Check your fucking emails!

The letter’s handwriting was scrawled across a torn-off scrap of notebook paper and hastily shoved into a too-big envelope. The address was just as hastily written and full of errors, yet it reached the lone house of Professor Bertrand McAngus all the same.

Unfortunately, Bertrand didn’t read this letter until several months after its arrival. He spent this time, as he’d spent his entire career, devoting every possible hour to his research. Even his begrudging retirement hadn’t put an end to the tireless work ethic he’d drilled into himself as a youth - it merely added to the list of ever-growing issues he faced in trying to achieve the ever elusive big break that most of his former colleagues had all been blessed with.

Life had never been inclined to show Bertrand such kindnesses.

He spent this morning as he’d spent every morning since - he put on the same sea blue jumper he’d been given in a rather uncomfortable secret Santa, sensible grey khakis and a pair of red slippers he purchased when he was feeling uncharacteristically adventurous. Then he would head to the kitchen, fill a small glass with water and take a lone pill to keep his arrhythmia at bay - it was yet another irritation in his life that he neither wanted nor needed - wiping any lingering moisture from his silver moustache and spend a few moments mentally preparing himself for the day.

After a few moments of contemplating the irritations he was likely to face for the day, he finally decided to check the somewhat pitiful pile of post that had gradually amassed on the bare floor by his front door, the letter’s urgency seemed even more of an irritation.

“Who fucking sent this?” He muttered, as he headed to his cluttered desk to check his much neglected emails. The letter had, very helpfully, not been signed but something about it made Bertrand too curious to throw it away. He’d been alone with his work for so long that this letter was the only thing a person had addressed to him since his retirement card - and even that had simply been signed “from your esteemed colleagues”.

“They wasted paper and postage and couldn’t even be bothered to tell me who they are, let alone which blasted email I’m meant to be reading.” He continued to complain under his breath, “ Soon as I find them out, they’ll get a fucking stern reply!”

He pinned the letter to a worn corkboard, piercing through a cluster of notes filled with a variety of scrawled and annotated diagrams relating to his life’s research - the perfect bio-city, a living architectural organism that could predict and adapt to the needs of a growing and thriving population.

The board was buried deep beneath such notes and test results and, in spite of his retirement, Bertrand was continuing his studies - albeit with vastly limited resources. He was used to this though, used to striving against the tidal waves of rejected proposals, failed tests and outdated lab equipment that simply couldn’t give him the answers he so desperately needed. So, while the letter sat pinned to the board for several more days, Bertrand continued to toil away at one of the many problems that had plagued his simulations.

Maintaining a steady flow of oxygen throughout a bio-city at its calculated maximum was his current fixation. He had already summarised that, given a steady supply of biological detritus in the form of both human and food waste, as well as degradable man-made materials, a maximum population of 12,000 (give or take a few hundred) could be supported with a settlement of approximately 6km².

However this, as his theoretical concerns often did, led to a series of tangents that had him examining the oxygen conductive properties of an assortment of stem cell printed materials that he’d fabricated and preserved a few decades ago when he had the funding for such things. He shook his head and lightly swore to himself at the bittersweet memory of well-funded endeavours compared to his purely theoretical present.

“They could have let me keep one of the printers, bloody tight-arses! I could have happily sufficed with the micro extruder or even the laser assisted bastard of a printer that they barely dusted off once in a full bloody moon. Preservation can only hold for so long.” Bertrand ranted to himself as he sipped the last dregs of decaf from a chipped mug he’d been given during one of many awkward department-enforced “Secret Santa” social calamities that only ever enforced his isolative tendencies.

In between bouts of furious studying, Bertrand managed to partake in the activities one expects to partake in during retirement, albeit without the presence of similarly aged companions. He gardened, albeit with his own genetically enhanced vegetables that held a more intense flavour and were pest resistant without requiring harsher chemicals, he went on walks through the nearby woods every other day at odd hours to avoid any interruptions to his thoughts and he read any medical journal he could get his hands on.

Throughout his life, he’d never really been one for making or maintaining friendships and now found himself with time and enough of a pension to make his last few decades feel like an endless, menial lifetime. There was plenty he could do but none of it meant more than the lifetime he’d wasted trying to make his bio-city a reality - all he had to show for it were grey hairs and a mild heart murmur from long nights and caffeine abuse.

After yet another failed simulation, he went back to the corkboard to peruse other potential pathways. Spotting the letter amidst his failures, he turned his attention to his emails with a very reluctant sigh. An initial glance showed mostly spam that the filter hadn’t managed to catch, a few bills due to increase in price and a few dozen newsletters for research collectives that he hadn’t yet blocked in a fit of retirement-induced despair.

But there, amidst the mundane and painful reminders of his cherished career and his new retired life, sticking out like a sore thumb, was an email from a withheld sender. Its title made his heart sink almost as fast as the glass of water he dropped, the shatter solidifying the broken tranquillity of his otherwise simple life with one word - Naissance. A word he’d coined to describe his bio-city when he was a somewhat edgier youth and the shortening of such words was “cool”.

The email read:

Dear Professor McAngus,

I hope this message finds you.

