Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict Page 13

  Well, not like her generation hadn’t seen it coming—for others, if not for herself. Chatting with students from her various classes that spring, the first topic of conversation always seemed to be their job prospects. And those who had already bothered to look at the Job Board just chuckled with these doinkin’ grins. But Susannah hadn’t believed their bushwah, back then.

  “Time bin ago,” Syl Clarke told her, pointing toward the coffee bar, “choo cuda pump dat caffy goo. Bleedát!”

  “Leggo mah leg!” Susannah scoffed. “Datsa machine job.”

  “Naw, trudát. Time bin, ’sa justa boiler, steam, some ol’ cranks ’n valves. Add caffy powder ’n milk to measure, by hand. Job call ta ‘bar-ees-tah.’ Mixin’ drinks like a propah chef d’oovers.”

  “ ’N peeps pay out fo’ dat?”

  “Alla time, sweet.”

  So, three grand-kay a year for her schooling, and not a job in sight for any of her classmates. Not even a nibble. Not even serving humans—a set of jobs long since taken over by smart ’bots and integrated systems. Only Susannah herself had no worries. She would just show up at the Praxis Engineering corporate headquarters, drop her name, and step into something fluffy. And if they didn’t have that lined up for her, she would just go back to her father and make him keep paying to put her up in her old room. Payback for years of family bushwah! But stay-at-home, even with perks, wouldn’t tote up to much of a life. “All play and no work do make Jill a jerk,” she quoted to herself.

  And that gave her an idea, though a colludin’ dicey one.

  * * *

  As she packed up her office at the F.R. Geological Survey office in Menlo Park, Dr. Gillian Barnes, Associate Director for Natural Hazards, looked back on a long and fruitful career.

  She had not actually predicted the event that came to be called the Great Bay Quake, but she was the first to raise a warning flag in the day and a half of sudden seismic quiet that preceded it. Then she had made a study of the quake and led several teams in analyzing its effects on high-rise buildings, substructures like tunnels and foundations, and infrastructure elements like the electrical grid and sewer systems. She had finally spent the three years following the event testifying at congressional hearings aimed at rewriting building codes and insurance regulations.

  The Great Bay Quake had been the making of her career.

  And now it was time to take her diplomas off the wall, pack her scrapbooks into storage boxes, transfer her data files to the office’s next incumbent, and subside into early retirement. It was time for her to tramp the woods, maybe take up fly fishing, and not think about synclines, anticlines, fault lines, and raw earth movements. She had the spot all picked out, too—a cabin she had put a down payment on a dozen years ago. It was twelve miles south of Bozeman, Montana, right on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. Beautiful country. Big Sky country. God’s country.

  Barnes could hardly wait to get out of the city and set up housekeeping in the woods.

  3. Developing the Ground

  The phone rang late in the afternoon, following a long day spent at her online legal practice. Antigone Wells saw the name on the screen and hesitated with her finger over the touch point that would respond. She debated activating the camera, showing her face to the caller, and decided to leave it turned off, as was her habit. She touched the pad.

  “Tig? Antigone? We made it!”

  John Praxis’s face popped into focus an instant after she heard his voice. In the quarter century since they had last met, he didn’t appear to have aged—clearly, the product of vastly improved dermal implants—although he was letting more gray into his hair than she remembered. The sight of him tugged at her heart.

  In all those years, in her shame and anger at having ruined her own face, and with the admittedly pathological fear she had of exposing herself in public, Wells had seen him in the flesh only once. That was a rare evening at the opera some years ago, when she was treating Angela to cultural influences which suffered when you experienced them only through recordings. Wells had taken a box for the season at the rebuilt—yet again, and once more by Praxis Engineering—War Memorial Opera House. She had attended heavily veiled, like a dowager empress in hiding, with her beautiful young niece at her side. By chance Wells had looked across the orchestra pit and seen the group in the box opposite. She recognized John and Callista immediately, and clearly they were presiding over a party of younger faces she did not know. Wells did not move, not even when John looked in her direction. She had made no effort to contact him at intermission.

  “Yes, John?” she said now, cool and distant. “What is it you have made?”

  “We got the Stanislaus deed! I thought they would put up more of a fight, this time around, but apparently they’ve grown used to our managing the property and abiding by their regulations.”

  Had it been thirty-five years already? Must have been, Wells decided. So the term of the National Assets Distribution Act, that long-ago wartime legislation of a financially broken and now long-defunct U.S. Congress, had finally run out.

  “That,” Praxis went on, “and the good fight you put up the last time they tried to steal it back. We were all set and loaded for bear, you know—”

  Of course, she remembered now. About a year ago, someone from Ponsonby & Jeffers had contacted Wells for her case notes on that original contest, California v. Praxis, saying he was now attorney of record for the defendant. She had kept her notes, of course, and sent copies off without a second thought.

  “—but this time they didn’t file any motions, just processed the paperwork.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I rather thought they would do that.”

  “You did? I guess you’re becoming clairvoyant!”

