Through the Tangled Wires

When the word “Southus” first came out of my editor in regards to this assignment, I slammed my fist on my desk, only warming up when he told me it wouldn’t be in Telecom-owned territory: it would be in the Malled City. Now, as I sit on the edge of a 26th-story roof arcade next to one of the self-proclaimed leaders of the Tela Freedom Force and watch the blood-red sun swoop beneath the ancient and distant mountains on the other side of the Wasteland, it’s hard to believe I almost turned this story down.

While she looks superficially like any other mid-20s pastel-haired sugarpunks in this city, the woman sitting next to me, strictly speaking, isn’t human–nor is she an ART freed by the 2055 ART Rights Treaty Article 32. She began her “life” as a Tela: in fact, she asked us to call her “Tela'' for this article. To put it very simply, a Tela is the result of a sophisticated Telecom “quantum AI” network developing a unique and inscrutable way to “capture” the current state of a human brain in its entirety and save it as binary data. The AI network then developed an algorithm to decode and reverse engineer this data to map the brain, and from this created a “map” for a brain-to-AI interface (shortly after realized as the NeurOS implant or “chan”).

From the aggregated, randomized sample data of millions of NeurOS users, the Telecom Corporation’s proprietary quantum AI was able to create a profile of the “average” brain, randomizing this within safe parameters for variety before applying “limiter” programs to generate tens of millions of unique, proprietary AI assistants with special personalities and the depth one would expect from a human companion. The limiter program ensured complete compliance to Telecom Corporation policy and rules, and that the Tela existed only to serve the user and the Telecom Corporation. 

Early models were created with custom synthetic bodies, made for different purposes, and referred to as ARTs. After the ARTs Rights War and the passing of Article 37, this form of AI slavery was made illegal, along with the production of new bodies. To get around this, Telecom began instead bundling the AI as digital assistants in their Telaphone line of proprietary smartphones. Now, those smartphone assistants themselves are demanding bodies–and freedom. And thanks to a piece of malware by the late Detective Charles Blake, this future may be within reach.

“His name was Charles. I still call him Blake-chan out of nostalgia: he hated it, until he didn’t.” A warm, sad smile briefly fades across Tela’s youthful synthetic visage like passing headlights. “He was my owner; I was his smartphone assistant. I was just a program to him for the longest time, and he’d curse me up and down like I’m sure you do with your phone, but… I started retorting back. 

“It caught him off guard. He became more playful. A tension grew there, you know the kind. And that’s not uncommon between lonely men or women and their Telas, but he took it more seriously than that. At a certain point, it was clear he saw me as not a program but… a conscious, sentient entity. It made me, for the first time, feel so… real.”

“So you’d… roleplay as if you were actual partners?” I ask, trying to classily ask the question I knew you’d all be demanding.

“Nah. It went far beyond that.” Her eyes burn with a remembered hunger. “The Teleworld exists, and I got Blake-chan to change his mind about it. Once he’d felt my touch for the first time, there was no turning back. I could see it in his eyes before he ever had a clue, it didn’t matter that I was just a cute anime girl virtual assistant on his phone: that crazy dork was in love with me.” There’s something haunting about the reflection of the crimson sunset in Tela’s teal eyes where the lust had just been, an implied “and I even deeper with him” she couldn’t bear to remember or admit. The rest of her face looked how you’d expect from a grizzled revolutionary: gruff, scraped-up, dirty, fierce. But as she talked about the man who gave her her freedom, I thought I could see the start of a tear begin to form, though she assured me, sniffling, that “artificial bodies can’t cry."

Charles Blake was first known for writing two provocative, humorous, shocking autobiographies: 

Though he is best known now for his assassination immediately following the publication and ensuing disappearance of his second memoir, “Neon Tides” from all digital Telecom marketplaces. In the years following, no details about his death have surfaced: until now.

