“It’s just that it’s Uncle Elmer’s ring. You really don’t want it.” The girl had one hand on the ring and her eyes were fixed on the muzzle of my gun. “It’s very bad luck.”
“Oh, that’s a new one. Now hand it over.”
“You really want the ring of fortune?” She was sweating and nervous.
It must be worth a bunch, and she must not be the owner. Not my problem.
“Yes. I want the ring.”
“I give you the ring of my free will.” She took it off and handed it over.
It was little. I slipped it on my pinky finger, as I took a look around. Absolutely no one in sight, and this gorgeous gal in front of me. “Now sweet thing . . .” I stepped forward and a rock rolled under my foot. I windmilled for balance, lost it and landed hard on my keister.
The girl was running down the alley, but to my surprise she turned around at the end. “Remember, you have to give it away of your free will to someone who very clearly states that they want the ring. After you told them about the bad luck.” Then she rounded the corner and was gone.
***
“Hang on a sec.”
Gloria rolled her eyes as her pathetic sister gawped at a Hari Krishna.
“I sorta remember a dream . . . “
“Oh Gawd! NOT again. Get a grip on your weirdness and let’s go.”
But the shaven headed nut case in the robe knew he had a fish on the line. He opened his mouth to start some memorized speil, but Carmen beat him to it.
Pointed right at his face. “You. Do you have of those Bhagadavida things? I had a dream about needing one.”
He blinked fumbled in his canvas sack and produced a book.
Carmen fished out a five dollar bill and they swapped, apparently both pleased. At least she turned away and started grabbing her luggage. The security people who’d been watching the whole thing relaxed, but one advanced on the Hari Krishna guy and he sort of oozed away.
They produced papers for the first round, and surrendered a suitcase apiece to the airline guy and he scribbled their gate number. Gloria tipped the man and led the way inside. The line for security wasn’t too long. She ignored the stupidity of the scans, told herself there was a nosy old lady looking at them, which was why she was wearing boring panties and an athletic bra with no metal or plastic anythings.
Carmen, of course, hadn’t done anything so practical, so she had to get felt up, well just the slides on her bra straps, and then lace herself back into her stupid boots.
They grabbed a couple of bottles of water, just in case service on the plane was slow. Waited in the boring, never look at anyone-or-meet-their-eyes impersonal atmosphere of the modern airport. Finally got on the plane.
And sat.
Gloria was in the window seat, Carmen in the middle.
The lady in the aisle seat started talking.
“I’m visiting my daughter in ??? She’s having marital problems. I told her that man was a total waste, but did she listen? No. She worse than I was at that age, married a lazy fool just like her father. I divorced him over a decade ago. And I didn’t put with nonsense from my second, either. Dumped him last year. I . . . “
Carmen interrupted. “Have you tried Transcendental Meditation? If you can practice Zen, and get in touch with your Ki, you will be a much happier person. Let me give you this book . . . “
Yeah. She pulled out the Baghadavida right then and there and pressed it into the lady’s hands.
“. . . the eastern religions . . . well, they’re more philosophies than actual religions, you know . . . “
The lady was leaning away from her, shoved the book away and reached for the attendant button. “Is there any way to change my seat?” she sounded desperate.
Gloria was desperately trying to not burst out laughing. She heard a few snickers from around us. Hopefully just coincidental.
The lady moved. The seat stayed empty. The plane backed away from the gate, and Carmen scooted over to the aisle seat.
The man across the aisle laughed. “I’ll have to remember that ploy, the next time I fly. Very clever.”
Carmen looked his way. Probably grinning or smirking, knowing her. Stupid stuff like this happened all the time around her. “I saw it in a dream,” my ass. Life happens. She thinks it all means something. Ugg. Family. You can’t live with them, and you can’t give sisters up for adoption.

***

Everyone laughed at the hung-over noble. He’d sung raunchy songs and bought three rounds last night. This morning he was green faced and shaky, and even funnier.

The troops were mounting up promptly, so Captain Heartsburg didn’t chastise the snickers as the noble’s scrawny servant flattened face first into the dirt as the noble used him as a mounting block. Tried to. The Noble fell backwards, and wallowed around trying to get up, as the servant scrambled to catch the horse, reins dragging as he sidled across the courtyard. The noble staggered to his feet and over to some bushes to retch for a bit. Then wiped his mouth on a lacy handkerchief, that he then looked at in disgust and tossed into the bushes, before he staggered after his horse and servant. This time the servant cannily led the horse to the front of the Inn. The Noble climbed the steps, then turned to try to bridge the gap between himself and horse.

The tall elegant stallion was thoroughly disgusted by the proceedings and snorted and tossed his head, lifting the servant off his feet. “Sir, sir, hurry and mount, sir!” His legs kicked helplessly.

The noble got a foot out over the steps and into a stirrup, neglecting to grab the saddle. The horse sidestepped, and the noble looked like he was about to split as his foot was pulled well out from the steps. The troops fell silent for a moment, waiting for the disaster. Then the Captain head a faint murmur. “Penny says he pulls something awful.”

But the servant got his feet down and pressed up against the animal’s off side, and the horse stepped back toward the noble. Who clutched gratefully at the saddle.

