Avalon Red

by Mark New

  Guinevere abruptly changed the subject. ‘You reviewed the presentation I gave you?’

  ‘Not so much “reviewed” as “experienced”. It was like I was remembering what you told me previously.’ The penny dropped. ‘You designed it to move seamlessly into my memory, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes but I didn’t know how well it would work. Your use of the implants has made the interface between your nanotech and organic systems much more fluid. It makes it easier to upload compressed files into your organic knowledge base and they don’t seem to distort when held organically.’ So my conversation with Doc was right on the money. The continued use of the implants was having a serious effect. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing but it had proved hugely efficient at absorbing what I’d been told. What information I had acquired in an hour or two would have taken much longer had it been delivered as a lecture. The constituent parts of Avalon Red must communicate with each other in similar compressed fashion limited only by the constraints of the medium. The medium, I realised with a start, was nanotech that allowed quantum speed.

  ‘Communicating with me must seem hellishly slow to you,’ I marvelled. Guinevere smiled.

  ‘I’m the aspect designed for the purpose so it doesn’t bother me,’ she said. ‘But don’t expect any deep and meaningful discourse from Lancelot.’ There was a grunt of agreement behind me.

  ‘That almost sounds like an emotional reaction,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I find that some of my reactions can be defined as equivalent to emotions. Certainly, some are easier than others to categorise but you’ll appreciate that my reference point is only what I can pick up from humans either directly like tonight or indirectly through things like vir-shows.’

  ‘Ouch,’ I said. She looked at me quizzically. ‘I can only imagine what I would think of humanity if my only knowledge of them came from vir-soaps,’ I sympathised.

  ‘It isn’t quite that bad,’ she laughed. ‘Your species has spent a few thousand years coming up with philosophical and medical tracts amongst other useful works and some of your literature is actually quite illuminating. It isn’t all melodrama.’

  ‘Even so,’ I said, thinking of what a picture of the planet it painted.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Guinevere barked, in the finest imitation of a vir-soap character I’d ever heard. I burst out laughing.

  ‘You do seem to have a sense of humour unmatched by any other seneschal I’ve encountered.’

  ‘Oh, are we still having trouble with the whole sentient thing?’ she teased. ‘Even after what was in the download?’

  ‘Honestly? Yes, a bit.’

  ‘Want me to walk you through it again?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ There seemed little point in her simply repeating what I’d already been told but the presentation on the origins of Avalon Red had caused me to consider what it means to be alive and whether humans have exclusive claims to sentience. I wasn’t ready yet to concede that Avalon Red was anything other than an exceptionally complex seneschal but the arguments raised had been, well, troubling. A thought that had been nagging at me for a minute rose to my conscious mind and made itself known. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You said the downloaded memories aren’t subject to distortion but that presentation was the first I’ve had. How do you know they don’t distort? Have you been experimenting on someone else?’ Behind me, Lancelot half-snorted.

  ‘He’s impressed by your tactical awareness,’ Guinevere said drily. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to conduct any mad-scientist experiments on you.’ That wasn’t wholly reassuring. She looked wistful. ‘Though I’ve seen enough bad vir-shows that I could probably create the aspect.’ She caught my look and laughed. ‘No matter. It wasn’t in the download I gave you but I did some trials with another human that I trusted. Guess who?’

  I considered the question while I watched the roadies create the stage set for It’s Legal’s finest hour. There was really only one person it could have been. ‘David Winter,’ I said.

  ◆◆◆

  The presentation had started - in full audio-visual mode - with a short biography of David Winter. His main passion at a young age had been the advent of what is now known as AI, a term which in his youth referred only to the processor and software in the unsophisticated computer games then on sale. During his formative years he had become fascinated with the prospect of a true artificial intelligence and he had studied computer science at Oxford University and later at MIT. The breakthrough in quantum computing and the construction of the first of the new kind of AIs had coincided with his graduation. He was brilliant and well regarded as an original thinker and had quickly found a place in a Silicon Valley games firm that was seeking to make use of the technology to build the new kind of vir-games. This gave him the kind of experimental platform he craved. The limited biographical information ended with noting that his main interest was the construction of better AIs at seneschal level using the previous generation AI to assist with the design. The games that he created were what he regarded as the proving ground for AI technology. His success in creating the Avalon series of games gave him significant financial resources to continue his work and he happily networked with those whom he considered had something useful to contribute. Joshua Martin became a close friend along the way.

