Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 66

The grey light of pre-dawn filtered into the bedroom, where Will woke to a cheek dampened with drool. He wiped his face and sat up. Then he remembered the pain in his lower back and grabbed at it.

They'd been watching some of Paige's favourite anime when he'd fallen asleep on her bed. She was still sleeping, mouth open.

His earlier viewing habits had convinced the streaming software to give him another dose of the panel show Debate Fight Tonight:

"But just yesterday, another explosion, another attack," said Barbara. "It feels like deja vu."

"When are we going to do something about these terrorists?!" screamed a pale, nervous man.

"Fighting for your own freedom is not terrorism," said a digitised voice. The talking head accompanying it was crudely animated, using some off-the-shelf motion-capture hardware, with the appearance of giant panda standing in a jungle of saturated colours, an animated rainbow filling the corner of the image. "Once people wake up to this new world order, the violence will stop."

"See, terrorism," said the man. "Children playing at politics. The grown-ups sit and discuss, talk out our problems."

"That's a great point," said Barbara, turning to the computerised panda head. "Your anti-automation group's tactics don't seem to be--"

"Pro, not anti," said the panda. "We're the Human Liberation Army and the case is clear: either you're pro humans or you're not. There is no middle-ground. You either care about people or you're no different to Hitler."

The pale man became agitated. "It's this kind of divisive, polarising rhetoric that can't help but--"

"What's that, Hitler?" said the panda. "I can't hear you. La la la la la." It held its paws against its puffy ears.

A nasally whiff raised Will to attention. He looked around, senses pricked, searching for the purple woman. But it was just Paige, waking herself up with a snore.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said, with morning voice. It wasn't necessarily sexy, but it wasn't necessarily not sexy.

"Do you think she'll be back?" said Will, still with heightened senses.

"I'll be OK, even if she does. Especially with the helperbot."

"That thing's pretty scary," said Will, as a sharp pain shot through his back.

"You should really take it easy," said Paige. "When you fell you could have really--" She chucked. "Could really have--" Another chuckle. It took effort to finish the sentence without bursting into laughter. "Could have been hurt."

"Hilarious," said Will, still groggy.

"Exactly," said Paige. "You provide much joy."

"I liked it better when I could just turn you off," said Will. He'd rarely had the opportunity to turn someone on.

"Real life sucks," agreed Paige. "Oh, shouldn't you be practising for the competition?"

"Yeah," said Will. "Time's running out. And Libbi still hasn't remembered how to win."

"You have to play under the Mutter Natur religion, then cloak a unit as if it's from Lord Dunkel."

"I did!" said Will. "But peace is still greyed out on the screen."

"No, there's another step, something we're missing, a way to get the En-Pee-Cee's to stop attacking."

"But you said it has nothing to do with--"