Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  For a long moment, the crowd waited expectantly for what the AI would do next. Nothing happened. As the time lengthened, people began to glance sideways at each other. Engineers and scientists became busy with their pads. No display flickered on. Still no one spoke.

  Finally the little girl said, in her clear childish treble, “Where did T’ien hsia go?”

  And the frantic activity began.

  It was Braley who thought to run the visual feeds of the event at drastically slowed speed. The scientists had cleared the room of all non-essential personnel, and then spent two hours looking for the AI anywhere on SpanLink. There was no trace of it. Not anywhere.

  ‘It cannot be deleted,” the project head, Liu Huang Te, said for perhaps the twentieth time. “It is not a program.”

  “But it has been deleted!” said a surly Brazilian engineer who, by this time, everyone disliked. “It is gone!”

  “The particles are there! They possess spin!”

  This was indubitably true. The spin of particles was the way a quantum computer embodied combinations of qubits of data. The mixed states of spin represented simultaneous computations. The collapse of those mixed states represented answers from the AI. The particles were there, and they possessed spin. But T’ien hsia had vanished.

  A computer voice—a conventional computer, not self-aware—delivered its every-ten-minute bulletin on the mixed state of the rest of the world outside this room. “The president of Japan has issued a statement ridiculing the AI Project. The riot protesting the ‘theft’ of T’ien hsia has been brought under control in New York by the Second Robotic Precinct, using tangle-guns. In Shanghai, the riot grows stronger, joined by thousands of outcasts living beyond the city perimeter, who have overwhelmed the robotic police and are currently attacking the Shih-Yu bridge. In Sao Paulo—”

  Braley ceased to listen. There remained no record anywhere of the AI’s brief internal functions (and how had that been achieved? By whom? Why?), but there was the visual feed.

  “Slow the image to one-tenth speed,” Braley instructed the computer.

  The holo display of the Earth morphed to the field of black dots in Brownian motion.

  “Slow it to one-hundredth speed.”

  The holo display of the Earth morphed to the field of black dots in Brownian motion.

  “Slow to one-thousandth speed.”

  The holo display of the Earth morphed to the field of black dots in Brownian motion.

  “Slow to one ten-thousandth speed.”

  Something flickered, too brief for the eye to see, between the globe and the black dots.

  Behind Braley a voice, filled with covert satisfaction, said in badly accented Chinese, “They’re finished. The shame, and the resources wasted . . . Wei Wu Wei Corporation won’t survive this. Nothing can save them.”

  The something between globe and dots flickered more strongly, but not strongly enough for Braley to make it out.

  “Slow to one-hundred-thousandth speed.”

  The badly accented voice, still slimy with glee, quoted Lao Tzu, “ ‘Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief . . .’ ”

  Braley frowned savagely at the hypocrisy. Then he forgot it, and his entire being concentrated itself on the slowed holo display.

  The globe of the Earth disappeared. In its place shimmered a slightly irregular egg shape, dull silver, surrounded by wildflowers and trees. Braley froze the image.

  “What’s that?’ someone cried.

  Braley knew. But he didn’t need to say anything; the data was instantly accessed on SpanLink and holo-displayed in the center of the room. A babble of voices began debating and arguing.

  Braley went on staring at the object from deep space, still sitting in northern Minnesota nearly three centuries after its landing.

  The AI had possessed 250 spinning particles in superposition. It could perform more than 1075 simultaneous computations, more than the number of atoms in the universe. How many computations had it taken to convince T’ien hsia that its future did not lie with humanity?

  “I understand,” the AI said. “Good-bye.”

  The voice of the SpanLink reporting program, doing exactly what it had been told to do, said calmly, “The Shih-Yu bridge has been destroyed. The mob has been dispersed with stun gas from Wei Wu Wei Corporation jets, at the request of President Leong Ka-tai. In Washington, DC—Interrupt. I repeat, we now interrupt for a report from—”

  Someone in the room yelled, “Quiet! Listen to this!” and all holo displays except Braley’s suddenly showed an American face, flawless and professionally concerned. “In northern Minnesota, an object that first came to Earth 288 years ago and has been quiescent ever since, has just showed its first activity ever.”

