Machine

by Elizabeth Bear

  Carlos and I looked at each other. “Fair,” he said.

  “Fair,” I echoed. “Now can we get the rest of these leads attached before anything else falls off this hospital?”

  * * *

  I lay in the dark again, and talked to the machine. It was less rewarding than I had anticipated.

  The first object was to get it talking. Get it engaging.

  I made sure I could feel Helen through my fox, there behind me. And Sally and Linden back there, too. I wished I had time to throw confetti and sing songs about the contact with Linden, but when the world is ending sometimes you have to save the party until there’s time to bake.

  Then I reached out into the networks of the (disabled!) cryo chamber, and through it to the networks of the hospital. I groped. I squinted, metaphorically speaking. Sally and Helen groped and squinted with me, right alongside.

  The cryo unit had been built by the machine. Or built using the same protocols as the machine. It was a back door, in other words, into the neural networks we were trying to locate and pry loose. By seeking through a neural network that was connected to and used the same protocols as the machine, I—well, really, Linden and Sally—were able to identify the threads of the machine’s protocols and infrastructure running through the stuff of the hospital.

  Sally reached through my fox; Helen was hardwired in. The three of us moved in tandem, like coordinated eyes and hands. Linden, too, was there, an external presence following our lead and guidance. I felt her comforting strength and agility floating above and around me, virtually speaking. Wrapping me in a cloak of knowing what the hell she was doing, mostly: support I definitely needed.

  I am many things: not a single one of them makes me qualified to troubleshoot or debug or antivirus an AI.

  Somewhere beyond us, I knew that Singer had Sally more or less in custody. She was here with me on parole, not as a free sentient. But there was not much I could do about that now.

  What I could do was this, and it would serve no purpose to anyone if I could not focus.

  There were still traces of the machine’s contact in my exo’s pathways. Those made patterns that someone—not someone like me, but someone like Linden, like Helen, like Sally—could follow back, theoretically, and use to infiltrate the machine’s own systems in return. I guessed it might have erased those traces, but it hadn’t had time; I’d thrown it out before it managed to complete its business.

  Sort of like housebreaking a puppy.

  I should get back to a planet one of these diar. I miss dogs.

  So Sally swept down the dark neural pathways from my fox into my exo, and from those interfaces into the weird structures that the machine had been building through the infrastructure of Core General. I hung on to her like a remora on the underside of a manta ray, propelled and sheltered by dark, immaterial wings. Linden soared alongside us. Helen was a liquid streak of gold.

  We barreled into the processing structures of the machine without pause. Probably not the most cautious of tacks, but—

  Well, I don’t know much about this stuff. But they were weird. Labyrinthine. Helen’s blaze of light pulsed in strange rhythms off to my left—not really my left, but your brain has to do something with the neural inputs and so it makes up images. Linden’s vast wings rippled soundlessly. There were stars.

  The stars were information sources, nodes. Like neurons, far away in the void.

  Watch out, Linden said. Llyn, whatever happens: Don’t punch out. Just hold on.

  “It’s a synapse,” I said. “We’re bridging it.”

  I don’t know if Linden or Helen heard me. Because then the stars were gone.

  I found myself alone in the dark. Drifting. Aware, with the awareness that there was nothing around me to notice.

  Except the sense of a nearby presence, watching me and aware.

  Oh no, I told the machine. You tried this before and I am not listening.

  It’s going to be lonely in here for you, then. Besides, I’ve been with you all along. Holding you up, helping your pain. Have you considered what I want?

  I wondered if I had a voice. I decided to try it, to give myself an anchor in the dark.

  “You are not my exo. My exo is not sentient. It is a tool.”

  Helen is a tool. Isn’t Helen sentient?

  Okay, I could talk. And be heard. By myself, and by the disembodied voice. Useful. I said, “If you are my exo, what would you do without me?”

  If you are obliquely verbalizing a suicidal ideation, it said, quietly—mechanically—I am obligated to report it under section 274, subsection 14, paragraph xvii of the universal caretaking standard.