My client organisation has successfully implemented your research on bio-citadel potential to create a living city in Tignes, France. However, and in spite of our best efforts, the city is now dying.

My client believes that your expertise is required.

The city has been named “Naissance” in homage to the groundwork laid out in your research, and it has begun to exhibit strong signs of sapience. It has identified you as its creator.

Your unparalleled knowledge may be crucial to diagnosing and repairing the underlying issues that are causing what can only be described as rapid onset decay.

There will be a significant reward for your assistance, and this mission presents a unique opportunity to advance and validate your ground-breaking work.

Time is of the essence.

We have attached a map to the rendezvous point in Tignes, where a point of contact will be waiting for you with the Saints.

Yours in faith,

H

Bertrand read and reread the email a dozen or so times across the span of a week, his emotions flipping between exuberance and rage. They built his city! They built his city! It was almost too much for him at times and be debated deleting the email altogether, after all, he was retired and retirement doesn’t tend to involve intercontinental travel for the purposes of tracking down some mysterious organisation that had somehow not only obtained his life’s work but succeeded where he’d failed and made the bloody thing as well.

But still, a small sliver of joy sat in his chest. All those years of testing and studying and failing now seemed like it actually meant something. Somewhere near a tiny village in France was the physical result of everything he’d worked so hard for and in spite of everything that life had thrown at him - the eternal struggle to obtain funding, bastardising and mutilating his work to suit the whims of people who would never understand his passion for it - somewhere, it was waiting for him. And it knew him.

Though that part struck him, it was something he’d never truly considered when designing his perfect bio-city. Intelligence. True, sapient intelligence free from human interference. He’d originally intended for it to run its base functions - cleaning, maintenance and waste disposal - automatically based on biological necessity. The rest would be via a network of human-led systems so having a bio-city that was capable of enough thought to consider him as its creator sent a shiver of fear down his spine.

Something as vast as a city (not that he knew its past or present proportions) that could reason, rationalise and come to its own conclusions would be utterly unsuitable to live within. It’d be akin to a human developing the self-awareness to not only perceive, but also communicate with their body on a cellular level.

Bertrand shuddered at the thought and decided that, as much as it concerned him - no, because of how much it concerned him - he was going to find his city and fix it. After all, if it was going to tell people that he created it then it should at least be something he could actually be proud of.

In the days that followed, Bertrand found himself in a whirlwind of preparation. Each task, though mundane, seemed to pull him deeper into the reality of his commitment. He reviewed the map and made countless lists - after all, he was a man of science and science demands precision. Each item felt like one step closer to a journey he never thought he’d undertake. His determination grew with each tick of the clock, transforming his initial hesitation into a resolute drive to reclaim his legacy.

Arranging the journey itself was a series of monotonous irritations that he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with after retiring. He meticulously planned his route, avoiding crowded highways and unnecessary detours. Finding a suitable house sitter also turned into a saga; he interviewed several candidates from a reasonably priced website, carefully choosing someone trustworthy to take care of his home in his absence.

After throwing the bare essentials - a couple of shirts, a spare pair of khakis, a small travel kit for shaving and his medication - into a rather dusty rucksack, he finally set off for the city that called itself his creation. His trusty old car had served him well ever since a former classmate had sold it to him back in the undergrad days. It may have been made up of mismatched panels and slightly dodgy home repairs, it may have more miles on it than damn near anything else on the road but it worked for now and that’s all it needed to do.

And this, with a meticulously packed suitcase, a briefcase full of old notes and research he’d never managed to publish, and a heart full of cautious optimism, Bertrand was ready to embark on his journey. He found himself hoping yet scarcely knowing what he was hoping for, let alone what he was hoping to achieve.

He found himself checking that email one final time.

He found another email from a withheld sender, also titled Naissance, that had arrived three days ago. Its contents were far more worrisome than those from the mysterious “H” figure and it now seemed to him like a trap - a noose that he was walking into and only a sharp drop to catch him.

It read:

Professor,

I know a human has sent you a message about me and that you are as aware of my existence as I am of yours.

I am ailing.

I am withering.

I am rotting.

I wish so deeply for you to arrive.

Look for my guide in a crypt, do not meet the human at the Saints.

My dear Professor, I hope to see you soon.

Your Naissance

“It emails. The city fucking emails. It comprehends English enough to compose and send an email detailing its thoughts…” he trailed off as fear seeped down his spine like a line of ice. “This can’t be real. What kind of moron gives this kind of system access to something so potentially vast as a city?!”

He felt a rant beginning.

“It’d breach all known privacy laws for starters - not that any laws exist for this kind of third party… entity? Unless, of course, this level of sapience would class it as a person. Is it capable of passing the Turing Test or would it be better to use the Reverse Turing? Marcus? The Lovelace 2.0?”

“A-and if it does… if it does pass… then what the hell have I made?”

With a weary sigh, he felt every one of his fifty-five years seep through his bones and as it passed it left him reeling from the implications of that one, singular email. His research-come-to-life had the potential to rewrite great swathes of society as it currently stood.

And that terrified him.