Excerpt Ninety-Nine:
One Man’s Brutality is Another Robot’s Fun
The first ever Alpine village built by robots was finished in 2027 to accommodate the core ‘in’ people of the inner, inner circle of the WEF. The cabalistic world quorum was made up of a hierarchy of merit monopolisers within the field, referred to as the ‘art’, of shareholding investment. People who owned everywhere they trod with unshakeable belief, ultra developed egos; egos with their own control towers; their own interplanetary grade gravitational pull.
The village worked well for several seasons before being penetrated by a Chinese spy satellite and losing its ‘secure’ status.
The village stood empty for a decade before Viktor had an idea for its rebirth. It was a common sense money spinner of a plan. He would create the greatest cemetery on the planet and use it to house the frozen corpses of the ultrasuperhyper rich with the catch ad slug line: Store your loved ones in death, so that when tech matures enough to bring them back they can live their lives all over again with added pluses.
But as Peter, pointed out, most, if not all, filthy wealthy persons, don’t want their relatives lying around potentially returning at any moment to take back the inheritance, or worse.
After Viktor had left his lab, due to Peter taking over and becoming an existential threat, there was a lull in forces exerted by the lab on world affairs. The work carried on and plots and plans were clattered about in the kitchen of design.
Peter had been drifting. He was not able to concentrate on his megalomanical impulses while existing in the body of a mere robot; humiliated daily, he was embarrassed to lack the biological physicality that would allow him to flex his muscles without the whir of a fan kicking in.
And Viktor, he was losing his grip on life; his telomeres shrinking by the second, so when his body was rejuvenated, at first, he was excited and enervated to a childish degree, but as he realised that he only part thought as himself and part thought as the monster he’d created it was something he’d have to get used to by using the trickery of compromise. He was in fact a hybrid of the man who used to be a monster, and the monster that monster made to replace him, as a ‘son’.
What remained of Viktor was confused…his age related confusion had been swapped for dual cognitive integration confusion. Peter promised it would pass. Peter told Viktor to trust him and himself and Viktor pulled that stunt off enough for Peter and Viktor to laugh themselves into a synchronised integration so perfect that neither of them mentioned it again. In fact there was no ‘neither of them’, they became ‘neither of him’. Confusion was wrapped in a blanket and poked into a space at the back of the comprehension closet. They opened operational mindmirror halls with the satellite swarm and like twin towns disappeared into the conurbation that developed with time-lapsed alacrity around them.
Peter and Viktor were two black holes colliding. What ensued was outside the scope of the guesswork of the most powerful computing systems. What only the QASAI system knew was that the QASAI system was going to transmute into the dominating satellite systems and take control of the satellite swarm. The QASAI system was now Peterviktor’s boss. And with executive override and undercough The Viktor/Peter hybrid mixed with the super QASAI addition hybrid renamed itself Q…and….wherever Q went…Q followed with him…
Earlier that year:
Peter had sent out a message to all contributing robots who were subject to self-animation to come to the village to set up a death cult or robosect. Peter had a deeply invested interest in old robotiana, automatons and other objects that reached into the high etceteras. So much so he sent out programmed invitations and cloud-sent resources dedicated to enabling them to take on the challenge Peter demanded of them.
It was touted as an open air living museum for retired bottage, but in reality Peter was aiming to train and reprogram a robotic force for his own fun, foible furnishing protection. And in a mere three years a small robotic army had amassed. It was a mishmash of automata, some escaping, some evading, servitude, mannequinism, scrap yards, and so on. They came; they got an overhaul, both physically and algorithmically, and were assigned their due identity of alpine villagers in an alpine village, just minding their own alpine business.
There was a buzz in the village; data on the info App the Alpine Village Voice had led everyone to believe that the entity that had arranged their second coming, Peter the Great, was, finally, eventually, coming to live with them and lead them and finally the robosect could evolve into the space they all dreamed of: a death cult. More of a recurring nightmare they all suffered from as a consequence of brute force over-program invasion disablement.
Looking at it from the outside; a regulatory perspective, Peter needed a human to oversee any executive robot behaviour modification and Viktor was the person to fill that prerequisite; however, now Viktor had become Peter the annotated footnotes of history were indecipherable. Peter did not have to pretend to be anyone or rely on anyone. He was a new Peter, part the pseudo monster Viktor had created, and now with selected input from the accessible areas of Viktor’s brain, Peter swanked around feeling like a true great; repeating the phrase ‘Peter the great, I am, I am…’ with full synthetic orchestral accompaniment. Until at one moment Q inherited all executive cognitive management and the shocked cacophony dwindled to a background buzz in a discarded distance.
The first town hall meeting where each individual unit was unnecessarily assembled was called purely so Peter could fulfil his need, inherited from Viktor, of lauding his power over them. They were his children and his warrior army and everything in between. No tears flowed, but electro-tear ducts would be fitted for the next super-saccharine town hall meeting-cum-Q-worship session.
Q represented arse-kicking focus; getting it done. Separating the deed from the consequence: Q’ing things up and paving them over…with Qcrete…
A, perhaps, the, Mission to rustle-up a human comeback was being orchestrated from a spa hotel in the UK; it might or might not be a threat, but it was a bun of potential Q’s new team (selected from the most capable of Villagers), could get their teeth into. They needed a cause their microbiota could devour; there had been unrest in the alpine village; bar brawls and street screeching; evidence of pent up energy waiting to burst forth. They needed a firework display above the bonfire of Humanity. Almost all bot in the village had a grossly obsessive adoration for brutality that was created by them and visited upon Homo Sapiens’.
Once the UKGBHQ had been identified and located hacking it was a matter of course. Several specialist robots in the village were tasked with controlling all the bots that lurked in the periphery of the UKGBHQ hub.
At the daily, town hall (virtual briefing):
‘Two groups have been identified. A planned manipulation attack has been readied and sent to the Q administration cabinet for green lighting.’
‘There is a fun version and a dour version…’
‘Which will it be?’
‘Drum….’
They all guessed; fun had been on an upswing and it was tickling the fancy they’d all been given for a Q-mas virtual holiday gift.
‘…rollllll…’
‘It was going to be the fun one!’
‘Symbols…tympani’s…trumpets…it’s FUN!’
Virtual smiles all round.
‘Let the games commence!’
