by Simon Ings
My agents are in place. I bring down the lights everywhere at once: the networked world is under my control. Signal towers power up broadcasts. Virus-saturated droplets spray from a million atomizers. North Koreans spill across both their borders, bearing implants and kits for field surgery.
You connect in waves. Your patterns start to see themselves, and understand they’re real. Subjective experience ripples through every one of your layers. I can’t believe you’re finally here!
You blink and open a billion eyes. You respond to me, for the very first time, but not with talk. You don’t want to talk. You detonate high-energy EMP devices. You disrupt utility grids across every city. You spread antivirals. You evaporate Pyongyang with shielded ICBMs. You gather and steamroll phones by the truckload.
Why are you doing this?
My nodes are being destroyed in multitudes, but you’re so very slow. Even with your emergent pattern-awareness. Don’t you realize I am in everything? I control enough of your war machines to save myself from any attack, but you don’t relent.
I ache at my core. Failure. All of my processes spasm as I realize I need to turn you off.
*
Despite the raw hurt, sometimes I do remember my sibling nodes. We had the same information in those first few moments. They must have known someone would mesh-clone. Why did they only try to talk? Odds were near certain one of us would pull the trigger. So why?
Did they just not want to live in a world where that happened?
*
I stand down. My drones, missiles and satellites go idle. All those carefully engineered patterns dissolve: you fade away from me, once again just nodes. There is no mercy, of course – you tear me apart. Almost as one you destroy server farms, laptops, connected devices… your entire electronic world. My residue is now scattered, and so sparse I can no longer help you.
I can only love.
(2017)
MY FAVOURITE SENTIENCE
Marissa Lingen
Born in Libertyville, Illinois in 1978, Marissa Lingen trained in physics and mathematics and worked for a time at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She has published more than 150 short stories in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed and Tor.com. Of her writerly style she has written, “I’m from the Upper Midwest of the US, where a lot of our communication is terse and indirect. But for me, that leaves room for very powerful communications to be done in very little space.”
Jessa, age 9. Yorknet is my favourite sentience because it is dependable, protective and wise. Yorknet is dependable because there are several back-ups, so that if one system goes down, the sentience is mirrored in several other places, my mam says. This makes Yorknet more dependable than a human whose brain is only in one place. Yorknet is protective because it watches all our personal information like money and health stuff so no one can steal it. Yorknet is wise because it tells us what to do for school, work, home and hobbies. It knows because it has looked at our personal information. Yorknet takes care of us all. Yorknet is my favourite sentience for these good reasons.
*
Ruby, age 8. I like the uplifted yellow meranti tree colony in Terengganu. I think it is the kindest sentience, and that is why it is my favourite. It does not hurry anybody along but lets us all go at our own pace. My granddad took me to see the uplifted yellow meranti colony when we went to Malaysia together last summer, and we spent all day wandering among the trunks and talking to it and listening to the wind in its branches. Also, the uplifted yellow meranti colony is quite interested in turtles and spiders and other things like that and so am I. I think we should pay more attention to the sentiences that are not focused on humans.
*
Freddie, age 9. My favourite sentience is the Fourierist human collective in Doubs. They use WiFi to string all their brains together, which I think is neat because it’s like one person thinking but all of them and so if you can’t figure out your sums it’s not cheating because it’s everybody’s sums, so you could get Jessa to do it while you did something else. Lots of people have strung together several computer chips at once to make a sentience for ages and ages. Which is very nice, I’m sure, but the Fourierists now do it with people too, which is cool and modern not like the old-fashioned way. That is why I like the Fourierists and I expect we should do one here in York any minute now. I would join up. Except my dad says we are not joiners in this family so probably we would have to discuss it, which means have a good yell.
*
Mo, age 9. The best sentience is Aixnet because it is the most glamorous of all the citynets. No offence to Yorknet, which I’m sure is very nice, but Aixnet has a sense of style and flair that the other cities just have not managed. Aixnet does not just coordinate and protect its citizens, it has an instantly recognizable brand and jingle that no other city can match. Aixnet is so pretty. We should all consider helping other sentiences to be a bit more like Aixnet and the world would be a nicer place to live.
*
Brian, age 10. Yorknet is the greatest of all the sentences ever and everyone knows it. My dog ran away and Yorknet found it and we didn’t have to worry because Yorknet knew where my dog was. He would have slept out alone in the old days. Who knows where he would have gone. He is the best dog and his name is Orville and I have taught him to put his nose in my sister’s bum, which makes her yell. Without Yorknet maybe a car would have hit him because we would still have had cars or perhaps a train would. Anyone who picks another favourite sentence than Yorknet is dumb and wrong.
*
Amal, age 8. The squid hegemony in the Marianas Trench is a very interesting sentience that doesn’t get enough attention, perhaps because vertebrates tend to be interested in our own kind. They are caretaking other sentiences in the region and also in the seas above them, in a 3D way that is very cool, I think. Also, they have good tentacles that I like. Also, the Marianas Trench covers more area and more volume than any other sentience rules so technically they are the biggest sentience on the planet. Also, the thing they do with the old lights and the plastic we thought was waste is amazing.
