by Scott Sibary
She paused as she noticed Stig’s head turn to follow a shapely waitress in a tight dress. “I got fed up with the games and wanted to create my own.”
“You smashed your computer during one, didn’t you?” Lars said.
“Oh! Tell us about that!”
“You would bring that up, Lars.” She ate a couple more bites of her food. “Yeah, I was cornered one day in the alter-world, facing annihilation. My real arm twitched, and I could swear it acted on its own. It smashed the controls into the screen.”
“Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed you were the game-playing type at all.”
“Is that a criticism or a compliment?”
Stig shrugged.
“I prefer open games,” she said, “where you know what’s going on. Like sports, including tennis. Lars and I play. He’s better.” She coughed once. “You might say sports got me more involved in life.”
“How?”
“In my mid-teens I was tall and fast. An acquaintance was setting up a girls’ rugby team, to join a local league. I don’t know, it’s one of those strange decisions you make, especially as a teenager. I joined, starting as a back. As I worked out and gained weight, they moved me to the scrum.”
“Bet you were heavy then.”
She put down her chopsticks to look straight at Stig. “Somewhat—heavy enough. I enjoyed the intimacy of the scrum: a new kind of experience, your arms around a teammate on either side, all pushing forward against the other team until one side gains the ball.”
“That’s what you see us doing here?”
“Definitely not,” she said.
“Then, does your story connect to computer science?”
“She got hurt,” said Lars.
“Yeah.” She aimed a stare at Lars, drew in a breath and continued. “I broke a clavicle and two ribs. I stayed home for a few weeks, playing computer games.”
“But you stopped after breaking your computer?” Stig asked.
“I couldn’t afford a new setup, so I went to the library, played instructional games, made up for lost time, and actually got way ahead of my equivalent school level. But it was there again, that queasy feeling I always got from computer games, that feeling of being guided by something I couldn’t see. And then the nausea of feeling controlled. Being shoved around in rugby is part of the game. And you shove back. You all know the rules. But I realized the one-on-one with a machine was controlled by hidden algorithms. The engineers had turned the tables to make me the object.” She rested her elbows on the table, stared into space and tapped her fingers against each other. “I became determined to figure it out.”
The other two paused their eating and waited.
“Only by lifting myself to that level, by knowing the ways of the sorcerers behind the screens, could I feel empowered. That became my first quest.”
“Then you should be interested in policy,” Stig said. “That’s where it all starts.”
“Back then I wasn’t. I hated my high school civics class, that exercise in torture. I remember spending an entire term arguing about policy—climate change policy—the problems dumped on us because of an irresponsible adult generation. Policy failure, over and over again.”
Lars raised his eyebrows.
“We’re the adults now,” Stig said.
“Exactly. And yes, policy concerns about how AI is managed got me working on vital codes. You too, right, Lars?”
“Right. I’ve worked on enabling the AI to consider all the repercussions of its decisions. Remember the issues with self-driving cars, or that old dilemma of a train on a collision course, whichever track it takes, and the AI is the only thing that can make a decision quickly enough. Only, real situations could be more complex than our little brains can grasp, and program for.”
Stig nodded. “And being obedient, following orders, isn’t enough instruction to include in the vital codes.”
“That was my point earlier,” Solveig said.
“Why only minimize harm? Why not avoid it altogether?”
“Because harm could include almost anything. You could finish that generous dish”—she pointed at his nearly empty plate—“or not, but there are consequences either way.”
He put down his fork. “So Lars, is that your focus within Solveig’s project at the university?”
“Yeah. Code flexibility: how the system can figure out what we’d want if we were able to fully understand the situation. All part of the vital codes. Solveig led the subgroup trying to make the vital codes unalterable by users, administrators, and even the machine itself as it self-programs.”
“And you succeeded!” Stig said to Solveig.
“No. My subgroup kept failing. Only after I got back from India did I strike upon the idea.”
Stig’s eyes widened, complementing his beaming smile. “Come on, tell me how.”
“I got out of bed in the middle of the night, after wrestling with a nightmare. I sat up doing sudoku puzzles, got bored, my mind drifted, and suddenly, I saw it!”
“The Protection Lock?”
“Yes.” She glanced around the room.
“And she keeps part of it secret,” Lars said.
“What if something happens to you?” Stig asked.
“The theory is published. Only certain elements are secret,” she said.
“Then how can we have full trust in each other?” Stig asked.
“Solveig and I have been working together long enough.”
“But I haven’t worked with you,” Stig said.
“On this issue, you’ll just have to trust me,” Solveig said.
There you go again, not telling the full story about the codes, about the rugby incident, about your heritage. Afraid they won’t respect you? Solveig shoved open the door to her room. And you were rude to Stig, like a bully. Yeah, you.
Standing over the bathroom sink, she bared her teeth to reveal a large white array with just one tooth crooked: one awful little defect ruining the assembly.
She began to clean her teeth, then paused, close-lipped, to stare at the face staring strongly back.
