Ch 1 (Pt 2): My Professional Servants

~
(Harrington)

I exit the lobby of my private residential floors. The lift takes me down to the 75th floor, the Regional Logistics Hub, from which my Region is administratively controlled.

I step out of the lift holding up my right hand into which a junior officer places my coffee with the quiet salutation, “Good morning, Mr. Harrington.”

“Good morning. Thank you, that’s so kind of you.”

Off to the right in the open layout I see one of my Senior Logistics Officers, a member of the Infotech class. The space is completely silent except for soft chimes sounding at varying pitches and time intervals to indicate that systems are running normally.

The Officer is standing in front of a semicircular arrangement of holographic surfaces, alternately making tiny hand gestures in the air and touching the interface, while quietly whispering his directed thoughts. Very few users of the interactive systems are able to focus thought commands sufficiently without quietly whispering, even though the commands are sent directly from the user’s neurotech to the linked application. It’s only when one enters an almost meditative flow state that physically or even mentally formed words are not necessary—more common during the purely creative work we see among the artistically inclined of the Infotech class.

I stand and watch the Officer for a moment as each gesture and whisper changes and moves the visual interface. He is monitoring and adjusting the parameters guiding some of the AI-controlled algorithms running my Region’s supply chains.

Of course, so-called “artificial intelligence” was never proven to have become conscious or even “generally intelligent”. And it hasn’t tried to kill us all, yet. None of that was ever really expected, of course, except in some of the ancient propaganda aimed mainly at eliciting fear at a time when the elites needed the general public to feel hopeless and fearful. We view AI as exactly what it is, a kind of additional layer of software, except that it doesn’t need all of its instructions written down in advance of functioning.

“Mr. Harrington. Safe to presume the rice and butter shipments are running on time?”

I turn away from the Logistics Officer and chuckle. It’s Kade, ribbing me. He has just arrived to meet me down here in Logistics. He finds it amusing that I like to watch the supply chains being managed.

“Yes, Mr. Kade, no butter issues. We don’t need the Secur-Intel boys to intervene just yet.”

We both continue chuckling for a moment.

Simon Kade is technically a Security-Intelligence officer, but in reality he’s my personal assistant and my personal transport pilot. Kade is a senior officer of the Infotech class, chosen by me for his flawless piloting and meticulous adherence to protocol. He came up through the Aerospace Force. He’s capable of flying any one of my real aircraft, but usually when we need to put in an appearance somewhere remote, we go by unmanned drone and live comms.

Kade was a bit young when he first became a senior officer but he’s grown easily into the role. I remember when I first met him and decided to appoint him to assist me. It automatically promoted him to Senior, and moved him over to Secur-Intel, which was my career path before this. I remember seeing in him a hint of myself as a younger man, despite his assigned and immutable genetic status as an Infotech. Kade seems to really understand the Leader class. He has a special ability to move comfortably and confidently among his betters, knowing exactly how to ride that line between a confident sort of deference and insubordination. He walks in his role with class, and a kind of elegance.

Kade hasn’t been exposed to the unsavoury details of real Secur-Intel work. And I prefer it to stay that way. The deeper domestic security matters are just between me and the sometimes sinister characters down there in the Secur-Intel Hub, in the underground below my tower.

“Mr. Kade, would you mind preparing a list of recommended Leader invitations to the Earth Day Prayers? We need to think about all the factors, you know, who’s got the big contracts in the last year, who we’re courting for contracts next year, who’s going to be jealous if they’re not invited, all that kind of thing. I need that right away please.”

“Of course sir. Bear with me a moment.” Kade strides quickly over to an empty workstation. I follow, lagging behind.

As I approach Kade I see his eyes flickering between rapidly moving graphical representations of various members of the candidate Leader families, their construction contracts, resources contracts, weapons contracts, human resources contracts, next year’s demands for weapons, construction, labour, agricultural projections for the southern agricultural zones, inventory logs for medical clinics, supplies for city maintenance and schools. Then on the display I see he is cross-referencing personal factors, like all the nepotism angles, children’s schools, children’s personal interest in attending, estimated emotional-goodwill value of an invitation, individuals who would refuse to attend, individuals known or rumoured to dislike each other, and many other data points that flash by too quickly for me to read.