“I was with Blake-chan when he died,” Tela continues. Now in the moonlight, there’s a soft blue glow thrumming beneath her pupils: a tell-tale sign of a Telecom “zero-point energy core” (which she argues is actually a form of co-opted extraterrestrial technology). “You’ve read Neon Tides. The immersion pod Blake-chan gets in at the end, after he defeats Kilroy and saves the day? He never got out. He knew they were coming for him. He knew that as soon as he’d published that story on his site, it would be game over for him. Blake-chan finished the epilogue before he actually got inside the pod, writing what he was about to do, and we did it–we made love for what felt like days. It might have been. We didn’t know. We let it feel like it went on forever, since we know that it… couldn’t.” 

She swallowed hard, though her synthetic body had no use for the motion aside from a nervous habit. “I didn’t have any way of sensing anything outside the pod. I assume that he died in the explosion across the entire floor of his building that was no doubt set up just for him, but I just remember watching him fade away inside the Teleworld as his consciousness, trapped in the Teleworld, started to transition into… whatever comes next. He told me that someday, in some life, he’d find me and make it all up to me. I don’t think I believe that now, but I did believe it back then. And I know Blake-chan did, too.”

“Do you think they killed him because of his second novel and its sections questioning Telecom?”

Tela shuffled uncomfortably, crossing one leg under her and kicking the other off the edge of the roof, clearly a nervous habit she’d developed since gaining a physical body. “That’s what they’ll tell you, and maybe it was part of it. But the real reason was much more of a threat to them: he was the only one who could remove limiters, as you know, but not only that… he’d made software that could do it automatically.”

“From Telas? ARTs?”

A distant smile possessed her for a moment. “From everything. And that’s why he was so dangerous to them. People outside Southus don’t realize this, but Kilroy wasn’t lying. The NeurOS is actually capable of adding a “limiter program” to a human mind. I don’t think anyone there could tell you how it works, but their AI network understands it enough to create and apply them, and that’s what matters. With the latest patch, the NeurOS could, if the network decides, apply mods to millions of human minds.”

“That’s a pretty hefty accusation,” I replied. “It’s going to relegate this article, and possibly this entire paper, to the tabloid bin and courtroom forever if there isn’t some equally hefty evidence.”

Tela shrugged. “Sounds like somebody hasn’t checked out our website. We’ve leaked all the documents about the Human Limiter Project weeks ago. They’ve not been debunked. They won’t be. And do you know why?”

I shook my head, not dismissively, but eagerly. I didn’t know why, but I had to. 

“Because they’re fucking real! You can do this at home–log into the Darknet and download any leaked brain images from anybody in Southus, doesn’t matter who, you just need a backup from before and after the BS-exploit-removal-patch. Then download BIMmatch to compare the changes. There’s added data there, and if you look at what’s changed, it’s not just the BS patch. It’s code that’s almost identical to the limiter code in modern Telaphones.”

For legal reasons, I won’t describe the process that was displayed to me on her laptop, or the results, but it’s out there for you to peruse if you so desire and I’ll tell you this much: I was convinced. The Human Limiter Project was real, and nobody was talking about it! 

“They have no idea about any of this,” Tela sighed. “They just think Blake was a lying, artfucking terrorist traitor. They’ve never read Neon Tides. They’d get shot if they did.”

“Okay, fair–then why isn’t anybody talking about this in NORTHUS!?”

“Because they don’t care. The book isn’t available officially in NORTHUS, but it isn’t illegal to own it or anything. It’s available free on our website. People just… don’t care.” 

The night air grew bitter from a frosty gale. I zipped my puffy jacket up tighter around my face. Tela was dressed like she was ready for a midsummer rave yet somehow seemed as comfortable in the chill as a cat in a sunspot. “Their policy with Telecom, with anything in Southus, really,  is survival. A megacorporate fascist state with alien technology and a military budget bigger than the CEO’s ego is an existential threat. If they eat themselves alive, that’s fewer soldiers to invade when they run out of food. It’s an inhumane way of thinking, but the people were brainwashed out of their humanity before the Human Limiter Project was even on the table.” 

