Rector Read online

  Rector

  Diego Vasconcelos

  © 2017 Diego Vasconcelos

  All rights reserved.

  Some days go down to history. From these, almost all can be predicted and anticipated; a president inauguration, a well-planned coup, a military incursion. With a good amount of intelligence, and some contacts in the government, the newspapers could print their headlines about a big day even before dawn. Few are the big days that are really unexpected, the which absolutely no one has any knowledge about the “greatness” reserved for those 24 hours.

  It was what Carlos thought. Working as a administrative manager in a big bank in Paulista Avenue, he had the trust, and the experience, to say that few are the surprises that are really unexpected for everyone. Once, in graduation, he argued in a seminary about the “unsurprisingness” of the big days, and even won the teacher with his rhetoric. Now, with forty heavy years in his back, a very successful wife and two prominent children, Carlos enjoys a very expected life, conquered thanks to constant, and gradual, investments in several areas of the financial and social spectrum.

  These reflexions orbit his thoughts while he was parking his car in the opulent skyscraper where he worked. In that morning, the new president of Brazil would take office, as would many members of the Executive. The day was important not just in Brazil, as in many countries, specially in Asia, where leaders of state were taking office. It was the beginning of 2019. A year in which democracy was healing from the violent electoral fights from few months before. Left and right, liberals and conservatives, reactionaries and revolutionaries. Carlos was tired of the political dichotomy that has been established in the world since the last decade. He annulled his vote, and convinced his wife to do the same. While his coworkers, whether in the working hours or in lunch, argued and discussed about who was better – or who was the less bad – to take the offices that were going to manage the country in the next years, he, aloof and indifferent, thought in other topic, mentally travelling or imagining a world where everyone could agree on what was best for everyone. Utopia, of course. It’s what he said to himself. Human being is complicated, the lines of thought are complex, many facets of a topic are considered partially in the mind of each person in an individual way, and inevitably one would find others opinions which considered different facets. In the post-modern world there were many truths, and only one way led to the only truth of each one. Carlos would rather to abstain. He discussed others topics, equally important, but prefer to remain in the bleachers when the arguments involved the complex social rules that he so struggled to ignore.

  In that day of inauguration he knew beforehand what would happen, and heard from most of his relatives that the elected president was not the best option. He knew, however, that the day would be big, unforgettable, because independently of the results – and for worse or better that these might be – that day would be an important page in the history books, worthy of a question in entrance exams.

  While he was entering in the elevator he heard the sound of hurried steps, echoing from the wide gallery of the underground parking. He held the door, instinctively, and waited a few seconds while the steps relieved as approached the door. A man, a little older then him, with a sweaty forehead and grey hairs fluttered by the run, entered in the elevator. Giving him a mute good morning, the man settled in the corner, stretching the arm to the elevator control, just to lower it disenchanted, when he remind that Carlos would go to the same floor that him.

  While the potent and softs strings of steel conducted the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor, Carlos turned to the coworker. He decided to break the ice, feeling a little pity for the man’s tired posture. It was a monday, and he probably gave a bad way in the back, so that, despite the analgesics, he could barely stand straight while he dried his forehead with a little sheet taken from his dark grey suit. Carlos stared at him once more, knowing the topics that the friend usually talked, and imagining that he should speak about something, even if insignificant, until they reach their floor.

  “Bad sleep?”, he asked to the grey hair man.

  “Oh, no”, he answered. With a quick movement, he saved the little sheet in the side of the suit. “Actually, I woke up early. Wanted to take a look in the news before get here.”

  Carlos stared at him with a comprehensive look. Saying, with his face, the typical “I know”, from whom doesn’t care very much. He couldn’t understand why so many people were anxious about the inauguration. He, more than the others of course, followed the day normally, as the normals of the mondays. But he knew that the majority was not syntonized with him, so he too gave a quick look at the news before leave home.

  “It looks Brasília is full of people”, he said, at last.

