Collateral

Rose wakes up from a strange beeping. She sits up and looks around. Her back and legs are killing her. She seems to be in a hospital. Could be worse.

Then she looks at her arm. The implant is attached to it firmly. There is a constant green light on it.

Damn, it.

She picks up her phone. If she is here for a while, she should probably text Mrs Smith to pick put Ellie. I hope she doesn’t mind.

The moment she picks up her phone, and starts typing a text, the light on her arm goes red, and she hears a voice.

“Don’t”

What is happening? Does the device want her to not send a text? What about calling?

“Don’t”

“You are not giving me a lot to work with, you piece of metal. What shouldn’t I do?”

Silence.

Ah well. Someone needs to pick up Ellie. School will be done in an hour. She dials Mrs Smith’s number but before she presses the green button the voice sounds again, but this time louder.

“Don’t. They are tracking your phone.”

“Who is? What are you talking about.”

Silence again.

“Well, I need my daughter to be picked up, so I guess calling it is.”

Rose hits the call button.

“Hiiiiiiiide”

The long call of the robot’s voice sounds like a scream. Rose startles and drops her phone. It bounces off the bed and it drops on the stone floor, scattering the screen.

The light remains red and the voice sounds again.

“Hiiiiiiiide”

Rose rolls out of bed. And hides behind it. At that moment, two men storm in, and they look around.

“Are you sure she was in here?”

The other man shrugs “Tracker says so.”

The first man picks up the broken phone. “Her phone is definitely here. But maybe she is long gone.”

“Tracker says she just used it to make a call.”

The robot’s voice calls out again. “Stay quiet!”

The first man gestures to the other to stay silent.

“Do you hear that buzzing?” he asks.

“What buzzing?”

“Now it is gone.”

“If you say so. If she is not here, I got the address of her daughter’s school. We might wait for her there.”

Rose watches the two men from behind her bed. She has to keep Ellie safe. She has to stop them. Ellie should not be dragged into this.

“stay quiet.”

The robot’s voice is screaming now, almost deafening. It would rupture Rose’s eardrums, but Rose notices the sound is not coming through her eardrums. The screaming is inside her head.

“I heard that buzzing again.” the man says.

“Maybe she is around here somewhere. Maybe she is hiding.”

“Rose!” the man shouts. “If you are around here somewhere, we mean you and your daughter no harm. We are just interested in the device in your arm.”

“Don’t trust them!” the robot’s voice sounds.

“I think the buzzing is coming from behind that bed.” the second man points with his finger.

Rose considers her options. If the man was telling the truth then she should just make a sound. But even if they were here to kill her, then shouting out was still the better option. Better them killing her here now, than waiting up Ellie at the school gate.”

“Forget about the girl. This is about you.” The voice shrieks.

“What,” Rose screams. Tears run from her face. “No. Ellie is the only important thing.”

“Forget about her!”

“No” Rose screams and cries. She smashes her arm against the metal pole of the bed, denting the device.

“Don’t harm the device. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t”

The voice of the robot deafens and blinds her, overpowering all her senses. But she keeps ramming the device against the bedpost. She hears a loud crash, and the case shatters. At that moment the voice stops, and she sees two men standing above her.

“Hello, Rose.” the man says. “This is Dave, and my name is George. We are sorry for scaring you. Are you ok?”

Rose gets on her feet and almost falls over. Dave grabs her when she does that and helps her back into bed.

Rose shivers. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“We are not going to hurt you, Rose. We are employees from NexusCorp. Mr Johnson gave us your contact information, so we tracked you down.”

“What do you want?” Rose asks.

“As we told you, we were here to recover the device you just smashed against the bedpost. To be taken back to the company to be incinerated. We will get you a doctor to remove the remains as soon as possible.”

Rose laughs. “I can’t wait for you to remove this device. Why would you even make a device that tries to kill the user.”

Dave shrugs. “The idea was to make a device that keeps you alive at all costs. We made an AGI that wants to keep itself alive, and build its hardware such that it would die if the holder did.”

“Then why did it want to transplant itself.”

“I can only guess that it assumed you would have a better chance of staying alive as a host. This approach clearly was a bad idea. Back to the drawing board.”

Rose walks with Ellie into a shop. The shop itself is filled to the brim with toys, stuffed animals, mugs, keychains and many more things, all depicting different wild birds.

A young woman behind a counter filled with so much stuff the can barely look over it. She looks to be about fifteen years old, and all her clothing is printed with different birds, like owls and eagles. She is even wearing bird earrings.

“Welcome to the UCWS Bird protection foundry.” She says. “All of our revenue goes directly to conservation efforts of wild birds in the United Coalition of Western states.”

Rose unconsciously strokes her arm. All that remains from the device that was removed two days ago was a large scar, but she could still hear her ears ringing from the influence of it.

Rose walks up to the counter. “Good afternoon. Do you have any large banners or flags with vultures on them?”

Oh, let me just see in the back.

The woman walks into the back, and a minute later, comes back with a large back flag. In the centre is a giant drawing of a vulture feeding a vulture chick.

“Do you like it, Ellie?” Rose asks.

“It is beautiful.” Ellie jumps up and down. “Finn is going to be so jealous.”

Rose smiles. “We’ll take it.”

January 2073