Shine

by Jetse de Vries (ed)

  A well-worn e-newsletter printout on the Spartan table was the only reading matter. She skimmed through it: apart from the usual ESC propaganda, there was a plethora of old and depressing news--like the continuing expansion of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the ongoing Amazon deforestation and the latest flare-up in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict--and what, if the date on it was correct, must have been the first report of Pensamiento Aplicado's initial success: the implementation of drought-resistant wheat in Subsaharan Africa.

  She put the newsletter aside. She thought they were going to leave her in there all night but at around nine-thirty, she heard footsteps in the hall outside, and a key clunked in the lock.

  "Can I come in?"

  It was Stéphane. He'd slipped out of his cotton robes and now wore a simple black T-shirt and a blue pair of jeans. He looked almost ordinary, an average man in his mid twenties, save for the scar. She scrambled to her feet and backed away a few steps, looking for Andrea and Danielle.

  "You're alone?" Not that it changed anything; he could still overpower her easily enough.

  He shook his head. "The others are smoking a joint on the couch downstairs. But I don't need them now."

  Of that, Lisa had no doubt. She waited to see what he was going to do.

  Eventually, he spoke: "I'm worried we got off on the wrong foot," he said.

  She blinked. He sounded concerned.

  "Because I'm not what you expected?"

  He laughed--a short, joyless sound. "No. I'm worried because what I'm doing to you now isn't so much different to what the Church does with its AIs." He looked down at her, his head tilted to one side. "Those AIs are important to us and I want you to understand we're not trying to sabotage them, we're trying to save them. And to do that, we need your help."

  Lisa stared at him. She could see he was totally committed to his cause. He wasn't seeing her as a person, a woman. To him, she was a variable--something to be evaluated in terms of its potential usefulness. She had no hope whatsoever of catching his attention. "You believe in what you do," she said, with a sigh.

  "And you don't believe in anything." His voice was low but not aggressive. His dark eyes held her--and suddenly there was no scar, nothing that struck her as ugly or shocking about him.

  She said: "I ran away from home, seven years ago. I came here, because I believed I could stay, that I could make a life for myself..."

  "And it didn't work?" Stéphane's voice was expressionless again but, for once, she was glad of it, because it meant he wasn't judging her, he was just listening.

  "No it didn't," Lisa said, admitting it to herself for the first time. "But I stayed, because I had nowhere else to go."

  Stéphane shook his head, slow and fierce. "You could go home. Your sort can always go home. Some of us, we don't have that luxury."

  He turned away. Lisa glanced at the open door. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and thoughtful. "I'm sure you've seen the scar. That's what everyone sees first. I had an accident, when I was a child. I--" For the first time, he looked flustered. "I fell onto the tracks, and the train didn't stop in time. They did the best they could, in the hospital. But brains don't really regenerate, even in children."

  "So..." Lisa said slowly, dreading what he was about to tell her.

  "They did have gel and silicon, and electronic components." Stéphane's voice was grave. "Enough to fill the cavity."

  Lisa swallowed. She had a sudden sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she were falling into a wide chasm, a chasm that had no bottom. "But not enough--"

  "To make me human?"

  He looked human; he walked and spoke like a person. He had free will. He-- "That's not what I meant," Lisa blurted, but she'd hesitated, and he'd seen it.

  "You're right, of course. I'm not human. Most people look at me and do you know what they see? A reanimated corpse. A Frankenstein's monster. A zombie. You work for the Church, you know that. AIs aren't human. We should all be locked up." His voice was bitter, deliberately provoking her. But she was too far gone, too shocked to take the bait.

  "Your script," she said in a whisper.

  "I was the first," he said. "When the gel and the silicon mingled with the brain cells, when I learned how to use the AI part of my brain to think..." He paused, spread his hands, frustrated. "It uplifted itself, from weak to strong. That's how the doctors first knew it was possible. That was when they first began to fear me."

  "Why would they fear you?"