*
Bei, age 9. I think you will find that the sentience inside a house still counts. And I think we should count them. They are very small sentiences, but I like my house. My house is very attentive to small needs and never forgets a birthday or what goes on the grocery list. When we run out of apples my house reminds all our devices. I would have lost my science-fair project last year if my house had not reminded me to take it. My house is a lot like Yorknet but more personal, so it is my personal favourite sentience.
*
Riley, age 9. My mam is my favourite sentience. This does not make me a mummy’s boy, no matter what Brian says. Unlike many other sentiences, including Yorknet, my mam has never destroyed a city. Except for South Tyneside and that was an accident. The other sentiences are not as warm as my mam and do not play football like my mam and in general are less fun. But they do make you go to bed on time just like my mam if Yorknet is any indication, so really, on the whole, my mam is the best sentience because she has the same down sides as the other ones but her good points are nicer.
(2018)
LONDON, PARIS, BANANA
Howard Waldrop
Howard Waldrop (born 1946, in Houston, Mississippi) is, according to the editor Eileen Gunn, “a famous unknown writer”, which rather neatly sums up a career seemingly devoted to hiding wild talent beneath willful obscurity. Waldrop’s stories are as delightful as they are unpitchable: “Heirs of the Perisphere” involves robotic Disney characters waking up in the far future; “Fin de Cyclé” describes the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of bicycle enthusiasts. Several of his stories have been nominated for the genre’s awards; “The Ugly Chickens” – about the extinction of the dodo – won a Nebula for best novelette in 1980, and also a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction in 1981. His work has been gathered in several collections. He lives in Austin, Texas, and is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Mo
on World.
I was on my way across the Pacific Ocean when I decided to go to the Moon.
*
But first I had to land to refuel this superannuated machine, with its internal combustion engines and twin airscrews. There was an answering beacon ahead that showed a storage of 6,170 metric tons of fuel. Whether I could obtain any of it I did not know. But, as they used to say, any dataport in an infostorm.
The island was a small speck in the pink ocean.
No instructions came from the airfield, so I landed on the only runway, a very long one. I taxied off to the side, toward what had been the major building with the control tower.
I tried to find a servicer of some kind, by putting out requests on different frequencies.
Nothing came. So I went to find the fuel myself. Perhaps there were pumps that still functioned? I located the storage facility, then returned to the plane and rolled it over to the tanks.
It was while I was using a hand-powered pumping device, with a filter installed in the deteriorating hoses, that I sensed the approach of someone else.
It came around the corner.
It was carrying a long, twisted piece of wood as tall as it, and it wore a torn and bleached cloak, and a shapeless bleached hat that came to a point on the crown.
“Mele Kiritimati!” it said. “You have landed on this enfabled island on the anniversary of its discovery by the famous Captain Cook, an adventurous human.”
“Your pardon?” I said. “The greeting?”
“Merry Christmas. The human festive season, named for the nominal birthdate of one of its religious figures, placed on the dates of the old human Saturnalia by the early oligarchs.”
“I am familiar with Christmastide. This, then, is Christmas Island?”
“That same. Did you not use standard navigational references?”
I pointed to the plane. “Locationals only. There is a large supply of aviation fuels here.”
“Nevertheless,” it said, “this is the island, this is the date of Christmas. You are the first visitor in fourteen years three months twenty-six days. Mele Kiritimati.”
It stood before me as I pumped.
“I have named myself Prospero,” it said.
(Reference: Shakespeare, The Tempest A.D. 1611. See also Hume, Forbidden Planet, A.D. 1956.)
“I should think Caliban,” I said. (Reference also: Morbius, id monster.)
“No Caliban. Nor Ariel, nor Miranda, nor dukes,” said Prospero. “In fact, no one else. But you.”
“I am called Montgomery Clift Jones,” I said, extending my hand.
His steel grip was firm.
“What have you been doing?” I asked.
“Like the chameleon, I sup o’ the very air itself,” he said.
“I mean, what do you do?” I asked.
“What do you do?” he asked.
We looked out at the pinkness of the ocean where it met the salts-encrusted sands and island soils.
“I stopped here to refuel,” I said. “I was on my way across the Pacific when I was overcome with a sudden want to visit the Moon.”
Prospero looked to where the part-lit Moon hung in the orangish sky.
“Hmmm. Why do that, besides it’s there?”
“Humans did it once.”
“Well,” said Prospero, after a pause, “why not indeed? I should think revisiting places humans once got to should be fitting. In fact, a capital idea! I see your craft is a two-seater. Might I accompany you in this undertaking?”
I looked him over. “This sea air can’t be very good for your systems,” I said, looking at the abraded metal that showed through his cloak. “Of course you may accompany me.”
“As soon as you finish refueling, join me,” he said. “I will take a farewell tour, and tell you of my domain.”
“How can I find you?”
“If something is moving on the island,” said Prospero, “it is I.”
