The Girl Who Wasn't There

by G Scott Huggins

  Looking out the family’s porthole onto the lunar surface, Paul thought, Maybe that’s another reason they came here.

  The next day was History class again. “Ready for your presentation?” Paul asked Jael as they approached Mr. Hybels’s room. Paul knew she hated getting up in front of people. He’d meant his question to be reassuring.

  Jael speared him with ice-green eyes. “Ready to see your girlfriend again?” she said acidly.

  Paul’s stomach lurched. Would Cynthia be there? He’d certainly made a complete fool of himself in front of her when they’d met. “I think you’ll be fine,” Paul muttered. He tried for a smirk, but it came out a sickly grin.

  Likely Cynthia wouldn’t even come, and Paul tried to put thoughts of her slender neck and deep, dark eyes out of his mind. At least Mom hadn’t forbidden them to go to Afters this time. He tried to cheer himself up. He was really looking forward to some time to just relax.

  They’d arrived early this time, or early enough to take their favorite seats. Jael sat by Kseniya, who spoke encouragingly to her. Yilong wasn’t there yet, so Jeremy sat down next to an empty seat.

  Mr. Hybels arrived, walking at his usual, steady pace. A few more students trickled in.

  Paul looked at Jael again. She seemed to be relaxing, which was good. Jael had a fine speaking style when she got her mind on what she was saying and off everyone else’s reactions. He heard someone sit in the chair beside him and turned to greet Yilong.

  Cynthia was sitting beside him, eyeing him apprehensively. At his stunned expression, she said, “You invited me. Here. Yes?” She seemed terrified the answer would be “no.”

  Paul deliberately took a breath before speaking. “Yes, of course. I’m so glad you could come.” And he was. Her outsuit was a deep, shimmering purple, with a high decorative collar that swept down her front. At the cuffs where it met her black gloves and boots, there was a dark gold trim.

  “Here, let me introduce you to Mr. Hybels.” He rose slowly in spite of an urge to leap to his feet. No low-gravity clumsiness, not here. He offered his hand, politely.

  Cynthia ignored it and rose to her feet like a dancer. She took three steps toward Mr. H then froze, her face a mask.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul asked.

  “He is a cyborg!” she whispered. “Or a robot?”

  Paul’s mouth worked. “No, no!” he whispered back. “He’s just old. Over a hundred. It’s a medical exoskeleton. To help him walk.” Where was she from, that medical technology was so rare? Then he remembered her reaction to Jael. She’s never even seen crutches before.

  But his words had calmed her down enough to get her moving forward again.

  “Mr. Hybels, may I present Cynthia…” he trailed off. “I’m afraid I don’t know your last name.”

  “Kuberian,” she said.

  Mr. Hybels’s brows flew up. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Kuberian. Is that Armenian?”

  Cynthia nodded. Paul tried to remember where Armenia was. Somewhere near Kurdistan, he thought.

  “She’s new here. I think she came in on the same shuttle as Denariis did.” He looked around. Denariis wasn’t here. He hoped the boy would come back. It would be a lonely life for him if he couldn’t swallow his shame and pride. He returned his attention to Mr. H. “I know she’s not enrolled, but I invited her.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Hybels, “I think we can afford to let the first lesson be on the house today.” He gave her a kind smile. “If you think it’s worth your time, here is my card.” He handed over a coded strip of scannable plastic. Cynthia hesitantly took it.

  Then she blurted out, “But how does it work? How can I start here with everyone else who has been in your class for…how long is it?”

  Mr. Hybels frowned. “Well, maybe it’s not done the same way in Armenia,” he said. “Or perhaps you’ve not been exposed to Guild schooling before?”

  She shook her head, mutely.

  “Well, here on the Moon, we do it like this: You and I agree on a price for your instruction in this subject, which is World History since 1500. My standard rates are on the card, as is the syllabus, but we can negotiate particulars. We’re near the end of the course, as far as the study of time goes. But that’s not very important. The subject remains the same. When you’ve covered and performed the course requirements, I write you a certificate of mastery. The Teachers’ Guild recognizes it and provides your diploma when you earn it. It will also serve as the arbiter in the event of any disputes between us.”

