I sat nude in the firelight by the steaming pool in Wei Sung’s cabin HQ and wondered exactly what this mysterious native beauty of the North had put in the concoction she called tea. The effects were reminiscent of mescaline, hyper-awareness mellowed by the peaceful serenity of liberation of sentience from the present bio-shell. Observing oneself from above. I’d done my sweat lodge time with Chief Jay Strongbow, a Northern tribe shipmate back in my wet navy submarine days, and his peyote/cannabis concoctions had a similar effect.
Hopefully, this time I wouldn’t come back to Earth days later married to a lovely hipster Sheila and living in a commune in the outback of Australia. But that’s another story.
Wei Sung pranced in with a ceremonial pipe. She had the inherent poise and grace of her people. She was adorned in just a brown mourning garment, one that fell open at the breast and just covered her muscular thighs. She smiled across at me and I received an empathic visual blast of her running to me on a beach that sent a thrill up my spine.
Her jewels were modest in her grief, but the appropriate talismans and rings sparkled as she made her way around the steaming rock pool that dominated the room. The jewels were a promise of nice things to come tonight, and there was much honor for the lucky one chosen to serve in the fertility rites of the North People that celebrated the life of the beloved deceased.
Like I say, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Sung shrugged off the brown bag mourning shawl that she’d made look quite hot when she ran to greet us. Her skin glowed amber, smooth, and perfect, pert nipples rising to the occasion (no nipples going “spang” in this universe Robert H.) as she bent low with the elaborate bong that was a tribal heirloom of the North Amerasians. It only came out for weddings and VIP funerals.
We had no word on the other two male MIA personnel yet, but love shack Gerry’s corpse had been packed in by Dyna’s drones. There would be at least one funeral. I knew he was dead but why the VIP mourning rites? For a mere employee? I asked Wei about it.
“He’s my uncle. And he was the one who kept this tribe and this mine up and running.”
Rise of the Succubots
Uncle Geronimo Sung was the first victim of a rogue sexbot wave, an emerging AI species. How about we call them call them “succubots”. After the succubus of the old Betaverse, another reminder that there really ain’t nothing new under the sun when it comes to sin.
We had no doubt about our perp since the black widow succubot AI who killed Geronimo with love went wonky herself and posted videos of their last days on Juke Tube and Spacebook. Contrary to what one might expect, Uncle Gerry did not die with a smile on his face. The poor man looked as if he’d been coated with ash. Through the pipe smoke an even more disturbing vibe wafted through the air and punched my mind.
As of tonight, Dyna reports that our lethal angel of death has 128K Spacebook followers and 465 marriage proposals. And counting. I’m shocked but not surprised, are you? Says something about old Joe Sapiens doesn’t it?
Wolf approached and placed his considerable mass between us. Wei was busy with a mantra and the pipe and didn’t seem to notice.”Easy Wolf”. The big galoot gave me the typical K-9 corner squint eye and shoved in further. “Wei, what breed of wolf is this guy exactly? Did you clone him from a piece of prehistoric amber or what?”
That solicited a growl from Wolf and a giggle from Wei Sung. Wei explained, “You’re assuming facts not in evidence dear Blitz. First, she’s not a he, second she’s not a pure wolf and third she’s not prehistoric. Her name is Kaya, for wisdom, and she’s a composite clone of select dog breeds with a touch of wolf remaining.”
“So what are we talking here Wei? A little Lassie, a dash of Rin Tin Tin, and a dollop of big bad wolf?”
Sung placed the ceremonial pipe on a rock and waded into the steaming pool. She beckoned me with open arms and I seemed to levitate right to her without disturbing my reclined position. Her soft hands cradled my head between exquisite breasts as she explained.
“Something like that.” Sung massaged my neck while I submerged in the steam above the pool. As her hair fell across my face it didn’t embarrass me at all when I went up periscope in front of Yah and everybody. ” But if you do a DNA trace you’d find that the custom cloners at G&G (Kennel Division) borrowed code from the best of all breeds and hybrid bloodlines for Kaya.”
“Fer sure Dude! I’m a regular Heinz 57 bitch. Just a bit of Grandfather Wolf. I get my hefty size from the mastiff line, Presa Canario, even a touch of Tibetan. Intelligence from Jack Russels, speed from my greyhound cousins, and scent from the bloodhound line. Loyal as a Golden Retriever and the bravery of a Rottweiler. That literally makes me the scariest bitch you’d ever want to meet, wouldn’t you agree, Bub?”
