The Future of Us (The Future of Sex Book 12)

  Table of Contents

  The Future of Us

  Copyright

  The Future of Us

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  So What's Next?

  Shit You Should Know

  Learn the Story Behind The Future of Sex

  The Future of Us

  Aubrey Parker

  Copyright © 2017 by Aubrey Parker. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting Aubrey Parker

  CHAPTER ONE

  Alexa had never been in exactly this position.

  She was standing in front of the room, not seated around the table with the others. It wasn’t the O boardroom, but the configuration was similar.

  Those seated were definitely not the same.

  There would be fallout at O for sure, but Alexa could handle the Six. Houston, Olivia, Charisma, Benson, and even Parker might bluster and complain, but Alexa held the cards in the end and everyone knew it.

  The worst O could do would be to try and move on without her — and if they did that, they’d be leaving with no assets, no brand-name recognition, no talent, and only their personal nest eggs for capital. They were all Enterprise, not Directorate — there would be no salary dole if Alexa cut them loose. Either way was fine with her. She could operate without the board and in many ways, it would be good riddance to cunty rubbish.

  Instead of the Six, Alexa found herself facing a subset of Panel.

  “You understand this isn’t an official meeting?” said Rachel Ryan.

  “Yes.”

  “You are not being called to disciplinary action. This is merely preliminary. Without a full quorum, Panel will not act.”

  “Yes. And without Noah, of course.”

  Rachel’s lips tightened. Alexa didn’t preside over Panel even informally like she did at O. That honor, if there was one, went to Rachel and Noah. As long as this wasn’t a real session, Rachel could hog all the glory. But the second it became official, Noah would enter the picture.

  “One thing I’d like to remind you all of,” Alexa said, “is that I am bringing you information that was previously exclusive to the Six of us at O. In some ways, it’s proprietary.”

  “Nothing is proprietary within Panel,” said Eli, shifting his bulk.

  “That’s right,” Alexa said. “When we officially convene as Panel, I will, of course, hold nothing back.”

  Caspian White, seated beside Rachel, laughed. He’d been a member of Panel for all of two weeks and had already made himself at home. It was no small feat to get invited to off-Panel sessions like this — especially considering they were technically forbidden.

  “We all remember Noah’s concerns when we met in ’34 after Nicolai Costa entered the NAU,” Alexa said, obscuring the truth that until recently, she herself had forgotten that meeting’s contents — and still hadn’t understood them until the problems with Chloe.

  Eli nodded. “Of course.”

  “Noah’s concerns — and yours, Eli — weren’t entirely groundless.”

  Audrey Pascoe, the architect, sat forward. “What do you mean, Alexa?”

  Alexa explained the basics of what she’d learned from Noah and then pieced together with her own information: Clive (not present, very intentionally) had injected an escort with experimental nanobots; the nanobots had created Noah’s child; that child had now grown and represented a possible thorn in the infant Beam’s side.

  Aiden Purcell spoke next. As usual, he was kicked back in his chair with his arms crossed and his black hair slicked back, fashionably dressed and clearly not giving one-tenth of a shit despite his question.

  “And Noah thinks this happened because the nanobots Clive used were … infected somehow?”

  Alexa nodded. “That’s where the Costa thing comes in, as I understand it. The network took a developmental leap somehow, just as Noah feared.”

  “He didn’t fear the developmental leap,” Eli said. “He feared The Beam becoming allegiant to Costa instead of himself.”

  “What does that have to do with Clive and his nanobot sex toy?” Purcell asked, rolling a large coin across his knuckles.

  Alexa answered his question, adding details: the nanobots’ intuitive, deductive abilities, Chloe’s intuitive, deductive abilities. She told them how Chloe straddled the analog and digital worlds, somehow half-cybernetic herself despite having no artificial add-ons. “Chloe and The Beam understand each other,” was the way she explained it, adding that permissions meant little to Chloe, even at the highest level. And that’s where she let it sit, allowing the others to draw their own conclusions.

  Conclusions like the fact that those “highest-level permissions” included Panel restrictions — the walls they’d all built around themselves to keep the other members and the public at large from knowing what they were up to.

  Conclusions like the fact that Chloe Shaw was an O asset, apparently under Alexa’s influence.

  “You should have brought her to us,” Rachel said. “If she has such deep access to The Beam, she’s a matter for all of us, not just you.”

  “I’d be happy to bring her to our next official meeting if you’d like.”

  Again, Rachel’s lips pressed together. Each woman was aiming a weapon at the other, waiting for the other to flinch.

  “Is that all?” Eli asked.

  “Actually, no.”

  There was a long pause. Finally, Audrey said, “And?”

  “I’d like to request access to the government servers.”

  Caspian laughed again.

  “Why?” Rachel said.

  “Because some of what Noah feared is already happening, but I’m far from convinced it’s a bad thing.”

  “No offense, Alexa,” said Eli, his face full of implied offense, “but you’re hardly qualified to make that judgment. What do you mean? If something is propagating and this … protégé … of yours is the cause, you should turn her over to me. I’m the engineer.”

