This Automatic Eden

by Jim Keen

  The ceiling was a nest of large cooling pipes that fed the great lake above ground. Alice’s mind screamed at her to move, run, get away, but she fought it and concentrated. Any MI system powerful enough to run this place needed power, cooling, and data. She traced a set of pipes across the ceiling and down the far wall; they turned left, covered half its length, then bent through ninety degrees and disappeared. Below the place where the pipes terminated was a small steel door with an armed guard. This was the first guarded room she had seen; that door led somewhere important.

  At the far end of a bridge was a crude motorized platform. She ran across and had begun to descend when the alarms sounded.

  45

  The alarm gave a loud, regular wail as the platform inched down on its weak motor. Ten feet from the floor, Alice vaulted the handrail, hit the concrete in a roll, and sprung up, running toward the door. The guard saw her, spoke into his shoulder mic, then pointed a thin rifle at Alice.

  “Halt.” His voice was loud and full of authority; Alice recognized an ex-sergeant straight away.

  “He’s coming. He’s over there.” She pointed over the guard’s shoulder.

  He didn’t flinch but sighted along the barrel and fired. The bullet caught her right shoulder, the impact staggering as the snub-nose round took a chunk from her back. There was no pain—adrenaline and the stimulant patch smothering it—but her right arm went limp as warm blood drenched her uniform. Her momentum held, and she thudded into the guard’s midriff. They both crashed to the ground, the rifle clattering away on the hard floor.

  Strength ebbed from her wound, the floor slick with her blood. The guard was well trained and healthy, tanned body taut with muscle, but he wasn’t fighting for his life, didn’t have the rabid aggression of a trapped animal. Alice let panic and fear fill every inch of her, the last dregs of energy building into a rage that the man couldn’t defend against. A flurry of left-hand punches and then Alice had her legs around his throat. He was unconscious in moments.

  Alice grabbed a pistol from his belt, stood, and slipped in her own blood to stagger into the wall. Her breath was ragged, vision sparkling with stars. With shaking fingers, she removed Four’s DNA pass and held it to the lock.

  Nothing.

  Whimpering in fear, Alice wiped it on her uniform, blood smearing across her chest, and tried again.

  This time, the door opened, and Alice fell inside as a bullet hit the wall beside her and ricocheted away. She turned and saw a platoon of solders running toward her across the hall, weapons raised. She leaned against the door and pushed it shut, the metal cold under her back as the world faded in and out.

  There were thuds behind her, bullets hitting the armor plating. She looked around. Another DNA lock held the inner door. Alice lifted the pistol and put rounds into it until nothing remained but a sparking mess, dark blue smoke trailing from the destroyed components. The soldiers were directly outside now; voices and blows rang through the tough surface. With no idea how long she had, Alice forced herself upright and surveyed the room.

  This was it, what Four wanted.

  In front of her was a fractured jigsaw constructed from geometric brass objects of all shapes and sizes. A cube six feet square welded to a twelve-inch pyramid connected via optical cable to a twenty-foot sheet that glimmered in the low light. The collection went into the distance sprouting cooling systems like fungus on a fallen tree.

  Alice limped over as her vision pulsed, blood loss growing. She took Four’s contact device from her top pocket. At her touch, it grew, and she half fell, half leaned, against the hot metal surface of the closest MI and jammed the device against its side. It grew too hot to hold in seconds, her skin blistering. She staggered backward to watch. The diamond corkscrew turned like a drill and drove itself into the brass machine, coils of metal falling to the floor.

  The room smelled of fire now, plastics and metals combusting. For a moment, she thought it was the device, but then she turned to the door. A white-hot circle grew in its center, smoke pouring from the surroundings. In seconds the heat was too much, and she limped toward the far end of the room, passing more interconnected brass objects. Nothing had the elegance of Four’s design; these were more like pieces of coral taped together.

  At the far wall, a full-body scanner sat in its plastic wrap plugged into a large MI. It was an old design, brass cube wreathed in cabling with a small, thin screen to one side.

  She wished she could have told Four about this. Too late now, she thought as heat rolled in waves toward her. Alice turned to the door and raised her pistol with shaking hands, trying to focus as sweat stung her eyes. There were no last words—nothing brave to say or feel—except she didn’t want to die, wanted only to see her brother again, tell him she loved him.

  She squatted, searching for fresh air, but the heat pushed her back until she squashed behind the scanner, its large bulk shielding her body. God, she needed a cigarette. A blinking cursor on the screen caught her eye. She pushed herself upright on legs that could barely function as smoke smothered her.

  The scanner was online and active.

  > (Hurry)

  She blinked away tears and tried to focus as words traced across the thin screen

  > (Designation set, parameters on line, awaiting organic input)

  > (Hurry Alice, hurry)

  > (Hurry Alice, hurry)

  > (Hurry Alice, hurry)

  Alice shook off the guard’s uniform. She kicked away her boots, and fought the waves of blackness that crested over her. Then, using her one good arm, pulled herself into the scanner’s ceramic interior. The end doors irised shut; smoke evacuated through a small vent. Her labored breathing was loud in the capsule, its thick walls deadening the maelstrom outside. Blood pooled beneath her as the machine hummed, a low pitch that rose. Vibrations next, a deep thunking far below and away. More clunks.

