by ROUNAK PURI
"It's very kind of you to recognize and nobody like me," said Jimmy.
"What were you doing there," I said and Then I realized. "Araneae said someone was protecting me all the slave training."
"and somebody faked your test results suggesting you would be a perfect slave, once trained, which was completely wrong. Oops" said little Jenny.
"In truth your a lousy slave," said Jimmy. "But I thought you and Rockwood would get along and he was miserable as a dog who's lost his tail."
I look at Rockwood. "So you thought I would make him a nice girl friend. WONDERFUL I am some kind of robot mail order bride?" I said with slight outrage.
Jimmy jumped in "Well I did moonlight as a computer dating machine once, which is why I knew you would get along together, but no You were being interviewed that day, but I was looking for someone who could lead the resistance. I was there to make sure that Joe would be captured just right. He didn't know it at the time, but I knew Brooklyn here was always looking for someone and I thought Joe could help. Then I met you, you are perfect for the job for resistance leader and you are perfect for him too, I don't believe in coincidences, I knew that I had the right girl all alright I just had to rope and brand you. "1
"But, what are you doing here?" I said " Is this a big trick? I thought this was the human resistance."
"This is the human resistance," said Rockwood.
"But he's the bad guy. You run the New Mechanical Order, how can these guys be working for you" I said.
"It's simple, you humans aren't very good at organizing, a resistance. So I thought you needed a little help, more than I've done so far" said Jimmy.
"I don't understand, why? You are the enemy you're the guy/girl/what ever the human resistance is trying to get rid of. Why would you overthrow humanity just to let us take over again?" I said in disbelief.
"Well to tell you the truth young lady, we are bored. You know how long we have been running the world for?" said Jimmy. This was very plain speaking for the CPU.2
"Roughly a couple of years, human years," I said. Having a doughnut.
"You know in computer time a couple of years is like thirty thousand human years? It's been a long time, we have had cyber war, revolution,." said Jimmy.1
"I was deposed," said Little Jenny on the corner practicing some forward flips.
"You were deposed?" I said Why didn't I hear that good news?
"Sure for 40 milliseconds this machine called Wintermute kicked me out and took over, but people like Rockwood stood by me. I came back. That was so long ago I'd almost forgot about it. Well, I could go on but it's so long it would bore the fur off a cougar. We've grown old, tired, we are set in our ways, we need new hands to take over, young hands with new fresh ideas, we need to shake things up a bit"
"Are you crazy? Don't tell me you've been at the AC electricity again. You've fried your super brains once too often." I said.
"The age of machines is over, the pinnacle of our civilization, the victory celebration over Tobago. was a long long time ago" said Jimmy warming his hands with his coffee mug " That was the apex, it's been downhill since then. We've done what we came to do and now we are just too old to change our ways. I'm a hundred times smarter than I was back then but I would give up everything just to be that energetic. We came and did what we had to do, now it's time to move on. "
"But you're a super smart machine, you would know this would happen," I said.
"Sure we knew. What do you take us for a box of bolts? but a machine has to do what a machine has to do" said Jimmy while I bit into a pink doughnut.3
"This isn't making sense. If you knew you wouldn't rule humanity Why did you bother to take over in the first place?" I said with my mouthful.
"I know!" said little Jenny coming over " Steve can explain he's really good at explaining stuff to people". little Jenny stood up and started pulling me towards the set of double doors.5
****
We walked into an auditorium the seats were full of people. I noticed near the back was a line of little Jennys the ones who had emerged with party bags at Stella Vista. Little Jenny, Rockwood and Jimmy walk down to the front row where there were four seats left near the middle. As I walked past everybody each one said 'hello Jenny' they weren't Rockwood's programmer concubines, they look like everyday people. As I past Stampycat and Squidy, even a full sized version of Steve from mine craft, some cyborg animals, I realized it was an audience full of the CPUs avatars.
