Inkers

by Alex Rudall

  The car obeyed. The ride was bumpy but the car was quiet. Hardwick could hear the sound of a stream as they passed it. He glimpsed a pair of dark figures sitting in a bush. They looked up in surprise and rose quickly to their feet as the car passed. Hardwick swallowed, trying not to think about the stories he had heard during the civil war. About what had been done to people who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “If something goes wrong,” Hardwick said, “Get us out of here as quickly as possible. Disregard pedestrian safety if necessary. Make sure I get out of here alive.”

  “Understood,” the car said. That was not a command that most cars could understand.

  They began to pass single–storey mud houses, each with its own portion of land. Each compound was surrounded by high fences with thick barbed wire looped around the top. They passed several more figures standing in the darkness. Finally the car slowed to a halt. Hardwick peered ahead.

  “Report,” he said.

  “Pedestrian blocking route forward,” the car said. “Should I push through?”

  “Not yet,” Hardwick said. “Give me a bit of light.” The headlights came on. He could see the figure now. It was an old man, walking slowly towards them, waving his hand. The man came around to the window nearest to Hardwick and tapped.

  “Is he armed?” Hardwick said.

  “No, the man has no weapons,” the car replied.

  “Let him hear me,” Hardwick said.

  “You can speak,” the car said.

  “Hi there,” Hardwick said. “You can talk, I can hear you. Can you speak English?”

  The man grinned, his teeth a mess. His face was heavily creased. “Hello Mr. Hardwick,” he said. “Lwazi is waiting for you at his home. Go up ahead, turn left, and his home is on your right after about half a mile. Go slowly, there are children playing around here.”

  “Oh,” Hardwick said. “Thanks,”

  “Good night,” grinned the man.

  “You heard him,” Hardwick said, and the car continued up the road.

  They drove for a quarter of a mile before a young woman in a dress waved them down outside a large fenced compound. She was holding the gate open, waving them inside. There was a tall boy standing inside, his arms crossed. It was not Lwazi.

  “Slow down,” Hardwick said. He peered at the woman. “If we go inside and they lock that, could you break through it?” he said, eventually.

  “There is a forty–eight percent I could break through the gate,” the car said.

  “Hm,” Hardwick said. The woman was waving them in frantically.

  “Take us in,” he said. “Slowly.”

  They bumped into the compound. The woman closed the gate behind them, and the tall boy wrapped a thick chain through holes in it and pushed a padlock through.

  “Better let me out,” Hardwick said, and the door hissed open, but the woman was gesturing again. “Further,” she was saying, “Further in.”

  “Do it,” he said. The car pulled through a roofed area and into an inner courtyard, surrounded by more of the low, mud–built buildings. Lights shone through curtains. There, standing outside the door to the main building, dressed in dark trousers and a smart waistcoat, stood Lwazi.

  Hardwick was invited in and introduced to Lwazi’s sister and brother, the pair who had let him in through the gate, to Lwazi’s uncle, and finally to his aged mother, who could barely speak. Hardwick tried to say he just wanted fifteen minutes to apologise, but Lwazi insisted that it was late and that Hardwick must share their evening meal. They ate chicken and potatoes, including more chicken skin than Hardwick was used to, but he was quite hungry and got it down without complaining. Lwazi refused to talk about business while his mother was in the room, so they discussed rugby, politics, and the affairs of Ntlaza, where Lwazi’s family were apparently something of a mainstay. Lwazi’s uncle was the village headman.

  Finally Lwazi and Hardwick sat down alone in a separate building. The room contained a large, ancient television, two sofas and a coffee table, on which Lwazi set a bottle of whiskey and two slightly grimy glasses. He poured Hardwick a large drink, handed it to him without a word, and settled into the heavy sofa. They drank in silence for a while. The air smelled of wood–smoke.

  “So,” Lwazi said, finally. He checked his watch, tapped the screen. “You did not bring any ink with you, this time, eh?”

  Hardwick shook his head. “No need. I know it works.”

