“Well that about covers things Mr. Carson unless you have any other questions?” said the Companions company representative wrapping things up.
“No, thank you,” he replied. He had supplied an enormous amount of information about himself, his daughter and his home in his application and out of concern for his daughter’s well-being made himself familiar with every aspect of the new Companion. As a scientist he was comfortable in the realm of technical and legal details.
He saw the representative to the door and after a crisp, professional handshake she was gone. He returned to his living room and sat down facing the new Companion. She (he couldn’t help thinking of it as ‘she’) sat smiling politely, her dark eyes looking steadily at him, hands folded neatly in her lap.
She wore a long dress of the type currently in fashion with a wide skirt and a close-fitting bodice and sleeves. Her hair was down, which was not the current fashion, but he found that somehow it made her more approachable which was probably what the manufacturer intended.
She was pretty without being alluring and possessed a warm, friendly demeanor. Yet there was something of a firmness in her eyes. Remarkably lifelike but the uncanny valley was still there. He had been told that would fade over time.
“As the representative indicated,” she said now with a small smile intending to put him at ease, “there is no need to concern yourself with preliminaries Brian. I am fully prepared to begin my duties immediately. Please call me Shepherd. Should you ever need to contact me I will be constantly connected to your home’s AI and if you are outside of your home we will be connected via the Companion network app on your phone.”
She was interrupted by a small cry.
“Ah,” said Shepherd. “Right on time.” She rose and headed to the nursery down the hall, her skirt softly rustling.
Brian gazed at her retreating form for a moment and then rose and headed to his study. He wore a heavy, dark-colored kilt that was more functional than fashionable and a loose, comfortable white shirt. He sat at his desk in his office at the rear of the house but he did not start to work. Instead, he stared blankly out the window at the woods thinking of his wife, who had passed away only one month ago.
Their infant daughter Brooke had needed immediate care. The nurse provided by the province was only a temporary solution allowing time for other arrangements to be made but he could not yet bring himself to invite another woman to the role. Also, he could not help his scientific nature and tended to take the long view of things. Best if the child’s caretaker did not change frequently. He called the Companions company.
About one hundred years previously the Companions company had started out as the manufacturer of sex dolls. Initially denounced they had persisted and gradually became an accepted part of society mostly due to increasingly liberal views and the fact that many of their customers had physical or social issues that prevented them from having normal relationships. Their real breakthrough came fairly early on in their history when they realized it was not sex that most of their customers bought their dolls for but companionship.
Throughout the history of civilization, as the nomadic lifestyle gave way to villages and villages to towns and cities, social isolation and inequality had steadily increased. By the time Brian was an adult, with the rise of electronic communications, social isolation was rampant and medical science had learned it was extremely damaging to mental and physical health. Millions of years of evolution had gone into optimizing face-to-face communications as a basis for survival and feelings of safety and well-being and technology had increasingly interfered with that. The body therefore perceived the isolation as a danger and the endocrine system flooded it with stress hormones which had damaging effects over the long term. The early founders of the Companions company saw the future and the real business opportunity and a market that was vastly greater than that for sex dolls.
They began to incorporate artificial intelligence into their models to enable them to simulate speech and non-verbal communications. Initially they used the AI systems developed by other companies but soon became leaders in the field in their own right. After one hundred years of development, by the time the Shepherd walked through Brian’s front door, Companions were highly advanced artificial intelligences with bodies and communications abilities that made them almost indistinguishable from humans.
The Companion’s AI allowed them to be customized and operate independently in a variety of roles. The Shepherd was their childcare model, now commonly in use worldwide.
Companions were still expensive however Brian had inherited a large estate and a portfolio of investments in a variety of blue-chip companies. He delegated the management of his financial affairs to a family office. His home was located in the countryside. He had contractors maintain it and the grounds and a domestic worker came in daily to do the housework and cook and serve the mid-day and evening meals. His family’s wealth had come from centuries of land ownership as farmers and then commodities traders. Although he had no interest in farming or business himself the same outlook served him well in his own choice of careers. He put his PhD in ecology to use as a fellow in a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of the planet’s ever-growing population.
Brian worked mainly in a communications capacity for the Satis organization, whose motto was ‘Scimus Satis’, Latin for ‘We Know Enough’, meaning the need was not for ever more knowledge but that the focus of society’s energy should be on the application of what was already known. In addition to his communications role, he worked as an advisor to the Ocean Heat Tipping Point Project at the local university. The project’s focus was the subject of his most recent popular science book, Gaia’s Dagger. A portion of the book’s introduction summarized its message:
“The most dangerous enemy is the unknown one. The one you are not aware of until it strikes the fatal blow. For humanity, the Ocean Heat Tipping Point is that enemy. Every day we hear about the growing threats of wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts and because they have immediate impacts on our lives they get our attention. Loss of ice at the poles is generally reported as an indicator of climate change, seldom as a cause. The general public does not worry overly much about it. Slowly melting ice does not make for a good news story. Yet in the final analysis it will be seen that the loss of the ice will lead to the most dangerous tipping point of all. It is likely in the extreme that it will be a fatal one for our species.
“Simply put, the oceans absorb over 90% of all the excess heat we put into the atmosphere and they have done so since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Eventually, like a paper towel saturated with liquid, they will not be able to absorb any more. Like ice cubes in a pot of water on the stove, the polar ice is keeping the oceans from heating as fast as they would otherwise. Once the ice is gone, the ocean temperature will rise much faster than it has in the past, quickly reaching its tipping point saturation level.
“At that moment, her tolerance of our abuse exhausted, Gaia will strike. Global climate change will accelerate dramatically. Within a century of that point, the human race will likely be extinct.”
Alpha & Omega 
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