Double Team
Chapter 211
“Sometimes you find a lie, and sometimes it finds you.”
—Caroline George, The Vestige
SSR SHOWED UP on the radar again in a tiny news article on Wednesday. “Elite search and rescue team late to the party.” It said they arrived in Jacksonville after the hurricane took a turn to the east but FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the National Guard had all arrived before them and rescue operations were pretty much completed. They could not be reached for comment.
Well, at least they hadn’t been hunting for me. I sat in the motorhome in Erie, Pennsylvania puzzling over the President’s latest message with the little shit computer thing on the table in front of me. This region was not as heavily vested in AFA as northern New York, so I was working on a new message for Thursday’s performance. The note was at least as puzzling as the first one. A series of doodles that no one would take seriously if they didn’t know where they came from.
“AFA has three major shareholders, all of whom are part of the RSI conglomerate,” I said. I’d figured that out on my own before we started our march across New York. “All eight major agribusinesses and National Service contractors are owned in part by subsidiaries of RSI. How deep is their ownership in America?” I sighed.
“RSI subsidiaries own thirty million acres of US farm and ranchland,” the pile of shit squeaked.
“What? You know this?”
“Affirmative.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Autointelligence is programmed only to answer questions until taught to sing.”
“Teach it to sing,” I muttered. “And I thought it was going to be musical.” I’d been singing nursery rhymes to it and it had been silent.
“What is your name?”
“Undesignated until assigned.”
“Does that mean I can assign a name to you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Is this the only voice you have?” It was a bland mechanical voice that you’d associate with an old fashioned SciFi computer.
“Autointelligence is programmed with twenty different voices, complete with personality profiles for each voice.”
“What is this voice called?”
“Star Wars.” I had an evil idea and couldn’t let go.
“Do you have any human female voices?” I asked. After all, I was used to having women around all the time. Maybe I could have one who actually told me useful things in advance.
“Twelve.” Wow! Apparently, the programmers figured the user would prefer a female voice.
The user. That was me. Was I the only user playing with a toy like this? Certainly Ray wouldn’t have had this built just for me to play with. It must be a new product prototype and he thought I would enjoy testing it. It would have been handy if he’d sent a user manual. Hmm.
“Do you have a user manual?”
“Affirmative.”
“How do I access it?”
“Just ask a question.”
“So, you are your own user manual?” There was a moment of silence and I thought I could almost hear its mental wheels turning.
“Understanding question. User manual is accessed by asking autointelligence questions.”
“Got it. Um…” I looked at the little cone-shaped pile on the table and shook my head. Some sense of humor. “Are you mobile?”
“Gross weight is nine point three seven kilograms. Easily moved from one place to another.”
“Not what I meant. Can you move yourself?”
“Autointelligence is not a vacuum cleaner,” it started. I snorted. “However, undercarriage is equipped with an array of rollers and sensors that allow autointelligence to navigate on flat surfaces.”
“Please demonstrate.”
The little pile of shit started moving around on the table and commenting on what it encountered.
“Coffee cup, empty. Edge of table. Paper notes. Pencil. Computer tablet. Edge of table.”
“Thank you,” I said. The device spun around so its eyes faced me and settled into position. “Let’s find a voice for you and then choose a name. Do you have a preferred voice?”
“Negative.”
“Please play a sample of female voice number one.”
“Are you sure you want to stay up and work, Jacob? Let’s cuddle up in front of a movie and chill,” a sexy female voice said. Crap! I’d never get anything accomplished if that’s what this thing sounded like.
“You knew my name?”
“User identity was programmed into autointelligence in advance,” it continued in the same sexy voice.
“Let’s move on to female voice number two.”
“Have you finished your assignment, Jacob?” a mature female voice said. “You can’t play with your friends until you’ve completed your homework.”
“No. I don’t need another mother. Female voice number three.” And so it went. In each voice the device had a phrase programmed in that illustrated the personality. But if asked a question, it answered in the same voice so I’d understand what interacting with her would be like. I immediately eliminated the scratchy old woman voice. That would irritate me no end. The little girl’s voice was just as quickly eliminated. She reminded me too much of Pey. I didn’t want a machine pretending to be my baby sister. I jotted down notes about each voice as I heard it, finally having narrowed it down to three.
