Fan Fiction ❯ Love In Binary ❯ Unemployment on Lustria ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Masahiro Koriani stood in his garage and stared out over the Lustrian buildings. His homeworld was a thriving planet on the edge of human space. Despite the glimmering skyscrapers, Lustria was a major farm world, supplying the human troops with food as the borderline expanded slowly into alien territory. Of course, not all aliens were hostile, many species were now so integrated into human lifestyles that it was hard to distinguish between their cultures anymore. Masahiro looked down sadly. Unfortunately the Keldar were intent on military conquest, their first encounter with humans had been a massacre. The Keldar had evolved on a hostile world with a record three native sentient species. Each species had become warlike in order to survive. Now only the Keldar remained, having crushed their natural foes they expanded into space to conquer new worlds and peoples. Luckily they were pretty primitive, their spacecraft still ran on helium based rocket fuel. The only reason they had escaped their own solar system was due to capturing a human transport vessel. Well there wasn't much Masahiro could do about it being a twelve year old Lustrian kid. Despite his age he was a talented computer engineer. Currently he was constructing a maintenance android. He had given it speech capabilities, pretty good speech recognition and had even managed a little associative ability. The programming had taken him ages to come up with, mainly he had cut up other lines of computer code and taken what he needed. Unfortunately he still hadn't cracked self awareness. He sighed. If he could give a machine self awareness he could create A.I. Some people had come pretty close to it, he may look at some stuff on the internet and see if he could barter for some programming. Only a few A.I existed in the world, but they lacked association and emotion so they were virtually useless. They were merely self aware but pretty much unable to understand things. The definition of an artificial intelligence was now 'a machine that is aware of it's own existence'. But people had dreamed up another form of machine. What was referred to as a 'true A.I'. The 'true A.I' was a machine with self awareness, association and emotion. It was sad that all these programs existed, but were so rare and complex that no one had ever been able to get all three in the same machine. Masahiro was a skinny japan originated kid and he didn't have many friends but he had never needed any. His big sister was his best friend. His parents had died in the Keldar raids and so he had grown up with just Sakura to look after him. Masahiro had been just eight when the transport was attacked. He could remember the ships hull rumbling as the Keldar patrol emerged from the Time-Space hole. He could remember the sirens, and the restraints lifting from his body as an evacuation was sounded. As he and his family had fled along the corridors the lights failed and they had become separated. He had blundered alone through the darkness until he saw the red glow of the Keldar searchlights ahead. Masahiro had frozen, and time had slowed as the armoured head had emerged from the night. He had watched on in terror as the alien raised one of its archaic projectile weapons in a thick, horny hand. He remembered as the searing energy beam roared past him from behind and struck the monster, spraying the child with orange goo, as he was pulled away by a human soldier. They had his sister with them and the two of them were practically flung into an escape pod. The man who had saved him smiled at them briefly before a metallic pellet blasted the door controls and they were sealed in. Sakura had strapped her brother down and punched the launch button and they were away. He shook his head to rid his mind of the memory and realised that there was a tear in his eyes. He rubbed his face quickly and turned away from the scene below. Masahiro headed to his workbench where an inactive robot lay half finished. Wires and terminals protruded from the mechanical skull as the young boy sat down to continue his work. He could have the machine ready for surface-coating by the end of the day. He pulled a key board and mouse towards him and an overhead terminal lit up as he began to programme the machine before him.Sakura stood in the glass elevator that ran up the side of the building, watching the gently curving towers rising towards the sky. She smiled to herself at the thought of the present she had for her brother. She too loved machines and the dream of her and her brother some day creating the first 'true' A.I. The data stick in her pocket had something very special on it. Sakura was twenty years old now and she and Masahiro made a living by constructing and repairing robots at a much cheaper price than any official business. They both loved doing what they did and lived a happy life. And they both shared the same dream. The three key parts to a true A.I were association, followed by self awareness leading to, and here she shuddered with excitement, emotion. A machine with emotion, the very thought made her tingle. Emotion was yet to be achieved in any machine. Only programmed discomfort or pleasure had been managed but it had been permanent and couldn't be altered. Emotion depended on association, it changed drastically based on small details, much too complex for any regular computer programme.They