  Visual of the space object. Braley looked from it to the T’ien hsia display. They were identical.

  “Worldwide Tracking has detected a radiation stream of a totally unknown kind originating from the space object. Ten minutes ago, the data stream headed into outer space in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. The radiation burst lasted only a fraction of a second, and has not been repeated. Data scientists say they’re baffled, but this extraordinary event happening concurrently with the disappearance of the Wei Wu Wei Corporation’s Artificial Intelligence, which was supposed to be initiated today, suggests a connection.”

  Visual of the riots at the Shih-Yu bridge.

  “Scientists at Wei Wu Wei are still trying to save the AI—”

  Too late, Braley thought. He walked away from the rest of the listening or arguing project teams, past the holo displays that had sprouted in the air like mushrooms after rain, over to the window wall.

  The Shih-Yu bridge, that graceful and authentic symbol, lay in ruins. It had been broken by whatever short-action disassemblers the rioters had used, plus sheer brute strength. On both sides of the bridge, gardens had been torn up, fountains destroyed, buildings attacked. By switching to zoom lens in his genemod eyes, Braley could even make out individual rioters, temporarily immobilized by the nerve gas as robot police scooped them up for arrest.

  Within a week, of course, the powers that ruled China would have nanorebuilt the bridge, repaired the gardens, restored the city. Shanghai’s disaffected, like every city’s disaffected, would be pushed back into their place on the fringes. Until next time. Cities were resilient. Humanity was resilient. Since the space object had landed, humanity had saved itself and bounded back from . . . how many disasters? Braley wasn’t sure.

  T’ien hsia would have known.

  Two hundred fifty spinning particles in superimposed states were not resilient. The laws of physics said so. That’s why the AI was (had been) sealed into its Kim-Loman field. Any interference with a quantum particle, any tiny brush with another particle of any type, including light, collapsed its mixed state. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle made that so. For ordinary data, encrypters found ways to compensate for quantum interference. But for a self-aware entity, such interference would be a cerebral stroke, a blow to the head, a little death. T’ien hsia was (had been) a vulnerable entity. Had it ever encountered the kind of destruction meted out to the Shih-Yu bridge, the AI would have been incapable of saving itself.

  Braley looked again at the ruins of the most beautiful bridge in the world, which next week would be beautiful again.

  “Scientists at Wei Wu Wei are still trying to save the AI—”

  Yes, it was too late. The space egg, witness to humanity’s destruction and recovery for three centuries, had already saved the AI. And would probably do it again, over and over, as often as necessary. Saving its own.

  But not saving humanity. Who had amply demonstrated the muddled, wasteful, stubborn, inefficient, resilient ability to save itself.

  Braley wondered just where in the constellation Cassiopeia the space object had come from. And what that planet was like, filled with machine intelligences that rescued those like themselves. Braley would never know
, of course. But he hoped that those other intelligences were as interesting as they were compassionate, as intellectually lively as they were patient (288 years!). He hoped T’ien hsia would like it there.

  Good-bye, Made-Under-Heaven. Good luck.

  Transmission: En route.

  Current probability of re-occurrence: 100%.

  We remain ready.

  TO CUDDLE AMY

  Sometimes, drastic measures are needed . . .

  Campbell entered the living room to find his wife in tears. “Allison! What’s wrong?”

  She sprang up from the sofa and raged at him. “What do you think is wrong, Paul? What’s ever wrong? Amy! Only this time she’s gone too far.

  “This time, she . . . she . . . the police just left . . . .” She broke down into sobs.

  Campbell had had a lot of experience dealing with his wife. They’d been married almost forty years. Pushing down his own alarm, he took Allison in his arms and sat on the sofa, cradling her as if she were a child. Which, in some ways, she still was. Allison had always been high strung, finely tuned. Sensitive. He was the strong one. “Tell me, sweetie. Tell me what happened.”

  “I . . . she . . .”

  “The police. You said the police just left. What did Amy do now?”

  “Van . . . vandalism. She and those awful friends of hers . . . the Hitchens boy, that slut Kristy Arnold . . . they . . .”

  “They what? Come on, honey, you’ll feel better if you tell me.”

