Toccatas & Fugues: Stories So Far

By J. McClain

Toccatas & Fugues: Stories So Far is a collection of ten Speculative Fiction short stories. From ghosts to robots and many things in-between, this collection includes horror, science fiction, fantasy, ghosts, steampunk, and apocalyptic fiction.

-A team of scientists attempt to awaken a sentient robot in “An Experiment with Sublimity.”
-Perhaps they stayed too long. Long enough, at least, to be trapped in a “Fear Cage.”
-What do you do when you're required to live in a super-highrise of the future, and you happen to be afraid of clouds? Ask “Jo Nepho.”
-Mark Twain was invited to have “A Lay-by at Cottonwood” in 1831. He shouldn’t have accepted.
-A woman recently widowed receives an unexpected message while doing her “Sunday Puzzles.”
-A “Locust” plague is not as dangerous as a mother's wrath.
-“Lazenby’s Aethereolabe” is a bold experiment, but will it carry our hero to an unfortunate doom?
-“White Out” recounts the bitter story of a greedy man who meets something greedier than himself.
-A “Bright Star” shines in the night, before falling.
-“Miss Fitzhue” is trapped inside a robot, and the robot consciousness coexisting with her is confused.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. McClain
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497766785

Book preview

An Experiment With Sublimity

Dedicated to Dr. Stephen Canham

Dr. Ei Tetsuyama had the honor of hitting the Primary Systems Initialization Switch (aka The Big Red Button) this time around; the master switch that started the process. Everything was ready, everyone in place. She looked around at the team, each one nodding back an OK. She tapped her screen once. Red to green.

The sets of TFTs down the side of each of Device Four’s arms began to warm from black to deep aquamarine. Ei was distracted by the color that flowed down each arm. She pulled herself back to the monitor. Board nominal. Alpha, Beta and Gamma had booted the same way, at least up to this stage. Let it stay that way.

The first step in stage one brought the primary systems and hardware online. The status indicators for the chest dynamo, exhaust fans, venting ports and plasma pumps turned from red to green one by one, a sea of traffic lights giving the go-ahead to the revving circulatory system. As systems warmed, fluid began to pump through the web of veins and arteries, cooling the Device and providing the repair nanotech a travel medium.

Prep the body, then flick the soul switch, Charles had said, as the team had initiated Alpha’s boot. Ei shook her head at the ghost of the comment still lingering in the lab five years later. Not all at one go, Charles, not this time. That’s where we went wrong with all of them, Alpha, Beta and Gamma. In Sublimity’s case the advanced cognitive processes—the soul—wouldn’t become fully operational until stage seven. She needed to come to awareness, not be drowned in it. That was where we must have made the mistake. Too much for a sentient being to process from the first moment.

Nine minute mark. Startup sequence continuing. All systems show green.

Alpha’s moment had come and gone in silence. Device One had powered on, and opened her two rose-grey, finely burnished eyelids—multistruck AA-plate, with multidirectional movement capability for when the Device changed facial expressions. She had stared directly up at the ceiling, not moving, for exactly six seconds. And then she had powered off again.

It had been that simple. One moment all systems were green, the next, everything had powered down. The sudden shutdown wiped out months of work in less than a tenth of a second. They’d expected a blowout maybe, some single system error. Anything but a disastrous complete shutdown.

Dr. Kowalski came across something in one of the subsystems that led to the Self-Kill Switch, so they started there. After six weeks the team had only achieved partial success. The best evidence pointed to a program test query being sent by one of Alpha’s higher cognitive programs to all systems during system startup. The test query had sent up a false flag warning and committed Alpha to emergency shutdown while still in the middle of the startup process, overloading the system.

The explanation of how the shutdown had happened did not do much to mollify the corporation chiefs. The VHI review had been caustic, with particular emphasis on the Self-Kill Switch itself. The team had installed the switch so that in case of a partial Device failure the system could power itself down, saving components. But the VHI review had focused almost exclusively on the (admittedly proven) potential for malfunction of the kill system itself. The orders were sent, the SKS was eliminated, and a new Device was prepped according to revised specs.

