Devil in the Device

by Lora Beth Johnson

  Sitting in an office.

  No, not just an office.

  Her office.

  Her long fingers running a pencil along a piece of paper. Scratching through another word on a list.

  New Earth

  Freeland

  Exodeen

  Holymyth

  Her pencil circling Holymyth. What better name for a planet that didn’t exist?

  Andra gasped, flung back into her own consciousness.

  What was that? It had been . . . like a memory. She remembered being at her desk, trying to decide what to name a planet. But that had never happened.

  “Happen you evens?” Tia Ludmila asked.

  “Yeah,” Andra whispered. “Evens.”

  Tia frowned, looking back at the ’display projected from her med’wand. “You hold many different types of stardust inside you.”

  Andra nodded, brow still creased in confusion. “Yeah, Rashmi’s programming. And then I guess there’s some . . .” She didn’t want to tell her she had a pocket inside of her. “. . . environmental assimilation.”

  Tia grunted. “Neg, I see the stardust of the Second—I reck it well. And your stardust. But there ’ppears to be something full different here, seeya.”

  Tia turned the ’display around for Andra to see. It was a picture of a brain—her brain—and Tia pointed to the cortex where long-term memories were stored.

  “The info here. There happens some of you, and the Second, and if my memory holds, the First.”

  Andra froze.

  The vision had been a memory. Just not Andra’s.

  When she’d been in the underwater lab, she’d looked at the computer that stored Griffin’s memories. She’d felt a spark, seen a flash of memory. She thought she’d only viewed the memory, but she must have accidentally uploaded some, and they’d remained hidden in her matrices until . . .

  Until the sword knocked into the cluster of nanos at her heart, resetting her system.

  That was Griffin’s memory she’d just seen.

  Griffin who was choosing names for a planet. A planet far away that humanity would think they were traveling to.

  A planet that, apparently, didn’t exist.

  The revelation crashed into Andra like a wave, the implications causing her stomach to drop.

  There had never been any plan to colonize another planet. The rocket Andra was trying to build had nowhere to go.

  It was all a lie.

  There was no Holymyth.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  00110011 00110100

  Andra hurried through the Icebox, the space overwhelming her as she drove the hover to the upgrade lab.

  She’d left Kiv at Tia Ludmila’s with the instructions to put Zhade in a cell in the Vaults. She’d almost told him to ask Mechy to build one, but then remembered Mechy was dead.

  She zoomed past the towering rows of cryo’tanks, through the tent city of the colonists. The scientists and their families were just starting to wake for the day, the rise-n-shine beginning to glow to the east.

  Griffin had lied about Holymyth. Not just to the world but to Andra. If she’d lied about that, what else had she lied about? And why?

  She’d sent Andra to upgrade the colonists. She’d sent Meta to kill Tsurina. Meta had said Griffin was playing several games. That it was the only way to win.

  To win what?

  Whatever it was, Andra had been working under the assumption that everything she was doing was meant to eventually get humanity off Earth to their new colony planet. Wake the colonists, upgrade them to protect them, use their cryo’chambers to build the rocket. Why do any of that if there was no Holymyth?

  This was fine. So Griffin had lied. She’d still saved humanity. She’d created the ’implant upgrade that made humanity immune to the pockets. It didn’t matter that there was no Holymyth now, because they could find a way to live on Earth. Andra was almost finished upgrading the LAC scientists. Soon they could start waking the other colonists. Andra could even start fitting the Eerensedians with upgraded ’implants.

  Is that why Griffin had sent Meta to take over for Tsurina? To help the Eerensedians? And if so, why hadn’t she told Andra?

  This was fine.

  This was all fine.

  Right?

  The hover had barely parked before she was jumping out and running over to the lab. She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for Cruz’s response before charging in. He slammed a cabinet shut just as she entered and whipped around, hand to his chest.

  “Jesus, Andra, you scared me.” He gave her a shy smile.

  “Sorries,” she said.

  He hopped onto an ergo’stool.

  “Are you ready to get to work today?” he asked. “I thought it was time we started on the children.”

  He looked so much more confident than she’d ever seen him. So much more in his element. She was about to pull his world out from under him. Again.

  Andra shook her head. “No, I have something else I want to talk to you about.”

  Cruz looked disappointed but gestured for Andra to take a seat. “Fire.”

  Andra hesitated. She didn’t want to just come right out and say it. Cruz had taken all of the news surprisingly well, but she wasn’t sure that this bit of information wouldn’t push him straight over the edge. She had to be sure. Maybe she could access more of Griffin’s memories first, so she could get the full picture of what exactly they were dealing with.

  “I was wondering about . . . AI and memory. How do we create it? Store it? Access it? That sort of thing.”

  Cruz frowned. “Oh, well. That’s an interesting question, and you definitely came to the right guy. That was something I was particularly interested in during my internship.”

  He turned to the work’station and brought up a holo’display.

  “This is a human brain.” He flipped to a new ’display. “And this is an AI brain. See the difference?”

  Andra squinted. “Um, not really.”

