Digital Life Form part 6

 

‘So, where is the rock?’ asked Winston.

‘In the faculty store, in the sterile safe, awaiting analysis.’

‘But you said…’

‘It’s a wasted sample, may not even be a meteorite, don’t know what grid reference she got it from, don’t expect Prof asked.  But he wanted it in the sterile store so that’s where it is.  The nature of the storage is such that each sample is isolated from the others, there’s no way this sample can contaminate the others.’ 

‘So, how do I get it?’ asked Winston.

‘The rock?  Ask the Prof in the morning.  If you rush you can break into his office and greet him when he comes into work.   He won’t give it you, of course, but at least I’ll get my flat back.’  Winston mulled this over but didn’t comment.  Eventually he changed tack.

‘What about the Sat Nav?’

‘What about it?’  I understood the old guy’s point about not fucking around with him but I was really struggling to understand why he was interested in these two specific items.

‘OK, where’d you get it from?’

‘Geek.’

‘The guy you met in the bar two nights ago?’  I started to remember Winston from that night – not enough to recall him sitting quietly sipping ruined malt whisky but enough to confirm I’d met him before.

‘Yeah, him.’

‘What can you tell me about him?’ he asked, relaxed, gently probing.  Somehow I didn’t mind his style, not intrusive despite his violation of my home.

‘Geek’s possibly my best friend, yet I actually don’t know that much about him.  Don’t know where he lives, what he does for a living, what his real name is.

‘He’s one of these guys who can turn his hand to any technology, make it work, modify it to make it do things it wasn’t designed to do.  As far as I can tell he must spend most of his time scavenging in scrap yards – I think there’s a new-age component in Geek’s make-up.  I seem to recall he mentioned spending some time in the army, in Germany.  That’s where he learned about computers and probably where he picked up his anarchic attitude to software ownership.  He says that if you can hack it, it’s yours.

‘We meet up for a drink every now and then, often so he can show me his latest toy.  Sometimes I road test stuff for him, sometimes he gets stuff for me.  That’s where the Sat Nav came in.’ Winston put his fingers together, made a steeple.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I’d asked him if he could get me one, some time ago.  I travel around a lot on field trips and I’m crap at navigation.  The trip to Herefordshire kind of forced the issue as I had to find my own way down there.  I called his mobile, he said he could get it working and let me have it for the trip as long as I didn’t mind it being a bit rough and ready.  We met in the usual bar, Geek running late as usual.’

*

Geek slipped the supermarket bag on the bar, pushed it my way and picked up the pint I’d had waiting for him for nearly half an hour.  He’d nearly finished the pint by the time I’d opened the bag and fished out the device.

‘Careful, it’s held together by sticky tape,’ he said, finishing the pint and flagging the barman to order a refresh for the two of us.  As the pints were being pulled he told me a little about the Sat Nav.

‘It’s an old model I picked up, low on memory, battery knackered and street maps from before the blitz as far as I could tell.  Screen was a bit ropey too, but not much of a problem as they are cheap to replace in devices like this.’

‘You bought parts?’  Geek looked offended.

‘Of course not, but because replacements are so cheap people are throwing away perfectly good items all the time.  The bit I really like is the voice recognition; I grafted it on so that you can teach it to understand your instructions.  Probably not the first Sat Nav that allows you to talk back and it take notice but I reckon you’ll only get that in top end machines.’  I turned the device around in my hands, it looked like it had come through a couple of wars: Geek wasn’t kidding about the sticky tape, either.

‘So I can train it to recognise keywords, like training the hands-free on my mobile?’ I asked, wondering whether this was a layer of complexity for very little benefit.  Geek shook his head.

‘I’ve taken the processor out of a portable dictation machine that converts normal speech into ASCII code.  That’s a bit trick and I wouldn’t have liked to work it out myself.  Normally that code is fed into a word processor and ends up as a document.  The bit I’ve done is to parse this information so that not only can you train it to find places by post-code, city, town or even street name from its database but also that you can train it to understand natural spoken language.  So you might want to tell it you’re ignoring a recommended turning and it will immediately realise that it shouldn’t be constantly telling you to turn around.  Most units work out eventually that you’re ignoring their advice and recalculate, but this one lets you tell it from the start.’

‘So it’s ready to roll?’ I asked, wondering how I turned it on.   Geek took it out of my hands to point to the few operable controls.

‘It’s not perfect yet.  You will need to train it a bit – I’ve left some instructions in the bag – and I don’t have a power supply for the replacement battery I grafted in yet so you’ve got about five hours’ worth of operation.  At least that’ll make sure you return it,’ he said grinning.

