Babylon Lost

Chapter 2

Jiro lay there on the floor in silence half wondering if he'd actually heard that second voice.

"Computer?" he said after a time "are you there?"

"I am waiting for you to comply." It said "you have fifteen seconds before deletion."

Jiro tightened up. Where did this come from? What was going to happen after fifteen seconds? What did 'deletion' mean? If he was hooked up to this android via neural link, being prematurely severed could wrack havoc on his brain, and if it wasn't a neural link...

He needed to think fast.

"Computer" he said hurriedly "why am I being labeled as a foreign program."

"Because you are not natural to this system."

"No that's not what I meant – I mean why am I being targeted as a program? This is a human operator."

A small digital circle began turning at the top of the HUD, Jiro guessed this was the AI processing what it had been told.

"No human operator detected. No manual or neural link detected. Prepare for deletion."

Jiro slammed his fist on the ground "I am human for gods sake!"

There was no reply. Pain shot through the back of his head, it felt like someone was drilling into his skull. "No stop" he screamed but it was too late.

The pain in his head seemed to somehow go deeper into his mind. He was frozen in time with images of his life, memories, and sensations from the past. They paraded in front of him like clouds in a dream and he was paralyzed, unable to grab hold of them before they floated off forever.

Grasping for life Jiro rolled over onto his back, physically thrusting himself about in some attempt to stop what was happening to him. He had to do something fast or it would all be over. With a monumental effort, reaching from some unknown recess of his mind, he cried out "computer, you are in direct violation of the City's treaty that protects human life from artificial intelligence. I order you to stop."

The pain ended abruptly. If Jiro had a breath, he would have caught it.

"Unidentified program" the voice said "you have evoked a higher protocol. In accordance with municipal treatises. To what reason have you evoked this protocol?"

Jiro had his hands to his head, feeling for physical damage but there was none. Whatever was happening to him was real in some form or another. He had never experienced pain like that before while hooked up to any kind of neural link.

"Unidentified program" the voice again "To what reason have you evoked this protocol?"

Jiro sat up "I'm not a program, my name is Jiro and I keep telling you I'm human."

The circle in the HUD went active again for a few seconds "enough emotional distress was detected to evoke protocol but no human life present." There was more loading, the circle stopped and Jiro thought the AI would chime in, but the circle just started up again.

"Computer?" Jiro asked uneasily.

"Error calculated. No human life detected. Bypassing protocol." The voice said.

"No!" Jiro cried out not wanting to experience that kind of pain again "no error calculated, stop bypass, repeat, stop bypass. I'm human."

There was no response.

Jiro started to panic, in a few moments he could be on the floor again watching a stream of his own consciousness fly away. Is that what dying felt like?