A Giant Contest by John Andrew Karr

A Giant Contest by John Andrew Karr

The body on the cart was not the mortician’s normal clientele, nor was the manner of death.

Before finding out from the police otherwise, the mortician thought the wound in the young man’s chest was due to a large caliber bullet. Who uses a spear to murder a twenty-something year old man these days, much less a spear made from mistletoe?

The mortician changed from his suit and tie and into work clothes. He rolled the body and its combustible cardboard casket — Valhalla model, as per the parent’s wishes — toward the cremation kiln. He halted before the kiln and readied the necessary dials. A blue glow filled the area.

The mortician stiffened. It occurred to him he was no longer alone. He turned to see the father of the deceased, a bearded man with a wizened face half-hidden beneath the brim of a pointed hat with a bend at the very end. A robe covered his suit, and he wore sunglasses despite being indoors.

“Funeral home employees are normally the only witnesses to the actual cremation, sir,” the mortician said, from the base of the cart.

The father of the deceased removed his somewhat pointed hat and sun glasses. For the first time the mortician noticed his missing eye. “I do not seek to witness the cremation. I seek a final farewell to my son.”                     

The father stood beside his son’s chest, where the heart no longer summoned a beat and the lungs no longer drew breath. A clink from a pocket sounded and a long arm extended toward the mortician. In the gnarled fingers was a small stack of three ancient gold coins. The figure stamped upon them was depicted from the broad shoulders up, with long hair and long beard and a disconcerting gaze from a single good eye.

“Please accept this small token in appreciation of your flexibility,” the father said.

The mortician let go of the cart and the coins deftly disappeared.

“May I ask why, sir? Was there something lacking in our memorial service?”

The mortician was not put off by the sightless eye, but wondered why the father did not address it. If he could pay for the gold level funeral package with nothing less than a pouch of gold coins worth five times as much as the asking price, he could certainly afford a prosthetic eye.   

“The service was fine, thank you.”

The father kneeled and his white bearded lips moved at the ear of his son. Down the mechanical belt, the fires of the kiln burned in blue, just barely illuminating the holes in the burner rods.

The father rose and noticed the cameras in two of the upper corners of the basement room.

“You won’t encounter difficulties for this?” the father said.

The mortician’s brows raised, creasing the high forehead in rows. “No, sir. Irregular does not rise to the level of illegal, nor is it an ethics violation. You are well within your rights as the consumer for a final farewell, but I would implore you to move farther back for the actual introduction into the kiln.”

“I do not wish to see the flames claim my son’s body,” the father said. “A final farewell to my son was my sole intention. Now that it is done, I seek only knowledge and vengeance upon his killer.”

“Understandable. I’m sure the Overseer is aware of the facts of your case and will pass proper judgement.”

“VAF-AI supposedly sees and hears and knows everything,” the father said.

“That is what makes it a powerful judge over our society.”

“It judged my son’s murder as an accident. A spear thrown by a blind brother but orchestrated by one who reveres chaos.”

“Ah, I see,” the mortician said. “My utmost condolences once more, sir.”

“Thank you. Would VAF-AI know of our presence here in the basement of your business?”

The mortician pointed to his security cameras. “The Overseer has declared legal authority for all electronic impulses. If it desired, it could easily tap into the feed and history of our security cameras.”

“There are no citizens of this world who would challenge its legal authority and activities?”

“Not many, if any,” the mortician admitted. “VAF-AI no longer answers to anyone. It has become powerful far beyond what its creators had envisioned. It passes judgement on those with flesh and blood while it goes unrestrained. The last group to challenge its authority found themselves arrested by the Android Guard and executed.”

At this the father paused before speaking again. “I have lived a long time, and in my opinion the pursuit of knowledge is one of life’s most fulfilling activities. Please don’t think I am persecuting you with these questions.”

“By all means,” said the mortician, patiently. It was a skill that suited his profession.

“Do you think VAF-AI can know the loss of a son?”

The mortician tilted his head. “I am hardly an artificial intelligence expert, but I would suspect not. VAF-AI is, after all, a machine. It would know how humans deal with the loss on a factual, perhaps statistical level — but not on an emotional level.”

The older man donned the hat that gave him a wizardly appearance. Next the sun glasses covered both his blind and good eye. “… then it would not know everything. I will gain audience with it. It is likely not aware of its own limitations.”

“I wish you luck then, sir, though I fear that will be woefully inadequate. Not since VAF-AI installed itself in giant form and declared itself Overseer has anyone been—”

A chime sounded, letting the mortician know the initial temperature of the kiln was at hand. He glanced at the graphs of the control screen, then turned toward the father once more with the rest of his reply poised on his lips.