Ei called the eight-minute mark, her mind still reviewing the three previous attempts. Beta’s startup had been more dramatic, though ultimately as unsuccessful as Alpha’s. Once fully operational, Beta had begun to lift herself from the table, hands grasping the sides. After a few moments, she’d collapsed back onto the assembly table, status lights on the team’s consoles turning green to red, one by one.

The team had more trouble with the second diagnosis. The best guess was that a set of auxiliary power systems designed to provide backup had somehow kicked in while main power was still on, and the resulting power overload had blown the processing units. The VHI response report was equally subdued, the corporation classifying the event as Unforeseeable Device Error. The team went through a second set of revisions, focusing on failsafes that would protect the processing core from surges.

Ei called seven minutes to startup. The other team members confirmed go status as subsystems came online. On the table, Sublimity lay silent, eyes closed. The machine in slumber.

Ei was still processing the particulars of the task at hand, punching buttons on her diagnostic board as one or another of Sublimity’s auxiliary systems begged for the go-ahead to come alive, but the rest of her mind wandered and wondered. Would this one succeed? Ei looked over at the Device. At Sublimity.

Sublimity had received her name after a very long discussion at the team’s usual nomiya, a drink and snack bar near the company complex. Someone had groaned at the mention of the word Delta. The conversation had turned to names, for the third time that week. What had happened with Gamma was part of the reason for the name change. Actually it was most of the reason. And one of the rare times they’d ever talked about Gamma (always with alcohol involved).

Whatever happened—and I’m not too sure yet what did happen—we’re participating in the sublime, Kowalski had said. There is something awesome in the idea of these creations, something of sublimity here.

Ei laughed. So what, should we call the next one ‘Sublimity’?

Someone toasted to the name and it stuck, first as a nickname, then, once the idea had been floated with the higher-ups, officially. They all felt relieved to be rid of the series of letters that ended with Gamma. Twenty six seconds was a terribly long time.

Charles Alquist had been team leader then. He was one of the original six directors of Sorrum’s United Synthetics, the company (or more accurately the mismatched group of geeks in lab coats) who’d come up with the Devices’ system design. He was standing near Gamma when the system initialized. He cleared his throat.

Here goes aural stimulus. Gamma, can you hear me?

Gamma opened her eyes. She stared up at the ceiling. Her jaw opened, as if she was about to speak. Then it closed. Gamma sat up in a remarkably relaxed manner, at which point they all gasped, Charles taking a half-step back. For just that moment, they felt the thrill of accomplishment; it had all finally, impossibly, worked.

Ei called over, a spur of the moment act. Gamma?

There was a quiet whir as the head swiveled. Two pitch-black, perfectly circular orbs fixed directly upon Ei’s face. The movement so precise, so inhuman, Ei felt a sudden, unexpected dread fall across her. She felt like prey. Would Gamma’s facial recognition programs read her fear? Ei forced the muscles in her face into her best imitation of a smile, hoping to elicit a friendly response.

Charles waved a hand in front of Gamma’s face. She swiveled to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, drew him closer, staring, staring. Charles twisted against Gamma, struggling to break free. Then she screamed. Servos and gliding faceplates drew her features into a masque of agony. The piercing wail froze everyone for a moment. It was a metal screaming of despair. After a few seconds her vocals became high-pitched and reedy, then modulated—strict—as if played through a keyboard. Gamma cocked her head to one side, still staring at Charles, almost as if she were now considering some question to ask him. Finally there was a muted crackle of electricity. Gamma jerked and her head fell forward. The system failed. She died. Twenty-six seconds.

As soon as the team pried Charles free of Gamma’s grip, he walked out of the lab, jumped into his car and drove away. HR received his resignation notice by registered mail the next morning. The experiment would continue.

After experiencing firsthand the failure of the three Devices, and in particular Gamma’s reaction, Ei had begun to develop a hypothesis. One anomalous failure was expected. Two was odd. Three was too many to dismiss. Then it came to her. She floated the idea at the next meeting.

I think it’s too much, too soon. Who wouldn’t blow a circuit faced with complete, total self-awareness, as well as the knowledge of all of history, the sciences, the arts, psychology, ethics, morals…. All within the first moments of your existence?

Dr. Duvall shook his head. But there was no indication of a burnout in the MMSU circuitry.