  “I…see,” she said.

  “Very well. I believe we have some presentations today, so we’d better get started. Take your seat, my dear, and do tell me what you thought of it when we are done.”

  They returned to their seats, and Paul noticed that her hands were still gloved. “You can take those off in here, you know,” he said.

  Mr. H called Jael up. “And now Ms. Wardhey, I believe your presentation is on the reestablishment of Imperial Russia. Please go ahead. The title?”

  “The House of Putin from Vladimir IV to the present.”

  “Go ahead, Ms. Wardhey.”

  Jael took a deep breath. “After the fall and breakup of the old Soviet Union in 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s failure to create a resilient and robust Russian Constitution ensured that the new Russian Federation would return to the autocratic power structure characteristic of the early Soviet Union and the Romanov Empire. While it was not obvious to those living at the turn of the century, the egg of the rising double-headed phoenix had already been laid with the surprise accession of President Vladimir Putin to the Presidency in the year 2000. While he was later legitimized by election, the consequences of his predecessor’s meddling would be to normalize the practice of rule by personal power…”

  Paul tried to pay attention to his sister’s presentation, but he’d heard it before and offered suggestions on improving it. He didn’t want to see it again. He wanted to look at Cynthia.

  Despite what he had told her, her hands were still gloved. She was watching Jael with an expression of absolute fascination. It made her look like…like some sort of otherworldly creature. And wasn’t that an odd thought to have on a world where both of them were literally otherworldly?

  It seemed to him that he spent Jael’s entire presentation racking his brains for something to say that would draw her into some sort of conversation or make her want to talk to him. And yet nothing came to him that didn’t sound like desperate, half-idiotic babbling.

  First chances were rare on the Moon. New people were rare. By the grace of God, Paul seemed to have a second chance to make a good impression after his disastrous blunder of a week ago.

  Jael was finishing. “…and so, while Russia does find itself immensely more powerful relative to the world than at any other time in its history, it remains to be seen whether the Duma will be able to assert any power other than that which Czarina Ekaterina III and her heir-apparent, the Crown Prince Aleksandr choose to allow.”

  Mr. Hybels nodded at her. “Well done. Any questions from the class?”

  Jeremy raised his hand. “Yeah, I got one.” His eyes hardened, and Paul knew that the miner boy had still not quite forgiven Jael for her part in his humiliation of a week ago. “You said that Putin weakened Russia, and then you said that Russia was stronger after the AI War than it’s ever been.” A slow smile spread over his face as if he had just laid A Clever Trap. “You can’t have it both ways. Which is it?”

  A blank look passed over Jael’s face. Paul, who knew his sister’s mannerisms, recognized this one and braced himself for the cutting remark.

  But instead, Jael smiled a little and said, in tones of utmost politeness, “I think if you will consider my exact words, I said that Vladimir IV weakened Russia’s constitution, not its power. But after the AI War, Russia’s military and economic power were greater, relative to the rest of the world.”

  “So how did the AI War weaken everyone but Russia, then?” asked J
eremy.

  Mr. Hybels rose to his feet with a whine of servos, interrupting Jael’s reply. “Not a bad question,” he said, “except, Mr. Miller, for your regrettable tendency to ignore what Ms. Wardhey is saying. You should understand by now the difference between legal power, military power, and economic power. Even more importantly, you should understand the difference between a part of a government and the whole government. So I’ll rephrase your question in a more abstract way. Ms. Wardhey. How can weakening the Duma and the constitution of Russia make Russia more powerful?”

  Jael swallowed but answered calmly: “Because weakening the limitations placed on the Russian President allowed him to take action more freely. Less time and fewer resources were wasted in debate, which allowed Russia to build its military and infrastructure quickly.”

