The Mercury Rebellion

by Felix R. Savage

  Elfrida was thrown by what seemed like a complete change of subject. “What?”

  “The stross-class. Fastest, smartest telepresence platform ever built. Sorry to bring back bad memories. Well, the idea was to upgrade those vinge-classes to stross-class.”

  “Wow, ma’am. What an excellent idea.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Goto. It doesn’t suit you. The truth, which I am in a position to know and you are not, is that the stross-class got a bad rap. People overreacted to the Galapagos incident. The development program was cancelled, but Derek Lorna, the lead developer, didn’t give up. He and his team at LiRI kept working on the stross-class. He was convinced—he convinced me—that he could build a friendly AI.”

  “I guess that would be a major breakthrough.”

  “It would be huge! Everyone believes no such thing is possible. Anything with human-equivalent intelligence, or greater, is intrinsically hostile to human goals. Or at best indifferent to them, like those Chinese no-we’re-not-really-AIs. Yadda, yadda, received wisdom, yadda. But friendly AI is possible. I know it. What happened on Callisto proved it. Derek saw Angelica Lin talk those phavatars down.”

  “Um, maybe he was lying about what he saw?”

  “No. He wasn’t. Those sixty-eight hostages walked out of there alive. How else are you going to explain that? Konstantin’s phavatars became what he had always said they were: friendly AIs. Angelica made it happen. All it takes … is faith.”

  “So you thought you were going to replicate the same effect?”

  “Chances better than even,” dos Santos said defiantly.

  “All right. I get what happened. Mike Vlajkovic thought the firmware upgrades were jailbreaking software. You thought they were Derek Lorna’s stross-class upgrades, which would turn the vinge-classes into friendly AIs. But when the code was actually installed in the phavatars, it turned out to be none of the above. It was the Heidegger program.”

  “Someone screwed up,” dos Santos said, as she had back at UNVRP HQ.

  “Did you tell Doug this stuff just now?”

  “Yeah, some. But he stopped listening after ‘friendly AI.’ Which I guess I understand.”

  “Call him back. Tell him everything.”

  “No,” dos Santos said. “I’m not telling that asshole anything. I am going to get off this planet myself, and find out exactly what went wrong. I am not going to die here!”

  Elfrida instinctively reached out to her. She let her glove fall back before the gesture took form. She tried to figure out whether this changed their own situation.

  Her gaze drifted over their pathetic stash of supplies. All those snacks and drinks from the concession stand, which they couldn’t consume, because they were stuck in EVA suits. And that mysterious pelican case, which dos Santos had lugged all the way from UNVRP HQ, and salvaged from the Sunmersible, heavy though it was, and cumbersome.

  “Dos Santos?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s in that case?”

  “Never you mind,” dos Santos snapped.

  Elfrida was just about to get angry at her when the toaster array trilled in her helmet. They both jumped.

  “Hey, Ms. Goto. This is Doug. Uh, Gloomy Doug.”

  “Where’s Grumpy Doug?” Elfrida said.

  “Busy. Things are not looking good here. I just thought you might want to know that our radiation-monitoring equipment has detected a spike a couple thousand klicks out. The neutron/gamma ratio matches the signature of an enhanced-radiation warhead.”

  “So?” Elfrida said.

  “Oh, fuck,” said dos Santos.

  “What?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that implies,” Gloomy Doug sighed. “On the bright side, the Crash Test Dummy is no longer visible to our ground-based instruments. That could mean it is currently around the far side of the planet, but our operating assumption is that it got nuked.”

  “Or maybe it just left,” dos Santos broke in, “masking its emissions by setting off a nuke behind the ship. If I were a homicidal AI, I would have better things to do than hang around this miserable planet, I’m telling you.”

  “Is that Angelica Lin?”

  “Yes, no, kinda,” dos Santos said.

  “Well, ma’am, I don’t often express myself like this, but: get fucked. Thanks to you and your bullshit ideology, we’re now under attack by the PLAN.” Click.

  “The PLAN,” Elfrida said. “It can’t be.”

  “Why not? Why the hell not?”

