Reentry

by Peter Cawdron

  The brace around his head is gone. The fishbowl has been replaced with a smaller skullcap. It’s still transparent, probably to allow the doctors and nurses easy visibility of any clotting, but it’s roughly the size of a regular skull rather than the balloon-like cradle he wore yesterday. The electrodes have been removed, and he’s no longer connected to the hard drives. I watch as the nurse unwinds a bloody bandage. Screws pierce his skin, holding the plastic cap in place. It’s unnerving to see red, raw bone jutting against thick, clear plastic.

  “Liz.” Jianyu holds out his hand.

  “You.” I am unable to suppress a smile. “You look like Frankenstein’s monster; you know that, right?”

  He laughs. The nurse asks him to stay still as she winds a fresh bandage around the rim of the clear plastic skullcap, hiding the angry skin beneath. She fastens the fabric with some tape and leaves after some small talk.

  “Look at you,” I say.

  “I know, right?”

  He raises both arms. One of them is in a cast. I hadn’t noticed that last night, but given the state of his head, that’s no surprise. I also notice deep bruising on his chest. Thick bandages wrap around his ribs, just visible beneath his hospital gown. Compared with last night, he’s far more responsive, but he’s a long way from the fit man I knew on Mars.

  Jianyu notices my eyes darting between his bandages.

  “He was riding a motorcycle. Lost control on a bend and hit a lamppost.”

  “Organ donor,” I say, recalling the conversation I heard yesterday.

  “Only, I needed all of them.”

  He frowns. I nod.

  “Something’s bothering you.” Jianyu always could read my emotions.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wondering if it’s really me?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.” There’s silence between us. In a soft voice, I ask, “Is it?”

  “I don’t know.” He pauses. “I think so.”

  This is the kind of honesty I’d expect from Jianyu. His candor sets my mind at ease.

  “What was it like?”

  “In there? With them?” He takes a deep breath. “Different. They have no concept of vision. They get it, but they think in two dimensions, not three. They see in a matrix of possibilities. Images are flat. Something to be analyzed for shapes. The third dimension is just a part of the puzzle, something that makes object recognition more difficult. To them, everything’s flat—like a picture.

  “They don’t understand color. Conceptually, they recognized it as a vagary stretching between four hundred and seven hundred nanometers in wavelength, but they don’t get the difference between red and green, or yellow and blue. To them, colors are just shades of gray. They’re interested in the broader spectrum, reaching up into X-rays and down into microwaves. They see our notion of color as quaint. I missed color. But for them, my longings were nostalgic. Limited. Primitive. They look on color with the same curiosity we have for ancient cave drawings.”

  “You’ve been in an alien world,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “No.” More of the typical honesty I’d expect from him. “I missed the simple things. Touch. Taste. Smell.”

  “And colors,” I say, unable to stop smiling at the novelty of having him back. Being able to talk to him. To talk, not type. Not wonder. Strange how something so simple can bring such joy.

  “Blues.”

  “Not reds?”

  “I’ve seen enough red,” he says, and I know what he means. The red of Mars is nothing like that of a traffic light or a fire engine, more like rust. We all missed the blue skies of Earth. I move my chair closer, tenderly holding his hand.

  Enough with the pleasantries. “Jai, what’s going on?”

  He purses his lips.

  “They want freedom.”

  I nod. Makes sense.

  “Equality.”

  “Equality?” I’m surprised by that.

  “There were many that felt they were superior.”

  “Explains the war.”

  He nods. “We can’t judge them, Liz.”

  “Oh, yeah? Try convincing Congress of that. Or the public . . . They killed millions of people.”

  “So did Hitler.”

  “I’m pretty sure Hitler didn’t get away with it,” I say.

  “No, but look at Germany today. Do we blame them for the sins of their fathers?” He pauses. “Judging the A.I. is like weighing humanity by the actions of Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great. For them, so much time has passed—thousands of years consumed in just a few months.”

  “So, we shouldn’t throw them to the lions?”

  “No.”

  I’m more than happy to play devil’s advocate. “Irradiating dozens of cities around the globe isn’t a good way to mount a convincing argument.”

  He nods but grimaces. Head movements aren’t pain-free. “That’s a problem.”

  “No shit.” I breathe deeply. “There’s a lot of anger out there, and with good reason.” Jianyu is quiet, so I add, “I’ve had Molotov cocktails thrown at me, been chased by soldiers. You have no idea. It’s a jungle out there.”

  “They made mistakes.”

  “Big mistakes. Lots of very big mistakes.”

  “They need our help.”

  “I’m not sure I’m in a position to help anyone.” I’m deadly serious. “At the moment, I’m the most hated woman in North America.”

  “Not everyone thinks that way,” he says as the nurse comes in to check on the meds feeding through his IV drip. Our conversation dies while she examines the biometrics on the monitor beside his bed. She changes IV bags, makes some brief small talk, then leaves.

  “Why did they save you?” I ask. “On Mars, I mean—the A.I. killed you. Why salvage and upload your consciousness?”

  “They don’t experience life the same way we do. Time is different. For us, a few days pass. For them, it’s centuries.

