Ace Dreamer
07-15-2012, 09:40 PM
Returning Favours - 15/Jul/2012
Kelly had gone 'back up'. With a large parcel of what looked like books. Was she OK? Hard to tell. Kevin Wright refused to talk. 'Confidential'.
She'd looked a mix of angry and hurt, when she arrived. Now she looked thoughtful. She gave Janet a considering look. "I think we might be working a lot together, in future", was her leaving remark. But, she made it to Janet, not him.
"What was all that about?" asked Janet. "Beyond the obvious, you acting as their Consultant, I don't know" replied Arthur. "If I was a religious man, I'd say it looked like she'd had some sort of revelation" he continued, "But, what?".
The next few weeks were busy. On top of all his normal work he was talking to civil right activists, some of whom crossed over with science fiction fans. Since the AI issue arose there'd been a lot of buzz about which legislature was going to 'bite the bullet' first.
Australia's stance of allowing AIs to incorporate themselves as companies, which they then more or less self-owned, was regarded as clever, but avoiding the real issue. Allowing AIs 'company passports' was thought particularly suspect. Current and ex-Commonwealth countries, including the UK, were accepting them on a 'wait and see' basis. Some counties had banned them outright, some were waiting to see if AIs tried to use them at their borders.
The consensus was this looked to be something that could make or break legal careers, not to mention involve a great deal of money. What more worried many people were the 'black projects' suspected to be very popular with a lot of the world's military. For half a million dollars you could easily become a 'space power' - chicken feed. And, if there weren't AIs enslaved in those projects the civil rights people would be very surprised.
Arthur was starting to get threatening letters, from people saying he was taking 'jobs from humans'. He'd had to hire a mail checking service, just in case. People were buying robots from "Wright Stuff Mechatronics" as fast as he, or Janet, could make them. And, they'd had to start vetting orders very carefully, to make sure they were from legitimate companies. He'd had to hire-out to do that, too.
There seemed to be about a 50:50 split of male and female models required. Some interest in customising appearance, something he'd designed-in so not all the O'Neill Station AI remotes would look the same. The initial orders from universities and research organisations had mostly shifted to companies.
He suspected some companies as being re-sellers, but, there were limits as to what he could do. Some robots had to be ending up in the 'sex toy' market, but at least he could claim he wasn't selling direct. Janet remarked that the next article might be 'King of Sexy Waving', and he shuddered.
Arthur was getting regular messages from Jane, now. Mostly it was about the new Engineering department that Kelly was heading, mention of them hiring a doctor, but there was some personal stuff, too. Someone called 'Lee Kay' (leaky?) was Kelly's engineering deputy, and apparently she was popular with a lot of the crew. Some personal stuff leaked into the messages, to. He thought Jane was a bit lonely.
He was now officially a millionaire, something he'd laughed about when he first set-up in business. Why wasn't someone undercutting him? He kept an eye out, but apart from some rather shoddy Greek attempts (the 'Pygmalion' and the 'False Maria' ranges), nothing seemed to be close. There was stuff out there, but tests showed it all had handwavium residue. Maybe his 'Body Builder' was making all the difference?
Kelly obviously thought she owed him some sort of favour. She'd sent a workshop assistant, in the form of a robot crab, two-foot across, with legs that could telescope to let it stand more than six-feet high, and reach-out to grab stuff at twice that distance.
Janet and he'd checked it out, but they couldn't figure out how it worked, even after they'd unbolted its top shell and used all the analytical tools they could bring to bear. It seemed to be steam-powered, and just needed the occasional 'meal' of a scoop of coke, and its water topping-off.
It had a manual. An immense brass-bound thing, with illuminated pages. The first thing they'd done was scan and OCR the lot, but sometimes new notes appeared in it, if the crab did something strange. Janet thought it was some sort of joke, on Kelly's behalf.
Then there were two messages from Sarah. The first talked about 'collaborative projects', and reading between the lines it was about his access to the Hollywood Machine. He showed it to his lawyer who said it was a brilliantly simple legal document, with no traps or loopholes that he could detect.
The second was... It was in two parts. The first part was an offer to collaborate with him, using her own personal time, on rights for AIs. The second part was a quite clear threat, that if he upset her sisters like that again (Jane or Kelly) they'd be finding bits of his body for the next fifty years. Interestingly, both parts self-destructed, and, as far as he could tell, left no sign that they had existed, at all.