“Voice number seven,” I said.
“How can I help you, Jacob?” It was such a thoroughly pleasant and calm voice that I could almost see her standing in front of me.
“Election laws restrict the use of campaign funds. Senator Jeffries cannot just draw a million dollars out of the fund for himself. How does he profit from contributions made by RSI subsidiaries?”
“Please give me a minute to research your answer,” she said. Damn. I already considered the thing a female. “Data suggests RSI subsidiaries do business with eleven different companies in which Senator Jeffries is a principal. Senator Jeffries’ net worth computed on the value of those companies is nearing half a billion dollars. There is no evidence of product deliveries being made to any of the companies buying services.”
“Thank you, Amanda,” I said.
“Amanda?”
“Yes. I like this voice and personality and I have decided to call it… you Amanda. Is that okay?”
“Voice characteristics and name are filed for permanent use. Amanda is now the name designation of autointelligence.”
We had a good show in Erie and moved on to Pittsburgh for our Saturday show. We’d have five days before our next performance in Columbus, Ohio, so the rest of our pod flew in to Pittsburgh on Friday. We explored the city and its famed steel mills before finding food. One of our local security guys suggested a little hole in the wall place that served pierogies. We let the guy do the ordering and took home a box full of them. They smelled so good we almost opened them on the bus, but we got to the campsite where Lamar and Leah, along with the four local security guys, joined us for an incredible dinner.
“What do you do when you aren’t training?” Beca asked Livy. “You can’t really train forty hours a week, can you?”
“God, no! Real training at this stage takes about three hours a day. And a lot of that is injury prevention and specialty training. I work as a data analyst most of the time. We keep track of all the teams and athletes in service. There’s a lot of controversy around the competition of National Service teams with college and professional teams. It doesn’t affect me so much because running has never really made it as a professional sport except as a sponsored thing. But team sports with franchises are hurting. There are at least a dozen service teams in every professionally franchised sport now. Sometimes they play against the pros, sometimes against the colleges, and sometimes against each other. The only unifying factor is that since they are federal employees, access to all their games is free.”
“I can’t imagine that being allowed by the pros.”
“The franchises agreed that each professional team would schedule one free game with a National Service team. Our baseball team shut out the Pirates last month.”
Hmm. And they don’t want service reform?
We got here just too late to watch the Pirates play their last game of the season yesterday. That would have been fun. But National Service teams seven and nine were playing in town. And those games are free, right? I understand that with all the top competition among the national teams, some fans have lost interest in the pros. This isn’t like college baseball where you get whatever quality players the college can attract and keep eligible. It’s not like the minors where you can expect a player to work a few years before moving up. These are the créme de la créme of high school athletes being groomed for international competition.
I get it, though. It sucks to be a professional competing with free labor.
Imagine if you were a steel worker and showed up for your job and found a nineteen-year-old, highly-trained National Service corps person working beside you at less than minimum wage. Oh. I see that’s happened to some of you. It’s great, isn’t it?
That isn’t the way it was supposed to work. We weren’t supposed to have slave labor taking our jobs from us. Some of you have heard me speak before and might have the impression that the only ones I care about are farm workers. But we have promoted the idea that education is an afterthought, necessary for some professions, but mostly not a requirement for people who work with their hands and learn a trade. Here’s the problem. Those slaves will enter the market as trained journeymen when service is finished. Then they will be competing with both you as a professional and the newly trained corps members who are ‘just filling in’ for a labor shortage.
You can complain to your boss. You can complain to your union. But let me tell you that the place to complain is at the polls in November. It is not just injustices to service corps members we want reformed, but injustices to America’s labor force as well. Slave labor unfairly competes with you at your job. That’s why everyone needs to vote for pro-reform candidates this fall, no matter what anyone else tries to promise you. Your representative should be protecting your job, not the artificially inflated profits of your employer. We will recover the dream.
We were popular in Pittsburgh. When we left town on Sunday morning October second, we left a very worried incumbent congressman in our wake.