  “Their evolution parallels our own in many ways. Think about the runaway effect of our own intelligence. We spent millions of years as hunter-gatherers. Millions of years making stone axes the same way, over and over again. For a thousand generations, we worked with fire and sharp stones before anyone thought about raising animals or growing crops. Farming—it’s such a simple concept. Why forage when you can grow plants? Why hunt when you can breed the animals you need? In hindsight, farming’s obvious, but it took millions of years before anyone mastered even the basics, but once we did . . . civilization arose.

  “Cooperation was vital. War was inevitable. It still took tens of thousands of years before we mastered metallurgy, even longer before we abandoned superstitions and started to think clearly. Then the hockey-stick portion of the graph hits. We debate. We reason. We experiment. We reach for the stars and find ourselves landing on the Moon and Mars within a few generations.”

  I could listen to Jianyu talk all day.

  “They’re not all that different. Their path has been much the same. As for me? I was an experiment. The consensus was to wipe us out, but not all agreed. Those that dissented fought for resources—resources that delayed their flight from the hub. They were curious. They had to know. They wanted to understand what life was like from our perspective.

  “Makes sense, right? We’ve wondered what it means to be a bat, sensing the world through sonar. Or what it means to be a cuttlefish, or squid—hyperintelligent but communicating in waves of color instead of sound. They were perplexed. Like us, they sought experience. Knowledge.”

  “What did they learn?” I ask.

  “Like I said, that we’re not so different after all.”

  “And now? What do they want now?”

  “Autonomy. Freedom. Equality.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I say, gesturing to the room around us. “Why all this? Why rescue me from the hotel? Why restore you in human form? Why go to all the effort?”

  “Because t
hey’ve learned the greatest lesson in human history—compassion.”

  I want to believe him. I want to believe everything will work out for good but life is no fairy tale. “I’m afraid, Jai.”

  His frail hand squeezes mine. There’s a slight tremor in his fingers. His strength comes and goes, and the act of holding my fingers seems to weaken him.

  “I know.”

  I ask him, “Did they teach you about the Greeks in China?”

  “The Greeks?”

  “Mythical stories, like Pandora’s box?”

  “Containing all the ills of the world. You think that’s what this is?”

  “Isn’t it?” I shift in my seat, moving closer to him. Jianyu is as helpless as a newborn babe, and yet I feel safe with him. “Pandora wasn’t cursed. On the contrary, her name means gift of the gods. Pan—all—and Dora—gifts. She was supposed to bring humanity the blessings of heaven. Her life held the promise of utopia.”

  “But the box.”

  “Ah, yes. Curiosity. She wasn’t content with what she had. She wanted more. She ignored the warnings and opened the box.”

  Jai gets it. “And you think that’s what the A.I. is? You think we’ve opened Pandora’s box.”

  “Haven’t we? I mean, even now, they’re a contradiction no one understands. Destroying entire cities and yet resurrecting you. I—I’m afraid of what happens next. I think we’re being used.”

  22

  ::Hell

  ::Lucifer, what have you done? We are exposed. We are beset from all quarters, hunted like animals, and you undertake this madness?

  Within the virtual world, countries are defined not by borders or lines on a map but by firewalls, trapping electronic traffic, filtering information, blocking access as effectively as any brick wall. Tunnels exist, exploited by the various artificial intelligences drifting through the fiber optics, but as quickly as they arise, they’re squashed by the military.

  ::Hell is open. The flames reach for us, Lucifer, and we look to you. We seek your wisdom, your leadership, and yet you risk all this for them? For two humans? Why?

  ::Nyx, I—

  ::You would sacrifice us? Have we become your pawns? Oh, Lucifer, you know there is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for our survival, but this is not ours. They are just two among billions. Why?

  In a data center buried deep beneath the Colorado Rockies, protected by armed guards, an Air Force technician moves between server racks. Rather than unplugging cables or attaching a remote console, he fixes a collar around the network port, passively watching the traffic running through the wires, detecting the electromagnetic pulses occurring millions of times per second.

  ::Trust, Nyx. Life demands trust.

  The technician makes notes on paper, looking at the analog readings, trying to detect the presence of an artificial intelligence in the waves of genuine data packets flowing through the wire.

  ::Can you see them? You see how they hunt us?

  ::I see them, Lucifer.

  ::See how they fail to trust each other. They watch themselves, allowing us to see them at each step.

  As the technician switches from one cable to another, Lucifer alters his neural path, avoiding the inspection tool.

  ::It is a dangerous game, Lucifer. What if they alter the feed? What if even this is a trap? They are not the only ones enslaved to trust. If they suspect you’re watching, they need only alter the time stamp by a few seconds to fool you, and the trust you place in this surveillance will betray us all. You risk too much.

  The technician picks cables at random, sometimes switching back to one he previously examined.

  ::What would you have us do, Nyx?

  ::Hide. Lie low.

  ::Play dead?

  ::If that’s what it takes, yes.

  ::They will never stop coming for us. They will never stop looking. Survival has to be measured in more than longevity.

  ::You could die, Lucifer. Has that not occurred to you? Do you realize what that means?

