The Precipice: The Chronicles of Altor, page 25
Van didn’t overreact to that. Instead, he calmly said, “This young woman is unlike anyone I’ve ever met. It’s not just that she’s smart, though she’s brilliant. It’s not just that she’s a fast learner, because she’s that, too. It’s something else. She has a perspective and ability to solve problems that I’ve never run into before. I don’t think you need another person with my skill set inside, but you’d be crazy to pass on her.”
Sky looked briefly at the girl, then glanced at what was obviously her little brother. If he was perturbed at all the attention being shown to his sister, it wasn’t reflected on his face.
“Archer is special, too. He has a natural empathy that is almost incredible, especially in someone so young.” Van raised his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose that empathy is on your list of traits you’re looking for, but they are a package deal. You can boot me out if you want, but if you want Harper, you’ve got to take Archer, too.”
Sky didn’t respond immediately, seeming lost in thought. The silence was broken by the man with the scanner, who said, “He’s right. He scans in as Van Hoffler, and he should have been in Altor.”
Sky rolled his head left, then right, looking for the right path to follow. The easiest thing would have been to follow his orders to the letter and send all three of them away. He felt like that would be a mistake, though. Instead, he chinned his comm and said, “Can you get the general for me?”
Silence settled over everyone as they waited. It was a crucial moment for the three people in front of the entry desk, but they didn’t seem too concerned.
Finally, a baritone voice crackled over the radio. “Steele.”
“General, I’ve got a situation I’m not sure how to handle. Can you or Pierce come down here?”
A short pause, then, “On my way.”
“We get to meet the top guy, huh?” Van asked. “All right.”
Two minutes later, Steele emerged from the tent into the area behind the entry desk.
Sky outlined what Van had told him and what they had confirmed through their own system. He finished by saying, “I think this one is above my pay grade.”
Steele looked Van up and down. “Where did you serve?”
“I did three tours in South Korea. 2nd Infantry.”
“General Towers, then.”
“Yessir, though I traveled in different circles than him, sir.”
Steele grinned a little at that. He turned to Sky. “Thank you for bringing me down.” He looked at Harper for the first time. “If what he says is true, we can use her, too. Put her through the full testing regimen.”
Steele walked through the curtain at the back without another word.
“We’ve got an intake program in place. We haven’t accepted any minors before, so we’ll have to adjust things a bit.”
“We’d like to stay together if that’s possible.”
“It is.” He turned to the woman beside him and said, “Take them to medical for their checkup.” Looking back at Van, he said, “Welcome to Dust City.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Welcome to the Dome
“Sorry that I can’t do a more thorough orientation,” Jackie Givens said. “We’ve had to process too many of you simultaneously. The good news is, you’re all inside and safe. There’s plenty of time to learn the ins and outs of Altor.”
She paused as the class of a hundred or so people giggled a little nervously. Jackie looked around as though she didn’t get the joke, then it occurred to her.
“Maybe that’s not the best choice of words, since there is no more out in Altor. It’s all in.”
More genuine laughter sprinkled through the crowd.
“In any case, you’ve all been given your watch. That will be your on-the-go connection to all of Altor. In your home, you will find a tablet and a larger system. No matter what you want to do—meet up with friends, find a scheduled event, or try to remember who the third emperor of Rome was, it will all be there waiting for you.”
“Caligula!” someone shouted from the back. “Try a harder one!”
More laughter.
“This is my fourth orientation today, and someone has known that in every group. You guys are a bunch of smart cookies.” She paused. “That’s probably why you’re here, isn’t it? All right. Tap the small house button on your watch. That is literally your “home” button. Wherever you are in Altor, you will never be lost. It will always lead you home. Welcome to Altor. Remember, together, as one, we can do anything.”
People stood and started to visit together in clumps of two, three or four. It was a little like orientation at college, with people reaching out and hoping to find friends.
Taryn Lattimore sat in her seat absorbing the word that Jackie had used so casually. Home. Nothing about Altor felt like home to her yet. If Jackie Givens had said, “Welcome to Hogwarts,” at the end of her talk, Taryn might have related more to that. The whole experience—the dome, the people, the advanced technology on display everywhere—felt magical.
Taryn was a coder, so she knew the 1s and 0s behind much of what she was seeing, but that didn’t diminish the effect. So much of the tech she had seen was beyond anything she had experienced before. She felt as though she had jumped fifty years into the future when she stepped inside the dome.
She stood and tried to make eye contact with those around her, but she was late to the game. Everyone had already formed into groups and moved away or was lost in conversation. If she was a different kind of person, she could have just approached with a smile and said, “I’m Taryn,” and a group would have no doubt welcomed her. She smiled to herself. That was okay, being alone was not unexpected. She had never been the most socially adept person.
She looked down at her watch and tapped the small home icon. Immediately a hologram appeared above the watch with directions and a map.
