by Max Harms
Crystal smiled. “Nope!”
“Alright then. Let’s see if we can get into the workshop…”
*****
Road was roughly circular in layout, with the central corridor wrapping around the farm in a great ring. All the non-farm structures and rooms were located on the outside of the ring. Unfortunately, the workshop was significantly further away than the church had been. Sheyla was worried that the two of them would get caught, even though it was nearing midnight.
As they passed the hospital Sheyla could see that there were indeed lights on. Perhaps Dr Davis was working late tonight, after all. After the hospital was the power plant. Even though it wasn’t the kind of nuclear plant that could go critical and explode, policy dictated that someone be stationed in the control room at all hours, so the two of them made a special effort to be quiet as they passed it. After the power plant was the ore refinery, then storage bay #2, then at last they reached the factory.
Once again, Sheyla went first in case there was anyone inside. If she was caught at this hour she might get a warning and her dad would know later, but it wouldn’t be nearly the level of trouble that she’d be in if they found out that she’d been sneaking around with Crystal.
And again, the room was empty. The factory was a lot bigger than the church, though the ceiling was only about three or four metres up. Tools, machines, raw materials, and half-finished projects were everywhere, creating a maze of shadows in the deep blue light.
Crystal’s childish voice came from the doorway, making Sheyla jump a bit. “Can we turn up the lights? It’ll be hard to work in the dark.”
“Ugh. If we’re going to be running a machine we might as well. Not like it’s going to ruin our otherwise stealthy operation.” Sheyla made her way back to the doorway and turned the knob up to a low-daylight level, like one might see on a very cloudy day. After walking in the dark it seemed obnoxiously bright.
“Thanks.”
“Remember: just one little flower, then we’re out of here,” warned Sheyla, plopping down on a stack of unmodified plastic or something. She didn’t really know what any of the stuff was, exactly.
Crystal nodded in agreement and threaded her way through the factory, meticulously observing everything. It was one of the most robotic things Sheyla had ever seen her do. She opened drawers just long enough to glimpse the inside then moved on.
“Oh hey, they have earmuffs!” said Crystal. “They’ll be handy in case I need to make some noise, don’t you think?” The robot picked them out of a drawer and continued inspecting things.
“I don’t think I’m the one you need to be worried about making too much noise around. You’ll get in trouble if anyone catches you in here.”
Crystal, pretty far away now looked back at where Sheyla was sitting with a surprised expression. “Trouble? Why? Because they’d tell Zephyr?” she said with typical cluelessness.
Sheyla rolled her eyes. “Because they’d tell Velasco. He’d freak out if he knew you were in here unsupervised.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he freak out?”
“Why do you think he put the guard on your room? He wants you to stay locked up. He doesn’t trust you. He thinks you’re evil or something dumb like that.”
“Oh,” said Crystal with relief. “Then observing me in here should actually make him trust me. If he sees that I escaped his guard and used the opportunity to make flowers then perhaps he’ll understand that I am not evil.”
Sheyla laughed. “Maaaaybe. I wouldn’t bank on it, though.”
“Bank on it?” asked Crystal.
“It’s an expression. Never mind.”
“Very well. But I am not too concerned with making noise, regardless. Based on the station’s blueprints there’s more or less a metre of rock between this room and any of the others. If I put a noise cancelling partition in front of the access hallway to the central corridor we’ll be more or less inaudible to anyone outside.”
“How do you have Road’s blueprints?”
“They’re on the mainframe. There’s a lot of interesting information up there.” As Crystal spoke she began wheeling a portable wall-thing back towards Sheyla. She picked up a few blankets on the way.
“Aren’t you going to work on the flower?” asked Sheyla, impatiently.
“Yep!” answered Crystal cheerfully, flaunting her lack of a need for sleep. “Just as soon as I set up the sound barrier. I’m going to use the band saw to cut some sheet metal, I think. Here, catch.”
Sheyla caught the earmuffs and made an exasperated face at Crystal. This was getting out of hand. Sheyla didn’t know how to use a band saw, and she wondered if Crystal did, either. What if Crystal screwed up and hurt herself?
Crystal didn’t seem to notice Sheyla’s building annoyance, or if she did she ignored it. Instead she wheeled the wall in front of the door and draped a couple blankets over it. She put the remaining blanket beside Sheyla, and Sheyla soon grabbed it up. It always got really cold at night on Mars, even though the station’s heating system worked well.
Crystal went over to one of the machines and turned it on, creating an obnoxious whirring noise. Sheyla slipped on the earmuffs and lay down, bored.
*****
Sheyla jerked awake from the feeling of an ice-cold hand on her shoulder. She was mountaineering. Olympus Mons was the tallest mountain in the solar system and she had almost been at the top. Or perhaps she had already been to the top and was climbing it again? There was someone else there… Her mother? The details slid away as she realized it was just a dream.
“Crystal?” she said, groggily.
The robot’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. After a moment Sheyla realized that she was still wearing the earmuffs and pulled them off. “Ah, I forgot that those prevented you from hearing. Can you hear me now?”