would need the top association programming before emotion programming could even begin. Sakura could barely contain her joy at what she had found. She pulled the data stick from her. The problem with computer development nowadays was everybody's unwillingness to share new programming techniques. Only the seriously rich were able to purchase any form of the three and then only ever one. There was never any way for anyone to get all the necessary programming together at the same time. She smiled to herself. She had just had a brilliant stroke of luck. The elevator stopped moving and the door slid open to reveal a long corridor. The smiling woman stepped off and trotted down the hallway until she reached a door, which she unlocked and entered."Koon sah con tah?" inquired Frorbek, proffering the small package to his friend. The human had to ran slightly to keep up with the fast pace of the alien next to him."Look Frorbek, thanks for the offer and all but I've got enough saved up at home, I'll get through this." said Hiroshi, turning to the tentacled creature next to him."Fen cren sha tonna. Ilsek oonah pisata, Hiroshi?" said the alien doubtfully."Of course I'm sure." he stopped walking and smiled hopefully, "I'll find another job. Maybe I can be a robotics assistant.""Kreee-hee-hee-hee." laughed the alien, "U? Unta frellsek capinton? Krah-ha-ha!""Hey what's so funny?" demanded Hiroshi."Achuta nel eskel frellsekas!""So what if I don't know anything about computers? I'd only be an assistant. Probably just fetch and carry work.""El surta cyl can is ta frant, Hiroshi!" said the alien, clearly still amused.Hiroshi sighed "I know there's more to it than that. It'll be a great chance to learn though. Anyway I have enough money to last me a couple of months, I'll figure something out."Frorbek reached a thin, green arm around his friends shoulders and patted him on the back whilst using his other hand to fiddle with the thick tendrils dangling either side of his mouth and gills."Hiroshi, kell sa ton ka sentako, es unichata frill sota." he said smiling.Hiroshi looked at his feet "Yeah I know..... look let me just try it my way and then when I'm in the gutter I'll let you fish me out again, ok?"The grinning alien nodded in confirmation and strode away, gurgling his laughter. Hiroshi tucked his hands in his pockets and set off again.He was a young man, only twenty one in Earth years, and had just been fired from his job. He was of average hight and rather skinny, and wore large round glasses, jeans and a jumper. The japanese boy strongly resembled a geek, the only difference was that he had no skill with computers whatsoever. He had just been removed from his boring job in the cantina and was returning home to his run down apartment after being ridiculed by his alien friend. Not that he minded aliens. They were the only people he seemed to get on well with. Truth be told he had no money though, how was he going to get a job? Well as long as it wasn't in a cantina he didn't mind. Hiroshi pushed his way though the crowds of people until he reached a brick red building that stretched into the sky above him. Just like all the other ones, he thought to himself as he entered the elevator. He pressed the button for the fiftieth floor and stood in silence whilst it ascended slowly. Who the hell was going to hire HIM, he had no qualifications. It also didn't help that pretty much every job besides farming was based on robotics. When the doors opened he walked into the corridor only to see another alien being, this time pushing a mop along the floor. He nodded to it."Good afternoon Ms Aneko." he said as he walked past. She looked up to see where the voice had come from and smiled."Oh, good afternoon Mr Sekato." she said in a high pitched voice "And how is everything for you today?""Fine thankyou Ms Aneko. And you?""Oh, very kind of you to ask sir. I am perfectly happy in every respect." she told him beaming with good natured cheer."Good good. See you around." he called back down the corridor."See you soon Mr Sekato. Goodbye." she shouted after him before returning to her mopping. Hiroshi Sekato pushed his door open and looked around the room. It was virtually empty, just a small sofa and a television stood in the middle of the room surrounded by general litter. A mattress lay on the floor in the corner with an empty pizza box next to it. He sighed, walked in and sat down on his makeshift bed before fishing a cold slice of pizza from the box. He sat in thought for a while, chewing slowly on an antique mushroom. He had no job, no money, no girlfriend and his life was going nowhere. Maybe he should try and get offworld, join the army and battle nobly against the vile Keldar hordes? But then again he couldn't shoot and was as muscly and brave as a string bean. And besides he'd probably get lost or something knowing his luck. What was he going to do. He bit into an ancient anchovy and pondered his next move. Maybe he COULD get a job as a robotics assistant, as he had said to Frorbek it was mostly fetch and carry and he could learn the rest as he went along. Maybe he could get away with it, he certainly looked the part. If he did he could make some serious money and learn about a completely new trade at the same time. Or maybe he could still take Frorbek up on his offer. Hiroshi jumped to his feet and stuffed the last of the pizza in his mouth as he headed out of the room at top speed.Converting /tmp/php2aRswn to /dev/stdout