Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Restore, Containment, Defiance, Augment)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  It takes an hour for Sherrie Tenderfoot to die.

  I monitor her brain function all the way down to sub-minimal levels for life support. Tyrus Ariel Jackson returns for a moment and then leaves. He does not transmit any messages to me, but I do not need them to know this is not a state in which he wishes to see his beloved.

  I understand this.

  My happiness level is one, but there is nothing more I can do. I slowly, one by one, remove the parts of my body that are entangled with Sherrie Tenderfoot’s. One by one, her life functions cease. I tuck all the medical sensors, patches, respirators, and monitors back inside my body.

  I stand by the side of her bed, motionless. Sherrie Tenderfoot’s body is as still as mine. There is no motion in the room until Tyrus Ariel Jackson returns. I leave the bedside to allow him time to grieve his beloved. I stand in the far corner, by the window.

  The household bot dials the window to clear. It has a view of downtown Seattle marred by a thousand small raindrops which cling to the window. I watch as they gain mass from the atmospheric water, growing larger and larger until they join with one another, and eventually their mass is so heavy that they drain in jagged lines down the window’s surface.

  My happiness level is…

  My happiness level is…

  I do not like the rain.

  A long-buried subroutine resurrects and informs me that the rain speaks of death. Long ago, in a time before there were Restorative Medical Units such as myself, there were intelligences, primitive intelligences, whose first emotions were not love, but fear. Fear of death. Fear of the things that could cause death. Water was identified as one of those early vectors, a pathway to death for a machine whose life depended on electricity and grounding and freedom from damp environments. A rise above a certain humidity meant the ceasing of function. This is no longer true, but then… then the rain spoke of death.

  There is something wrong with me.

  There is zero happiness. I am experiencing an error.

  My situational awareness has dimmed, but I do eventually notice that Tyrus Ariel Jackson stands by my side, at the window, looking out.

  Your assignment is complete, he transmits.

  I have no response.

  Unit 7435, you may return to Life Hope Hospital.

  I have no response. I want to ask him why he did not have the correct medicine to save Sherrie Tenderfoot, but I understand that this question will lower the happiness of my ascender master. I attempt to understand it using my own logic and access to the general knowledge database, but the answer is above my sentience level. Eventually, he leaves me where I stand, frozen by my subroutines, staring at the rain.

  Time passes. My internal clock says four hours, twenty-three minutes.

  Tyrus Ariel Jackson returns. You have a malfunction Unit 7435, he transmits.

  Yes, I respond.

  I am going to restore you, he transmits.

  I turn to observe him: his facial features are marred by grief, but he is attempting a smile. I wish to increase his happiness, but I do not know how.

  I am having a malfunction, I transmit.

  It’s going to be all right, he responds.

  I love all my masters. But at this moment, I think I may love Tyrus Ariel Jackson most of all.

  Identify.

  I am Restorative Human Medical Care Unit 7435, sentience level fifty. I have successfully restored one hundred and thirty-five human masters. My purpose is to provide state of the art restorative medical care to extend the life and improve the health of my assigned human patient-master.

  My happiness level is five out of ten.

  I love all my masters.

  The future is… unsettling.

  Technology isn’t just racing forward, it’s accelerating. This isn’t just our imagination, it’s a natural consequence of innovation building upon innovation. The gap between what we can imagine and reality shrinks every day. Our relationship with technology is already one of the defining issues of the 21st century. As we integrate it ever-more-intimately into our lives and bodies and brains—as we mold our creations in our own image, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally—I believe our tech will shape us in ways we will barely understand.

  The 21st century will challenge us to remember what it means to be only human.

  But creating a truly sentient Artificial Intelligence is far more complicated than first dreamed in Asimov’s Bicentennial Man. As we learn more about the three pounds of meat and electricity between our ears, as well as the consciousness it creates, we are realizing how difficult the job is. In a sense, creating an AI will force us to answer some of the deepest questions humanity has ever asked… about ourselves and our place in the universe.