  “Because, well, I mean, things can’t possibly get any worse.”

  Dos Santos laughed. “You did not actually just say that.”

  Elfrida was in no mood to laugh at herself. She jumped, grabbed the lip of the entrance to the cave, and peered out. Her faceplate immediately darkened to black. She dropped back into the cave. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she’d be able to see the PLAN from here.

  Dos Santos was pacing the cave, visibly distressed.

  “Sit down,” Elfrida said. “You’ll use up your oxygen faster that way.”

  “So what?”

  “We might as well try to stay alive as long as possible.”

  “You don’t understand. The Crash Test Dummy is gone.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “I was counting on that ship for our ride out of here.”

  “After it tried to kill us in the Sunmersible? Did you think it was going to see the light, apologize, and put down a GTV?” Elfrida bit her lip. That sounded like a gratuitously cruel sneer at dos Santos’s belief that AIs could be converted, for want of a better word, to the side of good. She hadn’t meant it that way. She didn’t disbelieve dos Santos.

  But she didn’t believe her, either.

  “I may be an idealist, but I’m not an idiot,” dos Santos said bleakly. “Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference now. The damn ship’s gone.”

  “I could teach you a breathing exercise I know. My therapist told me about it, back on Earth.”

  ★

  Time passed. The sun rose a fraction of an arc minute higher in Mercury’s sky.

  ★

  A sliver of refracted sunlight struck into their cave, and roused Elfrida from a doze of exhaustion. The light caught the top of dos Santos’s helmet.

  Dos Santos was sorting through the contents of Elfrida’s handbag.

  “Hey! That’s mine!” Although it wasn’t, actually.

  “I’m just seeing what we’ve got. Five Xenogourmet meals-in-pouches. Four liters of water. One rope. One Personal Survival Capsule.” Dos Santos held up the cylinder that contained the compressed Personal Survival Capsule. “The air supply for the PSC.” Another, larger cylinder. Dos Santos used her helmet lamp to read off its label, “‘Contains 2.5 kilograms of oxygen under a pressure of 10,000 kilopascals. Don’t worry! When conserved and recycled by the PSC, this is sufficient for 24 hours of respiration!’” She tossed the cylinder aside. “Only two point five kilos. How cheap can you get?”

  “I’ve still got twelve hours left in my suit’s tanks, counting the emergency supply.”

  “I’ve only got four and a half.”

  “Maybe you should get into the PSC.”

  “But if I did, you wouldn’t be able to get in afterwards. And if we both got in, that would be a waste of what’s left in your suit.” Dos Santos turned the handbag upside-down, shook it, and threw it aside.

  “We can’t eat any of our food, either, unless we get in the PSC.” Elfrida casually snagged the handbag with her foot and moved it closer to herself, further away from dos Santos.

  “There is that. We’ll probably have to get in the damn capsule, like Zazoë Heap. Not yet, though.”

  Dos Santos leaned back against the folds of parasol rucked up at the back of the cave. She folded her gloves in her lap.

  ★

  More time passed.

  ★

  “Have you checked out the sim recently?” Elfrida said.

  “No.”
>
  “You should have a look.”

  “Why?”

  “Just look.”

  “OK,” dos Santos said, “that’s … interesting.”

  The landscape in the sim had changed.

  They seemed to be sitting at the foot of a low cliff, in its shadow. That hadn’t changed. But now, they were looking out across a terrestrial desert. Gone were the sculptures of giant slugs that had previously distinguished this vista. Tufts of vegetation dotted the dry, pebbly soil. In the distance, a group of broken-down vehicles stood on a road that ran straight as a ruler across the desert, towards them.

  Elfrida had flown her avatar over the vehicles already, and ascertained that they were WWIII tanks, non-functional.

  “Where do you think this is meant to be?” dos Santos said.

  “The Anatolian plains? Maybe southern Iran? I dunno.”

  “Yeah. Everywhere in that part of the world looked pretty much the same by the end of World War Three. Of course, if this were real, we’d be dying of radiation poisoning.”

