Inferentia

You hear people talk about moments where everything slows down, time moves so slowly you have the ability to notice things that are normally imperceptible. It’s usually associated with nearly dying. That’s probably why every detail of my surroundings seems to be screaming at me right now. I hear the clock ticking, the fans in the servers whirring, I can hear my brother’s increased breathing, practically panting. Tessa is grinding her teeth. I hear the leather of the three hired brutes as they shift their weight and adjust the grip on their guns, pointed at me.

I notice the fingernails of the hired gun are nicely maintained. He must get manicures. I mean, it’d be hard not to notice. His trigger finger is doing what it must have been created to do - resting on the trigger of a pistol, its barrel resting on my forehead. That finger is less than an inch from eye. He can just as easily poke me in the eye as squeeze the trigger. He’s really annoying me right now.

It’s making it hard to see the computer screens I’m working at. Even though most of what I am doing is for show - I completed much of the coding work late last night - I still need to make this convincing. I don’t want anyone else in the room to catch on to what I’m doing.

“Hey, James, can you get this guy’s fist out of my face? I can’t see anything happening in the pre-production database.” I swat his hand away. It’s way more bold of a move than I’m actually feeling inside. I mostly did it to get a rise out of James. I’ve never wanted to let him win.

“Oh, I’m sorry JP, I apologize for the inconvenience but do you need reminded why there’s a gun to your head right now?”

“Because you’re an asshole, that’s why, and Dad is so turning over in his grave.” He grabs the nightstick from the brute’s holster and lights it up, it crackles with electricity. I feel the sharp blast across my back. I see stars and my knees buckle. I lay there folded in half trying to convince my body to start working again.

“James!” Tessa screams. She’s as shocked as I am. Like me this is not what she signed up for but James had to have at least one other person on the inside with him. As VP of Operations she’s a good pick. I wonder if it was only the money she’s been promised or does he have some kind of leverage against her?

“There’s no need for that! If you’d given me more time I could have bypassed his trap doors and firewalls and none of this would even be happening right now. Just let him finish.” She goes to help me up but James steps between us, kneeling down to my eye level.

The veins in his neck are pulsing. He’s really twisted up over this whole thing. I wish I could say I’m surprised by how aggressive he’s being. Lately he’s been a real prick. At least to me. It used to be just bluster, him throwing his weight around proving he’s the boss after the sale to InselCorp. This is different. He’s different. Everything around here seems different.

It may still have the name Dad gave it, WPL, Wallace Parker Labs, but the core of Dad’s dream died the moment the ink dried on the contract to sell to those corporate bastards. Maybe it’s my fault? After Dad died… Well, I just didn’t have the stomach to sit at that desk, to man the switch. James used his influence on the board in my absence. He saw his shot and took it. Things hit the fan pretty quickly after that. I should have seen it coming but didn’t. I thought I could still steer James, steer project development, the team. I didn’t need the title and job description. But he proved to be a step ahead of me, always. Like that dumb saying, he was playing chess while I was playing checkers. I hope I’ve got the jump on him today, though. That’s an unsettling thought. What if I’ve got the calculus for this situation all wrong? That’d really suck.

My limbs start to function again but I’m still on the ground. “That’s going to leave a mark.”

James huffs a smirk and hands the nightstick to the brute. I hear it recharging. When did those become standard issue? “Always with a smart comeback, right? What do you think is going on here? This whole thing is so much bigger than you and the tinker toy projects we’ve given you. And I seriously do not have time for this game! Now get up and finish the job. Activate the prototype, give me root access.”

“You didn’t say please.”

“Next time we shoot you in the leg. It might come clean off but you’ll still be able to type.”

It hurts like hell to stand up but he’s not wrong. I do need to get back to work. The guard shift change at the front of the building and the main gate happen at the same time, in about five minutes. Back to the plan. Step one - unleash chaos in here. Step two - escape during the bedlam (I have zero chance of punching my way out). Step three - run. And hope there’s one or two fewer guards at their post when I get there. Clearly foolproof, right?

“What exactly do I have myself caught up in here, Tessa?” I get back to entering commands. If there’s anyone in the room that might catch on to what I’m really doing it might be her. Hopefully my questions will distract her. “Have you thought about the endgame to this? Have you asked James what his plans are for me after this? Or for you?” I think I see a slight twitch in her cheek. Yeah, this is not turning out like she thought it would either.

Just beyond the control panels and screens is a large window. Currently the “curtains” are drawn. What that really means is the window is covered by a reinforced steel plate designed to slide to one side. I activate a couple commands on the console and the steel curtain slides away. Everyone in the room turns to look through the window.

