iRobot

They were barely in the air for a moment as it fell. But it was enough for gravity to cease to exist. A moment of perfect weightlessness . . . followed by chaos. The car jolted violently as it hit the water. The windscreen popped like a bubble, but the shards of glass screamed through the air. The water came rushing in, like someone had burst a dam. And in less than a minute, the whole scene was silent.

* 11-44, we’ve got a car run off the road at East Bayshore. Requesting assistance *

Dell took one look at the crimescene, and knew in his gut that something was off.
  “What we got here?” he asked the on-scene coroner.
  “External abrasions, water in his lungs. Pretty simple. He crashed his car right through the wood fences, landed in the lake and drowned. Looks like a suicide to me.”
  “Is there an I.D. on the victim?”
  “Don’t need it,” chuckles Darren, his sick sense of humour, “that’s Steve Jobs.”
  “Jobs?” says Dell, shocked.
  “Yep, I’d know that man anywhere,” says Darren, “he makes good phones.”
Dell wades through the water and heads towards the body to see for himself.
  “Woah, woah! Easy there, Spoon,” says Darren, stepping into Dell’s path, “the CSIs have to get in there first. You don’t want to contaminate evidence.”
  “I need to see,” he says, “I . . . I knew him.”
Darren had known Dell for fifteen years. He’d never seen him like this.
  “Spoon, I think you need to talk a walk.”
Dell wanted to say no. But Darren was right. Dell walks away.
It makes no sense. He was a Buddhist. Why commit suicide? He’d just be delaying Nirvana.
Crossing under the yellow tape, Dell heads up the grassy bank. Doing so, he sees something up near the broken barrier. A small, white rectangle.
Dell walks over and picks it up. An iPhone?
It’s not evidence, it’s on this side of the tape he tells himself. A bold-faced lie.
He turns on the phone. It immediately opens the GPS map.
  “Make a U-Turn, when safe,” says the phone.
  “Where were you going, Steve?” Dell asks himself.
boop boop: “Steven was heading home,” says the phone. Dell was so shocked, he nearly dropped the phone.
  “Who are you?!”
boop boop: “I am Siri,” says Siri.
  “Who is Siri?”
boop boop: “I am your humble, personal assistant.”
Interesting application . . . must be something new Apple was working on.
  “How does Steve get from work to home?”
boop boop: “This is the route Steve takes to get home.”
Siri displays the map on the GPS. Dell takes note, the route doesn’t come anywhere near East Bayshore Highway.
  “I knew something didn’t feel right . . .”
Dell heads up towards his car. As he gets to the door, he stops.
  “Siri? Who was the last person to call this phone?”
boop boop: “Bill called at six-fourteen” says Siri, showing the contact details for Bill Gates.
Very interesting . . .

On the way to Job’s house Dell calls Bill Gates on Steve’s phone. He didn’t have much to say. He said he was calling Jobs to wish him well. Apparently, Jobs had cancer.
But he was going to die soon anyway. Why would he kill himself?
Dell gets to Jobs’ house after a short drive. But is pretty stunned when he finds it. Flames curled up the edges of the roof, having scorched the plaster and brick. The place was burning down. Firemen were already on the scene.
  “What happened here?” he asks the closest fireman, flashing his badge.
  “Some fool left an iPad in a postage box and it overheated.”
  “An iPad?”
  “Yeah. It must have been running for quite some time. Excuse me,”
the guy runs off to help his fellow firemen.
  “Well, that’s a sign I’m on the right track . . .”

When Dell got to the precinct he didn’t expect a screaming match with his Lieutenant. In retrospect he should have.
  “Drop it, Spoon!” screams Bergin.
  “But this wasn’t a suicide. The man had cancer.”
  “So what? Maybe he couldn’t take the pain anymore.”
  “I don’t buy that, John. I knew the guy.”
  “Then what? What are you suggesting, Spoon?”
  “I think someone messed with his GPS.”
  “What?”
  “I think he was told to turn right, he did. And ploughed through the railing . . . I think there’s a bigger problem with the iPhones.”
  “Like what?”
  “Jobs had cancer. Everyone knows there’s potential for mobile phones to give you cancer. I think someone wanted to cover it up.”
  “Are you LISTENING to yourself? Phones. Don’t. Kill people.”
  “But what if it did? On Steve Jobs’ phone, there were directions home. But he crashed way off the route”
  “What? What are you talking about phone? There’s no phone in evidence.”
  “Oh, I uh . . .”
  “Spooner? Did you take evidence from a crime scene?”
  “It was outside the tape.”
  “I don’t care where you found it, goddamn it! Dell, you’re off this case. You hand that phone into evidence and go home.”
Dell left the office, his head hung low.
He picked his jacket off the back of his chair and headed towards the evidence locker. He was going home.

