AI Reborn

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2023

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter One

  Mason felt distinctly odd, and more than a little conspicuous, trying to run along the damp and puddle bestrewn city street. Outside. In the real world. Not safely inside his VR room, locked away from prying eyes or real hazards. Part of that kind of thing wasn’t totally unheard of in his life, of course. He did exercise. Almost every day, in the last months, even. Part of that, as weird as it sounded to him, was done due to the fact that he had a girlfriend. An actual female person who spent time with him and who, for her own reasons, took part in that sort of sporty and energetic madness.

  An actual mate. Which, given everything, he hadn’t even wanted at any point in his not too long life. Maybe, possibly, when he’d been young the idea had occurred to him. When hormones had ordered him to procreate, even if he had been the ugly fat kid.

  A thing that had never even been close to happening. In fact, his clumsy attempts at getting female attention had been shot down, hard and often, so that, by the time he’d been fourteen or so, he’d gotten the point. Women weren’t really an option for him. Not being gay, that meant he needed to improve the situation. So he had, by learning to keep that part of himself in VR. That splendid and marvelous fantasy world where his dreams were true and his hopes weren’t just another tool to manipulate him into behaving inside a specific box. Not the messy reality that he lived in the rest of the time.

  He reflected on that, being a lonely fat kid, as he padded at a decent but not intense pace, down a fairly pretty residential street in Portland, Oregon. Mainly in that he currently wasn’t that old at all. Twenty-five. That was hardly ancient. Still, there he was, going outside and everything, so that people could see that he, a semi-celebrity of some sort, wasn’t afraid to be out alone. With no friends around him, or guards to protect his tender flesh.

  That was why he was really there. It would have been faster and far less annoying to run in his VR room, after all. For one thing, his socks would be dry at the moment. The puddles were not allowing that to happen, even as he tried to avoid them. The idea of being seen hadn’t been his. No, it was, clearly, his punishment for attaching himself to Lexi Horn. Famous actress. After all, she was smart, and had decided that going out herself, with bodyguards or large and powerfully built assistants, would make it seem like a publicity stunt. If he did it, alone, which made sense not having anyone dedicated to his security anyway, no one would imagine that.

  The trick there was that he’d honestly figured that no one would care if he was in public. As in no one would notice him. He was just himself, after all. Mason Sims. A fairly decent nano assembly guy. Lately a bit of an imbed tattoo design professional. Also with some skill in food pattern design. They all related, as fields went. A person who had given people some free things to help them out when the world situation had shifted on them all, about three months before. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

  It might seem like it on paper, since the nano assemblers and disassemblers, pickers, food units for in-depth construction and some basic power systems, as well as imbed ballistic and energy shields would add up to a gift of a few hundred billion dollars, under the old economy. That was gone though. No one was using money, or credits, for anything, any longer. So, he’d actually just given away free things.

  Meaning no one would, or at least should, actually care about him at all.

  Except that, as he glanced up, first one, then six, flying drones started to track him, getting video of him gasping and panting. Showing that he wasn’t afraid, because, of course, he had an imbed shield on his skin. Anyone trying to shoot, stab or laze him was going to find that it wasn’t going to work at all. If they grabbed him, well, then he’d flop around like a fish in a VR camping program and try to run off. No one wanted him though. Really, he couldn’t imagine what they’d do with him if they did catch him and carry him away.

  Money was totally useless and he, personally, had already been giving away free tech, since before the economy had tanked. The most anyone should do, even criminals, would be to come and ask him for new stuff. Which he’d give them. Probably not even thinking about it much. So, no, it wasn’t going to be a problem at all.

  He also wasn’t important to the public. They kind of knew who he was, since people had taken to calling the nano-disassembly devices he’d put out for free Masons. Meaning his biggest real claim to fame was that his girlfriend was an actress and he hung around with some famous people.

  Well, possibly it was due to the new imbeds he’d put out, the day before. A totally new VR system. That was pretty good. It wasn’t revolutionary, really, mimicking a very high-end room and outfit set-up that way, but his units were free, and could be used anywhere. The idea was interesting, since it used imbed tattoos, the removable kind, which invisibly coated the entire body. Rather, it turned people slightly bronze, from the metals used in that particular device. Still, it wasn’t a dark color.

  Signals were sent to the nerves, the connections aligned nearly perfectly, and small electrical signals caused the body to resist at the correct time, giving a force feedback feeling that, while not perfect, was more complete than anything other than a full VR suit would provide.

  There was an imbed for his eyes as well, which allowed his vision to be totally co-opted, and a very nice set of controlled drops, that worked in his ears, for sound. In all, when turned on, reality would fall away, totally, leaving him in whatever VR world he’d programmed into being.

  If he wanted to run in place and have it feel real, he still needed to use his roller floor, with its millions of little ball bearings, but other than that, the system was nearly flawless.