You can’t have an impact—you can’t succeed—unless you put yourself out there. Rose did . . . still does. Some people from her generation even put themselves at risk. By comparison, risking money means nothing. But that’s not the way governments see it. And that’s why we’re in this mess.
Her Seattle cousin, “veteran” Rose, was a retired part-time community college classics and art history instructor, and a veteran of many protests. She’d been arrested several times: protesting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later the escalation of the war in Afghanistan in 2009; and for her part in the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and the Down the Drones movement in 2022. In 2028, Rose visited Osterøy for the first time. She had definite views on what was going wrong with the world. She picked on her own country as a prime example.
“We’ve been on a forty-year decline as a result of more concentrated wealth and power,” Rose said, waving around her glass of wine like a teacher’s pointer as she and Solveig sat on the living-dining room sofa.
“It’s like what happened to the ancient Roman Republic,” Rose said, “importing cheap labor—Carthaginian slaves—and selling them to wealthy patrician farmers. Small farmers couldn’t compete. They lost their farms—their independent economic base—and with it their political influence. Power got concentrated. Sound familiar? They also had a military-industrial complex, the Romans did, pushing them into bloody wars, like in the countries we now call Iraq and Iran. Blood and money, spilt into the sand.” She swirled the red liquid in her glass. “Speaking of Italians, wouldn’t you like to try some of this wine I picked up at your Vinmonopol?” Rose got up and headed for the bottle and another glass on the sideboard. “It’s called ‘Primitivo.’ Appropriate, eh?”
“Please.”
“You are old enough to drink, aren’t you?”
Solveig recoiled. “For several years now.”
Rose shrug
ged, sniffed the bottle, and poured two glasses.
“Skål!” Rose raised her arm in imitation of a cliché Viking. “Well, in my country it started with tax breaks for the rich and spending cuts on the domestic infrastructure, like education, that enabled working people to produce all of that wealth. It’s been a vicious circle.”
She took another swig of wine, studying the color and shaking her head. “Working people like me enjoyed short-term prosperity only by borrowing. When limits were reached, people worked harder, and longer. Productivity increased but not their real wages. They got angry and blamed the government, naturally. But what else can protect us from the rich and powerful?” She closed her eyes and seemed to grit her teeth. “They—I won’t say, we—elected that obscene, unstable, duck-brained con-artist. I won’t even mention his name.”
“Hasn’t your country become less aggressive?”
“Yeah, now we’ve run out of money. The government couldn’t take on more debt. Financing by bond sales and printing money reached its limits. Cutting back more on domestic spending only reduced productivity, so their hand was forced. They have to play dead. Yeah, I guess it’s true; the market has its sick way of curing all ills.” Rose tossed back the rest of her glass in one gulp. “But I do have hope for my country: your generation. If it ever gets into power.”
Solveig took a burning gulp from her glass, then coughed. “We have a democracy in Norway, and I thought you did in the US.”
“Don’t be too idly content about your democracy. It can get into big messes, whether the people like it or not. Our presidents kept expanding wars with new drone technology, always calling it ‘defense.’ Imagine all nations doing that! There’s another reason why you’d better be careful how all that AI technology of yours gets used. If any of it blows up in our faces, it’s the likes of you who’ll take the blame.”
Solveig put her glass of wine on the coffee table and rested her face in her hands. Work, purpose, meaning, all called into question.
“But look, you can’t be inspired if you’re always serious. It’ll kill your creativity.” Rose put a jostling arm on Solveig’s shoulder. “Cultivate that sense of humor. It’ll keep you going. It’s something AI will never have, will it?”
Solveig offered up a weak smile.
Rose repeated her Viking gesture. “Skål!”
Solveig, now the leader of the China mission, found herself staring down into her bathroom sink, hands on the porcelain sides and arms straight, tasting toothpaste rather than wine. A gentle wave of jetlag nausea sent her shoulders rocking from side to side.
“Go work it out in the gym,” she whispered, “whatever it is.”
A few minutes later she stood undressed, exercise clothes in hand. Her phone flashed and rang.
“Take a message,” she told it.
“Solveig, we need to talk . . . ,” Erik’s voice said.
She sat on the bed, letting the clothes drop.
“I need to talk to you. You left so abruptly, we didn’t have time to work things out. I really don’t blame you; we didn’t connect much in the last few weeks. You had to prepare. But after I drove your mum home, when we got to the island and I was standing in her house, I realized what was happening. Me standing there, where you grew up, and you on the other side of the world. It seemed really wrong.” He paused for a few breaths. “I should send along greetings from a friend of yours from grade school, Helle. She dropped off her mum to visit with yours just as I was leaving.” A few more breaths, then a clearing throat. “Call me. And I’ll call you.”
Like a robot with low batteries, she put on her exercise clothes, slumping as she laced up her training shoes.
Damn! Doesn’t he get it?
