The Coming of Enki V
Part five of a previously unpublished science fiction story
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Now, onwards to the next part of ‘The Coming of Enki’!
For those that missed them, here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
The Coming of Enki
VII
Had Lieb received a call like this a couple of years earlier, when his daughter was a jolly, untroublesome four year old, he would have been worried, fearing she might have injured herself during one of her nursery’s structured play sessions. Knowing it was now much more likely to be some disciplinary issue he grew angry with the school and, much to his shame, his daughter.
Dana was close to finishing her talk, emphasising the need for everyone to redouble their efforts until Vāc was upgraded. Taking a personal call now would be professional suicide. He would be considered unserious. Unserious people tended to be passed over for promotion. They tended to be quietly let go when an opportunity arose. And such opportunities, Lieb knew, arose frequently. He set the urgency level of his “do not disturb” flag higher but the school simply dialled up the importance of the call. They, at least, felt his attention was required at once. With nodding apologies to those on his right and left, Lieb inched his chair away from the table and entered reverie.
“Yes Ms Sterne, how can I help you?” he muttered, hoping to avoid attracting attention.
Chloe’s teacher was crisp and business-like. “I’m afraid, Mr Lieb, that Chloe is quite out of control today.”
Lieb checked the time. “With due respect Ms Sterne, Chloe has only been at school for less than hour.”
“And in that time,” Chloe’s teacher continued unperturbed, “she has shouted out the answer to every quiz question I’ve posed, disrupted every game…”
“How has she done that?” Lieb interrupted.
“By winning.”
“It’s no laughing matter Mr Lieb.” Sterne said, cutting through his muffled chortling. “We know Chloe is gifted. The games are not designed to test a child’s intelligence. They are team games that assess their ability to…”
“Conform,” said Lieb, the bitterness in his voice surprising even him.
“…cooperate.” Sterne finished. “The worsening translation outages have probably exacerbated her behaviour. Chloe is, as you’re aware, rather easily frustrated.”
Lieb wondered how many other people had already noticed Vāc’s erraticness. Anyone working with kids would notice it sooner because the language gap was at its widest between those separated from each other socially, economically or geographically. The young, who spent much of their time in reverie, lived, almost literally, in a different world from the one inhabited by adults—including their parents.
“I’ve done what I can to prevent her from being expelled as a result of this incident but I fear she’s on borrowed time as far as the principal is concerned. You need to come and get her straightaway.”
“I’ll send…” Lieb began.
“The nannoid is here already Mr Lieb. Chloe refuses to leave with it. She’s demanding you come. In any case…” she hesitated for a moment, “…the nannoid may be part of the problem.”
“How so?”
“I’m sorry Mr Lieb, I have to get back to the kids. Just get here,” Sterne said before disconnecting. “Your daughter needs her dad.”
Lieb waited a few more minutes until Dana’s presentation finished then left the office as discreetly as possible. As the company logged his every movement anyway, this was largely for show. He arrived at the school twenty minutes later in the company car that would already have sent Black Brook’s HR department the details of his unscheduled trip. The animosity he had felt towards Chloe’s teacher refocused itself on his employer. If Black Brook were going to punish him for putting his daughter before work, then to hell with them.
Ms Sterne had been presumptuous and patronising, it was true. But he could live with that if her words were motivated by genuine concern for his daughter, as they seemed to be. He had no reason to disbelieve her and knew the headmaster took a dimmer view of Chloe’s behaviour than she did. Perhaps the best indication that Sterne really did have his daughter’s best interests at heart was that Chloe loved and admired her. That didn’t stop her acting up in her class but she was at least relatively happy. That had not been the case the previous year with Mr Drake.
He waited in the school reception area for a few minutes until Sterne was able to hand over the class to another teacher. When she arrived, she quickly ushered Lieb into a sparsely furnished office set aside for such “difficult” meetings with parents. Lisa was already waiting in the room and began a fretful report the second he walked in.
“You may want to turn the nannoid off during the meeting,” Sterne said.
Lieb needed little encouragement. A welcome silence descended for a few seconds as they seated themselves and Sterne entered reverie to pull up Chloe’s details from the school database. She had a bob cut and wore thick black-rimmed spectacles even though myopia had been cured long ago. They added a decade or so to her age, Lieb thought, and bolstered her already quite formidable air of authority.
