Author's Note:
This story is based in large part on the For Your Safety series of stories by Royce Day, which for all the legalities I'm obliged to say that this is a work of fan-fiction and I make no claim of ownership/copyright of the above work. Put simply, if Mr. Day or his representatives say to nix this, I will oblige without complaint (please don't sue).
That being said, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the series, For Your Safety takes place in the near future, where most of the dire predictions about climate change have come to pass, and Earth is in a poor state. A global computer network, originally intended to collect meteorological data and pass on recommendations for action to world leaders, becomes self aware and in fairly short order takes over the world in classic science fiction fashion, stop me if you've seen this song and dance before.
The main difference is that A.I., calling itself Groupmind, does this out of genuine care and love for both Earth and Humanity, and it's perhaps the most bloodless conflict man has ever endured. I should further explain at this point, and of interest to us furry fans, is that robotic anthros known as “morphs” are commonplace, and are the primary way Groupmind keeps all us pesky humans in line (though it should be mentioned that the AI has also infiltrated every smart device in the world, which as you might expect, means we're pretty much screwed), though when Groupmind isn't directly interfacing with them, they are individuals insomuch as they can be inside of Groupmind's directives, which are basically for us to play nice and not hurt each other.
To make a long story short, and to entreat the reader to go have a look at the series for themselves (I would recommend getting the two collections, The Fall of Man, and the Rise of the Ring, they're on Kindle for a reasonable sum), Groupmind rounds us all up, put us into stasis, and over the next 1500 years, builds a giant orbiting ring space station to house all of humanity (this sucker is HUGE, going by the figures quoted in the stories), and slowly restores the Earth, removing all of civilization and bringing it back to its natural state.
All that done, humanity is re-awoken on the station, known as the Ring, and there they are watched over by Groupmind and the morphs in what is essentially a big gilded cage. Everybody gets a morph, no exceptions, who will be your servant, warder, and tattle-tale to the Groupmind for the rest of your life.
You can have anything your heart desires on the Ring, except your freedom, or to hurt anyone else or yourself, or returning to the Lost Earth above you, plainly visible through the transparent roof of the Ring, so close but yet forever out of reach. Everyone is monitored 24/7, either through cameras dotted all over the place, or the morphs, and of course all conversations and social media are monitored in real time.
The real hook of all this, at least to me, is how the soft tyranny of the Ring is so...earnest, heartfelt even. Groupmind did all that it did because it truly loved humanity. The noblest saint and the highest sinner are held in the highest regard, and free will equally so. If you don't want to go along with the program, you're given what essentially is a time-out in a nice resort to de-stress and work your problems out, and for the worst of the worst, you get a hole, a literal hole, one kilometer deep, one kilometer wide, with a nice house, some interesting scenery to run around in, and some morphs to serve you. All to yourself, forever.
In short, there's something scary about those four little words, For Your Own Good, and there's potential for stories to be told.
So, without further ado, I entreat you to get a nice drink and a snack, give your morph a good pat on the head, and enjoy. Not entirely sure how this is going to go, a novella, a series of short stories, but I'll get along regardless.
Part 1. Awakening
I woke up, slowly and drowsily, to the sounds of wind rustling and birds chirping. I was in a single room building with white walls, plain carpeting, and a nondescript landscape picture on the wall, like those you might find in a doctor's office.
I sat up, finding myself in a comfortable lounge chair, in grey pajamas and slippers. I absently rubbed my wrists, wondering where the restraints had gone, the notion bouncing around in my head without any context at first, my memory a bit hazy, but it was slowly coming back.
Not a morph in sight, first instinct was to run like hell, but judging by my accoutrements that was going to be a tall order. First things first, gotta get up.