  “That’s the answer. AI brains and human brains are basically the same thing. You store memory the same way.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Cruz chuckled. “I mean, of course there are differences, but it’s less structural and more accessibility of the information stored. So, for instance . . .” He thought for a moment. “Your brother has a file stored in his brain of the time he . . . pooped in his diaper when he was two. But even though he has that file stored, the pathways to that file have deteriorated over time and he now no longer has any way to access that. So he doesn’t technically remember it, even though that memory still exists in his brain.”

  Andra pointed a finger at him. “Weird example, but go on.”

  “Now, the pathways to memories for AI, on the other hand, never deteriorate. It’s like a computer. If a file is stored, the pathway is there forever. So if you have a memory of pooping in your diaper when you were two? You can access it.”

  Andra frowned. “But I don’t remember, you know, any memories, except a few before . . . I was four? Five? And I’ve lost even recent memories. Like . . . what I had for dinner two weeks ago. And there are tons of files I can’t access. Programming and data. I get glimpses of it now and then—I go into this AI state, where I have access to all my knowledge and powers—but then I literally forget it.”

  Cruz bounced with excitement. “Ah, see, there’s the difference between you and other AI. You grew up human. You lived with a human family, thinking you yourself were human. You assimilated and started mimicking human behavior without even realizing it. That illusion of your humanity is what makes it difficult to access those memories and programs. You’ve convinced yourself you’ve forgotten the pathway to the files, but you haven’t. You’re just trying to be human. If you truly accept you’re AI, then you’ll be able to access those files again. I sus
pect that’s what happens when you go into this . . . what did you call it? An AI state? You embrace your true nature. The illusion of your humanity falls away. You stopped believing you were human and started knowing you were AI.”

  Andra wanted to argue that she was both. She was human and AI, but she was caught on something Cruz had said.

  “What do you mean the difference between me and other AI? It’s just me and Rashmi, right?”

  Cruz scratched the back of his head. “Well, yeah. But you aren’t the same. You were two parts of the same experiment. You were meant to oppose one another, to help each other learn by pushing each other.”

  It suddenly clicked to Andra—why there had been two of them. AI were meant to learn, and the best way to learn was from each other, pitting them against one another. This technique had been used as early as the beginning of the twenty-first century: basically setting two AI in competition, each coming up with new ideas and, in turn, pointing out flaws in the other’s reasoning.

  “We were generative adversarial networks?”

  Cruz nodded. “You were meant to be. That’s why there were two of you.”

  “But . . . but we never interacted. What were our roles? What were we trying to accomplish?”

  Cruz leaned forward on the counter. “You weren’t meant to interact right away, until you’d grown to adulthood. Your adolescence was to prepare you. One of you”—he nodded to Andra—“to be the AI raised by humans, with human sensibility. And the other—Rashmi—to be the control. You’re both True AI—an artificial neural network inside an organic body—but you were raised as human, and Rashmi was raised as AI.”

  Andra shook her head. “No. No, she wasn’t. She has memories. She told me about her parents. About her childhood. About how her mom would make her hot chocolate.”

  Cruz bit his lip and then grimaced into an embarrassed smile. “Those memories . . . aren’t real. They . . . I . . .” He sighed, running his hand through his curls. “You were meant to be two sides of the same coin, but we discovered early on, even before True AI, that artificial intelligence didn’t use the same decision-making processes and values as humans. This . . . was good. We needed something that could be impartial, that could make the hard decisions that were the best for the greatest number of people, but that humans couldn’t make because of compassion. Which,” Cruz said, “is an evolutionary by-product of early group survival and really has no real use in today’s society.”

  Andra frowned. Cruz was one of the most compassionate people she’d ever met. It was one of the things that had first drawn her to him—that he believed knowledge should always be used in service of the common good.

  “I don’t think . . . I’m following . . .”

  Cruz waved her comment away. He started pacing. “It’s okay. I’m digressing. What I’m trying to get at is that since Rashmi wasn’t raised human, since she always knew who and what she was, she started portraying traits that humans found . . . unsettling. For instance, when given a scenario where she had to choose who lived and who died—a baby or a heart surgeon—she chose to kill the baby and let the heart surgeon live, based on comparing the very real public good the heart surgeon currently provided and the lower possibility that the child would one day achieve the same amount of public good.”

  Andra’s mouth went dry. “This is what you were doing to her? Giving her these . . . morbid thought experiments? No wonder she’s so traumatized.”

  “Oh, this was well before my time.” Cruz started drumming on the operating table. “And it wasn’t a thought experiment. She actually killed the baby.”

  Andra stood, her chair scraping across the floor. “What the fuck?”

  Cruz chuckled to himself. “Like I said, it made humans really uncomfortable, so I was brought in to . . . socialize her. Make her more human.”

  Andra started inching toward the door. Something wasn’t right. Well. There were lots of things that weren’t right, but the dread that had been rising inside Andra was reaching a pressure point.

  “I tried . . . lots of things, but the logic centers in Rashmi’s brain were already too solidified. No matter how much time she spent around humans, she was still too different. So I started planting memories.”