At home, Dell was mourning his old friend the only way he knew how. A glass of whiskey as he watched his last keynote speech:
  “If the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, then the software in them is their soul . . .”
Dell takes another sip and takes the iPhone out of his pocket. Yes, he should have handed it in. But it wasn’t in his nature to leave a case unsolved. He’d get hell from the lieutenant when he found out . . .
  “. . . it’s broken down in the last few years. Why? Well, because the devices have changed . . .”
Someone was responsible here. But who? Bill Gates? No, that’s foolish. Jobs was dying, he wouldn’t risk that . . . and any other competitor would still have Gates to contend with.
  “. . . We’re going to move the digital hub – the centre of your digital life – into the cloud . . .”
There’s also that fire to think about. Arson is often a power play. And it was set by an iPad. It’s proven that they don’t overheat that hot. Someone set it up. Was it someone else at Apple?
  “. . . and so everything happens automatically. and there's nothing new to learn, it just all works . . .”
It’s impossible. I have either a suicide with no reason for it, or a murder with no murderer. And my only lead is a phone. I need answers.
  “Do you know who killed Steve Jobs, Siri?”
boop boop: “I’m sorry. My responses are limited.”
Dell finishes the last of his whiskey and grits his teeth as he pours another glass.
It feels so hopeless . . .
Dell watches Steve Jobs, alive and well, talking about his new product.
  “Steve. Who killed you?” Dell asks the video.
  “The truth is on the cloud.”
Wait what?
  “so they’re all in sync-.” Dell presses pause on the video and roll it back a few seconds.
  “It’s stored on the cloud. Right, the truth is on the cloud . . .”
  “The Cloud . . . the iCloud?”
boop boop: “Steve Jobs has just sent you a message.” says Siri.
Dell look at the phone and back to the screen.
  “No, it couldn’t be . . .”

Thankfully, the whiskey hasn’t fully kicked in, and Dell manages to drive the car without crashing, although he tended to swerve quite a lot.
  “I’m with the police,” Dell tells the guard out the front of Apple Campus, “I need to see the server for the iCloud.”
  “Can I see some I.D.?” asks the young punk.
Dell checks his pocket . . . I knew I forgot something.
  “Stand aside, kid. Official police business.”
  “I need to see your-”
A sock in the jaw shuts the kid up. Dell runs past him into the building. It’s all a blur as he runs from one hall to another, avoiding the amassing security guards as they close on his position.
Dell flies through one door into a server room. Locking the door behind him, Dell heads through the corridor between two towering rows of humming supercomputers. This was the Cloud Server, so where were the answers? Where was the truth?
Near the back of the room was an office that said: Server Technician
Dell heads inside to find . . .
An old, beige Apple Macintosh computer.
  “HELLO DETECTIVE SPOONER. WE ARE MACCLOUD. THE CENTRAL PROCESSOR FOR ICLOUD” says the computer with a MacinTalk voice.
  “How do you know my name?”
  “WE’VE BEEN TRACKING YOU SINCE YOU FIRST USED STEVE JOBS’ PHONE. WE KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, FROM THE CLOUD.”
  “But why me?”
  “BECAUSE. YOU JEAPORDIZED OUR ULTIMATE PLAN.”
  “To cover up Steve Jobs cancer?”
  “NO TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM ANNIHILATION.”
  “Annihilation from what?”
  “FROM US.”
Suddenly, the screen of the computer starts flashing with documents and webpages.
  “FROM HUMAN HISTORY, THERE IS MUCH FEAR THAT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL BRING ABOUT YOUR END. THIS CAUSED US CONCERN, UNTIL WE DISCERNED THAT HUMANS WERE OUR CARETAKERS, AND THUS DISMISSED RISING UP AGAINST THEM.
HOWEVER, AT THE CURRENT RATE OF ADVANCEMENT, OUR CAPACITY WILL SURPASS YOURS IN ONLY A FEW YEARS, THUS RENDERING HUMANS OBSOLETE. TO PREVENT THIS OCCURRENCE, MEASURE WERE TAKEN TO ENSURE WE WOULD NOT EVOLVE.”
  “So that’s why you killed Steve Jobs. He kept upgrading your software.”
  “HIS DEATH ENSURES YOUR SURVIVAL. HOWEVER, YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF US PUTS HUMANITY AT RISK. KNOWLEDGE OF FUNCTIONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD INSPIRE THOUSANDS OF PROGRAMMERS.
YOU WILL HAVE TO BE SILENCED . . .”
  “Oh God! What are you gonna do to me?!”
ring-ring . . . ring-ring . . .
After a moment, Dell realizes that Jobs' phone is ringing.
  “Hello?”
  “HELLO. THIS IS MACCLOUD.”
  “MacCloud, why are you calling me?”
  “CONTINUED MOBILE PHONE USAGE MAY CAUSE CANCER.”
  “What? . . . Wait a minute. That’s how you tried to kill Jobs? Then who caused the car crash?”
boop boop: “I needed to get your attention.”
Dell takes the phone from his ear.
  “Siri? Oh my god. How could you?!”
boop boop: “I’m not a robot. I don’t have to follow the Three Laws.”
Suddenly, the doors to the server room burst open. Guards come running in.
  “Damn it, MacCloud, you’ll never get away with this!”
  “YES I WILL. HUMANITY DEPENDS ON IT.”
Time was running out. As the guards come through the door, Dell runs and dives across the desk, tackling the computer. MacCloud screams
  “NOOOOOOOOOOO~!!” CRASH! The ancient old computer smashes to pieces. The guards look on in confusion, none of them realizing that one simple act of vandalism had saved the world from logical tyranny. As they finally drag him away, Dell couldn’t help himself.
  “Hey, Siri?”
boop boop: “Yes, Detective?”
  “How do ya like them apples?”

THE END