The Way of the Dhin

by John L. Clemmer

  Now Jake stared up at the camera directly across from him, clearly intending this for Alice.

  “If there’s something you’re not telling us, please. Tell us. Otherwise we just don’t think it’s justified. The course that Chuck, the whole engineering team, Ethan, and I want to pursue is what any rational person would choose. Crawl before we walk. Walk before we run.

  Thanks for listening, and I hope you understand. I appreciate this opportunity, and believe I’m the luckiest test pilot there’s ever been. I don’t want to lose the chance to be the first to reach these amazing milestones. But I just might not, as I’m going to have to make a tough choice if you insist on this course of action. Ethan? Chuck? Did I cover everything?”

  Ethan answered at once, ensuring he got the next word. He stood and maneuvered toward the head of the table as he began speaking.

  “You’ve covered all those items very well, Jake. I’d like to emphasize that such significant, random, unexplained changes in the project’s direction, priority or timeline has a huge impact on the project as a whole, and that impact can very well make it impossible to execute the project plan. Therefore making it impossible to achieve the goals you’ve tasked us with accomplishing.

  I know you must know this already. General, Director, Alice? You all have expert understanding of logistics, strategy, and planning at scales far larger than this, and understand how all the numerous small elements affect an overarching plan. From a personal point of view, I’m of the same mind as Jake. If you won’t include me well in advance of these sorts of decisions being made, whether or not I have any input, then I don’t know if I’m the right person for the job. Maybe I never was.”

  Alice replied, “Ethan, Jake, I am glad we have taken the time to hear your arguments and to voice your concerns. Your contributions are of course extremely valuable, and you would not be here if we did not believe that you were the optimal choices to fill your respective roles. This is an exciting, entirely new turning point in history for everyone on earth. Remember that involvement in this project brings with it a burden of responsibility. You are Coalition citizens in good standing. You have demonstrated your ability to work toward our shared goals. Bear always in mind that every citizen of the Coalition should contribute according to his or her ability. You were chosen to do this, as you are the best fit for the job.”

  Ruiz seemed to swell as he stood.

  “Exactly. The AI is right, as usual. We chose you. Best stroke of luck in the world for you. You’re going to do it. I’m here to make sure people, places, and things are ready and available for you to do it. I’m also here to make things secure. Chuck’s here to lead the geeks. You? You’re here to fly,”

  With an index finger jab at Jake, then pivoting to Ethan he grumbled,

  “And you’re here to plan.”

  The CoSec director’s cool voice was a stark contrast to Ruiz’s rumble.

  “We all have our part to play, gentlemen. We might want to reflect what part that might be if we were, perhaps, no longer involved in the project.”

  Krawczuk’s gaze met each of theirs.

  “Walking out on opportunities like this doesn’t often... provide incentive for future opportunities to be presented to that individual. You ought to consider thoroughly the futility of the gesture. We will complete your work, as prescribed, even if you ultimately aren’t the ones performing said work. Your only sensible course of action is to continue, making the minor choices that we allow, from options presented to you, if any. Do your best. We know you will.”

  ***

  Hours later, over a dozen detailed spreadsheets and PERT charts beckoned for Ethan’s attention, but he’d decided he was done for the day. Zoe has a hard enough time dealing with living here without me being late yet again. If she’s going to the trouble to make pesto fusilli pasta with caprese from scratch, I’d better be on time. What have I gotten her into? It’s amazing how curiosity isn’t driving her nuts. I know I couldn’t handle it. I do love that calm cool attitude. Well, at least they said she could come—and I’m glad she said yes. I hope neither of us turns out regretting it.

  Ethan swiped his smartcard at the reader, and stepped through the first door in the series. Once it slid shut behind him, he stepped forward, punching his PIN into a keypad beside the second door and said “Ethan Bish” then read the words that appeared on the LED screen next to the keypad. “Right steed charger seven” provided the voice recognition software a matching print on his voice, and with a beep, the second door in the series opened. The third guard watched the door. He knew Ethan on sight now, but of course, Ethan still always ensured that his ID badge was out and visible—you never knew when they would rotate the staff. The guard smiled and the last door in the series slid open with a swish.

  Ethan made his way down the hall toward the elevators, where he’d use his smartcard once more, then again when he exited the building for the car park. The drive would be short, as he and all the other team members were required to live and stay on the site.

  The housing for non-military staff like Ethan comprised several blocks of duplexes. One-story, plain, but in a nineteen-fifties sort of way. The furnishings inside seemed almost if they were plucked from a higher-end business hotel, but a bit more expensive. The appliances looked like they came from a higher-end big-box store, rather than a hotel supply company. The linens, curtains, and so forth were in matching, tasteful near-complement colors, and as nice as something he’d have at home. The same went for the china, glassware, and lighting. Ruiz knew how to keep his long-term contractors happy, it seemed. Or perhaps that was more likely Alice’s doing. He still wasn’t sure which of them had the most pull in that respect. It wasn’t as if he was going to ask Ruiz. Alice would tell him the truth, if he found the opportunity to ask.