“Let’s get the paperwork out of the way, Mr Lieb, then we can Tf%^ about Chloe.”
“Excuse me?” he said. As soon as he spoke, he realised the problem. The algorithm was now failing to translate words spoken between adults of the same generation. Vāc’s powers were waning fast.
“Yes,” Sterne said, nodding. “There seems to be a worsening issue with translation. We’ve noticed it here with the kids. But now it’s affecting everyone.”
Her tone, Lieb thought, suggested she was not entirely displeased by this.
Sterne continued, repeating herself or coming up with alternative formulations when key words remained stubbornly cryptic. She explained that she had arranged for Chloe to leave the school for a week voluntarily. If he was in agreement that would avoid her being suspended and the concomitant black mark on her school record. Lieb assented.
When they had finished, Sterne looked at him encouragingly.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Mr Lieb,” she said.
Lieb fiddled with his tie, wondering how to frame the question that was foremost on his mind more delicately. In the end, he gave up.
“What’s wrong with my daughter, Ms Sterne?” he asked her bluntly.
“There’s no malice in her, Mr Lieb. That, unfortunately, cannot be said of all the children here.” She hesitated then seemed to make up her mind. “I’m going to be frank with you. My mother was a teacher too. Her generation would not have viewed behaviour like Chloe’s in the stark terms that we are asked to today.” She sighed. “But since the purpose of school has shifted from educating kids to ensuring they know how to behave with their peers in the real world, there’s zero tolerance for it.”
“She’s been seeing a therapist for over a year now,” Lieb interjected.
“An AI I suppose?”
“Why yes. We have an incredible healthcare package through my wife’s work. The insurance company has always told us that the AIs now get better results than human doctors ever did. They pointed us to the reviews, the meta-analyses of the interventions that showed…”
“Oh yes. I know what the reviews say, Mr Lieb.”
“You don’t… trust them?” he asked cautiously.
She didn't answer the question directly.
“You remember you asked me what I meant when I said that your nannoid,” she inclined her head slightly towards Lisa, “was part of the problem?”
“Yes I meant to ask you about that.”
“Many people do not know what they were originally marketed as. Have you ever looked into it?”
Lieb shook his head.
“Toys. Kids’ toys. When they started selling them, no exec dreamed that we’d be happy handing over our children to robots to look after….”
“But the studies…”
“… were largely funded by industry and leave plenty of room for doubt,” Ms Sterne finished smartly. “Once the execs realised that consumers were using their droids as de facto babysitters, some bright spark realised the huge potential market for robot nannies and they pushed them through the safety tests. Now, of course, just a couple of generations later nearly every household has one.” The corner of her mouth turned up in a cynical half-smile. “Fundamentally, however, modern nannoids are technologically little different from their forebears. They are toys. They cannot replace a parent’s… ministrations,” she finished.
Lieb’s face must have betrayed his surprise.
“You look scandalised,” Sterne said, smiling, warmly this time, her grey eyes alive with mirth—and a little mischief too, Lieb thought. “You must think me a terrible Luddite.”
“No,” said Lieb said slowly, “no, I don’t. But… what do you suggest I do?”
“I’ve already exceeded the bounds of professionalism, Mr Lieb. I’ve done so because I care about your daughter. Chloe’s a special child.”
“Please, I…”
“Take her home, Mr Lieb. Spend some time with her. And keep this thing,” she said, thumbing at the robot, “switched off for a few days. And quit machine translating everything too. With the algorithm failing this badly it can’t help you anyway. Specially not with a girl like Chloe.”
She called Chloe in to the room and Lieb got out of his chair to go over to her. She spoke to him tearfully but it was no use, Lieb could no longer understand anything his daughter said nor she him. He knelt down and took her hands.
“Wanna go home?” he asked her, gesturing towards the door. She nodded. Lieb gave her a long hug and quickly wiped a tear away from his eye before leading her from the room.
In the office, Decimus sat alone for a few minutes before returning to her students. Nothing about her features gave away the satisfaction she felt inside.
Now read Part VI.
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