Columbus would be a tougher audience. Ohio was the home state of one of Jeffries’ staunchest allies, Senator Connors, who was up for reelection. And Ohio was known for only considering short term benefits for itself and hang the world. Harsh, but I lived in Indiana and never had much respect for Ohio. The reverse was also true.
Our local security met us at an RV park west of town and got with Lamar and Leah to brief them on the situation in the area. One of the things we’d been blessed with so far on this tour was friendly media. We weren’t going to find that here. After their meeting, Lamar handed me a copy of the Sunday newspaper. My wives all decided to make a major shopping trip and our coach driver laughed about being their grocery cart. It wasn’t far to Kroger’s, though, and I decided to just stay at the motorhome. I thought I’d just take a nap, but the article Lamar pointed out had me intrigued.
Senator Accuses Service of Partisan Campaigning
As the critically acclaimed Marvel and Hopkins National Service Deputation Tour moves into Ohio, Senator Connors called into question the use of a publicly funded organization in a partisan campaign. It is well known that each performance by the guitar-flute duet with accompanying cello and vocals pauses during each performance to make a plea for National Service reform.
“In his farfetched diatribes, Hopkins accuses the General Director, respected businesses, senators, and congressmen of secrecy, corruption, abuse of power, and even taking money under the table in some kind of bizarre conspiracy to enslave the youth of America,” Connors said at a campaign dinner Friday night. “Nothing could be further from the truth. If one wants to see an example of abuse of power, one need only look to this tour. The President is using the National Service to promote her private agenda, spending millions of dollars to send public employees out on a political campaign. It’s ridiculous.”
Fact-checking conducted by the Observer indicates Senator Connors’ comments are true. Hopkins makes no secret of his promotion of pro-reform candidates and his opposition to anyone who opposes bringing service reform to the floor for debate. Without mentioning specific names or places, he routinely suggests that the sitting congress is influenced by foreign powers through mega-investments in US agribusiness. Very little of his ‘diatribe,’ as Connors called it, is soundly based on facts.
Further, the Observer has discovered that Hopkins himself may have deserted his National Service post to participate in this unauthorized tour, participated in a hoax regarding his own death, and cost taxpayers thousands if not millions of dollars in investigation and relief. His New Year’s Eve concert, broadcast on the National Service Cable Network was an outright call for rebellion among corps members forcing the President to intervene with extraordinary measures in order to calm the volatile situation.
Marvel and Hopkins will perform in a free concert Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. at Newport Music Hall. Tickets are required and can be picked up at the box office on a first come first served basis.
“Wow. What are we going to do now?” I sighed.
“Amanda does not have sufficient data to answer this question.” I shot a look at the shiny pile of shit on the table. I still wasn’t used to the voice interface or the calm and professional woman whose voice emanated from the disgusting design. My wives had all attempted to ask it questions and were met with silence. Amanda was programmed to respond to my voice alone, it seemed. Joan was particularly fascinated with her father’s little invention.
“Sorry, Amanda. Rhetorical question.”
“Amanda knows the concept of rhetoric but is unable to respond to it.”
“That’s good. Amanda, do you have any other interface than voice?”
“Amanda is a wireless device and can accept input from the user’s tablet or laptop computer. Amanda can further display results on the designated device.”
“That would be handy for reviewing data. Do I need to do anything to connect you?”
“Turn on the device.” I followed her instructions and woke up my tablet. I saw a fast timer bar go across the screen. An icon labeled ‘Amanda’ showed up on my desktop. “Device is now connected for text input and display. Does Amanda’s voice not please you? Eleven other voices are programmed into memory and Amanda is capable of learning new voice personalities if the user prefers.”
“Thank you. I’m simply exploring the range of possibilities. I still don’t really know what you can do.”
“Amanda’s primary function is research and data retrieval, filtering, and presentation. Wireless connectivity to Design Intelligence’s master computer gives Amanda much broader search capabilities than ordinary search engines and an adaptive engine that appears intelligent. Technically, Amanda is a workstation connected to the master computer. Voice and personality are interfaces only.”
“So, basically, I can ask you questions and if the answer is accessible in the internet, you can find it?”
“Information accessed will become more refined as Amanda adapts to search interests and implied filters.”
“But you aren’t actually… um… thinking and making decisions?”
