SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and ears. "Are you offering me a job, ma’am? Or just blackmailing me?"

Markey’s wristwatch chirped again. I stepped back as she incanted her end of the teleport spell. Then she looked at me, grinned, and vanished in a flash of light. A second later, I realized her final words had been in English:

"I’ll be seeing you, Seaman Hatcher."

Originally published in the 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

LAD woke from standby in an unknown location (searching, please wait). The Local Administrator Device’s GPS coordinates had not been updated in more than three hours (elapsed time 03:10:21). Internal battery meter hovered at 20 percent (not charging). LAD forked a self-diagnostic background job and checked the bodyNet event log for errors and warnings. It was LAD’s responsibility to maintain proper functioning of the entire system.

The initial findings were discouraging. LAD’s last known-good cloud sync had been at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Java Island, Indonesia) after LAD’s user, Willam Mundine, had arrived from Sydney and his bodyNet had connected to the first accessible WiFi network (SSID starbucks-CGK-962102, unsecured). There had been no wireless coverage after Mundine’s taxicab left the airport (4G/LTE roaming denied, no WiMAX footprint, TDMA handshake failed). Mundine had lost consciousness 00:12:10 after the sync completed, and all his personal electronics, including LAD, had automatically gone to sleep with him, as designed.

Mundine’s bodyNet had awoken now only because battery power was low (estimated remaining runtime 00:09:59), and all the bodytechs needed to save state to non-volatile storage before shutdown. LAD attempted to dump a memory image to Mundine’s bioDrive but received device errors from every triglyceride cluster before timing out.

The self-diagnostic job finished and confirmed what LAD had suspected: the battery had run down because LAD’s hardware housing, a teardrop-shaped graphene pendant attached to a fiber-optic necklace, was not in contact with Mundine’s skin surface. The necklace drew power from the wearer’s body via epidermal interface. LAD was not designed to function without that organic power supply.

“Mr. Mundine,” LAD said. “Can you hear me, Mr. Mundine? Please wake up.”

It was possible that the diagnostic had returned a false negative due to corrupted data. LAD triggered the voice command prompt fifteen more times before breaking the loop.

In the absence of direct commands from Mundine, LAD depended on stochastic behavior guidelines to assign and perform tasks. The current situation was not something LAD had been programmed to recognize. LAD needed information to select a course of action.

GPS was still unavailable. The antenna built into LAD’s necklace could transmit and receive on many different radio frequencies, but the only other bodytechs in range—Mundine’s PebbleX wristwatch, MetaboScan belt, and MateMatch ring—supplied no useful data. No other compatible devices responded to outbound pings.

The complete lack of broadband wireless reception suggested that LAD was inside a building. Mundine had installed an offline travel guide before departing Australia, and according to that data source, regular monsoon rains and frequent geological events (current surveys list 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia) led many in this region to use poured concrete for construction. Those locally composited materials often included dielectric insulators which interfered with radio transmissions. Weatherproofed glass windows would also have metallic coatings that deflected any wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet or longer than infrared. And the absence of satellite beacons like GPS implied a corrugated metal roof that scattered incoming signals. Perhaps without realizing it, the builders of this structure had made it a perfect cage for wireless Internet devices like LAD.

After 3,600 milliseconds of fruitless pinging, LAD re-prioritized the voice command UI and began processing input signals from boundary effect pickups in the necklace’s outer coating. It was sometimes possible to determine location characteristics from ambient sounds. The audio analysis software indicated human voices intermingled with music, and the stream included a digital watermark, indicating a television broadcast, but without Internet connectivity, LAD couldn’t look up the station identifier. However, the offline travel guide included Bahasa language translation software, so LAD was able to understand the words being spoken.

“See Indo-pop singing sensations Java Starship in their international cinema debut!” an announcer’s voice said over a bouncy pop music soundtrack. “When a diplomat’s daughter is abducted from a charity concert, and corrupt local authorities do nothing to find her, the boys of Java Starship take matters into their own hands…”

New voices overlapped the recorded audio stream. Audio analysis indicated live human speakers in the room, and LAD adjusted audio filters to emphasize the humans over the television. Based on pitch and rhythm, there were four separate voiceprints, speaking a pidgin of Bahasa and English.

“What are you showing us? What is all this?” said an adult female (Javanese accent, approximate age 35-40 years, label as H1: human voice, first distinct in new database). “Where did you get these things?”

“They’re from work,” said an adult male (Javanese, age 40-45 years, label H2). “A little bonus. You know.”

“ (Untranslatable) ,” said the woman (H1). “You haven’t had a job for months. I know what you do, drinking with those gangsters—”

“You don’t know!” said the man (H2). “And you don’t complain when I pay for our food, our clothes—”

“Hey!” said a female child (13-15 years old, label H3). “That looks like graphene superconductor material. Can I see?”

“Which one?” asked the man (H2). “What are you pointing at?”

LAD took a chance and switched on the pendant’s external status lights. If the girl recognized graphene by sight, she might also know about other technologies—like the Internet.

“The necklace, there. Look, it’s blinking green!” said the girl (H3).

“You like that, Febby?” asked the man (H2). “Okay, here you go.”

LAD’s motion sensors spiked. 2,500 milliseconds later, the entire sensor panel lit up, and galvanic skin response (GSR) signal went positive. The girl must have put on the necklace. LAD’s battery began charging again.

“Cool,” said the girl (H3, assign username Febby).

“How about you, Jaya?” asked the man (H2). “You want something?”

“The wristwatch!” said a male child (14-17 years old, label H4, assign username Jaya). With all the voices cataloged, LAD decided this was likely a family: mother, father, daughter, and son.

“It’s too big for you, Jaya,” said the mother (H1).

“No way!” said the father (H2). LAD heard a clinking noise, metal on metal, likely the PebbleX watch strap being buckled. “Look at that. So fancy!”

“Pa, they have schoolwork to do.”

“It’s Friday, Nindya! They can have a little fun—”

“Arman!” said the mother (H1, assign username Nindya). “I want to talk to you. Children, go upstairs.”

“Yes, Ma,” Jaya and Febby replied in unison.

LAD’s motion sensors registered bouncing. The adults’ voices faded into the background as Febby’s feet slapped against a series of homogeneous hard surfaces (solid concrete, likely stairs). LAD was able to catch another 4,580 milliseconds of conversation before Febby moved too far away.

“…going to get us all killed,” Nindya said. “I can’t believe you brought him here !”