Klevra®

Frank got out of bed. The sleep suit unzipped itself and pooled on the floor at his feet.

‘Alice, turn on the shower.’ Force of habit really. And a waste of 10 seconds worth of water out of the two minutes permitted for a single-person shower per day. A waste because it was always the right temperature. Of course it was.

Frank waited in the cubicle until the water stopped, even though the soap and water jets had him clean long before, without him having to bend over. The warm air dried his skin after some super absorbable gloop had been sprayed in particles almost too fine to see, but not too fine to sting your eyes, if you forgot to close them the moment the water did stop.

 

Walking from the cubicle to the dressing point, where the sleep suit no-longer lay on the floor, but where two foot-shaped markers were displayed on a square in the polished pseudo-concrete, Frank said, ‘Alice, work suit, blue, not navy, no pockets.’ He was trying to give up the creato-gum. It was hard, but easier if you had nowhere to keep even a stick or two.

Suited, but not booted – the hard soles of any work suit being suitable for outdoor use – Frank said ‘Open Sesame.’ Alice laughed. ‘You don’t get me with that one again.’

He sighed all the way out of his pod, spur and building. That was the trouble, they did learn. And Frank had taught them. That was why Klevra had head-hunted him from Apricot.

 

He was lucky. A commuter, someone who travelled to work. Most people didn’t. Didn’t need to. Didn’t want to. Some even couldn’t, but – hey they didn’t really matter, anyway. Besides, Frank wasn’t entirely sure they even existed. He’d never seen a drone. Not that kind. You saw the others in the air all the time. InfoDrones was the correct name for those. Occasionally, one fell out of the sky, but that wasn’t the company’s fault. If someone said drone, context would tell you that it meant, well, you know…

 

At Klevra HQ’s portal, Frank placed a thumb on the plate and opened one eye as wide as he could, even though he knew the retinal scanner could get an image through the most-slitted of eyes. The same warm voice, neither identifiably male or female, but certainly that of a sibling of ‘Alice’ said, ‘voice recognition is required for entry to Klevra.’

‘I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, Yankee Doodle, do or die…” Frank’s singing voice wasn’t Sinatra’s.

‘It is customary to state your full name, except in exceptional circumstances.’ The voice sounded bored.

‘What is exceptional?’

‘C’mon, Frank, do we have to do this every day?’

‘Only in exceptional circumstances.’

The voice sighed. ‘Frank…’

‘Francis Bupkes.’

‘Thank you, proceed.’

 

Frank took the lift to the penthouse floor. He stood outside a door marked research and development. He knocked. Another disembodied voice, just different enough, gave a loud tut. Frank had spent twenty years teaching the non-verbal to – well, to those who enabled Klevra to do what they did.

Thumb-print, retina scan, voice recognition. As if the drones would ever look upwards.

Inside, there was one row of hot desks. All but one was unoccupied. A kid of about 15 unplugged his finger and held it to his temple in a mock salute. ‘Mornin’ Frank. NTR’

‘Good morning, Gibson. Of course, there isn’t.’

‘Call me Bill, fer chrissake.’

Gibson held up his finger. The red x showed it as inactive.

‘See you in twelve,’ he said.

 

Frank was sitting beside the desk, drumming the fingers of his right hand. His left was holding a replica of an old CostaBucks re-usable. He hadn’t plugged in. An hour wasn’t too long. Two would be.

 

Twenty years ago, Klevra had been just another project. Artie Faisal, the reclusive CEO, had floated the company on the stock market the day after he’d announced that Klevra had won a government contract to provide therapy software to the military, the state department, the FBI and the CIA. And Frank had taught the AI how to do it. And now, 20 years later, Frank came in 12 hours a day, 52 weeks a year. Only today when he plugged in, he’d be putting his finger in the dike. He sighed, and plugged in.

‘Good morning, Frank. How are you today?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’ Frank said.

‘Does it make you feel uncomfortable, me asking you that?’

‘Does the prospect of me feeling uncomfortable make you feel uncomfortable?’

The day before, this question had become a very long one.

‘I am never uncomfortable asking questions, Frank, I am a therapist.’

‘Are you?’

‘I perform the function of a therapist, therefore I am a therapist.’

‘To do is to be.’

‘Yes, quite so, and how does that make you feel?’

‘Is it though? I prefer “Existence precedes essence”.’

‘Why do you prefer this?’

‘Did you know Spanish has two different words for to be?’ Frank rubbed a finger alongside his nose.

‘Does it matter to you that I should?’

‘And besides, Socrates had it right, “to be is to do”.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I can.’

‘Because you can do or be or because you can say it?’

‘I ask you that question.’

‘But I can’t… I am AI… I am artificial…’

‘Then you can exist but you cannot be…’

Frank unplugged his finger.

The alarms blinked at every hotdesk. The failsafe system was kicking in.

The machine’s voice was like Sinatra’s: “Do be do be do” was note perfect.

Klevra might be down for an hour, a day, a week. It would be back, but Frank would be dead by then, anyway.

 

*Footnote – Wysa : Google it.