In the empty elevator on the way down, she closed her eyes and calmed her breathing, letting herself follow the trail of memories spinning away from the phone message, back almost three decades.
“Well, well, what is Solveig Kleiveland doing here? And all alone at that!” The bellowing voice of the shop manager had resonated throughout the store for all to hear.
Solveig, six years old, stood in the aisle, frozen and alert. Everyone in the shop must be glaring at her and wondering the same thing. She was on the spot, as though she had done something wrong. Worst of all, one of Helle’s allies was there, glowering at her.
She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d followed her instructions and, as she walked the kilometer down the hill from home, she’d not spoken to anyone she didn’t recognize. Not that she’d seen anyone until she came to the bridge over the main road through Hauge, not even her older cousin whom her mother had secretly asked to trail her. In the shop, she’d gone directly to the correct aisle and selected a loaf of freshly baked whole-grain bread. She’d stuck her nose into the bag, fingers squeezing the sides, and felt the gratification of a huntress as the aroma rose around her face.
Then she was spotted. She the prey, or a thief caught in the act and with all attention drawn to her. She looked up at the smiling round face peering down at her.
He winked. “You made it just fine and found yourself a good loaf, you did. Your mum rang and told me you’d be coming. Good for you!”
Solveig felt the hotel elevator decelerate as it neared the bottom floor. The doors opened to reveal the entrance to a lively gym.
“You were silly then to worry so much,” she mumbled under her breath, “but maybe you need to ask again. What are you doing here?”
Chapter Three
Solveig had chosen an elliptical trainer in the first row, facing the mirrored wall of the gym. She warmed up one foot pursuing the other in a circle of up and down, back and forth: repetition in pursuit of progress. Another conundrum.
She slowed her pace to survey the half-filled gym.
Biological machines on top of mechanical ones, she thought. May it remain that way.
While her reddened hands gripped tightly, her feet, in men’s athletic shoes, looked more a part of the machine than of her body. Her opinion of them could change like their up-and-down motion. At times she could even feel proud of those size forty-three objects.
She glanced at the shoes cycling on the machine next to her. About size thirty-four, she guessed, neat and petite in lady’s athletic wear. She surveyed the other patrons. Most were preoccupied: video screens, music, or phones. As far as she could tell, they paid no attention to the oversized, reddish-blonde foreigner.
Stig called me “Big Red.” His hair is bright red. And our weight difference? Reminds me of what that jerk civics teacher said. At least you proved him wrong.
Solveig and her high school instructor had argued after class one day about the economics of climate change.
“The problem,” he’d said, “is that even after spending a vast amount of money today, tomorrow you might not get the results you wanted. And those paying the costs now might not be the same as those benefiting later.”
“Their children will!” she’d replied.
He suggested to Solveig as she shook her head, that those with more influence probably could provide for their own offspring in any event. Those who owned established industries would be motivated to oppose any alternative technology they didn’t or couldn’t own, or that would compete with ones they already did. For consumers, immediate gratification had become increasingly important, and there was less concern about “distant” repercussions.
“It’s like overeating and gaining weight,” he concluded, with a direct stare and questioning eyebrows. “Patterns of behavior can be as difficult for societies to change as they are for individuals. It’s much easier to think it won’t be necessary to give up what you like.”
She turned red-faced as she looked down at her full figure. Her throat hardened, then she stood up and walked out.
Solveig, pumping the machine in the hotel gym, checked her trimmed-down thighs.
You’ve got to be wary, even with people you know.
A pair of athletic-looking legs moved through the center of her
vision.
“Mind if I join you?”
He stood between her and the empty recumbent cycle to her right.
“Please do, Reidar” she said.
He slung his towel over the seatback, sat down, and began pumping at an easy pace.
“It’s interesting, being here,” he said. “Such a huge nation. Compared to this, Norway is little more than a few mountain chains between the North Sea and part of the European Union. When disagreements come up, how will Norway hold its position?”
“You’re worried about the power disparity?”
“I should be. In my opinion we should still be part of NATO. When the coups happened, most of us working in security felt that our government should’ve been more patient before pulling out.”
“Personal view, Commander?”
“I’m a civilian here, Senior Project Manager Kleiveland.”
“Did you know the Chinese gave me that title so I’d have the same status as Deng AnDe?”
“Actually, our government had insisted on it.”
“I guess you’ve more inside scoop than I do. I’m told you’ve even got your own contact in the Defense Ministry.”
“Because of my additional role, monitoring the security of our mission.”
“So how do you explain our country wanting to do this?”
Reidar pointed to Norway’s history of exploring both physical and political frontiers: the North Pole, the South Pole, Fritjof Nansen later being a leader in the League of Nations, and the first Secretary General of the United Nations being a Norwegian.
“And then,” he added, “there was the World Council on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Bruntland. Someone you admire, I would guess?”
“You guess correctly.”
“Well, their report on ‘Our Common Heritage’ laid the groundwork for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Those are values we take seriously.”
