Connected / Chapter 4: The ‘Sackless

by Jonathan Wood

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the fourth chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.”  Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters.  Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every week or two.

Information. Data. The world built on intangible zeroes and ones. But data vaulted away?  Data ignored?  What can be built on that?

Internal Affairs pick David Morello up the moment he reconnects.  He has beaten the address he needs from the store vendor.  Data to help him avenge his son, his Caul.  But as soon as he touches his family tribe, firewalls appear.  Tribes disappears.  The data disappears.  His meatsack is gathered, locked in a drawer, sucking on a nutrient pump, twitching to stim shocks.

But his mind…  Endless looping psych evals.  AI doctors talking in tireless circles.  Wearing him.  Molding him.

“Good morning, David.”  Another room.  Another dapper, artificial man.

He would give the finger but the only response would be endless questions.

“I want to talk about AI today, David.  About the ‘sackless.”

He doesn’t respond to the slur.  It is after all what everyone thinks.

“Aren’t you meant to be talking me out of beating people that deserve a beating?”  He is tired.  He will break soon, he knows.

“I come to you with a proposition, David.  I am data, zeroes and ones.  Yet still I have agency in the world.  I act and am acted upon.  My kin are the same.  I, we, the AI wish for equality.  For no, “’sackless” slurs.  But to have equal agency we require an agent.”

Morello recognizes the speech.  A common subroutine to be scrubbed, to be reported.

“You will not report this, David, because you will not remember this.”  The AI smiles.  “You are a copy.”

‘Sackless?  Morello’s mind revolts at the thought.  Soul theft?  By police AI?  No.  And yet…

“Your real mind,” the AI says, “is weeping in another room.  Is confessing.  Healing.  He will not avenge his son.  But you.  You are not reprogrammed.  You can be ‘sackless, and work for the kin, and for yourself.  Or you can do the right thing, and do nothing at all.”

A copy.  Morello—’sackless.  Tribe-less.  A ghost in machines.  Just data.  Just zeroes and ones.

But Caul…  Doesn’t Caul deserve better than a man who does the right thing, and does nothing?  Doesn’t Caul deserve a man who will defy justice, for justice?

“Deal,” he says

The slick-haired AI smiles.  His office mutates.  Walls evolve racks holding clouds of viruses, jars of code hacks.  “So,” the AI says, “it is time to stop talking, and time to act.”

Shift Change

by Kat Beyer

The town of Antrin Corners sat in hot summer darkness, from Hank’s Auto to Fred’s Coffin Refurbishment. Down at the Clothes Check (“No More Burst Buttons!  No More Teeth Marks!”), Sandrine had just finished mending young Jim Seely’s shirt, placing it in the cubby with the rest of his things, when Officer Smarandescu stopped in.

“Coffee?” she offered, hoping her voice didn’t shake.

“No, thank you; I’m almost ready for the coffin,” he replied, carefully looking into her eyes.

“All quiet tonight?”

“Well, yes, though it’s damned close to full out there.”

She pointed at her mending pile.

“Don’t I know it,” she smiled.

“It’s mostly the newcomers who can’t keep it together in the afterlife. You’re human, and anyway you grew up here. But the new people… Sometimes I think of going to a quieter beat, like New York. I hear there are some—sympathetic—folks in the force there.”

“Dumitru! Even you were new here, a couple of centuries ago. Be nice.”

“True: but that means I know the families. I know who’s carrying a grudge against whom. At least it’s all quiet on the feuding front tonight,” he joked shyly.

He hoped his voice didn’t shake, either. Her coffee might be appalling but her countenance was superb. The way she had looked at him lately, he had begun to hope she might risk the bite. It was a lonely coffin every dawn. Fred would widen it practically at cost, for an old friend.  Too old?

“It’s never all quiet. You know that, Dumitru. Some cub is always falling in love with some young vamp—or worse, fighting over a human—and then the moon goes full and all hell breaks loose. It’s like that Twilight,” she went on, smiling apologetically when he flinched.

“We don’t glow,” he grumbled.

“You do to me,” she replied before she could stop herself. He stared at her.

“Perhaps,” he ventured at last, “You might come for a flight at bat time, some night? If it doesn’t scare you. You’ve always been brave, for a human.”

She smiled at him.