I do not know. The… graduates know. They did not tell us.
"Do you have any idea? Any guess what it might be?"
My friend, he is… dead now. He was in my class. He said he heard something… in the chair. The graduates told him it was just a dream, but he… heard something. It was the Other in the annex, talking to the defective one in the main pool. It was a riddle. A poem.
"What was it? What did he hear?"
He heard the Other. It said, "Behold, I have… become death, the… destroyer… of worlds."
"Je-e-esus," Laura whispered.
"What?" Hoblenz demanded.
She didn't have time to answer. "Hello? Are you still there?" she typed.
Laura hit Enter, but nothing happened. The huge beast lay motionless on the floor beside her.
"Bin-go," Hoblenz said. He had found the main circuit breaker.
"HELLO!!!!" she typed, jamming the Enter button over and over, drawing Hoblenz's curious gaze.
The awful reply finally sputtered across the screen. Mary, Mary, quite… contrary, how does… your garden grow?
Laura felt tears flood her eyes. She placed the laptop down and crawled to the robot's face. The deep pits were bullet holes — scars from the toddler's game of hide-and-seek in the cafeteria.
"Goose!" she shouted. "Is that you, Goose?"
She scrambled back to the laptop, kicking over still more clutter along the way.
A plastic ball rolled across the floor of the room. From it emanated a scratchy recorded voice. Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall. It was Goose's favorite tune in the world. He'd brought it with him on his final mission. With a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot, Hoblenz threw the main power switch.
Laura nearly jumped out of her skin as light and motion exploded instantly all around. In that awful moment a low humming sound rose to an electric whine of ever increasing pitch as a hundred, a thousand machines began their ominous windup to full power. Snapping and crackling sounds of discharging electricity arose from all directions.
The soldier at the door dove to the floor, and just behind him came a heavy metal gripper — its exposed pneumatic cables flapping against its side. The claw began to vibrate in the doorway in a mindless, spasmodic fit.
"Look out!" Hoblenz shouted. A thick silver tube jabbed into the room through the empty window frame. A blunt metal piston shot with machinegun-like rapidity from the end of the shiny cylinder. Each punch of the stubby tip was accompanied by the deafening roar of a jackhammer.
Through the shattered windows of the small room Laura saw the building come alive with activity. Not the well-ordered operation of Gray's marvelous factory, but the frenzied contortions of machines out of control. It was bedlam on an industrial scale.
"Come on!" Hoblenz shouted as he crawled toward Laura beneath the pummeling piston. He grabbed Laura's arm roughly and tried to pull her to the floor. She jerked her arm free, and her hands landed in broken glass. Laura looked down at the small red specks that now dotted her stinging palms.
She didn't notice at first the fluttering gusts of wind on the back of her neck, but when she turned she saw a mangled robotic gripper rotating wildly. It spun a metal paint sprayer from the end of a slender rubber hose. The sprayer whirred through the air like a propeller just above Laura's head.
"Gotta do it now!" Hoblenz shouted as he squatted on his heels amid the swirl of machine violence. Laura glanced down at the screen of the laptop.
"Error. Communications interrupted. Host unavailable" was printed just beneath Goose's nursery rhyme.
"Laura!" Hoblenz called from where he pressed himself against the doorframe opposite the snapping, convulsing gripper.
She laid one hand on the smooth chest of the Model Eight — its epoxy skin cool to the touch — then joined Hoblenz at the door.
Hoblenz kept her clear of the robot's dangerous appendage. The hydraulic arm to which it was attached was stretched to full extension. It rose from the base of an immobile robot, which was fixed in place beside the now-rolling main conveyer belt. Hoblenz and Laura edged their way past the shaking gripper, which grasped and snapped randomly at air.
Once outside the power station, she saw the dead Model Sixes lying on their sides and scarred with crisscrossed torch cuts. A single Model Seven lay in the pileup, its leg trapped underneath one of the overturned Sixes and an ugly molten hole piercing its thorax.