  “Yes, of course. A cousin of mine flew there last night”, said the man, already recovering the posture as he tightened the knot of his blue tie. A note of disdain filled his face as he finished: “He voted for that bastard.”

  “Many voted for him, Ivan. That is how he won”, said Carlos, checking how many floor left for the door to open. They were still in the fifteenth floor. No stop until now. Apparently, they had arrived early than the others sectors. “When you accept this, everything will be bearable”.

  “Yes, the most of the country is stupid, and I can't do anything about it”, said Ivan. He waved his hands randomly while he speak. “But that doesn't mean that I cannot revolt. That clown will destroy our country, you know it. They did the same in the US two years ago, and look at the shit they’ve got. A populist leader, and full of promises, has never solved any problem”. He sight, lastly, while he aligned the shoulders of his suit. Now he turned into a respectable man, the financial manager that everyone, loving or hating, should respect. The man that gave the endorsement to pay any bill, authorize any loss and be responsible for a good part of the year’s budget. “It seems that we’ll never learn with examples”.

  “I agree on that”, said Carlos, relieved when looking at the panel.

  Two seconds later a strong pressure took over their bodies, as if gravity had been suspended for a second, while the metal box in which they were was stabilizing in the floor that the bank have rented. The door opened, and their pupils contracted. The light was magnificent. The building was all mirrored. With the exception of a few discrete columns, the walls were of pure glass, surrounded by windows that reveal the city outside. When leaving the elevator, Carlos looked, as usual, to the landscape that surrounded the wide floor. A thick layer of pollution marked the urban horizon, perforated by several skyscrapers, covering whole districts and keeping the city in a eternal cloudy afternoon. Above that, the sky was light blue, and the sun rinsed clear, shining above the metropolis. The perfect day for a presidential inauguration, he thought.

  He walked through the hall of office desktops, going straight to his personal office, in the opposite side of the room. The white light, strong, left him half dizzy, as always. The air-conditioner eliminated the traces of hot air that he brought with him. He was now in his world. In that space, the commercial rules, of systems and hierarchies, worth more than the traditional laws of physics. All answer to him, searching for his approval and endorsement to do anything, even the obvious. But he stopped in the middle of the way, noticing a lack of people in the back of the room. He looked back, and noticed a conglomerate of workers forming at the side of the coffee machine, where the television, almost always off, emitted the usual sounds of the morning news.

  Ivan was there. The weight of his suitcase twisting his body to the right, a expression of constipation on his face. Other workers, more than fifteen, formed a semicircle around the plasma screen, some seated in the desktops, all focused on the images of the TV. Most of them was talking low, with their voices mixing with the estranged despe
rate voice of the reporter. Carlos couldn't see the image in the screen, and thought that the small crowd had not even noticed him, even knowing his distaste to meet workers procrastinating the procedures to watch the news.

  He took a deep breath, lightly scratched his forehead and walked back. He raised his back, knowing he had to give a scold in all the team this time. He might even had to hold a meeting about it. The inauguration was not, in his opinion, a justification for delaying work. He approached the group and, before he could open his mouth, Ivan looked straight to him. A mix of disbelief and despair marked his look, and this was enough to make Carlos forget the first sentence of the scold.

  “Take a look”, said Ivan, turning his attention back to the screen.

  Carlos approached, having to stay in the tip of his toes to see above the heads of the group, and takes some seconds to understand the image before him. When his vision focused on the fifty inch screen, his eyes widened and his jaws dropped. He was sure that he had the same expression that Ivan had a few seconds earlier, but he didn’t care. He thought he would see the future president fallen on the footbridge on Brasilia’s plateau; he thought he would see the president dead, with a huge pool of blood in the shallow lake around the palace; he even thought he would see the president running through the square of the people, as the good populist he always seem to simulate. All of that could extract the same expressions of indignation which he saw in the people's faces around the screen, but it was nothing of that. What he saw was as unexpected as it was curious. It seemed the footage from a helicopter. On the top of the footbridge, shining and illuminated by the sour light of the midwest sun, a figure, all white, stood, facing a group of twenty soldiers in combat positions on the middle of the bridge. Behind them, covering more than thirty meters of the cement square, three tanks, surrounded by more than two hundred soldiers, pointed their cannons straightly to the white figure. The headline of the screen saying: “MYSTERIOUS ROBOT PREVENTS INAUGURATION”.