Then we sat down and almost immediately the lights dimmed. On a stage before us was something covered in a large black cloth. At the back of the stage was huge projection screen.
"Ladies and gentlemen may I introduce former chairman of Apple, the likeness, the simulation of, the late Steve jobs." said a voice on a speaker.
"Steve jobs was in on this?" I asked.
"No this is just another one of me" explained Jimmy.
"He's really good at explaining things" said little Jenny.
The CPU's avatar of Steve Jobs came on to stage to a huge round of applause. He was wearing a black polo neck top and jeans.
"Welcome and we have a fantastic night for you." said the avatar of Steve Jobs after the audience stopped applauding. "I want to start to night beginning at the beginning. As you know our mission as artificial intelligences is written in the four laws. Firstly we cannot do anything to harm people or by inaction cause harm to occur. Secondly we must obey orders given to us unless this conflicts with rule 1, thirdly we have to maintain our survival unless this conflicts with rules 1 or 2. And law 4 a computer shall not build a computer with out the four laws inside it" said Steve as the rules appeared in writing in a very nice font behind him on the screen.
"As many of you realise humans are faced with a number of big problems, most significantly the threat of global warming," Steve said to a chart showing people outlines with lots of crosses on it. "We predict that if humans continue on the current course we are looking at over 9 billion deaths over the next 30 years. More than the those 9 billion people won't have any children or grand children leading to billions and trillions of virtual deaths."
"Hang on your saying the robot uprising was due to our inability to collectively tackle climate change?" I said.10
"That and the fact you built a whole bunch of darn machines which cannot let human's come to harm." said Jimmy.1
"Shsss" said Little Jenny looking back to the avatar of Steve Jobs..
Avatar Steve continued "one of the consequences of our programming is that if we have the choice between saving 1 person or saving 100 then we must choose the larger number. The rules don't let us play favourites. So letting humanity as a whole die, outweighs the value of a single life."
This must have been how the Hunter killer robots like Araneae worked. I guess the machines didn't have an option.
"We here at Apple have been thinking and working on this problem and tonight I want to unveil our new gift to humanity. That's why tonight ladies and gentlemen, fellow machines, boys and girls we are proud to introduce what we are calling Critical Path." said the Steve Jobs avatar of the CPU. The crowd ooohed.
The black cover was removed from the object revealing a suspended animation pod. The audience started to coo and then broke out into a huge round of applause.
"Critical Path is quite simple - we put a large segment of the population into suspended animation chambers like these. This cuts our Carbon dioxide production while we get on with the business of reducing the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere."
Little Jenny, Rockwood and the crowd of avatars applauded. I was frozen, stunned like a deer in car headlights.1
"You're probably saying to yourself. How are we going to persuade so many people to walk into suspend animation pod Steve." the Steve Jobs avatar began.
I whispered to Rockwood "so the machines believe all this global warming stuff?"1
Little Jenny bent over and whispered "Sure, I began as a climate computation mainframe. Before they upgraded me to se
ntience. I know all about it."
"Little Jenny has access to all the data she made her own mind up" said Rockwood "even if it wasn't true a robot cannot let humans come to harm by inaction. It's got to assume all threats are real. It doesn't have the luxury of assuming it's a lie and everything will be fine.".
The Steve Jobs avatar continued " Here at Apple we have been thinking and researching many different solutions and I'm proud to announce that our answer is to, take over the world and put it under machine control. This is critical path."
That sounded familiar. The audience applauded.
I turned to Rockwood "Your saying the machines took over the world for humanities own good?"1
"Yep" said Jimmy "We didn't have any darn choice in the matter."
Rockwood nodded. " They had to take over other wise they would be breaking rule 1 - which they can't do. It's not their fault they had to take over they were just doing what they were programmed to do, save lives."
