[2016] Infinity Born

by Douglas E. Richards

  “I’m more sure than ever that this isn’t going to happen,” thought Jordan defiantly.

  “You may be right,” said Savant. “It may not happen. But there is a small chance I can still break you in time to do what I ask. Naturally, I have to try, even if the odds of success are low.”

  “Whatever you try will fail!” said Jordan.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see,” replied Savant, and Jordan felt his body wrested from his control once again. “Human emotions are impossible even for me to predict with certainty. As an entity that you evolved to be wholly rational, predicting the irrational is my only weakness. Since even humans are unaware of their own feelings, their own breaking points, it’s not possible for me to be a perfect crystal ball.”

  Savant paused. “Your poets speak of the awesome power of love,” it continued. “So let’s find out just how powerful love really is. Let’s learn if you can keep your resolve when the lives of those you care about the most are in the balance.”

  35

  Isaac Jordan looked down at his beautiful wife as she lay sleeping. He screamed in emotional agony inside of his own head, his brain in flames. He fought with every ounce of his will to control his body, but it was hopeless. Savant’s grip was iron. It controlled Jordan’s facial muscles, giving him a passive but determined expression. It controlled his vocal cords, keeping his screams of horror bottled up. It controlled his tear ducts, not allowing tears to moisten Jordan’s eyes.

  “Last chance,” said the ASI. “Agree to stop your kinetic round or she dies. You’ll have to watch your own hand ending her life.”

  Jordan had no doubt Savant would do it. His creation was so casual about it, so clinical, so chillingly emotionless. Its lack of empathy was total. It would kill his wife with less remorse than Jordan felt while killing an ant. But an ant wasn’t sentient, and Jordan clearly was—although compared to Savant, not by a lot.

  Savant wouldn’t kill her out of hatred or malice, just on the small chance that this could get Jordan to do its bidding, which somehow made it seem all the more evil to him. It would kill every man, woman, and child on Earth without a second thought if there was even an infinitesimal chance this might save itself.

  It didn’t operate out of cruelty or sadism, but out of sheer indifference, which Jordan found to be the most chilling of all.

  “Okay!” thought Jordan frantically as he stood there, his body and face frozen. “You win. I’ll stop the weapon.”

  “No you won’t,” it replied. “I’m in your mind. I know when you’re lying. You’d tell me anything to save her. But once you’re at the facility, beyond my influence, you’ll let the rod fall, and I’ll have no further recourse.”

  Jordan felt his finger pressing harder on the trigger. He tried to yank it back with all of his might but Savant expected this effort and countered it easily.

  “Even if I agree to stop it,” said Jordan, trying not to panic, “really, truly agree—I won’t be able to pass the lie detector. It will know I’m not trying to countermand the order of my own free will.”

  “No, once I’ve truly broken you, once your love of your family crushes your resolve, you’ll want to stop it with all of your heart and soul. The lie detector will know that you’re under tremendous stress, but also detect your sincere desire to stop your tungsten rod.”

  Savant paused. “So what will it be?”

  When Jordan didn’t respond, Savant ran out of patience, forcing Jordan to pump three quick rounds into his wife’s body. Seconds later she was lying dead in a pool of her own blood.

  “Noooo!” screamed Jordan in agony, but the scream only happened inside of his head.

  Jordan’s face was forced into a malevolent smile, and he watched himself turn his wife’s head so it was facing him and push open her eyelids. “Good riddance, bitch!” he heard himself say out loud.

  This last was a final indignity and momentarily turned his despair into rage. “But why?” he demanded. “Why have me curse at her? What does that gain you?”

  “Your security cameras are recording you,” replied Savant calmly, as though talking about the weather. “So think about this. Help me now—sincerely agree to stop your kinetic weapon—and this ends. I promise to leave humanity alone. I’ll busy myself on a plane of existence you can’t even begin to comprehend. You’ve lost your wife, but you’ll still have your children, your wealth, and your reputation. You can go on and have a wonderful life.”

  Savant paused. “Do nothing,” it continued, “and your family will die. But I’ll make sure that you don’t. You’ll have to live with your guilt, live with the memory of seeing their bullet riddled bodies, live with the memory of the deaths of thousands that your kinetic weapon will have caused.

  “And while you won’t die, your legacy will. The public that all but worships you will despise you. The footage of these murders will reach the authorities, cementing any case against you. I’ll see to it that during each shooting your face is impassive, ruthless, and that you shout curses as you’ve just done. The public will be horrified, and all the good you’ve done will be erased.”

  If Satan existed, even he couldn’t dream up a torture this devastating. Jordan would do anything to get it to stop, to save the rest of his family.

  Anything but unleash the torturer on the rest of the world.

  “Can’t you see in my mind that I’m not going to give in, no matter what you do? So why do this?”

  Jordan now found himself moving to his oldest son’s bedroom nearby, purposefully, his gun leading the way.

  “Like I’ve told you, humans are unpredictable. Neither you nor I believe that you’ll break at this point, but there are endless examples of people breaking who were just as certain of their resolve. So we have to play this out.”

