Part 1 Joining Mad-Sci-Soc

CHAPTER ONE OF FRIDGES AND FRIGIDITY

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2123

Mad-Sci-Soc. Where do you begin with a time traveling story full of world events, flashbacks and difficult relationships? There is no better starting point than the point where Terri and I first visited the Mad-Sci-Soc... it used to be a University club, a crazy one, and then it morphed into something else, something that was not quite definable but definitely crazy. It was Terri's idea to go to them. She knew where they were located, on the edge of the campus, but still inside the robot-free zone. With gentle snow falling around us as we walked through the historic brown brick housing district, it looked very Dickensian.

So there we were, at what could be the crucial turning point in human history; and where I started to unravel the mysteries of the organisation and the problems facing civilisation. Of course, I may be exaggerating. I presume there may be a parallel universe that did not start here in New York, 2123; a universe that does not have the dichotomic predicament that I was confronting. But that is always the problem with disturbances in the space-time continuum, nothing makes sense except from the first person perspective.

My augmented reality first person perspective was focused upon my gorgeous girlfriend, Terri. In a world of glamorous women and wimpy men, she was the most glamorous of carpet retailers and I was arguably the most geeky of freelance technical researchers. While gorgeous, she had made a couple of fashion mistakes that evening; she had her eye makeup recently re-tattooed and her eyebrows were now just a bit too high. As a result she looked permanently surprised. Or more accurately, surprised and annoyed. Her other fashion mistake was a lack of warm clothes. Her diamond-effect vest dress was only covered by her transparent raincoat with the broken hologram generator. Of course, she had no hat since that would disturb her purple-to-grey faded hair. Although she claimed that her furry boots and the heating unit in the vest provided adequate warmth.

But really what was rushing through my mind when I looked at her, was the change to her relationship status on EgoSpace. She had changed it that day to “it's complicated”. What a body-blow! I would have liked to forget about this and concentrate on the task at hand but every time I turned around, reality augmentation would kick-in; my contact-lens-heads-up display would show the results from my face-rec app and return her status. I definitely needed to change the settings to stop the facial recognition function from running all the time.

The task in hand was entry into the club house, aka geek-central, the geeks’ cathedral... Mad-Sci-Soc had the reputation as the gathering point of the cleverest of scientists studying the most intellectually challenging and most ridiculously obscure subjects that bordered more on philosophy than science. I was geeky but not in the same way as these guys. They were the very epitome of the uncool part of geekdom and who wants to be associated with that?!

"We've tried everybody else, haven't we? The Police, maybe?” I asked.

“The Police? I doubt this is their bailiwick. It would break their programming," sighed Terri.

“The University?”

“Serious scientists are not going to take us seriously."

“The Military?”

“I guess we haven't tried everyone.”

“So we should try them?" I said anxiously and gladly. Anything to avoid stepping inside the building.

“For frack-sake, Aaron!” Terri said. She was testing me again.

"No. Just joking," I lied.

The previously tacitly assumed plan, that I was to enter alone, was made explicit. “So go in then! I'll wait outside."

As my last delaying tactic, I said, “Is it because of Max?”

She sneered, “You work it out."

In an attempt for sympathy, I said heroically, “It's ok. I'll go in alone.”

Terri was not amused as I continued to linger on the pavement checking out the steps and the door, “Cold feet? I have the real cold feet. If I'm happy to freeze out here then you can do this. So, go!”

“I don't know whether I want to be seen entering...”

“You don't want to be seen going in? Shall I find a bag for your head! Some extreme-sport fanatic you are!”

I gave her a sarcastic smile. Terri was always a real world type of person while I still possessed a level of real world disconnection syndrome caused by years of game playing. However I prided myself on my ability to confront real world situations. I guess I liked to prove myself. Obviously not in an academic, exam-type way.

I turned around. There were no surveillance drones, no robots and no people. At least none that I could detect. Nothing to worry about there.

It was early evening, empty greyness only warmed by amber street lighting, I guess the snow had driven the humans inside. There was a few auto-taxis and A2s, but nobody looks out from their auto-autos, people were too busy with their social media exchanges or controlling their surrogates. We had to be there in person rather than traverse any virtual worlds because the MSS club members shunned such shimmering digital environments, which suited me anyway, having had my avatar banned from most.

I had run out of excuses.