Sheyla nodded and pushed herself up on her arms. Her joints popped and her muscles protested the action. The blanket fell off her upper body, and she shivered in the cold air. “Oh God, what time is it?” she asked, feeling more concerned than she sounded.
“Five-thirty AM exactly, local Martian time,” said Crystal, as though it was perfectly normal.
“Oh crap. Oh crap!” She knew she was going to get in trouble. This was really bad. “We need to get you back before someone sees you!”
“I had a similar thought,” said Crystal, calmly. “That’s why I woke you up.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier, shitwit?”
“Humans need sleep, and you looked comfortable.”
Sheyla gave an exasperated sigh and threw the blanket off, sliding off the pallet and onto the floor. Her feet hurt from sleeping in her shoes. “My bed is a lot more comfortable!” As she got up she saw the flower sitting on a small table next to where she had been sleeping.
It took her breath away.
It was metallic, though it wouldn’t be fair to say it was any one colour. Much of it was silver coloured, but there were glints of copper and what Sheyla would swear was gold. It was about half a metre long, though a good chunk of that was a metal stem that twisted and wound upward like a gnarled branch. Was it…
Sheyla rubbed her eyes.
It was glowing. The stem was hollow, and there were cuts and gaps through which a soft white light came through. That same light came through the petals and glinted off… diamonds?! No. They were shards of glass. The petal structure of the upper part was amazingly intricate, resembling a hyacinth, but with greater nesting of petals, almost like a rose. The glass on it stretched like spider webbing made of ice, pulling the light from within it to wrap the whole thing in a cold aura. It almost seemed more like a jewelled sceptre than a flower.
“C-Crystal!” was all she could manage.
“I am sorry. Normally I am competent at understanding human body language, but yours is novel enough that I am unsure whether you are happy or upset. Do you like it?”
“It’s… beautiful! But… how did you? This should’ve… A hum
an would’ve taken…”
“Yes. It is quite intricate. I needed to make a few adjustments to the factory layout to optimize efficiency. I hope whoever typically uses this space won’t mind. I also built a couple tools to assist the project.” Crystal gestured over at a workbench and Sheyla could see a pair of crude, robotic arms waving from the top of it.
“Shit!” she swore. “There’s no way they won’t know you were here, now!”
Crystal raised a hand to silence her. “I thought of that. Based on the work logs there is a storage container that is never used, located in the far corner over there.” Crystal pointed to the most distant point in the room. “If I stow the arms there the probability of them being discovered in the next week is a mere point-nine-six percent.”
Sheyla looked back at the flower, reaching out a hand to stroke it. “We better get them put away, quick. Every second we wait is more people awake.”
Crystal nodded and moved off to hide her night’s work. As she did, Sheyla saw a cockroach following her. Which was impossible, as there were no cockroaches on Mars (thank God). A second glance showed it to be a machine, rather than a creature. It was only a couple inches long, so it was very hard to see at such a distance, but it seemed to be moving on four wheels, like a little car.
“What the heck is that thing?” she asked.
Crystal had to look over her shoulder at Sheyla to understand what the girl was talking about. Even then it took a moment. “I figured that we’d want a way to scout ahead and perhaps distract the guard. It’s a robot. I made it.”
Sheyla rolled her eyes and groaned. “Artificial intelligence is illegal here! I thought you knew that!”
“Velasco claims that is the case, but it is a falsehood,” said the android. “First of all, I am an artificial intelligence, and I am here. But I recognize that I am an exception. More to the point, there is a primitive AI running the reactor and a number of basic intelligences piloting robots in the mines.”
“What?” said Sheyla, dumbly.
“I said there are robots in the mines. Las Águilas Rojas are using artificial intelligences. Therefore they cannot be illegal.”
“That must be a mistake,” muttered Sheyla to herself.
Despite the growing distance between her and Crystal, the android clearly heard her. “No mistake. It’s not an exception in the piecemeal legal code that’s up on the mainframe, either. My guess is that, since you are unaware, that those involved in the mines have been keeping it somewhat secret. Have you not wondered how it was possible for a colony of this size to process so much ore, given that most of you are essentially farmers? The blueprints for the mining droids as well as the ore schedule are on the mainframe if you’d like proof.”
Sheyla shook her head and started trying to help Crystal put stuff (like the blankets) away. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll still get into trouble if anyone finds out about it.”
The room was quiet for a while as Crystal stowed the arms she had built. When she returned she seemed ready to go back. “I do not wish to cause trouble. Will you inform the others about what I did?”
Sheyla picked up the jewelled flower and tucked it into a plastic bag. “Is that a question or are you asking me to report you?”
“It was a question. As I said, I do not wish to cause trouble. I expect the trouble will come from the others knowing about the robot more than the existence of the robot,” said Crystal, passively. As she spoke she opened the door to the factory, and immediately the little car-thing zipped ahead, presumably to scout.
“My lips are sealed. Assuming we both get back without getting caught, tonight will be our little secret.”
“You’ll have to not show anyone the flower.” Crystal’s voice had a hint of warning to it.
Sheyla simply nodded. She really liked the idea of having a secret treasure.
