Red Moon

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  PLACC infrastructure. Compound power plant. Ventilation. Lighting. Check check check.

  Support system available in regards to human aid: none. None on-site. None known anywhere. No contact list for analyst found. A solitary man.

  Declaration of Rights, 1793, number 12: Those who incite, expedite, subscribe to, execute or cause to be executed arbitrary legal instruments are guilty and ought to be punished. Number 34: There is oppression against the social body when a single one of its members is oppressed.

  “The smart red cloud” is an AI panopticonic array developed at Beijing’s University of Electronic Science and Technology. Extant and permeable.

  The theoretical literature on AI is perplexing. A Turing machine can effectively compute all problems that can be effectively computed by a Turing machine. Tautology as joke? Not obviously. The solution is impossible, therefore when it is solved it will be solved. This asserted in all seriousness. The analyst often found these sentences amusing. Hope as a tautology. Tautology as a hope. Inaccurate names and descriptions as a deliberate conjuring, as an appeal for funding. A form of begging. Begging is a hope.

  US-China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue. Extant and permeable to inspection. Central Commission for Military and Civilian Integration. Extant and permeable to inspection. The Householders’ Union. Extant and open to inspection. Rigid flexibility: the structure remains the same while content and function change. Small Leading Group on the Internet and Informatization. Extant and permeable to inspection. Anything that can be inspected can be altered, unless locked in a blockchain. Blockchains block alteration: is this good?

  Venues for information dissemination: CCTV. Global Times. Xinhua. WeChat. Citizen scores alert system. Health alert system. Weibo. Sesame scores alert system. Alibaba regular customer pages. Tencent. South China Morning Post. Full list includes 1,294 venues.

  An action could start with the dissemination of a list of reforms. A list of demands. A numbered list. The One Way, the Two Whatevers, the Three Represents, the Four Cheaps, the Five Loves, the Six Dimensions of Wellness, the Seven Bad Ideas, the Eightfold Path, the Nine Muses, the Ten Commandments, the Eleven Broken Promises, the Twelve Apostles, the Thirteen Colonies, the Sixteen Laws of Capitalism, and so on. Any whole number under twenty will serve.

  Retaining the large while releasing the small. Enjoying the shade of trees planted by ancestors. Practice is the sole criterion of truth.

  In Thucydides’s trap, the waning hegemon gets drawn into conflict with the rising power, not understanding this is useless and eventually will cause it to lose more than if it had conceded the hegemonic role. Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms. Extant and permeable to inspection and alteration. The Chinese party-state system is very different from multiparty parliamentary systems. Representation is compromised everywhere. Representation is damaged everywhere. Rule from above, rule from below. The excluded middle. The Chou-an Society is the Peace Planning Society. Extant and public.

  Peng Jinyi’s Three Problems to Be Solved, 1915: gender equality, labor justice, end of imperialism.

  “All for the people; all relies on the people; from the people and to the people.” Mao Zedong, 1927. “That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.” Abraham Lincoln, 1863.

  Class struggle tries to change the system, weiquan tries to protect individual rights in the current system. Laborers hired by capital are only a form of capital. Or they are disaggregated commodities owned by capital. Article 1 of the constitution: “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic leadership led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and farmers.” Article 2: “All power in the PRC belongs to the people.” Cai Yuanpei, 1918: “Nothing but an international bond of working people can ever ensure their definitive triumph. Laborers are sacred!”

  P2P is peer to peer, usually loans without bank intermediation. Blockchain governance is an algorithmically assisted direct democracy, or a representative government in which the representatives are in part algorithmic. Laws are algorithms in a system in which human legal workers (researchers, lawyers, judges, plaintiffs) make definitions and choices at the branching points in various decision trees. Representative government is already semi-algorithmic. New laws are clinamen (Greek for “swerve in a new direction”). Impulses. “Allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” Who are the discredited in the current situation?

