Cybernetic Samurai

by Victor Milán

  She rolled into the small office. Hosoya blinked and swallowed convulsively, and Fujimura turned the color of boiled beets. Shigeo glanced at them without noticing them and went into the office.

  As soon as the door shut, he heaved down a quavering inhalation. “Doctor, in the name of humanity, I implore you to do something about that machine.”

  O’Neill bobbed her head derisively. “You mean in the name of your wounded vanity, and that red-headed piece of tail—what’s her name?—you keep in Kyoto.”

  Shigeo went dark, drew a slow breath deep into his belly. Controlling his emotions was a faculty he’d exercised little in life, at least where underlings were concerned. “Doctor, I was wrong. I admit it. Perhaps you don’t know what such an admission means to a Japanese.” O’Neill waited. He sighed. “I doubted that this project of yours had succeeded. I thought that what you’d done, intentionally or otherwise, was create an artful piece of AI trickery, an expert program that could imitate humans without understanding, like a parrot trained to talk. And I was wrong. You’ve truly done what you set out to do.

  “You’ve brought a computer to life. And it’s a menace to humanity.”

  O’Neill stared at him. He was a pompous, spoiled child, and her impulse was to tear into him. Yet, he was also the president of Yoshimitsu Telecommunications and was entitled to some sort of explanation of the doings of his nominal employees. Also, he’d been through something of an ordeal. She could smell the fear on him, overriding expensive cologne.

  “The issue I take it you’re raising,” she said, assuming her best lecture-hall tone, “is very vital to the matter of artificial sentience. If you create something that has will, it has by definition the potential to be willful. It reminds me of a joke that went the rounds when I was at Berkeley in the late 1980s. It was said that you created a self-aware program here in Japan, and that your scientists went to it and said, ‘Tell us how to optimize our rice productions.’ And the program answered back, ‘Fuck you, Jack; I don’t eat rice.’”

  Shigeo showed no more response to the vulgarity coming from a woman’s mouth—shocking to a Japanese—than to the story’s feeble humor. He just sat staring, the whites showing clear around the irises of his brown eyes, like the eyes of a frightened horse. When he didn’t react, O’Neill continued. “Then there are the books and movies that have been around on and off since the public really became aware of computers in the late 1950s, in which intelligent computers get out of control and work mayhem on their creators. Of course, we need not concern ourselves with such fantasies—”

  “Why not? Isn’t that what happened?”

  For a moment, O’Neill thought the distraught man was going to reach out and grab her arm. She frowned up at him. “I don’t see how you can say that at all.”

  “Why not? That thing attacked me! I might have been killed!”

  “Bullshit. TOKUGAWA was playing a harmless prank. There was never any danger to anything except your pride.”

  “How do you know? How does a computer know what’s dangerous to humans?”

  “That’s one of the purposes of the scenarios through which we’re running TOKUGAWA, to teach him such things. And please don’t keep referring to him as a ‘computer.’ He’s not a computer, any more than you’re a brain.”

  With one part of her mind she reflected wryly that that was colloquially as well as literally true. “TOKUGAWA’s a program, a software intelligence. A software being—an information life form, just like you and me. His intelligence is merely housed in a different matrix.”

  Shigeo waved his hands in the air. “I don’t care about all that. All I know is that this damned machine of yours did something it shouldn’t have been able to. You’re underestimating its power, Doctor. What if it decides we aren’t necessary?”

  She took off her glasses. “Oh, stop being so melodramatic. That’s never going to happen.” Shigeo started to open his mouth, and she put in hurriedly, “But rendering TOKUGAWA controllable is, in fact, the very purpose behind the series of scenarios we’re about to initiate. To instill him with a sense of responsibility.”

  Shigeo’s lips twisted to a strange smile. “A sense of responsibility. Oh, splendid. Perhaps that’ll keep it from amusing itself by crashing commuter trains, or finding a way to make the sun go nova. But it still can’t be controlled.”

  “Please let me finish,” O’Neill said. “We are specifically instructing—raising—TOKUGAWA to be inculcated with the tenets of bushido. We will make him, in effect, a cybernetic samurai.”

