Artificial Lords II: Discord

By Adam Norwood

In the year 2076, the United States has been divided into two zones separated by a massive virtual wall. The wealthy citizens, owners of the robots and technology, have no use for the poor in their near perfect existence. The Harmonians, as they're known, have created their own territory called Harmony and cast off the freeloaders to a forsaken land named Hope. Ian Ramsey, the cofounder of the HARE Corporation and one of the wealthiest people in the world, realized the plight of the people of Hope and has formed an organization named the Council of Five to fight for reunification.
Ian Ramsey's former partner Jack Ritchie continues to live in Harmony with his family. His son Eli sees him as complicit in the harm done to the people of Hope. The humanoids and replicas of his HARE Corporation took the last remaining means of making a living, and all his father does now is focus on selfish life extension projects. As a result, Eli wants no part of his father's lifestyle and is deeply troubled by the division of the country.
With the two sides in open conflict, and after the devastating retaliatory strike against the people of Hope who crossed the Harmonian border, the country is in peril. With Ramsey presumed dead and his Montana residence destroyed, the team moves to a hidden bunker in the densely forested hills. Hunted as terrorists by the Harmonians, and now led by the dwarf gunfighter Tim Lucas, the Council plans their next move. Will it lead to the result they want or more bloodshed? Can anyone put the pieces of the fractured nation back together?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098378479

Book preview

Lucas and the Rabbit

Tim Lucas, the dwarf gunfighter from Hope, sat next to Bugsy, a humanoid resembling a rabbit that served as a mascot for The HARE Corporation. The venue was a precisely aged bar at an Old West-style saloon. Both sported drinks with a brownish hue and surely stronger than Bugsy was likely accustomed to. Lucas took a quick slug, slammed the glass on the bar, and glared at Bugsy.

Rabbit, he said. You’ve roamed about unmarked for far too long, causing great harm to my fellow townsfolk here in Hope City, Lucas said.

Bugsy nodded his head slowly. Oh, yeah? he replied. What are you going to do about it? I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams. I have everything. I’m going to outlive you, too. So, I look forward to the day when I’ll hop all over your grave. He laughed.

Lucas’s firm stare hardened as his eyes narrowed. Instead of just looking out for yourself, Rabbit, why don’t you help out humankind a bit? Why aren’t you grateful for what they’ve given you? Lucas asked.

I am grateful, the rabbit answered, to my human friends at HARE. They’re the ones who created me. I don’t really care so much for these derelicts in Hope City. They’re yesterday’s news.

Well, yesterday is today again, and I’ve got news for you, Bugsy. You never should have come here. You’re in the wrong town and I aim to make you pay for it.

You know that’s unwise, you broken-down has-been, Bugsy replied. I’m quicker on the draw than any human will ever be. You can’t win.

Lucas nodded toward the door.

Let’s go, Rabbit. We’ll see about that, Lucas said. They exited through the swinging doors of the saloon, then walked exactly 30 paces in opposite directions along the dirt road in the middle of town. They turned to face each other.

Lucas, you rancid piece of dying human flesh, you have no chance against me. I have laser aim, superior intelligence, rapid-fire … before he could finish, gunfire erupted from everywhere. Shots came from all the buildings surrounding the duel. Bullets repeatedly pierced the rabbit and filled him with hundreds of holes. Bugsy swayed back and forth, about to drop. Before he took his last breath, Lucas had one final message for him.

But I’ve got the goddam people of Hope behind me, Rabbit. And we’re not going to take this lying down anymore, Lucas shouted toward the mortally wounded HARE symbol. And we’ll be out there hiding, ready to strike whenever you’re not looking. There will be no peace for you or anyone who supports you, not until we get our country back. With that, he took careful aim at Bugsy and fired. His exploding bullet pierced the rabbit’s head and blew it to pieces. Lucas admired his work for a moment, then sauntered back into the saloon.

The video was over.

Bill Johnson asked his humanoid companion Sophia for her opinion. That’s amazing, don’t you think? he said. I hope it didn’t offend you?

No, don’t worry about that. You know I’m not from HARE anyway, Sophia answered.

Yeah, but it’s a shot at your kind, I guess, so I wanted to make sure. Well, I’m glad you’re not upset, and honestly, I think it’s quite remarkable.