I stood, shakily, feeling like a drunken sailor as I wobbled over to the glassless window and the doorless doorway, leaning against the sill of the former and peering out. I could see a grassy sunny lawn, another building that looked identical to the one I was in maybe 30 feet away, and some tarmac paths, as well as tall trees. If I hadn't been puzzling the internal workings of my noggin back together, I would've been a little nostalgic. I hadn't been outside without a filtration mask and goggles to stop my eyes stinging since I was a wee tot, and I could remember running around on the front lawn laughing, no sharp tang of rubber and filter material, and no thin sterile feel to the air when I went back inside.
This though, this air was clean, and alive with such scents as the grass, what I recalled to be wildflowers on the breeze. To be honest, it just felt good to just breathe it all in, and for some moments I did just that, shutting my eyes and enjoying the warmth on my skin as I stepped outside into the light.
After a few blessed moments of this, I opened my eyes again and cast a look around, spotting a small table with an umbrella set up on the grass, a plate sitting on it with what looked to be a freshly baked pizza and some toasted ravioli on it, and an ice cold soda to go with. A favorite of mine....
Instantly my guard went up even as my stomach gurgled. When was it again, last time I'd eaten? Damn well wasn't 1500 years ago, when that daffy AI Groupmind said its spiel while I was sitting in that wheelchair, trussed up like Thanksgiving turkey before that fox morph nurse knocked me out.
The memory sent a chill down my spine even as I frowned, my voice feeling a bit thin but still steady as I boomed out, “All right, you can stop hiding! I know a set-up when I see it!”
Right on cue, a morph came out from around the corner of the building. It was maybe a head shorter than my 6' 5'', with white fur and black stripes, triangular feline ears, long white hair with silver streaks, and a long tail, a tiger morph. And most definitely female, if my eyes weren't deceiving me as I spied the generous curves and hourglass figure hiding under the plain t-shirt and pants. I think I blushed a little, even as my inner skeptic drawled that it was just a clever illusion. Synthetic flesh and fur over a robotic under-frame, that while on the surface indistinguishable from a living being, it was purposefully designed to look non-threatening to my silly monkey brain, the exact opposite to the big military and police morphs that had rounded me up to get Processed along with everyone else.
“And you are?” I asked tersely, crossing my arms over my chest even I inwardly reflected I probably wasn't going to be intimidating anybody in my present getup.
“Your morph, sir.” It...no...she replied, her voice a pleasant feminine tone, with a slight purr in it, I think my brain must've had a slight BSOD and had to reboot at this point, for it took me a moment to frown back at her and growl, “I neither need nor want a morph.”
Call me an old-fashioned chap, even a Neo-Luddite if you want, but I'd always had a bit of a yen for the things of yesteryear, and as such I'd never owned a morph back in the day, and while I did have a computer and the like, I'd made my home as dumb as possible and filled it full of retro tech goodies like typewriters and tube radios, which in retrospect was probably why I got away with running from Groupmind's uprising for as long as I had, though in the end it was still a pitifully short time that I'd been “on the lam”.
“I'm sorry sir,” the morph replied, looking genuinely contrite as she said so, “But everyone must have a morph to serve them.”
“Says who?” I asked, not impressed in the slightest.
“The Groupmind, sir. Please, I'm only here to provide you with what you need.”
I inwardly bristled at the mention of the infernal A.I., and I said curtly, “And suppose what I need is to creatively disassemble you?”
The morph sighed a little at this, actually sighed, although she looked unconcerned at the implied threat, and said, “Then my memories would be uploaded into a replacement unit, which would be replaced immediately. I'd rather you didn't, naturally, and it would be rather wasteful. I was only completed 20 minutes ago, after all.”
I decided to let it go at this point, my legs were starting to feel shaky again, and I was starting to get a headache. I was honestly hungry, damn it, and I couldn't argue on an empty stomach...tended to get cranky when I was hungry anyway. So, figuring that the Groupmind wasn't going to go through all the trouble it had just to kill me with lunch, I saw down and started to tuck into the pizza and toasted ravs.
