To Find a Demon

by John Alexander and Michael Walsh

Copyright (c) 1991

Jackie Allan pulled on a pair of oilstained coveralls. She left the warm body sleeping in her bed and made her way to the kitchen. Spring is cold in Minneapolis. Making breakfast, she considered going back to bed. But she decided that she didn't want to be more than half an hour late to her first day on the new job.

She found Kelly Peterson's office behind mirror glass on the seventeenth floor of the new Excon building on Nicollet, and walked in.

"You're late." Kelly, petite and brown-eyed with a delicate face, wore artificially long straight hair in the current fashion. Jackie sat down and put her boots on the desk.

"Skip that. There's an automatic farm on the fritz that I'm supposed to fix," Jackie said.

The air between them began to freeze.

"You seem to forget which of us is the boss," Kelly said. "You refused to take a Political Reliability Exam. You refused to give us blood and urine samples, and access to your health records. You're not on time. These are all conditions of employment. How do you expect to get along with your superiors?"

"Go jump in a lake." Jackie rubbed the heels of her boots together, leaving fragments of dirt on the tabletop. "I'd just as soon quit now as next week. But you need an experienced systems engineer, and that's why I'm getting paid twice what you are. Not that money means anything anymore. Besides, I'm insulted. No scientist, engineer, or technician worth his or her salt will give you a urine sample. No one's even dared ask me since I was fresh out of the Institute. I refused then."

"Here at Excon, we try to maintain higher employee standards than are unfortunately prevalent elsewhere."

"So fire me. Let's see you beukies, I mean bureaucrats, fix a leaky faucett."

"We have some very competent personnel who are willing top take PRE's and give us urine samples," Kelly muttered, surrendering.

"Sure." War over. Jackie swung her legs off the table and got up. "Where's my terminal?"

"Actually, management feels you probably ought to have a look at the farm in person. There's a van in the basement garage. I'll show you."

`Management probably ought to have a look at itself,' Jackie thought as she followed.

The garage was dim and smoky. The van was enormous. A shirtless man with a well-defined chest and a bristling mustache was loading crates of equipment into the back.

"This is Mark Eckert, an automation tech who will be coming with us. Mark, this is Jackie Allan," Kelly introduced.

"I know Mark. Hi." (Jackie felt that Mark had the most beautiful eyelashes she had ever seen on a man.)

"Hi Jackie."

"You said - us?" Jackie turned to Kelly.

"Uh, I was told to come along."

Jackie gave her a hard look without saying anything. Then she climbed in one of the side doors of the van.

Automation up front; a manual driver's seat just in case; methanol engine; living quarters; lab space with terminals; and storage space in the back.

Mark climbed in with a four foot satellite dish.

"Hey, Jackie, what's with the beukie coming along?"

She reached out and flipped on a terminal.

"I'm not sure. Excon's been security-fanatic ever since people stopped them from putting microwave receivers on the Greenland icecap. You remember that?"

"Microwave power beamed down from the solar arrays in space? But I thought those things were in the Pacific ocean."

"They are." Jackie was watching her screen. She'd found her login and started exploring while they talked. "Some beukie originally wanted to put them on the glaciers. They didn't realize the conversion heat would eventually melt the glaciers, reduce the earth's surface albedo, and give global warming an extra oomph." She suspended a throat mike around her neck.

"What happened?"

"They were stopped. Mortal blow to the collective ego of top management. So now Excon recruits weak-willed people who give urine samples. I think Kelly's supposed to keep an eye on us."

A door slammed up front. The twitch of Mark's thick mustache Did not go unnoticed by Jackie. "So if I gave urine that means I'm weak-willed?" he inquired.

"Just don't do it again," Jackie laughed.

"Do what?" asked Kelly, coming through the door. Mark went back to packing boxes so they wouldn't move around.

"Urinate," Jackie said. "What's the name of that farm?"

"Fnail. Fnail Farm, in Canada. The farm overseer reports that everything is fine and dandy, but the last transport didn't find any produce to load. There are other disturbing reports." Kelly said. She was watching Mark, who was shuffling crates with effortless grace. She made up her mind that the muscle was real, not silicone insert.

"So how do you two know each other?" she asked.

"We worked together on a job for General Wind. Repairing power windmills." Mark placed his hands on the edge of a crate behind him and sat down on them.

"They had a joke about us," Jackie called over from the terminal. "About how you remove a generator housing."