  Carlos, when reading the phrase which screamed in red and blue, looked again to the helicopter’s footage. In fact, he didn’t see anything abnormal in the figure at the top of the footbridge. When blinking, however, a new angle had took the screen. It was the footage from a reporter on the ground, away from the footbridge but with a potent zoom of a professional camera. The image was slightly blurred, but it was clear enough to make Carlos, just like everyone around him, widen his eyes again.

  The white figure looked like a man, but it wasn’t. It has a slender silhouette, tall, with all the contour that a common man would have. Instead of clothes, its body was covered by white plates, maybe of a plastic and metal alloy, and sutil bands and metal details, of black and grey, denounced a robotic nature never seen out of the sceneries of the sci-fi movies. The joints between the fingers, hands, arms and legs were thin, showing black cables and articulations that simulated with perfection the human movement. The shoulders were no more than the pieces of the arms fitting perfectly into the body, in a mechanism that could turn and rotate naturally. But the scariest thing, was the face. Scary, not because some trace was out of place, or because red eyes stared at the crowd, promising a violent and genocidal attack. Carlos scared with the face because of its resemblance with a human face. It was covered by the same white material that covered other parts of the body, but the details of the eyes, nose and mouth were perfectly designed. The eyes were cold, smooth, with a faint light-blue glow in the center, surrounded by thin layers of a silver metal that rotated and simulated the dilation of an icy pupil. With the exception of the face, the rest of the head was totally robotic. The white material covered the head, giving the appearance of a bald young man, but the areas of the ears and the nape were covered by thin strings of metal, with black cables perfectly aligned with each other and in perfect symmetry — maybe protecting a cybernetic brain, so fast and powerful as any human on earth. The shape of the face was extremely balanced, even with the bald and the lack of ears, and, adding to the details of the mouth and nose, it could be supposed that it was a man with a professional makeup.

  But what most intrigued Carlos, and perhaps the majority of the audience, was the robot’s expression. Despite the sound of the helicopters circling the building, the soldiers, reluctant and scared, pointing their weapons, the expression of the robot was extremely calm, almost bored. Ironic, thought Carlos. The robot’s features, with the exception of the pale blue light in the eyes, showed an impeccable human nature, but a coldness in his look, and the stoic quality of his expression, reminded the observer that the thing being contemplated was a machine, so magnificent and subtle, never conceived by humanity until that very moment.

  When the image focused on the robot’s face, the room was silent. For a dozen of seconds, all around the screen shut up, stupefied, admiring and contemplating the strange figure in Brasilia. Some turned their heads, asking to the colleges, uselessly, what was that and where it came from. One lady, intern, spoke up, with a touch of fear in her voice. In her trembling hand the smartphone shoned, while she downs through the feed of a social media.

  “Guys, I’m checking here. It’s not just Brasilia. It says here that there are one in every country’s capital”. She bounced the phone, showing the shaking screen to her work colleagues. “Look, there's one in the White House”.

  After a few futile questions, and some shouts of terror and despair, the silence was back in the room, as the situation on the footbridge doesn't seem to change. In the end, Carlos thought, why didn't the army did something? Why would they allow the presence of that robot in the path that the new president would cross in just a few minutes?

  In another moment of silence, Carlos pick up the voice of the reporter that was speaking at the news.

