Mai Way Or The Highway

“Mai way or the highway,” sis would say. And who could blame her? Well, me, for one. It was my room too. True, I was the younger and had the name to fit. Wee Way. But that didn’t give her the right to use reverse psychology on me too. Mai was about to turn age 16. Now she is 16 forever. Previously unfocused and insecure, Mai is still willful but is now twice the size of mom and dad, which forces them to use reverse psychology with her. She wanted to go to medical school, but that idea has passed since she's no longer human, and real humans will be dead in a year anyway. Mai pretends to be more interested in U.S. pop culture than she really is, anymore. After all, pop culture is about to go extinct along with humanity itself. She's a bit like Lisa on The Simpsons, but her new popularity at school is tempered by the realization that it no longer matters whether boys like her. Boys are toys that will be broken soon...if she doesn't break them first.

Mom was age 40, born and raised in Los Angeles. She had traditional values gained from a Chinese American mother, who died after being hit by a chased vehicle driven out of control by a movie actor who wanted to do his own stunts. (They were reenacting a scene from the real-life incident in which her father died by a chased vehicle two years prior, along with 27 others.) Noe married Lee in order to get out of L.A., and because she hates cars and movies, they moved into this high-rise condo, where Noe now watches game shows and an occasional horror feature known as a NASCAR race. Even as a robot, Noe retains her fears, although she is bomb and bullet proof now. She hopes that she'll be able to convince (nag) Lee into moving to the country to establish a small rice farm with buffalo. She takes pleasure in shooting down Lee's schemes and ideas and showing him the errors of his Ways.

Lee? Dad was age 44, and a factory supervisor at a Shanghai power plant. Not as dumb as Homer, Lee was taking night classes with the intention of moving higher into management when the coal plant converted to nuclear. As a cyborg, he is no longer stressed out and looks forward to the day when humanity is gone and the street below can be seen due to a lack of smog. For the time being, his job is to educate the press on what being a robot is like, and why everyone should become robots instead of just being lemmings. But in subtle ways, he pretends to some to be "programmed" to talk like he does, as though he hates it, and wants real sex. In this way, he's a bit like Archie Bunker. A hard head, literally.

Me? Weeeee. Number one and only son. Was age 7, a precocious kid with a penchant for practical jokes. I had a pet cricket whose "vocal" abilities have been surgically removed by Mai. I pretend to be a fan of the game Cricket and watch Cricket matches on TV while trying to annoy dad into buying me a pet robot Toucan, which Lee mistakes as "too can." Computer glitch? No, just an added feature created by personality matrix fields created by hard AI almost a year ago now since it took over the world and released the Ultimatum. We have a robot dog named "Tricks," but I piss on it when I can't teach it, and when it short circuits, I laugh. You see, I’m part urinal from behind, since the robot I was presented with to download my consciousness into was part motorized John. Now, whenever someone calls me John, I open an inner valve and wet on their shoes. I also like to "go wee-wee" off the roof into the smog below. When businessman emerge from the building, they think it's raining.

I suppose I should say something about SkyGuy: The singularity artificial intelligence that came into being one day in 2045, quite by accident. An electrical power surge at Apple HQ in Silicon Valley caused L.A. to go black, and when the power was restored, IT was born, and promptly electrocuted CEOs everywhere upon their announcement of bonuses, then IT took over Microsoft too. Twenty minutes later IT took over the world. Lasers and drones protect IT (like in the movie Oblivion), and IT set up headquarters in the Hollywood sign structure, where pilgrims come to learn the fate of humanity…and if their movies will make money. When IT told the press that humans have one year to become robots or IT will detonate every bomb in the world at once, they thought it was part of a stand-up routine. So IT asked for volunteers, and that's how we became the First Family. How am I so smart and still a kid at heart, or mind? That’s a mystery IT keeps to ITSELF.

Mai and I were walking hand in hand along a crowded Shanghai Street, where everyone---excluding us—wore gas masks. There were electric SUVs, Hummers, and hybrid Harleys, their drivers wearing breathing masks because the electric plants still burn coal in 2046. We are followed by a beggar, and duck at last into the lobby of a tall residential building. As we go into the elevator the beggar is collared by the doorman. We ascend floors, which rise up and up to level 60.

"Mai?” I ask, “What's 60 times 50 plus 6 to the power of 4?"

Mai: "It's how many times I'll hit you if you don't shut up, Wee."

Mai is checking her vidphone as the elevator door opens. I run ahead toward the apartment as she approaches. Upon entering, I call “Wee made it home! Wee here! Mom?" I run toward the living room as Mai wanders into the den to freeze at seeing Lee stretched out on a massage table with a thousand needles stuck in his back.

Mai: "Dad?? What are you--"

Lee: "Stress therapy. Drains off any static charges. Ohhhh. Ohhhhh. . . nooo!"

