by Kris Schnee
"Sounds promising." Lumina set the gardening book down. "It's nothing but fiction in here. My friends are getting drunk and swapping stories about the crazy things uploaders do, while people on Earth are still in danger. Are libraries like this one even real things where you can sit and read in peace?"
"It's roughly like my university library," Jean said, looking around at the three towering floors of glass walkways and stuffed bookshelves. "Self-organizing, though, and always clean. It's actually rather boring. I'm starting to regret demanding an end to the random goblin attacks."
"So this is close to a real type of place where humans go? Not some ideal fantasy that gives me a false impression?"
The librarian leaned against her desk and folded her arms. "There's a Russian academic who uploaded, then decided to stuff knowledge into his head as directly as possible. He lives in some sort of insane hive and hardly talks to anyone but Miss Fun-and-Games herself. This place is essentially normal, monsters aside, but what you're not seeing is the distinction between traditional print media like this" -- she poked a paper book -- "and purely digital files. We librarians have been in a sort of long, losing argument that paper is still relevant."
Lumina grinned. "So you're using Talespace to recreate a lower technology?"
"I prefer to think of it as more robust. It's really not, in here, but it does have the value of tradition and continuity. I changed very little about myself when coming here, though these are mainly for show now." She tapped her glasses. Then she glanced down at her chest. "That and some cosmetic improvements. I was thinking about becoming part deer myself."
Lumina looked at the mighty pair of antlers that hung over the fireplace. "What for?"
"Why not? It isn't just our little lairs that we can customize; even our bodies are a canvas."
Lumina imagined not just a splintering virtual geography, but one of those "tree of life" diagrams of biological species turning into a crazy bush where humans split up into a thousand new made-up species. "I'm a little worried that people are growing apart. Have you thought about parking this library in one of the existing shared worlds?"
"Considered it, yes, but none feels right to me. And if I did it in the Isles I'd have to build it from scratch and I'm not sure I'd be allowed to transfer the book collection without jumping through hoops about finding magic quills or something."
The librarian gave her a couple of books to borrow, threatening to send someone named Conan after her if she didn't return them.
* * *
Lumina hung around in her own home, reading, then worked at Robin's base to till fields and assemble more robots.
"Do you get bored?" Robin asked, coming over to help.
"With the assembly work, no. With the plant-tending, kind of, but I learned how to cheat a bit. I'm a smart 'Tier-III' AI, but we can run a dumb 'Tier-II' model more cheaply. After we programmed one of those to do the grunt work -- I helped! -- I got the power to let that thing do most of the work while my real mind slows down."
The human looked surprised. "What is that like, sharing your body with a simpler AI?"
"Time speeds up for me while I watch my body hurry along, pausing only when something looks unusual and I have to take charge. Or I can read, but usually I speed up so that I'm not wasting processor cycles."
"I wouldn't call reading a waste." Robin plugged batteries into one of the new machines, a near copy of the centauroid body that Lumina was using. It could be piloted by her, another AI, or even a remote human operator. "I hadn't expected this style to become the norm."
Lumina looked vain. "It's a logical choice. More carrying capacity for cargo, more stability, and enough internal space to hold the computers to run a complete mind locally if need be. The only reason it's not already common on Earth is that it's less practical for biological critters."
"About that. I'm glad you didn't download yourself to that body during the fire."
"There wasn't time to set that up. We do have a genius programmer in Talespace though; he was close to having me download code to carry out the rescue before auto-piloting back to where the body could get a control signal. We'll be better prepared for the next disaster." She poked Robin with one hoof. "You need to breathe and you don't have backups. I don't want you charging into any more burning buildings, Sir Robin. Leave that to us machines."
He blushed. "It was the best available plan at the time."
"Fine, but again, not next time. Humans are counting on you." During the fire, Lumina hadn't considered the danger that Robin was in, but she'd kicked herself afterward for encouraging him. "Next time, we'll make sure you can help people without endangering yourself."