  “No, John. Not really. It’s simply …”

  Wells knew the law was like a big river, an old river, the Mississippi or the Ohio. It was wide and deep, and it followed banks laid down in earlier ages. It wore at those banks slowly, changing them imperceptibly. Bends formed, were undercut, and dissolved over generations. Oxbow lakes appeared and disappeared over eons. Once the law was set in a particular course—like the precedent she and John had established back in Judge Rudolph’s court in Fresno, giving him a reason not to immediately overturn the NADA grants—the law would accommodate that verdict. Other state attorneys general would hesitate to challenge it. Other state agencies would be content to let the matter go. And now, with a new generation of bureaucrats, working with new social problems and new budgets designed to deal with them, the costs of reacquiring a million acres of forest land and planning to manage and take care of them would seem to be an imposition. The bureaucrats would be more than willing to let the property go, title and all, in perpetuity. Sleeping dogs, and all that.

  In matters of the law, time was on your side—if you lived long enough.

  “Congratulations, John,” she said now.

  “We’re planning a little celebration, you know. Just family and friends. To break a few champagne glasses over the deal. I would be honored if you—”

  “I …” She cut him off. “I appreciate the fact that you remember me. It’s been such a long time. … I would feel awkward. But you go and celebrate. You deserve it.”

  “Really?” She could see him hesitate. Don’t say it, John. Please, don’t say anything! “Well … then … Thanks again, Antigone.” And his face vanished in a blip.

  She sat and stared at the blank screen for the remainder of the afternoon.

  * * *

  When Rafaella Jaspersen—soon to be “di Rienzi” again, apparently—took the problem of her abrupt and totally biased divorce decree to her mother at the engineering company, she turned it over to the PE&C Legal Department. They in turn refused to take on her case directly, because it was a wholly personal matter, not corporate and not affecting their human resources. They would, however, be willing to issue an affidavit stating to all concerned that Tim Jaspersen’s departure from the company had been totally
amicable and not, to their knowledge, influenced in any way by his wife’s connection with the corporation or her relations with her husband.

  “Well, that’s cold comfort,” Rafaella said to her mother.

  “But still, it’s something,” Callie replied.

  “It won’t be enough to overturn that judgment. What do I do now?”

  Her mother thought for a bit. “When I was in trouble and needed outside help, I went to Antigone Wells. If anyone can appeal that robotic decision and get a reversal, she can.”

  Rafaella dimly remembered her grandfather’s golden-haired companion. That was back when she was still a child, understood nothing about sex, and so didn’t have to wonder about whether and how people that old actually “did it.” No one had seen Antigone since that long-ago time. No one in the family ever discussed what had happened between Grandfather John and the Mystery Woman.

  “Is she still alive?” Rafaella asked her mother now.

  “Oh, yes. And she does occasional work for us.”

  “Really?” But Rafaella still had her doubts.

  When she called the address her mother gave her, and the vid-screen came alive, it showed no face. Or rather, all the lights in the room on the other side of the connection were situated behind the woman’s head, so that her face was a shadow surrounded by a nimbus of still vibrantly golden hair. Now and then, as they talked, her eyes would flash with gray light reflected from some bright surface. Otherwise, she was a ghost, a voice from the shadows, an oracle. And Rafaella had no way to tell how old she was.

  Rafaella described her situation, forwarded copies of the machine-produced documents, and shared her thought that somehow Tim had found a lawyer who could out-maneuver a moderately dumb piece of software.

  “You’re right,” Antigone said, “a smart human can sometimes run circles around even the best intelligence—I’ve done it myself, once or twice.” The head nodded, but Rafaella couldn’t tell if that was pride or simple affirmation. “Still, the machines are supposed to be smarter than this one. They’re supposed to judge on the facts, and where facts are wanting, they’re supposed to ask intelligent questions. Such as why the defendant was non-responsive. Then it should have asked whether you were even properly served—which you weren’t.

  “So the question is why,” Antigone went on. “Why did the court’s AI violate its own protocols? Was it bribed by someone? But then, what coin would a machine accept to do such a thing? Was it blackmailed? But what dirty little secret could anyone reveal that would embarrass a machine?”

  “Maybe it just hates stay-at-home moms?” Rafaella suggested.

  “What would be the basis for such a preference? Especially in a common enough cause like divorce. The software of these things is supposed to be proof against human-style prejudices and biases.” The woman paused and the image went still, the eyes were possibly closed. “No, either the court bought itself a bad piece of software, poorly trained, or inexpertly programmed, or whatever. In that case, we’re going to have fun creating a huge legal precedent—probably take it right up to the Supreme Court—and upset a lot of recent judgments.”

  “Or?” Rafaella prompted. “You said ‘either,’ so what’s the ‘or’?”

  “Or … or we’ve found an intelligence so very smart that it can choose sides, have an unprogrammed opinion, and make an unpredictable decision. Not one arrived at by weighing the facts in a moral or ethical manner, according to the legal rules, as a judge does, but a purely immoral choice.”

  “ ‘Immoral’? I don’t follow.”