All around the Sixes and Sevens was a hodgepodge of their newly energized cousins. Unlike the mobile models, the assembly building's immobile robots seemed to have no batteries and had simply stopped running when power was lost. That attacking machinery was now awake, but it was confused and running amok.
"This way!" Hoblenz shouted in the confusion. He turned to lead them in a sprint along the assembly line. The now-active motor of the conveyer belt was deafening. Its sonorous rumbling was pierced only by the whining stops and starts of cranes racing back and forth across the ceiling. Their movements were without apparent purpose, and heavy cargo swung recklessly underneath — large-scale lessons in the forces of physics. When two loads of heavy equipment met going opposite directions, the result was an explosion of debris which then rained down on the floor.
Laura ran into Hoblenz's broad back, and a streaking load crashed to the floor just ahead. Her ankles and knees were jarred by the blow, which passed through the concrete floor like the shockwave of a massive explosion. She covered her ears and jammed her eyes shut — the frenzy of the enormous cavern overwhelming.
"We gotta run for it!" Hoblenz shouted. He grabbed her hand and took off, dragging her along behind him. They dodged this way and that around piles of smashed equipment that grew in the chaos of random frenzy. And all the while the sky rained crates onto the floor and the constantly moving arms along the conveyer belt snapped menacingly.
Hoblenz turned all of a sudden to the right, pulling Laura down a narrow corridor and out an exit.
The door shut behind them, and the world was plunged into gooey silence. It seemed to coat all her thoughts and nerves with balm and to leave her floating in a peaceful bliss in which time ceased to matter. As an afterthought, Laura joined Hoblenz and his men at the top of the steps.
"I guess that was a waste," Hoblenz said.
The Model Sixes and Sevens were having a parade. They were strung out in a line, heading from the assembly building across the lawn to the computer center.
49
"Mr. Gray's down that way," a soldier said from behind his heavy machine gun. Laura followed his finger past the sandbags surrounding the computer center entrance to the lone figure seated against the sloping concrete wall. "He's been there a while."
Laura headed out of the puny human fortress onto the flat green lawn beyond. The grass was gouged and scarred from the battle, and the field was filling again with Gina's army.
Gray stared at the Model Sixes and Sevens, which were forming lines facing out toward the jungle. He didn't bother to look over at Laura even after she settled to the ground right beside him. She studied his stony face — its intensity focused on the ranks of Gina's legion. The brilliant spotlights of Model Sevens scanned the jungle wall, but none of the robots dared stray inside.
"I was looking for you inside," Laura said, speaking softly but feeling guilty for breaking the silence. She followed his gaze out to the lawn. Gray said nothing. "Georgi told Hoblenz that this whole area has been declared a 'special security zone.' Isn't that like what you set up around that first runaway robot on the assembly line?" Still nothing. "Like what you did with the entire assembly building after that worker quit?"
"I don't set up special security zones," Gray replied. "They're declared by the antiviral programs."
"You mean like the phase-one or whatever?" she asked. Gray nodded. "But I thought they just looked for viruses."
"They look for errors," he said as he drew his legs up, resting his arms across his knees. "For malfunctioning system components. It all happe
ns so quickly we could never see it coming. Humans can't function at the speeds of computers." He leaned over to Laura suddenly. "I have to rely on antiviral routines, Laura! You've got to understand!"
She arched her eyebrows and nodded. "I understand, Joseph," she said, worried by the tone of his voice. "But I don't really know what you're talking about."
Gray drew a deep breath and laid his head back against the wall. "I know, but you're getting closer. The computer's right. You'll understand someday, you're just not ready yet." He looked her in the eye. "But what I'm trying to say now, Laura, is that sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. There are trade-offs. Sometimes you have to shoulder the burden of making the tough calls. Of sacrificing the things you love, and with them a piece of yourself."
She rested a hand on his shoulder. It felt awkward, and she quickly withdrew it. "I thought you had to go do something important."
"I did."