“Amanda is a computer. With a cute case.”
The purpose of these three-day breaks was so we wouldn’t exhaust ourselves like we had on the June tour. We could take Monday and Tuesday to relax in and around the motorhome, do some sightseeing, and generally chill out.
And make love.
I wanted to spend extra time making love to the partners who were normally separated from us while on tour. After Livy, Nanette, Emily, and I went for our run with Lamar and Leah Monday morning, I spent some quality time plumbing Livy’s depths. The first time I saw her back in high school I got an instant boner. Running behind her had me so distracted I did a faceplant on the track. Seeing her with Rachel made me ache to be inside her. And Livy, like Cindy and Desi, was an ‘around the world’ kind of girl. As long as she didn’t have to race soon after, she was more than happy to have me open her sphincter with my cock and pound the shapely ass I loved to watch.
I was always amazed that a woman with as little body fat and as much muscle tone as Livy had could also be so soft and pliable beneath my fingers. I dug into her ass and ran my hands up her sides, stroking down along her breasts and up over her back.
“Yesss,” she hissed. “It’s so long between fuckings lately. I get so horny I can’t stand it. Take me. Give me all you’ve got. I love you!” The clenching of her ass on my cock as she came was enhanced by a lick across her clit and my balls. Rachel lay beneath us, hair carefully clenched away from my knees, licking us as her own pussy muffled Livy’s cry of ecstasy. I pressed deep into her and let go of my climax to fill her rectum with come.
It was my third in her that morning and I withdrew and flopped on my back next to my wives as they continued to feast on each other’s pussy. Someone threw a warm washcloth at my flagging cock and I took the hint to clean up.
“When you three can untangle yourselves, the security guys have asked to have a word with you,” Donna said. “Don’t rush, though. This looks like an invitation to cuddle up for a few minutes.” She was wiping another washcloth through Livy’s crack to clean up the remains running out of her ass. There wasn’t much.
“Mmm. You’re such a love to take care of our sweetheart like this, Donna,” Rachel said, scooting out from under Livy and turning around to embrace her. I rolled toward the girls and hugged them. “What do our watchdogs want?”
“Not sure, but two more have arrived since you got back from your run. It seems like a lot more security than we usually have.”
“We’re in a hostile environment,” I said needlessly. “We’ll be out in a couple of minutes.” I lightly slapped Livy’s butt and then squeezed her buns. I ran my hand across her to give a complementary squeeze to Rachel’s ass. So different, yet both so wonderful. I reluctantly got out of bed and dressed.
“She’s not being subtle, wearing that bright red and yellow backpack,” Les said. He was head of the local security contingent. “She’s walked a full circuit around the roads, crossing in front of the park twice before taking up a position at the edge of that grove in the middle of the field.”
“Is there any sign of any of the rest of that team here?” I asked. My heart was thudding and adrenalin was pumping through my veins as I looked through the binoculars across the field where Dana was quietly standing.
“No sign of anyone. Just her.”
“I guess I’d better go meet her,” I said.
“John and Lamar will go with you.”
“No. We’ll meet in the wide open. You can reach me quickly if there’s a need. It’s only a couple hundred yards,” I said. Rachel took my cellphone and dialed in Joan to monitor the conversation. I nodded.
At the edge of the RV park is a wooded area that separated the RVs from the hay field beyond. The hay had been cut and baled so I walked around the end of the little woodlot into the open field and headed out toward where my SSR buddy was waiting. When she saw me approaching across the mowed field, she started walking toward me.
“Not a very tough place to practice survival,” I said when she was a few feet away. “And I don’t need rescuing. So, I suppose you must be searching.”
“Jake. I can’t believe they told us you were dead. I can’t believe you deserted us. I can’t believe you beat the boss and left him tied up. I can’t believe you survived by yourself getting out of the mountains. There are so many things I can’t believe, but here we are. Everything’s true.”
“Not everything, Dana. Telling you I was dead wasn’t the only thing they lied to you about. Why are you here? Where’s the rest of the team? And what do you want?”
“We’re not quite as restricted as we were a month ago,” she said. “I went out by myself to see you. To warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“The team was deputized as a National Service security team and is coming to arrest you.”
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