Deus ex Machina Publicum

By J-L Heylen

Charlie Parish is a damned clever scientist with a promising career in Artificial Intelligence ahead of her. She lands a dream job getting paid to develop a computer program capable of gathering knowledge, reasoning solutions, and learning from mistakes. There’s just one problem. When Charlie lets her creation loose on the world, it does exactly what it is designed to do ...

... and that’s when everything starts to go right.

This is the latest stand-alone short story from the pen of J-L Heylen. It was first published on J-L's blog as a 9 part serialised story, but has now been integrated and edited into novella form. There is a bonus, previously unpublished, epilogue.

Like most of J-L's work, there is some strong language and adult themes. There is no sex in this one though.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992537418

Book preview

Deus ex Machina Publicum

(God in the Public Machine)

by

J-L Heylen

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

© J-L Heylen 2014

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Cover design: J-L Heylen

Cover image: Shutterstock image ID 15009190. Artist: Andrea Danti

Disclaimer

This novella is written in Australian English and Australian vernacular. It includes strong language, adult themes, and words used or spelled contrary to the expectations of some other users of English. The characters and events depicted are fictional. Any resemblance to real events or people is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgments

I owe the idea of this story to my friend Deb, who gave it to me in a five hour discussion over wine and dinner that she probably didn’t expect me to remember.

From there, I wrote a serialised story and published it on my blog, the majority of which is now recreated here in one volume, with bonus epilogue.

Thanks for reading.

Learn from me . . . how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

Mary Shelley, ‘Frankenstein’

For I dipped into the Future, far as human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Chapter 1

Charlie Parish, self-professed computer whiz-kid and Officer of the Federal Police Taskforce Against Child Pornography, sat at her desk sipping coffee as she digested the latest monitoring results of the main internet porn sites she had under surveillance. The report was generated not by a human, but by an automated spy-bot program that Charlie had designed and unleashed as one of her first projects when she had started this job two years ago.

It had happened again, she noted as she put down the plastic, eco-friendly, refillable, take-away cup. She was not thinking about the coffee though. Of course it had happened again with the coffee too.

The cafe next door to the 15 story building in which Charlie worked used to do the best flat-white coffee north of Melbourne, but they had recently installed a new coffee machine, and something about its settings, or the standard way the barista performed the act, no longer worked. The machine was one of those new-fangled devices that spoke to the net and gathered information about the individual consumer from an app on their smart phone. The ordered coffee was supposed to come out exactly the way that person liked it, changing grind, roast, milk type and temperature, crema, and a whole heap of things Charlie didn’t even know could be changed in coffee.

The supporting app was called ‘Perfecpresso’, and the user would order their first coffee using the app, taste it, then fill in answers to specific questions about what