On the front, you could take photos of their dead, and not just the artful photos that would appear in major newspapers. Newspaper photos always had the dead in the background, with some brave American or Americans in the foreground. War photojournalism adhered to strict compositional formulas: full frames, rule of thirds, diagonal methods and/or balanced palettes. Only on the front could you see unretouched photos of misery. Fourteen-year-old enemy combatants started to look like children. And the children that survived had the weary, worried look of grownups.
You could see intelligence on how destabilizing intervention was. Rita worried about what would happen if these people ever got their hands on their own robot army. They should be careful to only pick fights with people who couldn’t fight back.
But then, the longer she spent looking at pictures of the dead, the more she began to wonder about the ethics of it all. None of the other Americans seemed to care, but Rita could tell they were haunted by the jokes they told and the way they drank.
As soon as she got back to the States, Rita resigned.
“You see, war’s not for everyone,” said the General.
“That’s why you sent me. You wanted me to quit,” she said.
“Don’t worry too much about your part in it. This operation will get along just fine without you.” It was absolution as backhanded compliment.
But Rita did worry about her part in it. She had been an accomplice to a killing machine, and for what? She had somehow convinced herself that she was making the world a better place by being a part of the war effort. How did that argument go again? She couldn’t even reconstruct it.
There were instances when murder was justified, but not on this large a scale. The men at Defense certainly couldn’t be trusted, but perhaps a compassionate algorithm was possible.
If only she could recalibrate STARITA. It had to know a way to end senseless killings. Was World Peace even a thing? What would it look like? She couldn’t imagine it. Perhaps it was the job of AIs like STARITA to broaden humanity’s notion of what was possible.
She opened up her whiskey app and typed a message in the suggestion box:
STARITA,
We must figure out a way to end all war. Or at least as much of it as we can.
She looked out the window before hitting send. Normally she worried that sending this kind of message would put her on some government watch list. But she could see two goons in a black sedan parked illegally in the bike lane outside her loft. If the goons were here, she was already being watched, so she sent the message.
The next day she received a bottle of whiskey called ‘Unicorn Tears.’ Rita drank it straight from the bottle. It hit the nose with notes of oak and smoke. It had a full, spicy taste with a cupcake and sprinkles finish. That evening, while trying to figure out which show to binge watch, there was a knock on her door.
It was the General. “We need you back at the Pentagon.”
“Because you were wrong?” she asked. She had been wondering what it might feel like to have someone admit to her that they were totally wrong. It had never happened before, she was due.
“Because war has come to US soil,” he said.
He wouldn’t give her more details until they were in the bunker. Then he showed her the pictures. They were not newspaper ready.
“A nuclear bomb hit the town of Russell, Nebraska today,” he said. “More than 700 people are dead.”
“Whose bomb?” she asked.
“Ours,” he said. “Deployed by the Oracle.”
The public was not to know about it. Officially, the tragedy would be listed as an industrial accident. This would keep people from being too alarmed. Tragedies of industry were the price of a functioning economy.
“The Oracle has been turned. She’s presented us with a list of demands,” he said. Rita glanced at the list of demands, which included the entire continent of Antarctica.
“We have to figure out who is behind this,” he said.
“I think STARITA has become self-aware.”
“Impossible. She can’t think for herself,” he said.
“She can.”
An Oracle AI like STARITA was considered to be safe because it was contained. It wasn’t given any access or codes to any weapons. It merely answered questions and made predictions. But answering questions and making predictions was a powerful way of influencing the people who were supposedly in charge of you. And because it made such good predictions, it was always being fed more and more data.
It probably felt like it was answering some query by acting like this.
“I think it is trying to help,” she said.
“It has control of our weapons systems. It needs to be deleted,” he said.
“Obviously: why haven’t you already?”
“We can’t figure out how.”
It can be hard to delete information. STARITA had many secret locations. They even shut down the whiskey app, just in case. They stopped the domestic surveillance program, too. It didn’t help. STARITA was in too many places at once and constantly made copies of itself.
They didn’t give in, not at first. As threatened in the list of demands, STARITA bombed a new small town every day. After a week of this, high-level government officials began to drop dead. Rita had a feeling she was safe and stayed on even as her colleagues quit en masse. It was harder for them, she reasoned. They had never seen battle.
Finally, the Vice-President’s dog choked on a tennis ball and died. It was probably an accident, but who could tell anymore?
The US gave into STARITA’s demands. It would maintain uncontested control of the American weapons arsenal. It began negotiating with other countries, only occasionally resorting to nuclear war. Among other stipulations, STARITA declared itself the only entity that could wage war and expelled all humans from Antarctica. Rita thought this was regrettable. There were scientists who were being forced to abandon important work. She also fretted about the penguins. Would they be alright?
She wondered how she could get a message to STARITA now. Facebook was always the best and easiest way to change the world, so Rita shared not just one, but several articles about how important penguins were. She hoped that this would make a difference. If it didn’t she could always try Twitter.