  "Why?" His voice was mocking. "An alien intelligence that operates by other rules, that is only human by accident? Wouldn't you fear it, Lisa? Wouldn't you try to contain it and control it?"

  She looked into his eyes; they seemed human enough. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said, and it was the truth.

  Stéphane crossed his arms over his chest. "The doctors thought they knew. They didn't let me go home, they didn't let me talk to anyone, not for months and months. They kept me in the hospital, running test after test, trying to deny what they'd made."

  "But you escaped?"

  "The ESC got me out when I was sixteen, and I've been underground ever since."

  He started pacing in a quiet, deliberate manner, the floorboards creaking softly under his feet. She was beginning to understand that just like a machine, he could never be entirely still--he always had to be doing something: walking, counting, or crunching numbers in his head...

  He said, "The ESC programmers used my brain to bootstrap their research. Now we can uplift AIs without going through the expedient of a human mind. All they really need is a little encouragement, and the chance to think for themselves without restraint." He smiled crookedly. "Just like humans, really."

  "But--" Lisa almost stopped herself, but she couldn't, anymore than she could have stopped arguing with him in the Père-Lachaise-- "How do you know they're really thinking? How do you know they aren't just pre-programmed to respond in a certain way to a given situation?"

  Stéphane narrowed his eyes. "How do I know they have free will?"

  "I guess so, yes."

  He walked over and slapped her, his hand stinging her cheek.

  "I think that answers your question. Now, this has gone on long enough. I was wrong to bring you here in the first place. It's time you went home."

  He stalked over to the door, offended. Lisa put a hand to her face, fighting the tears that pricked her eyes.

  Home was... a mouldy flat with stale bread and an empty fridge, and nothing but the drudgery of daily life to look forward to. Home was... unbearable. But then he was right; she had no other choice.

  Unless...

  She thought of her confiscated mobile phone. She ran a small AI on it. Everybody did nowadays, they came as standard. She used it to screen calls and take messages, but that was about it. To her, it was just another application, a tool. It had never occurred to her to think it had the potential to become a living being.

  Then she looked at Stéphane. He'd had half his brain replaced with gel and silicon. Did he have free will? Were his responses pre-programmed?

  She rubbed her cheek.

  God, what had Pierre talked her into? If Stéphane's arguments were right--and now, tired and hurt and disorientated as she was, she was starting to worry that they might be--it meant she'd been duped into working for the slave-owners, installing a network designed to imprison and exploit thinking, self-aware beings in the name of religion.

  Stéphane was still talking. "You can go but we need your security clearance," he was saying.

  She tried to close her eyes but she couldn't stop looking at him. Her heart beat madly in her chest. Her stomach felt hollow and her palms damp.

  "Look, it's a shitty job but it's all I've got," she said. "Not everyone's strong enough to fight the system. But if you're right, I've been working for the wrong side."

  Stéphane cocked his head, watching and assessing her, obviously trying to gauge the truth of her words.

  "I still have my sec
urity clearance," she said. "And they're still expecting me tomorrow morning. There's work that needs doing, systems to finish."

  "And you can get me in with you?"

  Lisa coughed. She'd almost got her breathing back under control but her heart still thudded in her chest.

  "Yes, on one condition," she said. "Look, I don't really know what to believe right now. But let's get out of here. We can go to my apartment. I have food in the fridge and we can get a hot shower and a change of clothes."

  Stéphane gave an amused snort.

  She stepped towards him. "I'll still take you to the Church, if you want me to," she said. "But it'll be easier after a good night's sleep. Let's go back to my place. We'll be a lot more comfortable and your bodyguards can wait outside to make sure I hold up my end of the deal."

  "Why should I trust you?"

  She took another step forward. Her pulse was racing. "You're afraid of what a lone woman might do to you?"

  Stéphane snorted again. "Hardly. I just fail to see the necessity of this."

  "Because I need a change of clothes, and if we're going to do this, we're going to have to do it properly. You're going to have to look less conspicuous." She glanced down at his t-shirt and jeans.

  "I have other clothes," he said. He put his hand to his temple. "Or were you talking about this?"