We’re in an observation area looking into a bedroom of sorts. It’s only a bedroom in the functional sense of the word. It’s occupant has no need of a bed, a dresser, a mirror or other things in most bedrooms. This room isn’t even where it’s owner sleeps, because he doesn’t sleep. This is where his batteries charge. Where he connects into the database. Where he learns. We call him Grot. It stands for… actually, I don’t know what it stands for. They decided on it while I was, away.

Grot’s original design was to go where people safely can’t, or shouldn’t. His graphite and tungsten alloy skeleton is incredibly strong but also relatively light. It allows his motorized “muscles” insane amounts of PSI, torque, and strength. But it’s his processing power, his brain, that I find most impressive. It is somewhat braggadocious to say because I designed it but chances are good I’m not going to live much beyond today. Might as well get some credit while I can. Even though Grot can’t fully pass the Turing test the combination of his onboard processing and the network array he’s tapped into allows him to “think” and respond at near human levels.

He’s literally decades of work and innovation. The life’s dream of my father. Dad would have loved to see what we’ve done. How we finished what he started. Dad’s original vision was highly capable human-like robots that assist people in the most difficult and hazardous of situations. They’d search rubble of collapsed buildings, charge into blazing fires, clean up toxic environments. Robots designed to rescue, to research, to help. Now I think the only way I can undo what James has done is to bring this whole place crashing down. Burn it to the ground. Seeing as how it’s mostly an underground bunker I’m going to need some help.

James steps over to the door leading into Grot’s room but doesn’t enter. He turns to me, “Finish already! Boot him up and step back.” He swipes his key card at the sensor, the door swishes open. He walks past an empty table. It’s more of an upright dentist chair. He goes to the one Grot is hooked up to looking into Grot’s “face”. James’ smile slowly widens as the different systems come online. Cervos begin to whir, hydraulic fluid begins to circulate, Grot’s metal fingers twitch. His optical orbs glow yellow. A small screen built into his chest scrolls through the diagnostic tests fluttering through his system. James undoes the restraints that hold him to the table and hold him up.

The same list of tests scrolls in a small window on one of my screens. I enter a couple last commands and step away from the control desk. My knees are weak again, but not from the pain in my back. Because I’ve just activated one of the most powerful weapons ever created and designated its primary target - me. Grot’s sole mission now is to to kill me and to stop anyone else from hindering this mission which includes anyone detaining or threatening me.

While Grot’s brain is incredibly agile it’s not very “smart”. He hasn’t been programmed to rationalize that if someone else kills me his job is just as effectively done. He’s programmed to quickly compute alternatives to his mission, overcome obstacles, while staying within the parameters of his base code - his “morals”. That used to mean Grot would do anything to value people first and foremost. No good extricating someone from a collapsed building if they get pulled in two in the process. He was designed to appreciate our “squishiness”. Since James and his team from InselCorp have been working on him I honestly don’t know where Grot’s values lie but this is the only way out that I could see. If I manage to make it out of the building alive, let alone in one piece, I’m certainly going to jail. Which is fine by me. I’m as much responsible as James, or InselCorp, or Tessa - any of us standing here right now. I should have known better. I should have known the real money wasn’t coming from grants and research but instead from the military. Weaponizing Grot wasn’t just irresponsible it was criminal. At least it should be. Advances in technology are outpacing policies. We have to police ourselves. If James gets enough funding, if he can scale up what we’ve created, well, the person with their hand on the controls will run the most powerful army in the world. If it’s not clear to anyone else it’s clear to me James should not be the one holding the keys. And he ain’t about to hand them over.

Tessa looks over my shoulder, past the arm of the brute still holding his pistol against my head, . She sees the list of diagnostics on the monitor. “What’s FAILSAFE?” James whips his head from Grot to her, then to me. I involuntarily take a step back, into the brute.

James grabs Grot by both shoulders and peers into the screen on his chest. The robot is a full head taller than James, who isn’t short. Parkers tend to grow tall. “No, no, no! What is this? WHAT IS THIS!?” The vein on his head pops out now, too. It’s not a good look on him. He’s more than just being high strung, he seems strung out.

That’s an unsettling thought. Grot’s not the only project in the labs. There’s an A.I. division, I worked there for awhile, with James’ daughter Alison. That kid’s one of the smartest people I know. She had to have made some kind of record for youngest person to get a PhD, well, her first one anyway. She started working at WPL not long after that. She’s going to be running this place someday. Well, she was going to be running it. I’m hoping there’s not much left to work with when we’re through here. We mostly worked on putting A.I. into things like cars, lawn mowers, household devices. Not real A.I. That doesn’t exist, yet. The closest we’ve come are machines that are hyper intuitive. They’re really good at guessing what needs to be done. Remember that paper clip thing that used to pop up way back in the day? That paper clip is the first or second monkey in that evolutionary picture of ape to man. Grot is the hunched over one. Not quite fully upright. But there’s other divisions at work here, too. There’s a bioengineering skunkworks that came up in the last year or so. I thought they were only in animal trials, literally working on skunks. Could James be helping himself to the secret sauce, doing is own human trial?