"Not…. OK, misleading analogy. What I’m saying is that we have to allow for the possibility of there being some element, some overwhelming factor connected with the sudden understanding of the creation of its self as a self-aware being.

Duvall had been skeptical of any sort of success in terms of self-consciousness, despite being one of the most devoted program theorists on the team. Today was no exception. Why would there be an overload from comprehending the fact of its creation, any more than in comprehending the fact that someone assembled a pocket watch?

Kazuo Motomura, replacing Charles as the VHI team director, had stepped in the day Charles had left, with hardly an introduction. He alternated curt and gruff. Today was curt day.

It had a reaction.

Duvall went on the defensive. We also have no way of knowing if Dr. Tetsuyama’s explanation of the reaction is correct or not.

We don’t have another explanation, zat’s why we are considering. Is there another theory? Something else to try? If not, zen we start restructuring boot process to work in stages. The Psych team will be helpful in providing support necessary to help set up the initialization hierarchy.

The resulting hierarchy had seven stages. The first six stages activated the memory nodes on the Diamond Points: Basic interactivity, Advanced interactivity, Logical thought, Ethics and Morals, Social Functionality, and Asynchronous Thought. Stage seven was the when the Omnisphere came online—the system that in theory would provide the Device with self-consciousness.

Ei rubbed the back of her left leg with the other foot as she called the six-minute mark. The plastic bag over her shoe made scratching difficult, but the itch was distracting.

At five minutes: final safety checks and a flurry of activity. At four minutes, everything looked good on the boards. Everything had looked good on the boards for Gamma too. Everything works perfectly, right up to the moment of failure…. Failure. That nagging feeling again. She tapped at a set of buttons at the top of her board, checking codes.

Final thirty.

The twenty second mark. The ten-second countdown. The 5-4-3-2-1. The zero.

And then, just like her sisters before her, Sublimity opened her eyes. She blinked.

Plus five seconds. Sublimity? Can you hear me? Ei called over.

Kowalski’s hand was on the external kill switch. Just in case. Sublimity blinked again, then turned toward Ei.

Yes, I can hear you.

That’s good, Sublimity. You may call me Doctor Tetsuyama, or just Doctor. Could you please sit up now?

Yes Doctor. Sublimity swiveled up from prone to sitting. Blink. The research team had put together a special version of Trivial Pursuit that included facts about the Devices. Her blink rate was precisely 353 milliseconds, the average speed of a human blink, no slower, no faster. Just right. So far she was just right.

My board reads OK. Does everyone else agree? No sign of malfunction at stage one?

Nods of assent.

They went through a short set of tests designed to check motor functions in conjunction with external input. Sublimity was then asked to lie back down. They proceeded to stage two; she was fine with the basics of interactivity. Stage three went well; Sublimity’s logic systems functioned normally. Stage four; Sublimity’s answer to the hypothetical question of the fat man and the trolley headed toward the crowd of children stunned the team. Ei smiled at Sublimity’s success. They finished, gave Sublimity the OK, and left.

At stage five Ei sensed something about Sublimity’s responses. The socialization exercises had been designed to ensure the unit was capable of successful interaction with humans in a variety of situations, including hostile ones. Charles called them the Know Your Place Shuffle. She hadn’t thought about the phrase again until she saw the psych team at work. Sublimity seemed to be putting an edge to her responses, a hint of coldness Ei hadn’t heard when she’d interacted with Sublimity earlier on. The psych team didn’t seem to pick up on it. Was it her imagination?

Ei was tempted to ask Sublimity if something was bothering her, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to explain why to the psych team, and she wasn’t sure what the question would mean. So she said nothing, and watched the team go through the tests. The leader gave the go-ahead for the next stage.

Stage six was Gaussian Thought activation: simulation of the human imaginative and creatively intellectual asynchronous cross-referencing processes. Ei couldn’t sense any of the earlier coldness in Sublimity’s responses this time. She decided her earlier worries had been unfounded. The GT Team finished almost ten minutes ahead of schedule. One of the team members—a friend of Duvall’s as she remembered—couldn’t hide his nervousness. About what, Ei couldn’t be positive, though she could guess. Sublimity was... uncanny. There was nothing wrong about her. Answers, comments, opinions. Flawless.

Ei walked over to the Device after the GT Team had left. "You’re doing well,