"What is it?"
He grins again. "It is my greatest invention. A machine that will be smarter than me. A thinking machine, capable of creating machines more intelligent than itself."
"How can you create a machine that is smarter than yourself? Isn"t that a . . . paradox?" I ask.
Dr. Octavio laughs. "No, it is not, but it is a good question. To create a mind smarter than my own, I only have to improve upon my design and give it a desire to further improve upon itself. By eliminating the flaws in my own mind, it will be superior. Then from its heightened perspective, it will a.n.a.lyze itself and continue to improve, all much faster at thinking than even the Human Adding Machine." He taps his head. "It will be the Supreme Intellect, my ultimate achievement, and the ultimate achievement of science!"
"So the arm is for creating?" I ask, fear growing in me. I can sense my brain sending signals to a non ex is tent body. Run. Do something. The body does not obey these primitive signals.
"It will create others in its own image. I suspect humanity will become extinct in a century at the most." He says. "I have more vacuum tubes being air-dropped this afternoon. Go wait for them, and bring them straight to me when they arrive."
I obey.
There is no doubt in my mind that these machines will have no use for me. They will create themselves to be capable of serving all their needs. They won"t need a.s.sistants. Nor will they need artists.
I roll down the unused road to the old village, keeping an eye on the sky for the airdrop. I maximize the gain on my microphone, listening for the hiss of radio static.
I awake from my nightmares to the sound of explosions. The castle shudders beneath me. Outside, it is raining in the darkness. There are voices inside the castle, speaking in British accents. I can hear Dr. Octavio calling for me above it all- he is using the radio commander. "Come quickly! Kill all who stand in your way!"
I attach my flamethrower as quickly as my manipulators allow and then I roll out into the hallway. British commandos spill through a break in the wall. They ignite like cheap wax candles and flail around uselessly. I press past them toward the elevator.
Dr. Octavio has fallen silent, and I suspect he has been captured. When I arrive at the highest floor of the castle, a commando opens fire with a machine gun. Bullets ricochet from my armor-plating and kill him.
Allen Stone, leader of the Protectorate, has Dr. Octavio handcuffed to a chair. "Tell us where the superweapon is, Octavio!"
"What superweapon?" The doctor asks. His eyes search around him wildly. Blood trickles from a cut in his upper lip. He sees me. "Zed, tell them I am not making a weapon!"
I roll from the shadows. Stone and his men train their weapons on me. I can barely make the words. "It is in the laboratoryyy . . ." My mechanical voice shuts down.
As my body shuts itself down, piece by piece, the world seems to speed up.
Dr. Octavio lurches forward in his chair, roaring. One of the commandos spins and pulls the trigger. The gunshot deafens me, overriding all sound from my microphone. "Destroy everything down there," Stone says on his radio. My microphone shuts down.
Then the cameras. I am in darkness.
It starts as a buzzing sound. Someone is speaking to me. My cameras come back on line and focus sluggishly.
"He can hear me now?" Stone asks the balding technician in a white parka. The technician nods and backs away.
"Stone," I say.
"Good. It"s time to leave," Stone asks, cigar clenched between his teeth. We stand on the open field beneath his zeppelin. The laboratory billows smoke below us. Nothing will have escaped the fire.
"I am waiting for someone," I say.
He looks away uncomfortably. "That wouldn"t be Octavio"s daughter, would it? Infamous jewel thief Lucinda Octavio, aka "The Ghost"?"
"Yes," I say. I feel something familiar rising from the depths of my reptilian brain. Fear- I have almost missed you.
"I guess you have no way of knowing, living out here . . ." His voice trails off. I stare at him. If he doesn"t say something soon, I will set ablaze with the remaining fuel in my thrower.
"She"s been captured by the n.a.z.is." He pauses, considering his words. He stares at me with a perplexed expression, one I recognize as the result of searching me for outward signs of emotion. I feel sorry for him. "Seems she tried to steal from Hitler"s private stash. They"ve been trumpeting it in their papers and on the radio. Truth is, we"ve been afraid she would lead them to Octavio. That"s why we moved so quickly when you radioed us."
I try to pretend that I don"t feel anything. I don"t have a heart.