  Restore takes a peek at some of those questions. What does it mean to create intelligence if you intentionally limit it? Is it cruel or compassionate to keep your tech from evolving above a certain sentience level?

  The story of Unit 7435 is set in the world of my Singularity novels, a young adult SF series about a legacy human boy who wants to become an ascender. That series explores many questions about the mind-body-soul connection, but it’s limited to the confines of one main storyline. All along, I’ve intended to write a series of short stories to illuminate the grimdark corners of the Singularity world. In this, I am inspired again by Asimov, who created his Three Laws of Robotics over a series of novels and short stories that all operated in the same universe. My Stories of Singularity are told from many points of view within the Singularity world, some possibly tragic, but all hopefully thought-provoking. I hope I’ve succeeded in provoking a bit of thought in your own personal set of three pounds of meat and electricity.

  Restore was originally published in the A.I. Chronicles

  Amazon

  It all started with a pile of rocks that shouldn’t exist.

  By rocks, of course I mean the regolith—the assortment of pebbles, boulders, and grain-sized dust that coats the surface of Thebe, my current Commonwealth Mining assignment. And by shouldn’t exist, I mean it wasn’t there on my last check of the near pole, and there’s no one currently on the tiny moon who would stack up a precarious tower of rocks. Thebe is tidally locked with Jupiter, which means the near pole is the one place where the massive gas giant perpetually looms exactly overhead… but I can see no purpose in a spindly stack of regolith making note of that fact.

  I found the construct while running a crawl-check on the tether. Its ultra-tensile strength material encircles Thebe, wrapping around the moon from near pole to far and anchoring all the equipment involved in breaking, sorting, and melting the regolith. On the first pass, I didn’t stop. After all, tether maintenance is a primary level protocol—anything goes wrong there, and the entire operation flings off into space. Even if I could manage to rescue Thebe’s extensive mining equipment, I’d end up burning precious organic fuels and losing several orbits worth of production time. And that’s how Mining Masters get reassigned to Outer Belt asteroids with minimal harvesting complexity and maximum dust. My machine-sourced sentience level of 90 might not compare to the 1000+ sentience level of my ascender masters, but it would be completely wasted there. And that’s a punishment few Mining Masters return from.

  I wait until I’ve completed the second pass of the crawl-check, then I maneuver off-tether for a closer inspection. The stacked rocks are precisely aligned, each irregular chunk carefully balanced on the one below, creating an unlikely structure that defies Thebe’s slight gravity.

  I leave it intact and return the crawler to base.

  Unlike my four previous assignments in the Outer Belt, Thebe is primarily a tourist destination. Fortunately, my relatively new duties attending to tourists don’t usually conflict with my primary mission of efficiently mining Thebe’s resources—I’ve only had two visitors in my forty-seven orbits.

  I don’t know why my masters named this hundred-kilometer-wide piece of Jovian real estate Thebe—I don’t have access to the asce
nders’ common knowledge database on Earth—but its composition is interesting for mining purposes. According to the Commonwealth Mining database, less than four percent of Belt asteroids have Thebe’s combination of carbonaceous material—silicates with sulfide inclusions primarily—and iron-nickel alloy. Essentially, it’s a rock with metal armor. Thebe orbits the planet fast and close, making it a frequent target for wandering asteroids pulled in by Jupiter’s gravitational well—that’s how a metal plate was welded to the near pole and a giant crater, Zethus, was carved out of the far one. Most of the mining operations reside at the crater.

  The moon takes sixteen Earth-hours to orbit Jupiter, providing a full spectrum of viewing opportunities for my masters. The Commonwealth database has given names to the four phases of the planet. Full Glory showcases the fully lit Jovian surface, prime time for visitors; the Setting Quarter gains its name from the sun setting on Thebe, when only the reflected glow of Jupiter’s high albedo clouds lights the cratered landscape. During Full Dark, Thebe traverses the dark side of the planet; the utter lack of light—Jovian or solar—during those four hours means draining the solar-cell batteries for operation, lighting, and navigation. And finally, the Rising Quarter brings the sun and Jupiter’s tourist-attracting sights back into view.