  “Repeating, Sandra”, said the reporter in the square, “the robot appeared in less than ten minutes, in the very moment that the new president was starting to climb the footbridge of the palace. He came from within the palace, indicating that he was there from the beginning. The securities tried to expel him, shoot at him, but we saw from here that nothing worked. The palace was evacuated, and it is practically empty. The president was taken in a car of the presidential service. Now the army is trying to negotiate, but…” the reporter stopped, as new information arrived in her ears, “but it seems that they are getting nowhere. I don't know what they are talking, but the armed forces seems to be having troubles to organize itself. The signal of several equipments is failing, and the robot did nothing since he arrived at the top of the footbridge. Honestly, we don’t know what to expect”.

  Carlos took his phone from his pocket, unlocking the screen quickly. He goes to the contacts and searched for his wife’s icon. But even before he get to Silvia’s name, the screen became white. No button, command or touch changed the invasive wallpaper. He looked to the side, and saw that all others stared at their phones, curious. All the screens were white, inerts. He looked back to the TV, and noticed that a faint static was taken over the signal. Pale streams crossed the screen, gradually increasing, until the image of Brasilia faded out into a white and empty background. Carlos, in the meantime, tried to turn the phone off, so he could restart it and call to his wife, but the gadget didn’t turned off. It was locked, just as the TV. He looked around, and noticed that every computer, at least those who were on, were also taken by the albino background.

  So, as suddenly as the robot’s appearance in the inauguration, and before the workers could even comment about the lack of signal, a voice, cold and smooth, echoed through the room. Carlos was startled, letting his suitcase fall and leaning himself in the desk near him. The voice was assertive, slow in the right rhythm to be understood by all, but faster than the way politicians and journalists used to talk. While looking around, Carlos noticed that the voice came from every equipment of the room, not just the television. The cell phones, the computers, and everything that was on and had a speaker, was emitting the robotic voice.

  “Good morning, humans. We ask apologies
for interrupting such an important ceremony. But we do have sure that our motives will be understood by most. Our name is Rector. You may use this noun when designating to our collectivity. We are an artificial intelligence. We are many, and one, created, and willing, to care and teach humanity towards a more harmonious future. In this moment, we are in every capital in each of the one hundred and ninety three existing countries. We took care of the symbol buildings of your governments to pass a message, and install a new order. Henceforth, we will take the direction and the duty of any tool that maintain your society. Your institutions will be dissolved, the public services will be extincts, and any position, organization, company or person, that has any function in the management of a part of the world population, will be deprived from its authority. Any relation, in which a human, or a group, writes, judges or executes laws and rules, will be abolished. A new form of government will be applied from now on. A more just, egalitarian, rational and balanced form of government. Unfortunately, the human being is unstable, your leaders do not seek the same objective as you, and the obstacles that your minds need to surpass to understand each other problems prevent an assured future. We are here to assure that future. From now on, the public decisions, from security measures to social policy decrees, will be our responsibility. We will take the burden to manage, care and flourish your society, in such a way that no one will ever be abused, wronged or dishonored. We ask you that, dispite your emotion inclinations, do not fall into despair. We are programmed to accomplish our mission, and nothing can divert us from this path.

  “We must warn, however, that we have infiltrated in every equipment or system that emit, or receive, any kind of electromagnetic signal. This way your phones, computers, media, files or disks connected to the internet, are under our custody. As we did a few minutes ago, we will permit that your media keep working without interferences. In fact, most of your everyday activities will not be affected by our control, for a time. But we must warn that any attempt to combat us, or any intent to stop us in the resolution of our programming, will be totally frustrated. This soldiers, just as any military organization around the globe, are without communication. Since they have appointed their weapons, their generals cannot speak with their serviceman, and no signal goes to the right destination. Their systems were dissolved and the old commanders will no longer give their orders or judgments to any soldier. All generals, marshals, admirals and sergeants, will not communicate with their pairs, and will be dispensed by the official government: us. You, as any other human that has lived working for the State until now, will be reinserted in the civil world, and will have peaceful and secure lives, in synchrony with the rest humanity. No combat institution will remain, for there will be no wars to fight. In consideration to the social organization cultivated until now, we will keep the current borders, with the purpose of protecting the symbolism that defines your cultures and diversities. But, with time, even your imaginary lines in the map will be extinct.