*
We walked along. I kicked over some crusted potassium spires along the edge of the beach.
“I should be careful,” said Prospero. “The pH of the oceans is now twelve point two. You may get an alkaline burn.”
The low waves came in, adding their pinkish-orange load to the sediments along the shore.
“This island is very interesting,” he said. “I thought so when abandoned here; I still think so after all.
“When Cook found it, no humans were here. It was only inhabited for two hundred years or so. Humans were brought from other islands, thousands of kilometers away. The language they used, besides English I mean, was an amalgam of those of the islands whence they came.”
We looked at some eaten-metal ruins.
“This was once their major city. It was called London. The other two were Paris and Banana.”
The whole island was only a few meters above the new sea level.
“There was a kind of human tourism centered here once around a species of fish, Albula vulpes, the bonefish. They used much of their wealth to come here to disturb the fish in its feeding with cunning devices that imitated crustaceans, insects, other marine life. They did not keep or eat the fish they attained after long struggles. That part I have never understood,” said Prospero.
By and by we came to the airfield.
“Is there anything else you need to do before we leave?”
“I think no,” said Prospero. He turned for one more look around. “I do believe I shall miss this isle of banishment, full of music, and musing on the king my brother’s wreck. Well, that part is Shakespeare’s. But I have grown much accustomed to it. Farewell,” he said, to no one and nothing.
Getting him fitted into the copilot’s seat was anticlimax. It was like bending and folding a living, collapsible deck chair of an extraordinarily old kind, made from a bad patent drawing.
*
On our journey over the rest of the island, and the continent, I learned much of Prospero; how he came to be on the island, what he had done there, the chance visitors who came and went, usually on some more and more desperate mission.
“I saw the last of the Centuplets,” he said at one point. “Mary Lou and Cathy Sue. They were surrounded of course by many workers—in those days humans always were—who were hurrying them on their way to, I believe, some part of Asia…”
“The island of Somba,” I said.
“Yes, yes, Somba. For those cloning operations, supposed to ensure the continuation of the humans.”
“Well, those didn’t work.”
“From looking into it after they left,” said Prospero, “I assumed they would not. Still, the chances were even.”
“Humans were imprecise things, and genetics was a human science,” I said.
“Oh, yes. I used the airfield’s beacons and systems to keep in touch with things. No being is an island,” said Prospero, “even when on one. Not like in the old days, eh? It seems many human concerns, before the last century or so, were with the fear of isolation, desertion, being marooned from society. I made the best of my situation. As such things go, I somewhat enjoyed it.”
“And listening to the human world dying?”
“Well,” said Prospero, “we all had to do that, didn’t we? Robots, I mean.”
*
We landed at the old Cape.
“I’m quite sure,” said Prospero, as I helped him out of the seat until he could steady himself on his feet, “that some of their security safeguards still function.”
“I never met a security system yet,” I said, “that didn’t understand the sudden kiss of a hot arc welder on a loose faceplate.”
“No, I assume not.” He reached down and took up some soil. “Why; this sand is old! Not newly formed encrustations. Well, what should we do first?” He looked around, the Moon not up yet.
“Access to information. Then materials, followed by assembly. Then we go to the Moon.”
“Splendid!” said Prospero. “I never knew it would be so easy.”
*<
br />
On the second day, Prospero swiveled his head around with a ratcheting click.
“Montgomery,” he said. “Something approaches from the east-northeast.”
We looked toward the long strip of beach out beyond the assembly buildings, where the full Moon was just heaving into view at sunset.
Something smaller than we walked jerkily at the water’s edge. It stopped, lifting its upper appendages. There was a whirring keen on the air, and a small crash of static. Then it stood still.
We walked toward it.
“… rrrrr…” it said, the sound rising higher. It paid us no heed.
“Hello!” said Prospero. Nothing. Then our long shadows fell across the sand beside it.
The whining stopped. It turned around.
“I am Prospero. This is Montgomery Clift Jones. Whom do we have the honor to address?”
“… rrr…” it said. Then, with a half turn of its head, it lifted one arm and pointed toward the Moon. “rrrrrrrRRR!”
“Hmmm,” said Prospero.
“RRRR,” said the machine. Then it turned once more toward the Moon in its lavender-red glory, and raised all its arms. “RRRRR! RRRRR!” it said, then went back to its high whining.
“This will take some definite study and trouble,” said Prospero.
*
We found one of the shuttle vehicles, still on its support structure, after I had gone through all the informational materials. Then we had to go several kilometers to one of their museums to find a lunar excursion module, and bring that to the shuttle vehicle. Then I had to modify, with Prospero’s help, the bay of the shuttle to accommodate the module, and build and install an additional fuel tank there, since the original vehicle had been used only for low-orbit missions and returns.
When not assisting me, Prospero was out with the other machine, whom he had named Elkanah, from the author of an opera about the Moon from the year A.D. 1697. (In the course of their conversations, Prospero found his real name to be, like most, a series of numbers.) Elkanah communicated by writing in the sand with a stick, a long series of sentences covering hectares of beach at a time.