The video appeared for the first time that morning and was being circulated everywhere. Bill knew the federal government and Harmonians, now essentially the same, would shut it down wherever they found a copy. The efforts would be futile, though, because in 2076 there was no way to control the spread of content like this. If people wanted to see something, they would get their hands on it. Once they did, Bill thought, the people of Hope would stand a better chance of improving their miserable lot in life.

The Hideout

Ian Ramsey, Kai Kalini, and Tim Lucas, accompanied by their humanoid companions, had traveled from Ramsey’s grand Montana home to their new, far-less-opulent residence in the remote Black Hills of South Dakota. Intentionally, Ramsey built this new haven underground so no one could see or detect it from anywhere outside the compound; they were now the most-wanted terrorists in the U.S. They needed to remain hidden. Ramsey got the most important items from his basement laboratory before fleeing. This included his robotic workers and humanoids. Their help enabled the swift exit from Red Lodge, Montana. Ramsey also kept most of his finances intact by spreading funds around well before the government came looking for them. He always knew maintaining his wealth after they discovered his activities would be the most challenging task, so the planning had begun almost three years earlier. He began hiding his fortunes about the same time he drew up initial designs for their new underground habitat. There had been losses, such as the Montana home. It was blown to ashes across the forests and streams that were a part of his daily serene existence. The paralyzing agent killed some people after they ran across the border wall when he temporarily brought it down. Ramsey knew there would be great sacrifice, but he was willing to lose everything, even his life.

Government investigators had not disclosed that Ramsey was still alive. They probably knew, but he wasn’t certain. He added his DNA to his humanoid replica, who he destroyed in the explosion. Depending on how the blast impacted the surrounding structure, and the corresponding fire, it was possible they wouldn’t discover his death was a fake. But Ramsey had to presume otherwise and expect the feds would launch an exhaustive search for him. Publicly, though, Lucas and Kai were the government’s number one targets. Their faces appeared everywhere, labeled the world’s top insurgents. The recent propaganda video they created to generate public fury toward the HARE Corporation even used Lucas as its star.

They made a portion of the video just outside the bunker in the hills near their new hideout. They filmed Lucas on a patch of sandy dirt for the staged duel, adding Bugsy and other elements virtually. They created a saloon set inside the compound—a task that kept them busy while the rebellion was crawling along. They were in a holding pattern while Ramsey and the others waited for the dust to settle.

The government’s extreme response to the latest protests by the residents of Hope dismayed Ramsey. Many of them had sprinted across the border and into Harmony after the insurrectionists had shut down the virtual wall. Agents used retina IDs to confirm who was from Hope, and if they made a positive ID, they infected the trespassers with a paralyzing agent. Some remained in an almost-frozen state for days until the drone armies collected everyone and moved them back to Hope, which took a full week. The government intentionally leaked they identified all who had crossed the border and classified them as terrorists. That resulted in the suspension of their Government Approved Payments (GAP). Worse, more than 40 people died in the attacks—either from allergic reactions or because vehicles ran them over; others fell from considerable heights. The government restored the wall shortly after they returned all residents to their homes. Once there, people were scared, and stayed indoors, trying to figure out what happened to them and regain a clear head.

Ramsey noticed Kai replaying the video for a second time. After it finished, he shared his thoughts with Ramsey and Lucas, This is wonderful. It’s going to give people a cause to get behind. The people of Hope seem to have really taken to Lucas as their champion. I was wondering though: How soon do we get the message out on our new platform? We need to do it soon. It can’t simply be: ‘Give us back the Grand Canyon.’ If that’s the only cause, the movement will eventually wither and die.

You’re right, Kai, replied Ramsey. We need to drive home our cause. How far should we go with our messaging, though? Maybe all the way now? Originally, I was thinking we should mask our ultimate intentions for us to make incremental gains. That would put us in a better position to achieve our outcome of humanism. But now we’ve already broken the current system. They have effectively disintegrated the government of Hope. Sure, they’re putting it back together again now, but under the close supervision of the feds and Harmony. There is zero path to success for us under that situation. Worse than that, citizens of Hope will instead sustain incremental losses, putting them in an even weaker position.

All the way, answered Lucas. There’s no going back to the previous plan. It’s now or never. We’re in a very vulnerable position. You have many resources left, but they will erode. We have the companions still in place over in Harmony, but they could be whittled down too.

It’s settled, then. We will distribute our message, Ramsey said.

That’s a good step, said Kai. But what is that message? I know we’re talking about fairness, ending the division with the walls, and so forth, but what’s beyond that?