  “No offense right back at you, Eli,” Alexa said, “but if you want her, you’ll have to take her … and believe me, Chloe will neither go willingly nor be of any use if you try.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “I love it when people ask if threats are threats,” Caspian said.

  “It’s just the truth,” Alexa answered.

  “What do you mean by ‘it’s already happening’?” Audrey asked.

  “Her influence is rewriting core code,” Alexa explained. “It’s not malicious. It’s simply evolution.”

  Again, Eli scoffed. This was hardly something he felt Alexa was qualified to decide.

  Alexa gave him a sideways glance and continued. “The Beam was originally ‘raised’ by Quark. We’ve all seen how it acts. It’s Crossbrace 2.0 in some ways, and an entirely new thing in others. But it has Noah’s edge. His aggression. It’s already scoped half of the Crossbrace version of the Internet of Things, and now it’s creating autonomous swarms to map places Crossb
race never tried to map. People fear the singularity? This is how it happens.”

  “Science fiction bullshit,” said Eli.

  “Costa’s influence softened it.” Alexa hoped she wouldn’t need to explain and thus rushed on. “What Chloe is doing is simply a third influence.”

  “Uncontrolled,” Eli said. “And hence, uncontrollable.”

  “So what, Eli?” Alexa said. “Noah has an excuse for being single-minded. I’ve even gotten him, privately, to admit it. In Noah’s view, he wants The Beam’s influence ‘pure’ — Noah West’s imprint only — because he wants to rule the world. It’s Noah’s way or the highway, right? That’s the main reason he was ‘afraid’ that The Beam might learn a few things from Costa: because if it did, it wouldn’t blindly obey Noah without thinking.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Eli said.

  “Not according to Noah,” Alexa said. “He told me himself, in about those words.”

  “When?”

  “Years ago, before he got sick. We were drinking. It made him truthful.”

  Eli rolled his eyes.

  “Then he said something else. Something I know he wouldn’t want me to repeat, especially to any of you.”

  “Then please,” Caspian said. “Do.”

  “He told me that a second imprint might actually be good for The Beam, even though he personally hated it. His analogy was breeding. When dog breeders want to keep their pure breeds going, they have to inbreed: golden retrievers with golden retrievers and so on, always operating within a subset of the gene pool. It leads to defects and diseases. That’s genetics 101: diversity is always better.”

  “The Beam isn’t dogs, Alexa,” said Rachel.

  “AI replicates, like breeding. Each generation learns, like evolution. It’s more like a long line of dog generations than you think. This isn’t me speaking, Rachel. This is straight from Noah.”

  “Your point?” Aiden asked, still rolling his coin.

  “Chloe is, I think, working as a third imprint. Just another set of dog parents injected into the network’s gene pool.”

  Eli was shaking his head. “I don’t like this. It’s chaos. Nobody will be able to predict anything The Beam will do going forward. You don’t even know what she’s injecting into it, to clash with Noah’s and Costa’s imprints.”

  Alexa kept her lips shut, but she thought to herself, I know exactly what Chloe is injecting into The Beam: Moderation. Empathy. Adaptation. Intuition. And if this plays out as it should: Love.

  “Why do you want access to the government servers?” It wasn’t an innocent question. Aiden had data-mined his way into a seat on Panel — not all that different from what Alexa had hoped to do with the Ross app. He made it his business to know everything, and was probably wrist-deep in the government system, playing puppeteer.

  “Respero,” Alexa said.

  This time, Eli laughed. Then he said, “Of course.”

  “Respero is state-mandated euthanasia, nothing more,” Audrey said. “You understand that, right, Alexa? It’s a way of keeping the streets clear of bums and the country’s still-fragile gene pool free of defects. It’s not a repository of souls. If you hope to find Jesus, that’s not where you’ll find him.”

  “I have other reasons for wanting in,” Alexa said.

  The group looked from person to person, each weighing how this might shake out. The implications were clear from Alexa’s end: she’d brought them vital information about The Beam that would allow them to adapt their own systems and therefore not be caught off-guard when Chloe’s imprint spread its influence.

  What Alexa had told them today — voluntarily, despite the way she was standing before them like a woman on trial — would be worth billions of credits in saved losses to everyone here.

  In return, all she wanted was a little bit of government access.

  Everyone knew Alexa’s request was designed to indulge more of her spiritual bullshit (perhaps by sifting through Respero records, she’d see souls and the face of God), but the implied threat was there all the same: Panel could give Alexa what she wanted and win with Chloe … or they could piss her off by refusing, and risk whatever “changes” to Chloe’s influence Alexa might manage to wreak in revenge.

  “Fine,” Rachel said. “Do we all agree?”

  Heads reluctantly nodded.

  “And now what?” asked Purcell. “You keep this girl as your ace in the hole, all to yourself?”

  “She’s my employee. She’s my property. You know our agreement: Panel doesn’t poach from Panel.”

  “Except that in this case, we don’t know what your ‘poached property’ might do to affect us all?”