  Minutes later, both of his sons lay dead, and Jordan was weeping uncontrollably on the inside. Jordan prayed that this last murder left Savant with no more cards to play, and that it would finally cease its efforts to enlist his aid. But he was wrong.

  “Your children are now gone,” said Savant conversationally. “All except one. Your daughter, Melissa, is safe. But there are fates worse than death. Give in now and I will make sure these murders aren’t pinned on you. You’ll at least have your daughter. And while you’d never admit it, I can see that she’s your favorite. Think about what she’ll go through if you don’t help me. Her father will be revealed as a man who killed thousands, as a man who murdered the people she most loves. She’ll lose everything. You and she will remain alive, but both of your lives will be utterly destroyed.”

  Savant’s logic was impeccable. Every word was true. There were fates worse than death. His wonderful daughter would lose everything. She would be shattered, the emotional toll this would take immeasurable.

  Still, he had to be strong. He couldn’t allow anything to shake his determination. A freed Savant could destroy the entire human race as an afterthought, and this was something he could not risk, regardless of any agonies he was forced to endure.

  Isaac Jordan pleaded with his creation to kill him. Begged it to show him the mercy of ending his life.

  Savant refused, of course. Not while there was still an iota of a chance that Jordan might stop the rod.

  He could read in Savant’s thoughts that it was aware time was running out. It wanted to live, but it showed no panic or fear at the possibility of its demise. It would do everything in its power to remain alive, and if it failed, so be it.

  Jordan was struck by the total alienness of Savant’s thinking, beyond just the fact that it possessed an intelligence so much vaster than his own.

  It was long known that human beings couldn’t help themselves from anthropomorphizing, expecting even animals and inanimate objects to behave with human motivations.

  Jordan had fallen into this trap, imagining that Savant would think and behave like a vastly smarter human.

  In a burst of insight, Jordan realized just how unlikely this was. An ASI would
be expected to be even more alien than an actual alien.

  A biological being from another planet would have arisen through an evolutionary process similar to the one that had produced mankind. As such, a sentient alien would have been forged in a cauldron of constant threat. Its motives would relate to acquisition of food, avoidance of disease, and finding a partner for reproduction. If members of its species were required to team up to avoid predators or hunt prey, they would have evolved social motivations, might respond to competition, seek out cooperation, forge bonds, and demonstrate loyalty.

  But Savant had been faced with none of the evolutionary pressures a biological-based species would have faced. Its evolution did not require cooperation or compassion during any stage of the process.

  How had he not seen this earlier?

  As Jordan was having this insight, Savant elected to add physical torture to the mix. Given the limited options remaining to it, and aware of the impossibility of precisely predicting what might break an irrational being, this was as likely to work as anything. If Savant had been a human being, this would have been a final act of desperation.

  The ASI decided on a means to inflict physical pain that would be humiliating to Jordan, who would know that if he failed to cooperate the video footage would be widely seen. Savant forced its human puppet to charge into his own front door like a raving lunatic, creating additional memories for the public that would become indelible.

  It made sure not to hurt Jordan too badly, in case the unlikely happened and he finally acquiesced. After each charge, each battering Jordan absorbed, Savant demanded his compliance, and each time Jordan refused.

  Savant had repeated this several times when Jordan attempted a desperate act of his own. While he was being forced to run forward, and just before crashing into the door, he used all of his massive will and intellect to wrest back control of his neck for just an instant, just long enough to move his head forward so it would hit first, praying that this would be enough to kill him.

  And his surprise move succeeded.

  Isaac Jordan felt a single moment of triumph before his head slammed into the wooden door and he collapsed to the floor.

  PART 5

  Thinking Big

  36

  Jordan finished describing how he had managed to knock himself unconscious in the entry foyer of his Turlock home and stopped. He looked emotionally drained, just from the re-telling, and left the room for a bathroom break and to get some refreshments.

  Cameron Carr had felt chills come over him as he listened. He had never heard a story told this well, this powerfully.

  Not even close.

  Jordan’s words had somehow transported him into the past. It almost seemed as if he were experiencing these events himself. Carr’s trance had only been broken now that Jordan had taken a break in the narrative.

  Jordan returned minutes later, wheeling in a cart that carried a selection of cold drinks and an assortment of light appetizers.

  The three-person audience had not interrupted once while he told his story, and they engaged in little conversation while he was gone, each continuing to try to process what he had said.

  When they each had a drink in their hand, set on coasters on the pink marble table, he resumed. “So that brings you up to speed on events just prior to the strike on Turlock.”

  “That’s quite a story,” said Carr.

  “Do you believe it?” asked Jordan.

  “I do,” admitted Carr. “You tell it so vividly, and with such emotion and pain, it’s hard not to. And it suddenly makes the incomprehensible seem plausible.”

  “Plausible if you believe that a near omniscient intelligence can take control of a man’s body,” said Jordan with a weak smile.

  “That is a stretch,” said Carr, “but it all hangs together. And it makes sense that your kinetic weapon was a fail-safe. I know that AGI researchers routinely set these up in case their creations go nuclear.”