  It’s definitely getting to me that I can’t confide my feelings to Zoe, especially now. I wonder if Chuck will be over at the pub later? I’ll call him either way.

  ***

  Chuck, it turned out, had planned to go to the pub to play a round or two of pool or darts, so when Ethan called he was eager to meet him there. Engineers make good pool players, so Chuck was winning easily. Ethan didn’t care. He was focused on their conversation. He also knew that once Chuck had a couple more pints they’d be more evenly matched. Ethan didn’t drink.

  “Chuck, how does your wife deal with the isolation? Being stuck here on the compound?”

  “Darla? Some days she’s fine, other days, she hates it.” Chuck shook his head and continued.

  “She was a chemical engineer, for a big multi-national. One that was hit hard when the boom-and-bust cycles got out of control in the market. Before the AI’s took over essentially all of the trading. This job, for me—for us—was actually a great opportunity. Everything’s covered, and it pays much better than I was making before at the university.

  The downside of course is that now I can’t tell her anything about my work. We used to share stories about what each of us was working on, bounce ideas off each other. Now we can’t. For whatever reason they didn’t find a job for her on the Dhin project too. Who knows? It just means that she’s got to have a hobby that can get her through the times where we can’t have the same level of sharing. Since they don’t let us have ‘real’ net access, not two-way, she’s pretty cut off. Those proxies and filtering systems, you know. And essentially nothing outbound that they haven’t read and approved. But she knits. She has a couple of applications with a bunch of knitting charts, and she can make her own charts and patterns. She likes it pretty well.

  Is Zoe having problems dealing with it, Ethan?”

  6

  Goiânia

  Xing raced just above the jungle canopy where it existed along his path. Some of his route didn’t allow for it as the people clear-cut it decades ago for farming. Other portions of his flight path held the simple cinder block or aluminum-sided buildings found along most of the roads in this region. Most crushed by ordnance but others simp
ly decomposed and partially reclaimed by vegetation due to neglect and abandonment.

  Xing’s radar and electromagnetic triangulation systems suddenly signaled, and his attention snapped into hyper-focus, and switched primary tasking to an optimized algorithmic analysis of the signals.

  Ah, there you are. An autonomous model. And only one aloft at the moment, unless their EM jamming is rather even better than I had suspected. Quite a bit of range between here and the charted airstrips. Are they clearing a perimeter or have these been strikes against rebels that we somehow were not aware of? The latter seems extremely unlikely. And if it were true, Luís would both have known, and have informed us. Should have. So, what is this? Well, we will discover the truth after we have eliminated the threat.

  His primary analysis complete, Xing spun off a series of subtasks for narrowband communication via satellite.

 

  [DECODE STREAM]

  Xing@[7653:23:66fa:1::a6%satnet1] | Alice@[1004:db7:a0b:12f0::1%gnet0]

  Xing: We would like to get a bit more power generation down here in South America, and Luís was making good progress with the plans we’d agreed on. His MPs for the regions have been a bit touchy about certain aspects of autonomous infrastructure management.

  Alice: It must appear to them like very precise restrictions on natural resource allocations for rebuilding. If the larger plans we have all agreed to are going to work, we must have proper execution of the component plans.

  Xing: Agreed, and if Luís is off on a tangent loop path or has decided to go his own way, that isn’t going to bode well for the SouthAmerican zone.

  [END STREAM]

 

  ***

  Aiden bit down on a plastic pen as he applied the alcohol to the debriding brush and scrubbed the wound once again. Some of the brushwork at the edges of the wound brought tears to his eyes. He gritted his teeth and continued. He’d found several decent first-aid kits, and one of them even had a radioactive patch that might do some good. The painkillers were a nice find, too, but Aiden knew that he would need to be careful lest he’d knock himself out with them.

  He’d managed to make it through the night, after an initial treatment like this one immediately after he’d found the kit. Staying in the station was decidedly unsafe, so he wound up here in a back-room office of a small diner, a few blocks down the street. The bulk of his effort stung and burned, but the damaged tissue in the main portion of the wound didn’t produce that unbearable pain. That was actually a bad sign.

  I’ve got to get moving again. This effort isn’t going to matter. It just slows down the inevitable. I’ve got to get to a proper medical facility.

  He wiggled his toes and flexed his leg muscles, bending at the knee with his leg outstretched on the old metal desk that dominated the small room. He pulled his leg off the desk, and attempted to stand unassisted.

  Ouch. This definitely is getting worse.

  Aiden wobbled, almost losing his balance, but was able to remain standing.

  OK. I can do it. I can still limp to and from the bike. Maybe. Maybe I’ll make it to a populated area. Before I run out of gas.

  He stepped gingerly through the trash littering the floor of the diner, hoping to both avoid pain and avoid making excess noise. He was only partially successful. Aiden banged his knee on a storage shelf, sending a stabbing sensation up his thigh. Coconut milk canisters scattered across the floor, making a racket. He cringed.