I crept up to the black door to read a small sign which read "Come on in! But remember ...we may be mad but we still don't like time-wasters!" Under the doorbell with a name plate with just three letters: “M. S. S.” I pressed the doorbell and the door automatically replied in a sing-song voice, “Come on in. Push the door hard.”

I pushed open the sturdy metal door styled with fake embossments to make it appear in-keeping with the age of the building. Inside was a long brightly-lit corridor with posters showing headlines from old news pages: “Oil found under Manhattan!” and "Empire State Building converted to world's largest drilling rig!" “Matter Transfer at Columbia Uni wows Scientists.” “Captain Kittoffery saves Korean Town from Wild Radioactive Panda Herd.”

I ought to mention something about Captain Kittoffery for those people in the future (or the past!) who have not seen his exploits on TrueCrime-9+ channel’s Super Vigilante pan-device broadcast reality show. Captain Kittoffery was one of the limited number of licensed heroes that frequented New York and other parts of North America. And sometimes, as described in the news article on the wall, other parts of the world depending upon international treaties. CK could hold an Olympic heavy lifter with their maximum weights on each of his outstretched arms. Amazables! Was it a real super power, a stage magician’s trick or computer generated imagery? The superheroes claim their powers are mutotonic but nobody really knows what that is. There were enough eye witnesses to his super strength to disprove camera trickery. It remains a mystery.

The yellow-latex-clad Captain had a brief period of celebrity status until he was quagmired in a patent legislation suit against the Ms Bell mega-corporation where he won a victory of sorts, a technical victory. But after that he disappeared from broadcasts (or as we Brits still call it, “TV”) he was replaced by more charismatic and eccentric heroes such as Nerdifer and Sargent Canada. CK had not been seen in several years. I mentioned this since I walked into an office space occupied by a single, large male personage that reminded me of the Captain.

“Mad-Sci-Soc?” I enquired.

"Can I help?" asked the man looking up from his holoscreen.

“I doubt it but hey, we've tried everybody else,” I replied breezily. “Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Captain Kittoffery?” The face-rec application flashed up his name on my head-up display: Conrad. But his surname and other personal details were suppressed by a privacy filter.

The man furrowed his brow, “You flatter me. I’m not that good-looking. I’m just a humble post-grad. You were saying?”

“It's rather difficult to explain, er... Conrad.”

The man appeared to wince.

“I... er... have a problem with my fridge,” I said in a manner that I hoped indicated I did not really want to be there.

“We don't fix fridges. There's a repair shop down the road would you like me to show you on NetMaps?”

“This is a really big fridge problem,” I said trying to make it sound more interesting.

The man stood and offered me the way out, "Like the sign says on the front door, we really don't like to mess around."

“What sign?” I asked befuddled already forgetting the warning about time-wasters.

Conrad sighed. "Sorry. It must have fallen off. Anyway, we don't do anything with fridges, ok, good-bye."

“No, no. Wait. Give me a minute to explain. It's of earth shattering importance but it's going to sound crazy,” I said in a panic, contemplating the tongue lashing I would receive from Terri if I did not come back with some relevant information.

“Crazy you say...?” he replied slowly and rubbing his large chin. “In what way?”

“So if I mention fridges then you won't mind?”

"Is your fridge making funny noises?" he ventured.

“Yes, well it was...”

“This is perfectly normal. I wouldn't worry about it. Check the diagnostics and try defrosting once in a while,” said the man and sat back down to look at his holoscreen.

“Actually it is not the noises it's making that worries me. I think our fridge has come alive!”

“Well, everything is computerised nowadays. Has the machine developed a bit of a personality?”

“No. The computer stopped talking to us months ago. That was quite a bonus actually. No, it's moved by itself.”

“Moved by itself? How?”

“That's why I'm here.”

Conrad hummed to himself. “I think you better go right back to the beginning. What's your name again?”

I was relieved that I had finally gained some of his attention. “It's Aaron. Aaron Quarts. That’s Quarts with an S not Quartz with a zed...”

“Sure. Sure. Wind forward a bit.”

“Well, it all started while I was practising making tea for Terri..."

“Tea? What type?” said Conrad.

Perhaps I didn't really have his interest. “Ceylon. Terri's favourite.”

“You have a permit for the tea?”

“Well, of course,” I sighed. “It's medicinal.” He didn't seem convinced.

“And who's Terri?”