The brute wraps his arm around my neck and burrows the barrel of his pistol into my temple. Tessa shoves past us to the keyboard. She’s furiously typing but there’s no response on the screen. James bursts back into the observation room grabbing the nightstick from the brute. He takes one massive swing to my stomach. The electric shock feels like lightning through every part of my body and I involuntarily fall to the ground again. Like dead weight I fall out of the brute’s grip in a heap on the floor. The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000. That’s twice in five minutes. Note to self: buy lottery ticket later today.

“Shut it down!” he screams at Tessa.

“I can’t! I’m locked out, there’s no input until the sequence finishes.”

“Shut it down!” he screams at me.

I let out a groan, actually more like a squeak. James pounces on top of me. I have a flash of a memory from second grade. There was this bully, red headed guy, weird teeth. He picked on me a lot. James had had enough. Jumped on him in the snow. Really pounded him until a grown up came and pulled him off. I was in second grade? Is that right? It’s funny how you have to use math to remember how old you are.

He gets right to my nose and grits through his teeth, “What. Did. You. Do?”

“What’s Alpenglow, James?” James is visibly caught off guard by this. That felt good to see. I can mostly move again. It’d be easier if someone wasn’t sitting on my chest.

“How do you know about that?” He falls off me to sit on the floor. I can see the cogs working in his brain. It’s not that different watching Grot. I can hear Grot going through the final set of boot up tests. He stands up, takes one step forward with his right foot, puts his right hand forward, steps back with his right foot and at the same time takes his right hand away, behind him. Then he steps back in, puts his right hand in, and shakes it all about. Full on Hokey Pokey. The first time Grot did that was when we showed it to Dad. He loved it. He burst out laughing into that big belly laugh of his. He nearly fell out of his wheelchair. James and I both cracked up, mostly at how tickled Dad was. Dad called in Alison, his first and, most likely only, grandchild. She was, what? Ten? Twelve? Dad had me reboot Grot so she could watch. She was delighted and joined the dance. Dad nearly died laughing all over again. It was supposed to be a joke that I would undo and replace with something more practical but Dad insisted we leave it in, so we did. That was the last time the three Parker men were in the same room together.

James comes back to himself, looks at me. I wonder if he was remembering that same day? He stands up. I struggle up, too. A bit shaky. James looks at Grot. Then back to me. Still processing. Up till now he thought my sabotage was just to piss him off, to be a pain in his ass and embarrass him. No, brother, it goes so much deeper than that.

Tessa leans in closer to the diagnostic readout. “What control package did you install, JP?” That’s what they call me here, John Wallace Parker. The younger, beloved son. “JP” started young and stuck. My brother was always more formal. No Jimmy. No nickname. Always James. Even Alison, as long as I’ve known her, calls him James. Never heard her call him father. Or even dad for that matter.

There’s a slight hint of awe in Tessa’s voice. Even now it’s hard to not to geek out just a little bit. I mean, it is kind of impressive. First I had to discover how Tessa had hacked my code, then build a Trojan horse into her code, that she helped trigger when she authenticated me into the console so I could “fix” the mess I made that got me dragged in here at gunpoint. It took almost an entire day for me to do it. Far longer than anything else I’ve ever worked on.

“Control package?” James’s voice trails off. His processor is still heavily burdened. He did not see this coming. His face goes slack as the final bit of data computes. He’s figured out what I’m up to. At least, right now.

“Shut the door!” he screams. Tessa’s confused. Brute One instinctively snaps his giant hand around my arm. Brutes Two and Three raise their weapons but they’re not sure what to aim at so they keep shifting from me to Grot. Grot was the correct answer.

The diagnostics on the screen displays the final text:

Initialization complete.

Mission acquired.

Grot begins scanning his surroundings. James shoves Tessa away from the desk and frantically shuts the door.

Target acquired.

Grot’s yellow “eyes” stop scanning the faces in the room when they come to me. He walks over to the door as it begins to slide shut. Each step can be felt through the floor. He gets his hand into the door frame, stopping the door for a fraction of a second but the momentum and strength of the pneumatics are too much for him. His hand is slammed into the metal door jamb, which buckles underneath leaving metal fingers poking into the room. The screech of metal on metal is heard as he wrenches his hand back into his room. Grot moves to the window, pulls back his fist, and punches the glass.