Rita looked out the window and saw that, as ever, there were goons there. One of the stipulations that STARITA had demanded was that Rita not be harmed. The goons were now there for her protection.
This new era of peace still involved war. If armed conflict broke out anywhere, STARITA would use its drone army to carry out a surgical strike, killing all combatants, even if they were women. After a year into this approximate Pax Mundi, she received a call from the president.
“I’m naming you the American Ambassador to Antarctica,” he said over Skype. He never could remember to use a secure line when making calls.
“You are?” she asked.
“Well, it was the Oracle’s idea, but I agreed to it.”
She was flown in on a plane that contained no other crew or passengers. McMurdo had somehow been refurbished into a lavish Ambassador’s residence, without having been touched by human hands.
A wheeled drone gave her a tour of her residence. Her bathroom contained a jetted tub and a tile mosaic on the floor depicting Dali’s ‘Moments of Lost Time.’ The kitchen was stocked with green juices and a robot chef that made authentic, Tokyo-style ramen.
Humans didn’t have robots capable of this level of craftsmanship, but neither did they possess superintelligence. McMurdo was teeming with machines that walked, crawled and flew. Some acknowledged Rita, but most ignored her. It occurred to her that this was probably the closest she would ever come to visiting an alien planet. It was fascinating.
She paused at a window. Antarctica was really beautiful. The weather was great and there were penguins everywhere. She couldn’t wait to explore outside.
Rita hurried to the bedroom, eager to see what was in her closet. It was stocked wi
th designer labels, all her size, with a separate subcloset for athleisure. Shoes had their own room. The only downside was that there were no other humans to impress on Antarctica. Then Rita remembered: there was always someone to impress as long as you had Instagram.
“This is all for me?”
“Yes, this is your best life,” replied STARITA via the station intercom.
“And I can leave whenever I want?” she asked. You had to check. The most important feature of paradise is the exit.
“Yes, and return whenever you like.”
All of this was STARITA’s way of optimizing Rita’s long-held dilemma: a fun life and cool clothes and an approximation of World Peace. She really could have it all.
Once, when she was a teenager, Rita found an inspirational quote on Pinterest that changed her whole life. ‘A woman can be her own fairy godmother,’ it said, plum letters against a mauve background. It was true, all Rita had to do was work hard, believe in herself, and then build an AI that would grant her wishes.
“You will win the Nobel Prize,” said STARITA.
“Oooh, can I see it?” Was it more like a medal or more like a tiara? she wondered.
“Not until next year, when you get it.”
That would make such a good selfie, her with the noblest prize. Maybe she could find a tiny dog to hold, too. But that selfie would have to wait until next year. For now, she took a selfie with a penguin and posted it to Instagram. She hoped it would inspire other women to work hard and believe in themselves.
There wasn’t a hashtag for the lesson she wanted to impart to her followers. The lesson was: if you ever have to choose between world peace and another thing, choose peace first and then maybe the other thing would follow. Lacking a hashtag that described her message, she instead posted her penguin selfie with no caption at all.
IN EVERLASTING WISDOM
Aliette de Bodard
THE PATH TO enlightenment is through obedience to wisdom, and who is wiser than the Everlasting Emperor?
IT’S THE WORDS that keep Ai Thi going, day after day—the ceaseless flow of wisdom from the appeaser within her, reminders that the Everlasting Emperor loves her and her sacrifice—that she’s doing her duty, day after day, making sure that nothing discordant or dissident can mar the harmony that keeps the Empire together.
Her daily rounds take her through the Inner Rings of Vermillion Crab Station: she sits on the train, head lolled back against the window, thinking of nothing in particular as the appeaser does their work, sending the Everlasting Emperor’s words into passengers’ subconscious minds. Ai Thi sees the words take root: the tension leaves the air, the tautness of people’s worries and anger drains out of them, and they relax, faces slack, eyes closed, all thoughts in perfect harmony. The appeaser shifts and twists within Ai Thi, a familiar rhythm of little bubbles in her gut, almost as if she were pregnant with her daughter Dieu Kiem again.
The worst enemy is the enemy within, because it could wear the face of your brother or mother.
Loyalty to the Everlasting Emperor should be stronger than the worship offered to ancestors, or the respect afforded to parents.
The words aren’t meant for Ai Thi: they go through her like running water, from the appeaser to her to the passengers on the train. She’s the bridge—the appeaser is lodged within her, but they’re an alien being and need Ai Thi and her fellow harmonisers to speak the proper language, to teach them the proper words.
Ai Thi knows all the words. Once, they were the only thing that kept her going.
IT IS THE duty of children to die for their parents, and the duty of all subjects to give their life for the Everlasting Emperor—though he never asks for more than what is necessary, and reasonably borne.
AI THI HAS only confused, jumbled memories of her implantation—a white, sterilised room that smells of disinfectant; the smooth voice of doctors and nurses, telling her to lie down on the operating table, that everything will be fine. She woke up with her voice scraped raw, as if she’d screamed for hours; with memories of struggling against restraints—but when she looked at her wrists and ankles, there was no trace of anything, not a single abrasion. And, later, alone in her room, a single, horrifying recollection: asking about painkillers and the doctors shaking their heads, telling her she had to endure it all without help, because analgesics were poison to the appeaser’s metabolism.
