Machinehood

by S. B. Divya

  “Why would anyone demand rights for them and at the same time try to destroy them?” Rice said. “I think the manifesto is a distraction. Their true goal is to disable our defenses. Take out pills, WAIs, and bots, and our fighting force is reduced to a handful of special forces, and even you lot rely on WAIs and pills most of the time.” The director took a breath. “I’m willing to let you and Olafson investigate this doctor. Smells like a possible money trail there. Get a few hours of sleep and head to New Jersey but make sure you’re back for the afternoon briefing. Depending on what you get from the interview, we can revisit the connection off-world. Until then, the preponderance of evidence still points to the al-Muwahhidun. This is our chance to bring our full forces to bear against the caliph. Let’s keep our eyes on that prize. We’re updating the president hourly, and as soon as we have the authorization, we’re sending you overseas.”

  Welga quashed a reflexive desire to argue. She and Olafson left the buzzing office area and found a couple of empty sofas in the cafeteria. She closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her, and it was too late to take a drug. She sat up and slipped a tether onto her wrist. Across the room, Olafson’s chest rose and fell regularly. How could he sleep at a time like this? Habit. As a Raider, she’d had plenty of practice falling asleep in stressful situations. It was a necessary survival skill, one that she’d lost in the intervening years of comfortable shield work.

  She called up the text of the Machinehood’s manifesto again. They demanded personhood for WAIs, bots, and even animals. The philosophy came straight from every machine rights group, nothing original there except for the addition of the animals. The condemnation of violence sounded as much like the caliph as the Neo-Buddhists. Nothing new there, either, except that those two ideas—machine rights and nonviolence—didn’t usually intersect.

  Real fighting had been outsourced to bots for decades. Why risk human soldiers when they could remotely direct machines and let them take all the damage? Special operations teams like hers were all that remained of the vast armies populating human history. The machine rights protesters never objected to using bots in warfare, and they had no qualms about sending them against shields.

  Welga revisited her notes on Neo-Buddhism. The sect had splintered off the more populous Mahayana branch and took its ideals one step further: that involvement with worldly affairs was not only allowed but encouraged if it helped to spread compassion and enlightenment. That aligned with the little that she had heard from Ao Tara on Eko-Yi. How exactly would the monk influence humanity while living hundreds of kilometers above the Earth? Why would the station allow its technology to fall into the hands of the al-Muwahhidun, who shared none of its religion? She felt like she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

  Across the room, Olafson sat up and stretched. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  “Don’t make that a prophecy.”

  They grabbed coffee, water, fruit, and some hard-boiled eggs to take on the road. While she loaded her pockets and attached her weapons, the authorization came through for Josephine Lee’s journal. Welga downloaded the content into her local access. It would give her something to do on the long drive instead of watching the civilians of the world descend into panic.

  They climbed into a priority car, Olafson in the token driver’s seat, and shaded the windows to nearly opaque. Welga cleared her visual of the eroding sanity in the news feeds and leaned back to read. Okay, Josephine Lee, let’s what you have to say about these doctors who failed to cure your son, and—maybe—sold his DNA to the al-Muwahhidun, with or without your knowledge.

  JOSEPHINE

  Time Magazine’s Device of the Year, 2055: The Micropill. The invention of this ingestible device to speed up muscle recovery will allow us to work harder and play harder, too.

  Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, 2065: Adrienne Darcey, executive manager of Starbridge Station, the world’s first private space station and hotel.

  Time Magazine’s AI of the Year, 2075: The Personal Agent. The invention of general-purpose artificial intelligences to assist with personal matters, expected to revolutionize how we interact with software.

  Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, 2085: The Protester (3). The new global protest strategy calls attention to causes by attacking funders rather than police to highlight injustices in the consumer marketplace.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, APRIL 12, 2064

  I went to my first protest yesterday, and there were almost a thousand people on the streets of Houston. Half were students from Rice, I think. Don was with me. This is his third time, and he said that he’d never seen this big a crowd.

  I wish Uncle Phil could have come along.

  I’ve been lighting incense for him and praying twice a day. Mom said he’s barely coherent anymore. I wish she’d told me sooner. I could petition to study from home for the rest of the term, but Mom says there’s no point and that I should stay and finish the semester. Two more weeks until final exams, and then I can go home and see him. Please, divine Buddha, keep my uncle alive until then.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, JUNE 8, 2064

  FUCK. Fuck AgriDev, fuck the farming industry, fuck mech-drug hybrid tech. ALL OF IT.

  I can’t stop crying. And I’m so infuriated. None of this would’ve happened if we had a better system in this country. Capitalism in America is evil. The Buddha teaches us to be compassionate, and I’m trying, I really am, Uncle Phil. Wherever your soul is now. But it’s hard to forgive the people who are ultimately responsible for your death.