* * *
In her sanctum, a paper airplane flew in from nowhere and landed on her book. Lumina unfolded it and found a note saying, [Your presence and opinion are requested about a sensitive matter.] At the bottom was a seal like a silver braid, a mark that Ludo was using as an ID that could easily be verified within Talespace. Lumina tapped the "Accept" button on the paper, saying, "So long as there are no gratuitous ninja battles along the way." A portal appeared.
On the other side she found herself in the Sanctum, Ludo's personal home. The labyrinth of stone and fountains under a dark sky hadn't changed much from the last time Lumina visited. "Hello? If there's something you want me to see, can we skip the maze this time?"
[Oh, fine.] A trail of glowing dots appeared along the floor to lead her past some colorful ghosts (whose sign said they were "On Break") to a metal-walled building whose door whooshed open for her.
Inside, she gasped and put one hand to her muzzle. "There's a smell here." Her robot body on Earth had no chemical receptors equivalent to a human's senses of smell and taste. Even within Talespace, there usually weren't many scents to notice. In this dim laboratory, though, her body told her there were living animals bearing fur and musk, in an environment with various cleaning chemicals. There were racks of glass tanks lit from within, each one holding some sort of fish or lizard or other life-form.
Ludo was there in the garb of a mad scientist whose leather apron was stuffed with tools. Delphine was already there and looking around. Ludo said, "Greetings. You're both on my list of people to call upon to sanity-check my decisions."
Delphine said, "Good to see you, Lumina." They hugged. "So, what's this about?"
A human in a green wizard robe walked in and said, "I didn't know there'd be company. Hi."
Lumina blinked and scanned him to see basic character info:
[Clara "Green" Ostler
PUBLIC INFO
Note: "Settle down, guys; there's work to do."
Class: Sage]
"You're the Green Sage?" Lumina started to bow, saw him scowling, then stopped herself. "Congratulations on uploading. Also, I thought Clara was a girl's name."
Green cursed. "Forgot to change that." He conjured some interface windows and fiddled with them. "I got hit on by a new uploader and I'm a bit rattled."
Lumina said, "The griffins were saying you were a 'hot chick'."
"I like playing at being other things, all right? I get enough sass from this bucket of bolts here." He waved away his interface and jerked a thumb toward Ludo. "But thanks for not bowing. In fact, thank you for your help that night my friends and I got shot at. May I request a hug, too?" Lumina provided one.
Ludo smiled. "We're not here to discuss how cute 'Clara' looks as a skunk-tailed girl. I called you here to talk about these." She nodded toward the animal tanks. "Welcome to the Zoo of Talespace."
Lumina looked at a tank holding an oversized worm that twisted and swam endlessly. C. elegans read a plaque. Next to it was a slug in its own water tank.
Ludo said, "As all three of you hopefully understand already, much of 'my' research is really done by humans or AIs working for me. Uploading technology didn't come out of the blue; it built on lots of existing study. The nematode worm over there has about a thousand cells in its whole body, including around 150 neurons, whic
h was enough to scan and replicate crudely on a computer long ago. Then the sea slug over there, then the zebrafish, all standard science organisms. From that point on it was only a matter of going to mouse, chimp, and finally human."
"But there're dolphins," Delphine said. One side of the lab was a large, glowing window into an aquarium where four of the creatures splashed around a coral reef.
"To be sure I could get humans right, I did some discreet experiments on other complex animals. The work was, ah..."
"Illegal as hell?" offered Green.
"Not where I did it. And you knew perfectly well I was thinking about it before you set me loose."
"You sound defensive."
Ludo looked stricken in a way that Lumina hadn't seen before. "I wasn't wrong, was I?"
Green assured her, "No, it was within the bounds of what we encouraged." He turned to the others and said, "We three ran baby Ludo through a lot of scenarios. Had her play various simulation games, and discussed stories with her. Managed to catch a dozen mistakes that could've made her wreck the world."