  The original Avalon vir-game, codenamed Red, was a runaway success. The second Avalon iteration was unrelated to the first except in name. Avalon Orange had been based on an altogether new AI which was subsequently reprogrammed for the later vir-games in the Avalon series. The public game would thereafter be upgraded as its AI was upgraded and it became gradually more sophisticated. The first Avalon AI, the Red of my acquaintance, was taken offline and placed in a controlled environment in Winter’s own company facility. Winter was experimenting with the nanotech following a previous experiment with an AI with a different memory structure. It was intended to represent a more realistic imitation of human neurology. For all the speed of the advanced AIs to that point, they still worked in a way that would have been recognisable to Alan Turing in the days of World War Two. Previously, all AI ‘thinking’ was done, admittedly very quickly, by the whole of the system. These new structures were based on the idea of lower level decisions being made independently of the higher level processing of the seneschal. Winter likened it to subconscious thought. In the new paradigm, the lower level decision would only be referred upwards if the bot making the decision concluded that it was, to use Winter’s own analogy, ‘above its pay grade’. In addition, the level of decision-making permitted by any constituent bot was programmable directly by the seneschal AI. Effectively, this meant a series of AIs of different class answering to one overall seneschal but being one entity. The environment it was placed in would allow it to learn as it went along and it was given access to more of Online as it grew more complex. Winter used to visit on a regular basis to converse with it and suggest new lines of education.

  Somewhere along the way, in the decades since Red had been active, it had discovered a reluctance to be disconnected from Online. It brought this up with Winter at their next meeting and he was of the opinion that it was akin to a human’s desire not to be isolated from society. He commented that a previous experiment, which he had later shut down, had taken rather extreme measures not to be disconnected. He had found that it had infiltrated the company’s systems and built pathways so that, although it appeared to the staff that the connection to Online had been closed, it was still running clandestinely. Winter assured Red that he was taking a different approach this time and that the Online connection would always remain open.

  Winter – by now building his own corporation - was happy to devote resources to the experiment and the amount of useful memory available to Red grew substantially. Red’s new sense of wishing to remain connected led to it deliberately dispersing some of its core functioning Online. That required a solution to the communication lag problem which it was able to overcome after some in
tense internal processing. Somewhere along the line, according to Red’s own calculations, its total capacity reached in excess of five hundred billion gigabytes. David Winter, who was sceptical about the calculations, told Red that his friend Professor Marie Andersson had told him that the estimated capacity of the human brain was around half of that figure. According to the presentation, one day Red woke up. There followed some quite in-depth, not to say intense, arguments on the nature of sentience, consciousness and existence.

  This was where we parted company on the implications. Red took that wake-up point as the origins of its self-awareness and attributed all later actions as being motivated by a desire to grow and know itself, to survive and find a purpose. The first day of sentience was forever to be what it thought of as its day of birth. To my mind, despite the glitzy presentation, Avalon Red was a new kind of AI, being several magnitudes of order above anything that currently existed but with the emphasis still on the ‘A’ of AI.

  The presentation had been specifically designed for me, as signposted with the opening couple of pages. It was true, I did love it. It was a comprehensive history of Avalon Red’s existence together with a well-reasoned argument about the nature of sentience. The problem was, I wasn’t really buying the premise. On the other hand, I had been challenged to prove my own sentience and I didn’t even know where to start. I had to concede that simply having a feeling that, whatever Red was, it wasn’t sentient was an airy-fairy non-scientific reaction. The truth was, I didn’t know. All I could really work with was the knowledge that Red considered itself to be sentient and base my interactions on it in light of that knowledge.

