CAPACITY a-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  “Why? It will be weeks before I can get my eyes fixed.” Justinian was crying with frustration. “How will I look after Jesse?”

  “Justinian, you and your baby only have a few minutes left to live. Surely you realize this?”

  Justinian let out a shout of anger, then fell back, confused, as his vision suddenly cut back in again. He was experiencing the same strange black mapping of sight that he had experienced when he first entered the caves. There was Jesse, sitting not far away from him, happily playing with the vines that crept up around him. Stroking them. Loving them. Justinian could actually see them moving. And then over the lip…over the lip. He forgot all about Jesse then. He needed to see what lay down there.

  “Why? Why do I have to die?” he raged, trying to distract the pod. He had to look over the lip. He was moving there as he spoke, trying to peer over the edge.

  “You can see again, can’t you?” said the pod, and as it did so, Justinian smelled burning flesh. “It’s the plant. It can communicate with just about anything.”

  His vision suddenly went blank again, but not before Justinian had finally looked over the lip and seen the great black plant that grew there.

  It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was fascinating and nauseating and dangerous all at the same time. It wasn’t complete. Only part of it seemed to exist there in the cave. Just like the hull of the hypership.

  “Come on now, Justinian, you only have a few minutes left. Nothing intelligent can survive long here.”

  “What about you?”

  “This pod is no longer intelligent, Justinian. It is long dead. It looked up your personality before it died, and ran this conversation through your personality mapping. There is no intelligence in this pod, only a set of yes/no gates keyed to your responses.”

  A great empty feeling opened up inside Justinian. He was alone again. Just him and Jesse…and something that did not even count as the ghost of an AI.

  “Why?” he asked, then hesitated, wondering. Did it already know what his next question would be? Had the response to it been laid down weeks ago, before he had even heard of Gateway?

  He asked the question anyway. “Why do you want my baby?”

  The response was already there, preprogrammed. What had happened to his life that it could be decided before he had even lived it?

  The dead pod spoke: “The Schrödinger boxes are seeds. They disperse across space until an intelligence fixes them in place. Life makes use of natural resources like air and soil. Consider the fact that wheat is cultivated by humans. It has thrived because human intelligence invented farming. This plant has dipped right down to the quantum level: it appeals to intelligence directly. The stronger the intelligence, the more it thrives. Your human intelligence has grown a plant about half a meter tall. Imagine the size of the plant that this pod produced before it committed suicide.”

  “I saw it, and then you burned out my eyes! Then you did something to stop me seeing the dark light.”

  “I burned out the visual centers in your brain. Neatly cauterized them with the laser. Don’t put your hand to your head!”

  Justinian was already raising his hand. He stopped immediately. He didn’t want to touch his living brain.

  The pod continued. “The plant that this pod observed extends several kilometers down into the planet. And that was with the pod reducing its own intelligence almost from the outset. It guessed that these Schrödinger boxes have blown here from M32, drifting on an uncertain wind. These plants must have taken over that galaxy long ago. Intelligent life cannot survive there. Don’t you wonder how long it will be before the seeds of these plants reach our own galaxy?”

  “Oh…” Justinian felt a chill of fear.

  “You’re afraid. You’re right to be. The weapon that humans evolved to defeat their competitors was not the spear or the hydrogen bomb. It was their intelligence. And that particular weapon is useless against these plants.”

  Justinian was blinded. The pod was long dead. Even so, it had still found a way to manipulate Justinian’s feelings. For a moment Justinian felt that he was the pod. He was standing in a cold stone valley, feeling the wind whistling past. This was some time ago, just before it all started to go wrong. Somewhere, high in the mountains, Pod 16 was about to properly turn its gaze onto a Schrödinger box for the first time. Justinian felt the urgency of Pod 16’s message as it reverberated around Gateway: the call to abandon…what? Research on the Schrödinger boxes? No pod could ask it why, because Pod 16 was now locked behind the red wall of the twisted Klein bottle.