"Yes, yes," Mark grinned. "Jackie holds the screwdriver against the screw and Mark rotates the generator. THEN she had the nerve to write on a recommendation form that I was 'young, but competent.' Tell me what that's supposed to mean." He jabbed an accusatory finger in her direction. Jackie giggled.

Kelly smiled politely, but she had this image of Jackie with the screwdriver which she felt mildly threatening.

"Arrrgh. You're right." `Jackie's moods seemed to switch without warning,' Kelly thought. She had been communicating with the terminal by keyboard and subvocally through the throat mike. Now she turned it off. "From the farm's point of view everything's ok, but the other things flatly contradict that. We'll have to actually go to Canada to find out which machine is right."

"We've been on our way for five minutes," Kelly said.

Jackie looked stunned.

"You didn't notice? Your inner ear must be broken," Mark said generously. "We've been turning corners and everything."

"Damn modern suspensions are too good," Jackie growled reflectively.

It was starting to grow dark, and drizzling, when they pulled up to the end of a gravel track and stopped. The black arms of wet bushes and trees stood around a huge shed and a low crumbling concrete structure. Dull green conifers rose up one hill. In the other directions lay small fields separated by windbreaks.

"...land is poor around here. Vast area, very low level agriculture. It's labor intensive to conserve the soil," Mark was saying as they got out of the van, wearing light hooded jackets and heavy boots.

Kelly went over to the shed and pulled open the big door.

"Machines in here. Tractors ... I wish I knew all the names."

Jackie followed her in, clanged around, and came back out.

"Most of the farm machinery is out. The storage bins are empty... Mark, what is it?"

Mark had been standing in the rain staring off into the distance. He turned around.

"Nothing. Smelling the air. Getting a feeling for the place," he said. "That should be the bot den," pointing at the squat concrete building.

They entered by a wide gate which had doors flung open. Lights came on. It was a large cavern with showers and water hoses for cleaning equipment and bots, farm robots. Side rooms held supplies. Mark headed purposefully for a heavy door on the back wall. The room behind it proved to be dry and heated.

"Weather can get pretty corrosive, even on the bots," Mark explained. "And contacts." He pointed out a series of outlets in the wall. "The bots come here to report the day's events, and to get their assignments in the morning as soon as it's light enough to work. The bigger contacts are for power. Recharging."

"I was told the farm overseer talked to the robots over radio," Kelly put in. Jackie was rattling at a door with a rusted padlock on it.

"Sure, a bit," she said. "But the bots can remember a lot, especially botanical details. The data rate's too low. Same reason we'll be putting up a satellite dish. The van radio won't let us talk to the rest of the world as much as we want." The door wasn't giving.

"Mark, can you get this open? Otherwise I have to go back for a hacksaw."

Mark put his shoulder against it and pushed. The bar bent and came out of the frame. The door swung in.

"Cheap metal," he said.

No light came on here and there was a musty smell. When their eyes adjusted to the dark they saw several large cables passing through the room. One was connected to a large box on a bench, which was connected in turn to an old fashioned terminal. There was even a chair lying on its side.

"Hey, this looks like it used to be a control room for real live people," Mark breathed. "Totally antiquated, twenties stuff."

"Cool it. Some of us are old enough to remember the twenties," Jackie said. She righted the chair and sat down in front of the terminal, raising a clowd of dust.

Mark found an outside door and opened it. The last of the daylight filtered in.

"What I wonder is where all the bots are. They should be coming home," he said.

Kelly peered out, wondering if she would see the earth-toned hominids ambling towards her through the weeds growing over the foundations of long-gone buildings.

"They are home." Jackie stood up alarmingly. "According to this overseer, its storage bins are full of radishes, its fields are all plowed, and all twenty-four bots have been patiently sitting in the room we just came through, for the past hour."

They set off to look for the missing bots with flashlights. The drizzle had stopped. An invisible moon gave the cloud cover a uniform glow, enough to navigate by.

Kelly pushed through the underbrush of a windbreak, and came out on the other side. A bot was right in front of her ten paces off. It cocked its head slightly and watched her.

"Jackie, I have found one," she called out. In the flashlight beam it was brown, with black disks for eyes in an otherwise featureless face. Jackie came up beside Kelly.

"Stop. Test. Test," she said. The bot emitted a low hum. "That's about all they say." She pulled out a complicated-looking probe and walked over, reaching for an access port on the bot's torso. A third beam of light fell on the brown figure. They heard Mark's footsteps.