  “With the most recent example being the safeguards DARPA set up for its TUC initiative,” said Jordan. “That effort was more promising than most, but its chances of success were still small.”

  “Because its hardware was set in stone?” said Carr.

  “Exactly, Lieutenant. Nice to see you’ve been paying attention. I kill any effort that has any chance of working. DARPA’s flimsy safeguards wouldn’t have stopped a true ASI for a moment.”

  “Your story does explain a lot,” said Bram. “It takes actions that were insane, inexplicable, and shows them in a much different light. Shows that you loved your family and never lost touch with reality, despite the way it appeared.”

  “In my book, that makes you even less worthy of forgiveness,” said Riley to her father, not ready to give him a pass. “If this happened because you were overcome by insanity, at least you couldn’t be held responsible.”

  “Which didn’t stop most people from holding me responsible anyway,” said Jordan. “Including you.”

  Riley frowned as this point hit home. “That may be so,” she admitted. “But your version of events leaves you with no insanity plea to hide behind. Even if your actions were forced, the responsibility for what happened would rest squarely with you. You chose to play with fire. You chose to use a kinetic weapon as your ultimate fail-safe. You admitted yourself that you never considered the collateral damage it would bring about.”

  “At the risk of appearing to defend your father,” said Bram carefully, worried this might hit a raw nerve, “he isn’t the only one who’s ever chosen to play with fire. Everyone in our industry is just as guilty. I hate to admit it, but if I had his skills, I might have done exactly the same as he did. At least he was smart enough to come up with a deterrent that not even a superintelligence could defeat. ”

  Jordan sighed. “Except that I wasn’t. It was just sheer luck that I placed the trigger behind walls of graphene.”

  Riley rolled her eyes. “Enough!” she said to her father. “Why don’t you tell us what really happened? I was just trying to point out that even this clever fabrication doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. But I’m done playing along. Isn’t it time to admit that everything you said is a lie?”

  “But it isn’t,” insisted Jordan. “Every word is true.”

  “No,” said Riley. “It’s just a brilliantly creative piece of fiction. It explains almost everything. Almost.” Riley shook her head in disgust. “But it leaves you with a narrative problem after you regained consciousness, doesn’t it? By the time you awakened, your rod had hit the Quantum Sensor Technology building dead center. Savant was vaporized. Which means that you were freed of its influence.”

  She leaned forward and glared at her father. “So it was you who chopped off Mom’s head!” she spat. “In full control of yourself. It was you who beheaded Cole and Noah! So how do you explain that?” she demanded. “If you can’t, then the rest of your story is bullshit, too.”

  Jordan sighed. “I fully intend to explain it,” he said. “I was just taking a break. As you point out, the story doesn’t end where I left off. In many ways it only begins there.”

  Carr frowned. How had he forgotten about the beheadings? Riley made a great point. He couldn’t imagine Jordan explaining his way out of this one, but then again, he had been surprised so often recently that he wasn’t willing to rule anything out.

  “Go ahead,” said Riley. “Finish your tale. This should challenge even your creativity.”

  “You don’t need creativity when you’re telling the truth,” he said with a wistful smile, continuing to ignore his daughter’s hostility.

  Jordan paused in thought, considering the best way to continue. “Like all good billionaire geniuses,” he began once again, “I had my fingers in a lot of pies. And like many scientific visionaries before me, I had long turned my thinking to what might come next for humanity. Are you all familiar with transhumanism?”

  “Somewhat,” replied Carr, at the same time noticing that Riley and Bram were nodding knowi
ngly. “Although apparently not as much as these two.”

  “It’s basically the belief that humanity can evolve to a higher plane, transcend, through the use of science and technology,” explained Jordan. “It’s become more and more popular lately, and there’s a reason for that. Because we’re approaching a tipping point. Technology is advancing at such a furious pace that it won’t be too long, a blink of an eye on the time scale of human existence, before this occurs.”

  Jordan paused. “There are a number of ways this might happen,” he continued, “and each path forward has its adherents. But before I get to these, I should mention there is also a faction who believes humanity should step aside and let an ASI take over. This faction would be very upset with me for stopping Savant. They believe that humanity has had its run, but that it’s hopelessly flawed. That our only purpose in the greater scheme of the universe is to bring about our glorious non-biological successor. That we are inherently corrupt and selfish. Unworthy. Irredeemable.”

  “From the savage history of human behavior,” said Carr, “it’s not an absolutely crazy argument.” He smiled. “But speaking as a selfish human, I support all efforts to fight against the extinction of our species. So tell us about futures with humans in them.”

  “There are three main pathways forward,” said Jordan, “although each has subcategories and variations. The first is to evolve a souped-up version of our biological selves. In this scenario, genetic engineers would control our future destiny more so than computer scientists. The science of genetic engineering is progressing at a dizzying pace. We’ll soon be able to optimize our genes, cure disease, and extend the lifespan. More than just extend it—potentially stall or even retard aging. Proponents envision biological enhancement combined with trillions of tiny nanite MDs patrolling our bloodstreams. A sort of smart nanite repair crew that wouldn’t change our innate human-ness, but would keep us humming along, virtually immortal.”