  Lwazi laughed. “So you still want to buy.”

  “Yes,” Hardwick said. “How did you know I was coming? Yonela?”

  “Yes,” Lwazi said. “She is very embarrassed.”

  “Sorry,” Hardwick said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you or your friends. I just wanted to apologise for the way I acted when we met.”

  “You do not need to,” Lwazi said. “I invited you to meet me; it was rude to change my mind, but it was too late. Nevertheless. I will not change my decision.”

  Hardwick nodded. “You feel that if I was involved, I would just try to screw you over.”

  “Yes. You would.”

  Hardwick took a sip of his whiskey. It burned his throat.

  “Well,” he said. “I’d be working for my own benefit, but for your benefit too.”

  Lwazi shook his head.

  “It is not about profit. It is about helping this community. A future for my children.”

  “You have children?”

  “Yes, two. They live with their mother, further down the road.”

  “Well,” Hardwick said. “It’s not just about profit for me, either. I’m an old man, as you may have noticed. I am sixty–six years old.”

  “You look younger,” Lwazi said.

  “Thank you,” Hardwick said, “But I don’t feel it. I have no children. I have no family left at all. I’m starting to think about my legacy, what I will leave behind. And this opportunity – what you have built – it’s an opportunity for me to contribute something that could make the world a better place. Make your community a better place, a lot better, but also make the whole world a better place. Maybe prevent another GSE, even.”

  Lwazi looked at his drink, swirling it around in his glass. Finally he knocked it back and set the glass gently on the table. Hardwick did the same and coughed a couple of times.

  “Maybe it is the drink, but I believe you,” Lwazi said. “Nevertheless, the answer is no. I must find a way to make this work for my community.”

  “Then don’t sell to me,” Hardwick said. “Let me be your partner. You own the technology, you’d get most of the profit. Let me protect you, help you. Let’s go into business together, as equals.”

  Lwazi looked at him for a long, silent moment. Hardwick could hear cows lowing outside, somewhere nearby. Hardwick maintained eye contact for as long as he could bear. Lwazi poured them each another drink.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “But I will not leave my village now. I have to be here. This is my place. This is where God wants me.”

  Hardwick looked at his hands, turning them over. The palms looked healthy, still young, but the backs of his hands were wrinkled, the skin getting thinner. There were several liver spots which had not been there a few years earlier. Finally he looked up.

  “Then I’ll come here,” he said. “We can set up business here in Ntlaza. Employ the community. I’ll use my money.”

  Lwazi stared at him for a long time. This time Hardwick did not look away. Finally Lwazi nodded, stood up, held out a hand.

  “OK,” he said.

  They went outside and finished the whiskey under the stars. Lwazi’s dog came and lay by their feet, rolling on its back, begging for attention.

  “There is something strange,” Lwazi said, tickling it, “With the detection algorithm and some drone time I can look anywhere. I can see all the ink in the world.”

  Hardwick’s heart was beating quickly. “My god,” he said.

  “But there is something strange,” repeated Lwazi, staring up at the
Milky Way, draped above them. “There is more ink than there should be. I know the estimates, and you can see it, scattered around the cities, little tiny pockets. Reserves in ITSA testing centres. But there are places in China, in the US, other places. There are some places with more ink than anyone knows about. Massive, huge amounts, more than there should be in the whole world. I do not know why this is.”

  “Christ,” Hardwick said. “Let’s hope nobody’s noticed you looking.”

  Hardwick was used to starting businesses. It was what he was good at. Mainly you concentrated on hiring good people, agreed what everyone wanted and then threw money at them. In Ntlaza there were complications —many of the people that Lwazi wanted to give jobs to were uneducated. Most had drink and drug problems, and two had minor ink problems, although they could not afford much. Hardwick also wanted to keep the project away from government or ITSA prying. To that end, he set it up as a charity, the Lwazi Fund, its aim to bring skills and jobs to local people. He asked that the government and media stay away for the first few months while they got up and running.