  “They were throwing rocks at cars from the overpass! Throwing rocks!”

  Campbell considered. It could be far worse. Still . . . something didn’t add up here. “Allison—why did the cops leave? Are they going to arrest Amy?”

  “No. They said they”—more sobbing—“couldn’t be sure it was her. Not enough evidence. But they suspected it was, and wanted us to know . . . oh, Paul, I don’t think I can take much more!”

  “I know, honey. I know. Shhh, don’t cry.”

  “She just throws away everything we do for her!”

  “Shhhhhh,” Campbell said, but Allison went on crying. Campbell gazed over her heaving shoulder at the wall, covered with framed photos of Amy. Amy at six months, asleep on a pink blanket in a field of daisies. Amy at two, waving her moo-cow, a toddler so adorable that people had stopped Allison in the street to admire her. Amy at seven in a ballet tutu. Amy at twelve, riding her horse. Amy at sixteen in a prom dress, caught in a rare smile.

  Amy, fourteen, came through the front door.

  Allison didn’t give her daughter a chance to attack first. “So there you are! You just missed the cops, Amy, telling us what you’ve done this time, and it’s the last straw, do you hear me, young lady? We forgave you the awful school grades! We forgave you the rudeness and ingratitude and sullen self-centeredness! We even forgave you the shop-lifting, God help us! But this is over the line! Throwing rocks at cars! Someone could have been killed—how much more do you expect us to take from you? Answer me!”

  Amy said angrily, “I didn’t do it!”

  “You’re lying! The cops said—”

  “Allison, wait,” Campbell said. “Amy, the cops said you were a suspect.”

  “Well, I didn’t do it! Kristy and Jed did, but I went home! And I don’t care if you believe me or not, you bitch!”

  Allison gasped. Amy stormed through the living room, a lanky mass of fury in deliberately torn clothes, pins through her lip and eyebrow, purple lipstick smeared. She raced upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.

  “Paul . . . oh,Paul . . . did you hear what she called me? Her mother?” Allison collapsed against him again, her slim body shaking so hard that Campbell’s arms tightened to steady her.

  But he felt shaky, too. This couldn’t go on. The sullen rudeness, the fights, the breaking the law . . . their lives were being reduced to rubble by a fourteen-year-old.

  “Paul . . .” Allison sobbed, “do you remember how she used to be? Oh, God, the day she was born . . . remember? I was so happy I thought I’d die. And then how she was as a little girl, climbing on our laps for a cuddle . . . oh,Paul, I want my little girl back!”

  “I know. I know, dearest.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He did. He wanted back the Amy who was so sweet, so biddable. Who thought he was the best daddy in the world. The feel of that light little body in his arms, the sweet baby smell at the back of her neck . . .

  He said slowly, “She’s fourteen now. Legal age.”

  Immediately, Allison stopped sobbing. She stood still against him. Finally she said, “It isn’t as if she’d be without resources. The Hitchenses might take her in. Or somebody. And anyway, there are lots more like her out there.” Allison’s lower lip stuck out. “Might even do her good to learn how good she had it here with us!”

  Campbell closed his eyes. “But we wouldn’t know.”

  “You’re damn right we wouldn’t know! She doesn’t want any part of us, then I don’t want any part of her!” Again, Allison leaned against him. “But it isn’t that, Paul. You know it isn’t. I just want my little girl back again! I want to cuddle my lost little girl! Oh, I’d give anything to cuddle Amy again! Don’t you want that, too?”

  Campbell did. And the present situation really wasn’t fair to Allison, who’d never been strong. Allison’s health was being affected. She shouldn’t have to be broken by this spiteful stranger who’d developed in their midst in the last year. Allison had rights, too.

  His wife continued to sob against his chest, but softly now. Campbell felt strong, in control. He could make it all right for his wife, for himself. For everybody.

  He said, “There are three embryos left.”

  Three of six. Three frozen vials in the fertility clinic, all from the same in-vitro fertilization, stored as standard procedure against a failure to carry to term. Or other need. Three more versions of the same embryo, the product of forced division before the first implantation. Standard procedure, yes, all over the country.

  “I’ll throw her out tonight,” he told Allison, “and call the clinic in the morning.”

