Conscious Read online

  “How on earth do you know ‘the plan?” asked Andy, addressing her but looking at not-Thompson. “We didn’t know it ourselves two minutes ago! Who explained it to you?”

  “How would I know?” Aisha asked with a short laugh, “Have you noticed that I cannot see?” She tried to smile. “A man came into the hospital. I do not know who he was but he told me what is to happen. I suppose there is only one sensible course of action,” she suggested calmly, “and perhaps there was little doubt as to what would be agreed.”

  “The plan may be agreed, Aisha,” said Jenny, her tone becoming firmer, “but it doesn’t include you – or Andy, of course: you’re not well enough to travel. You’ll have to stay here to be looked after and, obviously, Andy will stay with you.”

  “You need me to help with your work,” Aisha replied, “and that process will not be simple. I will have to form some essential questions and consult Paulo Di Iorio some more. Then we will have to discuss the implications at length before you understand well enough to make your calculations. If we do that before you take the plane, it may take several hours. This will increase the delay in implementing the disconnection and tens of millions more will die. I will not allow that,” she added firmly.

  “But you need medical attention, Aisha,” Andy insisted. “You need to be in the hospital here; not on a plane.”

  “Should I not be the best judge of that among us?” asked Aisha, still facing defiantly ahead. “I am the doctor!”

  “We can ensure that the very best care is available on the plane – in terms of both equipment and medical staff,” not-Thompson interjected, ignoring a number of looks of distrust. “Now that all travel has ceased, there are many people stranded in places they do not want to be. In addition to the pilots, we have also identified two extremely experienced American doctors and two nurses, who will welcome this opportunity to return home (or at least to the right country). They will take care of you every second of the flight. The plane to be used is also no ordinary one: it is an elderly German senior executive’s private jet. He, sadly, has been killed by an RFS incident and we have used some emergency powers to commandeer it. It is already very well equipped for medical use; and every additional piece of apparatus, that can be made mobile and secured safely within it, will travel with you. When you arrive at the US operational installation, you will be transferred immediately to their medical facility and continue your recovery there. As I have already said today, this may not be ideal but it is a practical solution to an extreme – and time-critical – problem.”

  ‘Beep’ S = 0.836

  *

  The decision appeared to have been made. None of The Desk were comfortable with it – for a variety of reasons, personal and practical, Andy being particularly concerned for Aisha – but there seemed to be no room for argument. They also, with the possible exception of Aisha herself, felt distinctly pressured into accepting that all four of them should fly. However they all grimly accepted the urgency of the situation: that time could not be lost. They were to be taken to the surface, without further delay, where a car would drive them, under armed escort, to the airport, where the plane was already being made ready.

  Hasty farewells were shared. The bond between The Desk and Stephen’s team, forged quickly in the heat of desperation, was strong – and all were well aware that they might never see each other again. Even with the best of outcomes, there would be those who did not wake to see the following day, or any day after that. Everyone knew this only too well. There were tears on both sides, disguised as best could be managed by hearty wishes of good fortune and health, and assurances of the same.

  Stephen’s parting embraces were particularly emotional. He was naturally gentle with Aisha but his two arms were bear-like with Jenny and Bob. His words of friendship were heartfelt: softer than any he had ever been heard to articulate before. Having said goodbye to Aisha, Jenny and Bob, in turn, he looked to be on the verge of saying something more to Bob but then seemed to think better of it and satisfied himself with a last handshake. Instead, he turned finally to Andy and clasped both his hands in his own. As Andy accepted the warm double-handed grip, he felt Stephen press a small piece of card into his palm. He pulled Andy towards him in comradely fashion and, as their heads brushed, he whispered hastily – but as quietly as possible, given the background noise – in his ear.

  “I do not like this, Andy: I am unsure of some motives here. I do not know what may happen on the other side. If things turn bad, this contact may help you.” There was time for no more. As their hands parted, Andy – though taken aback by the gift – reacted quickly. He closed his fingers around the note and moved it, without looking at it, into his jeans pocket. Both thought the transferral went unnoticed. Andy could not have seen that, after The Desk had left, not-Thompson motioned towards Stephen with her head and that he was followed closely from the room by Thompson.

  And they were gone. Having been escorted back to the artificially lit entrance area, at which they had first arrived two days previously, The Desk found yet another large, black car waiting. This one was larger again: big enough for them and Aisha’s four helpers. Hattie was loaded into a separate van; Bob oversaw her being secured to various mounting points. They climbed into the car despondently and without ceremony and were driven up the curved ramp, through the gates, which were opened and closed manually by two guards as they passed, and out on to the main road towards the airport. Four heavily-armed military vehicles appeared from side lanes as they turned onto the public street and escorted them, forming a rectangle with the limousine in the centre and Hattie’s carrier just behind.

  Death, destruction, horror, violence and despair surrounded them all along their route.