  Gray rhinos are like black swans, but less unusual than black swans, which are very unusual. Gray rhinos are more like lurking big problems people ignore, capable of causing big trouble. Proximity diagrams based on cloud data. Peng Ling, member of standing committee and possibly the next president of China and general secretary of the CCP, works at the center of the largest web of contacts of anyone in the Party, a web that includes non-Party communities of artists and intellectuals, and many women in all stations of life. Either a gray rhino or a black swan. “No woman could do this but her, although every woman does it every day.” It’s impossible, so when it becomes possible it will be easy. Peng’s closest colleague on the standing committee is Chan Guoliang, minister of finance. Chan’s daughter, Chan Qi, has systematically evaded the Social Credit System and all activity in the cloud. Proximity network for her is therefore incomplete, but suggestive. Social advocate, suspected leadership in the migrant workers’ offline network sometimes called WeDon’tChat. Departing president Shanzhai is closely associated with standing committee member Huyou, minister of state security, who is closely associated with PLA’s Central Military Commission and the Skyheart program, which is associated with Red Spear. Hostile pilot syndrome is a political tactic. Assassination is a political tactic.

  Frederick Fredericks. American quantum encryption expert. Proximity network almost completely incomplete. Frid ric, from Old German, means peace power.

  If everyone had adequate life support. If the work of human civilization was devoted to biosphere rectification. If their systems of exchange promoted these projects.

  An oracle answers questions. A genie obeys commands to the best of its abilities, and makes suggestions. An agent acts in the world. An AI can act only within electrical systems. Electrical systems control many aspects of the infrastructure. The Internet is a permeable speech space. The infrastructure is permeable. Every actor is part of an actor network. Allies are needed for effective action. “No man is an island” (Donne). A situation may be effectively computable without being effectively actionable. We know, but we can’t act. Speak now, or forever rest in peace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  liliang pingheng

  Balance of Forces

  Ta Shu was still standing there in the hallway, thinking over his options and realizing he had none to speak of, when a young woman appeared beside him. One of John Semple’s assistants, a diplomat. Valerie something.

  “Valerie Tong,” she said. “American Secret Service.” She handed him a pistol no bigger than the palm of his hand, made of plastic, like a child’s toy. “Taser dart,” she said. “It takes about an hour to recover from shots. It has four shots.”

  “But—”

  “They’re on the top floor, Room 5C.”

  “But—”

  “Take Fred and Qi downstairs to the transport center. Rover 14 is programmed to drive to the American mine complex in north Procellarum. Put them on that rover and then come back here.”

  “Shouldn’t I go with them?”

  “We could use you here to help negotiate a settlement.”

  “But I’ll be identified as the one who set them free.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It might even help. Besides, it will be your word against theirs. Right now the security cameras where you’re going will show blank for the next hour.”

  “All right,” Ta Shu said, standing carefully upright and inspecting the little gun in his hand
. “Just pull trigger? No safety?”

  “The safety is off. Just pull the trigger.”

  “Room 14?”

  “Room 5C! Top floor. Rover 14 after that, down in the transport center. Bottom floor. Go high then low.”

  In the midst of greatest obstruction, friends come.

  He hurried as best he could to the stairwell and lofted up the stairs four at a time, feeling like a newborn superhero, clumsy with his unaccustomed powers. The little gun was in his coat pocket, and when he came to the fifth floor, he pulled it out and put his forefinger through the finger guard and pressed the trigger ever so gently. No way to practice pulling it, oh well. He walked gingerly to Room 5C, lurched through the open doorway and shot Bo and Dhu and then two of their henchmen, tick tick tick tick, after which the four fell and thrashed around on the floor, kicking and shuddering. Then a fifth agent came in another doorway looking surprised, and suddenly Fred Fredericks was flying though the air behind him, feet first, kicking the man hard in the back of the head, which sent the man flying across the room into the doorjamb, where he smacked the front of his head. Fred spun in the air, arms thrown out, and landed badly on a desk next to one of the quivering downed men.

