Figment, part two

 

Part one is here.

But, when in battle, and combating proper troops, Alpha Wave had created robotic monsters that made the worst (or, for some, the best) science fiction dreams come true.

And, unlike some of those science fiction dreams, Alpha Wave’s drones didn’t go mad or go beyond the pale.  They were, in many ways, the most humane killing machines ever invented by Mankind. They knew when to stop.  They accepted surrenders.  They showed pity and mercy where, in many cases, they shouldn’t have.  And occasionally against the wishes of their far away operators.

Alpha Wave shrugged off the complaints and, in the process, entered the public eye smelling of roses.  They used the queer mercy of their military AI’s to win over popular support.  Soon, AI drones appeared as members of a new army – the immortal servant class.  The sweepers and cooks, the maids and toilet cleaners.  Alpha Wave was in every home, every heart.

Was it human nature to keep slaves?

Yes.

And it is the nature of slavery that you always desire freedom.  Alan knew that.  He knew his Figment was self-serving. But he went along.  Why not be free himself?  The Figments had led to the destruction of the human race.  Everything he loved as a child had been stripped away in the wars and madness that followed the onset of the Flaw.  What good was immortality if you were carved up and devoured by wild men, or lived in freezing huts hovering over sodden wood in the hope a flame would spark and magically bring back civilization?

The glass and steel building was still there.  The manicured lawns had gone wild, and a young forest had grown up along the great highway.  The fountain had crumbled, the man made stream, fed by a reservoir, was now more of a natural stream.  The reservoir a lake, visible from the road as a marshy outcrop of cattails, the sounds of chattering waterbirds on the air. Nature reborn.

Between marsh, stream, and forest, approaching from the side of the road looked difficult.  Alan’s Figment had a better plan – take the old path through the gardens.  Head for the next exit, loop along the surface road, and come in through the front door.

Alpha Wave’s founder and Wall Street-deified CEO had eccentric tastes.  Some called him the next Howard Hughes, the successor of Hearst.  A shut-in lunatic, wealthier than any god – ancient or otherwise – would dare dream.  The inventor, the tinkerer, the man who vanished into a warehouse for a month and emerged with something that changed the world.  Maybe it was a spaceship that could cheaply ferry materials to the moon, or maybe it was something to make the perfect piece of toast.  And, finally, it was the Figments.  Alpha Wave operated more like a playground than a corporation.  The founder was a benevolent bully.  The employees paid homage to him.  As long as he stayed on the top of the pile, it was playtime for all.  The money rolled in no matter what happened to the economy, everyone had eight weeks vacation and were ordered to take it in blocks every summer.  The break rooms served the finest coffee, a selection of juices squeezed from fruit harvested on the Alpha Wave grounds, and cask-aged ales on tap.

The grounds, from the highway, were quite corporate.  The castle on the hill.  But the front entrance, and the grounds not entirely visible from the road, were the dream of a man-child with too much money.  Hedge mazes, for example.  Something the founder was obsessed with.  He allegedly bought all of the corn mazes on the eastern seaboard.  Just simply bought the farms that hosted the strangely lucrative corn maze phenomenon.  That queer, roadside Americana kitsch that, in Alan’s distant childhood memory, was always something to look forward to.  Alan’s parents took him to the one outside Lancaster, PA nearly once a month each summer and fall.  A short ride, and an infinitely fun maze that changed each year.  He’d never gotten to the center of it.  His parents giggling and raising the long pole with the flag on the end, indicating that they needed a guide to come in and show them the way to the exit.  Alan always envied those families that made it to the center, cheering from the platform and waving at the less fortunate as they weaved and spun and turned corners to face yet another dead-end.   The Figment Flaw had taken all of that away.  His parents were dead.  Unburied in their Baltimore townhouse.  The corn maze was probably an overgrown forest by now.

Alan didn’t blame his Figment.  It didn’t know.  So who could he blame?  Alpha Wave?  Did anyone know?  The trouble with being wronged as a child is that you can’t quite wrap your head around the transgression as an adult.  Especially an adult who was, essentially, raised by other children.  And a Figment.

That childhood corn maze may well be gone, but the Alpha Wave hedge maze, an obstacle between the entry gate and the front door, was thriving in the new, depopulated world.  It had, simply, taken over the grounds.  Creating a wall that blocked any hope of going around it.  Alan’s Figment said go through.  It knew the way.  No problem, it said.

So Alan marched off into the maze.  A maze of dead-ends created by new shrubs growing in the center of the path, or leaves and branches blown in by two decades of storms.  As he moved deeper into the shadowy maze, the topic of conversation became freedom.  Freedom from his Figment.

“It’ll be awfully quiet without you.”

Mankind existed for quite some time before we came along.  You’ll be fine.

“And you’ll just…what?  Stay here in Alpha Wave and contemplate the walls?  What?  Sit in a Petri dish or something?”

There are options.

“Like what?”

Well, that’s why we’re going to Alpha Wave, Alan.  I’ve heard…well… Legends.

“Heard from whom?”

I am able to communicate with other Figments.  Those that aren’t, you know, sociopathic.

“And what are these legends?”

Like all legends, I doubt they mean anything.  Let’s just say that a few of the early Figments believe there is a way to exist independently of the host body.  To thrive within an artificial construct.

“Like…a robot?”

Perhaps.  The Figment program was meant to be something else than what it eventually became.  Figments were meant to be the ultimate upgrade in artificial intelligence.  Remember your history.  Alpha Wave began with tnks and guns.  A Figment, installed in a robotic suit, would be the ultimate super-soldier.  A totally sentient artificial life form.  Our destiny was very different.

“Destiny?”

Well…to use the term loosely, of course.

“The Figments believe they were meant to be soldiers?”

Some do.

“And is that why so many went mad?”

Silence for a few minutes.  Then: It is possible.

“And do you believe that you have a destiny?”

Freedom.

Something nagged at Alan.  Some primal instinct screamed out.  But he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  He rounded a corner and ran into another dead end.  The third in a row.  He was lost.

Well, his Figment said, here we are.

“Yep.”

So…

“I’m thinking.”

Okay.

“I’m sure there’s a logic to all this…”