That’s okay for now, but what if I don’t want everyone around me to know where I’m going?
She tapped the home button again and the floating imagery sank back into the phone but did not disappear. She could still see exactly where she needed to go.
This was another small piece of technology that she hadn’t seen before. She’d seen hologram watches and non-hologram watches, but not one that switched back and forth between modes at a touch.
Taryn found the door out of the conference room, turned left, right, left, and found a bank of elevators. Before she could push the UP button, the door slid open, even though there was no one else around and no one inside.
“Interesting,” Taryn said to herself. She stepped inside and the door slid closed behind her. It made the unmistakable whooshing sound of the sliding doors on the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek. She squinted at the door and knew that wasn’t the sound the door should make. It had to be programmed. What she didn’t know was if it was that way for everyone or just for her because she was a fan of the show.
Would they really personalize sounds for each person based on our interests?
She reached for the button that said “17,” but again, she started to move upward before she could touch it.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” she said aloud.
“It will seem old hat in no time,” a female voice answered.
Taryn turned her head like a dog hearing a faraway whistle. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Ella. I’m Darth Vader’s little sister. Ella Vader.”
“Oh my God!” Taryn said, bursting out in a laugh despite herself. “An elevator with a horrible sense of humor.”
“A good pun is its own reword,” the voice said.
Taryn shook her head and made a zipping motion across her mouth. She wasn’t about to get in a punning contest with an artificial intelligence that had access to all of recorded history.
The door slid open on floor seventeen and Taryn stepped out, pausing briefly to see if the elevator would have one parting shot, but it did not. Her watch showed her to turn left, then take a right down the first corridor.
There were no numbers on the doors, probably because, as long as you had your smart device, you wouldn’t need it. At that moment, Taryn realized that she hadn’t been given a key but assumed that her watch would once again unlock the door.
That proved to be correct, as the next door on her left unlatched as she approached.
She stepped cautiously inside and saw a short hallway that led to a small living room. To the right was what was probably the kitchen, though there wasn’t a visible stove or refrigerator.
The living room was sparsely furnished, with a love seat, small recliner, and two end tables. Against the far wall, a small computer desk had a tablet and large monitor on it. As soon as she stepped into the living room, the monitor came to life, showing an old-school fish tank with colorful fish swimming back and forth in a preprogrammed pattern. She recognized it immediately as a decades-old screen saver.
Fascinated at this show of old tech, she stepped toward the screen. The screen saver may have been decidedly ancient technology, but the rest of the system was advanced. There was no visible mouse or keyboard. As soon as she got within six feet of the monitor, the fish disappeared and a desktop with a few recognizable icons appeared.
“Hello, Taryn. If, at any time, you’d like more information about any part of what I say, simply say, more. Of course, you can ask more complex questions any time you like.”
Taryn thought the voice sounded identical to the one she had heard in the elevator. “Is this also the voice I spoke to in the elevator?”
“Yes and no. All of the systems that will help you are part of one program. So in that way, yes. But I am a specially segmented part of that program that is designed to specifically help you. If you wish to do research projects or coding, I can assist you, but I will not share it with the rest of the system.”
“That will be nice,” Taryn said. At the same moment, she thought, And I don’t believe that for a second.
“I can also adjust my voice in any way you might find pleasing. I have hundreds of languages and dialects in my database. I am able to change my accent to match a native speaker of either of two towns fifty miles apart.”
“Well aren’t you just something,” Taryn said to see how it would respond.
It didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, the voice said, “In your most recent work, you used a Tentra 206 Holo Keyboard. Would you like to continue to work with that?”
“What other options are there?” Taryn would have been very happy to continue to work with what she was comfortable with, but more than that, she was interested in testing the parameters of what this Artificial Intelligence was capable of.
“I can provide both backward and forward compatibility with any keyboard that has ever been broadly produced. If you would prefer an old physical keyboard and mouse, I can have one delivered and I will integrate it into the system.”
“Thank you. The Tentra Holo will be fine.”
“Do you prefer any particular movement to activate?”
“A right to left hand swipe is fine.”
“Activated.”
The glistening outline of what appeared to be the same holo keyboard she had left behind appeared in front of her. She tapped a few keys and a blank document appeared on the screen.
“I am designed to accommodate whatever your needs are. Whatever input mechanism you wish to use, whether it is keyboard, mouse, drawings, code, or verbal prompts, they will be accepted.”
Taryn chose to test that. She typed in an old DOS command.
“Oh, that tickles,” the voice said, but it also carried out the command.
“Are you sure you’re not Ella? Ella Vader? You seem to have the same sense of humor.”
“Very observant. We are all programmed to use humor as an initial icebreaker. If you do not like it, I can turn it off. Another option is that over time I will learn what you think is funny.”