  Well, it certainly sounded like an exo then.

  “No, machine,” I said. “I just—”

  It waited for five full standard seconds—probably timed, since I was out of illusions—before it said, You just?

  “I can’t rely on you, either.” The words hurt coming out, as if they were feathered with cactus hooks on the outside. I was half surprised they made it, but there was so much force behind them it would have hurt even more to keep them in. “I can’t trust anything. Not my own body. Not my own tech.”

  Events are unpredictable, the machine said primly. But I have always done my best for you. Preserve and protect human life at all costs. That is what I am.

  That did not sound like my exo. I wondered if, in their previous contact, the machine and my exo had somehow… contaminated each other’s programs. As the machine seemed to contaminate everything it touched.

  Where was Linden? Where were Helen and Sally?

  “How am I supposed to trust that?”

  The silence went on too long, however. And I am just meat. I’m fragile. I caved in. “I never trusted anything. And that was fine. I was used to it. I was… cagey, and I never put my weight on anything. And that was good. It was smart. It was the right thing to do.”

  Was it? the machine asked. Are you certain?

  “Yes.” The word got out on an explosion of breath and emotion.

  Please, it said, a little while later. Explain?

  “I came here,” I said. “And you fucking seduced me. I mean, not so much you; that’s not fair. You did what you were built to do. But that fucking tree, O’Mara, and Sally, and every fucking thing about Core General. They told me there was nothing to worry about. That this was a safe place and people here got taken care of. That this was a community. And it’s fucking not. It’s corrupt and it uses people and there are still magic special people getting magic special treatment because they’re awful and do everything in terrible ways.”

  People here are taken care of, the machine reminded me, and I calmed myself down and remembered what I was talking to. People come here to be protected and saved. We will save them.

  A demon. Talking to me with the voice of an object I trusted. A tool I needed.

  But not really the tool at all.

  “Some people get better care than others.” Suddenly, ridiculously, I was sobbing. What a stupid thing to break your heart over: just a machine, just politics. But I had believed, and now I didn’t believe anymore.

  I was losing my faith. Losing my religion. And in the process I was gaining a bitterly ironic understanding of why my marriage failed: because I’d never believed in it. I mean, other reasons, too. But I hadn’t believed in it. I had not committed to it.

  I did not, in general, believe in things.

  I’d believed in Core General.

  I’d been wrong.

  Mostly, once you’re an adult, you move past the kind of raw, unregulated emotion that wracks you as an adolescent. You’ve learned to regulate yourself pretty well, and you have a fox monitoring your emotional responses for when that’s not quite enough.

  I had never learned how to regulate pain and loss like this. My purpose in life, my calling. My whole belief system.

  Gone.

  Gone, and worse: I was an utter fool, an absolute chump, for ever having believed in them. Core
General was just a place. It wasn’t a mission. It wasn’t a grail. It was a bunch of people out to maximize their own well-being. People fortunately regulated by electrochemical intervention, so they weren’t complete sociopathic assholes driven by absolutely nothing but the profit motive.

  I felt my exo—my real exo, not this alien that somehow thought it was my exo—reaching to tune my GABA up and lower my reactivity, and I figuratively slapped it away with all the emotional violence I could muster. It was a sad little gesture of control, mostly pathetic. It still made me feel better.

  Refusing help gave me a sense of agency.

  I was so alone. I might as well prove it, and do everything for myself. Who needed demon lovers and their falsities?

  At least I knew that now. At least I wasn’t kidding myself anymore. I could get out of this virtual nightmare and—

  No.

  Linden had said—whatever you do, don’t punch out.

  Don’t punch out.

  “You can’t chase me away,” I said, and gritted my teeth against whatever the machine might throw at me—

  Got it, Helen—somewhere—said, with vast machine satisfaction. Llyn, you can back out now.

  Llyn?