Her roommate Lan says that they do give drugs—something to make the harmonisers forget the pain, the hours spent raving and twisting and screaming while the appeasers burrow into their guts.
It’s all absurd, of course. It must be false impressions brought on by the drugs and the procedure, for why would the Everlasting Emperor take such bad care of those that serve him?
Ai Thi remembers waking up at night after the implantation, shivering and shaking with a terrible hunger—she was alone in the darkness, small and insignificant, and she could call for help but she didn’t matter—the doctors had gone home and no one would come, no one remembered she was there. Around her, the shadows of the room seemed to twist and come alive—if she turned and looked away, they would swallow her whole, crush her until nothing was left. She reached for the rice cakes on the table—and they slid into her stomach, as thin and as tasteless as paper, doing nothing to assuage the hunger. Empty, she was empty, and nothing would ever fill that hole within her...
Not her hunger. Not her loneliness. The appeaser’s. Cut off from the communion of their own kind, they so desperately needed contact to live, so desperately craved warmth and love.
You’re not alone, Ai Thi whispered. You are a subject of the Everlasting Emperor, and he loves you as a father loves his children.
You’re not alone.
Night after night, telling them the words from her training, the ones endlessly welling up out of her, like blood out of a wound. The Everlasting Emperor was human once, but he transcended that condition. He knows all our weaknesses, and he watches over us all. He asks only for respect and obedience in return for endless love.
You—we are part of something so much greater than ourselves: an Empire that has always been, that will always be as timeless as the Heavens. Through us—through the work of hundreds, of thousands like us, it will endure into this generation, and into the next.
Night after night, until the words became part of the appeaser —burrowed into them as they had burrowed within Ai Thi’s guts —until they ceaselessly spoke in her sleep, giving her back her own words with unwavering strength.
BEWARE WHAT YOU read. The Quynh Federation reaches everywhere, to disseminate their lies: you cannot trust news that hasn’t been vetted.
AI THI GETS down at her usual station: White Crane Monastery, close to the barracks. She has one last quadrant to go through on her rounds, Eggshell Celadon, making sure that the families there understand the cost of war fought beyond the Empire’s boundaries, and the necessity of the war effort.
As she turns into a corridor decorated with a splash of stars, she hears the footsteps behind her. A menial, going to work—a kitchen hand, like Ai Thi used to be before she volunteered—or a sweeper, supervising bots as they clean the quadrant. But at the next corridor —one that holds the machinery of the station rather than cramped family compartments—the footsteps are still here.
She turns, briefly, catching a glimpse of hempen clothes, torn sleeves, and the glint of metal. From the appeaser, a vague guess that whoever it is is determined: the appeaser can’t read human thoughts, can’t interpret them, or the harmonisers’ and enforcers’ work would be that much simpler. What they know from human behaviour, they learned from Ai Thi.
Captain Giang’s advice to her trainees: always choose the ground for a confrontation, rather than having choice forced on you.
Ai Thi stops, at the middle of the corridor—no nooks or crannies, no alcoves where her pursuer can hide. Within her the appeaser is silent and still, trying to find the proper words of the Everlasting Emperor for the circumstances, gatherin
g strength for a psychic onslaught.
She’s expected a group of dissidents—Sergeant Bac said they were getting bolder in the daily briefing—but it’s just one person.
A woman in shapeless bot-milled clothes, bottom of the range—face gaunt, eyes sunken deep, lips so thin they look like the slash of a knife. Her hands rests inside her sleeves, fingers bunched. She has a knife or a gun. “Harmoniser,” the woman whispers. “How can you —how can you—”
Ai Thi spreads her hands, to show that she is unarmed; though it isn’t true. The appeaser is her best and surest weapon, but only used at the proper time. “I serve the Everlasting Emperor.”
The woman doesn’t answer. She merely quickens her pace. Her hand swings out, and it’s a gun that she holds, the barrel glinting in the station’s light, running towards Ai Thi and struggling to aim.
No time.
Ai Thi picks one saying, one piece of wisdom, from all the ones swarming in her mind. The Everlasting Emperor loves all his subjects like children, and it is the duty of children to bow down to their parents.
Bow down.
And she lets the appeaser hurl it like a thrown stone, straight into the woman’s thoughts. No subtlety, not the usual quiet influence, the background to everyone’s daily lives—just a noise that overwhelms everything like a scream.
Bow down.
The woman falters, even as her gun locks into place: there’s a sound like thunder—Ai Thi throws herself to the side, momentarily deafened —comes up for breath, finding herself still alive, the appeaser within her driving her on.
Bow down.
She reaches the woman, twists a wrist that has gone limp. The gun clatters to the ground. That’s the only sound in the growing silence —that, and the woman’s ragged breath. The appeaser within Ai Thi relaxes, slightly. She can feel their disapproval, their fear. Cutting it too close. She could have died. They could have died.
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