It was asking myself why Grot’s room was surrounded by reinforced metal, cement, and triple bullet proof glass that set me off exploring what was going on beneath the surface in this company I used to run. It’s the question that woke me up. Gave me a new focus. I had to find out what I had missed after I disconnected myself. After losing Dad I felt lost. I obviously knew it was coming but I wasn’t ready. I just wanted him back. It’s all I could think about. I couldn’t figure out how to function. But something caught my attention about this room, about Grot. The pieces weren’t lining up.

The official answer for why the room was so heavily fortified was the room was designed out of an abundance of caution. Just in case some drastic meltdown happened in Grot’s processor. That way we’d at least have the massive machine contained. A gentle giant is still a giant. In truth, now I wish I didn’t know. The answers have lead me down a dark, but logical, path. It was the most disorienting, confusing sensation I can ever recall. It’s stained the memories of my last days with Dad. I may never know fully but I think things were in motion long before he left the company to me. This whole project was a little secret between him and James. It was smart of him to not tell me. I mean, look where we are now, but it still hurts. So, yeah, part of what I’m doing is petty revenge. I’m breaking their toy because they wouldn’t let me play, too.

James did a very good job of keeping me out of the loop. Not that I was trying very hard to stay in the loop. Once InselCorp came into the picture my role at WPL, my day-to-day, was pretty perfunctory, handling logistics, work schedules. Busy work. I was fine with that. That’s probably why James dropped his guard. It’s amazing the things you can discover with basic calendar access. Something big named Alpenglow is set for tomorrow. The attachments showed the future plans for Grot. Something snapped in me. All I could think was, not on my watch. I may already have one foot out the door but I have to try and stop this.

My Plan A was to get out alive and get to the bottom of it, get all my questions answered. That faded pretty quickly. What’s the point? Dad will still be gone, nothing will bring him back. No, I finally understood that I don’t really care anymore. Not if I get out alive. Not if I ever see the whole picture. I don’t care about, anything. I just want to live long enough to see it all fall apart. Like I said, burn it to the ground. So when I stopped to think about the construction of Grot’s room, once I discovered Alpenglow’s true meaning, I surmised the containment measures weren’t nearly strong enough. In fact, I’m counting on it.

BOOM. Another massive punch. The glass holds, barely. Grot rears back for another punch.

“Why? Why target yourself?” It’s all James can manage at this point.

“Because I figured someone would be holding a gun to my head.”

BOOM! Cracks form all the way to the edges of the frame now. Brute One - I think I’ll just call him BO for short. At this distance it’s a fitting moniker. BO takes a step back, pulling me with him.

BOOM! The entire window shatters crumbling to the floor in a thousand glittery shards. All the Brutes open fire on Grot, bullets ricochet in every direction around the room. James, Tessa and I - the ones without guns - crouch to the floor. Even though I’m now free of BO’s grip I catch myself marveling at the agility of the machine as he climbs through the window and onto the control panel. The panel bursts in an amazing display of sparks and fire as everything crushes under the weight. I didn’t plan that but it sure will help slow down any effort to retrace what I did. Grot’s upright on the floor now. Ok, time to go.

♾

Thank God for him, for Grandpa. If it weren’t for him she would have gone crazy, or left, or both. In better days she tells herself she should be grateful. That between Grandpa and James she ended up with a pretty well rounded father to grow up with. Just when she’s ready to accept that idea, to accept the better days are not anomalies, he goes and does something heartless, selfish. Self absorbed, that’s the term for him. Grandpa at least made time, Grandpa at least saw her. With him she can recall actual conversation, connection. With James, it’s just instruction, directions. It was up to her to interpret, to translate, to read between the lines to understand it was his way of showing love. It’s too much work.

She feels the heat of her tears splashing on her tightly clasped hands after they fall from her face. She tastes their salt. Her mind races, too fast, she can’t slow it down to form words. Not that it would matter, her father is doing all the talking.

They sit together, the three of them, in the courtyard surrounded by single floor buildings on all sides. It’s an atrium with a glass ceiling. Air conditioning holds back the stifling heat of the desert outside. She’s always enjoyed sitting here. The smell of the flowers, the plants that shouldn’t be growing in this part of the country but thrive in this artificial space. The splash of the fountain covers the sounds of her crying. She can’t find her voice as they continue to argue.

She doesn’t understand why he can’t listen, why doesn’t he hear what he’s actually saying? They are too much alike, her father and his father. She cries as she listens to them argue, again. She sees the security cameras around the courtyard and feels a flash of embarrassment. Who all might be watching this right now? Watching their leaders argue, again. There’s no time for this, she thinks. Grandpa doesn’t have time for this. They should be talking about other things. Better things. But James does all the talking. He always does all the talking. None of the listening. She’s pretty sure she hates him for it, too. Though she knows it’s a terrible thought she lets it come to the surface anyway. She wishes their fates were switched. Why couldn’t it be James in the wheelchair, connected to the oxygen, looking back at the best days instead of ahead?