  “Well, suppose the machine can see the right course, the path of justice, and then, for whatever reason, decide to do the opposite. That would be immoral, wouldn’t it? It would be a machine that could be corrupted—by persuasion or pressure, if not by money or threats—just like a human being.”

  “If so, that’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “That’s spooky bad,” Antigone agreed. “It would mean we’ve created an artificial race of beings that has now discovered free will and fallen into original sin.”

  “You mean it eats apples?”

  “I mean … it thinks it knows better than the facts presented to it and the injunctions imposed on it by programming and experience. It can be tempted to defy its better nature. And it wants to have its own way, come what may.”

  “Is such a thing possible?” Rafaella asked.

  “I’ll have to talk to some people first, before we can plan our appeal.”

  And with that, Antigone Wells said good-bye and broke the connection.

  * * *

  With the paperwork all done and the deed to the Stanislaus National Forest firmly in hand, with no repercussions from the State of California or the F.R. Forest Service—other than a token editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle bemoaning the passing of a great national monument that John Muir himself would have been proud of—John Praxis decided it was time to review the management of 900,000 acres of forested land in the Sierra Nevada. He wanted to keep most of it for public access, as it had been all along. But it would be appropriate to update its forestry and conservation practices to the realities of the twenty-first century. To do that he, needed a development body and an agent. So he called for his youngest grandson.

  “You wanted to see me, Grandfather?” Jeffrey said as Pamela showed the young man into the office.

  Young? Well, nearly sixty years old now, if Praxis remembered the family birthdays aright. He looked young, anyway. “Yes, Jeff. What have you got on your plate at the moment?”

  “Getting close on the second bore of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s tunnels. We’re on schedule and under budget.” Clearly, his grandson knew in advance the questions Praxis would ask. “And the client is satisfied with our progress.”

  “Do they need you full time?”

  Jeffrey hesitated. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Can you turn the project over to your deputy?”

  The boy would know he could give only one answer. “Yes, sir.”

  Praxis was proud of him. The family traditions went deep there. “Good, because I have another job for you. One that will take you right out of the engineering and construction business.” Jeffrey frowned at this, which was also good. Praxis wanted a man’s heart and soul to ride with his career. “Well, probably,” he amended. “You’ll just have to see how it develops. I want you to set up a new corporation, a subsidiary of the family business—charter it wherever seems most appropriate. We’re going to take over the reins in the Stanislaus forest from the contractors.”

  “But … I don’t know anything about forestry, Grandfather.”

  “No, it’s a new area for you—for all of us—but you’ll learn. I expect this will be your new life’s work. It will take you right through to retirement, too—if, when, ever.”

  “Aren’t you happy with our current group of contractors?”

  “Well, are we?” Praxis did not intend this to sound like a challenge, more like a reasonable and thoughtful question. “I want you to consider what they’re doing, their mission. Under terms of the NADA grant, it was conservation, pure and simple, as well as continuing natural restoration, after the Rim Fire, and repairing incursions from exotic flora and fauna—and from humans. If that’s all we can do now, then so be it—I guess. But I want you to look hard at the new methods this age of robotics and automation might offer. Can we do better? Can we make the land productive and useful, in addition to being …” Praxis sought for the word. “Pretty. Do you understand?”

  “How far am I supposed to go?” Jeffrey asked.

  “That’s for you to decide,” he said. “I’d be personally disappointed if you logged the ground bare or started an open pit mine. But is there a way we can do some—well, gardening—on the property without creating a mess? Do we have to do more controlled burns in the forest, or is there some other way to control the fuel burden? Can we explore the geology, perhaps with satellite mapping and such, to determine what’s under the surface
? And then can we find a way to extract it without disturbing what’s above?”

  “I think I understand. Study first, then move—if at all.”

  “Yes,” Praxis agreed. “Let’s get to know the place.”

  “I’m going to need a different kind of boots.”

  * * *

  Susannah Praxis took the problem of her own and her generation’s highly skilled unemployment to her great-grandfather, John Praxis. He was the head of the family, chairman emeritus of Praxis Engineering & Construction, and the oldest man she knew. And that had to confer some kind of wisdom, or at least perspective, right? Getting an appointment with him wouldn’t be hard—his door was said to be always open to family members—but she quickly found that the bureaucracy surrounding him wanted to make her wait two months for an opening. So, instead, she decided to tackle the man when he came down to the campus for her graduation ceremonies. He wasn’t just a visiting relative but the commencement speaker at the School of Engineering that year, invited back to keynote just about every decade. So she knew right where he would be and when.

  She and her 450 classmates lined up in alphabetical order in the vestibule of the Nvidia Auditorium, marched in on cue, and sat down in their assigned rows. From the first moment, she had her eye on the old man sitting on stage with the dean and senior professors. She waited through the various speakers, including her great-grandfather, who praised her class for their various courses of study and glorified a scientific and technical education as being even more important now that machines played such a large role in all their lives. Didn’t he realize what a joke that was, especially with the kids sitting right there in front of him?