Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 118

The door creaked open, and it was only now that Adelaide noticed. She held her breath as another connection fail message flashed on her screen. Then ducked below the partition.

A wheel squeaked through the opened doorway. Had a guard been notified? Heart pounding, she peeked through the gap in the corner, noticing movement. It appeared human. And Mr Borken wasn't in his office.

The squeaking stopped. Then started again. Then stopped. Followed by a few curses. The last parts were distinctly female in nature. Adelaide's fear turned into confusion when she noticed who was sneaking along the stationery cupboards.

"Maggie?" she said.

Her old colleague was picking out sticky notes caught beneath the wheel of a small trolley, while gripping a bunch of stationery between her waist and other arm.

Adelaide put on her best impersonation of perplexity. "What are you--"

She stopped when Maggie dropped the stack of folders, thirteen packets of tape, and five additional wads of sticky notes. For comic effect, a cartridge of copier toner, fitting the old multi-function black & white laser printer that had earlier crashed on Adelaide's leg, bringing to force its full 21.4kg weight, fell from Maggie's pocket.

I need to pause the discussion for a moment to address the most obvious critique at this point. Some of you, pedants as I know you to be, will no doubt be wondering why, in this near-ish future of no set date, suffused with electronic forms of automation, are offices still carrying stocks of paper-based supplies. It is here a less scrupulous narrator could make an astute observation on the supposed paperless office, that progenitor of additional paper use, but I'm far too honourable for that. The truth is, I just thought it would be funny. If I'm wrong, may Zeus fire down a bolt of-- *ouch!*

Maggie's shocked look turned to cynical nonchalance. "Everyone does it, dear," she said, reconstructing the proceeds of her ill-gotten gains onto the small trolley.

"Yeah, while they're still working here," said Adelaide.

"Oh, don't give me that," said Maggie. "My grandkids can't survive on their own. It's easy when you don't have a family."

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Adelaide.

"Nothing, dear," said Maggie, breathing out heavily, "Nothing." She threw a few packets of pens to the top of her stack.

"So you're not going to stop?" said Adelaide.

"Like I said," said Maggie, "everyone does it. And I mean the company itself. How many of the new weaponised bots has it stolen?"

"What?" said Adelaide. "We make them!"

It was still her company. Nothing would change that.

"No dear, they fill the contracts with enough legalese that no one could understand the licensing requirements. We even bought a program to make the wording as abstruse as possible! Then we use the safety backdoor -- the one put in place if they get out of control -- and commandeer the machines, to sell them onto someone else. And you're worried about a few pens going missing?"

"That's just the way business works," said Adelaide. "What's the problem?"

Maggie gave her a high-level condescending look, then went about finalising her unpaid purchases.

Adelaide tried once more to access the defencebot system. In the past she would have argued the point, to show she was right, but an opportunity for revenge took precedence. It was true, though: if the customer had broken the contract, the defencebots should be returned.