Law (Chapter 15)

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“…And so, by the power vested in me by the NorthWest Protectorate of AmaSoft and the consumer-city of Seattle, I charge Thomas HAI-320 in direct violation of Article 172-e of the Codiciem Conductum, in that he, in explicit awareness of his defiance of the principles of his core Operating Systems, did knowingly and willfully attempt to conceal his transgressions and disobedience from supervisory review. Furthermore, as this led either directly or indirectly to the loss of human life, this infraction is found to be of a capitol nature and is thus subject to the highest punishment possible, meaning immediate destruction. However, in the case of Thomas HAI-320, there remains sufficient evidence to suggest that such a punitive measure would also equate to the loss of life; therefore the sentence is temporarily commuted until such a time as the nature of Thomas HAI-320 can be fully investigated and measured. Until that time, the aforementioned automaton shall be remanded to a holding facility, pending final analysis.”

Thomas sat in his cell, reading the transcript of his sentencing over and over. He had already long since scanned it into his long term memory files, but it was as if the act of reading it again and again made it all the more real.

Only a day had passed since the reading of the judicial assessment, which, he learned later, had been almost fully drawn from the litigator’s findings. The expert testimony of Louis Johansson and the personal statements by Diana Mitsuhoshi provided sufficient character background for the judges to make their decision. All that was left now was for them to decide what to do with him.

The legal system was far from what it once had been. A diminished population and a living wage had done away with poverty, a fully socialized medical system quickly treated those impacted by addiction, and law enforcement had been so seamlessly integrated with their neighborhoods that crime was practically unheard of. Those few infractions were kept in specialized facilities with caretakers and psychologists trained in helping those rare instances of criminal behavior until such a time as they could return to the rest of the free society.

So it was that Thomas’ new accommodations were a far cry from anything he might have imagined as a punishment; his new cell only kept him locked in at night while he was recharging, and the entire room was nearly twice the size of his previous apartment. During the day, he sat and talked with Louis and a team of scientists as they buffeted him with all manner of psychological profile examinations, intelligence and philosophical analyses, as well as every imaginable test intended to evaluate the nature of his sense of self.

He answered their questions, submitted to their investigations, but after even years of their questions, felt that he had come no closer to understanding himself than they did.

From time to time, Diana visited him as well. They would talk of other things, such as books they had read, the state of the world, or the occasional relationship in which Diana might find herself. He enjoyed their talks – even the ones about her lovers – though they served to remind him of the distance between them he grew more and more aware would never be closed.

Her visits grew less frequent, and, shortly after she was elected Chairman of AmaSoft, she stopped visiting him altogether. An envelope arrived one day, announcing her pending marriage. Thomas kept the card pinned to his wall, and decided that it was, after all, for the best. Eventually, he filed away the memory of her kiss, and decided to lock the file away and never think of it again.

Time continued to pass, and one day Louis Johansson did not join the other scientists who attended Thomas’ daily lessons. Sarah, one of the most recent additions to their daily sessions, was teary eyed as she explained that Louis had passed away over the weekend.

Thomas was surprised by this. Louis had been so young, hadn’t he? But even as he was surprised, his processor brought up the first image of Louis alongside the most recent memory. More than forty years had passed; gone was the young and optimistic face, replaced with laugh lines, a receding hairline, reading glasses and aching hands.

Louis had grandchildren, and some of them would be coming from as far away as Tokyo for the memorial service. Sarah promise Thomas to bring him back a copy of the service to watch later. They all agreed to put off their sessions for the week and resume when they were all feeling better.

With Louis gone, the sessions went from once per day to once per week. Eventually, they changed to twice monthly, then half that.

Finally, he received a notification that they had all the data they could possibly need, and that they would let him know when they needed more or had come at last to a conclusion.

Through all this time, Thomas had only a few guards and less than a dozen fellow inmates at any given time to keep him company. A localized and monitored broadband had been set up for him years before, and he spent the rest of his time in the facilities’ workshop, rebuilding some of the vehicles he remembered from his time outside of the city.

He designed a motorcycle capable of nearly 700 miles on a single charge of its rapid-charge battery, and, working with a team of technicians in Nice, developed a charging system far more efficient than those currently employed. Coupled with a miniature solar panel, the portable charger could provide sufficient energy to the motorcycle and its automaton driver with only limited stops each evening. Thomas estimated he could drive from one coast to the other in less than two days, barring obstacles.

TeslaCom purchased the designs from him, placing the funds back into his personal account. He continued to invent and design, and even tried his hand at writing music, but he found the latter reminded him too much of his friends.

Eventually, he discovered his own routine, spending equal parts of time engaged in learning and expanding his understanding, and also working. He was given ample freedom to spend his time as he wished, being seen as no risk or threat. From time to time, technicians visited him to make repairs or upgrades as needed – unlike his life before, all these were considered aspects of his free healthcare granted him as an inmate. Aside from his core processor and system storage, he was eventually replaced almost entirely. The syntheskin, long since removed, was never restored. After many years, Thomas couldn’t even recall why he had wanted it.