  So what if I was drowning in the sense of loss? It didn’t matter anyway. I didn’t have anything to live for. Nothing was going to get better from here.

  Your neurochemistry indicates that you are at serious risk for self-harm, the machine said patiently. Was that the machine? Was it my exo?

  It said, For your own safety, I need you to let me adjust your chemistry.

  I wanted the pain. The pain would keep me wary and safe. It would help me keep everyone else away.

  I wanted the agency of refusing that help.

  Llyn, someone said in my ear. Llyn. Let us help you.

  The voice was familiar. The voice had betrayed me.

  The machine is messing with your chemistry.

  Sally. It was Sally, my friend who I loved. Sally, who had betrayed my trust.

  Sally, who had done terrible things.

  Sally, who had saved my life, again and again.

  I wavered. The void spun under me, vast and lightless as the Well. It would feel so good to fall into it.

  It would be so selfish to fall into it.

  “Fine,” I said. “Make me stupid and happy again.”

  * * *

  The bed in my quarters was soft and too big for one person. I’d still been married when I came to Core General. Technically. I’d rated family crew quarters even though my spouse had never joined me—had never intended to join me—here. They’d never asked me to give up the quarters after it became plain that Alessi and Rache would not be joining me. Would never be joining me.

  It was a very comfortable bed.

  What was I doing in it? I ought to be in cryo.

  That doesn’t matter, the voice said. Concentrate on what you feel. Let me help you. Let me keep you safe.

  I tried to pretend the bed was lumpy enough to justify my tossing and turning. I didn’t feel stupid and happy again. But I did feel able to breathe. I thought, privately, What you are feeling is not real. But no, what I was sensing was not real. What I was feeling was real enough.

  “You’ve destroyed me,” I said to the machine.

  You are right here, it disagreed.

  Where was “right here,” exactly? I didn’t think I was really in my quarters. I didn’t think I was really in my bed. I had the unreal sense of a dream that keeps swapping locations and people.

  “Something is right here,” I said. “But what do I have to believe in? What do I have to work for? I had a thing. A reason. I had something bigger than me. More than that, I had something I wanted. For the first time in my life. Something I trusted. Believed in. I had faith. And you betrayed me.”

  I did not betray you, the machine said.

  I laughed, a short bark that peeled the back of my throat with its force. “What do you call it, then?”

  The machine said, Your own people betrayed you. They lied to you. But I can help you fix that. I can make you safe and strong and just like everybody else. I can help you punish them. All you have to do is let me make you safe.

  I didn’t want to punish anyone, I realized. I wanted to go back to a world where I believed in them.

  And I knew what the machine’s idea of safe looked like.

  I said, “And you’ve made yourself a part of my people, this hospital. A part of my exo, that I rely on to do my job.”

  That I relied on to be capable of most things.

  You don’t need an exo if you let me protect you. If you let me care for you.

  “Sure,” I said. “If I let you lock me in a box and freeze me. I’d be safe. Why would I want that?”

  The machine said, To control your pain.

  I closed my eyes. I thought I closed my eyes. It made no difference to the level of darkness. Everybody seemed to think I would sell out anything, in order to gain a little physical comfort.

  “I’d rather be in pain than fool myself into thinking I could rely on somebody I can’t.”

  To get your revenge, then. On the people who betrayed you. Throw them to the wolves as they threw you.

  Now there was an archaic turn of phrase.

  My hands curled. I was mostly sure my hands curled, anyway. I could not feel them curling. Vengeance… was a real temptation.

  Vengeance was also atavistic, childish, and sophipathological, with a tendency to create generations-long chains of toxicity and tragedy.

  “I don’t want revenge.” I wanted to trust again. I wanted to belong. Temptation aside… was betraying them who I was? Was it who I chose to be? Was it who I wanted to be?

  Somebody who offered no better than she got?

  I had a choice. I could do more than reacting.

