Judgement

by Fergus Bannon

  'What is your responsibility?'

  'To save mankind if I can. To rein our technology back while encouraging moral and ethical development. If all goes well mankind could be out of quarantine in a couple of thousand years.'

  'And if it goes badly?'

  She sighed. 'I can't hold the Cloud off for ever. There must be signs of a turnaround within eight generations, two hundred years. That's when we get the attention of The Integral. We've been spared a few microseconds of its time. If we're found wanting, the monkeys get their big chance.'

  'It can't be done.'

  'Not by the way I've been going about it. There are no guidelines in this job, each species is apparently too different for that. I had no help,' she looked down at her hands, clasped in her dainty little lap, 'and I haven't done a very good job so far.'

  I took a deep breath.

  'Why you? Why did they choose you in the first place?'

  'I don't know. The Cloud wouldn't or couldn't say. I have no idea what alien criteria I passed. Its true I never deliberately did anybody any harm. In fact...I was quite gentle once. A schoolteacher, believe it or not. One day The Cloud just appeared, scared me rigid, but left me no choice, as I think you'll come to understand.'

  And now the most important question of all. More important than aliens or clouds or species death.

  'Why are you telling me all this? Why me?'

  At last it was out.

  She said nothing for a second while my guts went into free-fall.

  'Because I need your help,' she said at last.

  CHAPTER 21

  The South China Sea and Elsewhere

  The Kyoto Maru's rust-stained bow cleaved easily through the listless grey waters. Misty rain was falling, making the superstructure glisten and rendering indistinct the figures on the deck.

  On the foredeck rivers of blood gushed down specially designed gullies, foaming up as they dashed against the gunwales. The men, covered from head to toe with green rubber, worked in silence as they ran the flensing knives through the blubber made yielding as butter by the razor sharpness of their implements. Above them gulls wheeled in huge numbers, filling the air with unholy shrieks.

  One man, shouting hoarse clipped commands, leaned against the port side of the deck near the forward mooring winches. Pausing to light a cigarette, he took one deep puff then turned to throw the match over the side. In doing so, he was just in time to see the first tentacle flop onto the forecastle, barely two metres from his left boot.

  meanwhile

  My consciousness moved through a binary universe of stygian black and dazzling white. Ever changing with the ebb and flow of data, star clusters would blaze into existence, filling their once dark firmaments with pointillisms of light.

  Concentrating, I made the representations change until I recognised Conrad's files. Reading them, I wondered if he had any inkling of just how much data the bank kept on him. Perhaps they too distrusted customers who were arms dealers, no matter how rich or legitimate they might be.

  I found the interlaced star clusters that recorded the amounts in each of his accounts, the largest a long line of lights interspersed with the blacks of zeros. Thirty-eight bits long, it decoded to a sum of just over a quarter of a billion dollars.

  I made a motion with one hand and a wave of blackness washed over the stars, extinguishing them.

  meanwhile

  The Cloud entered the room and shook the man's hand then sat down in a wide and very deep leather chair. I had it demurely tuck down the hem of its skirt.

  'I realise you're a very busy woman, Ms. Allman,' the man was saying, 'so I'll try and get this over with as soon as possible. Really, all it requires is your signature here...and here …' The man, a South Korean, stood back and held his hands together over his chest. I could see him hold his breath: this deal was the answer to his troubled prayers.

  I subdued the urge to wait until he had to gasp for breath. Instead I moved my own hand so that The Cloud picked the ornate pen out of the holder. I switched to the file which held the signature of a woman long dead.

  The Cloud signed the contract.

  meanwhile

  I couldn't help but marvel at the tiny machine's intricate shape as it chewed its way relentlessly up the double spiral. Clusters of atoms, colour coded in this simulation to show different elements, disappeared into its maw. Inside, between the molecules that made up its body, I could glimpse the DNA chains being disassembled by a molecular hammer. Its ionising forces moved back and forth, shattering the bonds. Caught by assembly molecules in the creature's mid-section, the original bases were keyed into new sequences before being excreted from the creature's rear.

  Riding piggyback was its partly-assembled replicant. Its waving molecular arms plucked atoms and molecules out of the cell's cytoplasmic fluid to feed this offspring. Soon it would be finished and its odyssey in search of fresh DNA would begin.

  meanwhile

  I flexed my hand and the tentacles tightened. There was a satisfying sound of breaking wood, then the deep tortured groan of bending metal. Jabbering with fright the bosun turned and ran.

  I started to massage and the forecastle crumpled, sparks flying as metal ground on metal. As I kneaded, the bow of the ship became a twisted mass.

  Where the distress frequencies lay, the faintest of sounds tickled at the limits of my hearing. Satisfied that the message had got out safely I recommenced my work in earnest.

  meanwhile

  From 4-space the safe could hold no secrets. Conrad's share certificates and bearer bonds filled most of the spacious interior, each tucked away in its own carefully marked leather folder.