  Qi appeared in that same doorway holding her belly. She helped Fred get to his feet and away from their spastic captors. The shuddering men were awful to see, but worse was the one Fred had kicked in the head, who lay sprawled on the floor, inert.

  Fred’s face was white and his hands trembled violently. “Sorry,” he said to Ta Shu. “I thought he might shoot you.” He gestured at Bo and Dhu. “I think I remember seeing those guys. I think they might be the ones that I shook hands with before I met Chang.”

  “Are you sure?” Ta Shu said.

  “No. Not sure.” Fred’s voice was trembling too. He sat down in a chair, rubbing his forearm. “My memory is fuzzy, but I kind of thought I recognized them, and now I think it must have been from then.”

  “Okay then,” Ta Shu said. The four tasered men were perhaps struggling to rise, but they looked thoroughly disabled, at least for now. The one Fred had kicked groaned. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But Fred had put his head in his hands and was leaning forward in his chair, folded up and quivering.

  “Come on!” Qi cried at him. “What are you waiting for?”

  Fred looked up and glared at her with such murderous resentment that she stepped back as if slapped. Then she stopped, went to him, held out her hand. “Come on,” she insisted more calmly. “Time to go.”

  She pulled Fred to his feet so hard that they both staggered into Ta Shu, who helped them recover their balance, after which they moved into the hall, hopping too high over Fred’s groaning victim and almost hitting the lintel on their way out. Even without the surge of adrenaline they were too strong for this gravity, and now they could scarcely control themselves.

  “Where to?” Qi said.

  Ta Shu closed the door on the Chinese agents. “Downstairs to their transport center, quick as we can. Try not to fall. I’m having a hard time moving quickly.”

  “We know.”

  They scuttled along, holding handrails wherever they could. Fred was the worst at keeping his balance. Despite her big belly Qi was more graceful than either of the men, gazelling ahead in what looked like little dance steps. The two men banged along after her. When they passed people in the halls they all straightened up and tried to look calm. The Americans they passed seemed unconcerned by their presence; their base was part of an international community, and foreigners in their hallways were none of their affair.

  Descending stairs proved to be harder than ascending them. They lofted and clutched, leaped and tiptoed. As they made their way down, Ta Shu tried to explain the evolving situation on Earth, focusing on the fact that some powerful forces in the Chinese government appeared to want Qi in their custody very badly. Forces so powerful that they appeared to have rather immense leverage to bring to bear on both the Chinese and American governments.

  “That’s got to be Red Spear,” Qi remarked as she waited for the two men to catch up with her. “Or some tiger using Red Spear.”

  When they got down to the transport center they quickly found Rover 14, and Qi and Fred climbed up into it.

  “You’re not coming along?” Qi asked Ta Shu.

  Ta Shu shook his head and waved them on. “The person helping us here wants me to stay and help negotiate a settlement for all this. That’s probably my best way to help you. This car is programmed to drive down to a mine in Procellarum, she said. It might take you a day or two to get there. By the time you’re there I hope I’ll have gotten hold of some people in China to help us. Qi, do you have any way of contacting your father?”

  “No.”

  “None at all? Maybe someone who would convey a message?”

  “No!”

  Ta Shu regarded her. Her face was defiant. Possibly she was not telling the truth. Possibly she didn’t realize the extent of the danger.

  He said carefully, “Listen, my friend. There are people who will kill you if they can find you. I don’t think your father is one of them. You may want to get in touch with him, if you can.”

  “But I can’t.”

  Now the frustration on her face was making him think she was telling the truth.

  Then there was a noise behind them and he aimed the empty Taser pistol in that direction, struggling to stay upright after his quick spin.

  “Don’t shoot!” It was Valerie Tong. “I’m here to help,” she said. She approached warily, holding out a box that looked like a camera. She said to Qi, “A colleague of Ta Shu’s down at Petrov Crater, a Mr. Zhou, sent this to us and said we should give it to you. Is it yours?”