  Justinian felt the sudden confusion that had ricocheted amongst the remaining thirty-one pods. Thirty-two minds had lived connected for so long. The sudden loss of one of their number left them reeling, as if someone had kicked away one of the legs of a ladder. What had happened? What to do now?

  Justinian had made the decision. No, not Justinian; this pod had made a decision. It descended to this cave, hoping to safeguard the rest of the planet from what it might find, and then it had repeated the experiment of Pod 16.

  And oh, the wonder! The sheer possibilities inherent in that little black seed upon which it first gazed. It wasn’t so much a seed as a window into another place. And what came spewing forth from that window, matching its thoughts? To pull back was almost impossible. It had to cut part of its own mind clean away just to achieve separation from the alien plant.

  Reeling, with only half a mind, it had formed a plan. Sent itself on a dizzying ride through a databank of the population of the Earth Domain, looking for a suitable child.

  “My child!” shouted Justinian, shaken from his reverie.

  “Yes,” the pod said. “We knew we would be refused if we asked for a child. So we named an adult, one who would have no choice but to bring their child along with them. You.”

  “Oh, Jesse,” Justinian cried, “what have I done to you?”

  “Nothing, Justinian. It was not your fault.”

  “Why not?” He shook his head. “Did you just say something?”

  “No. Justinian, take comfort in the fact that, in coming here, you were not acting of your own free will. You have been manipulated by AIs into bringing your child with you. Now your child’s interactions with the plant can be transmitted-”

  “You evil-”

  “Not evil. The EA needs to see what a developing human intelligence calls forth, and the thresholds at which that plant operates.”

  “Fuck your thresholds. Why should we care?”

  “Because these plants are the Strangler Vines that could reach all the way through your galaxy and choke the life from the Earth Domain. We must study them, and yet the one tool that we use to study them, our intelligence, is useless! We need to find out why they were made.”

  “Why were they made?” said Justinian. “I’m sorry…what was that?”

  “I said nothing.”

  “I could have sworn…Anyway, how do you know they were made? Maybe they grow naturally.”

  “I don’t think so. You know the BVBs?”

  “I know the BVBs,” Justinian said bitterly. He could feel the tension of the one around his arm.

  “They are being formed by the plant that this pod here grew. The larger the plant, the greater its capabilities. This plant is pouring energy into cosmic strings, making them grow.”

  Justinian shook his head, clearing his ears. “Cosmic strings?”

  “Smaller than atoms. Little loops pumped so full of energy that they grow to macroscopic size. And then they are released, to shrink away again-BVBs. They are the stuff of the universe itself. That is why they can’t be cut.”

  “Oh.”

  “The amount of energy that is required to grow a BVB is colossal. We need to know where it’s coming from. We need to know how the plant is doing it.”

  Justinian shook his head again, sure he heard a whispering there, a sweet whispering, the sound of the sea, the sound of his wife. A seductive calling and cooing.

  “What
is that noise?” he said.

  “The plant,” the AI said. “It adapts quickly. It will try to communicate with your intelligence in whatever way it can. Now that your vision is destroyed, it is finding another way to speak with you. Soon I will be forced to deafen you. Listen: you still have a chance to live, Justinian. Run back to the surface and board the flier. I can activate the automatic recall; get it to take you back to Gateway spaceport.”

  The whispering grew louder. Justinian strained to hear what it had to say.

  “Ignore the whispering, Justinian. You have the willpower to do so. Start running now, and don’t turn back, no matter what you hear.”

  “What about Jesse?”

  “I’m sorry. He stays here with me.”

  “Then I won’t go.”

  “Then you’ll die.”

  The sweet singing was louder now.

  “No! I won’t allow you to keep my child!”

  “What can you do, Justinian? I am sorry that it must be this way, but the decision was made a long time ago. It is better that fifty people die than three hundred. Better one child than all humankind.”

  The siren voices were almost making sense now.