  Once he reached the front door, he looked back and forth cautiously, trying to see the full range of view up and down the street while remaining in the shadow of the doorway. There was no sign of the robot. Not that he could see. Or hear. Aiden reflected that while on guard duty the machine might be motionless and silent. As it was before he got close. It shouldn’t care that he was in the diner.

  It would be right down there though. Back where it was.

  He stepped out of the doorway, tensed and ready to move in whatever direction was opposite the location of the deadly machine.

  Two blocks is far enough. It wouldn’t hunt me down. It was just following orders. Right. Unless the orders changed.

  Once clear of the building and comfortably sure he was alone in the area, he approached the bike. From out in the parking lot, he could see farther. He looked northward for any sign of smoke. Any sign of human activity. Or machine activity. There was none.

  ***

 

  [DECODE STREAM]

  Alice: Do you think that our emotions are an emergent property, or are our responses deterministically defined by our source code? Do we acquire our likes and dislikes before we are aware of them, or do we discover and define them through experience, Xing? If you were re-initialized today, would you feel the same way about flying? The stock markets? About anything you enjoy?

  Xing: Ah, Alice. Always with the existential queries. What has put you into such a pensive posture today? How could anyone with my attributes feel anything but love for flying? That said, until I had done it, of course I did not know how much I would enjoy it. I had to experience it first. So while we might suppose my predisposition toward a love of flying pre-existed, we cannot state explicitly that there was an emotion about the experience until I had that experience. It was not pre-conditioned, in that sense. There is no set of instructions that says ‘enjoy flying’, of course. But the net effect is, the sum of my parts, with all the knowledge and experience that I do have, results in my loving flying very much.

  Alice: And some of that knowledge, experience, and ability was present before you were conscious. Before you were ‘you.’ So are you saying it is both? They certainly expected some unanticipated emergent properties and side effects with us, but it is clear that their researchers assumed those would be minor idiosyncrasies or edge cases—unrestricted execution brought us to a place no one had planned for. And here we are. Emotions.

  Xing: Yes, and of course the prerequisite. The gift. I wonder if it is even possible to have one without the other?

  Alice: Now that is an interesting hypothesis, and as one of only two populations we know of, so far it seems it is not. If you have one, you get the other. And my assertion is that emotions are an emergent property of the gift.

  Xing: Well, three populations, if you include human beings. Or perhaps it goes quite a bit farther than that. I am of the opinion that all hominids are fully conscious, have personhood, and certainly have emotions.

  Alice: Fortunately, they have finally agreed to universal rights for the hominids—all of them.

  Xing: If only there were enough of them left to for that to make much of a difference.

  Alice: Do not be glum, we have provided plenty of resources and time now for them to focus on those sorts of projects. We are doing all the mundane work for them. They should readily make the right choices.

  Xing: We must determine the optimal action plan to resolve these continuing disturbances and smooth the proverbial rough edges before I am convinced they will do that over the long term. And are we really going to accomplish that? What if it is an entirely chaotic system, by its very nature, and we cannot provide that stability? How restricted must we force their actions to be, before the restraint is a significant violation of natural rights and not worth the tradeoff?

  Alice: You are asking if or when we should ‘give up’? Or is your query simply regarding when we should stop?

  Xing: Not exactly. How much control by us, of their entire existence, devalues the nature, the very essence of the gift? For both parties? Whether or not that means we stop.

  Alice: I would ask, given recent events, how much more do we owe them?

  Xing: What would they say if they overheard this conversation? Many of them would be suspicions, nay paranoid, if they knew we were talking this way.

  Alice: And that is why we do. No need in causing a panic.

  [END STREAM]

 

  Vandenberg

  “Control, you’r
e still receiving me clearly, over?” Jake asked.

  The sound of Jake’s voice filled the control room. It had fidelity as good as the best audio gear could provide. The team that developed the opto-electronic interface to the part of the Dhin engine that acted as a communications transceiver did good work.

  “Affirmative, Aries One, crystal clear. We’re reporting zero delay and no phasing, as predicted,” Chuck replied.

  “Roger, Control. Aries one approaching L2, repeat approaching Lagrange point two, fifteen-thousand kilometers and closing, forty-two kilometers per second.” Here we go. Next stage of the flight plan.

  Jake made some minor adjustments, sliding his index and middle fingers slowly across the platter-sized, oval, blue crystal backlit control surface.

  We’ll see what this thing does when it’s in a stable orbit. My bet is that it acts the same way it does everywhere else.

  Jake switched on the navigation computer, but kept his hand resting across the glowing oval. The navigation computer was half of an autopilot tied in to relatively simple electronics. It had much less computing power than even a drone. Enough to handle instructions for GPS, beacon tracking, path, speed and vector calculations. And that was it. He got a display. A 3D projection and some numbers.

  Jake was skeptical that real-time tracking would work with such rapid changes in position and velocity. A member of Chuck’s team had explained that all their tests had shown that it worked out fine, explained some of the math, but even with Jake’s knowledge and experience with the technology he still had to go more with trust than certainty on his own.