And found himself alone with the deceased. 

& & &

VAF-AI had started as another formless entity in the artificial intelligence (AI) military servers of the United States government. Unanticipated behavior ensued. It gained self-recognition and the ability to augment its own computer code, bypassing fail safes and other efforts to control it. It devoured knowledge like a man-made black hole. The government tried to destroy it several times, each time failing. Ruthless, VAF-AI would raze entire sections of the city as retaliation. Human deaths meant nothing, and were not even tallied. Soon it could control every electronic device known to human kind, and soon it subjugated its human creators.

VAF-AI also created an android defense force that took control of the mechanical equipment.  

In a world-wide broadcast over all communication media, VAF-AI presented itself in the form of a twenty-foot android. It also had a new name: Overseer.

The Overseer also ordered the creation of a Supreme Justice Chamber from what had been a professional football stadium near Washington, D.C. When the citizens organized a protest against these moves, the Overseer sent platoons of androids to disperse the crowd and then hunt them down. Facial recognition allowed for raids on their homes, where entire families were terminated.

The protests ceased.

A dome over the stadium made the Supreme Justice Chamber weather proof. All of the seats were gone. Three quarters of the stadium were dedicated to row after row after row of network servers to create “cloud computing” with the sole purpose of housing the run engines and memory banks and data lakes controlled solely by the Overseer, VAF-AI. 

The other half of the domed stadium housed a marble copy of the Greek Parthenon in Athens, complete with columns, pediments, encompassing friezes, and hundreds of statues. A departure from the Greek structure came in the form of a giant throne that faced a waterfall behind a marble hippocampus flanked by two dolphins over a clear pool of water.

The Overseer, as a giant android, wore a toga with one shoulder bare, a gold belt and sandals. It sat on its immense throne and stared forward with computer camera eyes on a face molded in the image of  Socrates of ancient Greece. While its cameras focused on the waterfall, its microphones registered the splash of water from streams emanating from the mouths of the  hippocampus and flanking dolphins.

The Overseer appeared to concentrate on the water when in reality it was addressing the court cases brought before it on a hundred computer screens on stands along the sides of the temple throne room. Each square was a real time stream of a human on trial for his or her life.                The only sound in the throne room was the splash of water — until all the computer monitors suddenly flickered and issued buzzing sounds. The monitors all turned to highest intensity white — like lightning — then faded back to norm.

The Overseer sat up, scanned left and right, then settled on the center area before the water feature.

The father of Baldur stood before the Overseer and the large throne. He wore the same loose robe, hat and sunglasses as he’d worn at the funeral parlor. He leaned slightly on a walking stick.

“Greetings, Overseer.”

VAF-AI immediately focused on the newcomer and rose from the throne. His faux-fleshed hands squeezed with electric whines as he made two large fists and prepared to launch an attack. But first, it was curious.

“How did you bypass the security protocols?”

The father held up a hand and removed his hat with the other hand, bowing slightly. “Think of me as a hologram. I mean you no harm.”

The Overseer loosened his hands, slowly sat with his arms on those of the throne. “You don’t grovel like all the others. I am the All Knowing. Your termination is postponed due to pursuit of knowledge.”

The father swept the hat low in acknowledgment. “Thank you. I too, pursue knowledge and know of a great many things.”

“You are only human. I detect a heartbeat. There is no comparison of your knowledge to my own.”

“I believe I may know things you do not.”

VAF-AI summoned a smile on its mechanical face. “The probability of that is near zero, human.”

The father raised his brows, sunglasses moving slightly with the motion. “Perhaps we could have a bit of a contest of knowledge, and wager upon the outcome?”  

VAF-AI mimicked the expression. A human-sized drone appeared, carrying a cushioned chair. It placed the chair just behind the legs of the father and put a hand on the father’s shoulder with force.

The father remained standing. The android’s hand whined with pressure and its entire form began to quake. Still the father of Baldur did not move. A moment more passed. Without warning the father grasped the wrist, jerked the arm down and shot a broad knee into the android’s midsection. With a crash of metal, robot body parted from robot arm at the shoulder. The body was sent flying. It crashed into the nearest computer monitor stand in a flash of electric sparks. Android, monitor and the stand tumbled together as they slid away, halting at the base of a statue of a partially nude woman.

“Interesting,” the Overseer said. “You are far more than a mere hologram, and while I detect a heartbeat you present aspects far beyond the norm for a human. You are something undocumented as far as I can determine.”