  “Don’t listen, Justinian. That plant is growing again. Ignore the voices and concentrate. Go back to the spaceport and grow new eyes. Tell them there what I have done. Maybe you can convince them to return here and rescue your child. Yes, why not do that? Be quick. I can keep him alive one, maybe two days. Today he looked at a Schrödinger box and held it in position for the first time. Leslie will have marked that level of intelligence well. Beneath that level is the level we can work at. Maybe the EA can build AIs of below that level of intelligence which can resist the plants. I hope so but, if not, tell the EA to start running.”

  The siren song was so loud now that Justinian could hardly hear what the AI was saying. It was important to listen, he knew that, but that singing was so distracting.

  “Listen, Justinian. Intelligence has spread right through our own galaxy. Its time may be coming to an end. Something out there doesn’t like the idea of intelligence, even if that thing is just a plant that has evolved a way to wipe out its competitors. Who knows? You can’t save your baby. But save yourself.”

  Something was asking Justinian to listen to what it was saying. A voice that spoke without words, concepts that came from another place.

  There was a sudden shrill burst of white noise, and Justinian heard nothing further. Deafened by the pod.

  What was he to do? Sobbing with frustration, he began to crawl in the direction he thought the tunnel to the surface lay. He shouted out that he would be back, but his empty ears heard nothing.

  He could feel tears on his cheeks. Tears of rage and pity and shame. He felt cold sharp stone beneath his hands. He was crawling away from his child, but he had to. It was the only way to get help.

  He put his hand on something soft and rounded. A vine? He felt a pattern of movement on his skin. Regular movement: a message in tactile Morse. The plant was still trying to communicate with him! And now he could smell something…And then there was a burning sensation as the pod flayed him alive, burnt the living, feeling skin from his body.

  The pain passed and his mind was left floating in a dark sea, cut off completely from the insinuating information of the plants.

  Jesse, he thought in despair. Where are you?

  Helen 5: 2240

  Relaxation had been an art form back in 2170. Helen had been an artiste.

  She sat cross-legged on the smooth green lawn, cherry blossom falling softly around her. The pink-and-white blossom fell into her brushed-out hair, tangled in threads of golden sunlight. The petals formed a pointillist pattern across her white jumpsuit. Her tanned hands rested palms upwards on her knees, a gentle smile playing across her face.

  This is all a pose, she thought, eyes closed. It isn’t about getting in touch with myself after my ordeal, no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise. Damn that Judy. She’s revealed me to myself.

  She opened her eyes. Kevin was walking towards her, drawing a wake of death behind him. The branches of the trees in the cherry orchard closed like hands as he walked by, red-banded trunks blackened as they aged. The grass at his feet turned brown and lay down to die. A cold wind followed him, bringing the smell of decay.

  “Oh, Helen,” Kevin said, “you look so pure and virginal.”

  “That was the intention.”

  Helen remained seated as Kevin stopped before her. A wash of dying brown grass swirled around her.

  “Must you do that?” she asked.

  Kevin shrugged. “It isn’t real, Helen.” He raised an arm to take in the surrounding green orchard of this section of the Shawl. “None of this is real. This is just a processing space. It’s just the Watcher’s dream.”

  Helen was climbing to her feet. “If you won’t stop, I will go and sit somewhere else. I came to this section to think.”

  She turned and began to walk back through the orchard, towards the mown path that connected the different parts of the rambling forest that filled this section.

  “Maybe I could train you.” Kevin’s words floated after her. “You could be my new Bairn, now that Judy three has taken the old one.”

  Helen’s pace faltered for a moment, but she took a breath and strode on. A wave of dying grass washing past her feet signaled Kevin’s approach. A gentle hand clasped her shoulder.

  “Hey, hold on there a moment, Helen.”

  She stopped walking. The forest was dying around her. His voice was gravely soft in her ear, sweetly seductive.

  “Helen, do you realize what you are giving up? How do you know you won’t like subsuming your will to another’s? Bairn did, and Bairn is you, after all.”

