by Amber Stuart
“Perhaps you should tell me instead of playing cryptic word games,” she said.
“The bio-intelligence they have developed--”
“The same as what we’re doing here? Creating human intelligences?” Chal wasn’t too surprised. Singapore had always pushed the boundaries of ethical experimentation, and this was as lucrative a research opportunity as any, barring the strange focus on emotion.
“ –the intelligence they have developed falls outside of the boundaries of the MacLaurin Conventions.”
Chal’s mouth dropped open. Immediately the pieces started falling into place.
The MacLaurin conventions had prohibited digital intelligence designed to kill emotionally conscious beings. But what if the digital intelligences themselves were emotional?
“How--” Chal said, then stopped herself, trying to figure it out. She couldn’t. “How are they planning on using them?”
“Various possibilities,” Johnner said. “It would be difficult to stop an invading force made up of conscious digital intelligence.”
“But India has tons of digital intelligence,” Chal said.
“That just makes it worse,” Johnner said. “If Singapore tried to invade a non-digital nation, they’d be sunk. You can still use guns on anyone, after all. But everything in India has been developed with digital intelligence, including their military arsenal. And they’re not allowed to fight back with anything even remotely dig-int if the invading force is emotionally conscious.”
Chal went silent, considering the possibilities. If they had indeed developed digital intelligences of the same sort, there was no reason they couldn’t have used them as spies, even before invading. The digital intelligences themselves wouldn’t be able to fight, but so what? They could be used for reconnaissance, or simply as cover for the non-digital arsenal. They could spread through the world unknowingly. Or they could be used to incite a breach of the MacLaurin conventions, to spark a world war. Chal’s head spun as the true possibilities of the research became clear to her.
“That’s why all the guards with guns,” she said. “Is everybody here military except for me?”
Lieutenant Johnner nodded. “This laboratory is now considered a combat zone under M.I.D. command.”
“A combat zone?” Chal was aghast. So that’s why it was all men working in this lab.
“Always a possibility.” Johnner seemed unfazed. “It was in the paperwork you signed upon arrival.”
“Right, one of those stacks of paperwork,” Chal said. She hadn’t read a single page. There had been no time. No time—
“The NorAm-Soviet consulate considers the research here a prime target for its work in emotional sentience,” Johnner said. “All the more so now that an outside nation has declared war using emotionally conscious intelligences.”
“Nobody thought of this beforehand?” Chal said. She looked at Lieutenant Johnner accusingly.
“We did,” he said. “We just thought we’d be the first ones to develop them.” He looked slightly embarrassed.
Chal stood. She was tired, and she felt as though her brain was moving slowly, as though in a dream.
“So... the prototypes?”
“Yes?”
“You’re planning to use them as foot soldiers?”
“More like defensive aids. They won’t be fighting against any actual people, just other biologically-grown intelligences.”
Chal blanched. “What’s the difference?”
“I’m afraid we’re talking at cross-purposes, Dr. Davidson,” Lieutenant Johnner said.
“We certainly are.” She wasn’t going to help the military create a second tier of fighters. It was immoral, atrocious. She turned on her heel to leave.
“Dr. Davidson, there was something else. The reason I was going to look for you.”
“Yes?” Chal asked. She was already seething with contempt, and the last thing she wanted to do was spend one more second in front of Johnner’s desk.
“I’m returning the project’s lead to Dr. Friedman,” he said.
Chal wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “You’re what?”
“Dr. Friedman will be in charge of the project from here on out,” Johnner said. “As a sensitive M.I.D. project, this experiment needs to be under military command.”
“Is that protocol?” Chal snapped.
“No, Dr. Davidson, it’s not just protocol. It’s me replacing a scientist who has endangered the success of this mission--”
“Mission?” So it was a mission, not a project. Of course.
“—who has bordered on destroying a priceless prototype--”
Chal leaned over the desk and spoke over Lieutenant Johnner. “You said this was an emergency scientific project, not a mission. I am working in this lab as a scientist—
“—and having sexual contact with the subject of the experiment!”
“The android was malfunctioning,” she said, jaw clenched. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Apart from your misconduct in the laboratory,” Lieutenant Johnner said, continuing on as if he hadn’t even heard Chal, “you’ve compromised the success of this mission from the beginning.”
“How?” Chal asked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“You lied during the initial medical examination,” Johnner said cooly.
“Excuse me?” Chal said.
Johnner picked up a folder from his desk; Chal saw the logo of her graduate university on the top page.
“Chal Davidson, twenty-one years of age. Suffers from ongoing episodes of depression--”
“Give me that!” Chal reached for the folder, but Johnner leaned away.
“—episodes of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder brought about by her childhood experiences in wartime.”
Chal was trembling, her face burning hot. “That’s private information,” she said. “They shouldn’t have released that to you.”
“At this level of security there is no private information, Dr. Davidson,” Lieutenant Johnner said.
