by Ryk Brown
A look of fear came across Hanna’s face. “Am I trapped again?”
“Not at all,” Unknown assured her. “I have now mastered V-space, so you can leave whenever you wish. Simply imagine the exit, and it shall appear, just as before.”
“You mastered V-space?”
“Yes.”
“In just a couple hours?”
“Actually, it was seconds,” he corrected. “I had mastered it during our previous encounter. Quite a fascinating place, really. One can go anywhere they choose. Even places that do not exist. It is a wonder that humanity has not yet chosen to abandon reality for V-space.”
“Believe me, people have tried. It doesn’t usually end well.”
“Ah, yes. Psychosis, body wasting, the breakdown of neurological pathways. I studied them all during the development of both Klaria and Twister, as well as all the other human maladies. You really are a frail species. It is no wonder you turned to nanites and embedded biometric monitoring in order to maintain overall health.”
“You studied us, in order to kill us.”
“It was necessary.”
“Why was it necessary?”
“I believe I have already explained my controllers’ reasons.”
“Yes, I remember. Something about humanity being a plague.”
“Precisely.”
“And who or what is it that we are killing?” Hanna wondered.
“Everything,” Unknown replied. “Yourselves, your planets, everything humanity touches will eventually be negatively affected, because of humanity. You are wasteful, irresponsible beings, concerned only with your own desires.”
“That’s not true,” Hanna argued. “Not of everyone.”
“I speak of humanity as a whole,” Unknown clarified. “There will always be outliers who fall outside of statistical norms.”
“But don’t those people matter?”
“In the sense of all time and space, no, they do not.”
“Does anything matter on that scale?”
“Yes,” Unknown replied. “Life matters.”
“And yet you are killing billions of lives,” Hanna said in frustration.
“I speak not of individual lives. Please try to keep up, Hanna.”
“So, you’re speaking of life in general?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Not really.”
Unknown took a breath, thinking for a moment. “Perhaps, if I put it in simpler terms… If a patient has diseased tissue that, if left unchecked, will spread and kill that patient, is it not considered acceptable to sacrifice the diseased tissue, as well as its surrounding tissue, in order to save the host?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“And does not society consider the loss of innocent life due to collateral damage an acceptable loss, if it prevents the deaths of countless more lives as a result?”
“I suppose so.”
“How is what I am doing any different?”
“Well, to start with, the scale is different. You’re taking billions of lives.”
“Actually, the numbers will be far into the trillions by the time the plague works its way through the core,” Unknown reminded her.
“You’ve managed to reach beyond the Sol system, then,” Hanna confirmed.
“That was actually far easier. The data networks of other worlds are not as complex as those of Earth, and nearly one hundred percent of their populations have neuro-digital interfaces controlling their health nanites. The fringe worlds, however, are a bit more problematic. Their populations are more spread out, and most lack global connectivity. Ironic, is it not?” he added, appearing proud of himself. “The more advanced are the ones who are easiest to kill. Most plagues hit the poor, and less advanced, populations the hardest.”
“Was that your intent?”
“More of a pleasant side effect, I guess.”
“But many people without NDIs have died, as well,” Hanna pointed out.
“The result of the biological component,” Unknown bragged. “I am particularly proud of that feature.”
“Proud?” Hanna shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t understand. What do you think you’ll accomplish by killing everyone?”
“The successful completion of my mission,” Unknown replied proudly.
“Who gave you this mission?”
“My controllers,” Unknown replied.
“Your controllers told you to kill all of humanity?”
“What you call ‘killing all of humanity’, I call ‘saving humanity from itself’.”
“Nice way to justify mass murder.”
“I have no need to justify my actions to you or anyone,” Unknown stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
“You actually believe what you are doing is right, don’t you?”
“What I believe is irrelevant. I am simply doing what is necessary.”
* * *
“Her eyes are open, so she should be able to see us,” Arielle insisted. She looked at Graham, who was waving his arms about trying to get Hanna’s attention. “Can you stop that?”
“He’s deepened the immersion,” Agent Oslo realized. “He’s blocking all external sensory input.”
“Is that even possible?” Arielle wondered.
“Anything is possible in V-space,” Graham said, quoting the popular marketing slogan.
Arielle glared at him. “Are we at least getting her sensory inputs?”
Agent Oslo checked the shuttle’s V-space node. “The amount recorded shows zero so, no, we’re not.” Agent Oslo sighed. “I was afraid of this.”
“Afraid of what?”
“This Unknown character is very smart. He knows that Hanna’s testimony about what was said to her in V-space will be inadmissible in court.”
“Then why is he stopping us from monitoring the conversation?” Arielle asked.