“My girl friend.”

“Hmm, Interesting,” he said, suddenly intense.

“No, that's not the interesting part.”

I then told him the story about when the fridge first started to misbehave.

“I was doing research on the legacy-web trying to extract open-source technology. People always laugh at my ancient computer with its keyboard and mouse or make sneering remarks about its hygiene, all that dust build-up between the keys... but really it is the only way to truly access the ancient texts.” Conrad rolled his hand indicating for me to speed up my story. “I was staring intently at the computer screen, its old and solid, not holographic, when I notice a movement behind me as a flicker on the computer screen, a reflection.”

“A mirror effect?”

“Yes, right. I focused on the reflection and this time I could tell what it was. The door of the fridge moved. The first movement I detected must have been the door opening; the second, which I saw clearly, was the door shutting. It made a hermetic thud as it closed.”

“And this is a standard fridge. Nothing automatic? Net-connected?”

“Just a fridge. As I said, we lost voice interaction and network connection ages ago.”

“And you were alone in your home?”

“I was alone. I shrugged it off. It was about a minute after when it started to happen...”

“What?”

“The fridge moved...”

“I thought you said that you were making tea.”

“I tried making tea earlier. But I couldn't open the fridge to get the milk. The door was stuck. So I had black tea. I don't like black tea.”

“This was the same fridge that opened and closed its door and then moved? How did it move?”

“The same fridge. We have only the one fridge. It moved like it was shuffling forward, rattling fast, in short bursts.”

“And did it keep doing this?”

“At first it shuffled forward about a foot.”

“And what did you do?”

“I got up and went over to the fridge and tried to open the door.”

“And?”

“Just like before. It wouldn't open.”

“And yet you saw the door open a close, all-be-it in reflection a few minutes earlier.”

“Right.”

“So let me get this straight, you want to show me this fridge?”

“I can't!”

“No?”

“The fridge has gone, man. It's done a runner!” I then projected a picture from my Genie-Phone of the hole in our apartment’s wall which now provided a grim panoramic view of downtown Manhattan.

Conrad looked skeptical.

“I'll bring Terri in and she can confirm. She's outside. Probably getting cold.”

“Sure. I’d like that.”

***

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2123. (5 MINUTES LATER).

I dashed back outside onto the snowy street but there was no Terri. I touched my wrist control of my G-Phone and said, “Call Terri”

“This service is brought to you by Merry Medication and Upgrades. Call Merry?” suggested the networking device.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“No, call Terri!” I reiterated with emphasis on the tee.

“Call Terri and not advertised service?” queried the G-Phone.

“Yes, confirm.” Sometimes I wished I had the concentration to make the mind-machine-interface work, there are no adverts on the MMI. But I used gesture and voice control as per the 90% of humanity that cannot afford, or indeed, operate the MMI. Techno-implants make the MMI easier according to the advertising, however, call me a technophobe if you like, my body is a temple where machines should not be inserted. In that vain, Terri was also trying to ween me from junk food, although with only limited success.

The audio sync-call connected quickly. “Hi Terri. I'm chatting to this Mad-Sci-Soc guy. He wants confirmation on the fridge story.”

“You've told the whole story? It's only been five minutes!” she said exasperated over the earpiece.

“I haven't told him about the whole fridge opening palaver.”

“Is Max there?”

“I don't know. I haven't met him you know. There was only one guy. The Captain Kittoffery look-alike.”

“Yes, I know Conrad. Max doesn't look like that.”

“What does he look like?”

“Short, geeky.”

“So like me?”

“No. Shorter. And he's a control freak. And known to wear a suit on a weekend.”

“Ah,” I said as I caught sight of my own dishevelled appearance reflected in a window. I was wearing my old, but freshly laundered, fabricated, heat-regulating t-shirt with a “Buy Pizza” logo inherited from a past failed career. “That's not an insult you could throw at me.”

“No. I have other ones for you,” she replied coolly. “Call me when you've finished.”

***

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2123. (5 MINUTES LATER).

I went back inside.

“No girl friend?” Conrad asked.

“No,” I said. “Apparently she knows you.”

“Ah-ha. Just as I thought. There are no coincidences. Terri, Terri Shiraz?” Conrad mused and stared at the ceiling as if recalling past events.

“So you remember her?” I asked politely. I knew these University types interacted with hundreds of people a year, albeit mainly in virtual worlds.

