Ripples 16 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

16 Slight of Hand

Too much information, not enough answers: Life.

She peered over the documents, comparing notes to pages; pages to notes. The Fruit Fone certainly could do a lot of things.

She liked puzzles and games but this wasn't an ordinary puzzle. Or perhaps is was. Just a more complicated one, with lots of waffle in play.

The Fruit Fone had loads of gizmos inside that could detect and tell what was happening to it. It had a gizmo that could tell compass direction. It had a gizmo that could tell how fast the phone was moving. It could tell if the phone was being held in a hand waving it around or if it was moving in a car across town. It could tell up from down, right from left and flipped from flopped.

There was a gizmo that could tell exactly where you are on the planet. Or rather, exactly where the phone was on the planet. This gizmo worked by connecting signals from a host of satellites orbiting the planet.

The idea of so many satellites flying around space was just an accepted part of life. That the number of man made objects being rocketed into orbit just grew and grew over time. She remembered when there was only one satellite: the moon. Now hundreds crowded the area above the Earth creating massive space jams; not without a few collisions, as one satellite might kilter into the course of another.

There was no one sweeping up the debris.

It all fell to Earth.

Eventually.

The Fruit Fone could do just about everything except move on its own. It needed a human to move it. What horses and oxen did for humans, now humans did for robots: a new symbiotic relationship.

The human belief in supremacy, effectively marshaled by robots, assured cooperation. The new human hosts were easily trained to carry the robots to destinations indicated by pixels on a screen. The hum-droid, dutifully hauled the robot, believing that the relationship was of sole benefit to the host: the human.

Of course, that is what all parasites need to accomplish: convincing the host to carry them without complaining too much. By enticing the human into thinking the relationship was beneficial, that they were

eating at the same table

or even at

a table for one

guaranteed the robot phoront, would be mechanically transported by its host without issue.

Hum-drafts hauling billions of silicon robots in their pockets.

Billions and Billions

7 Billion and counting.

Nearing the equal of the 7.5 billion global human population; with 2 billion more every year.

But the robots were vulnerable, with a life cycle of just two years, maintaining the herds of hum-ports was essential. A phone could not survive without its human ... not even a Fruit Fone.

Rule 1: Don't let the Humans know.