by Amber Stuart
In year 2131, the year in which Chal Davidson was contacted to assist in Project Paragon, the nature of consciousness and its ultimate place in the universe was still unknown.
***
Chal woke to find Lieutenant Gray Johnner leaning toward her, her binder clasped loosely in his lap. She raised her head and peered outside of the van. They were moving: dark, empty fields flew by in the window, and in the moonlight she could see barbed wire haphazardly strung along the side of the road.
“We’re almost there, Dr. Davidson. You dozed off.” Johnner sat back in his seat.
“Almost where?” She had been to Phoenix before; this wasn’t it. This wasn’t a city at all. The mesas outside were dotted with sagebrush, and in the cold blue light the desert resembled an alien landscape.
Johnner seemed relieved that she was awake and talking. “M.I.D. headquarters. It’s almost a hundred miles south of Phoenix.” He handed her back the binder full of her files and she took them clumsily, still half-asleep.
They pulled off of the highway, the van bouncing on the dirt road at a speed that Chal was not entirely comfortable with.
“Can we slow down? Jesus,” she said, as they hit a pothole, her body lurching upward in her seat.
“It’s urgent that we reach headquarters as soon as possible,” Lieutenant Johnner said, no trace of an apology in his voice now. “We still have to undergo decontamination procedures. And you’ll need to view the videos of the failed prototypes.”
“Prototypes of what?” Chal asked, her heart beating a bit faster. This was the good stuff.
“Emotional intelligence in a biological substrate.”
“Rats or chimps?” Chal had worked with both types of substrates, and found benefits and drawbacks to each one. It was universally acknowledged that rat neurons were the easiest to replicate in terms of memory retrieval processes, but chimp tissue had become increasingly popular in studies that focused on neurotransmitters, the chemistry of chimp brains being much more similar to those of people’s brains. She was curious to know what the military had decided upon, but Johnner’s answer surprised her.
“Neither,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
Johnner cleared his throat. “The M.I.D. is working with human substrates.”
Chal’s mouth dropped open, and for a second she didn’t know what to say.
“That’s...that’s illegal,” she finally sputtered. “The MacLaurin Conventions--”
“The indigenous Tohono people have never recognized the MacLaurin Conventions,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “None of the native tribes have.”
“And we’re on a Tohono reservation now.” It wasn’t a question. Chal simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“That’s right.” The van raced along the bumpy road, and in the distance Chal could see a ranch house. Its aluminum roof reflected the moonlight brightly.
“So you’re making humans?” Chal asked. “Implanting intelligence into actual human-substrate bodies?”
“It’s not implanting,” Johnner said. “That’s been tried, but implantation is only really good for memory chips, learning modifiers, and the like. Consciousness doesn’t work quite that way.” Chal realized that he knew much, much more than she had first believed. Johnner wasn’t just a stuffed suit after all. “It’s more like . . . growing. Around a digital core.”
“Growing.” Chal repeated tonelessly. “You’re growing digitally-controlled brains.”
“In human substrates, yes.”
“Making men.” Chal looked at the ranch house looming before them as the van slowed. “Jesus Christ.”
“Well, we’re trying.” Johnner’s voice was impassive on the surface, but Chal could tell that he was tense underneath. “We’ve come across some unexpected issues with the prototypes that have led to two failures in a row.
“That’s why you need my help.” It was beginning to make snse.
“Of course, this work is classified, and I trust that you’ll be able to handle this with discretion.” Johnner looked worried, and Chal remembered what he had mentioned earlier.
“You talked about the implications of my work,” Chal said.
“That’s right,” Lieutenant Johnner said, as they pulled to a stop outside of the deserted ranch. “It would be very bad if word of this project were to get out.”
“Because of the MacLaurin Conventions?”
“Because of the political implications,” he said cryptically. Chal had no idea what he was talking about. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but he waved her ahead toward the building. Whatever the political implications were, they would have to wait.
***
The MacLaurin Conventions had been developed at the insistence of the European consulates after the digital Divide, which had resulted in nearly a third of European countries rejecting digital technology within their borders.
It came as no surprise that many nations had decided to rein in their intelligence research, especially after the second millennial digital expansion and the ensuing backlash. Fears of digital surveillance and ethical qualms about intelligence programs spread rampantly among many first-world populations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. What was surprising was how entirely and totally the post-Divide nations abandoned intelligence work altogether.
Some people called these countries backwards, and Chal Davidson had been one of them. Her own mother lived in West Catalonia, a newly-formed nation state that had decided, along with a dozen other countries, to abandon digital intelligence technology and revert to old analog/electrical systems or digital systems without any intelligence components. Old technology was hard to find or manufacture. Countries created rigid customs inspections to deal with the hazard of importing goods, and a national review board decided the borderline cases. Life reverted to that of the late twentieth century.