  *

  The suited woman was back at her desk – and back in grey, her attention divided between the news channel displayed on her wall-screen and several papers in front of her. A sharp tap at the door was followed by the re-entry of the uniformed man. He walked slowly towards her. Her eyes asked all the questions any words could. He nodded.

  “They’re on their way, Ma’am. And I think it’s time we left too: it’s not safe here.”

  Chapter 23: Senselessness and Insensibility

  At first, Aisha was aware of no more than the low drone of the plane’s engines. She took several minutes to adjust, repeatedly slipping back into dark dreams and waking to a blacker reality. The bandages and dressings, which held her aching eyes closed, forced a pressure through her whole head but the pain was at its fiercest along a line just above her nose. She felt sick and knew instinctively that drugs – probably several – were at work within her. There was some scattered conversation around her and she felt a weight enclosing her left hand. She somehow knew, before she identified anything else – before she even really remembered for certain who she was, that this was Andy’s hand holding hers. With this as a point of reference, a few details of her current situation and their departure from Brussels came slowly back to her.

  She remembered little of the attack: some blurred impressions of pain and terror. More vividly than anything, she recalled the cold fence against her back as she held Jenny’s hand and awaited their fate at the mercy of the mob. She had a dim recollection of lights and speed and being wheeled through passages. Slightly clearer – but still muddled – in her mind was her awakening from the operation; the darkness and the remorse: people had died. Then Andy had been there; then others. She had not understood much of what was said but they had given her more medication and things had seemed better. Then she had been taken to see the others to tell them everything was alright. And it was alright: at least it had seemed so then.

  They had been driven to the airport at speed. She had been able to feel this distinctly but had been spared the dreadful sights that the others could see through the tinted windows. Only their frequent gasps of disgust and dismay gave any clue to the state of the outside world. At one point, shots had been fired to clear the road ahead as rioters threatened
their progress (and safety). Her guilt had intensified. As they travelled, she had – assisted by Andy sitting next to her – managed a short mobile conversation with Professor Di Iorio (‘holed-up’ in his Milan apartment, he said) before the connection had failed. It was not much, and she found it hard to concentrate as they spoke, but it was enough to get some essential detail from him – and probably as much as she could properly absorb in her condition.

  She had known from the other three’s comments the point at which they had entered the airport perimeter. Inside, it appeared, some slight element of normality had been preserved although the buildings themselves were almost entirely deserted. Only security staff were on duty outside, the airport being closed; but they were driven straight to the plane by an entirely external route, where they were met by others: either police or troops – she could not be clear. Here they were searched and had all their mobile devices – phones, watches, tablets, headsets, everything – confiscated by officers (to prevent unintentional signalling to the ground while on board) and she was helped onto the plane and to a seat. She remembered being strapped in but not the take-off: presumably she had been unconscious again by then.

  She could hear the scratch of pen on paper now. Some mumbled words, closer than the others, gradually became clearer. No-one was aware she was awake yet. She fought through the blackness. Eventually, she understood a small fragment.

  “Have they really not thought it through?”

  She recognised Andy’s voice: could almost feel it through his hold of her hand. She waited for a reply but there was none. She quickly realised, from his tone and the absence of any response, that he was talking to himself. Bob and Jenny could be heard conversing between themselves a little further away but she could not follow.

  “Not thought what through?” she slurred. She had not realised how difficult speech would be. She felt Andy’s hand twitch, then tighten, as he realised she was back with him.

  “You’re awake! Are you OK?”

  “I think so,” she mumbled. “Groggy; head hurts. What have I missed?”

  “Not much. We’ve been flying about two hours. Jenny and Bob are talking through how to disconnect It when we get wherever we’re going and I’ve been writing a few bits and pieces to keep my mind off things as much as anything. So, how do you feel?”

  “A bit sick, and a bit confused. Just waiting for my head to clear: God knows what they pumped into me. Anyway, who has not thought what through?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking out loud. The past couple of days have got to me: being told that keeping business going is more important than keeping people alive, that sort of thing; I didn’t realise some people really thought like that: I was getting pretty angry. Then I was getting wound up about you and – oh, you know. I needed to let off a bit of steam so I’ve been writing an article for one of the social newsletters I edit – if anyone lives to read it, that is! But, I don’t know how to finish it because I’ve got to the point where none of it makes sense!”

  “Read it to me?”

  “Don’t be daft! It’s nonsense; just a first draft, and it’s not finished.”

  “Please. It will give me something to focus on. Something to help clear my head.”

  “So, somewhat reluctantly – but still with a deliberate air of theatre, Andy picked the pad of paper from his lap, cleared his throat (Jenny and Bob also stopped talking to listen) and began.

  “Smoke and Mirrors in Robotic Technocapitalism” (Andrew Jamieson)

  Professor Robert Greenburg provoked considerable debate recently by suggesting, in an online interview, that we could have more to fear from the nature of capitalism in future than armies of intelligent robots. The response was immediate, robust, deeply personal and entirely predictable.