Ramsey replied. You, Lucas, and I have had conversations many times about the only paths forward for humanity. One is complete and total separation with our branch of people dying off like the Neanderthals. We can never tolerate that, so the only real way forward is to reunite and share the productivity of the robots. I’ve said this a thousand times now, but we never should have accepted GAP and the wall. It took us closer to a place where we never wanted to be.

So, getting back to where we must be, I can state it simply as complete reunification and sharing the productivity of the machines. As we all know, the end of human productivity has arrived. I’ll take it a step further: The day of human innovation is ending soon, too. Our creations will soon develop and build all new things, and old things. What came before is no longer relevant. If we don’t have change, a person’s current lot in life will be that way forever. If you’re rich, you stay rich, and if you’re poor, you stay poor. There’s no way for hard work to pull you out of poverty, and that can’t possibly be our future. Money was simply a reward system for productivity and innovation. We should have no use for money in this new paradigm. So, we’ll have no money and no wealth. There’s enough machine productivity for every human to thrive. With the fertility rate finally reaching the break-even point, if we do all these things, we can thrive together.

We’re going to have to shoot our way to that future, Lucas said. I mean, I guess we’ve already started that, but my guns are loaded and I’m ready to throw more flames on this fire. They’ll never accept your vision peacefully over there. Why would they?

We need to threaten their future, their serene existence, Ramsey answered. They need to see their future is even worse than what we face in Hope.

Like Paul Bento did? Kai replied half-jokingly. It was the first time the death of the Harmonians’ outspoken leader had come up. Kai and Lucas were silent for a moment, waiting for Ramsey’s reaction.

Yeah, I guess so, he said simply. I don’t like it, you know. The violence. Kai and Lucas nodded slowly in acknowledgment. So, back to this plan, Ramsey said. If you recall, the U.S. went to more of a sharing economy earlier in this century. First ridesharing, then houses, and so forth. Some remains, but only a fraction. Progress on this new economy made it to a certain point, then stopped and reversed. We should focus our message on evolving to the sharing economy that came before; except now, we’ll share everything. There’s little need for wealth or property ownership. We can all live on schedules we select. Here one week or month, there the next. Doesn’t everyone want the beachfront lifestyle in Maui? In Malibu or the Virgin Islands? We can all have this now. We can increase the level of productivity exponentially through AI and its physical representation.

It’s like a summer camp schedule, like when you were a child, offered Lucas. You chose the activities you want. Like, I select archery, rowing, and then a craft session. But in this world, you choose where you want to live next, your next hobby, and your next adventure. Restaurants are available to everyone based on a schedule of reservations. The only difference is they’re all great. Just a unique experience each time, like the type of food and the theme.

They’re going to call it communism, you know, Ramsey, Kai said. And they’ll fight it.

I know. This comes up every time. I don’t care. It’s not in the same ballpark and we’ll need to be crystal clear why. The vision needs to be irrefutable. A new human existence. Seriously, it’s already been done on a smaller scale. They’ve created new lifestyles, but only for those who could pay. We have the resources for this to include everyone now. The next propaganda video needs to be along these lines. We need to show this positive vision and weigh it against the threats we’re posing to them now. It should be a simple choice, Ramsey explained.

A simple choice once we scare them, Lucas added. If they don’t feel threatened, they won’t give up what they have.

Yeah, that’s next. We need to do this in tandem, though. We can work on both scaring them and the next propaganda video.

They immediately got to work on the dual strategy.

Eli

Eli Ritchie returned home after making sure Sage, the girl he’d met in Reno and now cared deeply for, was safe and on her way back to Hope. He continued to duck the ceaseless questions from his parents and girlfriend Marilyn about where he had been while the wall was down. Eli kept telling them he didn’t want to talk about it. His relationship with Marilyn was now clearly on the rocks; neither seemed interested in trying to save it. They hadn’t even tried to contact each other for days. Eli’s father Jack was badgering him about the Ramsey news and seemed to look at Eli suspiciously all the time. Everything he said to Eli seemed an interrogation, so he just ignored his father, who became extremely frustrated. His mother seemed to oppose Eli, too, but tried to take a thinly disguised good cop approach he rejected.