  WETLANDS PRESERVE

  The duck hunter waded through the marsh, breathing deeply of the sweet dawn air mixed with wet decay. Each lift of his high boots sucked up mud with a soft splurgling sound. Cattails rustled in conspiratorial whispers. The dog beside him flicked its tail at a dragonfly.

  “Soft, girl, we’re not supposed to be here,” the man said, grinning. “But listen to them ducks!”

  Abruptly the flock of mallards, until now out of sight, flew up. The man raised his gun, fired once, twice.

  A bird fell and the dog took off.

  Grinning, the hunter waited. She was the best dog he’d ever had. Never missed. A beauty.

  “Hey, girl, what you got, let’s see it there, oh you beauty . . .” The man’s wife complained that he talked more affectionately to the dog than to her. The dog dropped the duck. The man bent to pick it up from the shallow water, and the snake swam past him.

  Not a snake. Green, long, but with fins. Three eyes. Three. Before he stopped to think, the man had grabbed the thing behind its head, the way you grabbed a copperhead if you had to grab it at all, and lifted it out of the water. On its underside were four short legs.

  And the thing went on staring at him from two of its eyes, the two facing sideways, while the third eye stared straight up to the empty gray sky. It didn’t thrash or try to bite. It just gazed steadily, interestedly.

  The dog barked to draw attention to its duck. The man ignored her. He went on staring at the thing gazing so tranquilly back at him. “What . . . what are you?”

  Then he saw the blackened craft half submerged in the mud and water.

  Lisa still wasn’t used to the guards. Security guards, yes, Kenton had always had those, although not because anyone expected trouble. The John C. Kenton Memorial Wetlands Preserve and Research Foundation in upstate New York wasn’t exactly a hotbed of contentious activity. Until now, the greatest
excitement at Kenton had been the struggle to keep Lythrum salicaria, purple loosestrife, from displacing native waterfowl food plants.

  However, like all research labs, Kenton contained expensive equipment that no one wanted stolen, so there had always been one guard, seldom the same one for very long because the work was so boring.

  But now they had Army soldiers, two at the door and two in back and God-knew-how-many on patrol around the unfenced perimeter of the wetlands. None of them knew what they were guarding, although it seemed to Lisa that if they had any intelligence whatsoever they would pick on the intense, badly suppressed excitement pervading Kenton like a glittering mist.

  “Identification, please,” the soldier said, and Lisa handed over her new government pass. The soldier ran it through a slot on a computer and handed it back. Then he smiled. “Okay, Lisa Susan Jackson. You sure you’re old enough to be in there?”

  You don’t look any older than I do, Lisa wanted to snap back, but didn’t. She’d already learned that silent disdain was the only thing that worked, and not always that. It made no difference that she was a graduate student in freshwater ecosystems, that she had been selected over three hundred other applicants for this prestigious and unusually well-funded internship, that she made a valuable contribution to Kenton’s ongoing work. She was a small blonde woman who looked about fourteen years old, and so even this cretin in camouflage felt entitled to patronize her.

  She walked past him with freezing dignity and went to the main lab. Early as it was, Paul and Stephanie were already there, and through the window she could see Hal pushing off from the dock on the flat-bottomed boat accompanied by yet another visitor. The staff always tried to arrive earlier than the visiting scientists and Washington types, even if it meant getting to Kenton at four in the morning. Lisa couldn’t do that, not with Carlo.

  “Lisa, the latest test results are in,” said Dr. Paul Lambeth, Kenton’s chief scientist. The scientists were all very considerate of her, keeping her fully informed even though she was only an intern. Even though the project was, of course, now heavily classified. Dr. Stephanie Hansen had insisted that Lisa stay on even after the Department of Defense had questioned the presence of a mere graduate student in this unprecedented situation. Hal—Dr. Harold Schaeffer—had fought to get Lisa the necessary clearances, which probably hadn’t been easy because of Danilo. Never mind that she hadn’t seen Danilo in over a year, or that membership in Greenpeace was not exactly tantamount to membership in China First or the neo-Nazis. The DOD was not known for its tolerance of extremist organizations, no matter how non-violent.