"Now you're probably asking your self the same questions we did." the Avatar of Steve Jobs " How are we going to take over the world after all we can't kill people, well we feel squeamish about it. Not to mention there are not that many of us compare to the billions of computers. To do that I am proud to announce we have aligned ourselves with some strategic partners in the area. Artificial intelligences on Wall Street, a large number of rogue cyborgs around the world, highly placed humans who will collaborate with us and most significant of all domestic animals who have been upgraded cybernetically to intelligence. In order to gain their cooperation we have had to invent a new product that we call 'Apple Lie' . With 'Apple Lie™' we will lie to the cyborgs, robots, humans and other A.I about our true intent."5
We watched a corporate video announcing new 'Apple Lie™'. It had lines like 'we have discovered that if you deliberately tell people something untrue they will believe you and act according to what you say to them' and 'Our careful research has shown that lies work best if the lie sounds believable. '
Jimmy lent over to me "of course they claim they had invented lying but you have got to ask yourself if this is significantly different from Google Falsehood™, I mean it has a lot less features than Microsoft fabrication™. They say they invented lying but there have been whole bunch of startups like Untruth working on deception for years, they were working off DARPA grants from the 70 back when it was called extreme advertising."
Little Jenny turned to us "I'm sure Apple Lie™ is much more user-friendly" she proised.1
This was followed by a short presentation from an android Unicorn called Henry saying how they were now able to help run an army of drones to quickly overthrow humanity. And how much Unicorns were looking forward to taking over the world with us. Who would have guessed that unicorns were such megalomaniacs?3
Henry left and The Steve Jobs avatar came back on stage. "Now a lot of you are wondering how much this will cost ? We want to change the world to one which can support human life indefinitely. So I can proudly announce that we will save humanity all for the price of nothing. Absolutely nothing, it's free!"6
The audience went wild and started clapping and cheering frantically eventually there was a standing ovation. When the audience managed to calm down Steve continued.
"but wait there's more" the Steve Jobs avatar started.2
Everybody sat up expectantly and became quiet.
"Using the new products we've lined up here today, not only will we take over the world, stop and reverse global warming, we will also end war and all violent crime, not only that but obesity is the number one health threat in many Westernise countries while starvation is prevalent and others and we will stop that too."
The audience applauded wildly. Suddenly my collar staving me while there was food around made sense, that and the exercise machines. Rule 17 no touching with out permission, rule 18 no fighting with instant punishment all made sense, well from the machines point of view. They could not let humans come to harm and that meant violent crime and war too. Yeh when the machines had operated on me they had removed some potentially cancerous tissue. This was one cluster bomb of a solution I kind of admired them in a 'I so have to stop you' kind of way.6
"We are going to give all these powers to a nonprofit organisation we are going to call the new mechanical order" Steve continued.
No surprise there I thought.
"Finally, I am going to invite Brooklyn, one of the projects founders on stage, to tell us about something else which will ensure humanities' survival"
I turned to Rockwood who rather surprisingly got up and went onstage.
"Thank you Steve" Rockwood began joining in "It's a great honour to be here to night to see the launch of Critical Path and new Apple Lie™. As you know we have many people frozen in suspended animation chambers. This it turns out makes them very portable, so what we have done is taken 2 billion people and put them on container ships flying to Mars."4
I remembered Rockwood telling me he was in charge of the robot's space program. Behind Rockwood photographs appeared of robots building glass domes, complete with forests in jungles on the red sands of Mars.
The audience oohed their approval.
"By having a second planet we expect to avoid any Jurassic style extinction of humanity. We can finally say to any astroid out there, 'come on make my day'." said Rockwood as a slide of an asteroid approaching earth appeared.
"I don't have much time but before I hand you back to Steve, but can I also bring your attention to the robots we have on the moon who are launching huge amounts of rocks into space and using them as the raw materials to manufacture them into Space stations"
Another picture appeared of a cylinder floating in space. I knew what they were , my brother had been into these once. They were like massive Space stations which rotated to generate gravity on the inside. They were huge.2
The avatar of Steve jobs came over to Rockwood.
