Copy & Waste
A Short Story
By Stephen O'Neil
Part 2 of 9 - First Page - Previous Page - Next Page
The progress had required adaptation to change. Grigori was reminded of this as he worked, images and text flashing across the clear, filmy screen in front of him as he concentrated, making occasional gestures with his hands. In his earliest work he had spent a great deal of time writing computer programs. The old digital computers had given way to synaptic computers. This was a natural consequence of the shift from procedural and object oriented programming, to organic programming. He remembered the frustration of working with the old technology. The limitations on his research in to artificial intelligence. One by one the advances in technology had stripped away those limitations and the breakthroughs had come. Some from other companies, entrepreneurs, even competitors. Just as many from the laboratories of ARALO.
And now his career ended here. Managing information technology at the ARALO Hale mine, nestled in the northern side of the Hale Crater on Mars. Certain chemicals were required in the manufacture of some of the artificial organs produced by ARALO. While these could be manufactured in small quantities on earth, it had been discovered that they occurred naturally a short distance beneath certain points of the Martian surface. Despite the distance, mining them here still worked out to be more economical than trying to synthesise them back home.
A soft chime interrupted his reverie and he turned to the door as the screen before him froze. A green light lit up next to the door which slid smoothly open. A young woman stepped in to the spacious office Grigori occupied, carrying a small stack of papers. She looked at him reprovingly as she placed them carefully on the corner of his desk.
“You fell asleep again.”
It was a statement, not a question. He did not argue and he had long since given up asking how she could tell he had been sleeping. A chuckle sufficed, “I still get the work done my dear.”
She wrinkled her nose as she glanced at the papers she had just delivered, “You’d get a lot more done if you didn’t insist on doing things the old fashioned way.”
“At my age I’m entitled to be a little eccentric. I like to read something tangible.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Old enough.”
She smiled and shook her head as she moved to the other side of the room and began sorting some of the papers he had left sitting on a low coffee table. His gaze followed her as she moved. She was a strikingly attractive woman. The standard white ARALO shirt and long pants may have looked unflattering on some people, but not on her figure.
Grigori was immensely proud of Vermisa. She represented some of the finest work ever produced at ARALO. Her limbs, organs, face, everything about her manufactured in the same plants which provided artificial limbs and organs to tens of thousands of people every year. It was what was inside that head that gave Grigori the most pride though. She marked the pinnacle of achievement in artificial intelligence and much of it was his own work. She was a prototype. One of the earliest Artificial Human Beings or ‘Aahbs’ as they were more commonly known. One he had personally modified and upgraded many times over the years. Those upgrades didn’t always go smoothly. She still occasionally teased him about the time when one of his upgrades left her cross eyed and talking with a lisp for over a week.
She was more to him than just a project though. This AHB had been his closest companion ever since his dear Izabella had died. She served as his personal assistant and kept him company. Unlike most AHBs, she appeared human in every way. Vermisa was not bound by the normal laws which required changes in skin colour, additional markings etc which generally were standard ways of identifying AHBs. Only in the military and certain government agencies would you find other AHBs that were indistinguishable from humans. In his eyes, she was perfect.