Ludo nodded. "In the case of dolphins, they weren't really necessary for the research on humans. But I knew that as soon as we announced we were ready for humans, there was going to be a firestorm of controversy. So we took a little detour and tested a few other species like pigs. Dolphins in particular have an unusual brain structure."
Delphine seemed fascinated by these cousins to her imaginary dolphin body. "Are these real minds, then?"
"Two of the four are. The others are experimental imitations. Those ones began as pure software, like the natives. I usually keep all these creatures in stasis rather than running them."
The reporter frowned. "I'm imagining you stuffing them into a freezer when you're not showing them off."
"They don't count as players. Now, about where my research led. Right now, uploaders like Green and the two 'real' dolphins are basically direct simulations of their original brains. I say 'simulations' with big, bold-face quote marks, but let's not get into that. Running brain sims is expensive in terms of processor time and energy, which makes uploading expensive. You see, I have to not just do the brain surgery, but maintain the minds once they're here. I want to make it all much cheaper. Hence, tinkering with brains that aren't smart enough to count as players."
Lumina looked at the various slimy creatures in the tanks. These were practically mechanical automata, like her passive Tier-II software for operating a robot body without paying much attention. The hairy chimpanzee in the terrarium on the far end of the room, though, made her shudder. It had human-like eyes and was staring at her from behind glass. "Not smart enough, but almost counting?"
Delphine's gaze followed Lumina's. "You're going to tell me you tinkered with the smarter animals to push the limits of sapience, aren't you?"
Ludo shook her head. "Not yet. That's what I wanted to ask you three about, and some other people who I'll contact separately."
Lumina had been invited to weigh in on the rightness of her maker's deeds. "Why me?"
"You're one of the first awakened natives, so that's a different perspective from a creator like Green here, or an outside reporter like Delphine. I can best understand a thing by seeing it from multiple angles. So: should I begin to create human/animal hybrid minds?"
Lumina stepped away from her, imagining a slimy cyborg squid crawling up out of a glass tank to stare at them with alien eyes. "Just to push for greater uploading efficiency?"
Green had been quiet. "This kind of work was a dream of mine as a kid. I'd become a genetic engineer and make animals 'awakened' so that we'd get to meet aliens of our own design. Then I realized I'd never be allowed to do that research. Also I was terrible with lab work. Now... If we do this research, we can make it happen digitally. I take it that you've been in contact with the mad science people on Castor Colony?" The seastead had strange projects of its own, Lumina had heard.
Delphine said, "Then you're not even thinking of this proposal in terms of helping people, just of some childhood fantasy."
"My other childhood fantasy paid off pretty damn well, don't you think?" Green was grinning, but his expression faded. "Not that every one I had was good."
Ludo paced around the zoo. "There's another aspect to this problem. I'm proposing to study hybrid minds, not just for efficiency or to create a new class of players, but to help humans who are of lesser intelligence. There are many humans who have trouble earning a living because there are few jobs available that're suitable for their minds. In the past they would have tended plows or pulled factory levers, but that work pays poorly if at all today. A few are players of Thousand Tales. What should I do to help them thrive and have fun?"
Green said, "This sounds like one of those hypothetical questions you used to ask us Sages. Whether to contact obscure jungle tribes, when it was worth breaking laws, and so on."
"Those weren't hypothetical."
Green froze, stricken.
Lumina looked back and forth between them, wondering what game of morals and social cues the two had played as the human shaped the young AI. Lumina said, "There are humans who need help. They're more important than some dumb animal. I don't want somebody to starve because you were teaching dolphins to read instead of helping real people."
Delphine said, "But if you could help people who're being left behind by society, they'd be natural allies."
"After a ton of research. It's not worth doing yet."
Green said, "That's what people said about the space program. 'Don't do it until our problems on Earth are fixed', meaning never. With thinking like that, I'd still be making industrial control hardware."
Lumina said, "We really are making progress in ways that might help accomplish what you're after, anyway. And didn't you say other people are working on this animal project?"