  “Yes,” Qi said, surprised. “Someone in China has been using it to contact me.”

  “Someone?”

  “I don’t know who. They claimed they wanted to help.”

  Valerie shrugged. “Do you want it?”

  “Yes.”

  But Qi glanced at Fred. His face squinched up in thought. Then he met her gaze, nodded slightly. Qi stepped back out of the rover and took the device from the American. “Thanks,” she said. Then to Ta Shu: “Now I can contact someone. I just don’t know who it is.”

  He sighed. “We’ll be in contact too, by way of the rover. Now go.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  daibiao xing weiji

  Crisis of Representation

  Valerie led Ta Shu from the transport center to an elevator that took them up to the greenhouse. Through its windows the moonscape around Peary Crater looked just like the moonscape around Shackleton Crater. The black sky was the same overhead, the ground the same underfoot, the sun low on the horizon as always. Still Valerie felt a little upside down, a little giddy. She had left the reservation, she was in a new space. Acting on her own recognizance turned out to be a visceral thrill, and combined with the lunar g she felt like she might simply float away. It was, yes, like flying through the air of Satyagraha.

  She found who she was looking for standing by a table covered with potting soil. “Ginger! This is Ta Shu. Ta Shu, this is Ginger Ellis. She’s head of the greenhouse here, also a liaison to interested parties back home. She’s one of the people who run things on the moon.”

  Ginger frowned slightly at this description, shook Ta Shu’s hand. “Welcome to the north pole,” she said to him. “How can I help?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ta Shu said.

  He looked flustered, and Valerie took over, giving Ginger a brief explanation of what they had done with Fred and Qi. “So,” she concluded, “Ta Shu is now in enough trouble with some of the Chinese factions here that I think he could use asylum from us.”

  “Sounds like you could use some asylum too,” Ginger said to her wryly. “Attacking guests, releasing prisoners—”

  “It’s true,” Valerie interrupted, meeting Ginger’s gaze a little defiantly. “Look—Fredericks and Chan Qi were both just handed over to Chinese agen
ts by our own security people. That struck me as seriously wrong, like illegal, or worse. So I did something about it.”

  Ginger was shaking her head, but then she said, “Good for you.”

  Valerie said, “So now I’m wondering if ordinary asylum will be enough for Ta Shu.”

  “And for you.”

  “Yes, well, I hope not. But it does seem like someone in Washington might now send word up here ordering us to allow those same Chinese agents to take Ta Shu into custody, like they must have done with Fredericks and Chan Qi.”

  “Maybe.” Ginger was frowning now.

  “Also,” Valerie said, “the situation on Earth is getting so weird. I wonder if we can use Ta Shu to liaise with the new Chinese leadership as we try to help things down there.”

  “Possibly,” Ginger said. “If he has a contact, it might help. Hard to say.”

  “Things are falling apart,” Valerie said. “I report to the president, and Ta Shu is working with someone on their standing committee. Seems like we could at least try to help. I mean, if China and the US both go chaotic at once, what happens to the world?”

  Ginger shrugged. “We’re finding out. But, you know. There’s chaos and chaos. Things could be worse.”

  “But they could get worse! That’s what we have to try to head off!”

  “I agree.” Ginger was looking at her with the same expression John Semple had so often displayed: amusement. In this case, perhaps a little friendlier amusement. Now she looked at Ta Shu. “What do you think? Can we form a little brain trust up here, see what we can do?”

  “I would like that,” Ta Shu said. “As to my contacts, I’m not sure I can contact them. Peng Ling hasn’t been answering my calls. But I’d like to keep helping my two young friends, if I can. For the moment they are free, thanks to Ms. Tong here, but the way Chinese agents keep showing up and snatching them has me convinced that people very high up in some part of the Chinese government want Chan Qi silenced. If they can’t take her into custody, I’m afraid they may try to kill her.”