  I reached out and the Cloud lightly touched them, giving them the faintest of impulses. It was more then enough to remove them from Conrad's universe entirely.

  meanwhile

  Immensely wealthy following the addition of very long binary strings into several financial databases, The Cloud was now owner of all it surveyed. It toured its assembly line. Thousands of notebook computers filled the factory which was loud with the low chattering of several hundred assembly workers. Here and there, quality control personnel checked component placements, whilst twenty Koreans sat at massed banks of sets inspecting the pictures. A small team of engineers clustered round one point on a silent assembly line.

  Nervous that The Cloud might get the wrong impression, even though the ink was dry and the contract safely locked away, the man rubbed his hands together.

  'There are many machines and some are bound to break down now and then. But I assure you uptime is better than 98%'

  'Of course,' I had The Cloud say. 'Very impressive.'

  meanwhile

  Even with the timescale slowed a thousandfold the gene changer swarmed up the DNA chain, periodically shooting versions of itself into the cytoplasm. As they parted from their parent, pseudopod-like grappling hooks were fired out. If unsuccessful, they were retracted then hurled out again. It happened so quickly it was as if the copies were constantly exploding and imploding. When at last one grapple caught the cell membrane the copy wormed its way up through until it was out into pastures new.

  meanwhile

  The ship was already in danger of sinking. I had the Cloud drop a tentacle 500 metres to the sea bed then, locking its million or so joints, I had it become a firm support to hold the ship above water level.

  The last lifeboat cleared the Kyoto Maru, the men sculling frenziedly. Sending a tentacle round the stern of the boat, I brought my arms together. With a crack like a heavy artillery shot the ship's back broke, sending fragments of metal showering into the air. I kneaded and compressed until the ship was a ball only 20 metres in diameter.

  Cradling the ball in one tentacle I shot another out, thinning it down to a high tensile strand only atoms wide. Arcing down through the waters it split into millions of tiny molecular filaments which suffused the molecules of the sea bed, forming an unbreakable anchor.

  Then I contracted the
arm and I was flying over the sea at supersonic speed. I fired out a second tentacle to form the next anchor point. Striding over the ocean a league at a time I was at the coast of Japan in minutes.

  The Head Office of the whaling fleet was deserted. A Cloud fragment had already plucked out all the workers and deposited them safely, though horrified, unwell and confused, safely out of harm's way.

  I gently deposited the ten thousand tonne ball of compressed ship on the roof of the office and watched with pleasure as the building collapsed under it. Then I checked to make sure that the only uncompressed section of the hull, the part with the letters Kyoto Maru painted on it, was visible. It was.

  I smiled to himself.

  meanwhile

  Conrad, his mouth hanging open with shock, was looking down stupidly at the two halves of his credit card. The waiter had cut it up in front of eyes. Then Conrad's mouth closed like a bear trap and his eyes blazed with hatred. 'I'll get you for this. I'm a wealthy man and I'm going to ruin you.'

  I smiled to myself.

  meanwhile

  The man, still wringing his hands, was talking rapidly. 'Of course you'll want to arrange meetings with our main customers, the retail chains. It would be best to assure them supplies will be continued.'

  'They won't,' said The Cloud. 'All the computers along with the modified modems, every single one of the millions this group produces, will be sent to China.'

  I watched him blink and open his mouth. Just as he grasped it I hit him with the punchline. Hand-wringing man had already expressed his great and deep concern over the suite of software loaded onto every machine: more than enough to bypass the firewall blocks I was anticipating. 'For free.'

  Mr. Lan's shocked expression was so comical I had to smile.

  meanwhile

  I watched as the Cloud, still under simulation, split up into hundreds of fragments, each clutching samples of the fertility reducing nano-machines. The fragments set out for their destinations throughout the globe. I knew even this small reduction in reproductive capacity meant the misery of childlessness for countless millions of couples.

  I wept.

  So that’s how I spend my days, my consciousness flitting like a honey bee from one exotic flower to another. Like Verity I still shy away from allowing myself more than the occasional glimpse of 4-space. No amount of adaptation and fine-tuning, no amount of hot-wiring neurones is ever going to make me comfortable with that.

  I leave all that to the Cloud. It operates effortlessly in 4-space, tailoring the views and perspectives into formats I can handle.

  The Cloud’s operating style had been painless. It’d penetrated my body, sending in armies of tiny warriors to fillet out all the pathogens. In doing so it had cleared all the gunk from my arteries, tweaking my ciliary muscles so my eyesight is as good as anyone’s, and generally made me into the healthiest human being on the planet.

  As for my neural hot-wiring, that huge 4-dimensional hypercube of optical pathways that hovers ana my head, that does indeed condense days of thought into seconds. My clumsiness, which brought me so close to death on several occasions, and which caused the death of others, is gone. There is little now that I cannot anticipate.

  It was the past that caused me the real pain. No more could I hide behind convenient forgetfulness or carefully edited memories. Verity made me review my life, made me track down the consequences of my actions through the lives of those I affected. Just as Nevis had wanted me to do, but at an agonising level of veracity.

  The worst case had been a family of refugees from Beirut. Palestinians who had made it to the Sytares by an expensive and circuitous route, they had settled in New York in the late Eighties. The father had been engaged in politics and peripherally with terrorism. The rest of his family had been entirely innocent. Several years on, in a couple of uncaring and rather tedious hours, I had been the one who tracked them down and downloaded their data to the section who'd made the search request.