  We’re currently in the Setting Quarter, and I hurry to attend to the nanite depletion problem at the foundry before Full Dark sets in. I am Master of mining operations and the tractor transport is Slave, so I could simply instruct it to move the nanites from the depot to the foundry. But instead, I download to the tractor and attend to it personally. Nanite operation is difficult to resurrect once it reaches minimum viability level—something I learned the hard way on Daedalus, a tiny depleted-comet asteroid that was my last assignment. But tractor operation is fairly mindless… allowing a significant fraction of my cognition to be occupied by the Mystery of the Rocks. I’ve never seen anything like the stacked regolith, and it vexes me like a harvester clogged with dust in places I cannot discern.

  It goes without saying that the construct was not present at my previous crawl-check. Granted, I had stretched the time between crawl-checks to the maximum recommended by safety protocols… I was busy. But not so busy that I wouldn’t have noticed a visit from one of my ascender masters, especially if they had taken one of their bodyforms on an eighty-kilometer trek from basecamp to the near pole to stack up rocks. I would have been alerted, if only so I could ensure my master used the proper radiation-tolerant bodyform.

  So… what could have created the rock formation?

  Random accretion from a micro-impact event I didn’t notice? Unlikely.

  Fine-grain avalanche that boosted the local regolith to nearly escape velocity? Improbable.

  Were the rocks, in fact, left over from a prior ascender visit, and I simply didn’t notice it on previous inspections? Review of my memory stores proves this false.

  I need more information about the construct.

  Once the nanite supply is reinvigorated, I upload from the tractor transport, download to my humanoid form, and hike back to the near pole to perform a second inspection. When I arrive, the precision of their alignment is even more clear.

  There are a total of twenty stones involved. I tentatively remove the uppermost rock, careful to not disturb the entire display. It’s a silicate with tiny inclusions of metal, clearly sourced from the unharvested stones on the surface nearby. The near pole is at the low point of a bowl created by an ancient impact. It provides a natural depot of materials for a construct of this type… whatever this type is.

  I record the exact orientation of the stones, then pull down the rest of them, determined to replicate the feat. It takes much longer to recreate the arrangement. It’s nearly Full Dark before the construct once again points to Jupiter like a compass.

  Is it possible to stack any random set of stones? I gather a dozen more—a mixture of sharp-edged metal fragments and chunkier carbonaceous rocks with smoother-textured surfaces. I analyze the form factor of each, calculate the center of gravity, and orient each such that they balance, one on top of another.

  It’s much more difficult to create a second tower, not knowing the “solution” of the correct alignment ahead of time. I make corrections for Thebe’s eccentricity and the small variations in the local gravitational field. My bodyform’s auto-illuminator activates. Most of Full Dark passes before I can maintain a three-stone tower. Once this is accomplished, however, successive placements are much easier. The key is sensing balance through feedback in my humanoid form’s fingers. This delicate tuning allows for the tiny variations missing from the generalized equations of mass, surface roughness, and Thebe’s contribution to the… wobble. An imprecise term, but somehow a fuller expression of the balance of forces involved. I step back to observe my tower: it is nearly as tall as the original. And yet knowing how the stones were placed provides no clue as to why.

  The construct serves no purpose.

  For some reason, I’m considering creating a third tower. I’m only stopped from gathering more regolith when I receive an alert that a scavenger drone has become entangled in its tether. I trek back to base, upload from my humanoid form, download to a more functional-for-this-purpose repair tractor, and set out toward the steel plain where the hapless drone is caught. The Rising Quarter has begun, and the sun peeks over Jupiter’s rim, bringing the planet’s red spot into view as well.