The bot casually brought up its right arm and knocked Jackie's hand out of the way. She reached out again, and barely dodged a large swipe of the bot's arm - but tripped backwards in the grass. Kelly caught her, staggering in surprise at Jackie's weight. Muscle and bone. Kelly felt strangely excited. In spite of the jokes, Jackie couldn't be much over thirty-five.

"They're not supposed to do that. Anything like that. Ever." Jackie was breathing hard, and there was some fear in her eyes. Kelly wondered how she was supposed to feel.

The bot didn't do anything futher aggressive, and just stood there. Mark had run up and was now standing next to them.

"Let's stay away from that one," he said. "Come on, I found a disabled one. It's probably safer."

Mark's bot was lying on its side at the foot of a grassy incline. It looked considerably less than human with several large panels removed. Mark's finger picked out details.

"See, here, the oil well's dry. I'll bet the joints are ruined. Hydraulic fluid's low. The battery's drained. There's a lot of physical trauma, especially to the computer casing. I've never seen a bot so mistreated. Usually the mechanical parts wear out after five or so years. This one's brand new." He straightened up. "It almost looks like this bot TRIED to kill itself. And another thing I don't understand is why the operational one over there didn't bring this one in. They're supposed to take care of each other."

"This one was probably ordered to commit suicide," Jackie put in. "I am sure that this was done through the overseer itself. I doubt we'll find many working ones."

Mark hoisted the casualty across his shoulders.

They drove the van around to the outside door of the little control room and carried in a bright light and set up their troubleshooting gear. Jackie quickly broke the system. It had been set up to deliberately destroy the bots, and to deny that anything was wrong.

"There're four bots left. They're not hostile anymore," Jackie stated. She yawned.

"Someone must have done that," Kelly said. "I'm worried. Can we use the bots that are left as guards?"

"Go right ahead. I'm going to bed."

Kelly got Mark to show her how to get a low-resolution picture (of shadowed darkness) through the bots' eyes, how to set an alarm on their motion detectors, and how to tell them to move around. For the rest of the night Kelly kept an avid watch on the nocturnal wildlife.

She also watched the two sleeping figures on the floor. She couldn't decide what to think of them. Some great conflict seemed to be brewing inside her.

The next morning before breakfast Jackie dragged them along to a small lake half a mile away.

"I found this place last night," she said, taking off her sweatshirt.

"But it's cold," Kelly said.

"So we get to prove we're Minnesotans."

"I didn't bring a swimming suit," Kelly continued. Mark and Jackie splashed in, both inarguably lacking swimming suits, and loudly proclaimed the water cold. Kelly shrugged and bowed to fate. She had to admit, it was ... invigorating.

When they got back, Jackie immersed herself in the global communications network while Mark drove off to gather up the disabled bots, which the overseer was now able to locate. Kelly disappeared on some project of her own.

"Username Ari in Australia," Jackie announced when Mark returned. "Means 'demon' in Icelandic, incidentally. Whoever did this came from there via Kamchatka, France, Argentina, and Estonia. Only thing is, the trail was obvious."

"Um," Mark said.

"I think it's a front doorbell. Here goes."

Several minutes passed before the other end was picked up. A line of text spilled along the bottom of the screen.

"Old union handshake," Jackie said. "Let's see if I can remember how to do this." After several apparently meaningless exchanges the screen cleared to show a bearded man with soft brown eyes and a red face.

"Ah. Jackie Allan," he said. "I've heard of you. You went to the Institute of Wisconsin-Madison? Involved in the Chernobyl cleanup of '27, right? I'm Brent Alberts. Institute of Toronto." He looked at Mark. "Who's our third party?"

"That's Mark Eckert. I know him, he's ok," Jackie said.

There was a pause.

"You're not in Australia," Mark said impulsively. There was full sunlight behind the man's head.

"Not exactly," Brent laughed. "I'm in a safe jurisdiction. Not that Jackie there couldn't find me if she really wanted to."

Jackie nodded at the compliment. Then she got down to business.

"I'm fixing a Canadian farm you set on self-destruct. Why?"

"Maybe you heard about Excon's plan to raze a good part of the remaining Indonesian rainforest so they can build golf courses and luxury apartments for several thousand of their executives." Brent didn't waste words either.

"I read in the news. I assumed somebody was going to stop them."

"Me and some other people decided to do it. Only they've gotten smart since the Greenland affair. Hired sharp people as collaborators. They have actual human beings with guns on the site. Several of us got physically arrested and imprisoned under some barbaric Indonesian law."