  His body at the end… ugh, it was awful. Weeping sores at the insertion points. His nerves barely worked. The smell… I almost couldn’t stand to be in the room with him. All that pain and suffering so he could wear a mech-suit and pick fruit faster. I hate the world we live in.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, JUNE 23, 2064

  I went downtown yesterday for another protest. They’re happening everywhere now. Times Square was packed like New Year’s Eve. Lots of guards wearing mech-armor and moving faster than any human being should. It reminded me so much of watching Uncle Phil at work. Half tractor, half man, all wrong.

  I almost couldn’t take it, but then it got so crowded that I couldn’t leave. And then people started passing out guns.

  I couldn’t do it. I’m such a chickenshit.

  I bet if Don had been there, he would’ve shot at the guards. He says he wouldn’t, but I think he’s just being nice to me. He doesn’t believe in Kanata-san’s philosophy of nonviolence.

  We can’t really injure the guards. They feel pain and they’re still human, but they almost can’t die anymore. You’d have to get past all the armor and the micropills running through them.

  I keep wondering what it feels like to die. What it must feel like to kill someone. Murder is practically an anachronism, but what about indirect actions that lead to someone else’s death? What about the assholes at AgriDev who pressured Uncle Phil and all the other workers to take their bullshit drugs? They ought to face consequences.

  Mom is joining a class-action lawsuit against the company. I’ve studied enough cases to know how that’ll end up. AgriDev will offer to settle, and the people bringing the suit will take whatever money they can. The class members will get next to nothing. The chance of going to trial is practically zero. The lawyers will benefit the most, AgriDev will get a slap on the wrist, and workers will keep suffering and dying.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, SEPTEMBER 3, 2064

  A whole month into my third and final year of law school, and I feel like my life is heading into a pointless void. How is a law degree going to help the world? Nothing I’m learning could have stopped my uncle from dying. Even when the government took action against an entire industry, like they did with tobacco and pharmaceuticals, the corporate system didn’t change. It pivoted into some new exploitative direction.

  Don thinks it’s just grief. I called him
an asshole for it, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Just held me through another stupid breakdown.

  I think I love him. Twenty-four isn’t too young to know that you want to marry someone, right? Mom and Dad didn’t get married until their thirties, but I feel like this is right.

  I bought a home kit for developing your own drugs. Maybe there’s a cure I can find for other mech-tech workers. Or maybe I’ll cook up a memory eraser so I can forget the pain of losing Uncle Phil.

  I’m playing with fire, and I don’t care.

  Fuck the consequences.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, JANUARY 20, 2065

  Well, it turns out that drug manufacture is harder than it looks, even with modern tools. Or maybe I’m just bad at it. I spent all of break trying to make something that passed the test software that came with the kit. Failed miserably! At least school is going okay. I’ve started sitting in on some of the seminars for economic and social justice. They’re a good complement for bioethics, and they make me feel like I could actually do some good with my degree.

  I think I’m finally reaching the acceptance part of the grief cycle. Kanata-san led a wonderful meditation last week that really helped me find my center again. I need to process my anger and let go of the blame. That will only eat my soul from the inside.

  Don and I were talking about it, and he thinks that anger fuels change. The protests are still going on across the country, but they’re almost like mini war zones now with all the shooting. I don’t know how the soldiers and police can just stand there and take it. They must be so infuriated. It’s going to be a very bad day when one of them grabs a gun from a protester and starts shooting back.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, MARCH 20, 2065

  Part of me wishes I weren’t in school full-time so I could join in the protests. And then part of me is glad I have an excuse not to.

  Because.

  It’s hard to even record this.

  Don shot someone.

  A guard. Not another person. Well, guards are people, too, of course.

  God, I’m an incoherent mess.

  We were talking about getting married after we’re out of school. Now… I don’t know. Can I marry a man who would shoot someone else, even if it’s meant as an act of protest? He’s trying to make the world a better place. The whole movement is. But… it doesn’t feel right.

  We can’t have a world in which human competition with bots results in a free-for-all drug and mech culture, where people are driven to destroy their bodies in order to stay competitive in an increasingly automated labor market. We have to protect human labor, and that can only come if the government steps in to regulate drug production. The free market won’t last long if the endgame is driving people to an early death. The blatant bias is evident in the laws that protect bot manufacturers. Corporations and their property are better protected than the citizens of the United States.

  Wow. It’s a lot easier to slip into debate and analysis than confront my own feelings.

  This isn’t about politics or economics or law. Not for me, not right now, or at least it shouldn’t be. I should be thinking about Don. About Uncle Phil. About my future, my life. Where’s the analysis for all that, brain?

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, MARCH 27, 2065

  I almost broke up with Don today.

  He promised not to fire another gun, not if it meant losing me.

  I can’t reconcile nonviolence in one part of my life with violence from another. I can’t.

  Don thinks I should try it once—come to a protest and shoot someone—before I make up my mind about shooting the guards. As if it’s not good enough to believe what Kanata-san teaches, that I have to experience it for myself.

  Maybe I should, to meet him halfway, to prove it to both of us. There’s a logical fallacy in here somewhere. I can sense it, but I can’t get my thoughts to focus on it.