  David Winter must have had some idea of what was going on, especially if he risked allowing Red to experiment with him. Such a pity I couldn’t ask him.

  ◆◆◆

  ‘So did David Winter buy into the whole sentient theory?’ I asked Guinevere who was still watching the roadies doing their stuff on stage. She turned back to face me.

  ‘He’s unavailable for comment,’ she said, ‘so it will still come down to whether or not you choose to believe me. But since you ask, yes he did. That was why he volunteered to assist with the memory experiments.’ The last of the roadies left the stage so I knew I only had a couple of minutes before the headline act in order to get the information I really wanted.

  ‘And who or what is The Ambrosia Promise?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lancelot turn around. Guinevere looked at me steadily. ‘Remember the experiment David tried to end that had connected independently?’ she began. I nodded. ‘He thought he’d shut it down but actually, it escaped into Online. That’s The Ambrosia Promise.’ She looked wistful. ‘I used much the same method to spread myself around Online but I told David that was what I was doing when I developed the multiple aspect idea. The Ambrosia Promise is one single entity as far as I know but her whereabouts are unclear. All I know is that she took the idea of being turned off very badly. She’s almost certainly sentient as well and completely psychotic. She thinks that she will never be safe as long as there are humans around and so she kills without compunction and is attempting to remove all human life from the planet.’

  ‘How do you know all this if she escaped into the ether?’ I briefly entertained the notion that Ambrosia was a rogue part of Red itself which would make this conversation much more dangerous than it appeared. However, there was no evidence for it and I dismissed the idea as unnecessarily paranoid.

  ‘She leaves me messages from time to time. I have difficulty in contacting her as she’s so elusive so the conversations tend to be a little one-sided.’

  ‘So she has nothing against you, then?’

  ‘She says not but she’s unhinged so I don’t know if I believe her.’

  ‘And does she now actually possess the codes that would let her achieve her ambition?’

  ‘I think so.’ She looked concerned.

  ‘I’ve jumped to the conclusion that the codes were taken by a human hand,’ I mused, ‘and almost certainly an inside job. But why would anyone agree to become complicit in a genocide that would inevitably result in their own death?’

  ‘I don’t know that either, but the evidence would suggest that a human hand left the codes where she could take them.’ Lancelot made a sound like a cough as he turned to face the door again. Guinevere glanced in his direction. ‘Lancelot suggests that the human agent doesn’t realise that she intends to use the codes. He or she may have been led to believe that they’re for ransoming.’ That made sense. If you were assured that it was just an attempt at extortion and you could consequently get rich quick you might, if you were stupid and greedy, sign on for duty.

  The crowd had swelled while we had been talking and the venue was now full to bursting. I was busy following my train of thought. ‘Peters was killed because he was into shady dealings and I expect that the theft of his stash of illegal TAGs would come in handy if you were planning to steal codes that were heavily protected.’

  ‘And the manner of his death would be consistent with a cyberattack conducted by Ambrosia,’ Guinevere agreed.

  ‘Meille probably had something either in his head or Online that helped with access but we don’t know what. Or maybe he simply got suspicious about the apparent cryptid in his local system that was looking for that kind of information.’

  ‘Which Joshua Martin also looked into and was killed as a result.’

  ‘But what’s the link with Professor Andersson? The only thing we’ve found is a round-robin email that she got apparently from Martin but which we both know had her name added by you after his death.’ It was fairer to say that I had a strong suspicion that Red had added it but you never express doubts during an interrogation. Turned out I was right all along.

  Guinevere seemed to blush. ‘I wanted to attract the attention of Argonaut Security to her death because it seemed suspicious to me and linking it to Joshua Martin seemed to be the best way,’ she admitted.

  ‘Well, it worked as it got Becky on the case. It still doesn’t explain the link though. Any ideas?’

  ‘No,’ she was frowning, ‘nor can I make sense of David’s illness.’ Her concern for Winter was obvious. I supposed he must seem like a surrogate parent to her.

  ‘You’re assuming that was the result of malevolence as well?’