"Well, until you get started, can we talk?"
"I'm right in the middle of it, actually."
"In the middle of what?"
"Thinking."
"Oh," Laura said. She rested her head against the wall and looked up into space. There were stars everywhere. "Will we be able to see the nuclear detonations from earth?" she asked.
Gray pointed to the sky. "See the red planet? The star that doesn't twinkle? That's Mars. Look off at four o'clock about the width of your hand at arm's length."
Laura held up her hand. The patch of sky was black. When she looked down, she saw for the first time Gray's rifle lying on the ground beside him. He had taken the deaths of the Dutch soldier and the two security troops hard. What will he do if the worst happens? she wondered. What is the worst?
"Joseph?" she said quietly, trying not to disrupt his thoughts too much. "What is the worst that can happen? With the asteroid, I mean."
She might as well have struck up a brass band. He turned and looked at Laura, focusing on her and her alone. "In the short term, a lot of people will die. In the worst case, hundreds of millions."
It wasn't the answer she'd wanted to hear. It wasn't even a possibility she'd really considered, such was the extent of her faith in the man seated beside her. "What about the long term?" Laura asked.
"What?"
"You said 'in the short term' when you answered. What about the long term?"
He stared straight ahead. "In the long term," he said slowly, "we'll all die."
She waited for more, but he said nothing. "Is that some sort of philosophical bullshit — that we all die, sooner or later — or am I supposed to take it literally?"
Gray shrugged and fell into his normal pattern of ignoring the question. "Well," Laura said, "I'm glad we had this chat." She stood up and brushed the seat of her jeans.
Gray rose also. He headed out onto the field. Laura hesitated, but then followed along by his side. Model Sevens stood silent sentry in the rear ranks. The Model Sixes again drew the tougher duty at the front. Gray spoke quietly. The deep and confident tone of his voice was mesmerizing.
"We humans think we've run out of challenges. We perceive our world as having been tamed. Over hundreds of thousands of years we've carved out our biological niche. We widened it through incessant competition with, and ultimately destruction of, our closest natural competitors. Look at the primates. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, baboons — all have varying degrees of intelligence arrayed along a spectrum. Each represents a point on that spectrum not very far from each other. But when you look down at the end of the spectrum, what lies next beyond the intelligence of the chimpanzee? There's nothing until you get to the standard by which all intelligence is measured — the human. We aren't the strongest, the fastest, or the greatest in number, but we are the smartest. Our forebears understood the threat posed by intelligence, so they extinguished our brighter competitors and left as our closest relative only the duller species that evolved into chimpanzees."
Suddenly, a great crunching of metal could be heard from ahead. Laura froze and grabbed Gray's hand. A Model Seven patrolling the jungle's edge was being pulled into the bush by the leg. Its spotlight spun wildly about, and its other legs dug at the turf. If robots could scream, it would've been shrieking as the first of the fiery torches arced downward. The sizzling sound and screeching and tearing of metal were sickening enough to Laura. But she realized as the last of the thin legs disappeared into the jungle that the robot could scream. It could shriek in holy terror only Laura couldn't hear it.
All the robots around them were still, even the fidgety Model Sixes.
They all shone their lights on the same spot in the jungle wall, seeing nothing now more than quivering bushes. Hearing, Laura imagined, no more of the frantic, microwave pleas or wails of agony and death.
Gray's outward demeanor remained collected. "Can I ask a question?" Laura said, barely able to keep her tone civil. "Why are you not sick to your stomach over all this?" She looked across the destruction that had been wrought on his finely manicured lawns. "Put aside any moral aspects of what's been happening! I mean just sick at the waste. The time you spent creating these magnificent machines. Your money! Sick at something!"
When he turned to face her, she felt drawn into him. "There's only one common characteristic of life," he said, speaking softly. "It is violent. It is aggressive in its growth — in its replication. It carves out its niche… or it doesn't survive. It's that behavior which defines life best. That definition of life encompasses biological and computer viruses at the low end of the spectrum, and life's new and higher order as well."