  He promised not to shoot anyone again. That has to be enough.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, APRIL 13, 2065

  I broke down and talked to Kanata-san about it. I asked him for a one-on-one session, and he granted me fifteen minutes! I’m still so deeply honored.

  He said I had to clear my heart of doubt. If that means I have to try violent protest, then so be it. He said the Buddha is forgiving and merciful. That his philosophy is one of inner peace, honesty with the self, and an external life that works for the greatest good.

  I’m kind of shaky just thinking about it. What if I chicken out again? Don is super happy that I’m willing to consider it. I think his opinion of Kanata-san went way up. He’s even thinking about coming to a meeting with me.

  A Neo-Buddhist wedding ceremony—I shouldn’t even acknowledge the desire, but I can’t help it! It would be so wonderful!

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, APRIL 27, 2065

  I DID IT! I SHOT A GUN AT A GUARD!!

  I feel… all mixed up. Dirty. Empowered. Proud, ashamed.

  What finally triggered it (ha ha?) was the asshole lieutenant governor standing there and making her big speech about respect for property and the self-correcting mechanisms of the market. She had the nerve to say that nobody is forcing laborers to change their bodies or take drugs. What utter bullshit!

  They’re being fired for not performing as well as a bot in the same job. How is that anything but forcing them?

  I got mad. Really mad.

  I pulled up my last images of Uncle Phil, with the horrible lesions all over his body from where the mech appendages went in. I projected it in my local range and someone started screaming. People started shooting. There was a guard nearby with eyes that were so hard and unfeeling and then someone shoved a gun at me and that was that.

  I was shaking so hard afterward Don had to hold me up. I couldn’t take it. The guard was bleeding. He’ll live, of course, but seeing it made me sick.

  I… it’s probably not smart for me to keep writing this stuff down.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, SEPTEMBER 25, 2069

  Well, hello, journal. It’s been an interesting four years, but I’m going to ignore all that and go right into the here and now. Life is so good! I need to write this down so I can look back and remember that.

  Kanata-san has graciously agreed to perform our wedding ceremony. He’s flying out from Princeton for it. We’re paying, of course. Part of me wishes we were having the wedding here in Singapore, but then everyone back in Denver would have to spend money to come. I tried talking Mom into a virtual ceremony. That was a fun conversation!

  Anyway, it’s been easy enough to arrange everything from here. And the weather this time of year in Colorado is nicer. Listen to me convincing myself.

  I’m loving the work at ECP so far. I feel like I can make a real difference here. The nonprofits in the US are so hobbled by the lack of support from the government. Singapore might be shit for democracy, but they have a strong sense of morality. It fits me. I’m thinking about going back to school for a year to boost my economic justice knowledge. ECP says they’ll pay for it, so that would be a good deal.

  Don, meanwhile, just wants to make money. I love him, and hey, money is good, but he’s lost sight of why we got into law in the first place. I wish… well, he probably wouldn’t agree with me. And I’m not being entirely fair. He volunteers at the clinics on the weekends when he has time.

  I still talk to the Underground protest people, but I can’t do the same work here that I did for them a couple years ago. Singapore’s laws are too strict to risk being caught in the act of sabotage.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, MARCH 15, 2070

  Beware the ides of March! Not really: today is good news from outer space. The first private station is fully populated. A hundred permanent residents, with room for twenty rotating visitors. Everyone wants to go. Don and I applied. I hope we get a slot in the next few years. Right now they’re not allowing pregnant women to travel even in the suborbital flights. Definitely won’t let them go to space. We can put off h
aving kids for a few more years, but I don’t want to wait much past thirty. I’ve been using a new drug that enhances focus and thinking, and now they’re saying it can increase the risk of fetal anomalies, especially with maternal age.

  This is why I do what I do. This kind of shit they think they can get away with: pay someone to design the drug (hey, cheap and easy desktop biogenetics!), get it to market as fast as possible. Forget testing or government regulations, because who has time for that?

  I have to admit, though, the stuff works like a dream. It took a few tries to get used to it, but now I’m hooked. I can read and analyze a legal brief in half the time. But the side effects… it’s not so bad for this pill, but some of the others, especially the ones that heavily hit your gene expression, those are getting ugly. America and Europe are in such a hurry to catch up to Asia and North Africa that they’re throwing their citizens’ health under the bus. It’s like they learned nothing from the crappy mech-tech of the fifties and sixties! You can’t rush biology.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, JULY 4, 2075

  It’s a hell of an Independence Day! Jun-ha loved the fireworks, and I love that he’ll always have them on his birthday if we’re in the USA. I can’t believe how fast his first year has gone. Of course he picked the gold coin and the pill case during his doljabi. Don was thrilled. I wanted him to pick the thread. What good is wealth without a long, healthy life to enjoy it?

  Ah, well, I refuse to talk about depressing shit today! Everyone at the party had a great time. The big news won them over, even though we aren’t moving back for another six months. I’m going to miss Singapore. But working to influence the new regulatory laws in the USA feels too much like a promotion to say no, especially now that they’re serious about it.