"Look, mate," Stone says, "come with us and you can make a difference in this topsy-turvy world. I can"t promise you anything, but maybe you can rescue her. British Intelligence has a lot of questions for her. What do you say, Zed?"
"My name is not Zed," I say. "But yes. I will come with you."
"What is your name then?"
"Call me Tin Man."
Stone shrugs and walks up the ramp into the gondola hanging a few feet above the ground. I turn my cameras to watch the smoke from the laboratory for a few more minutes, until I can be sure that I will never doubt that every last bit of Octavio"s last experiment is gone.
Jeremiah Tolbert"s fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Ideomancer, Polyphony 4, and Shimmer, as well as in John Joseph Adams"s anthologies Federations, Seeds of Change, and Brave New Worlds. He"s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and Podcastle podcasts. In addition to being a writer, he is a Web designer, photographer, and graphic artist- and he shows off each of those skills in his Dr. Roundbottom project, located at www.clockpunk.com. He lives in Colorado, with his wife and cats.
It"s the opening of many great mystery stories: a rich man has died. His family members gather, eager to find out who stands to inherit his fortune. And as a storm settles over the mansion, people begin to disappear.
This next story isn"t a mystery novel, but it is a tale of a fortune, and a family wracked by greed. When a brilliant inventor designs the perfect investment manager, a computerc.u.m-accountant called "The Executor," the inventor"s estate grows every pa.s.sing year. But only one descendant, the descendant who can crack The Executor"s mysterious review process, stands to inherit. And generations pa.s.s in violence, the bodies stacking up like firewood.
The author says that "the beauty of the archetypal mad scientist is the conflict between raw brilliance and utter lack of insight." Here is a story of a scientist who could not imagine how little he understood about families- and the disaster he manages to wreak. As Wilson says, "A mad scientist is like a hugely powerful locomotive that"s gone off the tracks and is plowing through neighborhoods just leaving piles of dead bodies in its wake."
THE EXECUTOR.
DANIEL H. WILSON.
I stagger into the Executor"s office just before my joint-stabilization field fails. I crumble to the floor and I can hear my nine-month-old daughter crying but my eyes aren"t working for some reason. That"s when I realize that I"ve really failed now- there"s no other way to look at it.
The rest of my family is going to die, and I"m going first.
Twelve hours ago I stood in this same room on my feet, like a man. My daughter Abigail was safe and sleepy, strapped to my chest. And I still had some hope that I might save her life.
The Executor. It looms over me, imperious, an expensive hologram solid as a marble column. Flush as the devil and still with a sour mug. The machine sports the trademark scowl of the scientist who created it: my great-great-great-grandfather. The Executor has been controlling and building the family fortune for almost two hundred years, an angry old man staring down infinity with eyes like black pinp.r.i.c.ks. Brilliant and wealthy and utterly alone, just like my ancestor.
"How much?" I ask.
"A common enough question," responds the Executor. "Trillions. Wealth that you cannot properly conceptualize. Diversified. Off-planet mining. Interworld currency exchanges. Hard mineral caches. Property. Patents. People."
"And yet your clothes are two hundred years out of date."
"Some things even I can"t change, Mr. Drake. I am modeled after the original Dr. Arkady. As such, I am not allowed to . . . let"s say, evolve, outside of certain constraints. My goal is to ama.s.s wealth. And my strategies toward that end are quite, ah, contemporary."
True enough. The Arkady Ransom is the largest concentration of loot on the planet. In his infamous will, Arkady made a promise that, one day, a descendant would claim the Ransom. That promise turned out to be a bucket of blood in the water. It broke my family into splinter dynasties. Sent the splinters borrowing from syndicates to pay for the Internecine War.
Arkady"s promise destroyed my family.
"Lot of greenbacks," I muse. "And n.o.body to enjoy them."
"I certainly don"t. I require no wages, Mr. Drake. No air and no light, either, for that matter. As stated in the original will and testament, ab initio, the profit from Dr. Arkady"s investments- ama.s.sed over the last two centuries- shall be held in trust in perpetuity for the descendant who is able to claim it. So far, none has."
"A couple might have tried," I quip.
"Hundreds have tried, Mr. Drake. All have failed. Are you here to stake your claim?"
I adjust Abigail in her carrier. "For the kid," I say. "She needs a doctor. The kind that a guy like me can"t even pay to consult."