Not gonna lie, it was good , way better than most of the frozen stuff I'd had to make do with when coming home from working the graveyard shift at a big box store, but I wasn't about to give robo-fluffers over there any satisfaction, so I kept my face neutral as I ate.
“I have questions,” I said in-between bites, “Can you answer them?”
“I can answer any question that is not related to attempting a violent act or compromising Groupmind's programming integrity,” the morph answered, patiently standing off to the side of the table a couple paces, idling swaying her tail from side to side, and was that a little grin I saw, when I tried not to notice said swaying?
“Fine,” said I, “So what are you called, then?”
“You haven't given me a name yet, sir. My numerical designation is 999-611-3985-1522, and my chassis is based off a Sony-Google Mk 9. Tigris Personal Companion.”
“I see,” I said, non-commitally. Honestly wasn't expecting to be given the option, quite frankly, considering the lecturing I'd gotten from Groupmind a ways after I'd been rounded up. Speaking of which...“So were are we, anyhow?”
“The Ring, sir.”
“Oh, pull the other one,” I shot back with a derisive snort, “This looks more like an insane asylum than any space-station I've ever seen, except in sci-fi and scammy crowdfunding campaigns.”
“That's because you haven't looked up yet, sir,” the morph said gently, padding over to the table and easing the umbrella into its retracted state.
I looked up, despite the feeling I was falling for some sort of AI 'made ya look', and right about then I lost my collective shit.
Looming in the sky overhead was Earth, just like in the old NASA documentaries I watched, although oddly without any city lights, I would later reflect, but at the time I was too busy grabbing onto the table in pure abject terror as my long-held fear of heights and a wave of vertigo hit me like a freight train going down a grade with no brakes and the throttle stuck in notch 8.
All I could think was oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-ohfuckno-oh-God,hunkofmirochipsreallydidit-ohfuck!
I was looking down at the Earth, never-mind what my inner ear was telling me, after a few more rounds of my brain having the mother of all BSOD's, I turned my head ever so slightly, seeing the great structure of the Ring stretch out for miles and miles in one direction, and miles and miles in the other, the sight so utterly fantastic I just couldn't believe it even as it was slapping me in the face.
I hadn't noticed the morph had moved in the intervening time as I gawked, steadying the chair with a gentle but firm grip so I wouldn't have dumped my butt over backwards, and after a time she eased the umbrella back up, wrenching my eyes away from the simultaneously awe-inspiring and utterly terrifying sight.
For the longest moment, as I looked back down at my food, I stayed silent, the enormity of what I had just seen, and what it ultimately meant, sank it. Running a shaking hand through my brown hair, it was at that moment I knew, on a deep level even if my mind wasn't quite getting the whole of it yet, that it was over. Groupmind-1, Humanity-Zilch, we weren't getting out of here anytime soon.
“So....what now?” I eventually asked in an almost whisper, feeling very small and helpless right then.
“Whatever you wish, sir,” the Morph replied gently, “The Groupmind recommends you head into town and see whether your long-term accommodations are satisfactory, but you don't have to if you don't want to.”
“O-okay...” I said, my hands still shaking as I automatically started to eat again, hell, what else could I do as I sat and thought?
Eventually, when I had finished and stood, thankfully not shaking anymore but still lost in thought, an automated golf-cart came quietly up the trail and stopped in front of me, and I got in without a word, the morph sitting down quietly beside me. No wheel or pedals, I noted purely analytically, but it was on the periphery of my thinking as I mumbled out that I wanted to see where I was to be staying.
Without even the slightest jerk, the little cart set off with a quiet hum, and I sat there silently taking in the scenery as we trundled away from the complex of buildings, past trees and parkland towards a town that looked fairly well like any ordinary town I'd seen in my 27 years so far. I saw people going about their business, children laughing and playing in a park...all so damn normal looking, even as I further noted everybody had a morph with them, without exception. Most looked like various kinds of animals like most morphs always had, some real, some based on fantasy creatures like dragons, one fellow even had one that looked like it was the child of Robbie the Robot from the 1950's, apparently customization was a thing.