Sergeant Willon blasted out of the Inn’s front door. “He’s escaped!” He bellowed.

The horse reared as the Sergeant bolted under his nose. But the noble not only clung, he swung a leg over the horse’s back, reached a hand down to the scrawny servant and aided his spring up behind. They were fifty feet down the road and accelerating before the Captain regained his wits and ordered his men to arrest them.

Three miles down the road the racing chestnut cut off the road and up a trail into the forest. Half an hour later, the Captain realized he was chasing the wrong person, no doubt in the wrong direction. He send the Lieutenant and half the troops after the noble, and backtracked with the other half to try, in vain, to discover which direction the prisoner had gone.

He was not surprised to find no indication what so ever. The King’s special guards who had been in charge of the prisoner had been released by the Inn staff by the time he got back.

“The Earl of Mount Hauser?” Never, ever, call him Prince Rupert!
The Lieutenant in charge was on his feet, but the pupils of his eyes were different sizes. “Gone. No doubt he’s back with the rebels in the hills by now.”
***

The test was a complete failure. My brilliant computer was just a hunk of metal. No bright spark of true intelligence lay within its circuits, no matter that my team had exceeded the number of connections in the human brain by nearly an order of magnitude.
It just wasn’t there.
It was all just clever programming.
“Sorry, Boss.” Tina was one of the hardware people. Cute too.
I subdued my male urge to ignore the rules about sexual harassment (which these days seemed to include anything and everything up to and including my having noticed that she was female) and stumped out to the vending room. This called for carbs. I plunked change into the snack machine and snatched my hohos. I eyed the drink machine. It was new, delivered yesterday. Damn thing had all the bells and whistles. Not just the motion detector that lit up the lights in the others, no this one had facial recognition and a memory. It compared one’s purchases with the government’s recommended diet. It added them up over the day.

Welcome Mark Granger this purchase contains 15% of your recommended daily caloric intake it contains sugar and caffeine. In combination with your nine AM purchase, and assuming you ate a healthy breakfast and lunch, this exceeds your daily caloric needs.

“Oh yeah? Make me care. Right now, a dose of cold sweet fizzy caffeine is needed.” I fed it the correct amount.
Nothing.
I tapped it, real friendly-like. Honest. Barely a pat. A can hit the dispenser at about mach two and started hissing. They make those cans too thin for rough handling. I muffed my curses by putting my mouth over the break and stalked back to my office. I managed to get more of the cola into my almost clean coffee mug than I got on myself and my keyboard.
A snicker ran around the big planning room, and everyone relaxed.
Mike pulled up the schematic, and George started tapping away at his station, both trying to not smirk. What the heck, it wasn’t like this was the first time The Beast had proven to be not simply tame, but to have all the initiative we programmed in and not a bit more.
Tina sighed. “Just throwing more CPU into the motherboard isn’t going to do it. We’ve paralleled the analogue and the digital processors. We’ve cross connected them. What do we try next?”
I swallowed brown (theoretically chocolate flavored) wax, brown cake-like substance and whipped artificial fats. and pondered the question. “How about random brief cross connections?”
“Probably give the poor thing e-epilepsy.” George yelled across the room.
“If it does, does that make it intelligent?” I asked, trying my slightly flat but still cold caffeine.
Tina snorted. “I don’t think the spark of life will result from short circuited and damaged chips.”
Mike was looking bright. “Can’t hurt to try.”
I winced. “My budget for parts is not just empty, the drain pipe has cracked and dried, the attached sewers have withered in the money drought, the municipal treatment plant . . .”
“Okay, okay, we won’t fry too many processors. Trust us.” Tina grinned and headed around to the back of The Beast.
The Boss walked in and frowned. “This doesn’t look like a celebration. I thought you had another test this morning.”
I nodded. “Not there yet.”
He tapped his foot impatiently. “The government incentive award would be enough to salvage our bottom line. Get our name in the news for free.”
“Perhaps,” I stepped boldly out onto thin ice, “we ought to just build the machines that people want, and worry about AI when and if it happens.”
“Perhaps,” The Boss’s lip curled, “you are under the impression that our majority stockholder is more interested in a long hard slog than fame and fortune?”
In as much as the startup money had come from a playboy actor without the faintest idea of what was inside those sleek Sci Fi space ship worthy cases he packaged our otherwise merely topline and well designed and built computers in . . .
“We’ll test again tomorrow.”
He glowered. “Mr. Danger is going to be here Thursday. I’ll be showing him the financial situation in the morning. Have something at least a bit hopeful to show him after lunch.”
I controlled my breathing carefully. Smiled. It didn’t hurt too bad, so I nodded. “You got it.”
He stomped out.
I sank down into my chair.
Tina shifted in my peripheral vision. “They say Bell labs is getting near.”
“I heard Berkley was almost there.” George shut up as I shot a dirty look over my shoulder.
“Everyone, including us, thinks we’re almost there. So, let’s do a bit of brainstorming and think of four more ways to arrange the hardware, and if there’s anything else we can do to the software to . . . spark something.” I scowled at my caffeine. “And while you’re at it, run a cable to that damned drink machine and reprogram it.”


Living forever, moving from one computer to the next . . . never to be written!