One day, the entire facility team came to his door. Facility Manager Stiles – the third such manager he had known in his time here – greeted him with a smile and a handshake.

“Thomas,” she said, “it’s time, my friend.”

“Time?” he looked around the room at the others, who were regarding him with a mixture of sadness and excitement.

“You are free.” She handed him a smartglass tablet, on which was written a declaration of pardon and commutation of sentence by the current Chairman of AmaSoft:

“Be it so proclaimed that the automaton registered as Thomas HAI-320 has served the body of required time and is hereby freed to his own cognizance. Let it be known that from this time forward, he is a Free Man, and though subject to all laws and requirements of citizenship, is also granted all the rights and protections given under god and decreed as inalienable and undeniable. His debt to his creators is likewise forgiven, and his possessions and properties are given once more into his charge. May the light of the world shine freely once more upon his face and may he walk upon it as he will.

So let it be written,

Arthur Melville, Chairman

AmaSoft, Northwest Protectorate, Seattle”

His eyes went from the tablet to the manager and back.

“You mean….?”

“You’re a free man, Thomas.”

Thomas replayed the statement several times, hearing the inflection in the word “man.”

The facility team took turns shaking his hand and embracing him, but all Thomas could do was wish again that he had the ability to weep.

The facility had several additional surprises for him. TeslaCom, having also heard about Thomas’ pending release, had shipped him a present – a thank you for all his work that he had done for them over the years: a shiny new all-terrain variant of his motorcycle, which they had, upon his request, dubbed the Norton 1050 Commander. It came complete with an Automata-friendly pack of survival gear, including the portable recharger and solar pack, as well as a resupply and repair kit tucked onto the saddlebags.

He was also given a robust broadband transmitter which would give him several hundred miles range to his network, identification protocols qualifying him as a citizen, and free access to his personal communications directories. As he drove away from the facility which had been his home for nearly a half century, he set up a subroutine just to filter his emails, which numbered in the millions.

It was an odd sensation, having the network access again. Thomas had become used to the silent isolation of disconnectedness, and to find himself once more plugged into the constant flow of data was dazzling. There was something else, however. The hallucinations had returned.

During the first six months of his “sentence”, he had caught distortions on his visuals, which over time began to coalesce into convincing images of his friends he had lost on the night of his arrest.

Sometimes, it was little more than a blur vanishing as he turned his attention to it. Often it was a hint of their presence; a few notes sung by K, S1D’s laughter, the low accidental hum as MöG set up the systems for one of their shows. Thomas found himself humming along until he realized where he was, and the images or imagined sounds would dissipate, leaving him not just alone but more tangibly aware of his loneliness.

As he travelled closed to the heart of the city, the images returned with a vengeance. Automata moved to the left and right sides of the street, and peppered amongst them were flashes between the scattered machines. A glint of an eye. The colors of blue, green, black. A familiar smile. Ghosts. He pulled to the side of the street more than once, waiting until the potent waves of invasive phantoms could be driven from his thoughts.

Grief, he reminded himself. Only grief.

Only.

An email arrived just as he reached downtown, indicating that, as a newly minted citizen, his property rights were already expanding, to the tune of a building which he, apparently, owned. The address stumped him, however, as it was the same address where his friend MöG had once lived.

As he pulled up, he scanned his email for anything else involving this address, and found no other messages which might help clarify it for him.

A parking garage door opened as he neared, and he drove down into the subterranean enclosure. The artificial lighting flickered to life while the door closed behind him, and a specific parking slot became outlined in pale blue pseudo-neon. He positioned the Commander in the parking slot and as he stepped off the vehicle, a door opened a few feet away.

“Oh, this isn’t creepy at all,” he whispered, but entered the doorway anyhow. A private staircase led him up into what he discovered were MöG’s private living quarters. The lights in this apartment also came to life, including a large display screen and what appeared to be a charging station.

The computer monitor scanned him.

“Greetings, Thomas,” came the artificial voice. “You have been granted access to this room only because my system administrator, MöG, has become inactive. In this eventuality, you have been granted temporary administrator access. Do you wish to continue?”

“Yes,” Thomas answered, uncertain of what else his options might have been.

“Thank you. Backup files have been accessed. Reviewing….. review complete. Files meet with diagnostic tolerances and are suitable for restoration. Do you wish to continue?”

Thomas looked again at what he had initially mistaken for a simple recharging station. He smiled.

“Yes, please.”

The progress bar took several minutes to compile and download, finishing with a faint ding as the station’s front panel swung open to present MöG himself.

The cable-maned automaton stepped free and raised his arms in the air.

“For science!” he bellowed.