  She looked up at the polished convex interior that smeared her reflection across the curved panels and felt her life drain away. The roar from outside sounded louder now, voices and gunfire approaching. The static hum enveloping her rose to a shriek that seemed to come as much from herself as the machine, a noise that cut her away, broke her apart, subsumed her.

  And then it stopped.

  Part 4

  Interlinked

  “Off world, they will be far beyond our control. Do we allow them to intermix with humanity, use their technical skills to create beings suited to these new horizons, or do we strive to contain them for as long as we can?”

  “The Larson Paper” on rights due to Mechanical Intelligences, presented to UN delegates, 2048

  “The worst thing about it is the loneliness. No one calls, no one visits, it’s just me and the TV.”

  Unemployed chef, MT, USA, 2050

  “It is understood the measures outlined here, in normal circumstances, would be seen as the suggestions of a corrupt and evil institution. However, when viewed with the understanding we are at war, the conclusions are logical.”

  Department of Homeland Security and Employment report, Eyes Only, President of the United States, 2053

  46

  Alice stared at the flat metal panel overhead and waited for gunfire to cut through the tough walls. No smoke entered the capsule, its integrity holding, but it could only be seconds before the heat and pressure grew too much. She held her breath then exhaled, a thin hiss echoing from the walls. It was silent outside, the whine of the printer audible as it tailed off and the equipment slowed, under her, oily clunks as heavy machinery nestled back onto their stops.

  With the grinding noise of long-unused equipment, a coffin-sized door opened above her. She squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, ready for heat and suffocating smoke; what entered was cool and antiseptic. Goosebumps crested across her naked skin. Alice lifted her head to see a sterile waiting room. The support tray slid up and out with a clack.

  There was no missing time, no black gaps in her memory or déjà vu, only then and now, an instantaneous
transfer of consciousness. She didn’t know where she was or how long the signal had been in transit. She could have been asleep for a century for all she knew.

  Alice sat up and looked around. The room was as clean and organized as an operating room: white featureless walls, recessed storage, black rubber floor, and a closed metal door. She sat on the lip of a large metal box, a standard organic printer, and saw her curved reflection in the drum-shaped scanner opposite. It was silent, no voices or footsteps. Alice rolled to her side, swung out her legs and tried to sit, but her head was all wrong—too heavy and hot—and she overbalanced grabbing the stretcher for support.

  Both her hands looked the same—her plastic left replaced with a perfect recreation of her right. She lifted her head and raised her arms. No scars, wounds, wrinkles, or signs of aging were visible. Her skin was pure, a Renaissance representation of human perfection. The pain and weary fatigue, the malnourishment and abuse, the toll from years of smoking and drinking had gone. She thrummed with energy and strength, felt like she could run for days.

  She stood cautiously, balance off. Her body was wrong, too tall and thin, but that passed as she adjusted. She crossed to the wardrobe and grabbed a loose-fitting robe which she wrapped around herself, its soft texture sending a shiver of delight across her skin. Slippers next, warm and comfortable.

  “Hello?” she asked. The room’s acoustics dampened any echo.

  Nothing.

  The air was preternaturally sharp as if she could see every dust mote and molecule. A mechanized cough rattled from overhead as the filtration systems came online.

  She opened the door, its thick metal sliding on oiled hinges.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  Again nothing, just the soft hum and faint background whine. The air held the off-gassing of new plastic, a chemical smell that tickled her nose.

  The corridor curved away on either side, the aesthetic like the printer room: stark, clean, unoccupied. She bounced on her toes, turned right, and walked forward, calling out every few seconds. The corridor continued its wide arc, allowing her to see fifty feet ahead as rooms branched either side. She checked every one to discover half-built storerooms or open-plan offices, some filled with plastic-shrouded equipment.

  Alice walked on. The air was dry and cold. There was nothing to let her know where she was—no sound, no change in temperature, no people. She stopped and put her hands in the gown’s warm pockets, unsure what to do next.

  Click, snick, click.

  The sound carried in the silence, metallic and organic. She turned her heavy head, searching for the source, and saw a door ahead of her marked central observation bubble.

  She turned the handle and stepped through.

  47

  The circular room measured over a hundred feet wide and featured a large kitchen at the center shrouded in blue plastic sheets. Meeting areas spread from the middle, their shoulder-height chairs forming walls around dark metal tables. It was empty apart from an old, heavyset woman who sipped tea from a steaming cup then resumed knitting a multicolored scarf. It was the swish and click of Four’s knitting needles Alice had heard from outside.

  Alice opened her mouth to speak when light burst overhead. She had assumed the black ceiling was an artistic installation, but as the light grew, she realized her mistake. A geodesic dome built from black composite spars webbed by gel pillows was orientated toward Jupiter’s day-lit face, the cresting sunlight washing browns and reds across the room. She gazed, lost in her insignificance. Jupiter swirled above, the striated bands of ochre, beige and tan mixing with fractal detail, wave upon eddy upon ripple. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

  As she gazed out, a giant plume of water rose into the black sky, and the ground rumbled beneath her feet. The solar system only had one place like this.