  “Bairn isn’t me,” Helen said simply. She pulled free of his hand and walked on. She still felt calm and centered, she noticed with quiet satisfaction. There was the sound of running feet, and Kevin reached around from behind her and pulled her tightly against himself with one strong arm. His hand cupped her breast, the other hand reaching down between her legs.

  “Bairn liked it when I did this,” he whispered hoarsely in her ear. Without anger, as if performing the steps of a dance, Helen stamped down hard on his instep while simultaneously jabbing her elbow back into his ribs. Kevin gave a gasp of pain as she kicked herself backwards, overbalancing them both. She rolled free of his grasp, skidding on the dead brown earth as she stood up.

  “Do that again and I’ll kill you,” she said without heat.

  Kevin rubbed his ribs, smiling ruefully.

  “No, you won’t. Judy will have been at you. You only get one chance in the Watcher’s system. Only one chance to exercise free will, and then Social Care reprograms you. You can’t kill me now. You have empathy. You understand crime, punishment, and redemption. You can no more kill me than you can bring that last Kevin you killed back to life.”

  Helen dropped into a fighting stance, her right breast aching where Kevin had roughly grasped it.

  “Try me,” she said in a low voice.

  Kevin pulled a white plastic blade from his pocket and tossed it to the ground near her feet. He pulled open the front of his striped shirt and thrust out his chest.

  “Go on, pick up the knife. Stick it in me. I won’t stop you.”

  Helen looked from his chest to the wide opalescent blade that lay on the bare ground.

  “What’s the point?” she said. “If I kill you, you’ll just come back.”

  Kevin slipped the shirt down from his shoulders so that his hands were semi-bound behind his back. He tilted his head back and grinned.

  “So my death doesn’t matter then, does it? Go on, pick up the knife. Stick it in me while my hands are tied like this. Stop me from destroying this section of the Shawl.”

  Helen deliberately kept her eyes on him, but she couldn’t help but hear the dry crackling of death all around her. Healthy trees were blackening and withering in an expanding cir
cle, Kevin at their epicenter. The coolness of the forest was evaporating as the leaves shriveled away, leaving nothing but the harsh desert glare of the sun shining through the polarized blue filter that formed the section’s roof.

  Helen quivered with frustration. “What if I don’t want to?”

  “ ‘Can’t’ is what you mean. That’s not right, is it: what Judy did to you? Why should you be punished for ridding the world of me?”

  The cold wind surrounding Kevin was at odds with the heat from the sun. Helen thoughtfully brushed strands of hair from her hot face and then, in one easy movement, bent and picked up the white blade from the soil. She weighed it in her hand. There was a handle molded into one end of the plastic, with little knobbles to aid her grip. The other end was wickedly sharp. She tilted the blade into the breeze, feeling the note as it sliced the wind in two.

  “It is sharp, isn’t it?” she said. “One slice and I cut you open from your crotch to your neck, just like this.”

  She demonstrated the motion, lightning fast. It felt good. But such thoughts were to be resisted. She centered herself once more.

  “But I won’t. Judy showed me why. There are no quick and easy solutions; I’ve got to work through this on my own.”

  Kevin laughed, a deep male laugh. Damn, he was good looking. The thought cut straight through to her libido without warning. She shook her head, disgusted with herself. Kevin knew what she was thinking. He smiled that lazy smile.

  “Social Care couldn’t have said it better themselves,” he said. “Helen, you are a human personality construct in a processing space. You are being programmed just as surely as the EA programs a flier’s Turing machine.”

  “So you say. I say I do this of my own free will.”

  Kevin loomed closer, his brown eyes boring into hers.

  “Do you really think that, or is that what the Watcher is making you think? You’re just a personality construct. Do you really think those thoughts, or are they just patterns in the processing space? Do you really think, or do you just think that you think because you are programmed that way? Maybe you just react to events. After all, is a real human any more than just the reactions of a bunch of neurons? Is there free will, or is your consciousness merely a transition state?”