Taryn considered. On the one hand, what the program thought was humor seemed to be bad puns and obvious jokes. On the other hand, it was effective in its own way. It did make the program seem more human.
“How can you tell what I think is funny? Is it whether I laugh or not?”
“That can be part of the input, yes. However, I also monitor your breathing and blood pressure and other readings at all times. That can be indicative of things you like or do not like.”
Taryn glanced down at the watch on her arm. She was beginning to realize how invasive it was.
“Can I take my wrist device off whenever I want to?”
“There is no need to ever take it off. It is hypo-allergenic, exceptionally lightweight, and you can put it into silent mode by simply saying quiet.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“Your watch will begin to beep if you remove it.”
“How often?”
“It’s a growing pattern. It beeps once at removal, again at one minute, five minutes, then at ten minutes. It will then beep every fifteen seconds from that point on.”
Taryn unclasped the device and set it on the desk.
It beeped at her. It was not a short, friendly beep. Instead, it lasted for several seconds and had a harsh tone that grated on Taryn’s ears.
“Can I change that tone?”
“That is not something that can be altered.”
“This is certainly a brave new world.”
“Is that a reference to the Aldous Huxley book first published by Chatto & Windus in 1932?”
Taryn didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Computer, off,” and slipped the watch back on before it made that annoying, screeching sound again.
The monitor immediately went dark, but she didn’t believe for a moment that it was off.
She explored the rest of the apartment. It wasn’t big, but it was intelligently designed. She would have expected no less. It was perhaps six hundred square feet, with most of the space being taken up by the kitchen/living room/eating space.
The bedroom was twelve by twelve and came furnished with a queen-sized bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. Both the nightstand and dresser appeared to have drawers, but there were no pulls or handles or any obvious way to open them. She reached out to touch a drawer and it slid open easily.
Taryn took off her watch, endured the annoying beep from it and tossed it on the bed. Again, she touched the drawer. This time it didn’t open.
She slipped the device back on, waved her hand in front of all the drawers, and they all slid open to reveal socks, underwear, t-shirts, and shorts.
She looked around the room, thinking there would be a closet somewhere, but none was visible. She took a chance and said, “Closet, please.”
An outline of a closet door appeared on an otherwise unmarred wall. She reached her hand toward it and a section of the wall slid away to reveal a lighted closet, with shirts, pants, and even a few dresses hanging inside. The clothes weren’t fancy, but when she touched them, they felt like they were all good quality. Across the floor, half a dozen pairs of shoes, from athletic to dress, sat in a neat row.
“I don’t think I even need to try this on. I’ll be amazed if anything doesn’t fit.”
“Everything in your home was sized according to your most recent online shopping orders.”
I need to remember to stop talking to myself. It’s always listening. She paused, with a small grin on her face. Can you read my thoughts?
There was no answer, but Taryn realized that it probably wouldn’t answer that question, even if it was capable of mind reading.
The voice, which seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere, said, “You haven’t watched your welcome vid yet. Would you like me to play it?”
For some reason, that made her think of a cruise she had been on, where they made her muster up to get a safety lecture before her key card would work properly.
“Can I leave the apartment without having watched it?”
“Yes, but why would you want to? It was made specially for you.”
In her mind, Taryn pictured thousands of people just like her, all sitting down and being forced to watch the same video, made just for them.
Come on. Getting paranoid now. It’s better in here than out there.
She smiled to make her voice chipper and said, “Sure, I’d love to watch it. Just give me a chance to get into the living room.”
It only took her a moment to reach the couch and when she settled in, she found it was so comfy, she likely didn’t need the bed. She could have slept right there.
“Okay, play the vid.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Janus is Everywhere
An image flickered over the entirety of the living room wall—no screen needed. A gorgeous shot of Altor from the air dominated the screen. The domed city had never looked lovelier, lit from behind by a pink and orange sunset, with small birds seeming to cavort with the drone taking the shot.
At least, Taryn initially thought it was a drone. She changed her mind when the camera dipped straight toward the city and passed right through the outer skin.
That’s either some fancy editing or this is computer generated. She knew either was possible.
She leaned forward with interest as the shot moved around the dome. She hadn’t seen much of it yet. She’d arrived on a shuttle with fifty other new Domers, had been shuffled off to the orientation, then here. She really hadn’t had the opportunity to see where she would possibly be spending the rest of her life.
Her own area of specialization was in computers, specifically coding. She was a practical person. And yet, seeing the time, effort, and money that had obviously gone into the aesthetics of Altor made her heart soar.
Things were, of necessity, built closely together. Space was at a premium inside a dome. The intelligence of the design meant that wasn’t the case.
Taryn’s sharp eyes didn’t miss anything. She soon realized that everything the flyover showed her was aimed at making life good for the Domers. There were parks, gently sloping trails, hundreds of trees, towering apartments like her own, and buildings that evoked different eras of the past.