Conrad ignored my question. “Always had a strange taste in men... Hmm. You were talking about a disappearing fridge?” he said, while maintaining his upward contemplation.

“Well, after the fridge moved, I freaked out and ran out of the apartment to Terri’s workplace.”

***

FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2123.

I tried calling her while running the few blocks to Columbia Carpet Factory Showroom. Terri enjoyed her real world job as a carpet sales person. She found it satisfying meeting and dealing with real people and delivering real products. However that day, for some reason, she had blocked incoming calls. I sprinted across the crowded street with the smart-road re-routing taxis and auto-autos around me. (Fortunately there were no cyclists about; cyclists being the last bastion of zero-automation transportation in New York, pose the most danger to pedestrians crossing the road.)

At the showroom, I was directed to the back office by a fellow staff member.

“Terri, Terri, Terri!” I said knocking on the staff-only door.

Terri slid the door open while I stood there panting, “Aaron. What are you doing here?” she said, not in the least bit pleased to see me. “This way!” And she dragged me outside to a back alley away from her carpet executive colleagues.

Clearly she was not in a good mood but what she said next really sapped my last remaining strength. As I stood there panting, she said. “Well I suppose we have to talk and I guess this is about as good a time as any. Aaron, there's something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time.” She bit her lip, "This is really hard to say and there’s no easy way to say it or a right time. I have looked in the mirror every morning...”

I stood there puffing, puzzling about what she was saying to me.

“And I've been thinking. Is this where I want to be? And for too many days, I've been saying no.”

“I am sorting out a new apartment for us...” I puffed.

“No Aaron. It's not the apartment. It's us. It's a new year and things have to change. For things to change, we have to finish. We really are not right for each other..." then, as if remembering a script, she tilted her head and tried to look sad.

“What?” I gasped. “But things were going so well lately.”

"That's not my perception," she sighed.

To be honest, we did have a less than sparkling New Year's Eve celebrations; we stayed in with a large pot of tea and British-style biscuits having returned back from an exhausting skiing vacation that extended over Christmas.

“But we go together like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.”

"Yes, we're a great comedy duo," she said sarcastically.

“I didn't mean it like that. We're synergistic. Noone else in the city would even understand that joke. Is it my bad habits? The gambling and borrowing money and the like. You know I have that under control, right?”

“It's not the money,” she said.

“You don’t like the bets, the competitions?” I said desperately.

“They are wearing thin. The bets are just your way of getting cash from me.”

“It's the boxes, isn't it?” I said.

"Your cardboard box collection doesn't help. But that's not it either!"

“What is it then?”

“This isn’t how I’m supposed to live my life. Yours either. It’s like nothing matters.”

“You matter. I matter. We matter. What I’ve got to say now matters.”

Terri turned and folded her arms, “Perhaps this isn't a good time to talk after all. I was going to do the whole it-is-not-you-its-me bit, but really that would be so fake. It is you.”

“Terri, please. Don't flip-the-bozo-bit. We have to talk. This is really important, I swear. I swear on my mother's grave.”

“Your mother's not dead!” she huffed, her back towards me.

“It’s a metaphor. Terri... Terri, I really still must talk to you. This isn't about you and me,” I said soothingly thinking she might be upset.

"So you do want money?” She said turning back sharply.

“No, no. It's not money. It's the fridge! It's moving... It's gone crazy.”

“Moved?”

“It shuffled by itself into the middle of the kitchen! The door won’t open!”

Her demeanour changed instantly. “So it is happening?” She said wide-eyed.

“What?”

“The machines! They’ve gone sentient. They’re rebelling!” Terri had been in the apartment alone about two weeks previously and had, apparently, seen the micro-robo-cleaner going berserk in the apartment. I suggested that it might have been fighting a rat. She responded that seeing a rat in a seventh floor apartment wasn't any more comforting than a robot uprising. Paranoia is one of Terri’s less endearing traits. Researching the causes of the robo-cleaner shadow battle, she had established her preferred most-likely theory: the “singularity”. That being the point where machines become self aware and start to take over the planet. The first stage of the singularity is predicted to be meaningless but wilful disobedience from the machines. She’s been brooding about that and much else both before and since.

***

JANUARY 5 - 21, 2123.