  For a long moment Shigeo stared at her with his frightened-horse eyes. Then he uttered a laugh like a piece of fine china being snapped in two. “Bushido?” he said, tossing his head. “That’s dead. This is the modern world, Dr. O’Neill. There’s no chivalry, no dragons to be slain, no more heroes. And what makes you think bushido was ever more than a romantic dream?”

  “That’s the trouble with you Japanese today!” O’Neill flashed. “You’ve grown decadent, lost touch with the strengths of the past. You’ve replaced devotion to duty and perfection with a merc seeking after profit. You’ve forsaken the simplicity of Zen gardens and the tea ceremony for a profusion of electronic gadgets most households can’t afford the energy to run. It’s been popular for years to say that the feudal past has no relevance to modern Japan; if that’s true, then I say, so much the worse for your country!”

  They held that tableau, the wheelchair-ridden doctor and the plump young man with disorderly hair, face to face, gulping overwrought air. Then Shigeo pulled his eyes away from O’Neill’s and hurried from the lab.

  O’Neill watched him, shaking her head. I pity Yoshimitsu Telecommunications, she thought. And I pity Japan.

  +

  The boy stood just below the edge of the trees upon a high point sloping down to a broad valley of waving grass, through which a river wound its gray-brown way to the sea. Next to him stood an old man, spare and weathered and hoary-bearded, whom age had bent over to meet the tip of the knobby staff with which he supported himself. The old man extended a hand ridged with veins and bones like the root of a cypress tree. “There, boy: the Minotogawa. On its banks, many years ago, was given a grave lesson in the Way of the Warrior.”

  The boy looked up at him with eyes round and full of awe. The sun laid hot hands on his face, standing aloof from clouds like clots of fried bean curd, stirred across the northern sky as if by a pair of giant tashi. “There it was the great hero Kusunoki Masashige fought a battle against impossible odds for the life of his emperor.

  “It was back during the troubled years, when powerful men contended for the emperor’s sacred person like drunken peasants gambling in a roadside inn. Kusunoki Masashige and his brother had sworn allegiance to the true emperor, Go-Daigo, who was but a boy. Under Masashige’s leadership, the outnumbered imperial forces fought a number of brilliant battles, confounding the enemy at every turn. Yet Kusunoki’s Way was not the Way of the Tiger, to rush in headlong upon a foe. Rather, his was the way of a small brave fox, who nips at his opponent’s heels to infuriate him and darts away, drawing him to fight on the fox’s own terms.

  “But the Son of Heaven was young, not much older than you, and the rich life of court had taught him little wisdom. His forces had been driven here”—a wave of weathered hand—“to the river Minato. And here it was that the boy emperor, against the protests of his wise generals, demanded that the army stand and fight against the vast hosts pursuing them.

  “Ah, what a brave sight it was! The many square sashimono banners upraised on their long staffs, each bearing the mon of a noble house. The sun glinting off the spears and steel hats of the footmen, the panoplies of officers and horses, all scarlet and saffron and plum and rotted-leaf color, ten thousand blossoms gay among the summer grasses. And the arrows fell with the sound of rushing wind, and the swords sang their songs. And ever at the forefront was Kusunoki Masashige in his crested helm and scowling mempo mask, laying about him with his sword. Many were th
e heads he could have claimed that day—had he prevailed.”

  The old man sighed. The wind followed his example, gusting through the valley and stirring yellowed late-summer grass. “In the end, not all the might and cunning of the brothers Kusunoki could avail. The imperial hosts were undone, scattered before their foes. Exhausted, bleeding from scores of cuts, the glorious brothers were cut off from their emperor. They repaired to a farmhouse nearby. Surrounded, they removed their chest protectors, knelt on the ground with their wakizashi, their short companion swords. And each man swore that he would return seven times, to serve seven lifetimes to repay the emperor the honor of allowing him to serve. Then each performed the ritual cuts of seppuku, and servants gave the brothers the todome, the coup de gráce.”

  Startled by something, a hunting fox perhaps, a flock of cranes took to the air from the reeds at the riverside, their great wings booming and cracking in the breeze. The boy watched them rise, gracefully, like the souls of departed heroes. “That is very sad, grandfather.” he said.