  “I can’t figure out how it got into my contacts.” Elfrida raised her hands to the outside of her helmet. She wanted to pluck her contacts out of her eyes, check out of this movie. She could turn the sim off, but she’d still know it was there.

  “It isn’t in your contacts. The sim is publically editable. The toasters’re still on, and … yes, look, picking up a signal. So your copy of the sim is auto-updating.” Dos Santos’s voice was neutral. Elfrida had expected her to be as horrified as she was, but she seemed to be interested.

  “It’s still changing.” Elfrida pointed at the sky. “That was Earth’s sun. Now …”

  The orb in the sky was larger and redder than it should be, sinking towards the western horizon.

  Dos Santos’s avatar squinted in the same direction. But she was not looking at the bloated sun. “Something’s coming,” she said.

  A puff of dust rose on the horizon.

  ★

  They discussed turning the toaster radio off, but decided not to. It would be pointless, as their location was already known. They took turns to stay awake and monitor the sim.

  The puff of dust got closer, very slowly.

  Elfrida did some reading up on World War III, using the encyclopedia in her contacts.

  “Also known as the Last War on Earth,” her unicorn told her. “Started when the Shekau Caliphate formed an alliance with the People’s Republic of China, threatening to sever shipping routes between the United States and its UN allies. The bombing of an American space station provided a casus belli. Soon, the conflict escalated into the proxy war between the USA and the PRC which statesmen on both sides had long predicted, and dreaded. The death toll swiftly mounted into the millions, and refugee flows threatened to overwhelm Europe and India. These pressures forced the UN countries into a tighter alliance, which is seen as the forerunner of today’s UN government.

  “Increasingly isolated, and with the PRC itself under threat from Russian and Vietnamese territorial incursions, China ended the conflict by nuking its former ally, the Shekau Caliphate. Though confined to the region, the nuclear fallout affected the global climate, triggering the Long Winter of 2155-57. The Middle East was left largely uninhabitable. But! That was a long time ago, and clean-up efforts have been really successful! You can travel anywhere in the region now! Most of the Arabian peninsula is covered by jungle! Ask your parents about the Ancient History for Kids Tours sponsored by Unicorn Tears®. But make sure you bring your own air-conditioner, because it’s hot!”

  “Oh, frag off,” Elfrida said. The unicorn’s perkiness no longer amused her. It was a kiddie toy. It couldn’t help her anymore.

  She glanced at the horizon again. The puff of dust had come even closer. The dust was rising in a cloud, not squirting out linearly, like it would in a vacuum. Attention had been paid to detail.

  Dos Santos’s avatar lay at the foot of the scarp beside Elfrida, a rock for her pillow. Asleep, she looked about twelve.

  Elfrida smoothed her own avatar’s short skirt over her chubby knees.

  A bit hot …

  xliii.

  Dos Santos opened her eyes and stretched. “I’ve only got half an hour of air left,” she said. “I’m going to get into the Personal Survival Capsule.”

  Elfrida nodded. She was stiff all over. It had been hours since she moved at all, except to sip rehydration fluid.

  “No comment?” dos Santos said.

  “I was in love with you once,” Elfrida said.

  There was a short silence.

  “Yes, I know. You told me.”

  “I didn’t know you very well then.”

  “I’ve often thought about that day,” dos Santos said. “Wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t turned you down.”

  “Pretty much the same as what did happen,” Elfrida said, “except my heart would have been broken worse.”

  “I’m sorry, Goto. I never knew … I guess I didn’t think your feelings were real. You were just a kid. I didn’t want to hurt you.” Dos Santos’s avatar laughed miserably. “Maybe you should go for a man next time.”

  “Next time?”

  “I was just joking. But they’re different. It’s not as emotional.”

  Elfrida thought about the only man she’d ever gone for, John Mendoza. She ended up thinking about him for a long time. When she snapped out of it, she realized that several minutes had passed. “Shouldn’t you get into the PSC?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. I was falling asleep there.” Dos Santos’s avatar stood up, its movements wobbly. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

  “It would be too tight of a fit.”

  Dos Santos laughed dryly. “Oh, well. I asked.”

