The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue by Louis Shalako

Author:Louis Shalako
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, dystopia, satire, romantic adventure, louis shalako, betty blue

***

The silence was funereal as Dr. Piqua snapped shut the heavy oaken slab. One or two even twitched as he flipped the thumb-piece on the deadbolt. His shaven head gleamed in the overhead pot lights.

A minimum of staff had been invited, nice word, to the emergency meeting.

Doctor Piqua moved to the head of the room, where his chair sat vacant. Features obscured with the strong light of the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, he regarded the group, examining each face, one by one. He stood with heavily-tattooed hands on the back of the chair.

Clearing his throat, he began to speak.

“I think it is time to invoke Plan Nine.”

They all knew what that was. Plan Nine was a backdoor into every unit built.

His plan was limited to passive surveillance.

“Basically, nothing changes. Our units go on as before. We just take a stream of data from each one, and run it through the machine.” When he said machine, he meant more than one.

This was going to take up a lot of machine-time.

All faces were turned to him.

“Are we sure?” Company president Renaldo Gage was an aquiline man in his mid-fifties, suave and sophisticated.

Renaldo took a deep breath.

“Once we are blown, we will stay blown.”

“Yes, that’s very true. But we cannot rely on the police to find Betty Blue and we must have her back. It would be preferable if we were the first to examine her.”

Plan Nine was only for the direst of emergencies. With foresight, and a knowledge of the heavy liabilities involved, it was only to be used in a worst-case scenario. This was one of those cases.

Steve Hobbs, senior software writer, cleared his throat.

“Yes?” Piqua gave him his opening.

“We are already aware that some units have been hacked. If we can isolate those units, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees.”

All in the room were aware of the problem. Once a unit was hacked, its security was forever suspect.

“It’s a risk we are going to have to take.”

Hobbs nodded.

“I would prefer almost anything but that…”

Hobbs turned to program security chief Letitia Bennett. She was opening up her file, as if seeking reassurance, although she could talk on this subject without notes. Her small eyes surrounded by wrinkled flesh looked bitter at the best of times. She was as tough as they came and her husky shoulders reeked of physical training. It was habitual for Letitia, completely unconscious of it, to cross her legs under the table and dangle a clog off the end of her foot.

“With all eyes looking for Betty Blue and this Scott Nettles character, we have a better than even chance of finding her before they do.”

This was confidential information gleaned from police sources. Bennett was very good at that sort of thing.

‘They,’ of course, referred to the authorities. ‘Eyes,’ of course, referred to every robot built in the last few years by SimTech and anyone else who built ‘bots with proprietary systems and components under license.

“If one of our friendly neighbourhood hackers detects our presence, there may very well be hell to pay.

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