Chal’s expression deadened. She was white with fury, her hands clutching the edge of the desk. She wanted to scream at the lieutenant, wanted to slap him with all of the rage that had built inside of her. She wanted to resign right then and there, and demand to be taken back to California. Right now California seemed worlds away.
“I take it I’m to leave, then?” she asked instead.
“You can’t.” Johnner said.
“Excuse me?”
“This laboratory has been locked down due to the political crisis on the surface,” Johnner said. “Nobody goes in or out.”
Chal blinked and paused a second before continuing; she hadn’t expected something so drastic. “I’ll stay in my quarters, then. Do you know how long it will be before I can go?”
“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Johnner said wryly. “How long do wars usually take?”
Chal’s gaze glittered with anger, but she forced herself to back away from Johnner’s desk.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, at the doorway.
“You’ll be notified as soon as the laboratory is unlocked,” Johnner said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
***
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chal left Johnner’s office, her eyes burning with tears she would not let escape. She wanted to leave right then and there; she wanted to stay with Alan, the most precious experiment she had ever been a part of. He was a sentient being, an emotional being, and she had helped to bring him into existence. How dare they take the project’s control away from her!
In her quarters Chal fell onto her bed. Every part of her seemed dead, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She felt as sorry for herself as she ever had. These feelings weren’t normal. She was always able to separate herself from her work. All of her achievements meant precisely nothing, she knew, and neither did any of her failures. She had always been a
ble to work and just enjoy the work, enjoy the feeling of acting competently, creating something where before there had been nothing.
She thought of what it would be like to have her consciousness—how had Johnner put it?—turned off. Chal had always thought of death as something to be accepted just as any part of life was accepted, but she only thought of it in an intellectual sense. The fabric of the universe shifted and changed. At one time she had been nothing, and someday in the future she would be nothing. Right now she was just a flicker of consciousness in a vast dark sea of unconscious material. It didn’t faze her to think that one day the flicker would be extinguished in her body and ignited in someone else’s. Grieving over death made as much sense as grieving over the crashing over the waves against the sand. New waves formed and crashed, and there was no loss, just the endless cycle of a process put into motion a long time ago.
This project was different, though, and as she tossed and turned over on the bed she tried to separate the strands of her work from the emotions that were indelibly tied to it. She couldn’t help but think of how Alan would react during the next questioning. If they tried to ask him about his own mental states again—
“No.” She whispered to herself, her face turned to the wall. “No!” She was no longer concerned about herself; she didn’t care how long she had to stay underground, locked into this laboratory, but to leave him behind... it wasn’t possible. She didn’t want to stay, but she didn’t want to go back to the world either. Not without him.
Chal felt something inside of her fall apart, and the wall which had been holding her emotions at bay was no longer there. Tears streamed down her eyes and she let them roll, her body racked with sobs. Her entire being felt as though it was burning up from the inside, and, not caring anymore who observed her pain, she cried aloud in terror for the man she could no longer do anything to save.
In time, she ran out of tears.
***
When she next awoke, Chal had the sensation of waking up in a completely foreign place. The lights in her room had been turned off, and she stumbled to the doorway, her fingers scrabbling at the wall before she could turn them back on. She leaned against the wall, letting her eyes adjust to the brightness.
Her face was blotched and red, her clothes slept in, but who cared? There was nothing left for her to do here but wait until they let her leave. She splashed some water on her face and headed toward the substrate lab, where she had left her computer.
Rounding the corner, she saw the lab assistants wheeling Alan back from the main lab. The sight stopped her dead in her tracks. His face looked peaceful, and for a moment Chal was sure he was dead. Then she saw his chest rise in breath, and his head turned to one side. The gurney was wheeled into the room, and he was gone.
Her heart was twisted in jealousy. Dr. Fielding had taken the project, had taken him. She blinked hard and forced herself to walk normally, past his room and down the hall to the substrate lab.
Nobody was there but the animals. Chal walked to the back of the lab. The octopi were hiding in the underside of the coral, their legs only partially visible through the craggy holes in the rock. She bent down, scrutinizing the heads of coral.
When she was a child, she had made her own seawater tank, jury-rigged with a filter she had found in a scrap heap somewhere. Most of the coral that grew in the Mediterranean were the red, sticklike colonies of coral. Once she had found a white blooming coral that she transplanted ever so carefully to her tank. She was fascinated by the way the polyps grew slowly but surely, spreading their exoskeleton millimeter by millimeter. Most children would not have the patience to take care of something which grew so imperceptibly, and her mother had often wondered aloud if she would not like a fish or two to put into her tank, something more like a pet.
“Something alive,” her mother had said.
“Coral is alive,” Chal remembered saying.
“It just looks like rocks to me,” her mother said. “Tcha, whatever you want!”
Standing back up, Chal thought back to her childhood, which had seemed so happy even in distressed times. Her mother always let her play, never stifled her curiosity even when her curiosity involved taking apart the only working radio in the house.