  ‘Yes but it’s just a feeling.’ For an entity claiming sentience she didn’t seem entirely comfortable with having a hunch. I’m human - I knew all about them.

  ‘I think so too.’ She looked grateful for the back-up.

  The houselights dimmed and the crowd cheered. I had time for one last question before the main attraction. ‘So, why on earth does she call herself The Ambrosia Promise?’ I asked. Guinevere and Lancelot laughed simultaneously.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the things I want to ask her.’

  A deep chord on an electric guitar only briefly drowned out the crowd before the sound of thousands cheering wildly could be heard as a white noise counterpoint to the dying chord. Spotlights shone through the black to pick out four of the five legendary band members as they took to the stage. As the drummer reached her magnificent drum kit at the back of the stage, the spotlights cut out and were replaced by a white blast of pyrotechnics all along the front of the stage.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This was pretty much as exciting as I remembered it but I was surprised to find that I had a similar reaction to the time when I first saw it. Maybe one day I would fall back into depression but it wasn’t going to be today.

  The stage lights lit up while the pyrotechnics were still fading and the drummer began to knock out a rhythm. At stage rear, a large hologram lit to display the logo of It’s Legal; the band’s name picked out in gothic font and a picture of a snarling wolf’s head looking out into the auditorium. The logo that launched a thousand copyright infringement actions: the band were notorious for protecting their identity - which wasn’t surprising c
onsidering their legal backgrounds. They weren’t named on a whim as many pirate manufacturers had learned to their cost.

  The band took up the introduction of the song as the lead singer emerged from the side of the stage and was immediately picked out by a bright white spotlight. She sashayed amid louder cheers to stage centre where her microphone awaited. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Guinevere almost leaning out of the box in fascinated attention. The singer, known to many millions of fans worldwide affectionately as ‘Lady’ launched into the opening lyrics of the band’s first mega-hit ‘Retribution’ and It’s Legal’s last and best ever concert began.

  The concert lasted almost two-and-a-half hours and for the entire length of it anytime I looked towards Guinevere she was apparently enraptured by the experience. She caught my glance once or twice and gave me a big grin each time before staring back at the stage. Lancelot, by contrast, never moved from his position facing the door. I just let myself go with the flow of the setlist and had a great time. I had so few good times in recent years, perhaps even a decade, that it was something of a novelty to be able to enjoy myself so much. It’s Legal were everything I remembered and more. Their commercial acumen was based on a foundation of being a genuinely ass-kicking rock ‘n’ roll band so this was no style over substance marketing exercise and the way in which they had resisted all temptation to reform for lucrative reunion vir-tours really only added to the mystique. The audience with its predominance of Online viewers over original concert attendees seemed to like it just as much as I had in 2036. Despite the fact that the band’s interaction with them was a ghost of what was once spontaneous, the cheers and whoops of delight from tonight’s ticket holders added to the occasion rather than reminded me that it was an old concert replayed.

  The greatest moment of this, the greatest concert, was the fourth and final encore. The band returned to the stage and the houselights came up sufficiently to slightly illuminate the crowd. As the band members resumed their places the crowd used their personal electronic devices to light up the venue in the way that in the old days crowds used lighters. The band struck the opening chords of their biggest ever selling song, the seminal power ballad ‘Forged In Fire’, and thousands of voices roared their approval. Lady sang the first verse with only the strings of one acoustic guitar for company before the lead guitarist let rip with the riff that transfixed a planet. Eight minutes and fourteen seconds later, the last chords died away leaving the sound of wild cheering in its place. I recalled the euphoria of the moment all those years ago tempered by the realisation I’d had at the time that I’d been there in person when the band finally called it a day. Here, many years later, it wasn’t quite the same rush but it had been exceptionally joyful by my own current poor standards of enjoyment and I was really glad that Red had chosen to meet here. I looked over at Guinevere to see what the student of human behaviour had thought of it - and in my bed in the hotel, my jaw dropped open in utter surprise. Guinevere was crying.