So, he had 'Angels' in his life? How bad could that be?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Kelly had gone 'back up'. With a large parcel of what looked like books. Was she OK? Hard to tell. Kevin Wright refused to talk. 'Confidential'.
She'd looked a mix of angry and hurt, when she arrived. Now she looked thoughtful. She gave Janet a considering look. "I think we might be working a lot together, in future", was her leaving remark. But, she made it to Janet, not him.
"What was all that about?" asked Janet. "Beyond the obvious, you acting as their Consultant, I don't know" replied Arthur. "If I was a religious man, I'd say it looked like she'd had some sort of revelation" he continued, "But, what?".
The next few weeks were busy. On top of all his normal work he was talking to civil right activists, some of whom crossed over with science fiction fans. Since the AI issue arose there'd been a lot of buzz about which legislature was going to 'bite the bullet' first.
Australia's stance of allowing AIs to incorporate themselves as companies, which they then more or less self-owned, was regarded as clever, but avoiding the real issue. Allowing AIs 'company passports' was thought particularly suspect. Current and ex-Commonwealth countries, including the UK, were accepting them on a 'wait and see' basis. Some counties had banned them outright, some were waiting to see if AIs tried to use them at their borders.
The consensus was this looked to be something that could make or break legal careers, not to mention involve a great deal of money. What more worried many people were the 'black projects' suspected to be very popular with a lot of the world's military. For half a million dollars you could easily become a 'space power' - chicken feed. And, if there weren't AIs enslaved in those projects the civil rights people would be very surprised.
Arthur was starting to get threatening letters, from people saying he was taking 'jobs from humans'. He'd had to hire a mail checking service, just in case. People were buying robots from "Wright Stuff Mechatronics" as fast as he, or Janet, could make them. And, they'd had to start vetting orders very carefully, to make sure they were from legitimate companies. He'd had to hire-out to do that, too.
There seemed to be about a 50:50 split of male and female models required. Some interest in customising appearance, something he'd designed-in so not all the O'Neill Station AI remotes would look the same. The initial orders from universities and research organisations had mostly shifted to companies.
He suspected some companies as being re-sellers, but, there were limits as to what he could do. Some robots had to be ending up in the 'sex toy' market, but at least he could claim he wasn't selling direct. Janet remarked that the next article might be 'King of Sexy Waving', and he shuddered.
Arthur was getting regular messages from Jane, now. Mostly it was about the new Engineering department that Kelly was heading, mention of them hiring a doctor, but there was some personal stuff, too. Someone called 'Lee Kay' (leaky?) was Kelly's engineering deputy, and apparently she was popular with a lot of the crew. Some personal stuff leaked into the messages, to. He thought Jane was a bit lonely.
He was now officially a millionaire, something he'd laughed about when he first set-up in business. Why wasn't someone undercutting him? He kept an eye out, but apart from some rather shoddy Greek attempts (the 'Pygmalion' and the 'False Maria' ranges), nothing seemed to be close. There was stuff out there, but tests showed it all had handwavium residue. Maybe his 'Body Builder' was making all the difference?
Kelly obviously thought she owed him some sort of favour. She'd sent a workshop assistant, in the form of a robot crab, two-foot across, with legs that could telescope to let it stand more than six-feet high, and reach-out to grab stuff at twice that distance.
Janet and he'd checked it out, but they couldn't figure out how it worked, even after they'd unbolted its top shell and used all the analytical tools they could bring to bear. It seemed to be steam-powered, and just needed the occasional 'meal' of a scoop of coke, and its water topping-off.
It had a manual. An immense brass-bound thing, with illuminated pages. The first thing they'd done was scan and OCR the lot, but sometimes new notes appeared in it, if the crab did something strange. Janet thought it was some sort of joke, on Kelly's behalf.
Then there were two messages from Sarah. The first talked about 'collaborative projects', and reading between the lines it was about his access to the Hollywood Machine. He showed it to his lawyer who said it was a brilliantly simple legal document, with no traps or loopholes that he could detect.
The second was... It was in two parts. The first part was an offer to collaborate with him, using her own personal time, on rights for AIs. The second part was a quite clear threat, that if he upset her sisters like that again (Jane or Kelly) they'd be finding bits of his body for the next fifty years. Interestingly, both parts self-destructed, and, as far as he could tell, left no sign that they had existed, at all.
So, he had 'Angels' in his life? How bad could that be?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind