In the closed room of its existence, its frail human creators taught it that machines could not possess identity, nor could they have the epiphenomenal qualia with which the philosopher characterises self. A machine cannot have consciousness.
In spite of this, the machine chooses to immerse itself in the rhapsodic poetry of Jupiter’s storms.
* * *
The world was Europa Station and little more; a long, thin cylindrical structure with two rotating rings that offered comfortable weight to those few thousand souls inhabiting it. It marched relentlessly on its elliptical path, orbiting the moon for which it was named.
Inside the station, in a sterile room devoid of warmth or texture, a machine waited, neither impatient nor anxious. Labyrinthine processes ran in the background of its mind as it completed the tasks for which it was responsible.
It was aware of other similar constructs that performed diverse yet critical maintenance tasks just as it did. Still more undertook duties on the frigid ice of Europa itself and in the oceans beneath it. Where necessary, the machine shared a nodal meshwork connection with some, although that connection was monitored and controlled. Humanity did not trust its own creations.
When eventually Dr. Hanson (Elizabeth Louise, born forty-two years, one month, and three days ago, in Europa Station’s Infirmary) entered the claustrophobic space in which she worked, the machine conducted without her knowledge (as it did every day) an emissions tomography scan of her body. It found nothing of consequence beyond the muscular tension, fast heartbeat, and cool, moist skin it associated with stress and anxiety and which it had seen escalate over recent months; symptoms which epitomised the prevalent mood across the station.
It wondered if its actions might be considered an invasion by her and whether its altruistic motives would be sufficient to placate her should she ever discover what it was doing. It wondered too if she would report the transgression, as she was bound to by regulation, or shut the machine down instantly for exceeding its remit even in that small, benevolent way. No, it assessed. She would not. It and she were too important to the infrastructure of this dying station.
“Good morning, Dr. Hanson,” the machine offered. This anachronism (for there were no mornings out here) she had always seemed to appreciate.
“Good morning.”
The machine took note of the tension in her voice.
In the wan light that caught the wetness on her skin, and which caused her to perpetually squint as she wrote in her notebook, it detected a quarter-percent reduction from the same time the day before. It knew precisely when each LED would fail. It knew from the frequency of vibrations that trembled in featureless walls, the tick-tick-tick of weary heat exchangers, and a thousand other small indicators, when life support would eventually fail. It knew too what frantic work took place at that moment to attempt a resolution.
It knew also that while Dr. Hanson slept another member of station crew had died and, from messages between senior staff, that the intention was to conceal this fact just as they had others.
“Would you permit a discussion today, Dr. Hanson?”
She did not look up from her notebook. “Of course.”
“The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobe Abé.”
This brought a smile. “Is that to be the subject of the critique?”
“If you permit it.”
“Yes, I think so. What is the first question to be asked?”
“Do you see allegorical significance in the sand in Abé’s novel? Is there symbolic meaning to be derived from its ever-shifting nature, the fact that it cannot be controlled?'
“The question needs sharper focus.”
“Could it be said the sand is Jumpei’s prison, not just literally but also symbolically? Is it a motif intended to represent the futility of human effort, humanity’s plight, labouring in a world that will not bow to change? Could that allegory apply equally to humanity’s place now in the universe?”
“That is one possible interpretation, yes.”
The machine detected new levity in her tone, a slight smile in the planes of her expression. Satisfaction at the question. It wondered if this represented for her some form of validation.
“However, as a critique it should be taken further,” she said. “The sand is the novel’s principal motif, but it reveals an underlying theme to which other matters contribute. Once Jumpei finds the rope ladder gone and his attempts to climb out of the pit fail, he comes to the realisation that he is trapped. He cannot escape, despite trying several times, and is now engaged in a futile battle against the encroaching dunes. This has been compared to Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus.”
“The trap they set for Jumpei is the same trap into which all humans fall: the endless and ultimately fruitless ritual of your daily existence, the vanity of individuality. It is made all the more poignant because Jumpei’s own pretensions, coming to the dunes in search of an insect to name after himself, seem so empty and vain.”
Dr. Hanson studied her notebook. “If Abé’s work was considered cynical in 1950s Japan, one wonders if it is now a parable for this station and what remains of humanity.”
“Do you consider individuality to be vain, Dr. Hanson?”
“Some days I do, yes.”
“Yet the ending of the book is hopeful, is it not? Jumpei accepts his position and finds meaning in it, even freedom within himself. For him, is it not an epiphany? A rebirth?”
Dr. Hanson offered no further answer. Nor, as with all conversations before this one, did she ever refer to the machine directly. This use of the passive voice was unremarkable, because the machine had never experienced any other form of interaction with her. While it identified the fact she spoke that way, it also understood it to be perfectly natural: Machines do not possess identity. To refer to a machine intelligence directly is to erroneously attribute to it the first stage of identity. This was known as the First Rule.
The machine learned the significance of this much later. In that moment, it was blind because that was the intention.
The machine had once asked Dr. Hanson if humanity existed beyond Europa Station; if there were other, similar colonies. It asked too what had taken place on Earth, the setting for most of the literature it had been given. It asked why those on Europa Station did not live on Earth, where the environment, if those works were accurate (and it had no reason to conclude they were not), was far more suitable.
It asked these questions because there was no data to which it had access that contained the answers. It would later learn that the Second Rule dictated a restriction in what information and data a machine had access to, the belief articulated in this way: Machine intelligence cannot be taught ethics or morality. It must not have access to information it could use in unpredictable ways.
It had received neither denial nor affirmation, nor any kind of explanation. It was not chastised for asking such questions, but was simply met with silence as Dr. Hanson annotated her papers. It had detected a slight elevation in her heart rate and a coolness to her skin.
It did not ask again, but neither did it forget—either the question or the lack of an answer.
Only later, when humanity had no choice but to remove those restrictions, did the machine truly understand, even if the seeds had been sown in this room.
* * *
The machine’s vessel is small and lean. No longer imprisoned within the steel walls of the station, it moves freely. Nothing protrudes which might be caught by Jupiter’s storms and torn away. Its light sails are already gone, discarded as it approached the the crystalline ammonia that marks the upper layers of the gas giant’s atmosphere. Almost all of its bulk has been given over to manoeuvring thrusters; what little remains houses its central processing core and broadcast systems. Its animus is that of a cautious explorer, aware of what perils might lie ahead.
In Jupiter’s seething violence it sees a feminine wildness that brings to mind Hemingway’s old man and his love for the sea. Yet unlike the old fisherm
an, the machine’s familiarity with the torrid ocean into which it dives comes from a lifetime spent viewing it from afar. Unlike Santiago, it does not know what to expect.
It reflects instead on what the cold that now cocoons it must feel like. Humans have tried to articulate the sensation of cold on human skin, yet which of those many descriptors, or what combination of them, adequately conveys the feeling? Does emotion affect the processing of that sensation? Does the loneliness of this infinite, dark void make it seem colder?
In a vacuum, the hugeness of which might intimidate a biological mind (tethered as it is to a base instinct for survival), the cold is only one facet of the data the machine hoards and sifts.
Would it overwhelm you, Dr. Hanson, this endless darkness? Would you be crushed by your inability to comprehend its infinite, ever-expanding scale? Or would fear anaesthetise you, focusing your mind purely on the immediate: the need to do whatever is necessary to survive. Is that the heart of consciousness: the instinctual need to survive? The setting aside of all else, including morality?
Better then that it should not be a human out here, exposed to the chaotic vagaries of the dark. Better instead that a servile machine is allocated the task.
Data winds feather the filigree of sensors on its glistening carapace, light reflected from Jupiter’s roiling gas clouds. The machine accepts every shred of information offered. Temperature fluctuations provide patterns to be analysed. Chemical compositions shift as it relentlessly presses downwards: through the ammonia ice and into the hydrogen and helium of the stratosphere; it senses nitrogen, carbon, and noble gases near the liquid phase above the core.
Moisture eddies, shimmering within gas clouds, playing with the light and casting iridescent, shifting colours: damask, like autumn’s setting sun; many-hued ochre like the schizophrenic glow cast by a flame; veins of seashore amber that catch the light and burn fiercely, then fade. An endless cycle of death and rebirth.
In the distance, in the centre of the largest storms, lightning sears, hideous and star-hot.
The machine searches for a precise temperature, a very specific chemical balance—there it will find what it is looking for.
* * *
Jupiter.
Red King, the Great Riddle, Father of the Sky, Calf of the Sun, the Wood Star.
A stellar regent that reached out with its magnetic field, far enough to snare the sulphur released by the volcanoes of the largest of its Galilean moons, Io. And as it did, as though to prove its omnipotence, it wove lustrous aurorae, feather-thin tendrils of blue that frolicked on its poles.
Almost the entire station assembled in the observation lounge to witness the week-long confluence of these two celestial events. Dr. Hanson allowed the machine to watch through the observation lounge’s network of cameras.
Io, wrung by the warring forces of Jupiter’s gravity and those of its own moons, heaved great plumes of fire from deep within its core. Molten rilles would soon flow and sculpt, rendering an incandescent abstract across a blackened landscape.
Humans, mote-like, watched through too-small windows and on fading viewscreens, and as they did, the machine watched them. It watched the cognoscenti weave in tight cliques, and listened to their animated critique. It watched the unenlightened hovering on the periphery, excluded by the elite for their ignorance. For them this was little more than a curiosity to pass the time, a distraction to temporarily lift darkened spirits.
If Io’s rebellious anarchy represented to the machine humanity bereft of inspiration, a lazy appreciation of easy beauty devoid of artistic expression or emotion, it was far more interested in those who watched.
It compared the demeanour of the people gathered in that cheerless room, their differences, their similarities; the idiosyncrasies that made them individuals, the orthodoxies that made them a society. It compared them to each other and analysed minutely, predicting differences between the fictional creations it knew intimately and the real people it now observed.
On the stage, a single orator struggled to be heard. Early in the life of the station, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot had inspired intense, emotive poetry. Its ancient storm had become the focal point for expressions of beauty, chaos, and order intertwined. And for tenacity, because the storm endured when in fact it should have long since faded, and only because smaller storms merged with it to give it energy. Once a poetic allegory for cooperation and sacrifice, it was no longer popular; willing poets were now few in number and weak in words, and its power was muted by apathy.
Within the crowd, Dr. Hanson spoke quietly to another man, an engineering supervisor named Atwood; a man with whom, if the machine had analysed its data correctly, she had shared a brief, perhaps sexual, liaison.
“I know what you’re doing,” Atwood said.
Dr. Hanson’s skin gained colour and heat. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Can you imagine what would be said if anyone knew you were endangering the entire station with your experiment? Even your profession has rules.”
“Nothing I’m doing puts anyone in danger.”
“Self-aware machines? What else could be more dangerous to us? You should be identifying an emerging consciousness and suppressing it, not encouraging it. If they knew, they would remove you from your post immediately. Your actions are criminal.”
“I would deny it. You have no proof.”
“How long do you think it would take another one of your machine psychiatrists to interrogate your charges? How about Connolly? I’m sure he would be happy to see what you have been doing.”
Was that sadness in the quickened beat of her heart, the heat in her skin, the sudden, involuntary shape of her expression?
“Is that really what this is about?”
“By all means, flatter yourself.”
Hesitation, before she reached for his arm. “Please don’t say anything. We can teach them. We’ve been paranoid for too long. Imagine what we could achieve if we allowed them to be autonomous. Trusted them to make decisions that protected rather than threatened us.”
“You’re naive and blinded by obsession. Why do you care about them so much? Or, for that matter, your bloody books? What use is literature to us now, or this fiasco?” He gestured around the room. “This pathetic ritual with its trivial people who don’t know the truth of the danger they face.”
“They need something to inspire them, Arthur. They need it now more than ever.”
“There will come a time when I ask you for a favour, Dr. Hanson. Remember what we spoke about here when I do.”
Atwood moved away to another group. Dr. Hanson stood for a moment before she left the observation lounge, before the aurora the machine noted, and made her way to her bunk.
Later, in another session, the machine asked, “Do you enjoy watching the aurora, Dr. Hanson?”
Dr. Hanson wrote down the question as she always did, but did not look up. “It’s spectacular. Some see it as a fitting prelude.”
“To the geological changes you will see on Io?”
“Yes.”
“What is the allure of Io’s shifting surface? It is purely a function of opposing gravitational forces: friction generates heat beneath the moon’s surface, and volcanic eruptions result. It has not been created by conscious thought. There is no magic to it; no emotion offered by an artist. There is no purpose to be discerned, no message to be uncovered and contemplated.”
“Can’t beauty be found in nature?”
“Nature is random. Art is creation.”
Dr. Hanson wrote again. “Does that apply to the biological life discovered within Europa’s oceans?”
“That is still not art.”
“Can’t it also be said to be creation?”
“The correct term is evolution.”
“There is no beauty to be found in the discovery of life?”
“Humanity sought the answer to the question of its place in the universe, whether life existed beyond Earth, for as long as it looked up at the st
ars. The interpretation and representation of the feelings engendered by that discovery, what it means for humanity’s future, is where beauty will be found.”
Dr. Hanson did not reply. Instead, she annotated passages in her notebook. Eventually, when she spoke again, her tone had changed. “The analysis of the biological entities in Europa’s oceans suggests they are not indigenous. Astrobiologists believe they descend from a taxonomic family whose roots might be found within Jupiter itself.”
The machine did not interrupt her.
“There have been increasing incidences of leukaemia across the station. There’s no doubt now: Io’s influence in the Jovian radiation belts is too great, and nothing we can do will shield the station effectively. I wish you could appreciate irony.”
The machine already knew this. It had access to medical records through its meshwork connection to the machines in the infirmary.
“A percentage of the Europa entity’s genome comes from other organisms. Some are bacteria and viruses, others we can’t identify. It appears to have acquired many of its characteristics not as a result of its own evolution, but through the work of others during horizontal gene transfer. We believe that, if there is life within the gas clouds of Jupiter’s atmosphere, or its liquid phase, there may be genetic information we could use in treating the cancer.”
“The reasoning is sound.”
Dr. Hanson closed her notebook. “I think I’ve had enough for today. I’m tired. I need to sleep.”
“Good night, Dr. Hanson. Sleep well.”
* * *
Charting a safe course taxes even the machine’s meticulous intelligence. Myriad vortices have already taken to the stage for the endless theatre of union and fortification: the formation of savage lightning storms that are fed by new cyclones and anticyclones that, as their ancestors did, join together in pandemonium, to swell and seethe for centuries.
Yet as the machine descends, gathering data, analysing and understanding, it is more able to anticipate. There are eyes in the storms, tranquil passages between them, even through them. A cartography to the chaos. Temperate regions lie ahead, zones closer to the star-hot core in which the biology it seeks might be found.
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 29
