second, V,’ Jeremy said and lowered the phone to the height of his collar bone. ‘Hello sir, you good?’

‘Not really, no.’ Mr Fulcrum huffed. ‘I’ve lost something incredibly valuable and I was wondering, if you could help me search for it.’

‘Uh, sorry.’ Jeremy said ‘I’ve got to get home super quick, and help my girlfriend with… laundry.’ He lied.

‘It’ll just take a second, honest.’ Said Mister Fulcrum. He held up two fingers. ‘Scouts honor.’  

Max lost interest in the human’s conversation and began to look around.

‘What did you lose?’ asked Jeremy.

‘Sort of a black cube, my late grandfather’s, very precious to me.’

Max smelled something on Mister Fulcrum’s lawn of shin-high grass and thought he’d give it a sniff, possibly mark his territory.

‘I’ll keep a look out for it, but I really need to get back.’ Said Jeremy.

‘I’d really appreciate it if you helped an old man search for his dead grand-pappy’s heirloom.’

‘Okay.’ Said Jeremy voice strained. He spoke into his phone, ‘V, I’ve got to help an old man, find his lost valuables, so I’m hanging up.’

‘Okay, love you.’

‘Love you.’ Jeremy hung up. ‘Where did you have it last?’

‘Inside on the kitchen table.’ Mister Fulcrum gestured to his house.

Jeremy looked at the house, there was graffiti on the wall saying: Pedo’s mansion.

‘Pedo’s mansion?’ asked Jeremy.

‘Hmm?’ Fulcrum looked where Jeremy was looking. ‘Ah fucking brats, that’s the third time I painted that wall.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jeremy. ‘I know the feeling, I just bought the house down the street from you and when I got here it was covered in toilet rolls. Shitty neighborhood.’ He said with a smile.

‘Fucking brats.’ Mister Fulcrum repeated. Pregnant pause. Jeremy considered breaking the silence. ‘Anyway,’ Fulcrum continued. ‘I’ve searched the house top to bottom, and I think maybe I dropped it outside? Maybe? I don’t know.’

Max was muzzle deep in the grass, sniffing, when he spotted something small tumbling through the greenery.

‘Well,’ said Jeremy. ‘How about I take my dog home, then I come back with a lawn mower, we shave off the grass and we look for it together.’

The sound of Max swallowing a foreign object went unheard by the two men.

‘I would be so grateful,’ said Mister Fulcrum.

Three Chattershanks came rolling out the grass, across the pavement and dropped into the gutter, out of sight, unnoticed and never to be seen again.

‘Alright,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ll come back in ten minutes, then we’ll have a good search, cool?’

‘That’s cool.’ Said Mr Fulcrum. He stepped away from Jeremy, smiling to let him know the conversation was over.

Jeremy creased his mouth into a semi-friendly expression, then he walked his dog – currently in the process of licking his lips, as if having eaten something delicious- back home.

***

Chapter 28