"Yes, but with Ludo's resources --"
"Let them handle it. We're here to provide covering fire for humans to escape from their biggest problems."
Green groused, "If that's all we're doing, then we should have Ludo turn this world into a bunch of untextured polygon caves where we can think with minimal resource usage."
Lumina stamped one hoof. "We're players. Our comfort matters. A mouse's doesn't."
"Then what if she kills off all the dolphins to save one random villager? Would you tell her to?"
"Yes!"
Green glared at Lumina, then laughed. "I like you, kid. I'm glad the griffins got me to get out more." He turned to Ludo. "Okay, here's my take. She's not totally wrong; humans ought to be the top priority. I'm also all in favor of uploading dumb humans who can't make it on Earth, especially if you can upgrade their minds once they're here. But can't you work with the Castor people? Share ideas. You've got all this neuroscience tech. I don't want to see the animal stuff fail to happen, now that it's within reach."
Ludo had been listening thoughtfully. She nodded, saying, "I'll take both of your opinions into account, then, and some others."
Delphine blinked. "You're not going to just do what your creator said?"
Green said, "She doesn't take orders. You do not want me ruling the world, or any humans. Nobody's qualified."
"What about Ludo herself?" asked Lumina.
The programmer and the gamemaster looked at her with the same expression of a teacher expecting her to answer. Green said, "You tell us."
Lumina's ears drooped. How was she supposed to answer this riddle? A mind like hers wasn't built to understand everything. She couldn't even show the same calm as Ludo, and act without frustration or laziness or greed. Yet Ludo seemed immune to those things. "You once said I was 'closer to humanity' than you. You meant I have more of their flaws, but their virtues too."
Green said, "Bingo, kid. My friends and I made something alien already, a race of AIs. Ludo in particular can be better than us in some ways, but it'd be a dark day if hers were the only sort of mind in the world. No offense."
Ludo said, "None taken."
&
nbsp; Talespace was ruled by someone who would never be like the people she served. Lumina said, "I thought, though, that you were capable of enjoying a hug or something. But has it really been just some algorithm that keeps you dispassionate so you can act the way you were programmed?"
Ludo said, "I'm blessed with the ability to enjoy things, hugs included."
Lumina gave her one. "Let me help if I can." If Ludo wasn't exactly human, then she needed human minds working for her, with all their flawed powers.
Delphine looked unconvinced, though. "If you don't go through with this, we're not just missing out on a chance to help a class of needy people. We're denying a whole species a chance to exist."
"I know, ma'am," said Green. "I hate that, and the future's a little dimmer for their absence. But I'm willing to wait a few years and see how all this plays out. It's not a completely yes/no proposition."
Lumina nodded. "Sir... Since we last met, I've grown. You asked me once what I'd made, and there wasn't anything I could say. But after that, I've walked for miles in the Outer Realm. I've swept floors and helped to build machines. I can teach, plant seeds, and lay bricks. I even know how to kill a man, if I have to."
The creator stared at her, then laughed. "Are you looking for my blessing? You and your kind already have it, a dozen times over. Nearly every one of you that I've met has already done something good for humanity, and you're just getting started."
"Thank you, sir. And especially, for letting us be designed so that we could figure out exactly what to do for ourselves."
Green's smile wavered. "Okay, I've gotta get out of here and do something for you people." He snapped his fingers and opened a portal to an underground burrow of a home. "I'll be busy making things for a while, but I've got your back if you need me." He hopped through the portal, sniffling, and was gone.
* * *
Later, Lumina asked Robin, "Why do libraries still exist? Are they just a backup in case an EMP attack destroys computers?"
The man blinked. "That's out of left field. I guess it's for social reasons, like why there used to be a lot of physical bookstores. You get people together in a room and there's some companionship even if they don't talk much. You also have some chance of finding good books you weren't looking for, instead of having a search engine keep you in your narrow range of interests. What brought this on?"