Eli tried to maintain his health, though, so he resumed his usual morning run. Routine was perfect for him at this point in his life. He could go about his day feeling nothing, and that’s the way he wanted it for now. It wasn’t tremendously different from his life before. He took his usual path down into San Francisco and saw the usual cast of characters, mostly HARE creations. This time, however, they made him angry. It wasn’t the humanoid replicas per se, but their owners and what they represented. After all, he enjoyed spending time with the humanoid Woody Guthrie at the wall protest. While he was running downtown, he saw anti-Hope virtual billboards, which made him even angrier. How had this even affected these people? As he ran deeper into downtown, he saw something else upsetting: The Harmonians were positioning Paul Bento as a martyr. Eli shook his head; Paul Bento was no martyr. Did these people even know what a martyr was? What cause did he die for? Protecting the vast fortunes of his family and their friends? Amazing man, what a hero, Eli thought. He tried to put all of this out of his mind for the rest of his run, but it didn’t work. It kept coming back. The fact Ramsey met his end with Bento had shaken Eli. The worst part about it was the public demonization of Ramsey as the killer of Bento, who wasn’t a quarter of the man Ramsey was. Ramsey’s death left a hole inside Eli he thought would never close. He didn’t know it at the time, but now it was clear. His visit to Red Lodge this past summer made an impression that changed him forever.

The Trial

Marilyn and Jack Ritchie had been working tirelessly at Jack’s lab on a breakthrough on human life extension. They based their work on the efforts of their incredibly powerful Artificial Intelligence systems that performed all the real labor. Jack used his vast wealth to build one of the world’s most powerful cloud systems to focus on this effort. By law, they had to supervise and document all outcomes. Any new direction from the various outcomes had to adhere to these strictures. As work in this field continued around the globe, there was synchronization of human data, but not direct sharing of what to do to manipulate the genes. They identified the aging gene many years earlier, but the discovery only led to more questions, not life-extending therapies. Mapping out how the aging gene controlled other genes had been the focus of the past 20 years and led to many amazing discoveries. Everyone now had the data on which genes did what related to aging, but the AIs now focused on the outcomes of simulated modifications to these genes. The AIs even came up with the ideas on what modifications to make and then ran simulations of their own theories. Once they had a positive outcome, the research needed to shift to animal and eventually human trials.

The trial process was out of scope for Jack and Marilyn, but they continually tracked the outcomes and would reap the benefits of any discoveries. Now, they had one therapy that progressed to human trials. Jack didn’t care about the financial impact. Getting credit for this type of discovery and first access to therapies for him and his family was the most exciting part. Though Eli didn’t seem to care about any of this, what drove Jack most was thinking about how this could impact his only offspring. He thought Eli would eventually come around and realize what incredible things his father had been doing to benefit him. Jack and Marilyn continued to work throughout the tumultuous summer, even the day the wall came down. Many businesses closed for a few days, especially those near the border. While working alongside Marilyn, Jack brought up the status of the existing trial virtually every day. A few weeks after they restored the wall, he received welcome news.

They’ve enrolled all the participants in the full human trial now, Marilyn. I’m not sure if you saw it. That’s fantastic news. Step one. Everyone has received the therapy, and so far, there are no serious adverse events. The initial gene therapy has caused no negative reactions, Jack said.

It’s exciting! replied Marilyn. I know you probably wish you could be the one to spring the news on me, but I can’t help myself. I’m watching it every day, too. Every morning it’s the first thing I check.

It won’t be long now. We’ve been grinding away at this and it seemed like it could be forever until we get an actual therapy people can use, but it’s finally right in front of us. With the human trial length being so short, 30 days from now could be one of the most exciting days of my life. It’s crazy it takes less than an hour for the FDA AI approval system to compile a new drug application. I remember my father saying it would take 10 years or longer for testing and approval of medical devices. The FDA part of the process alone took one year.

Marilyn just nodded and they continued to work. They had little else to talk about these days, as she and Eli were all but officially finished. It led to a little tension between her and Jack, but they adjusted to the new normal.

Bill and Sophia

in Harmony

Ramsey gave Bill Johnson, a member of the Council of Five, a specific mission due to his unique location in Harmony. Sophia, one of Ian Ramsey’s creations, communicated the details. He and Sophia would assist the humanoid spies who Ramsey secretly placed in Harmony. Bill would remain a Harmony resident as long as possible, even though his teaching position was being eliminated. Normally, he would have no choice but to leave Harmony almost immediately, move to Hope and accept GAP. In his case, however, Ramsey’s money eased any financial concerns. After a while, people would wonder how he maintained his lifestyle, so that would limit his time in Harmony. He’d have to be effective in the short time remaining.

The