"Drop her off at any state-run orphanage and they will provide for her."
"Kid"s got meta-Parkinson"s, like me. The state will throw her into a wheelchair and forget about her. But the disease is degenerative. It"ll kill her sooner or later, unless she gets a fledgling exo-rig to build up her strength. If she can learn to walk, she could use a hybrid stepper until she"s grown. Then a full-blown joint-stabilization field, just like her old man. It"s real simple, Executor: I don"t have enough money to save my daughter"s life. You do."
The Executor looks at me, expressionless. It"s tough to tell how smart it is. Those muddy eyes. The light sort of disappears into them.
"So what next?" I ask.
"The details of the review process are confidential. Touch the speaking stone to initiate."
I notice a flattish block of red sandstone on the ground.
"What else?" I ask.
"Nothing. The process begins when a legal descendant touches the stone. Once activated, the review process cannot be repeated. My decision will be final."
I cradle my daughter to my chest. She breathes in soft gasps, warm against me. My joint stabilizers whine as I kneel to touch the rock; they"re army-issued and falling apart.
"Review process initiated," says the machine. "Answer the following question: What is inside you and all around you; created you and is created by you; and is you but not you?"
"It"s a riddle?"
"You have five seconds to respond."
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
As the seconds burn like match heads, my baby daughter squirms and coos. She rubs her balled up fists over her cheeks and flashes those baby blues. I focus on her and try not to think about her future. A frown flickers across the Executor"s face.
Zero.
"Review process complete," says the machine. "Your claim is denied, Mr. Drake."
I take four steps toward the curb when I feel the nose of a gun jabbing into my ribs. There"s n.o.body around, just a busy avenue buzzing with trolling auto-cars. These days, the city moves too fast for human reflexes. The streets have a numb life of their own. In turn, the citizens have become hard and precise and cold- a functioning part of the city-machine.
No drivers. No witnesses. And I"ve got the kid strapped to my chest.
I show my palms to the street. A slender hand clamps down on my right forearm and spins me around. A woman stares me in the face. She has a cheap-looking black polymer Beretta clutched in one gloved hand. She pauses, registers the kid sleeping against me. While her eyes are on vacation I shove the lady off balance and slap the pea-shooter out of her hand with a stabilizer-enhanced swipe. The lump of plastic hits the elasticrete sidewalk and I make sure it tumbles a safe distance away.
When I look up the lady has a retractable knife in her fist, coming off a tight swing. My right arm is grazed, jacket torn at the shoulder. The blade is too close to my daughter for comfort. I slow the situation down, relax my body, put my hands by my sides.
The woman"s eyes shine with malice.
"Think I won"t?" she asks.
"What do you need?" I ask.
"Just to give you some friendly advice, Drake," she says, motioning toward the Executor"s ornate front door with the knife. "There"s nothing in there for you. So don"t worry about going back."
"No problem. I didn"t make it through the review process anyway."
"You tried?"
"Sure I did. I"m an heir to the Arkady Ransom, aren"t I?"
"Sure you did."
"That Executor is no softie. He failed me quick and didn"t budge an inch. The machine"s got no heartstrings to play."
She eyeb.a.l.l.s the kid again. "Either way, it"d a real bad idea to make a return visit. Honest, it"d be a crying shame if you got hurt. Or if somebody in your family got hurt-"
I"ve got her by the wrist before she can finish the sentence. I dig in with my thumb, stabilizers engaging, crushing the median nerve. Her knife drops into my other hand real neat. It"s an expensive pig-sticker. High-grade nano-carbon. A steep buy, out of place on her hip.
"Say what you want to me, I got thick skin, and besides, it"s probably true. But don"t threaten the kid," I say.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she says.
"Give me the sheath and we"ll forget about it."
"You"ll pay for this," she says through gritted teeth. My thumb digs in. The stabilizer is rock hard and I can hear her wrist bones grinding together. She reaches back with her other hand and takes the sheath off her hip. Hands it over.
What an excellent actress. Whoever put her up to this wanted that knife to draw my attention. Well, they got what they wanted. I let go of her, sheathe the knife, and slide it into my coat pocket. Abigail lets out a little mewling whine; she"s starting to wake up.