IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 536

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Abandoned Structure
Current Event: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-60431874

Asmita Quispe shook her cellphone.

Elnur Alaoui whispered, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to locate the mall’s AI.”

Elnur snorted. “This place is too old…”

Asmita sniffed, and pincing the map on her phone, threw it into the air in front of Elnur’s face. She didn’t care that they’d been best friends forever. He was in med school; she was the computer genius! She was the one who’d been awarded the Feynman-Manin Lifetime Grant for her own pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence! “There’s an AI here. It’s been buried or underwater since this place fell apart. They tried to revive it in the early 2020’s, then turned it over to the AI in 2034. A year later, really weird stuff started to happen.” She got the scanner program running and in her waders, slowly turned in a circle.

“What do you mean they put an AI in here? This is Bangkok! They don’t have that kind of…”

“It was a state secret. They were working with NATO countries to keep an eye on China. The AI was supposed to do nothing but listen. But it started communicating.”

“With who?”

She took down the map hovering between them and tossed a map of the mall between them. A red spot brightened and faded and brightened again slowly. She said, “It’s there.” She started off, slogging through water that was barely over her ankles. She’d waded through worse when she’d done a field study with a group that was trying to plant microwave relay towers that grew from a small container of nanomachines that would use local materials and an independent heuristic program connected to a supervising AI back at MIT in the US. Two of the seven packages they’d planted… “Focus!” she muttered.

“I AM focused! If I wasn’t focused I wouldn’t be following you…”

“Not you. Me!”

“What?”

“Forget it. My mind keeps wandering…” said Asmita.

“Oh, great. How do I know your mind isn't going wander over a cliff somewhere?” said Elnur. “You’re trying to contact an old AI to find out what?”

“I want to talk to it. It’s here and after a couple of art shows in 2021 and 2022, they project shut down. The AI’s here, but no one seems to know what it’s doing. For all we know, it could be planning on building a plague to get rid of all Humanity!”

A burst of static echoed in the core of the mall, the sound softened by greenery the grew out of the water, reaching up to the uncovered roof four stories up. There was a long silence, then a scratchy voice said, “No plague for Humanity. Sorry to ruin your sci-fi story. But, I think I could use your help in moving the Korean Peninsula to Mars…”

Names: ♀ Nepal, Peru; ♂ Azerbaijan; Morocco
Image: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iKuHoEmxneeo/v0/-1x-1.jpg