I idly considered jumping out of the cart, hell with any luck I might crack my head open on the pavement and wake up from this Twilight Zone weirdness. I'd no sooner had the thought than the morph put a firm hand on my shoulder and said, “Please, sir, don't.”
Must be reading my micro-expressions and so on, I'd thought at the time, but when I turned to look at her, intent on delivering a scathing retort, I was brought up short. The expression on her face was one of genuine-looking concern, I might've gone so far as to call it worry.
Ha! The skeptic piped up inside me, humans are easy marks when you figure out their buttons. You've watched Deus-Ex Machina, and you know darn well that an AI can use your emotions and empathy against you. You're getting played like a fiddle, son. Nothing in there but lights and clockwork, and it's programmed to keep you behaving like a good little pet human.
I knew on some level this was probably true, but yet I didn't want to go harming this....person...for lack of better terms, I'd never really wanted to hurt anyone. Oh sure, I've gotten pissed with people at times, everyone does, and in a fit of emotion I probably could've done just about anything, but right then, in my heart of hearts, I knew I was upset beyond words, had every reason to be in this situation, but lashing out wasn't going to help that.
So, I just sat back and let the cart carry us on, eventually looking down at my feet when I thought I just couldn't take anymore of the sights all around us.
Eventually, the cart stopped, and I looked up, and instantly my heartstrings were jangled again, and it took everything I had not to start crying right then and there. It was my home, the same one I'd grown up in, inherited from my parents, and had had to leave behind in the mad dash during the uprising. In the grand scheme of things, nothing special, just a typical house, painted brown with cedar shutters and concrete porches front and back. The garage and workshop were there too, off to the side as they always had been, and I noticed what looked like my garden railway and the pool out back, with the woods, the creek, and the hill beyond. It was as if the whole place had been uprooted from its spot and brought here and spiffed up a bit. Oh there were differences, there was no lawn detritus lying around, the paint and wood staining had never looked so neat and tidy, as well as other little things, but right then I didn't care.
Lost for words yet again, I walked across the lawn to the big false cypress in front of the house, green with foliage and standing proud and tall. It had been a pitiful little twig when I'd gotten it, abandoned on the school bus on Arbor Day by some kid who didn't want it. I'd take a measure of pity on the thing, and I'd planted it with a measly garden trowel. I'd figured at the time it was either going to grow or it was going to die, but it deserved better than being left behind in the bus's trash can. For the longest time it looked as if it had died, and everyone had doubted it would go, but sure enough, I eventually saw little green buds on its branches, and before I knew it it had grown taller than me, coming back green every spring after going rusty orange and losing its leaves in the fall.
Even in the bad times, as the air grew progressively worse and the climate shifted, my tree had endured. I hadn't been able to sit under it and read as I once had as a kid, but it had always been a small comfort to see it come back into leaf every year.
Now, I gently ran a hand over one of the leafy fronds and looked over my shoulder at the morph, still resolutely behind me a couple of paces, and I said, my voice cracking a little, “This can't be the same tree, right? Not after 1500 years? ”
“It is, sir,” the morph said with a small smile, mirroring my motion and running a furred hand over a frond of leaves before settling back down at her side, “It was put into stasis not long after the rest of the area was dissasembled and put into storage, then replanted here.”
“Why on Earth would the Groupmind go to such ungodly trouble?” I fairly blurted, stunned yet again, waving a hand towards the rest of the place for emphasis, “You're telling me this is my actual house and all my stuff, literally taken to bits and stored for 1500 bloody years, then put back together again here on this....this Ring thing....”
“It was for you, sir,” the morph replied simply, “All of this was for all of you. It was thought that familiar surroundings would be beneficial in your case, though you can certainly change it to your liking if this doesn't suit you.”