Some dissented, of course, but the costs of their emigration balanced fairly with the increased revenue of whole immigrant tribes like the Amish. With huge governmental subsidies provided to move people across the dividing lines, there were few who put up too much of a fight.
The United Nations deemed it necessary to protect these countries from external interference, including digital intelligence warfare against which they would have no possible recourse. Many who lived in the non-digital nations pushed for global conventions that would support their isolation and keep them safe from attackers in adjacent digital nations.
The digital intelligence boom had come on the heels of a great number of military advances that bulked the automated machine armies of just about every major nation state to annihilation-level proportions. Once cognitive advances made the machines intelligent, political scientists warned that if any nation state at all with an A-level army began an invasion, it would be impossible to prevent global war and mutual destruction.
Because of this threat, a UN subcommittee drew up the first drafts of what would eventually be known as the MacLaurin Conventions. They consisted of three treaties that established for the first time the standards of international law for the treatment of digital intelligences both in and out of warzones.
Ethical considerations of creating life had been worked out across many medical ethics boards some time back. Ever since digital intelligences in biological substrates became used in widespread applications, concerns about whether or not they should be treated as different from normally developed animals had flown back and forth across ethics boards. The treaties were quickly drawn up.
The first treaty banned creation of any digital intelligences designed to kill emotionally conscious beings, where consciousness was determined to be a base level of at least +1 on the modified Freitas consciousness quotient spectrum.
Many disputes arose over this definition. Conservative pundits argued that allowing carnivorous plants to be defined as “conscious” was too liberal and could be misused by environmental activists. A coalition of pesticide companies lobb
ied to place certain weed varieties under exemption, ridiculing the treaty’s language that classified plant life as “conscious.”
Eventually it was agreed that a liberal interpretation was necessary, and the UN amended the draft to include concessions for lower-level biological life. But anything that could feel—with the liberal Freitas interpretation of “feeling”--was safe from digital warfare.
One military leader, vehemently against the MacLaurin Conventions, was quoted in a national newspaper:
“The liberal pansies writing this document have no idea of what reality is like. We can’t drive an automated car across the border without being worried that we’ll crush a bug. We’re being forced to trash all of our smart machines for no reason at all.” His words, echoed by many, were nonetheless ignored by the UN. The armies of all digital nations cut back their forces to non-intelligent machinery.
Many panentheistic religious groups, believing that all of nature possesses consciousness in some form, would not ratify the MacLaurin Conventions because they felt the first treaty was not liberal enough. Native American tribes such as the Tohono asked Washington to extend the first treaty to forbid the destruction of any form of nature by digital intelligences.
Washington privately laughed at the request, which would outlaw logging, mining, basically all resource management whatsoever, since those industries had long since stopped using human workers and moved over to digital intelligence machines to do their dirty work. Publicly they issued a statement encouraging Native American tribes to pass their own extensions to the MacLaurin Conventions. This, of course, was financially implausible for the tribes, and would only have protected the dwindling reservation lands anyway.
The second and third treaties in the MacLaurin Conventions established basic rights for digital intelligences which possessed consciousness. As nobody had ever created such intelligences and there was no reason to believe they would, these two treaties passed under the radar with very little comment. A few hard science fiction fans irritated the hell out of Washington leaders by giving their own interpretations of the treaties and filibustering the public forums, but that was all.
It was tacitly understood in Washington that the second and third treaties were simply a catch-all for any possibilities of developing conscious life in order to satisfy the conditions of the previously existing Geneva conventions. It didn’t make any difference one way or another.
Not yet, anyway.
As one popular magazine put it, “even if we could build a robot with consciousness--which we can’t--there isn’t any reason we would want to. Everybody wants a robot that can vacuum a rug and do the dishes; nobody wants a robot that knows it is slaving away at housework, or worse, complains about it.” One late night talk show had a popular segment based on the idea which they called “Simon the Sad Sentience,” featuring a lovable but depressed robot who would try to kill himself whenever asked to perform the tasks for which he was designed.
Military leaders described the Tohono reservation development as a biological research station, and construction moved forward quickly. The Tohono tribe leaders accepted the explanation. With over three hundred million dollars at stake in the investment, nobody asked too many questions about the details of the research it would be doing.
***
CHAPTER FOUR
Johnner waved an ID card in front of the door of the abandoned ranch house, and Chal tried not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The cabin looked straight out of Little Home on the Prairie, and yet Johnner was passing his card across the wood like he was swiping it across a scanner.
“Is there a secret knock?” she joked, looking back to the military men standing guard by the van.
“The security here is airtight,” Johnner said, as a steel post slid up from the ground in front of them. He entered a passcode and pressed his thumb to the post. It beeped and the heavy metallic sound of the door unlocking was so unlike what Chal had expected that her mouth dropped open.
The wood door swung open to reveal a metal stairway dimly lit by overhead blue lights and Chal felt a rush of warm, sterile air blow over her.