  The basic premise of the discussion in question was Greenburg noting that, if most of the work of a future society was performed by machines, then how we occupied ourselves instead was much more of a social, political, economic, ethical, demographic, etc. question than it was technological. The rebuttal was essentially:

  That’s silly: the old jobs will be replaced by new ones,

  Please don’t say nasty things about capitalism,

  Scientists should stick to science.

  So how much of this criticism was justified and how much of it was simply ‘The Establishment’ closing ranks?

  Well, it could certainly be argued that Greenburg may not have got his point across well on this occasion. He’s believed to have made similar observations in previous, not-quite-so-global environments, both in more detail and with greater clarity. Perhaps this was his fault, perhaps it was the fragmented, social media, nature of the interview; but the comment was easily picked up in isolation and trivialised, then reported as superficial and misrepresented as ‘Those nasty capitalists are going to replace us all with robots’. It’s much easier to find a counter-argument once you’ve repackaged the original argument in a form that suits you.

  Without wishing to put words into Greenburg’s mouth, there are probably two key observations behind what was essentially a small soundbite:

  - The automated world we’re about to enter will be very different to the present one; the traditional model of the changing workplace may not apply. If the robots take the old jobs, they may take the new ones too. We’re beginning to see the start of this already.

  - The numbers, the scale of all this, will be unprecedented, as may be the wider social upheaval. Alternatively, the existing economic frameworks might not change at all, which could be even worse for most people.

  In both respects, people aren’t using the term singularity lightly.

  The platitudes regarding the first point generally take the form of claiming that this is apparently nothing new. True enough, we’ve had increasing automation in one form or another for centuries. The essential argument is that relieving humans of the mundane work, leaves them free to be more creative and find more interesting things to do. Eventually, this widening of horizons leads to both further technological advances and new jobs in these new fields. One day, technology advances to the point where these jobs themselves become automated, people go off and do something else again, and the process repeats forever …

  But it can’t repeat forever. That’s not what The Singularity is about. We’re looking ahead to a world in which machines/AI/robots – call them what you will – are better than us at everything. Faster, stronger, more accurate, longer-lasting and, from a conventional economic standpoint, cheaper. They’ll be better at both the existing jobs for which they replace us and the new ones that arise as a result and this is the repeated pattern that we should look to – one in which humans play no part at all. Global unemployment is already rising and is set to increase dramatically. Why would anyone use a human for anything if a robot can do it better? Well, there may be an answer to that but it brings us to the second point …

  So, in today’s world already, in fact, a number of people don’t work – or do very little. But, as a non-worker, how society treats you depends largely on who your parents are. It could be argued that, on the whole, current unemployment figures don’t include people who don’t need to work. However, whichever way you do the calculations, unemployment across the world is still fairly low. Most people work; and most of them work in difficult conditions, for too long, for low pay, largely for the benefit of either the more fortunate non-workers or much better-off workers. The ever-present threat is that this mundane existence is better than the alternative: that of becoming part of the less fortunate non-working community. These worse-off non-workers are generally despised compared with their affluent non-working counterparts (who are often overlooked entirely). In fact, non-workers make up the two extremes of the social spectrum.

  Now, project this model forward into a future in which the majority of people don’t work. Say, for the sake of argument, that unemployment rates of 10% become more like 90%. The economists will howl at these figures but the roles are reversed
now: it’s the economists that don’t understand the significance of the technological singularity. With existing economics, can the majority of the population be supported to do nothing? (Or meditate or write poetry or play sport or something – although there’s a likelihood the machines will be better at all that too.) No, of course not. Because everything in the world today revolves around the competition to make profit. Nothing much happens if there’s nothing in it for someone. It’s anyone’s guess what might happen to a majority superfluous workforce. The only non-workers that will get by, just as now, will be those few that don’t need to work. That simply cannot be a stable system. There’s nothing essentially different to today in terms of the definitions of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ but the balance will shift hugely in a numerical sense – probably well beyond the catastrophe point … another singularity or revolution to use different terminology.

  Now, if we’re going to change any of this, there’s some considerable thinking-outside-the-box needed here. But when scientists, who are generally pretty good at that sort of thing, dare to try, it seems that they get slapped down by economists who are all-too-ready to point out that they might not understand the niceties of current economic models. No, they probably don’t. No, they’re not trying to. They can see that something much bigger is about to happen and the response can’t be conventional because the old models won’t work. But when an engineer starts to talk about AI and unemployment and politics and economics, taking the piss is very easy indeed – particularly if you’re coming at it from being a beneficiary of the current system, and desperately not wanting it to change. But, it’s going to have to change and to start that process involves throwing out a lot of old, comfortable assumptions about the way the world works.

  Just how hard this thought revolution can be in practice, might be best illustrated by an example; sort of fictitious but not hard to associate to the real world …