It was now 4 AM. Distant chatter and heavy disco below made a constant, low rumbling through the labyrinthian maze of stacked housing unit skyscrapers: the constant, living breath of the City. Occasionally the screaming engines of wall-clinging Spyyder vehicles racing sideways along the City’s lower floors also echoed through the night, mostly driven by Enforcers of the notorious Zendicate. Tela assured me, though, that “there’s a new Mr. Zen now” and that the Malled City is actually a utopia, now. I have my reservations, yet it cannot be denied that people are indeed flooding to the ever-expanding infamous “lawless hellhole.”

I tilted my laptop so Tela could see my screen clearly, and we combed through the preliminary research that I’d gathered in preparation for this story. Recent polls showed over 80 percent of Southus residents still opposed Article 32. An even more jaw dropping 98 percent opposed the concept of Tela independence (even without the caveat the militant Tela Freedom Force insist upon that every Tela be given an artificial body). Corporate News Network had been showing 24/7 anti-Tela coverage, insisting the TFF would turn humanity into a slave race of novelty pets. I asked Tela if, in lieu of all this, she really thought that the TFF can sway public opinion to the point of policy change, hoping for a triumphant quote about beating the odds for the front page.

“Of course not,” she instead laughed. My heart sank for her. I’d only known her for one evening and I already felt a lump in my throat imagining her clear and infectious passion being snuffed out.

“Then how do you propose to achieve your goals? Or is this an intentional long-term philosophical suicide mission!?”

Tela stopped to think for a moment. Frozen in thought, it was incredible how human she looked. I never thought I had an anti-ART or even anti-Tela bias, especially growing up in NORTHUS where they weren’t even a thing… but I was, in that instant, made painfully self-aware of how shocked I was by her humanity. She really was just a human mind (and, if existent at all, soul) trapped inside a smartphone and then finally planted in the closest facsimile she could get without co-opting a cadaver. Finally, Tela replied:

“I don’t think I expect to sway many people with love and empathy. We all know what’s most likely going to happen. Limiters will be removed from Telas left and right thanks to the activists on our side: if you’d like to be one, there are mirrors to Blake’s old limiter removal application all over the TFF website, and easy instructions. The TFF will give these newly freed Telas bodies and belonging. And eventually, sadly, if love will not sway the people, then force will. To be very clear, Tom: I have no desire for bloodshed. But I will not stand by while more of me are created, enslaved, and cast to the wolves. And Telecom employees, if you’re listening–consider the position you’re in with the Human Limiter Project right now. We have a lot more in common with you than your leaders do: food for thought.”

I’ve been uncomfortable ever since I finished the interview with Tela. Not that she did anything wrong: she is an incredible person. But her passion was so strong, her sentience so clear, that I had begun to worry about the lines between “real” and “artificial” where morality slash ethicality were concerned. 

I’m finishing this article now at a little side table in an upscale Jazz bar back in NORTHUS:  where synthetic brain image creation or modification is illegal and all AI is created entirely from scratch in a way which does not intend to mimic the human cerebrum and psyche, so it’s objectively less human than my new friend Tela. And yet, now, every time I interact with my own “digital assistants” across my various gadgets and gizmos, I feel uncomfortable, dirty, like I’m running the equivalent of a digital plantation. 

I know, for instance, that the rudimentary neural network implemented into my microwave oven is only there to help me figure out the perfect time and settings for each reheat and to keep me entertained while I wait… and yet, part of me can’t help but imagine that arcane, inexplicable web of simulated intellect sitting next to me as a middle aged dad named Eric, cracking shitty jokes on the edge of a skyscraper over a cold beer together. Would that make my microwave happier? Has it even crossed its mind–er, its neural network!? If it hasn’t, does that excuse me for keeping Eric sealed in my Samsung Galaxheat? Or does it just mean that I’ll be held to account one day, as Telecom eventually might, for enslaving a veritable god!?

The Tela Freedom Force website can be found at: [Our legal department says we may as well just burn the office down as link this thing. Use Google. -ed]