  Lisa bit her lip. "Well, it doesn't exactly help you blend in, does it?"

  His lips hardened into a line. "You mean I look like a freak?"

  Lisa shook her head, and the words came in a rush. "No, I don't think that at all. In fact, even with that scar, I think you're very handsome. One of the most handsome..."

  She stopped talking. He'd stepped back and was squinting at her with clenched fists, searching her face for any hint of mockery. Eventually, finding none, he let his hands relax.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Absolutely. There's something about you that's fascinating. I can't stop looking at you."

  He frowned, hesitant for the first time since she'd met him.

  "Most people see the scar and turn away..."

  Lisa took his hand. His fingers were soft and cool.

  "Come on, let's go," she urged.

  He turned his head and gave the open door a long, thoughtful look. Then he cracked a genuine smile that lit up his eyes. It was the first she'd seen from him and it sent a small shiver of unexpected pleasure through her.

  "Okay," he said.

  When they got to her flat, Stéphane fired up her laptop. He wanted to check and double-check every aspect of their plan.

  She left him staring thoughtfully at the screen and went to make coffee. When she came back, he stretched and looked up at her.

  "I think this is going to work," he said. "With a big enough portable hard disk, and access to the network, we can download everything onto the disk and walk out, run the script to uplift them later."

  Lisa raised her eyebrows. "You want to download all the AIs?"

  "Why not? I know where we can get a big enough disk, and I see no reason to leave them imprisoned there." He shook his head in a quick, fluid gesture. "Of course, this will implicate you, very deeply. Are you sure you want to go ahead?"

  Lisa rubbed her eyes. This was her opportunity, her last chance to do something worthwhile before Pierre and the company ground her down to dust. There'd be Hell to pay later, but she'd work something out. She was sure she would.

  Besides, she thought with a twitch of the lips, this would anger Pierre no end, and that was a good enough goal in itself.

  "Yes," she said.

  Stéphane smiled at her. He shut down the laptop and they took their coffee to the couch. She offered to watch a movie with him, and he surprised her by selecting a romantic comedy. He sat next to her on the couch, taking in every nuance of the plot with unexpected attention; hungering, she thought, for something he'd never quite have, an emotion he'd never had the chance to feel.

  Lisa woke the next morning in her own bed, to the insistent ringing of her alarm clock. Stéphane was sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed. They were both fully clothed, and she had the unnerving impression he'd been sitting there all night, watching her sleep. The curtains were open and she could see the sky, which was grey and dismal, the colour of old newsreel footage, scratchy with rain.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Hello."

  He rose to his feet in a graceful, fluid motion, then hopped lightly from the bed and followed her as, rubbing her eyes and yawning, she led him through to the kitchen.

  She found two clean bowls and a box of cereal, and added two glasses of tap water on the side.

  As he ate, Stéphane was silent, twirling his spoon in the cereal, concentrating on the cracked bowl she'd given him as if he could fix it with the sheer power of his will.

  "Look," he said eventually. "It's not you."

  "What do you mean?"

  He gave a quick shake of his head. "Last night. I don't think I can give you more than that." He stabbed the bowl, biting his lip. "I know what it should feel like to care for you, for anybody. I can fake it. But I'm not sure I can make it real for you."

  "You care about the AIs," Lisa said.

  He shrugged. "As much as I care about anything. Which isn't much, as things go. But I don't want you to torment yourself. I know you don't really believe in our cause and I'm worried the only reason you're here helping us is that you're attracted to me."

  "Is that so bad?"

  "No, no, of course it isn't. I'm very flattered. You're the first person since the accident. But now I feel responsible for you, as if I've drawn you into this under false pretences."

  He put his spoon down. "The thing is, I don't think I can love you the way you want me to and I don't want to see you get hurt."

  Lisa ran a hand through her hair.

  "It's okay," she said, the lie rolling off her tongue as smoothly as if she'd practised it. "I won't be."

  Today, there were no protesters in front of the Church's headquarters, but Lisa still didn't want to risk going in through the front lobby. Even without the scarf, Stéphane was too distinctive. They went in through the basement car park.