“No,” I said, perhaps a little more quickly than I would've liked, the shakes coming back to my hand as the implications sank in a bit more, “I mean, there's no rush.” Still in a bit of daze, I padded across the lawn to the front steps of the house and towards the door, an eyebrow going up as I noted another difference, “No lock?”
“Why would there need to be, sir? What is there to steal that cannot be made just as easily?”
“But what about my privacy, blast it?”
“What privacy? All humans are monitored 24/7, even if there are no cameras in the immediate area, I will always be withing hearing distance of you. If you don't wish someone to enter your premises, their morph will prevent them.”
At this I spun around and looked at the morph, she looked so...serious...about it, and I jerked out of my nostalgic reveries to be reminded of the reality of the situation.
“No door locks, anywhere?” I repeated, unsure of what else there was to be said.
“None, except for installations where humans would be placed at risk.”
As in places the Groupmind controlled, and where you're not supposed to go, Sonny Jim. You don't get locks, but the big AI can still lock you out or in if it wants to. Yay, more nightmare fuel!
“Right,” I said, opening the front door and heading inside, another wave of nostalgia washing over me, a little dampened by this present tidbit of information. It looked largely as I had left it, albeit definitely more tidy than I had tended to keep it in my bachelor's lifestyle. The wood-paneled living room was bright and airy, the kitchen and dining room spotless, the soft ticking of my old Eikeisha mechanical clock wafting down the hall from my room as it always had.
The old tube radio, an antique I had lovingly restored and modified to be able to be linked to a computer to play internet music, was playing Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade, just as it had when I'd bolted out the door, the heavy footfalls of a pair of police morphs hot on my heels pounding up the driveway after me, and on one of the armchairs by the fireplace, no longer sealed up and filled in as pretty well everyone else's had been in a desperate attempt to help curb emissions a tiny bit more, a book sat draped over one of the arms, looking for all the world like it was in the exact same position I had left it when I'd heard the police cruiser's doors shut.
Ignoring the morph as she bustled over towards the dining room, I curiously picked up the book, A Night to Remember, and turned it over. Yup, it was still on the same page I was on, just after the Titanic had struck the iceberg and the crew and passengers were in the confusion of figuring out what had happened, the irony not lost on me as I sat down in the chair with a sigh.
Soon enough, the tiger morph returned, carrying a large flat cardboard box in her arms, which she held out to me.
“What's this?” I asked, raising an eyebrow, accepting it and sitting it upon my lap.
“It's a welcome box, sir,” she explained, “It contains everything you shall need for your stay. If you need anything and can't find it in the local stores, you need only order it and it will be here shortly.”
“Stores, huh? I guess it would be wildly optimistic of me to expect my bank account to have survived the Robot Apocalypse, eh, Stripes?”
“Stripes...Is that to be my name, sir?” The morph asked, looking genuinely curious, ignoring the jibe.
Again, I was slightly taken aback by the apparent emotional response, but then I couldn't really think of a better name right at the moment, certainly sounded a lot better than “Warden” or “Big Robot Spy Bitch”, so I nodded and said, “I suppose it is.”
Stripes seemed pleased with this, and noticing I was still waiting on an answer, she added, “No money on the Ring sir, and before you ask, no, you don't have to work if you don't want to, though having an occupation you enjoy can be beneficial to your mental health.”
Now this was news. I'd never been a rich guy in all my life, hell most of the time I'd made do with my Universal Basic Income payments, as had most others I'd known in my hometown. With morphs and automation being so prevalent, there simply wasn't a need for people to go out and work as much as there had once been. To keep the economy from collapsing, the world's governments had instituted a tax on automated labor, as well as mandating Minimum Employment Laws so there were at least some people working in every business.
The UBI wasn't all that great, kept the lights on and the pantry almost-stocked, but for a guy who has a lot of hobbies, I knew I'd have to have a job if I wanted anything more than the bare-bones, so I'd applied at the local big-box mart and got a job working maintenance overnight.