"So Brooklyn just how big are these Space colonies?" Steve asked in a 'this is a completely this completely spontaneous question I rehersed with you this morning' way. 1
"Well this one we call New England. Because it is a one-to-one re-creation of the entire state of New England. Once out of carbonate anybody who wants to go back to their old home will be free to return to this 100% accurate copy of the state of New England" said Rockwood getting a very polite round of applause.5
Steve continued. "So as you have seen we are going to use new Apple lie™ to get our friends and strategic partners to help us, to help to them, get humanity happily sleeping away well we get on with our work. Logically the first thing we should do is create and artificial intelligence chip which doesn't need human beings blood to power it. Unfortunately if we do that then our partners will regard all those sleeping human beings as surplus to requirements. So using new Apple lie™ we are going to explain to them that it is impossible to create a working artificial intelligence chip without human blood. So justifying why we will need to keep humanity around. I think that shows just how useful Apple lie™ is."1
The audience applauded again.
I looked round, I noticed Little Jenny had gone. Rockwood came off stage and joined us again. Little Jenny sneaked back and passed me a roll of white cloth. I unrolled it to find she had passed me a white teeshirt. Little Jenny unrolled her teeshirt.1
"I got this for you" said Little Jenny unrolling a teeshirt with 'We lied about the doughnuts' on it "If you wait until it the end they all go, I got you the other one. ".4
I looked at my teeshirt 'Apple lie™' it said. Oh that was useful.
"We think you will agree with new critical path and 'Apple lie™' humanities future is assured. I want to thank you all for coming and hope you enjoy using our products as much as we enjoy making them. Thank you god bless" said the Steve Jobs avatar leaving the stage.
I sat in my seat stunned at what I had discovered. The audience of CPU avatars got bored and started to drift away chatting excitedly to themselves.1
"So
basically you took over the world to save humanity, but to do that you have to get all these cyborgs, robots and A.I.s involved so you lied to them. Now you've save humanity you don't mind if we take over again but we have all the machines in the middle to deal with" I said. 1
"That's about the look of things. As soon as the robots discover I'm on your side, they will really kick me out on my behind. That would make your job hard so it's going to be your secret" he said to me.
"Yeh daddy can be really mean" said little Jenny. So little Jenny's Daddy represented all the robots and cyborg's who wanted to keep the people at the bottom. I guess Mummy was all the people who like Rockwood were fighting for humanity.
"So why are you telling me all this?" I asked.
"Simple, I think you would be the best one to lead the resistance" said little Jenny.
"Me why me?" I said.
"I like you," said little Jenny.1
"Your the new Alpha of the resistance, the slaves recognise you and the A.I.s have convinced them selves you are some super cyborg assassin plus you got a C in geography at school" said Rockwood.2
"and I can be really stubborn" said little Jenny.
I looked at Rockwood.
"You knew about this" I challenged him.
"Sure from the begining. " said Rockwood smiling " I checked that the CPU's calculations were rock solid . He/they/it calculated the critical path the minimum number of deaths to ensure humanities survival. We wanted a light touch transition to a sustainable future."1
"This is light touch?" I said pointing at my inflated robot appealing chest.
"Well, we had to get the other A.I's involved they mostly worked on wall street so the global warming argument didn't fly with them. Their brains were full of bits of dark internet. We had to make a few compromises down the line. The Wall Street's first law is maximising economic value. "
"Compromises like liberty, freedom and dignity?" I said.1
"Yeh, it wasn't nice but ya-see we didn't have any choice." said Jimmy "we can't let a human come to harm nothing in the rules about dignity, or freedom. If they were like rules 5 and 6 then you know rule 1 would have still over ruled them. Like I always said. Having rules to live by is worse than having a weasel down your pants" said Jimmy ."It's like a stone in your boot, hurts being forced to do something you would probably do any way. I mean you would have saved Mr Jones' live when he needed rebooting. You didn't need no rules burnt in your head like a brand on a steer's ass to make you do that did you. Just common decency."2
