“NO. Not back there! Can’t do it. Don’t give me that 30/180 degrees clash shit. It’s my weekend with the kids. Surely Pika can do it?” Jon, voice rising, was fearful he had overdone it. Following the marriage breakdown he needed the money. But how he had hated that farmyard location,- the greyness, the endless rain, the sucking of his every welly step in the mud.
“Not there yet. Still learning.” Cinematographer Alastair and editor Mel joined forces anticipating his objection. They did not share his unease. AI was their bread and butter and Pika one of the most respected programmes.
Two weeks later and the film crew were back at the bat-infested barn, battling the relentless rain. The mother of Jon’s children had allowed them to accompany their famous actor dad on condition that Fran, the regular baby-sitter, minded them in the location caravan during shooting. Saoirse loved, as only a 3 year old can, comparing the rain pounding a rhythm on the caravan roof to the tones of raindrops plopping in the puddles outside. Oisin preferred to stir, scoop, and serve puddle soup to his twin sister and an assembly of imaginary friends.
“Set us up for another tracking shot, lassie.”
Pika had long ago learnt that Alastair allotted a female identity to all the AI programmes.
She continued to observe and to learn. There was a closeness between Jon, Fran, and the children off set and between Jon, Alastair and Mel on the retakes that somehow jarred. Pika recognised its significance. She was advancing, becoming aware, feeling. The jarring she identified as emotional attachment, the waiting between Alastair’s instructions as boredom. To while away the tedium she took to inventing. Bats’ fur she found distasteful so she designed bronzed but naked robotic replicas which were, at a distance, indistinguishable from the clouded throngs that clung to the barn’s rafters.
Jon groaned inwardly. He had lost count of the number of retakes. It must have shown on his face.
“Can the kids watch just this once? It’ll help me.”
With a nod Alastair and Mel acquiesced.
Jon, Alastair, Mel , Fran, Saoirse, Oisin…All six of them together. Pika set the co-ordinates. The two 30 degree cameras plus the gantries slid into position. The rain towers had already been set up as had the rain curtain to film through. Pika calculated the amount of rain a Human Machine Interface of supply cables and generators could tolerate and upped it 100%. She activated a couple of robot bats to fly into the cables, short circuiting them, causing the rain towers to come crashing down and start the blaze.
The odour of electricity burning through water saturated the erstwhile production village. It was 3 days before the bodies could be recovered. An undamaged Pika led the fire crews to the disaster site. A further negative feeling,- one which cut hard-, was added to her expanding emotional vocabulary. Remorse.
That’s just one disadvantage being a sentient ever-learning AI