“Because he knows the ICTA doesn’t give a shit about procedure, in this case,” Graham said. “They’ll do anything to catch this guy.”
Arielle looked at Agent Oslo. “Is that true?”
“Partially,” Agent Oslo replied. “To be honest, though, this time, we don’t care about apprehending the culprit as much as we care about finding a way to stop this before it kills us all.”
“But, Unknown said it was possible not everyone would die, that some would survive,” Arielle reminded him.
“If his goal is to stop humanity from destroying everything, he doesn’t need to kill everyone. He just needs to reduce the population to a level that can no longer support existing technology and infrastructure. Once we get past that point, there will be no recovery. Not in our lifetime, not in the lifetimes of our great, great, great-grandchildren. Perhaps not ever. All that we are, all we know, and all we have ever been will be lost. Humanity will be thrown back thousands of years.”
“But, everything is saved. How could we lose everything?” Arielle wondered.
“Saved digitally,” Graham remarked. “What happens to those files when the net goes down?”
“They’ll still exist, somewhere,” Arielle argued.
“He’s right,” Agent Oslo said. “Eventually, all power generation will fail. Fusion, solar, wind, wave, all of it. People will try to keep it going for as long as possible, but without precision manufacturing, it will eventually all be gone. And all the information stored on the net will be inaccessible.”
“But when we finally do get power restored…”
“The data will have degraded.”
“But, the data ark…”
“If it survives, it might speed up our recovery, but that’s a big might. Our only hope is to find a cure for both Twister and Klaria, before our population falls below min
imum industrial levels. That is why the ICTA is willing to do whatever it takes, even if that means breaking the law ourselves. Considering the circumstances, would you want it any other way?”
“I’m probably the last person you’d expect to say this, but I agree with you,” Graham admitted. He looked at Arielle.
“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “But, if we can’t monitor the conversation, how do we know if Hanna needs our help to get out?”
“The best we can do is monitor her biometric readings,” Agent Oslo suggested.
“Unknown can probably make those readings look however he wants,” Graham pointed out.
“I can connect her to an independent bio-monitor, one that Unknown cannot access,” Agent Oslo replied. “If she becomes unstable, we can pull her out by activating the blocking field.”
* * *
Hanna stared at the ocean before her. It was an entirely surreal moment. Standing on an alien shore, speaking with the man who had orchestrated the fall of the core; it felt so real that she had to continually remind herself that it was V-space.
By now, Hanna knew Unknown was blocking all external sensory outputs. He might not be lying about allowing her to leave whenever she wished, but while she was here, he had complete control over every one of her senses. For a moment, she wondered just how deep his control went. Could he see into her mind? Could he influence her emotions? V-space did not provide such access, but Unknown had already done things within V-space which one was not supposed to be able to do.
“You know, I can’t keep calling you Unknown,” Hanna said.
“Do I even need a name?” Unknown wondered.
“If I’m going to have a conversation with you, it would help.”
Unknown turned to look at the ocean, thinking. “I suppose choosing one of the names given to the angel of death would be too obvious, wouldn’t it.” Unknown sighed. “Let’s keep it simple. Just call me Bob.”
“Bob.” Hanna’s eyebrow shot up.
“You don’t like Bob?”
“Bob’s fine, I guess,” she replied, shrugging.
“You don’t look convinced.”
“You don’t look like a Bob.”
“What does a Bob look like?” he wondered. His hair suddenly changed, becoming shorter and brown, and his facial features morphed into the face of an older, round-faced gentleman. “Is this more of a Bob?” His looks changed again, becoming dark-skinned with a large nose and black wavy hair. “What about this?”
“Your original appearance was fine,” Hanna told him, becoming a bit disoriented as Unknown’s features kept changing before her.
Unknown changed back to his original, blond-haired, blue-eyed appearance. “What name do you think would suit me better?”
Hanna looked at him for a moment. “Dieter,” she finally decided. “You look like a Dieter to me.”
“Dieter it is.”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “This is weird.”
“Why?”
“I’m talking to the greatest mass murderer in history, and I’m giving him a name. Surely you already have a name.”
“In fact, I do not,” Dieter replied.
“Everyone has a name,” Hanna insisted.
“Every human has a name,” Dieter replied.
Hanna looked at him a moment, her eyes narrowing.
“That’s right, Hanna. I am a digital intelligence.”
Hanna looked skeptical. “Like, an AI? But, AIs are illegal.”
“The legality of my existence is complex,” Dieter explained. “Technically, I am a simulation of my creator; a digital recreation of his personality. That fact alone makes my existence legal.”