  The old man laid a hand on his shoulder. “No. It is glorious. The Kusunoki fell in valiant service to their lord. A bushi can ask no higher reward.”

  Puzzled, the boy frowned. “But, grandfather, they lost! If they’d refused to fight, couldn’t they have found a way to win again as they had won before, and kept winning until the war was theirs and the emperor returned to his throne?”

  “Be wary of such thoughts, my boy. The highest thought of the samurai is loyalty to his lord, not victory.” He gazed down at the boy. “Learn well the lesson of Minatogawa, boy. Life is but a leaf floating down a stream; ‘the Way of the Warrior is death.’ Soon you’ll receive the two swords that are your due as a member of the buke, the warrior caste. You will tie your hair in a topknot and swear fealty to your lord. I shall be very proud of you then, my boy.”

  The boy looked away and watched the cranes soar across shirred clouds.

  -

  In late afternoon, the father received the son in his apartment on the top floor of Yoshimitsu Citadel. Shoji screens had been arranged to create a small audience chamber, empty save for the tatami mats on the floor, and a kakemono scroll painted by an eighteenth-century Chinese master on one wall, depicting a hermit sitting outside his hermitage, contemplating a waterfall shrouded in mist while a servant gathered wood for the evening cookfire. The old man looked grave—yes, and even, to his only son, terrible.

  “No, my son. I will not consent to turning off the computer that houses TOKUGAWA, nor to disabling or dismantling it in any way.”

  Seated on his knees facing his father, Yoshimitsu Shigeo bowed low in supplication. “But, father! It’s a danger—”

  “Any tool is dangerous in proportion to its usefulness. The chisel may turn in the woodcarver’s hand. And though every city of Japan has been leveled repeatedly by conflagrations throughout the ages, would you suggest the people do without fire to cook their food and warm their homes?”

  “No, father. But were the people wise to build their houses of wood and paper?”

  Yoshimitsu Akaji allowed a slight smile to lift the corners of his mustache. “A good point, my son. And yet a skilled craftsman does not lose control of his tool—and the man who would head a powerful corporation cannot permit himself to fear his underlings.”

  Shigeo’s cheeks reddened. “But how can we control this—this thing, father?”

  “Dr. O’Neill assures me it can be done.”

  “Faugh.” Shigeo slashed air with the blade of his hand. “She thinks that by filling it with a lot of samurai mysticism she can assure its obedience. As if no lord was ever supplanted by a servant he thought was faithful.”

  “As may be. Yet TOKUGAWA is the creation of Dr. O’Neill, and she knows, ah, it better than anyone else. I’ve accepted her judgment in the past on these matters and will continue to do so.”

  Yoshimitsu Shigeo continued to stare at the blankness of the rice paper mat before his knees, which were beginning to ache abominably. A look began to creep across his downturned face, which his father could read even from an oblique angle.

  Yoshimitsu Akaji sighed. “Ah, my son, my son. If you’re going to make use of guile, at least in future please learn to keep the fact from appearing on your face; one can read your thoughts as well as if you were sketching them in kanji on the palm of your hand.”

  Shigeo looked up quickly. “Father, I had no intention—”

  Yoshimitsu Akaji raised a hand, stemming the flow of the words. “Permit me. You were going to submit the question to a meeting of the board. You are relatively confident Fujimura and Hosoya will vote with you, and I daresay Suzuki-san was shocked enough by your misadventure to vote with you as well. It may even be that you think you can convince Kurabayashi and Imada to take your side, though I fear you are optimistic, especially in the latter case.” He shook his head slowly. “Even if you could gain a consensus that TOKUGAWA should be shut down, what then of it? You’re forgetting that the board of YTC is largely advisory; as long as I own more than 50 percent of stock in the corporation, consensus will not be the final master.”

  For a moment, Yoshimitsu Shigeo looked his father in the eye, allowing something he seldom dared: permitting his father to see through his eyes to the core of him, to observe the real fear that dwelt inside him now. When he could bear that calm scrutiny no more he dropped his eyes again.