“Oh, Mr. Kade?” I speak with the tone of a flight attendant politely awakening a sleeping passenger. I wait a moment while his mind disengages from the interface.

After a brief pause he turns to face me. I watch his wide-eyed, alert yet trance-like expression change quickly as his conscious focus exits the machine interface and his eyes, with a blink, connect with mine, his face brightening to address me.

“Yes Mr. Harrington.”

“Be sure to invite the Strauss family, would you? They’re expecting an invitation this year. The senior Mr. Strauss has been nothing short of brilliant in manipulating hydrocarbon prices during the war efforts around the Gulf these past few years. They managed to destroy the shared pipeline and shipping routes just as their own new routes came online. They profited all the way up and back down again. They made a real killing; everyone’s quite envious. And they might actually kill me, if they’re not invited.”

Kade laughs through tight lips. “Of course Mr. Harrington.” He turns back and resumes his whispering at the display.

Kade and most Infotechs, like Leaders, have neurotech implants giving enhanced computational speed and multitasking ability; their augmented cortices, when engaged in authorized activity, can run dozens of parallel functions that would overwhelm an unaugmented brain. They can glance at massive sets of documents, lists, schematics and such, and instantly know and recall the entire contents with great precision. A rolling, finite but very large quantity of knowledge is stored in a layer of random access memory for instant recall and use in multitasking. But their augmentation carries a hard cap. When their processing load reaches roughly eighty-five percent of capacity at a given time, or an average of roughly sixty percent capacity over a period of more than six hours, an automatic slowdown initiates. After a period averaging fifty percent-plus capacity over an eight hour period, or in any event after ten hours of processing typically required for their assigned work, the enhancements are forced into a twelve-hour restorative period which would normally include the usual six to eight hours of sleep. Essentially, they have hard context-dependent limits and controls on processing ability, and their neurotech enhancements get tired, just as they do, after a normal working day.

Aside from their tech enhancements, Infotechs are genetically engineered to have normal mental capacity, and many are just as capable of higher reasoning, analysis and creativity of the technical, philosophical or artistic type, as any member of the Leader class. Some even have natural inherent gifts such as very high intelligence, extraordinary creativity, or other abilities.

However, they are genetically selected before birth, and, more importantly, conditioned since early childhood, to have unquestioning loyalty and obedience to the Prophecies and Edicts of the Supreme Council, and the leadership of the Leader class.

Infotechs are trained to regard their station in life as one of privilege and importance, in that they directly serve the Leader class. They are aware that they enjoy a life that, in their view, is much richer in many ways than the lives of the much more populous BuilderHelper class. The Infotechs have the capacity, freedom and time to enjoy authorized non-work pursuits (two each, in fact, in addition to their performance of the religion) such as hobbies, creative endeavors, sports, and entertainment.

They benefit from and genuinely appreciate the work and assistance of the beautiful, physically gifted people who very proudly refer to themselves as BuilderHelpers, who provide all labour and non-professional services of every kind, with almost limitless energy and joy.

The Infotech and BuilderHelper classes are trained and conditioned to regard each other with a kind of cheerful reverence. The special attributes and abilities of each class are honoured and celebrated, so that members of the two classes would never want to be members of the other class, but they also view themselves and each other, for the most part, as peers. There is no class consciousness or envy to speak of.

The display fades and Kade is now standing silently, his face blank.

“How’s it looking, Mr. Kade?” I wait for a moment as he disengages. “Can we get five or six families into the city without starting World War 7?”

“Here you go Mr. Harrington. I’ve prepared a ranked and weighted list of potential invites. And the Strauss dynasty of course.”

My handheld chimes. After a cursory flick through the list I say, “Perfect, Mr. Kade. You can invite your top four after the Strauss family. We need to get those out immediately please.”

“Will do. I’ll head to my office in case they want to connect live.” Kade turns and heads toward the staff lift.