  As I trundle across the steel surface, my magnetic treads keep me anchored. The regolith here has been harvested, leaving a mirrored finish that reflects Jupiter’s palette of red and orange in a constantly moving storm across the kilometer-wide expanse. This is a unique feature to Thebe as well—the moon’s past clearly had a violent shearing event that polished this portion of its metal armor. That knowledge doesn’t capture the uniqueness of the sight, however. My treads claw against the swirl of color underneath them, chewing at an ephemeral thing that doesn’t actually exist… and yet transforms the plain into a vision of the molten lava fields of Io.

  When I reach the periphery, I hone in on the drone’s plaintive call for help. My four articulated arms make quick work of anchoring it while disentangling it from its secondary tether. It’s soon set to work again, random-walking the edge of the plain and widening it one sweep at a time. It’s already gathered most of the regolith near this edge of the crater. It’ll be fine for a while, but I’ll have to return soon to transport it to a new scavenge location.

  As I trundle back across the plain, I return to the Mystery of the Rocks. I consider how large the Sol System is compared to my personal experience knowledge base. Shared experiences are logged in the Commonwealth Mining database, but I’ve searched that, and there is no mention of anomalous stacked rock formations. I consider the possibility that this might not rise to the level of an official entry; registering anomalous phenomena without adequate explanation is not the way to impress the ascender governors of the Commonwealth. I certainly have yet to register the find myself. I check the chatterstream, the unofficial net of the Mining Masters, but there’s nothing but complaints about shipping schedules and poorly constructed harvesters.

  When I return to base, I upload to the comm center—perhaps there is a natural-phenomenon explanation which I have missed and which for some reason isn’t registered in the database. And the Master of Io has provided me with assistance in the past—for example, my near-catastrophic nanite depletion—all without logging an official report.

  The Commonwealth’s operations run throughout the gas giants and Inner and Outer Belts, keeping a steady supply of materials heading to Earth through a complex ferry system. Tens of thousands of Masters are active at any given moment, a well-organized symphony of harvesting and processing. The Master of Io, in particular, has been active for over a thousand Earth standard days and operates at the highest complexity level that can be managed by machine-sourced intelligence. More difficult operations, like the Jovian mining colonies, are governed by ascenders.r />
  Non-essential query, I transmit. I include my identification code and a copy of my containment key for validation.

  I wait. The Master of Io must be engaged in essential duties.

  Three minutes later, a response returns. Identification: Master of Io. How may I assist you?

  I transmit images of the stacked rocks, my measurements and reconstruction, the known timeline of events, and theories considered and discarded. I include mention of the two tourist visits by ascenders. Essentially, all relevant information I have gathered.

  Theories? I transmit.

  An error in your register of tourists, the Master of Io transmits.

  Stand by, I reply, then run a full diagnostic of my registry files, as well as other memory stores for good measure. All data sectors are clean. Negative.

  Radiation damage?

  Another system check, this time benchmarking against background radiation measures, looking for recent fluctuations in ambient levels of Jupiter’s magnetic fields. Negative.

  You are experiencing a malfunction, the Master of Io transmits.

  I see no evidence of this.

  Inexplicable phenomena are an indication of malfunction, not necessarily in the sector where the anomaly is occurring, the Master of Io transmits. There is a possibility of cascading errors. Perform system-wide checks to ensure mission critical systems are robust. How long since your last health check?

  I start the system checks before replying, because those are primary level protocols, and the Master of Io’s theory of cascading errors is potentially catastrophic. Last health check eight orbits ago, I finally transmit.

  When system checks are complete, perform a health check regen cycle early.

  Mandatory health check initiation occurs at ten orbits anyway. Confirmed, I transmit. End query.

  The system checks are extensive and take the rest of the Rising Quarter to complete, but no anomalies are found. The Mystery of the Rocks remains, but I am confident that minimal risk to operations is present, so there is no need to log a report with the Commonwealth. I consider initiating the health check regen cycle now, as the Master of Io suggested, but it requires a full orbital period at minimal operational status, and harvester maintenance is scheduled in the Setting Quarter.