I didn’t bother with the unit until just before I left for Herefordshire, mainly so I didn’t run the battery down, partly because I had some trepidation.  I wedged the unit in my windscreen on top of a road atlas as the irony of the manual back-up seemed too good to miss.  Making the voice recognition work was harder than Geek had implied but I’d promised to give it a good go and ten minutes after starting to use the unit it recognised my speech well enough to let me enter the post code of the pub the Prof was waiting in.  The maps Geek had swiped to replace the original were bang up-to-date but problematical as the SD card they were stored on kept popping out of the card slot, but eventually I found myself heading out of Manchester en route for Herefordshire.

By the time I reached my destination the battery was indicating half depleted, maybe more, but I wasn’t too concerned.  I only needed to find my way back to the motorway from the village, because then the return journey would be simple.

*

‘So no problems with the equipment?’ asked Winston, flicking the file open and scribbling on a blank page.  ‘Any problems with the car?’

‘It’s an old car, best I can afford given the meagre salary.  Sure it misses the odd beat but nothing untoward.’

‘But when you gave the Sat Nav back to Geek…’

‘Ah, that was after the return journey.’

*

Like the rest of the team I crashed pretty early but unlike them I rose way before breakfast.  I settled my bill and cleared the room before the others came down, mainly because I didn’t fancy spending the day with one or more as a passenger.  I figured I could be on the road long before any of the others turned to.

*

Winston turned the page towards a closely typed sheet of text.

‘Quite the loner, apparently.’ He observed.

‘Not the closest human, I grant you.  I don’t mind company, just don’t crave it.  And there's the professional gap,’ I offered.

‘The one your professor seems to ignore,’ Winston noted.  ‘Continue,’ he said, not looking up.

*

The morning roads leading from the village were complicated and winding and the Sat Nav didn’t seem as assured as it had on the way down.  I couldn’t put my finger on anything with any certainty but I felt like it, well, hesitated on some turns. 

I wasn’t concerned, it was a fine morning, the sun was beating down, warming up the day nicely.  It just seemed that I was going to need the road atlas wedged under the Sat Nav after all.

Eventually I reached a junction and realised that the sound of the rushing wind coming in through the open window had caused me to turn the music up gradually as I’d driven.  The cessation of road and wind noise as I sat at the junction, coupled with the deliberations of the Sat Nav, now made the music sound louder than I usually had it and when the instruction to turn left eventually came I struggled to hear it.  I guess I was becoming less and less confident in the ability of the equipment to navigate me to the motorway anyway and was correspondingly more sensitive to the disembodied words advising me.  Turning down the music allowed me to concentrate more fully, to allow me to choose whether to revert to good old fashioned map reading or to continue with Geek’s toy.  And that’s when I heard the music.

*

‘Music?  What kind of music?’

‘You ever hear of a band called the Electric Light Orchestra?’  Winston showed mock surprise.

‘ELO?  You kiddin’ me?’  They were one of the biggest bands Stateside when I was a young buck in the late Seventies, early Eighties.  What about them?’

‘I’d been listening to one of their tracks, Mr Blue Sky, just before I turned the CD player sound down.  Tell the truth I’d listened to the track more than once on that return journey as it has a real good vibe.  You know, sun cracking the slates, wind in your hair, good music on the stereo.  Just kept playing it over and again.’

‘So?’

‘So the CD player is turned down but I can still hear the tune.  Not like a recording, but like a mimic, odd words correct, others incorrect or missing.  Tune was there, sort of.  I checked the stereo but it was turned as low as it would go, I even ejected the CD but the music continued.  Christ, the Sat Nav was singing ‘Mr Blue Sky’ to me!’  Winston sat motionless, his pen poised in mid sentence.

'So, what did you do?'

'Turned it off, found my way home the old fashioned way, gave Geek the Sat Nav back.  He's going to look at it to find out what's going on.'  Winston pondered for a moment.

'So the rock's locked away and Geek's got the Sat Nav?  How do I contact Geek?'

'You don't.  I have a number he sometimes answers, usually doesn't.  He tells me he only picks up if he knows who's calling and only then if the time's right.  He's a bit weird but those are his rules.'  Winston raised his voice a fraction, enough to make me realise how forceful he could be.

'For the last time, don't fuck with me.  I need to speak with this man and I need to do it soon,' he said, sweat bubbling on his forehead.  I gave him Geek's phone number and he tried it, without luck.  He then walked into my kitchen and spoke quietly on his phone for a few minutes before returning and holding me with a stare.

'Your friend's off the scale.  If that number you gave me is correct then there's no record of it.  I need you to call him on your mobile.'  I must have smiled too readily, I didn't get the chance to explain that I had absolutely no intention of leading my friend into a trap. 

Then I saw the handgun.

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Digital Life Form will be back with part 7 soon.  Can't wait?  Like all of my books Digital Life Form is available as an eBook and paperback on Amazon and can be read for free if you're an Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited customer.