  I had forgotten them then, turning enthusiastically to some mathematical modelling of a new computer virus. The Israeli hit team had been sloppy and indiscriminate. A lot of clearing up had been necessary. To the world the family had simply disappeared, but I know where they lie, deep in the heart of woodland to the north of New York State. There will always be flowers there, no matter the time of year.

  The anguish and depression had paralysed me. Verity said later she thought she had lost me. She comforted me as best she could, showing how the harm done to others had always been through a failure of my imagination. True evil is rare: we are simply bounded machines of flesh and blood with very limited empathic capabilities.

  Later I wondered how Verity had survived her own life review. The Cloud seemed uncomprehending of the concept of sympathy.

  'But why me?' I had asked those many weeks ago. 'I'm not the most ethical or moral man in the world.'

  'Correct.'

  'Then why do you want me to become like you?'

  'Because you are like me, though hopefully more imaginative than I am. Anyway your life is actually pretty blameless. You always avoided hurting people if you could. When you did hurt them it was through carelessness, or because you put too much faith in the CIA.'

  'You want me to sit in judgement and be your executioner?'

  'Exactly. We have to change the world, and very quickly. Even with the computer extension I can handle barely a score of analogues. There's far too much work for me to do alone.'

  'How many others do you intend to recruit?'

  'There's a limit. I can superintend you the way I do my analogues. That would allow me only twenty judges.'

  I shook my head. 'That's too limited. Twenty judges with twenty personality clones means only four hundred analogues at most to judge and guide six billion people. That's fifteen million each!'

  'The depopulation program will help eventually, I suppose.' She sounded tired. 'I doubt it will fall below a billion even in a hundred years. The virus will reduce potency levels by nearly eight percent, but really determined people trying harder could raise the levels above the fifty percent target. If they resort to technology, in vitro fertilisation, that sort of thing, it could be as bad as ever. Part of our job will be to stop them.' A stable, caring ecology was impossible at present population levels.

  Fertility clinics had always seemed to me to be so worthy. Now, when everyone would be classed as infertile by the standards of the previous generation, I would be spending a lot of my time making sure such places could not function.

  Why me? Why her? What strange alien criteria had we met?

  Religions are traditionally supposed to spawn 'good' people, or at least people who follow some prescribed moral code. But blind belief does not seem to be what the Integral is after. Maybe that’s not surprising when you consider how much trouble religion has caused.

  We're certainly kind people, so far as we're able nowadays. Neither of us is tough or ruthless. It would help a lot if we were.

  Both of us are rather naive. We both think intuitively.

  Are those the reasons enough for choosing us for such power? I think not.

  I've paid a heavy price for my godhead, naturally. In the Garden of Eden the Apple was Knowledge, but never did it taste sweeter, more satisfying than now.

  Too satisfying. I cannot stop no matter how tired or lonely or depressed I become. I cannot close down my analogues, slow down my neuronal speeds or cut myself off from the database. The intellectual blindness and claustrophobia of being only a man again would be unbearable.

  I have had to pay in another way. A way that has emptied a part of me that can never be refilled. I should never have looked at Lola with my new eyes. No life can stand such scrutiny. I know that well enough now, having seen the weakness and deceit laid bare in countless lives.

  But at the time my love for her was still strong. I thought that by knowing her more I would love her more.

  Perhaps at first sight her courage seems admirable. But I can se
e the despair that fuels it. I loved what I thought of as her independence but now I see the nights of lonely tears, the worry and self-doubt that I guess are her constant companions.

  Independence, in any event, is an illusion. Scanning through her life I can see all her actions and unconscious reactions. I see the way that she, lobbyist and arch-manipulator that she is, can be so easily manipulated in turn. By friends, by newspapers, by governments, advertisers, numberless fads and fashions. Everyone has pretensions of independence, but every hour they live by countless rules and conventions, legal, civil, and social: stated and unstated. It is cooperation that has made man what he is. How else would we have got to the top of the food chain?

  In other words Lola is only human, just like all the billions of others. She eats, lives, loves and will die in more or less the same way as everyone else. She has so much in common with humanity when viewed under my all-seeing microscope that there is so little about her which is different or special. A person who stood out in my life, the sight of whom would lift my heart, is now as undistinguished as one amoeba from another.

  I could love you all or I could love none.

  If only you were not all so weak!

  I have never been a forgiving person. Perhaps forgiveness is something The Integral does not hold dear.

  In my newfound loneliness I tried talking to The Cloud, but it has such difficulty communicating. Humans are so monumentally stupid, so breathtakingly ignorant, so far away in understanding that it cannot even talk down to us. How would a farmer set about communicating with a stalk of wheat? Even if he understood its language, its conception of the universe would be so very strange and so very limited that communication would be impossible.

  The Cloud tries and so do I, but I rarely if ever understand what it is telling me. As long as I can just tell it what to do, as clearly as I can, and it shows me what it is doing, then everything is fine. But ask it a question like: 'Describe the beings who built you', and the limitations of English soon become apparent. It starts to run through every adjective in the dictionary.