  They didn’t even take a lot of energy to use, meaning they could perform at a high level with the new lower intensity energy systems that had come out. It took about a hundredth of the energy that an older system needed and came with a safe antenna array to collect the needed information and power from a standard wireless set. All of that was built into the imbed, so once applied, you had everything you needed to start playing.

  Not all of that was his work, either. No, once people, some of them, had gotten the idea, that money wasn’t going to be a thing any longer, a few of them had started to dump a lot of really sweet tech onto the market, for everyone to use. Not a lot of people, but at least two others had done it, which had allowed for almost everyone to set up better power systems than his thermal paint would have allowed for.

  As he padded along, avoiding puddles since it had rained earlier, his new shoes shedding fluid and keeping his feet warm, while spreading the weight of his footfalls evenly, water coming in at the top of his socks and wicking downward, he grinned. After all, everything had weaknesses. When you found them, you either lived with the flaw, or tried to find a way to fix it. In this case, not jumping in puddles seemed like the first thing to try.

  One of the drones moved in next to him, floating along easily, at head height.

  It was professional seeming, colored in red and white plastic, with eight evenly spaced propellers, quietly providing airflow over counter-rotating disks that were providing lift. That was an older configuration still used, since it worked pretty well. There was a large and highly complex camera lens array, with six apertures, to show he was being mapped for VR use. Only on one side, of course. It needed to move around him totally, to get a good picture that could be made into a virt.

  A voice came from the unit, as it floated next to him. Largely being ignored by Mason, since mugging for the camera always looked bad. It was an amateur move or showed paranoia. He kept his eyes forward, to give the impression that the viewer would be floating next to him, looking at the side of his head. That was always better to watch, on a three-dimensional screen.

  “Mr. Sims. You exercise outside? Is that safe? There have been... disruptions.”

  He shrugged as he moved, smiling a bit. It was contrived, of course, though he figured that his makeup imbed was going to leave him looking virt ready, at least. Even if he was gasping a little, covered with sweat and a slight bit of slickness from the misting he’d taken a bit earlier.

  “There have been some minor events. Even a few major ones. But everyone is getting that everything can be better now. That we can have everything we want now. I expect crime to not only go down but to virtually vanish in the next year. Once people start using the new devices and realize that they can have pretty close to anything they want. It’s not perfect yet, sure. We’ll get there. That’s the outside time point for that, too. As for exercising, well, we should all be doing that, every day. All of us should be getting outside and helping our neighbors or just saying hello to them. Block parties, maybe. Really, let’s all claim that this weekend is the first annual block party for the United States. Everyone make plans and set things up, if the weather allows.”

  The idea was a stupid one, of course. People didn’t really do things like that. There were reasons, too. Still, if he was outside, running and getting damp feet that day to show things were safe, adding in a party for everyone kind of made sense. To him. Probably no one else in the world. That got him to grin.

r />   He shook his head then.

  “Scary, I know. I mean, going outside, right? That’s why we have VR, but we still need to do it for mental health reasons. People need to actually see and interact with other people, real ones, occasionally.” At least that was what the psychologists had been pushing on them all for over the last forty years.

  Seeing that he was talking, possibly answering questions, the other units moved closer, with voices coming at him, several of them trying to fly around him in a three-sixty, in order to get pictures for complete models. It would be harder with him, a nobody, than with someone like Ben Starky or Deidre Omry. Both of them had been on screens a lot, in the last months. Ben had one of the most popular programs going at the moment, even.

  A cooking show.

  Really it was about using high end nano assembly devices that made food. You didn’t really do much cooking with those, building what you wanted from base components. Popular, since everyone suddenly had that kind of advanced food manufacturing unit, in theory if not practice, and farm fresh produce was scarce that year. So everyone in the nation suddenly had an interest in machine-built food that didn’t suck. Ben Starky was a master chef, with regular food but had, just before the government had suddenly come under attack and fallen apart, started a new show, a virt, for exactly what was needed by almost everyone now. A program that Mason was working on, since building food profiles, good ones, which worked on the high-end assembly devise, was a hobby of his. Now it was a job, of course.

  Another voice, one that sounded like an actual person, a young one, spoke to him then.

  “Um... Are you and Lexi Horn going to get married? Or, I mean, do you have sex with other people?”

  It was a bit disjointed and not important at all but he thought for a second, instead of just saying no, since marriage was stupid. A way to trap men into being slaves to women. It was rare and not that important as an institution any longer. Other than his parents, of course, who had done the marriage and kid thing the way it had been intended to be used. Growing up there had been a few other kids in school like that. Some had been surrogate situations, since they had two dads or moms, of course. It was still a trap.

  It used to be, at least. Now with the new rules, when being divorced wouldn’t, and couldn’t, utterly destroy a man and leave him probably ending up in prison for breaking some rule or another, that might have changed. He wasn’t certain.