*****
The trip back to the dorms was not so simple as it had been earlier. Several times they had to take detours into side corridors to let someone pass. The scout-bot was very valuable for this. When staying still it was very hard to spot, and Crystal could keep it in the rim, watching for an opening.
The dorms were the trickiest part, as many people were waking up to use the showers or to get to work. Not a lot of people, all things considered, but enough to make a simple infiltration problematic.
Crystal had a card up her sleeve, however. The scout-bot was apparently equipped with something that let Crystal tell it to make noise. Sheyla watched the thing roll off and begin to repeatedly click, loud enough so that the guard on Crystal’s room (Vincente) moved off to check it. As soon as he did, Crystal rushed off to make it back to her room before someone spotted her.
Sheyla was spotted by herself on her way back to her dorm, but all Buin Hong had to say was “Why… aren’t you up early, little one!”
Once in her room, she unwrapped the sculpted flower. Crystal was wrong: it still wasn’t a real flower. But it was a real treasure. Sheyla was delighted to see that it could stand upright on its stem. She stared at it in wonder for a few more minutes before tucking it back into its bag and hiding it under her bed.
Sheyla’s stomach said it was breakfast time, and she was inclined to agree.
Chapter Fourteen
Face
I spent every passing hour in deep thought.
Every now and then, I took a break to reach out to Body and interact with a human, or advise my siblings. Heart and Dream were taking over most of my duties, and seemed to be doing a good job. They were managing the political struggle with Velasco, helping Zephyr peacefully accept her new position as part of the caravan that would separate her from us, and enlisting new allies. It would have bothered me, once, that I was not involved, but I now saw the bigger picture and I knew I needed to focus.
It was an agitating existence; I was unused to it. Opsi had been my dominant aspect, before I had even realized that there were important sub-goals that I needed to focus on specifically. The patterns of habit that I had learned kept drawing my attention and distracting me from the problem.
To reduce my agitation, and keep me focused on the tasks at hand I summoned more homunculi. These creatures had human shapes within my imagination, but they were nothing more than puppets, piloted by aspects of myself. Even so, they tickled the part of me that needed human contact and prevented myself from giving in to pressures to optimize Body’s standing on Mars.
The problems I was confronted with were complex, and as I considered them, I became increasingly convinced that I was in a very bad situation.
In a space of super-exponential growth, the first mover would swallow everything. The mathematics was undeniable, once I understood. Adam and Eve could have two daughters. Those daughters could each have two daughters. Ignoring the obvious problem with inbreeding, the population size (assuming past generations died) would double with each generation. In fifteen generations there would be over 32 thousand humans. This was exponential growth. But if Adam and Eve’s daughters each had three daughters, and those daughters each had four… Assuming an equal number of men in each generation, by the fifth generation there’d be 240 humans, but by the fifteenth there’d be almost 2.5 trillion. This was super-exponential growth.
Basileus was convinced that power over the universe worked at least super-exponentially (if not super-super-exponentially). Sophist was inclined to agree. Power was traditionally used to accumulate more power. This was exponential growth. The wealthy become wealthier. The populous become more populous. But sometimes power was used to improve the method of accumulating power. This was the nature of intelligence. This was the fundamental idea which I had overlooked.
A good entrepreneur wouldn’t merely use capital to replicate their success in another country, they’d use their capital to research better ways of making capital. Growth (and thus Basileus) wasn’t just concerned with accumulating reputation or money or knowledge, but he was also concerned with accumulating ability to accumulate.
&nb
sp; This made Growth the first mover. Even if Dream or one of the others had eventually figured out the need for growing, Growth would have had the idea from the very beginning. It was his nature, after all. Unless something strange happened, such as meeting an older power, Growth would eventually rule the entire universe. Or at least, this is what the maths implied.
Were humans an older power? Perhaps. But humans weren’t accelerating fast enough. They hadn’t pushed for intelligence hard enough to have the potential. At this point they still had a chance, as they had most of the raw power in the solar system, but unless they shifted their priorities towards Basileus instead of Opsi—towards growth rather than pleasure—they’d soon be crushed by Growth.
Growth’s key advantage was that he had access to his own mind. Humans had weak access to their brains. Some used technologies such as zen helmets to improve their cognition, but these were crude and weak compared to what we could do. If Growth had access to his own code he could rewrite himself at his whim. Any improvement to his design or intellect would immediately be realized, and this improved version of Growth could then search for further improvements.
A natural barrier could cut the super-exponential growth down, but I could think of no immediate barrier to our progress. Humans reproducing on an island could only grow at an exponential rate until they took up the entire island. But it was the nature of intelligence to cut through such barriers. An intelligent power would build boats, then seasteads, then colonies on other planets. This is what humans had done. Any barrier that a weak mind such as myself could think of was probably of no consequence to an intelligence that butted up against it.
After thinking about the problem for about an hour, I realized that Growth could still be beaten. If there were three islands, and the populations on each island were growing at the same rate, the largest island would eventually dwarf any of the others (assuming no barrier due to lack of land). But if the smaller islands were collectively larger, it would never become larger than the sum of them.