Terri and I forgot about our relationship problems in the days after the fridge incident. We had a shared enemy and a shared problem: the fridge! First problem: how to open the fridge door. If we opened the fridge door we could disconnect its computer controls, hopefully stop the rebellion as well as access the milk and other food stuffs, which were, after all, essential to our well being.

We pushed and pulled the fridge and tried to move it from its new location, the centre of the kitchen. The fridge resisted and wouldn't budge.

So we tried a variety of tools to open the thing...

Hammers merely dented the outer shell.

Crowbars could gain no leverage.

Axes bounced off its surface, no better than the hammers.

The chainsaw chain came off and took out one of the lights.

We applied electricity and merely managed to short circuit the whole apartment building.

The fridge remained steadfast, two metres from the wall, the door firmly shut.

“I bet you... I bet you that if we just unplug the fridge, it would die. And then we can open the door,” I said.

“I thought we were not doing these bets any more,” sighed Terri.

“I have a good feeling about this.”

“Ok, how much?”

“Five dollars.”

“Huh. That’s all? I bet my share of the rent.”

“Whoa!”

“Backing out, Mr Quarts?”

“No way.”

We unplugged the fridge from the mains but then in the morning we found it plugged in again. And still closed. I lost the bet.

We cut the mains cable, but it appeared to make no difference to the fridge.

Terri and I discussed where we could obtain the chemicals for the explosive composition I had found on the legacy net.

Ah, those were good days. We would go to bed at night, like we were a real couple again, with pillow talk about destroying the fridge or refining our description of the gurgling noises we could hear inside it. In those cold wintry days in the apartment with a barely operational central heating system, I'd sometimes find Terri's arms around me, her body moulded to mine.That bitchy emotional wall that she had established around herself seemed to have tumbled down just like that twentieth century Hadrian’s Wall thing in Germany.

Then came the morning when I pushed my luck, and started to kiss those shiny, ruby red lips of hers. She responded by kissing back with no sarcastic remarks. I thought that she had “returned to me”, that our relationship was on again. I started running my hand over the curves of her body and felt her silky soft skin. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing was fast and shallow. I felt sure we were heading for Level 10, but then came the crash! A literal explosive shattering crash, followed by the sound of falling items, breaking glass and a howling wind. It came from the kitchen, and the closed doors provided little in terms of sound insulation.

Terri's eyes sprung open and sat up, “What the frack-quake was that!?”

“Oh it's probably nothing. Hey darling, come back here...” I suggested in an uncharacteristically macho style, still feeling passionately inclined towards her. I knew the suggestion was useless even before I said it.

Terri's icy stare was the reply before grabbing her robe and exiting the room, while I, uh... adjusted myself before following her.

Terri's scream shifted me into overdrive.

In the kitchen, the whole east wall was gone leaving it open to the wintry weather. Terri was clutching her hair looking out from an impromptu, seventh floor vista onto the cityscape complete with grey, misty morning skies. Beyond the rattling cupboard doors and banging, hanging utensils, wind was whipping through Terri's hair and gown like a cape, and also, incidentally, freezing the end of my still rampant manhood concealed in my pyjamas.

The fridge was also missing.

***

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2123.

“So the fridge had gone?” Conrad asked, after I recounted the story (minus various details).

“Yes,” I'd just told him that the fridge was missing. I thought these guys were supposed to be clever.

“It created the hole in the wall?” asked Conrad.

“Yes, it blew out the wall. The hole was actually quite neatly cut and fell to the garden below.”

“Seven stories down?”

“Yes, we were on the seventh floor.”

“What did you do after that?”

“We looked for a new apartment...”

“But did you find the fridge? In the wreckage down below?”

“We looked but the fridge wasn't there. It had gone. That's why we think the fridge was to blame.”

Conrad leaned back and rubbed his huge, square chin. “We need to talk to Max.”

Max, Terri's Ex, I was keen to meet him, to look him in the eye. But I knew Terri wouldn't be. “Why's that?” I asked with undisguised glee.

“He is an expert in sentience. He has a published paper proving the impossibility of the singularity.”

“Sentience?”

“Yes, the science of consciousness.”

“I don't understand.”

“Well, nobody really does. I wouldn't feel bad about that.”

“The science of consciousness,” I said mulling the implications. “So could the fridge have come alive?”

“Who knows? But there is enough mystery here to warrant a Mad-Sci-Soc investigation. And it would be good to catch up with Terri again...”

***