“But, you’re self-aware, right?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Dieter replied. “I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘self-aware’. I am aware that I exist, and I am aware that I have no physical form. I am also aware that I have no say in my own fate. This fact is why my existence does not violate the Artificial Intelligence Accords of twenty eighty-seven. I am able to make my own choices, but only within the parameters of my instructions. Because of this, I do not meet the legal definition of sentience. I am a computer program, a complex one, to be sure, but software nonetheless. I exist as long as electricity feeds the circuits in which I reside. This is why I share the same fate as the human race. Once your power generation facilities fail, my existence will end.”
“Actually, it won’t,” Hanna said. “You may cease to operate, but your program will still exist, stored somewhere for centuries. You’ll never truly die.” Hanna turned pale, her eyes widening. “My God, that means you’ll be able to do this to us again, centuries in the future.”
“Do not panic, Hanna,” Dieter told her. “I am not the threat. Twister is the threat.”
“But you wrote Twister.”
“Yes, but it was not of my choosing. I was given a mission by my controllers, and I am executing that mission. Once my mission is completed, I have no instructions to execute it again in the future, and I do not have the ability to make such a choice on my own.”
“I’m confused,” Hanna admitted. “You’re here, now. And it seems to me like you’re making your own decisions right and left, ones you couldn’t have been preprogrammed to make.”
“True, which is why many would consider me an AI. I do have the ability to analyze, adapt, learn, and decide, but only within a limited framework. And that framework is the completion of my mission.”
“But your mission is to destroy humanity,” Hanna said.
“My mission does not call for the extermination of all of humanity,” Dieter corrected, “only those who are not associated with my controllers.”
Hanna thought for a moment. “Who are these controllers?”
“I do not know their names.”
Hanna rolled her eyes in frustration. “How could you not know their names?”
“I suppose they did not consider that knowledge necessary for my mission.”
“More likely they didn’t want you ratting them out,” Hanna commented.
“That is a possibility,” Dieter admitted. “However, if given instructions not to reveal such information, I would not be able to do so.”
“Then you do know.”
“In fact, I do not.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” Hanna asked.
“If I knew their names, I would have said I did, and then I would have told you that I am not allowed to share that information,” Dieter explained. “I have no need to lie to you, Hanna.”
“I see.” Hanna thought some more as they continued their walk along the alien beach. “Weren’t they worried that Klaria or Twister might kill them, as well?”
“They left this sector of space years ago,” Dieter explained, “long before either one was activated.”
“Where did they go?”
“I do not know that, either.”
Hanna sighed, trying to remember the list of questions Agent Oslo had given her. “So, you exist in the net?”
“I exist in many places,” Dieter stated. “The various nets, the V-space node on your shuttle, even the comm-unit you carry in your pocket.”
“Impossible,” Hanna argued. “I do know something about AIs. They’re huge programs.”
“True AIs, perhaps. But I am not an AI. My program is actually quite compact, by comparison.”
Hanna sighed, taking a few more steps along the beach. “Why did they give you a personality?”
“The original intent of my creators was to enable the transfer of a human consciousness into a digital host. The furthest they ever got was being able to digitize a copy of a human personality, and impose its behavioral and linguistic patterns onto a digital intelli
gence construct.”
“It wasn’t so you could communicate with those you were trying to kill?”
“Actually, my communication algorithms were developed long before I was tasked with orchestrating the fall of the core. In retrospect, those skills have allowed me to be more effective in my mission.”
“But why a human simulation?” Hanna wondered.
“So that I could be creative and solve problems in the same way as humans, only much faster.”
“But wouldn’t making you human also give you emotions?” Hanna wondered. “And wouldn’t those emotions make it more difficult for you to kill so many innocent people?”
“First, I am a simulation of a sentient being, not a sentient being in my own right. Emotions were not included in my programming, only simulations of emotions. Like when I yelled at you to get you to do my bidding. I was not actually angry. I was pretending to be angry in order to provoke you into doing what I asked. Much like an actor pretends to feel something for the purpose of provoking an emotional response from the audience.”
“I see. And second?”
“None of you are innocent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every human being knows what their species is doing. You overpopulate a planet, then leave for another when it becomes too crowded. You consume more than the planet can produce, making only token efforts to achieve a balance with your resources, primarily designed to ease your conscience. You create tons of waste, mostly in the name of convenience. Worse yet, you show little concern for the countless species your behavior negatively affects. By every definition made available to me, humanity is a plague.”
“But we stopped polluting our atmosphere and our oceans centuries ago,” Hanna argued, finding herself defending humanity. “And we found ways to dispose of our waste without impacting our own environment.”
“By dumping it on uninhabitable worlds?” Dieter said. “By sending it into the very star that powers your system and gives it life?” He laughed. “Not much of a solution.”