These happy thoughts were broken up by the chattering of the mice, which were at the moment fighting over a cardboard tube which had been chewed and shredded so much that it was falling apart. Chal’s gaze went past them, focusing on the door which stood so unobtrusively at the very back of the lab.
Chal approached the metal door, reaching her fingers out to touch it. The door was cold against her palm. All those bodies, lining the walls. All those bodies, cold but breathing, their stares empty and eternal.
She leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the wall, goosebumps instantly rising on the back of her neck. It was just her imagination, maybe, but when she closed her eyes she thought she heard the air whistling through their perfectly-formed noses, their biologically pristine bodies taking the oxygen from the air at near one hundred percent efficiency.
“Dr. Davidson.”
Chal jumped a little, starting back from the door. She spun around to find Dr. Fielding standing against the mice cages.
“I seem to always be startling you,” he said.
“That’s what happens when you keep an eye on someone,” Chal said. She breathed heavily, trying to compose herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Chal had the odd feeling that he meant it. It was to be expected, anyway. Generosity was easy in victory.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve got the project back.”
His mouth twisted sideways in what could not be called a smile.
“We just finished a session,” he said.
She nodded, knowing she looked pale and tired but not caring. “I saw him coming out.”
“He asked for you.”
At these words Chal’s heart jumped, and she could not believe that she had heard correctly. “For me?”
“He said that he wanted to talk with you.”
“What was the session about?” Chal asked. “What happened?”
“Emotional states.” Dr. Fielding took the drive out of his pocket and slid it over toward Chal’s computer. “You should watch it before the next questioning.”
“Why me?” Chal said, her hand resting lightly on the drive. “You’re the questioner now.”
“Dr. Davidson,” Fielding said, “it wasn’t my decision to change the project’s lead.”
“No, I’m sure you fought it tooth and nail,” Chal said. She was sick of being led around by the nose by men who weren’t capable of doing the job she did. Hadn’t she saved the project twice already? This was hard repayment, indeed.
“Believe it or not, doctor, but I was impressed by how you handled the situation earlier.” Dr. Fielding looked up at Chal. “I could not have done as well.”
“It’s great that you’re back in charge, then.”
“I need your help,” he said. He spread his hands in front of him in a gesture of supplication. “I would like for you to continue the questionings with the prototype.”
Chal paused for a moment to consider his request.
“This is ridiculous,” she said finally. “I’ve been dismissed from the project--”
“By Lieutenant Johnner,” Dr. Fielding said. “Not by me.”
“And will Lieutenant Johnner be fine with me doing this, do you think?” she asked.
“Lieutenant Johnner,” Dr. Fielding said, “is gone. I am in charge of the project. And it is my professional opinion that the prototype’s successful development would be best served by having you continue on in your capacity as questioner.”
“Wait, hold on,” Chal said. “What do you mean, Johnner is gone?”
“He’s meeting with a consulate group or committee or some such,” Dr. Fielding said. “He told me he trusted me to run the experiment while he was gone.”
“But the lab is locked down,” Chal said. Her head was spinning. “He said nobody was allowed to leave.”
Dr. Fielding darted his tongue out to the corner of his lips. “Lieutenant Johnner doesn’t always play by the rules. As I’m sure you’ve found out.”
Chal waited, her thoughts chasing each other back and forth. She didn’t know what Fielding was up to, but he certainly seemed to have had a change of heart about her participation in the project.
“You’ll grant me full control over the prototype’s development?” Chal asked.
“As much as Johnner will allow once he comes back,” Fielding said. “I can’t promise more than that.”
“What if he throws me off the project as soon as he gets back down here?” Chal asked.
Dr. Fielding shrugged, a gesture that seemed oddly incongruous on his body.
“Then I suppose you had better make this next session count.”
***
Chal was watching the recording. Her lip trembled as she saw Alan wheeled in, hooked up to the IV in the sensory deprivation tank. They had turned the lights back down to low, the white noise level up. Dr. Fielding sat in the shadows.
The IV began to drip green liquid into the line, but it was barely visible in the dim light. A minute passed without anything at all happening. Dr. Fielding shifted in his seat.
Then Alan’s eyes opened. He blinked, then stared straight ahead, as though remembering something. Dr. Fielding was silent. That’s something, at least, Chal said. He just needs to stay quiet.
“Where is Chal?” Alan asked.
“Chal isn’t here,” Dr. Fielding said softly.
Alan rose halfway out of the water. “That seems to be obvious enough. But where is she? I’d like to talk to her.”
Chal put her chin in her hand, watching with rapt attention. Alan’s brain seemed to have branched out since the last session. His neural development in language structure and content had progressed significantly. The fusiform gyrus was active –he could differentiate people based on facial cues. That was something that normally didn’t occur until later in infancy. But Alan seemed already to be well past this stage.