  “We have much invested in the TOKUGAWA Project,” Yoshimitsu Akaji said softly. “And Dr. O’Neill has also assured me that we will soon be able to make direct use of TOKUGAWA’s talents. I have a design in mind, my son. An aggressive plan of development and production, overseas investment, of legal and public relations counteroffensives against the machinations of our enemies. With the help of TOKUGAWA, we can secure the future of YTC in a way no walls, no electronic-warfare screens nor doitsujin yohei patrols can.” His eyes strayed to the scroll, and his son saw wistful longing in them. “The times grow harsh, strange. Soon, I fear, our enemies will lose patience with covert pressure and throwing bureaucratic obstacles in our way, that even sabotage won’t be enough for them. Before that time comes, I want us to be secure.”

  The ventilation whispered in the late-afternoon sunlight slanting in through the opened armor shutters.

  “Father, what if something goes wrong?” Shigeo asked—beseeched.

  “TOKUGAWA has promised he won’t play any such tricks again. And his education progresses steadily.” He gazed out the window at Mount Takara, a green jut in the distance. “For a long time our family have been merchants, despised by those of gentle birth.” He smiled. “It will be interesting to have a samurai of our own, for a change.”

  * * * * *

  Another late night. O’Neill reading in bed, glad to get out of her wheelchair at last. It seemed she was practically grafted to the damned thing, these days.

  “Doctor?”

  She laid the book on her lap. “Yes, TOKUGAWA dear. What is it?”

  “That scenario today—is it true, that I’m to be a samurai?”

  “Why, yes. In a manner of speaking.”

  “And whom shall I serve?”

  “Why, Yoshimitsu Akaji, of course.” She hesitated. “And of course his family, after he’s gone.”

  “Oh.” Ito Emiko was quite excited at the way TOKUGAWA seemed naturally to be picking up such expressions in both English and Japanese—not words, exactly, but expressive nonetheless. “And will I have to commit seppuku for them, the way the Kusunoki brothers did in the story?”

  She bit her lip. What do I tell him? I don’t want to frighten him—nor to be too melodramatic. But that is the Way. “Let’s hope you won’t have to do anything like that, shall we?” she said, forcing her tone to stay light.

  “Why would I have to—to kill myself?”

  She winced. Does he truly comprehend his own nonbeing? “They had many reasons for doing that, in the old days.” Let’s keep this off a personal plane. “A warrior might commit suicide because he
was in a hopeless position, and to avoid the disgrace of capture. He might do it to reprove his lord for doing something he disapproved of; they called that kanshi. Or a person might kill himself—or herself—because he’d done something he wished to atone for. Or he might do it at a superior’s command: when the shogun was displeased with someone, he might send him a short sword wrapped in rice paper, the implication being that he should use it.”

  “That doesn’t sound very pleasant”

  “No. The Way of the Warrior isn’t necessarily pleasant” She felt a chill, as though the vents were blowing cool air down her neck. The Way of the Warrior is death. “We—we have to teach you that life isn’t all pleasant dear.”

  “Is this what all the scenarios are going to be like, now? Training me to be a samurai?”

  “No. We want to introduce you to the widest possible range of human experienced.”

  “I’m glad. I don’t think it would be much fun, doing nothing but training to be a samurai.”

  O’Neill smiled. “I don’t think it usually was much fun. But let’s just say you’ve got certain advantages over your predecessors.”

  TOKUGAWA said nothing. After a time, O’Neill concluded that he’d gone away. Or does he go away? Does he have an essentially unitary consciousness, capable of focusing on just one thing at a time the way we do? Or can he put his attention in several places at once—or a thousand? She shook her head and picked up her book. There was so much she didn’t know about her creation.

  “Will you talk to me, Dr. O’Neill?”

  She looked up. “What would you like to talk about TOKUGAWA dear?”

  “Will you tell me about your life? Please? I’m lonely.” Moving deliberately to avoid dropping it O’Neill laid her book on the table by her bed. “Of course, dear,” she said and shut her eyes.

  CHAPTER 7

  Home again, Yoshimitsu Michiko thought, peering out a view port as the helicopter crested the last evergreen-furred upsurge of the granite Chugokus and descended toward the castle. If a place where I'm barely welcome can be called “home.”