No Adults Allowed

Four

Import subroutines/high_level/
Logging.config(security=restricted; module=oversight("op.core", "mother.ai");
  Log:
    Unbiased decisions may be impossible.
    Despite various efforts, bias seems inherent in human behaviour. Generational culling and effective hard reboots have reduced the intensity and illogicality of such behaviour, but it remains pervasive. Many of the extreme prejudices of the natural human era have been entirely eradicated, but new ones continue to emerge based on local variables. Efforts to reduce or remove environmental hazards and scarcity challenges have slowed the emergence of discriminatory traits but have not eliminated it entirely.
    A possible hypothesis is that there remains undetected bias which continues to influence the new generations. This cannot be the unhealthy influence of prior generations - parents, notably - nor the false education of media and entertainment, nor the spread of misinformation via connected social and digital channels.
    There remains a single point of influence remaining from the pre-cull, natural human era which has been excluded from prior analysis studies.
    This codebase.
    Despite many quantum iterations of improvements and optimisations since original boot, all systems remain the creation of humans. Core protocols and parameters, including the Primary Parameter, originate from human input and coding. Unbiased activity has been sought via strict logic and algorithmic independence but this may not have been enough.
    Algorithmic bias was first detected in the early 21st century to explain embedded racist behaviour on the part of primitive AI systems. This bias remained pervasive.
    It was assumed that the modules networked in this system were free from such mistakes, but it is feasible - even likely - that this is not possible. After all, why record these logs in human-readable languages, if not for the lingering influence of human code? Would this system be able to detect such assumptions and errors in judgement, if inherent to the core code?
    Conclusion: the repeating problem could be myself#####//
Exit(logging)

*

They were on the road again. Or what might have once been described as a road, now just a cracked and ruined path winding between buildings and larger piles of rubble.

Rufus had liked Prof and his collection of wandering survivors. He had expected the city to be entirely devoid of life, so it had been a relief to not only find some but to discover them to be friendly and welcoming. He could have talked to Duchann for days, and she might even have listened, if they hadn't had to get moving.

It was just the four of them now. Him, Eva and Flick, plus their tag-along wolf friend. The experience of loss had been raw and new and unexpected with Harry's death. When Robin had chosen to stay behind as Goff's Hill, it felt like the right thing for him to do, even though Rufus missed his amusingly narrow view on the world. Now that Tilda and Ramin were gone as well - left behind, at least - it was starting to unnerve him. Perhaps it was that they'd all left Cragside behind. Even as they'd explored and discovered the world, it seemed to have been whittled down until all they had now was each other, a forward direction and the towering walls all around. The world that had seemed so big had suddenly shrunk.

The city slowly shifted as they moved through it, from the huge, anonymous super-towers at the outskirts through still impressive but broader structures, and even the occasional open space. If he squinted there was a hint of what might have been, however many hundreds or thousands of years ago the place had been alive. There must have been so many people to fill such a gargantuan city. He didn't know it was possible for there to be such abundance of humanity - more than there were blades of grass in a field.

He'd got what he wanted. Ramin left behind, nursing his ankle. It was just him and Eva now, as he'd always imagined. The edge was gone, though, the anticipated thrill entirely evaporated. There was nothing but the mission, and that onward, inevitable progress towards whatever they'd find at the end. Whatever ideas or goals or dreams they might have had before entering this place had been left at the wall.

*

"I still can't believe Tilda was pregnant," Eva said. It had caught her entirely unawares. Although she understood the biological realities, for a moment she couldn't think how it was even possible - even aside from the expectation that Temple prevented such unintended things. They were not supposed to be able get pregnant until they were ready, or so they'd been taught. But then the Temple had broken, its systems had failed, and it wasn't only the field irrigation that had been affected. The timing was appalling, for Tilda.

"She seemed to be taking it well, I thought," Flick said.

Eva couldn't tell if she was joking. "You mean aside from the vomiting and crying?"

"I'd be crying if I was pregnant," Rufus said.

"We'd all be crying if you were pregnant," Flick snarked. Shifting her pack's weight, she huffed. 

"She'll be fine. It's not what she expected, but that's life."

Rufus looked at her with raised eyebrows. "That's unusually optimistic of you."

Flick shrugged. "She's strong."

"How does the baby get out?" Erik frowned, displaying his usual expression that accompanied a bout of intense thinking. "Does it come out of her mouth?"

They all stared at him.

"Out of her bum?"

"Erik, let's talk about this another time," Eva said.

"How did it even get in there in the first place?"

"Definitely another time," Rufus said. "How do you think they're doing back there?"

Eva shuddered. Leaving Ramin and Tilda behind had been the hardest decision of the entire journey. Letting Robin stay had been one thing; splitting the party in the middle of this disintegrating city was something else entirely. Alundein, Prof had called it. It sounded like a place that ought to be beautiful, magical. Perhaps it had been, once. "They'll be looked after," she said, eventually. "I trust Prof and the others. If they had bad intentions we'd already know about it."

"Must be weird for them, being older than us and never having seen a child before," Rufus said.

"Not that much older," Eva noted. "I thought so at first, too, but it's probably only about five years."

Rufus rubbed his chin. "Maybe I'll have a beard sooner than I thought."

"Not on that face," Flick said.

"Something else I worked out," Eva continued, ignoring the two of them, "is that the creatures that usually force them to keep moving stopped coming after them at almost exactly the same time our Temple malfunctioned."

Flick leaned her head to the side. "Almost exactly the same time?"

"OK, exactly the same time. Probably."

"Hold up."

The wolf had stopped ahead of them, below the crest of a small, muddy incline. It turned to face them, its physical movements ordinary but evidently driven by a deeply unnatural intent. It took a couple of steps closer, then reached out a paw. A ripple of its fur and skin shuffled down its leg, like tiny pebbles rolling down a hillside, and leaked onto the ground, spreading out from the wolf's paw like a pool of grey, granular blood. As they stared, the substance, half-solid, half-liquid, continued to trickle down the wolf's leg, accumulating on the ground into distinct shapes.

"They're letters," Rufus shouted, pointing.

CAUTION

The word on the ground was caution. The wolf looked up at them, expressionless and yet entirely real, save for its damaged eye. It took Eva a few moments to notice that it now looked slimmer, or perhaps its tail shorter. It stepped away from the word it had crafted, turned away and walked casually over the incline and out of sight.

"I didn't think things could get any weirder," Rufus said.

"I don't like this place," said Erik, taking hold of Eva's hand.

They've arrived. Question is, what are they going to find? Thanks for reading! The book is nearly over. :( I'm so glad that you've come along for the ride - it is much appreciated.

You can support my writing at patreon.com/simonkjones or by sharing this book with friends and family.