“Well, you’ve never met any of my ex-wives have you?” The brute had surfaced like a great white shark and her voice thrummed against my ear drums. Tough but feminine, like Bee Arthur or Kateleen Turner on steroids with a megaphone. Kaya didn’t respond to my feeble attempt at nervous humor. I got the typical quizzical K-9 head tilt, K-9 for “WTF?”, and down she went, leaving a wake in the hot spring pool like a Trident submarine diving for the depths.
“So your talking mutt blows my mind and takes a dive? How deep is this pool anyway?” I heard my voice as if from a great distance and Wei Sung’s as if it was inside my head. “We’ve got more important things to blow than your mind venerable Blitzenbaum”.
Pan to curtains blowing across windows. Northern Tribe fertility funeral rites are strictly confidential. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Bad News From Wall Street
Well, at least I didn’t wake up married in Australia. I wasn’t too sure about my marital status in Wyoming though. Foggy remnants of last night’s rituals left a lingering doubt about that. And Wei Sung’s voice had picked up the subtle commanding tones so typical of a wife. I found that I wouldn’t mind either way. There were worst circumstances to wake up to.
The next morning Wei Sung had her CEO hat on and she was anything but sweet to the C-suite of IBM, long ago rebranded as I Being Machines when the casino-funded tribes decided to expand their interests into industrial artificial intelligence applications. The virtual board meeting of the C-suite matriarchs of the IBM tribe was bad news followed by worse news.
IBM stock had taken a dive and that was just on the word getting out about losing Uncle Geronimo. The other two MIAs were even more essential. Kai Crazyhorse was the machine-learning code genius and Neil Hung was their Kaizen continuous improvement engineering black belt. With most of the physical labor done by robots built by IBM itself, the Wyoming mine relied on these two human innovators to meet lucrative downstream demand. Not to mention the fact that this domestic supply source provided the raw minerals for the company’s own intelligent machine products. With the top 3 human brains out of the loop, Wei Sung’s operation was completely shut down. Recruiting replacements was like recruiting for combat. With the succubots on the loose the c-suite matriarchs weren’t calling out the troops, though there was no shortage of warrior volunteers, both the men and the women.
And we weren’t the only ones on the continent dealing with the AI angels of death. In a way, the rural isolated location gave us a chance to get the rogue AIs under control. That wasn’t the case in the cities. Sexbot homicides were reported in Manhattan, Chicago, Miami, and LA.
“It’s a domino effect Blitz.” Wei sat at her console and I noticed she had on formal tribal business attire now.
I was still naked as a jaybird, and a little disappointed that the HQ architectural AI had reconfigured the cozy fire-lit cabin as a high-tech company office. In any case, once again Heinlein was right. Sometimes a man just feels better with a pair of pants on. I tried to keep Wei Sung’s attention on the topic and off of my awkward search for my jeans.
“What do you mean by ‘domino effect’ Sung?”
“When there’s a fatality the sexbots themselves call 911. The first responders never come back alive. This started yesterday. They’re now using each homicide as bait for the next victim. And it’s working all too well.”
“What about female cops Wei? I know that more than a few proud lesbians are cops but how about the female heteros on the job? Wouldn’t they have a certain immunity?”
Wei Sung watched as her computer initiated the query. The news wasn’t good. “I was afraid of this. Now we’ve got male sexbots making the rounds. I wonder if another shipment from Zhen Zhen has made it in?”
“Not necessary Wei. The succubots are learning. It’s not a big leap for them to swarm as a male. Let’s classify them as AI subspecies “incubots”, for incubus, the male form of demon who seeks out sleeping women.”
“So how do we eliminate them? Without recruiting an army of eunochs, that is? ” Wei wasn’t pulling her punches. “I say we sic Kaya on the bitch and kill it before any more of my braves are lost. We need some good news for the Street and the tribe, or we’ll be insolvent in a month. Maybe sooner.”
“That would just be a stop-gap measure Madame CEO. Kaya can indeed be a help tracking your human MIAs, but I need one sexbot alive if we are to figure out a network-scale remedy for what’s becoming an internet-scale epidemic. This is already too big to resolve one AI at a time. I need to get one on the algorithmic couch and see what’s making them tick.”
“Well, we need to do something Blitz, speaking of ticks. When was the last time you could buy IBM stock for 28 cents a share?”
Kaya appeared silently by my side, a low rumble emerging from her massive throat. About 4 seconds warning before we heard the explosion from the mine 15 miles away. It rocked the HQ and lights and screens flickered and dimmed as backup power kicked in.
“Shall we go get this sucker now or not?” asked the wolf-dog with the Mr. Ed complex. Kaya was out the door with Wei Sung close behind, shotgun in hand and knife at her hip. I wondered what effect they might have on a billion particles. If there was anything for Kaya to sink her teeth into.
I feared there was no silver bullet for these AI vampires.
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