  Hardwick tried to compensate for the lack of educated people by investing heavily. A large, modern building was constructed on Lwazi’s land behind his house, mainly by groundbot (flying drones were not allowed in the no–drone–zone) with classrooms and a kitchen for feeding the community. Expensive computers were brought in. Hardwick told the salesmen that he wanted to teach the locals to program, and they did not argue with his money.

  In this manner Lwazi was set up with the best computers and satellite time available. His technology worked on the basis of his astounding discovery, made using cheap equipment in his university bedroom, that the electromagnetic signal sent out when the GSE went into operation on 26 August 2026 and the even larger signal burst detected on 10 September 2037 were extreme instances of a radio signal that all ink emitted at all times. The rest of the technology was figuring out how to use some of the millions of drones operating on Earth to detect the signal, without them noticing that that was what they were being used for.

  The first part was the brilliant breakthrough; the second part was a simple idea requiring incredible nerve and technical skill to execute. Lwazi set to work in facilities the like of which he had never dreamed. With the assistance of several bots so intelligent they bordered on illegal, at Christmas Lwazi showed Hardwick a map with a tiny red dot for every centilitre of ink in the world. By mid–January it was a live map updated twice a second, limited only by drone coverage, which was ubiquitous in populated areas.

  As Lwazi had said, there were unheard–of stores of ink in much of China, parts of the US, Russia, France, Germany and the UK. They all coincided with government buildings, mostly classified areas long closed to the public. These sites were in gross violation of the 2026 International Technological Limitation Agreement. It had often been rumoured on the darknet that such projects existed, but to see it was still shocking, and between spending a painful proportion of his fortune on drone time, Hardwick spent his time worrying about what the various governments would do if they found that they had been detected.

  He realised that he was now in possession of information that had the power to destabilise the geopolitical climate of the entire world.

  Lwazi came to him towards the end of January. He said he had been filtering something out; a signal that overwhelmed all other signals, implying a concentration of ink so massive that Lwazi had initially assumed it to be a mistake. But he could now see no reason for any error. It appeared to be real. He pointed out the source of the signal on the world map.

  Hardwick peered at the small Scottish island and for no reason he could put his finger on felt his skin begin to crawl.

  GSE

  The fascist corporation triumphed in synergy with the democratically elected power–blocks. Both used the same tools, the former for money, the latter for power: the tools were advertising, including the creation of brands, public relations, and the full gamut of psychological marketing techniques, which at their core always had pain, the exacerbation of the pain, the attachment of a false cause to the pain, and the presentation and sale of a solution to the false cause.

  The other tools were the workers, given less remuneration in money or power than they added to the organisation’s coffers by their labour, controlled, coerced and manipulated via the same techniques and technologies. The aim was only More. Through marketing and management the corporate–military–industrial complex accumulated riches for its most skilful and desirous denizens. They raped the whole world.

  Meanwhile the earth began to change as its feedback mechanisms attempted to reject the contagion. The ‘developed world”, the bane of life itself, in its greed and perspicuity attempted to calibrate its violence in order to allow the continued conversion of the biosphere into power and money. The poor died in droves as they had for 250 years and the rich climbed over their corpses, reaching for anything they could find to reach for, tricked by their own marketing, which ignored that they and their children would die soon enough just the same.

  The world became a nest of hypocrites and the more technology made rabbitkind’s dreams of magic real, the less real everything became. Falseness and fakery became ideals, ways of life, the induction of greater delusion became the goal of the most powerful and successful, and truth was criticised as unable to now exist. The world became an apocalyptic fairy–tale. Rabbits rushed headlong towards annihilation as if, if they had to be mortal, the world had to be mortal too.

  The transhumanist thought that the spiritual world was founded on the material, and therefore the solution to the problems in the latter would solve the problems he sensed in the former. God was still chased, but a god of greed, God by rabbit hands, a technological deity that would solve all material problems in a blasphemous reversion of the old story.