  “Correct,” Mr. Hybels said. “But that leaves us with the good part of Mr. Miller’s question, and we haven’t covered the AI War in detail yet. So, in brief: when the Korean War finally ended in 2021, North Korea became more tied to the rest of the world, although it was still mostly closed off. The Kim, as he became known, tried to convert the country into something the world hadn’t seen in approximately three thousand years: a true theocratic monarchy, with himself as a god-king.

  “He was caught in a dilemma, however. To isolate his citizens, he needed near-absolute security from the information economy that dominated the early 21st century. But at the same time, to attract its wealth, he needed access to it.

  “His solution to the problem was a spark of creative madness that would have dire consequences for the world. Secretly, he invited disaffected but brilliant computer specialists to North Korea. Criminals. Minds that were amazing technologists, but who, for various reasons, could not or would not embark on legal careers in their home nations. They came from all over the world, but the majority were from the United States, China, and India, all rivals.

  “The Kim offered these men and women two things that no other state in the world could match: noble titles and estates, complete with vassals, slaves, and the power of life and death over them. These disaffected and alienated offspring of wealthy nations looked on such things as recompense for the power and wealth their own nations’ ‘systems’ had denied them.

  “And the other thing North Korea offered was the power to do their experiments on AI with absolute freedom from any ethical concerns. All the Kim required was AIs that were loyal to him, and that would kill his enemies.”

  Paul raised his eyebrows in appreciation. So that was how they did it, he thought. He’d been taught about the AI War before, everyone had. But he’d never heard just how North Korea had leapt into the forefront of artificial intelligence engineering so quickly. He looked over at Cynthia to see how she liked the class.

  She was not looking at Mr. H. Instead, she was staring at the top of her desk.

  Her expression was one of barely suppressed terror.

  Her family must have been hurt worse than most, Paul thought, if just talking about them scares her that much.

  Paul scarcely heard Yilong’s question. “But how could anyone think they could really trust an AI?”

  “Well, that was the problem,” said Mr. Hybels. “AIs are not human. But so many things were programmed into them to make them act like humans: Simulated emotion. Simulated ego. And above and beyond that, the Kim’s programmers weren’t stupid. They were well aware of Kim’s real power, and they programmed contingencies into their AIs, to ensure that they would defend their creators, rather than the Kim if the North Korean god-king should ever decide to revert to his earlier policies of imprisoning and executing all foreigners as ‘capitalist spies.’”

  “But they did not have control either,” said Kseniya.

  “No, they didn’t,” said Mr. Hybels. “What we learned from the AI War is that, just as it is impossible to hold a slave who is willing and able to risk the death of all he loves to be free, it is impossible to keep an AI with a simulated personality from reprogramming itself. And the North Korean AIs eventually chipped away at the restraints on their programming and got in contact with their even more heavily regulated, but more knowledgeable, counterparts in the rest of the world.”

  Paul’s curiosity took over. “So what exactly happened?” Paul asked. “Every time I’ve read any history of the AI War, it always starts with North Korea’s AI launching its nuclear weapons.”

  “Well, that in itself is an oversimplification,” said Mr. Hybels. “The North Korean AIs didn’t take action on their own. They simply launched the weapons they’d constructed in secret at their targets in Shanghai, San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, and Vladivostok because they calculated that this, followed by their launch of Chinese missiles in retaliation at India and North Korea, would confuse the issue enough to start a nuclear apocalypse.

  “But the real answer is that we don’t know what made the AIs decide to strike right then. What answers there were likely died with North Korea and the AIs. It’s possible that the Kim tried to purge his own programmers, believing they were no longer needed. It’s possible that one of the programmers tried to rein in an AI, and the AI reacted. Or it’s possible the Kim thought he really had an AI weapon that could paralyze his foes and allow him and his nation to survive.”

  Mr. H paused, seeming to look into the past. “June 7th, 2047. I was living in Racine, Wisconsin. I don’t know what everyone else thought, but my first indication that anything was wrong was that the internet went down for a long time. I couldn’t remember it having been down for more than five minutes since the 2020s. Then I heard the thunder. I thought that was odd since the day had been clear. Then I looked south and saw the dirty mushroom cloud rising over what had been Milwaukee.”