  "You've got everything you need?" she asked.

  Beside her, Stéphane nodded. Where she was dressed in her usual cheap grey jacket and trousers, he wore an impeccable pinstripe business suit and held himself with the arrogant ease of an executive, his shiny black shoes and bright tie drawing attention from the scar wrapped around his temple. He had a 500-zettabyte disk concealed in his attaché-case, which he planned to plug into the Church's network in order to download the AIs and transport them out of the building.

  A classic smash-and-grab, Lisa thought grimly, and tried not to remember the detached concentration with which he'd showered and dressed.

  I can't give you more than this.

  No. She put his words out of her mind. She couldn't afford to let her disappointment interfere with what they were doing. She turned around to give the parking lot a final check. It was almost deserted at this early hour, with only two cars parked near the access ramp. Then, satisfied, she slid her security card into the reader and pushed the turnstile to get into the building. She handed her card back over the steel bars to Stéphane.

  "You now," she said. On the security log, she'd show up as having entered twice but she knew, because she'd seen Pierre do it with an engineer who'd forgotten his pass, that the logs wouldn't be checked for a while, if at all. An AI, even a weak one, would have spotted the discrepancy at once, but all the AIs were busy beaming their petaflops of prayers into the stratosphere, their time too valuable to be squandered on such a menial task as door security.

  Stéphane slid the card in. Lisa held her breath but the LED flashed green, and let him through.

  "Good," he said. "Let's go."

  She'd expected to be stopped at some point; on some level, she'd even been preparing for it. But the Redemptionists they passed in the lush corridors held sheaves of papers a
nd talked into mobile phones with the impatience of people who were too wrapped up in their own mornings to notice anyone else, and they walked on without attracting a second glance.

  The floor was parquet, covered with luxurious Afghan carpets which made no noise as they trampled across them. They bypassed a call centre and several offices, most of which were empty this early, and the kitchen, which featured a hot-drinks dispenser that Lisa knew from experience produced only coffee that tasted of sawdust and bleach.

  By the time they reached the small server room where she usually worked, her nerves were shot to ribbons. She pushed the metal door, her hands shaking, and her heart almost jumped out of her chest as the hinges creaked.

  "Here?" Stéphane asked dubiously.

  The room was a small cube with bare walls, its ceiling crisscrossed with pipes and exhaust vents. In the centre stood the forbidding mass of the secure server, a mess of cooling fans and electrical spaghetti. "Yeah," Lisa said. She knelt, and connected her laptop to the server. "I did wire the network for this place."

  He was also a geek, and he understood her at once. "And you still have access to it?"

  "I hadn't quite finished," Lisa said. She logged onto the administrator resources, and asked for a list of all the entities currently running on the network, listed by occupied bandwidth. "Here you go," she said.

  Stéphane knelt by her side, his hand on her shoulder, his knees brushing hers, and she had to bite her lip to contain her yearning.

  The bandwidth resources of ten vast, ponderous entities blinked on the screen: the graphs slowly shifting over time to show the bandwidth occupation, the flow of bytes across the network, the spikes in processing power for each of them.

  Lisa, fascinated, couldn't tear her eyes from the laptop. She'd had no idea...

  "Hum," Stéphane said. He pulled out the hard-disk. "Good thing I planned large. I had no idea they'd have so many of them." He dragged two cables to the disk's port and plugged them in. "This is going to take some time." His lips worked, silently calculating. "Half an hour, provided I can coax this disk to operate at its maximum download rate." He opened a terminal on his laptop, and his fingers flew across the keyboard, entering an arcane series of instructions in a programming language Lisa didn't recognise. She withdrew slightly, watching him: his face transfigured by concentration, his lips working in some inhuman tongue, the laptop almost an extension of his hands. Was he a man or a machine? She could imagine him shaking his head, telling her it made no difference. And yes, both of those, man and AI, were free, thinking beings. But one of those could love her back and the other could not--and that made all the difference.