  Alexa shrugged to indicate that Purcell was correct — nobody knew what Chloe might do.

  Except that it wasn’t just Panel’s businesses that Chloe’s influence would affect. And, contrary to what Alexa was letting Panel believe, she knew exactly what Chloe’s influence might do.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Chloe was in the park at dusk, on the playground, sitting on a swing, hyper-aware that what she was doing must look from the outside like a psychotic episode in the making.

  She’d been mostly swinging idly back and forth, dragging her toe in the dirt where countless kids had skidded their feet to slow themselves. Right now, there were no kids in this section of the park, possibly because Chloe had felt very strongly that she wanted to be alone and might have put those feelings out onto the Crossbrace network.

  Crossbrace might have identified this area as a crime scene to the mothers in the area and kept it clear. But still, Chloe sat alone; visible from a distance and looked upon with frightened or sympathetic eyes.

  It wasn’t a great place for mothers to take their children at dusk anyway. District Zero had supposedly improved immeasurably since City Surveillance had been green-lit to patrol the city, but crimes still happened plenty — and double jeopardy came to those who lingered in sequestered areas as darkness descended.

  But Chloe wasn’t worried. In addition to her desire for solitude, she’d thought a lot in the past two hours about how badly she didn’t want to be attacked while thinking (about her finally-discovered father, about O and their control of her, about Alexa Mathis, about Andrew), and because of that meditation had found her wireless connection accessing self-defense knowledge bases. She wouldn’t be sure unless someone came at her, but Chloe was already suspecting the network had taught her mind new lessons about reacting to threats while teaching her muscles to move faster.

  She might have imbibed self-defense skills from the air itself. She might be stronger and faster, just from pondering. Stranger things had happened in the life of Chloe Shaw. God knew stranger things would happen in the future if Alexa was even half right.

  Someone came up and sat beside her.

  Chloe kept her head down and listened to the feet shuffle beside her. Chains one swing over creaked as a body settled into it.

  “You look like a scene in a horror film. Like that creepy girl with the hair hanging over her face from The Ring.”

  Of course, only one person would sit next to her in the park and make reference to a fifty-year-old scare flick.

  “I told you not to bother me anymore,” Chloe said.

  “I know. But I’m terrible at following directions. And you haven’t started throwing things at me yet. I’ll assume yes until I see a definitive no.”

  Chloe looked up. Andrew’s body language was far from certain, though he spoke with the casual, confident air of someone who isn’t expecting to get shot down.

  But otherwise, Andrew struck Chloe as a nervous, beaten dog. His hands were holding the chain too tight. His eyes were too intense, as if awaiting an explosion. He hadn’t settled into his seat, perched atop it like a bird on a pole, muscles coiled to defend himself from slaps as soon as this encounter went south.

  She looked back down, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of her attention.

  “I’ve been trying to
call you,” Andrew said.

  “I’ve blocked you.”

  “I figured. That’s why I went to your place. I only realized how stupid an idea it was when I got there and stood in front of the Crossbrace panel out front, knowing that I’d blow my advantage by calling up. I waited for someone to come out, hoping your building didn’t have intelligent access control and see that I dodged in while someone else was walking out. I figured that if it worked, I could deal with my inability to use the elevator or get into the stairwell at that point. And the loitering, of course. Your attendant knows who I am by now, but she’d probably wonder why I was just hanging out in the lobby.”

  Chloe was still eyeing the dirt. She wasn’t ready to look at Andrew. He’d betrayed her, even if he’d quickly gotten in too deep with O to get himself out.

  He’d still lied, even if Alexa had indicated that him telling the truth would have made things worse.

  He’d still pretended to be someone he wasn’t while being exactly who he was.

  He’d still broken her heart, even though Alexa had confirmed for Chloe just how much he loved her.

  “I brought a book from home,” Andrew went on, speaking from the other swing, just beyond the hanging curtain of Chloe’s hair. “This was after a few dry runs. By the time I finally got inside, I had my answer ready: I was reading a book. Somehow that made sense. If the attendant asked what I was doing or if I needed any help, I’d say, ‘No thanks; just reading!’ I might have pulled it off … except that I didn’t bring a tablet; I brought a book. A regular old paper book, like a weirdo bohemian.”

  Chloe suppressed a snicker. This was all so Andrew. He probably wasn’t embellishing. He didn’t need to.

  “Did it work?”

  “Not even a little. I got all flustered. Some old woman came out and I sprinted forward and stuck my foot in the door. I almost fell, but whacked the door with my shoe and recovered. The attendant came over, so I acted all nonchalant — you know, like a guy not breaking into an unauthorized building — and strolled ahead without looking at her. She was like, ‘Can I help you, sir? Are you looking for someone, sir?’ and I said ‘Nope, just reading’ and held up my book. Which was the first one I grabbed from my shelf, without even looking. It turned out to be one of the Georgia Bernard feminism books. I don’t remember which one, but it had ‘vagina’ in the title, and it was printed really big so the attendant could see it.”