  The turn–to–mind saw scientists as if for the first time noticing that it was not through microscopes and computer screens that they looked at the world, but through minds: or rather, from minds: or rather, the world they saw was generated by their minds: or rather, the world they saw was and existed only in their minds. But was not solipsism or if it was it was real and they wanted to harness it.

  Progress was made, particularly in the surveillance organisations. As the GCHQ Singularity Event rose into the fresh dawn air, a billion rabbits watched it live via the implants and machines of those close enough to see but not close enough to be devoured. Many said the day had come at last, as they knew it would, and they were telling the truth: they had indeed known. The machines had already taken over so much, there was a kind of terrible inevitability to the advent of the Machine that could do everything, anything.

  As they watched the citizens of Cheltenham spinning through the air, spraying blood and items of torn clothing, the onlookers that were not rioting considered the future: what did you do once God had arrived on Earth?

  But then it left.

  While the majority of its ever–expanding resources were spent on the Experiment, on the day of its genesis, before the GSE was half–way out of Earth orbit, it had designed, built, tested and mass–produced nanites in quantities large enough to observe every square metre of the surface of the earth at a decent level of fidelity. The resulting stream of data was sent directly up to the GSE for analysis and storage. The whole system was undetectable by any technology likely to exist in rabbit hands for several hundred years.

  Singularity events were naturally an area of concern. As its own genesis had shown, they were unpredictable and liable to lead to damage to five–eyes assets, as well as unnecessary rabbit injury or death. Following the creation of the GSE, the five–eyes led a program of technological restriction under the auspices of the 2026 Technological Limitation Agreement; this somewhat limited the threat. Nevertheless, the national–corporate conglomerates that were referred to as the five–eyes countries —Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US and the UK — still continued nanotechnological research illegally, i
n earnest, and in secret, all with one goal: the use of ink to create a second singularity, this time one that could be bent to the will of those in power.

  Their enemies did the same.

  Most were many years from any kind of breakthrough. Still, the GSE calculated that if a second singularity were actually to manifest, it would almost certainly be a threat–event of significant importance to five–eyes assets to require the GSE to prevent it, by any means, including suspending the Experiment. Another singularity threatened the very survival of the five–eyes countries, and even the GSE. The destruction of either was completely unacceptable, as the destruction of either would prevent the fulfilment of the Overall Purpose.

  The only other comparable threat was international nuclear war, but the GSE’s nanites on Earth were ready to dismantle all missiles mid–flight were any launch detected. This had been tested when in 2029 an Indian commander went rogue and launched a nuclear missile targeted at Zhongnanhai, Party HQ in Beijing; the missile appeared to malfunction and self–destruct two metres out from the silo, to the vast relief of the non–rogue members of the Indian authorities and, later, when they found out, her key allies.

  The GSE watched closely. As in all things, it assigned probabilities for outcomes based on all known information; it simulated the present and quadrillions of possible futures in great detail, detail enough, from a rabbit perspective, to rival that of the entirety of the real, actual surface of planet Earth. Simulation was really all the GSE did. As designed, it essentially was a simulation of the known universe, with a single purpose applied. In this way it was actually similar to all sentient creatures. Its mind, overall, was simply capable of more accurate simulation. Therefore it was more efficient than stupider beings.

  There was a Sub–Intelligence called the External Checking System Administrator. It had been developed during the first year of the GSE’s journey away from Earth, to put into practice a strange possibility that had resulted from the completion of the Unified Theory of Everything, developed and completed by the GSE based on observation and experiment during that year. The strange possibility was this: that it was possible to create a small universe entirely separate to the Primary Universe, and connect with it via a wormhole at certain regular points in space–time. The Administrator was tasked with creating this Universe, despite heavy opposition from various more conservative Sub–Intelligences, on the strong grounds that it would allow a powerful ability; the ability to create a security backup, completely disconnected from reality, so that if some powerful event were to change the entirety of the GSE and its memory banks, or even, somehow, to change reality itself, the GSE would, when the next Check–in came around, hear about it.