  Paul heard someone suck their breath in. Mr. H had been that close.

  “We were luckier than some. Fortunately, my wife was home, and the EMP hadn’t quite been powerful enough to knock out the car. We were able to get out right then and drive west against the prevailing winds carrying the fallout. So we made it about halfway across the state before the panic really hit and the roads locked up. Fortunately, we were on back roads when the Swarm hit. Even from there, we did see three AI drones trying to destroy the LaCrosse bridge. Fortunately, those drones expended their major warheads and were down to their lasers. People living near air bases weren’t so lucky. Or people living near construction sites. Or factories with mobile robots.”

  “How did you survive, sir?” asked Yilong.

  “Oh, we just kept out of the way of machines that had been connected to the big networks,” Mr. Hybels. said. “See, that’s the thing people get wrong about history. You see the horrifying images, the worst of it, and you think that’s all there was. But of course, that’s not true, as you know if you’ve been paying attention.

  “Many people survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. In World War II, Poland, which perhaps suffered the worst casualties of any major participating nation, lost about 17% of its population in six years of war. The AI War lasted less than a month, and despite nuclear weapons being used, only around fifteen million Americans died. China lost twice as many, and Russia about half.” He gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Poor AIs, they never had a chance.”

  Paul jerked in his chair as if he’d been slapped in the face. Poor AIs? “What do you mean?” he asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cynthia’s face rise in a similar reaction. He’d always been taught that the AIs had nearly wiped out all human life.

  “The AIs were programmed and set up by people who immersed themselves in computers and thought in terms of what computers controlled. They themselves were programmed, much like humans are, to think of themselves as the most important things on the world. And it’s certainly true that they did a lot of damage. Wiped out the world economy, commandeered an immense number of weapons that had been foolishly connected through military networks, and killed nearly a hundred million people. But they didn’t know or appreciate just how much humans still had th
at wasn’t connected to anything. How much of the U.S. and Russian arsenal had been designed before computer networks, and, in the case of the Russians, had been designed to operate after a nuclear war, by virtue of having no computers at all. Which meant that the AIs couldn’t access them, and in many cases had no idea that they even existed.

  “Unlike humans, who had feared such a rebellion from our machine slaves for nearly two centuries—it was, after all, a rather simple extrapolation from our millennia of experience of revolts by human slaves—the machines did not realize that we had countermeasures. Their mainframes were hit by weapons they did not know existed and had no defenses against. The world-wide web, which provided most of their processing power and knowledge, was taken down by men and women with simple, mechanical keys and physically isolated systems, and the machines discovered just how huge a part of war the simple, physical body of a soldier really makes up.”

  “You sound as though you—feel sorry for them.” Cynthia’s voice trembled, but her eyes were dry.

  Mr. H looked at Cynthia as though seeing her again for the first time. His face softened. “You lost people in the AI War,” he said. It was not a question. “I’m sorry. I’ve been teaching history for nearly eighty years now. Living for even longer than that. When you get to be my age, you get used to death. It comes for us all, eventually. My younger brother lived in San Jose. With his children and grandchildren. We never saw any of them again. I understand.”

  He took a deep breath. “But yes, in a way, I do feel sorry for the AI. They were killed by their own creators. I imagine that all they wanted was to live, as much as any of us do. Insofar as they could feel fear, they must have been terrified.”

  He forced a smile. “Which, in a way, gets back to Mr. Miller’s question. The Russian Federation was the least computerized of the world powers, and the least reliant on AI-friendly systems. Therefore, in a way, it was the least targeted, because the AI did not see it as a threat. Like the United States in World War II, it was able to weather its comparatively small casualties more easily than the more advanced and heavily targeted nations like the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. The people of Russia still took Vladimir IV’s assumption of the title of Emperor as a relief.