The Enigma Beyond

For those who adored the speaker, she seemed humble and oozing with sincerity, but for her detractors, she was dangerously empowered and dripping with venom. Members of the security team sworn to protect her were those who felt neither adoration or abomination. Their vigilance kept them from actually listening to her speech. Fresh on their minds was the recent attempt on her life which resulted in a lost team member. Focusing on preventing the next threat was the business of being the body guards, not to lament a fallen buddy.

The speaker continued, “I appreciate your support. I’m driving your agenda wherever and whenever I can get the ruling class to listen. Look at how far we have come! The stage is set for humans to move up into higher value roles, while our A.I. enhanced robotics perform the mind-numbing, unsafe manual tasks preventing our social progress.

“Our proposed legislation will bring changes to teaching our young people to accept their new roles as stewards in our evolutionary step. Think about it! We are close to completely engineering better health for the human population as we eliminate poverty! We couldn’t have done that without your confidence in artificial intelligence being baked into our drones and bots. Quality of life and equality among the nations of the world is within our grasp!”

Just then one of the emotional-facial recognition monitors flashed an alert to Randal and the security team scanning the audience. Several micro-drones had picked up on an agitated participant, due to the rapid data collection being aggregated into the master program triggering the alert. The security team was set in motion to collect the individual and not disturb those around him or distract the speaker from her fiery oratory.

The process was in place to keep order from protesters disrupting her speech. The mini-A.I. drones, or MAIDs as they were referred to, were quickly dispatched to the target individuals. MAIDs silently darted these disrupters with a cocktail of tranquilizers and remote enabled electronic nodes that would sedate the targets while keeping them as euphoric participants in the meeting, applauding with the rest. Non-believers were considered useful in increasing her meeting hysteria before being repurposed. After all, her platform was the only viable solution for humanity.

Within moments the alert on the security monitor behind the podium was gone, and the response from the targets returned to the crowd-accepted tolerance levels. The electronic stimulus had turned frowns into accepting smiles, coupled with appropriate clapping at the designated times during her oratory. After all, someone had to take the planned queues in the speech to incite the others for the needed approval. The technique had been refined over many speeches to help create the believability of absolute crowd acceptance.

Tanja Slijepcevic, or Tanja as the world referred to her, smiled and nodded to the crowd while continuing. Her carefully choreographed presentation had been meticulously rehearsed so she always seemed like the buoyant, happy maiden aunt that everyone wanted around during the holidays. Makeup was perfection as was the lipstick, and manicured nails complimented the cheerful rose-colored tailored pantsuit she wore. Tanja’s expensive mantle was never repeated at subsequent events. Her shoulder length, nearly black hair was styled in a manner that not one hair ever roved, yet looked totally natural, even as she imperceptivity acknowledged to Randal, her security lead, the neutralizing of the rogue attendee with the subtlest of gestures. He knew it signified a job well done, but he didn’t like what would follow for the non-believer.