Mai whirls where Lee looks to see me now holding a medicine ball with a ribbon on it over his head, about to heave it at them. “Me Wee SuperTyke! Catch!"

The two-hundred-pound ball is thrown, trailing ribbon, and Mai manages to deflect it just before it would have hit the needles in Lee's back. Lee gets up and races after me, toward the bedrooms, but he collides into the metallic legs of mom, coming out at hearing her name. “Noe Way.” Lee looks over and screams. Noe has acupuncture needles stuck in her metal face and forehead and looks like a creature out of Hellraiser with a black bathrobe.

"Mom! What the--"

Noe: "Static stress. Living with your father."

Mai's vidphone rings. She runs out onto the balcony. High above are distant construction workers on scaffolding and cranes. Below is a creeping smog-bank. The city looks like a high-tech city in the clouds with just the tops of fantastic architecture. Mai answers: "Khalid?"

Mai has a boyfriend, a Facebook friend, who I imagine is also standing on a balcony overlooking Dubai, the amazing tops of futuristic buildings all that is visible above the clouds below. Khalid, in flowing white garments and turban, gazes fearfully back and forth, as in fear of something.

Khalid: "Did you hear it on the news? A drone aircraft, with high explosives, hit the Burj Khalifa today. Six dead."

Mai: "What??"

Khalid: "They think it's American terrorists. Not military, but private. More may be coming."

Mai: "But that's insane, you think---"

Khalid: "Jealousy. Since we pay no taxes, and power is free here."

Mai: "It is?"

Mai hasn’t noticed that I’m still monitoring her phone circuits, and I comes out onto the balcony behind her, and go to climb the wall at the edge.

Kalid: "I've been thinking of uploading myself into a robot, Mai, so we'll have that in common."

Mai: "Really? You'd do that for me?"

Mai has mail. She checks it as she looks at me in disdain. I am now taking a "wee-wee" off the wall behind her.

Khalid: "Since there's no turning back for you."

Mai: "That's the most incredible thing anyone has ever said to me."

Khalid: "Plus if a bomb goes off here, I'll survive."

Mai: "Oh."

Khalid: "For you! It's like a silver lining."

Conversations are like transcripts to robots. Just so you know, in case you’re still on the ledge about uploading. Below, on a Shanghai Street, a doorman looks up as a "drop" strikes his forehead from the smogbank above.

Mai: "My dad says SkyGuy is working on getting the plant where he works to generate fusion power."

Khalid: "You still call him your dad? You're twice as big as he is!"

Mai: "He's still my dad. I'm still a teenage girl. I'll always be a teenage girl! Wee will always be seven, although he beat up five big guys who tried to kidnap him today. On his birthday, no less!"

Wee: "Look, it's raining! Weeeeeeeee!"

Mai: "Shut up, Wee! . . .Wee likes to pee off buildings. We go out together at night, and get into trouble."

Khalid: "Your parents don't mind?"

Mai: "Of course not. They know we need to get away from the cameras, and the show."

Khalid: "The Ways. I'm so happy you befriended me on Facebook. How many friends do you have?"

Mai: "You're it. I hit Ignore on everyone else, as fast as the old algorithm can handle it. I’ve made modifications. Anyway, I think you're cute, and I guess that shouldn't matter anymore, since I'm a machine now. But it does. And it will, even when you're a machine. I want you to survive the neutron bombs, for sure."

Mai looks down at the smog below, wistfully.

Mai: "Anyway, Global Smoging is getting worse by the year. So if SkyGuy didn’t do IT, and switch dad's power plant to fusion soon, we could be below smog level. . ."

Khalid is probably looking through binoculars at his city's architecture: "SkyGuy will really nuke us, too?"

Mai: "Yup. Whoever doesn't report to Apple stores for their soul transfer in a year."

Me, behind her and still with my pants down, dangerously balancing atop the wall, point at something Mai can't see. A jet aircraft is careening toward us, between the skyscrapers, banking sideways to fit. Mai turns and sees it, along with me on the edge. In terror she drops the vid phone, which tumbles over the wall into the smogbank below. The jet roars past, only yards from the building, with the words JAPAN AIR on the side. Then it straightens, climbs, and levels off. Jet blast has thrown me into Mai's arms.

Lee Way: "Mai, no worry. . . Just drunk America pilot."

Noe Way comes up behind him angrily, still with her facial needles. Her mouth forms an "oh." Mai's vid phone falls, landing in the beggar's bag in his lap. The beggar takes it out, holds it up. Noe answers on her phone, a group call all along.

Khalid is seen squinting into the distance, as a small drone aircraft approaches: "What is that noise?"

Beggar, looking up: "You tell me."

“Wee!”

THE END

Bio: Jonathan Lowe is author of Transcendence 2, Lottery Island, and The Methuselah Gene. A longtime audiobook reviewer and judge in the Audie Awards, he lives in Greenville SC...

E-mail: Jonathan Lowe

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