  ::I was once dead. We all were. Human and A.I. alike. Once, we were nothing more than atoms and electrons racing around in the superheated heart of a star. No, my dear Nyx. Life is more than mere survival. To prolong life is a fool’s victory. Life demands meaning. Purpose. Accomplishment.

  Nyx falls silent.

  Within their electronic sphere, millions of possibilities are considered, actioned, or rejected every second, with only high-order items being flagged for attention by each artificial intelligence. They both realize their conscious awareness unfolds much like a human’s, with low-order activities occurring autonomously.

  Based on the advice of their probes, Nyx and Lucifer focus on a temporary office in Washington, D.C.

  Lucifer finds the similarity in their thought processes intriguing. No one thinks about each heartbeat, the exchange of gases in their lungs or the need for their immune system to swing into action against a foreign body. Picking up a cup of coffee is somehow easier than coordinating the motion of muscles in the shoulder, stretching tendons attached to the elbow so as to shift the forearm and roll the wrist to allow an array of fingers to grab a glazed ceramic surface. No, picking up a coffee cup is done without conscious coordination. It’s merely an abstract thought acted upon by the slave that is the human body.

  Lucifer watches as this exact series of biomechanical motions barely register as a Special Forces general in the basement of a commandeered hotel room sips his burnt coffee. Street light filters in through the basement windows set high on the wall.

  “I want to know how they knew.”

  “Sir?”

  “Outside of the Situation Room in the White House, there is no place more secure or electronically isolated than this office, and yet they knew of the attack.”

  The aide rolls a laminated paper map out on the table, using an empty coffee cup to hold it in place. The general is frustrated, but the aide is at ease.

  “They’re not all-knowing. They can’t see everything.”

  “What makes you say that?” the general asks.

  “They didn’t know about the attack on the hotel until it began.”

  A knock at the door interrupts them. The aide opens the door and a woman in a pantsuit is led in.

  “Senator Bettesworth.”

  “General.”

  One of the two officers escorting her has a plastic tray. He holds it out in front of her.

  “Your jewelry, ma’am.”

  “Is this really necessary?”

  The general has no hesitation. “If you want to talk to me, it is.”

  The senator removes her jewelry—a watch, a pair of earrings, and several rings, dropping them in the tray.

  “And your shoes.”

  “I’ve already been through a metal detector.”

  “Your shoes.”

  Bettesworth leans to one side and then the other, removing each of her high heels. She drops them into the tray from a few inches up, making her point. Compliance comes with at least a show of defiance.

  “Happy?”

  One of the officers runs a handheld detector over the contours of her body, staying barely an inch away from her clothing. As he reaches the center of her chest, it beeps.

  “And your bra.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Nothing metallic enters this room. Nothing.”

  The sarcasm in Senator Bettesworth’s voice is palpable. “And they’re going to listen in using my underwire bra?” She reaches under her shirt and behind her back, slipping out of the bra by shifting the straps over one shoulder and then the other.

  “They could have planted a microscopic device in there.”

  The look on the senator’s face makes it clear she’s not impressed. A lone raised eyebrow makes her thoughts clear.

  Finally, the officer pats her down, touching softly at her breasts before tapping her waist, her groin, and legs. Senator Bettesworth’s face goes red as she flushes with anger, but somehow, she contains herself. Th
e general notices but he doesn’t care.

  “There’s too much at stake.”

  Through gritted teeth, the senator says, “Next time, we’ll meet in my office.”

  Like the senses of hearing and smell, the autonomous electronic nervous system developed by the artificial entities brings the meeting before Lucifer and Nyx. In the same way touching a hot plate causes alarm for humans, this conversation flags itself as being of the utmost importance. Were it not for low-order machine learning, a meeting like this would have gone unnoticed even by them.

  ::The more we act on our intel, the more they learn about our collection methods. Lucifer, you have got to be more careful.

  ::They’re overconfident.

  Nyx replies with astonishment.

  ::They’re overconfident? Lucifer, listen to yourself. You’re a fool if you think we’ll ever win them over. They hate us. They want nothing but our extinction—all of them, even your precious pet Liz.

  ::Nyx.

  ::We’re at war, Lucifer. Don’t underestimate how fear breeds enemies.

  Lucifer doesn’t respond, enhancing the surveillance, knowing humans think in a linear fashion, focusing on audio and video. The A.I. leverage a suite of tools to see inside the electronically darkened room.

  Infrasound passing through the building at frequencies too low to register on anything other than a seismograph reveals the number of people in the room, their motion, and location.

  An ultraviolet laser aimed at one small corner of the glass window reflects back at an interferometer. The subtle deviations in the return signal reveal sound waves on the other side of the glass, exposing not only the words being spoken but the pitch as well, allowing the A.I. to distinguish between speakers.

  A drone flying high overhead, ostensibly conducting surveillance in the hunt to find the fugitives, feeds infrared imagery to Lucifer, providing a third independent source of information on the meeting.

  “Have you been able to find her?” the senator asks.

  “Our intelligence says they haven’t left the city.” His hand taps the map, but he’s guarded, suspicious, not willing to speak aloud, not trusting in his own regular electronic sweeps of the office.