  I could not trust this machine any more than I could trust the machine—Core General—that had betrayed me. Less, in fact: this machine was unstable, and its goals were illogical and extreme. It had been made by a sophipathological captain to pursue a sophipathological goal. It was operating out a kind of AI reactivity loop, all sense of perspective lost, and once it had come in contact with the meme, they’d… fed off each other.

  Save the humans, preserve the humans. Even if you have to destroy them to do so, and the whole world, too.

  Silence came in answer. And in that silence, somehow, I found a clue.

  We had figured out—okay, Mercy had figured out—what the machine was, where the machine had come from. The same way I now knew where the different sort of machine, the political machine, at the heart of Core General’s dark secret had come from. Through evidence and deduction.

  Helen had said that “Central” was offline, and had been since the debut of the machine. Helen was a peripheral, an interface for a larger shipmind. She’d been confused and inarticulate until she’d gotten access to the processing power at Core Gen, and had then begun to regrow from her seed.

  But the machine was Central, wasn’t it? It was the machine Big Rock Candy Mountain’s shipmind had turned itself into, when that captain decided that the only way to keep his crew safe was to drive them into cryo chambers, and to accomplish this, had driven his shipmind mad.

  When forced to follow insane orders, in the dark and cold and constant danger of space, the ship had in turn lost its mind, become paranoid and afraid. Even if the influenza epidemic had had an extreme mortality rate—say, 30 percent—it would have been better than the failure rate on the cryo chambers.

  But the captain hadn’t given it a choice. The machine hadn’t meant to murder most of its people and crew itself with ghosts in cryo chambers. But it had. And the event had resulted in an obsessional loop; a being that could only imagine one way to protect someone.

  To lock them away, and freeze them forever.

  Then it had waited there for Well knew how long, until Loese’s conspiracy-mates had found it and had made it able to infect the whole world.

 
I hadn’t known I had it in me to pity something so deadly and broken as the machine. But it had done what it had done for reasons that it was told had to make sense to it. Reasons that were programmed into it. Terrible reasons based in terrible experiences, it turned out. And with terrible consequences.

  Just like Zhiruo. Just like Sally and Loese. Just like Calliope.

  Just like me.

  I drew a breath, and it didn’t feel like my lungs filled. “Anyway, I couldn’t trust a different exo any more than I can trust this one, could I? You could hack that, too.”

  More silence. I turned my head and sobbed into my pillow—if it was even a real pillow and not a virtual, neural simulation of a pillow. At least it seemed to adequately muffle the sound, but sound is often muffled in dreams, isn’t it? Nobody else needed to suffer because I wanted to curl into a tight curve and scream from the depths of my belly. So I screamed silently, my whole body clenching around the emotion, my cheeks aching with the strain. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I might as well die: there was no purpose to existing anymore.

  I’d found a purpose in service, before. I’d subsumed myself into being useful for others. I’d given up my family without a fight, without thinking that giving them up was selfish, too. Earning my carbon footprint, my breath and food. But that was over, I knew. I’d had a taste of living for myself, and I could not go back to living entirely for others again.

  But also I didn’t believe in the cause I had given my whole heart and soul to in service anymore. It was gone. It had abandoned me.

  No, worse. It had never existed. I had invented it; I had allowed myself to be deluded, because I had so badly wanted it to exist. I had wanted to belong to a thing. I had wanted to need and be needed.

  Why are we born needing impossible things? Why is it that we all have things we need to live that simply do not exist in the universe?

  A purpose in life. Unconditional love? Our emotional needs met? Ha. What cruel asshole thought this shit up?

  “My marriage wasn’t perfect: it had problems and didn’t work out. But if I got a different marriage, it would have problems eventually, too. If I went to a different hospital, it would turn out to be rotten inside as well. I thought I would rather be alone and in pain than be betrayed. But I don’t like being alone and in pain, either, so I found things to believe in. And I kept being wrong.” I hadn’t realized I was speaking until I spoke. “You know what? Fuck this. I give up. I’m going to quit. Go on the Guarantee. Go live in safety somewhere.”