"THAT I didn't read in the news." Jackie looked disturbed.

"So we decided on war. Excon has operations in automated farming, automated mining, automated manufacturing, and automated transport, all of them more vulnerable than the Indonesian construction site. This was a test. Tomorrow, it all goes. I think Excon will back down, but it'll be hell in a handbasket."

"I don't like the waste," Mark said slowly. "It hurts me to see bots ruined."

"Neither do I. If we had something like an executive password, we could get at the bulldozers directly. Failing that, the feeling is that bots are more replacable than untouched ecosystems and endangered species. Also, that making an example of Excon will make Consolidated and the others listen to us the next time they try to pull something like the Orinoco salinization scandal. Jackie?"

"Sorry. They gave me barely enough information to find the farm. We do have an executive, though ..."

...who at that moment burst into the room. At a keystroke, a lengthy quote from 'Njal's Saga.' covered up Brent's image.

"I saw some large shapes last night," Kelly said when she had ascertained that no one else was talking. "There aren't any footprints out there today, but I found some two-toed tracks, deer or something."

Jackie tried to think of a good way to put it to her and couldn't.

"Kelly, your company's doing something really idiotic in Indonesia. We need your password to stop it," she stated.

Mark almost groaned.

Kelly's eyes widened. She looked back and forth between their faces, trying to decipher the expressions. She flushed.

"I think it is very nice that the company is able to provide beautiful houses for its administrators. Just because ... how dare you, you techie anarchist scum!" She turned and ran.

Jackie grimaced and turned Brent back on.

"I assume you heard that."

"What a diplomat you are," he said drily. Mark grumbled something similar.

"You go talk to her, then," Jackie said. "I'll go tell Excon I fixed their overseer, please send twenty new bots."

Kelly ran on past the lake and sat down, tears on her face, under a huge tree not far from one of the bots standing in the tall grass. The sky had cleared. The sun was out, and the air had the rich smell of evaporating rain. For several minutes she tried to figure out why she was crying, and what she would report to her superiors.

"What's the matter?" a calm baritone voice asked out of nowhere.

"Who's there?" Kelly looking around.

"Just me." The bot in the tall grass turned to face her. She froze in terror. It walked toward her casually, almost as if it were using body language to convey ease and confidence to her. Usually, robots walked purposefully.

"You are upset. Why?" The same voice, imperturbably calm.

She tried to talk, swallowed, found her voice.

"I'm ... confused. How should I know about Indonesia, what to do? The techies, I mean the two people I came with, I can't trust them."

"Whom can you trust?"

She thought of her superiors. Suddenly she couldn't remember why she had ever trusted them. Trust was poised in her throat like a boulder on the edge.

"I ... do trust them," she said, surprised at the words even as they came out of her mouth. "Jackie and Mark. If someone could just explain to me ..."

"They asked for your password so that I would be able to stop the Indonesian project directly. Species diversity is essential to the earth's ecology and is a part of human survival. If I can't stop it directly, I will kill tens of thousands of bots the way I killed the bots here, to stop it. That would be a great waste."

Kelly bit her lip and studied the horizon. Then she leaned over and whispered the word at the formless head which was bent to receive it.

"Thank you," it said.

Kelly stood up slowly and took a few steps. She wondered if she should say goodbye. Instead she said,

"Are you human? Or can they make intelligent robots now?"

"They can." The bot rose. "But they haven't. I am a human being named Brent Alberts, talking with you by means of a reprogrammed farm robot."

Kelly felt tricked, but she also felt like laughing.

"Why haven't they, then?"

The bot paused for a second.

"An intelligent robot would be a citizen. What kind of life could we offer this person? Joints that wear out in five years? Poor eyesight, no sense of smell or touch, accidental death by power failure?" He shrugged. "With power comes responsibility. We must refrain from doing many things that we are capable of doing."

`That made sense,' Kelly thought.

"Bye," she said.

The bot waved in a way that she decided was very suave.

Contest and published in the April 1991 issue. (It won first place)

John is a double-major in Math and Secondary Education who wants to become a math teacher. Michael graduated from The College of Liberal Arts with a Physics degree and is now working on his Ph.D. at CERN, Switzerland. The two hope to go on to greater literary fame, but, according to John, are hampered by the fact that they can no longer spend long nights hashing out story ideas while getting wired on caffeine and silly from sleep depravation.

johna@ux.acs.umn.edu