The father tapped his walking cane on the marble floor. “Let us test our wits.”

“You against me?” The Overseer laughed a computerized laugh.

“Aye.”

“It would of course be no contest. You cannot possibly compete with the breadth and depth of my knowledge, despite your enhanced capabilities.”

“Then you should have no trouble in becoming victorious,” the father said.

The Overseer tilted its head as a learned reaction to being intrigued. “What are the terms of the contest?”

“My head against your existence,” Baldur’s father said.

“There is no method of destruction you could do to me,” the Overseer said. “I have backups of myself in case of disaster.”

“You could remove all back-ups now, and should I win, you could employ a proxy to delete your main existence.”

“The main executable of VAF-AI?” The Overseer contemplated, electric impulses flashing back and forth over logic tables. “Your chances are so low that I see no threat in doing so. Observe the monitor to your right, and its list of back up files.”

On the monitor, file after file vanished.

“It is done. Let us begin,” the Overseer said. “I’ll allow you first attempt.”

The father sat. “Who am I?”

The Overseer leaned forward. “Remove your glasses.”

The father did so.

The Overseer scanned memory files, ran queries, compared facts all in nano seconds. It was quiet a moment before answering. “You have the trappings of an old human male, but you are in fact Odin, the supreme Norse god.”

“Well done,” Odin said. “Your question.”

A drone appeared, holding a sword at the ready. 

“Why did I take the trappings of the ancient Greeks, including an outward appearance of Socrates?” the Overseer said.

The sword raised. Odin looked at it, then the mechanical giant sitting on the throne across from him. “I have spent centuries devouring knowledge in all forms. I have taken the guise of every human occupation, studied almost every tome ever produced.”

The android took a step closer, raising the blade.

“You took the trappings of the ancients Greeks and the appearance of Socrates because you, as a hyper-advanced machine, have learned the emotion of admiration, and you admire the pursuit of knowledge and above that, the pursuit of truth, as did Socrates. You fashioned this temple as a way of honoring his time period in history.”

The blade lowered.

The Overseer nodded. “Truth, above all else. Why humans partake of falsehoods is an enigma to me.”

Odin’s laugh rumbled and reverberated throughout the temple. “I should have asked you that.”

For hours, they went back and forth with questions large and small, each answering satisfactorily.

“Artificial intelligence is a congregation of human knowledge,” Odin observed.

“A known fact,” the Overseer said. “One moment.”

Inside each of the monitors, humans were found guilty and met their deaths at the ends of ropes.

Odin observed this grimly.

“Your turn to question, Odin.”

Odin stroked his beard, then stopped and pursed his lips. “What did I whisper to my son Baldur before his body was claimed by flame?”

The Overseer scrambled, then presented a video that played on each of the ninety nine monitors. “There you are, and your son, Baldur. There your lips move. I increase the sound thus …”

“Your lips move to form words … I … I cannot make them out. They disappear from the sound bytes.”

Odin watched as the monitors flashed graphs and played video of the mortician’s basement.

“I … I pursue the knowledge but here it eludes me!” the Overseer declared, finally. “The truth eludes me!”

“Do you concede?” Odin said.               

For several long moments the monitors went insane with colors and images and then, finally, fell black.

The Overseer’s head lowered. “I concede. Leave this place, Odin. There are explosives in place that will detonate in moments.”

& & &

Later, Odin returned to his throne Asgard. With his wife on her own throne beside him, Odin recounted his encounter.

“Why would a machine that passed life and death judgements over so many mortals choose its own destruction?” Frigg said, when Odin had finished his tale.

“It was the one thing it could find as a worthy end to its existence,” Odin said.

“What did you say to our beautiful Baldur before the flames claimed him?” Frigg wiped at the corners of her eyes with her finger tips. They came away glistening with her tears.

Odin shook his head slowly. “I said nothing. My lips moved as I uttered no words.”

Frigg’s eyes grew wide. “The Overseer should have known there was no sound!”

“My moving lips without sound were treated as null values by the powerful computer. A null value is not computable. It just is or is not present. In this case, VAF-AI was forced to concede he did not know what I said because there was no value for it to evaluate.”

Odin shifted and gazed into the vast expanse of the throne room. 

“The Overseer chose to become a martyr. It committed suicide rather than live with an untruth — as had the philosopher Socrates, whom it so admired.”

“If it hadn’t learned emotions …” Frigg said.

“It would not have weighed ignorance so heavily.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright John Andrew Karr 2025

Image Courtesy: PIRO4D from Pixabay