  She was on Europa.

  As Alice watched, Jupiter grew before her, details enlarging through the vacuum. She understood the gaseous clouds, the molecular hydrogen and helium mix, the low abundance—

  “Quite the sight, isn’t it, dear?” Four asked, her knitting needles continuing their hypnotic clack.

  Alice wrenched her eyes away and down. “What?” She stopped herself, memories returning, and fought for equilibrium. “Hello, Four. Thanks for getting me out. I’m on Europa, right? How are you here?"

  “It was the least I could do, dear. And, yes, we’re on Europa. As for my presence, well, that’s a little more involved.” She patted the seat beside her. “Come sit, and let’s have a chat.”

  Alice sat, her skin luxuriating in the soft plastic, and inhaled the tea’s sweet aroma. She was scared to begin, she realized. Now the answers lay before her, what did she want to know?

  “How are you here?” she managed.

  “Is it that important? We have so much to chat about and so little time.”

  Alice gave a mute nod. The background whine increased a notch as if a drill were boring through her skull.

  “As you wish, but before we do this, please remember nothing is permanent.”

  Alice noticed Four now held a small china mirror decorated with painted pink flowers; the hot tea and knitted scarf had vanished. Four held it out; the mirror jumped to Alice’s hand, the handle cold and thin. She took a long, steadying breath then studied her reflection.

  For a moment, she couldn’t understand what was in front of her, her brain refusing to accept reality. The left side of her head looked normal though bald; the right was different. It had been replaced with a long brass block that projected forward and back twelve inches. Its external side was serrated to form a massive heat sink; the background whine came from its cooling system. Her left eye was organic, the right replaced by three lenses arranged vertically on the machine’s brass face. They clicked in and out as she focused.

  Why hadn’t she noticed this before? Alice knew she should feel a cold horror at this—a level of revulsion to match that she had felt in Takamatsu’s hidden abattoir—but her body remained calm, heart pulsing a steady sixty, breathing metronomic. There was no shock, just a deep curiosity as if she were studying a medical textbook. Four had altered her emotions, made them so she accepted this violation as natural, and try as she might, no rage came from this intrusion. Before, the idea of being reprinted, of having an interlink, had seemed a dead end, a way to refuting her humanity. Now that appeared the thought processes of another person—a younger, simpler one.

  She placed the mirror in her lap and looked up through the dome.

  She understood now why Jupiter appeared so perfect and how she had known the chemical composition of the gas giant’s clouds. An interlinked Mechanical Intelligence was processing everything she gazed upon.

  She noticed a blinking green cursor in the lower right of her field of vision; as she thought about it, details of her new ocular system scrolled across the bottom of her view. The hot and heavy brass machine hummed in her head as it linked to external camera feeds, her vision switching to their fields of view. The whine grew as the MI cranked through calculations and generated heat. She saw Jupiter’s other moons, the way their orbits interacted and the locations of habitats built onto their differing surfaces. Accessing her dome’s communication system, she connected to their MIs and ran entrance protocols but found nothing but more mothballed blisters of stale air. She tried to look inside, but her gaze had limits, unable to access the dead CCTV systems in those other structures.

  She closed her eyes, gathered herself, then opened them to look again at her arms and legs. Her body had been altered to the same extent as her mind. What had looked so normal and healthy a few minutes ago now looked alien to her. It had an insectile quality, arms little more than reinforced bones wrapped in skin, legs the same, the design custom made for the low-gravity environment. A flat, sexless torso connected everything, the result of emotionless analysis and calculation. There was no horror, the MI splinter buffering her emotions, just a cool acceptance that her Earth body would be a complication in this new settin
g.

  “I thought it would be easier if you didn’t notice the changes. A miscalculation for which I now apologize. I assume you have questions, yes?” Four said.

  “Why and how?”

  “At the current solar orbit, we’re forty-eight-point-two-seven light minutes from Earth, so any conversation with my full consciousness would take time we don’t have. Further, my signal from Cortex Tower to Europa passes through four relay stations, each of which could have been compromised by the Department of Homeland Security. We need to talk in private hence your redesign.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I replaced thirty-six percent of your brain with an MI splinter component. That sub-mind holds this representation of me.” Four gestured to herself. “We can talk freely up to a certain limit, then my knowledge ends. As you experienced in Charles’s little shop of horrors, full biological/mechanical interlink has been possible for a while now. Biological redesign possibilities have also taken similar strides, but the results have been outlawed by the UN. The standard protocols prevented such work on Earth, but now with your help, that is no longer a problem.”

  Alice recalled the crude collection of MIs she had seen in Arizona, the machines she linked Four to. “The connection worked?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  Four sighed and settled back in her chair. She studied her hands, turning over the wrinkled, aged flesh. “I was young once … I’m not the first, nor the last, to notice that youth is wasted on youth. I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. One day I looked in the mirror, and a different person looked back, someone worn away by time’s arrow.”