  “I don’t know? On the marriage part. We should all still be having sex in VR, in the main. Especially if you all go and downlink the new imbed that I put out for that, yesterday. It’s up on Slipknot. Get yours today. You know... Deidre Omry has a new instructional VR program coming out soon, to teach people how to actually do that correctly with a real person. It’s very high end and is being designed to work with the new imbed VR devices. Those are free, so everyone should get one. I have one on right now.” That was true, since it was part of his skin, over his entire body. There were eye drops and ones for his ears, too he didn’t mention that part. The constructed tattoo eye piece was actually the important part of the whole unit, really. People would get that, when they looked up the specs on the link. It wasn’t hard to use.

  He hadn’t been watching or listening to anything as he’d run, but he could have, if it had occurred to him. The younger voice, who sounded like a girl to him, spoke. Seeming excited.

  “I have one of those, too. They’re super popular and sprong. My mom even has one. She likes mystery virts, which is kind of boring right now. Not a lot of new things are coming out.”

  That was just true, of course. It had been a large business, worth a significant portion of the country’s economy, the year before. Now no one would be getting paid. Ben, Deidre and Lexi had been working for free, so they actually had new things coming out. Set up for his new VR imbed system, as well as the older one. Most of the other professionals hadn’t, not understanding that part of the new world, yet.

  “Yeah. Still, that will change. A lot of people are going to realize that they can just build what they need to make their own shows now. High quality virts and VR. Honestly, we’ll probably see that kind of thing getting better, since a lot of what we had before couldn’t really take any risks. It was too expensive to be adventurous. Sales aren’t important anymore, so, you know, it’s all about being popular and getting views. So people are going to be getting better. Now... Hold on. I have to cross the street.”

  There wasn’t a lot of traffic but people had electric cars still and used them. Most people just didn’t have a job to go to, and it was early in the morning. Before noon.

  Not so odd for him to be up and about but a lot of people wouldn’t even be awake yet.

  Crossing the road, he looked both ways, several times, and didn’t speak until he’d safely gotten to the other side. Just in case anyone was watching him do it. Which, after a fashion, he knew the answer to. He was being followed by drones, buzzing and whining as he moved. He was being watched.

  They still had laws, after all. Just no real police force to keep people in line.

  That was down to the fact that most government workers were currently blind. It was a temporary state, the nano clusters that were covering their eyes being impossible to remove safely but they would, over time, simply fade on their own, losing the bonds that held them in place.

  People were also partially deaf, as well. The same ones, for a similar reason. Some, no doubt evil, terrorists had put out huge amounts of nano powders in government buildings, that responded to anyone who had a government inskin computer device with an official signal coming from it. The nano dust had collected over the lens of the eyes, and around the bones in the ears, rather effectively.

  So, other people had to care for them but as long as they had food and water, they would recover, in time. In about eleven months, and seven days, to be exact. Not that Mason had told anyone that. The doctors knew it was happening, of course. It had even been put out in the press. Not the exact dates, just that the people infected would be fine again, eventually. So it hadn’t been the slaughter of the old guard, just an inconvenience that the government hadn’t been able to manage on their own.

  There were a few politicians who kept making a point of claiming they were in control. No one was listening to them in particular. The police, the jackboot tyrants, had virtually vanished. Where they hadn’t, their old tactics of assaulting innocent civilians had stopped working, more or less. They could still arrest people but simply beating them half to death was a thing of the past.

  Everyone, over ninety percent of the population if his math was correct, should have high-end imbed shields in their skin. Forty percent had eye drops in, to prevent lasers and dazzlers from being effective. Meaning the only trick that worked now was to bodily pick up a person, slowly and carefully, and to use handcuffs that gently restrained an individual.

  Another of the drones approached, the one the kid was using moving back, to politely get out of the shot.

  “Is there anything new in the works that you want to tell the public about? Other than the new device you released yesterday. That’s big news.” This came from a man, the voice probably being an AI. A tool, instead of a major system. Those, the old mega AI like the IRS and Mil-Net had gone down when Mil-Net had set off EMPs over every major city. That one act, meant to stop the terrorists, had actually been what had stopped the government.

  Because Mason had new tech that hadn’t been taken down, being in a faraday cage at the time, sitting there, ready to go. Everyone in the country had it now, if they wanted it. At least that was the plan. He hadn’t been tracking the spread, just assuming it was working, of course. Moving from person to person. Assemblers that could make anything they needed. Disassemblers, so there would be no waste and trash could be used to make what was desired. Energy systems, so the power couldn’t be cut off. Not that it had been, everywhere. The nuclear plants had to be kept running, and the electricity needed to go somewhere, so a lot of people had energy at the touch of a switch still. Even if they weren’t paying for it. So, money was worthless, but everyone had food, clean water and the ability to have any material good they wanted. Printed at home, using a combination of new energy technologies, that could be run almost anywhere. In theory. If things were happening like they should be. All it would take was people understanding that there was no value in holding back tech from anyone else.

 

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