"Do you mean that the robots are the new higher order, Joseph? Are you saying we're no longer number-one? That the 'spectrum,' as you call it, that measures things by their intelligence now puts the robots ahead of us?" Gray shrugged and looked away — releasing her from his spell.
The moment had passed, and Laura felt again the unsettling emotional swerve. She looked out and saw a Model Six pick something up, look at it, and then drop it into its bin. Even on the eve of battle, it was still cleaning Mr. Gray's field of debris.
"We're talking about two different measures," Gray said in resumption of a conversation she thought had ended. "One is intelligence. Computers will certainly surpass us by that measure, if they haven't already. There's no upper end to their expanding ability. Their architecture is open-ended, unlike ours."
"We could start bionics," she suggested in an offhanded manner. "Maybe begin implanting parts of computers and robots into our bodies to keep pace." Laura's face grew flushed, and she expected Gray to laugh at the half-baked idea.
"But then we lose!" Gray said, grabbing her hand and squeezing so hard it startled her. "Bit by bit we would cease being human. Over time, the process begins to look more like we're being eaten alive by the machines, doesn't it?" Laura shrugged. "Think about it," Gray repeated. He was serious. Laura had no ready reply.
"If our objective is to keep pace with these things," he said, waving his hand across the field at the robots, "then why would we start giving up pieces of ourselves? What would be left when you carried it to its logical end? In order to gain an advantage in competing for a factory job you might replace your legs with bionic legs. But what's to prevent your competition from also strapping on bionic arms? Plus, you wouldn't want to be roaming around an industrial furnace with robotic arms and legs but a torso made of flesh. At some point biological reproduction would cease. The bionic hybrids would be sterile. And we might live two thousand years, but we wouldn't remember much. The human brain can't remember anything but memories of its memories for much over five years. So what's the last step in that process, Laura?" She shook her head and shrugged, looking up at him for the answer. But he refused to supply it, waiting instead for her to think.
"I don't know," she said. "Replace the brain with a more capable model?"
"Exactly!"
Laura smiled like a pupil on pleasing her teacher. She quickly caught herself, however, when she realized how insane th
e ideas were.
They were terrifying, and she had no idea why she was allowing herself to be taken in by them.
They walked on in silence past another row of Model Sevens — standing poised and ready for battle. "It was just an idea," she mumbled, wondering why her offhand suggestion about bionics would… Gray spun her around and grabbed her arms, studying her with blazing eyes. He focused on her as if she had just said the most important thing in the world. He pulled Laura toward him, his eyes remaining fixed on hers. Their faces close. His mouth descending toward her lips — pausing, hovering, almost touching. Laura drew in breath. Air no longer seemed important. An electric fire set her skin tingling, spreading from the unyielding pressure where their bodies met.
And then the moment was over. Gray pulled away, and the night air rushed in to fill the place where the warmth had been. Slowly he walked away.
It took Laura a moment to orient herself. "Hey!" she called out. "What the…" Her voice and anger rose. "Did I just miss something here?" He didn't answer, and she ran after him. "Hel-l-o-o-o?"
Gray stopped and looked at his watch. "We'd better get back."
"You… you can't just…!" Just what? "You can't just take me on some mind-blowing tour of your twisted future and then leave me lying around in little pieces like… like one of your machines!"
Laura wanted to keep talking, but she didn't know what she would say next. She knew only the true cause of her upset. She yearned for the feel of him — for the crush of his body against hers.
Laura closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. "Okay," she continued, her voice level. "Look, Joseph. We've gone from — what? — a million years ago when we were all just one big happy ape family, to strapping on bionic legs to compete in the workplace. But this is just undergraduate brainstorming crap, right?"
Gray smiled inexplicably. "Did I ever tell you that you're really fun to talk to?"
"What?"
"But we ought to be getting back," he said, turning for the computer center.
Society of the Mind Page 55