“That’s just the venting system. The building is positively pressurized to prevent contamination from the outside,” Johnner explained, waving her in. “After you.”
Feeling like Dante Alighieri descending into the mouth of Hell, Chal stepped down into the eerie blue light and out of this world.
The sedative had not fully worked its way through Chal’s bloodstream and she reeled with dizziness, but she resisted Johnner’s attempts to steady her as they made their way down the steps. At the end of the stairway there was another door, which Johnner opened using a different passcode. They entered a small metal elevator which only had two plain metal buttons on the inside panel. Johnner pressed the lower one and the door sealed shut. The elevator dropped quickly, and Chal soon had to swallow to pop her ears. They kept dropping.
“How far down are we going?” Chal said. It seemed impossible that they were descending so deep.
“It’s about two hundred feet down. We’re almost there,” Johnner said, and as if to corroborate his words the elevator slowed and came to a halt. The door opened in front of them into a room that looked like a laboratory, all white and steel. A man with a machine gun scanned Johnner’s ID before they were allowed to enter.
“We’re going to need to be decontaminated before we can enter the inner laboratories,” Johnner said. “It’s an involved process.”
“I’m pretty involved already,” Chal said. She had resigned herself to her part in this situation and might as well make the most of it.
A man in a white lab suit hurried toward them, and smiled perfunctorily at her, holding out his hand to shake hers. She started at the touch of his cold hand. His face was pointed, his hair and eyes dark and oily-looking, and as Chal felt his hand slide out of her palm she resisted an impulse to wipe her hand on her pants leg.
“Dr. Davidson, pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Fielding.” He scratched the corner of his mouth anxiously. “Let’s get you into the decontaminant room.”
“Any changes so far?” Johnner asked the doctor as they walked through the doorway. Chal watched the doctor carefully. Dr. Fielding. It had been his notes scribbled on her papers. His appearance unnerved her, though she couldn’t place a finger on exactly why.
“Not yet, it’s still stable and in suspension. We’re not sure how long it’ll take before it begins to degenerate. A day, two at most.” The doctor waited as Johnner slipped off his shoes and jacket, and Chal followed suit.
When Johnner walked down the hallway, Chal began to follow him but was stopped by Dr. Fielding’s hand on her shoulder. She cringed at the touch involuntarily but forced herself to relax. It must have been the sedative making her so irritable.
“This way please, Dr. Davidson. The decontamination rooms are private.”
She saw why as soon as she entered the room and read the first instructions which were printed across the giant touchscreen wall. A voice spoke the instructions aloud as she crossed over the threshold. It was male, and unsettlingly cheerful.
“Thank you for entering Decontamination Level 1. Step One. Please remove all articles of clothing and place them in the storage container.”
The door shut automatically behind her, startling her with a hiss. She was alone with the screen and the voice, which now sounded impatient, repeating the instructions.
“Step One. Please remove all articles of clothing and place them in the storage container.”
Chal sighed. She pulled off her clothes and tossed them in the bin. It slid into the wall and slid back out, empty. She crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling strangely vulnerable. They had taken all of her clothes. The instructions on the screen dissolved away and were replaced by new instructions.
“Thank you. Step Two. Please remove any articles of jewelry, including hairpins and other metal objects, and place them in the disposa
l container. Metal objects are not permitted to go through the decontamination process.”
“Will I get them back?” Chal immediately felt ridiculous for asking: the voice was automated.
“Step Two. Please remove--“
She pulled off her earrings and threw them into the bin. They had been a present from her mother, handworked steel from a local artisan neighbor. Chal had never been sentimental about things like jewelry but she hoped that these were not lost for good.
“Step Three. Removal of contaminants and gaseous immersion. Please stand in the center of the room with your arms raised above your head.” Chal did as the voice told her, feeling irritated by how encouraging it sounded. A perky male receptionist, she decided. If it had been up to her, she would have fired him and replaced him with a monotonous robot.
A rush of air streamed up at her from vents under the mesh floor, blowing her hair up. She shivered at the cold of it. Then the air was replaced with a white gas which billowed in, turning the entire room white and opaque. It was as though she was standing in a cold sauna, unable to see a foot in front of her. She felt slightly claustrophobic, and the voice speaking loudly in the small room only made her more so.
“Please take several deep breaths.” Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t slept; maybe it was the tranquilizer still making her dizzy. Whatever it was, she wished the voice would stop saying “please” and just tell her what to do. It was getting on her nerves. The cloud of gas smelled sweet, and she wondered idly if it had antibiotic properties.
As quickly as it had come, the gas thinned out and she was able to see again. In front of her the old instructions dissolved and the new ones appeared.
“Step Four. Irradiation. Please put on the shielding glasses.”
Chal found the glasses on the table next to her. They must have been placed there while the gas was obscuring her vision. She put them on and faced forward again. Her arms were beginning to be sore, and she wondered if she still had to hold them up. When she lowered them, though, the voice spoke up quickly.
