How human can Artificial Intelligence become? Can a computer programmer ever really control his AIs, much less trust them? Add an alien race called The Masterless, and our anti-hero is in over his brilliant head. --Carol Kean, Perihelion Science Fiction, September 2014

Tiago and the Masterless

by Charles Barouch (Goodreads Author), Ian Harac (Editor), Juan Ochoa (Illustrator)

“LISTEN CAREFULLY. I AM TIAGO Modesto Breno Davi Salazar.

I am your new master. You will submit to me, now!”

Of the many comical lines in “Tiago and the Masterless,” by Charles Barouch, that one has to be my favorite.

This story is sheer fun, the way science fiction was meant to be. It also packs a message without being didactic. How human can Artificial Intelligence become? Can a computer programmer ever really control his AIs, much less trust them? Add an alien race called The Masterless, and our anti-hero is in over his brilliant head.

Tiago is a computer geek and a pirate, which sounds oxymoronic. He’s dwarfed by the three-mile-wide spaceship he’s stolen. How he pulled that off, we don’t know. We only know our socially challenged renegade is on the run from a totalitarian government on Earth. They want their ship back. Captain Lossgren “took the theft of the Interrogative personally” and keeps the chase going long after everyone else gives up.

I’m eager to meet this Lossgren, who brings to mind a relentless Captain Ahab, as well as Robert Duvall’s unforgettable Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore demanding the return of his surfboard in “Apocalypse Now.” Sadly, Lossgren makes no personal appearance in this novel. Happily, Charles Barouch has thirty novels in mind for this series (yes, thirty!), so I expect him to deliver Lossgren soon. While he’s at it, more of the mysterious Quintrell would be good. It was Quintrell’s idea to steal theInterrogative, we learn via flashbacks, but Tiago somehow ends up going solo.

Tiago is antisocial in the cutting, witty and detached way that only an Aspie-like computer programmer can be. For two years, he’s been cut off from human society. His only interaction is with a crew of government-issue sim holograms, all programmed to utter the propaganda Tiago was running from in the first place. Loneliness finally drives him to search for life, any kind of sentient life.

Meanwhile, with a futuristic sort of 3D printer, Tiago embodies one of the sims. He winnows out most of the propaganda and changes her name from Six-four-four to Audra. When Tiago tires of her much-too-clever comments, he just tells “The Maker” to disassemble her. When he needs her again, he has her remade. Male readers may love this as much as women readers are sure to hate it, but Audra gets the best of Tiago in scene after delightful scene. Soon, she has him apologizing. “I shouldn’t have disassembled you,” he says.

“Again,” she adds.

“I shouldn’t have disassembled you again,” he agrees.

Sometimes the dialogue is little more than a string of commands to a computer, but even I could grasp it—and it does my Luddite heart good to share a tech-wizard’s frustrations. Tiago wants to “meet the software designer, pat him on the back for the speed and efficiency of the code, and then strangle him for the complexity of the same code.”

Tiago knows AI programming is intentionally fuzzy. “Lots of things creep in where you don’t expect them,” he reminds himself. “It makes them seem more human.” Still, Audra’s only a sim. Furthermore, “Even geniuses can be deeply, deeply stupid,” he thinks, ironically forgetting that he too is a genius.

Audra gets it. Sometimes she knows Tiago better than he knows himself, and the more savvy she becomes, the more guilt Tiago suffers for the all-too-human feelings he’s enabled her to suffer.
When they finally encounter a planet with signs of civilization, Tiago hesitates: “It was one thing to hope for contact; it was another to act on it. They could be monsters. They could be brutal savages. Worse, they could be the sort of highly evolved savages he was fleeing.”

“Do you have a plan,” Audra quips, “or are you just going to land and see what attacks you?”
Tiago definitely didn’t program all that sass into her.

Audra’s ability to think comes in handy when they encounter the aliens. Dressing to impress (or so he thinks), Tiago comes out looking like a ninja—in blue, not black—which for some reason cracks me up. The plot twists are even more fun. The villains deadpan lines that would be great in a movie trailer, if they weren’t plot spoilers. The way Tiago handles his adversaries just goes to show that anti-heroes, even antisocial ones, are more sensitive and compassionate than most people ever expect. And AIs are more human than we want to believe.

The next installment, Book 2 of thirty in the Interrogative series, is “Tiago Versus the Jezoani.” Book 3 releases September 15, 2014. Every two months, a new story will be released. Book 1 is “a down payment” on the million-word promise the author made to Sydney, his wife of thirty-four years and counting.

“Syd is amazing,” Barouch wrote me via Facebook. “She was diagnosed with colon cancer last year. During chemo, she was getting despondent, so I promised her a million words—thirty novellas, one every two months—so that she’d have something to look forward to. Normally, she edits my work, so this was her first time to enjoy the stories instead of receiving them as work.”
A million words. In a way it’s like A Thousand and One Nights. What a bribe for living, as Jack London famously put it, and what a husband, to spin a tale as captivating and entertaining as Tiago’s. (“Tiago and the Masterless,” Charles Barouch, HDWPbooks) —Carol Kean Sept 2014

NOTE: I wrote this review for Perihelion Science Fiction in 2014. Last I heard, Syd is still alive, but no longer married to Charles. Book 5 appears to be the last in the series since 15-March-2015.

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