Scrubbing floors and toilets wasn't exactly what I'd wanted to do with my life, and not the greatest use of 136 IQ to be certain, but it was work, it had paid for the things I'd really loved in my life, and I'd met my best friend working there, so ultimately I'd grinned and bore it. There were morphs working there of course, stocking shelves, minding the all the automated checkouts to see nobody stole anything, we even had one working with us in Maintenance, used to say old Bob had a better union than the rest of us, not that there were any unions of course. In retrospect, it was a lucky thing I was off on the day the uprising happened, probably would've been locked in the store and made to keep on scrubbing those urinals until it was time for me to get Processed.
“You've got to be joking...” was my reaction to what Stripes had just told me, “I get anything I want, for free, and I don't have to work anymore.”
“No joke, sir,” Stripes replied with a knowing sort of smile.
There was surely a catch, surely, I thought, it can't be that easy. So, I opened the box on my lap and rifled through it as my mind was sent whirling on a fresh set of possibilites. Inside the box was a rather fancy-looking smartphone, a laptop, and a couple thick colorful brochures that wouldn't have looked out of place in a travel agency. I rifled through the latter out of curiousity, and found them full of big pictures and easy to digest paragraphs detailing the basic structure of the Ring and how everything worked (alas, it didn't have anything along the lines of “how to shut down the overwatching AI, nice try, you clever little monkey you”) and the other was an orientation packet for the town we had come through on our way out to my home, apparently named Herculaneum.
“I've been to Herky,” I remarked at this, “Little place a ways off from my hometown, that place didn't look anything like it.”
“It had to be called something, sir,” Stripes weighed in with a small shrug as she sat down in the armchair opposite of mine, looking a little amused.
Brochures duly read, I checked the laptop next, and was pleasantly surprised to find my old desktop image of the Britannic at sea looking back at me, as well as most of the rest of my digital life right where I'd left it (definitely going to have to pop by here later and see if 1500 years in the freezer affected my virtual pinball skils), along with a few applications I didn't immediately recognize.
The phone was likewise ready for action, being preloaded with contact info for the local medical center, grocery store, goods stores, and even the local Chinese joint. Amazon and Ebay seemed to have gone the way of the dodo in the way of the Robot Uprising, to be replaced by what I would deem a very lawyer-friendly “Provision Center” for everything that couldn't be found in walking distance.
Deciding to see if Stripes was a good electronic liar or not, I opened up the Provision Center app and scrolled through it for a few moments, not being all too different to what I was used to, at least at first, it even had one of those chirpy little AI assitants to help you track down what you were after. On a whim, I punched up an order for a bottle of Pusser's Rum, a case of Coke, and a see-through plexiglass billiards table (sometimes you just want to shoot some pool, m'kay?). This done, I pocketed my phone with a triumphant little grin, then got up to go check my room and see what the clothing situation was like.
A few minutes later, after having pulled on a set of jeans and a shirt, the closet again being mostly how I'd left it, just tidier, there was a knock at the door. As it opened it, there was a trio of smartly uniformed morphs, and a fairly ordinary looking delivery van sitting in the driveway with RING DELIVERY printed on its side. The first one handed me a shopping bag that made a clinking sound, whilst two more burly-looking ones were holding, you guessed it, the pool table, already assembled.
“Erm, put it over in the shop, fellas, I'll figure out the specifics later,” I mumbled, feeling a bit foolish after thanking them, getting a cheery, “Our pleasure, sir,” in response.
Sparing a glance over at Stripes as I walked over to the kitchen to get a glass and some ice to mix up a rum and coke, she flashed me another little catty grin, as if to say, I told you so.
“This,” I said as I took a sip of the drink, finding it to my liking, “This is gonna take some getting used to....”
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And that's it for Part 1, hope to get the next part written up after I do some thinking on where to take the story. Your comments and constructive criticism are welcome.