  Elfrida put her face in her hands. She did not feel anything, of course, because she was only cupping her helmet in her gloves. A long-denied ache gnawed at her.

  “Too bad,” dos Santos said. Her avatar winked out of existence. Her voice, disembodied, added: “You would have tasted good.”

  Elfrida jerked upright and stared at the place where dos Santos had vanished.

  “Joke, joke. I was just remembering how you ate that guy on 11073 Galapagos.”

  Elfrida felt a stab of anger. She couldn’t believe dos Santos had thrown that at her. She was about to say something defensive when the puff of dust in the distance distracted her.

  Whoever was coming, they were a lot closer than she’d thought. She’d been waiting to make out the shapes of vehicles. But there were no vehicles. The dust was being kicked up by humanoid figures, running.

  “They’re almost here,” she said.

  “What?” Dos Santos reappeared. “Shit. I only have like five minutes of air left.”

  “Get in the PSC. I’ll deal with them. If they’re real.”

  Elfrida blinked the sim away. Beside her in the cave, dos Santos was fussing with the capsule that held the PSC. She shook out a mass of silky orange fabric. “I never went camping,” she said.

  “You probably just push a button.” Elfrida jumped, caught the lip of the cave with her gloves, and hauled herself up until her helmet was level with the surface of the landslide. As before, her faceplate turned black. She grabbed hold of another rock to pull herself out. This time, she reached out beyond the edge of the shadow, into the sunlight. Her suit—silent for the last few hours—immediately screamed, “No! Ow! Ow! I’m burning!”

  Elfrida let go and thumped back down into the cave. Damage alerts flashed in her HUD.

  “I just exceeded my temperature tolerance. My hand feels warm.”

  “Were you planning on going out for a walk?”

  Dos Santos stepped into the PSC, holding the oxygen cylinder under her arm. She pulled the PSC over her head, so that she looked like a big orange caterpillar. The fabric heaved around as she fastened the seals from inside.

  Elfrida blinked back into the sim.

  The running figures were much closer now. She could see that they were soldi
ers in WWIII vintage uniforms. They wore visored half-helmets and knee-high sneakers advertising vanished brands.

  She walked her avatar out into the dull, reddish sunlight.

  The soldiers halted in a semicircle around her. There were three of them. Sweat soaked their tees. One, a woman, had her left arm in a fluorescent yellow sling. Their weapons looked too overengineered to be reliable, with lots of knobby bits, but she had read enough in her encyclopedia to know that one of those could level a town.

  She recognized the soldier facing her. VC000632, a.k.a. Gonzo.

  He swigged water from a camelpak. The sight made her thirsty. Dust caked the creases in his farm-boy face. “Hey-ho, shorty,” he said.

  “Hey-ho, yourself. What are you doing here?”

  “Imagining the death of the solar system.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Elfrida said.

  “Life is pain, Your Highness. Anyone who says anything else is trying to sell you something.”

  “Wrong movie,” said the female soldier.

  Gonzo flipped her a middle finger without taking his gaze off Elfrida. “No amount of terraforming can stop the sun from expanding into a red giant.”

  “Are you talking about the future?”

  “The deep future.”

  “Who cares about the deep future?” Elfrida cried. “It’s billions of years off! We’ll all be dead by that time, anyway!”

  “Not necessarily,” said Gonzo, “if you’re an AI.”

  He threw his helmet in the air. It disintegrated into a cloud of bright motes.

  “Nanoships. One possible way for sentience to escape the death of the solar system, travelling at 99% of the speed of light.”

  Dos Santos’s avatar materialized at Elfrida’s side. “First the planets, then the stars, huh?” she said.

  “Oh, we’re not in any hurry,” Gonzo said.

  “No, clearly not.” Dos Santos was barefoot. She looked very fragile next to the soldiers. “You’ve got all the time in the world. Running around in sunlight that’s hot enough to boil water. That can’t be doing those crapped-out old vinge-classes any good.”

  “You took me,” said the fourth soldier, who had Disciple of Satan tattooed on his forearms. It was probably the name of a 21st-century band. “Give me back, or I will frag you.”