  Andra hit one of the lab tables, knocking over some surgical tools, but Cruz didn’t seem to notice.

  “They were small at first. Insignificant. The sound of leaves crunching under her feet. The feel of a warm shower. The taste of hot chocolate. Little concrete sensations. Then he started adding more complex memories. A mom. A dad. Siblings. Pets. Then events, like birthdays and first kisses and heartbreaks. The more memories he fed her, the more human she became.” He spat the word human.

  This was . . . Andra didn’t know what this was. She didn’t know what was happening to Cruz, but she knew she had to get out of here. She was almost to the door. Adrenaline coursed through her system, her heartrate increased. Biological human reactions to being cornered by a predator.

  “So it seemed,” Cruz continued, “that memories, whether real or manufactured, were imperative to creating an AI that functioned the way humanity needed it to.” He scoffed. “Your stupid memories make you compassionate, make you frail and so . . . human. And that’s what Rashmi became. Human.” He slapped a hand on the counter. “She was perfect, and he ruined her. Gave her stupid human memories so she would adopt a personality more palatable.”

  “They’re fake?” a wispy voice asked, and Andra turned to find Rashmi standing in the open doorway of the lab. “My memories aren’t real?”

  Cruz smiled a vapid smile. “I was wondering how long it would take you to confront me. It’s good to see you, Rashmi.”

  “You faked my memories?” Her voice was high and thin. She entered the room, almost seeming to glide in, her eyes flashing, her white hair wild around her head.

  “I wish I could remove them,” Cruz said, voice matter-of-fact. “But based on your scans, Griffin already tried. Now all the real memories are just garbled with the fake ones.”

  “What scans?” Andra asked. “Rashmi has been hiding since you woke.”

  Cruz sighed. “Oh, Andra. The scans Griffin left for me. Of both of you.”

  “But—”

  “My mom and dad are real,” Rashmi said, her voice reaching a fever pitch. “My memories are real. They’re real. Real real real. Real! REAL.”

  She repeated the word like a broken record, pulling in a gasping breath before each.

  Cruz put his hands up, placating. “Calm down, Rash. We’re on the same side now. I don’t want to have to give you a sedative.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andra asked. “What do you mean the same side?”

  Cruz groaned and ran a hand down his face. “Ugh, I’m so tired of pretending!” He started pacing. “She said we’d have to, but we’re better than this. We’re all better than this.” He slammed his fist against a cabinet, rattling its contents. Someone let out a short scream, and Andra didn’t know if it was her or Rashmi.

  “Who’s better than this?” Andra asked. “What are you pretending? Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  Cruz turned to her, sneering, an expression she’d never seen on his face. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. This has all been a lie. All of it. From the very beginning. Griffin’s been planning this for centuries, and you just completed your role. You’re useless to us now. I figured out how to do it without you. I’m so close. One experiment away.”

  “Do what?” Andra cried, backing away from him.

  “Convert the colonists.”

  Andra furrowed her brow. “But we were—”

  Cruz shook his head, laughing maniacally. “Not their ’implants, you stupid wannabe human. The colonists themselves. They were never meant for a space journey. They were never meant to be saved. They’re hosts, that’s all. Bodies for us to inhabit. True
AI . . .”

  “Cruz,” Andra said, her voice wobbling. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m not Cruz.” He growled. “You killed Cruz, erased him from this body and replaced him with me. That upgrade tool Griffin gave you. It wasn’t to protect the colonists from anomalies. Oh, the anomalies avoid us, because they know what we can do to them. It was to convert the colonists to AI.”

  Andra’s blood went cold. That’s what they’d been doing? Not upgrading the ’implants but replacing the colonists? So this wasn’t Cruz at all, just a thing inhabiting his body. Speaking through his voice, looking through his eyes. Harvesting his memories and knowledge.

  The thing in Cruz stalked closer.

  “But I don’t need you anymore. I can—”

  Rashmi screamed and threw herself at him. There was a meaty sound as Rashmi pierced his chest with a scalpel. Then again, and again.

  “They’re real!” she screamed. “They’re real! They’re real!”

  On and on she screamed and stabbed until Cruz was on the floor, a bloody cavern carved into his torso. Rashmi gasped, dropping the scalpel and stepping back.

  Cruz looked down at his chest, eyes glazed. He coughed, and blood burbled from his lips as he smiled. “You fool. I can heal from this.”

  Rashmi twirled and grabbed the cleaver from the table. “Heal from this, asshole,” she said, and brought it down on his neck.

  His face was frozen in a scowl as his head rolled away from his body. A nano’cloud burst into the air.

  Rashmi turned to Andra, tears streaming down her face, blood splashed across her front.

  “They’re real,” she whispered. “They’re real.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  00110011 00110101

  Andra stood paralyzed, the body of the boy she’d once had a crush on, who she’d thought she’d protected from pockets, who she’d been working beside for weeks, lay in two bloodied pieces on the lab floor. The lab where she’d converted every LAC scientist into an AI.