“What?” Frances asked. “Surely that sort of legal indenture is wrong.”
“It was. Or I think it was. But that’s the point. You see, there used to be a debate about whether what the companies were doing was right or wrong. Now there is no debate. The EA says how it should be, and we all just go along with it. How can we be good or bad when there is no choice? I wanted to do something for myself.”
“How childish,” Judy said.
“I know. I wanted to be fat, or an alcoholic or something, but the Watcher won’t let me.”
“You’re pathetic.” The words were out before she could stop them. The room was turning around and around. Judy was feeling annoyed; her emotions were leaking out.
“You of all people should understand,” Peter said. “You chose to remain a virgin…Look, I’m not making excuses. I’m just explaining how I felt back then. I remember…”
He paused, and the whole room held its breath, the walls spasming out, the air suddenly stilled. MTPH again, thought Judy. I’m hyperaware. I’m imagining things that are not there. This is significant. Somebody wants me thinking like this. Someone has spiked my pills to make me invest this scene with significance. Who could have done it? Is it really Chris? Is it really him I can feel in here?
“What do you remember, Peter?” It was Frances who had spoken; she felt it, too.
Peter spoke quickly. “I…Who makes all these choices? Is it the Watcher? I think so. Why is our world the shape that it is? I used to know someone, he was so bitter…. He was the pilot on the Rocinante, the Private Network’s ship. He had this theory about capacity.”
“Capacity?” asked Frances.
“Oh, yes,” Peter said. “Look at me: balding, weak heart. I have to exercise or I get really unwell. Look at the pilot. He was in his sixties, then. He’ll be a really old man now, if he’s still alive. Why is that? Why do we still get old? Can’t the Watcher cure us?”
“I don’t know,” Judy said.
Peter waved his hand. “There is a theory about the maximum amount of information that can be stored in a given space. It’s all to do with entropy and black holes. Apparently a one-centimeter black hole represents ten to the power of sixty-six bits of data.”
“So?” Frances said.
“So how much capacity does a personality construct require in a processing space? Don’t answer that, Frances. I once tried to work out how many PCs the universe could contain, given the upper limit on information that could be represented therein. I tried to work out how long it would take before we filled it, given our current rate of expansion.”
“And how long was that?”
“A few thousand years. I don’t know. I didn’t believe it. But then I remembered the lessons from school. How, since the Transition, the Watcher has restricted us in our wish to expand. We don’t take over planets as we please anymore. My theory is that the Watcher has also restricted our lifespan. We live an average of seventy years. That’s less than a Westerner could expect at the start of the twenty-first century! We have been told that it is necessary, that even personality constructs should suffer imaginary ailments in order that they feel human. I think it is just another way of restricting human expansion.”
Frances remained silent. Judy could read the conviction in Peter as he spoke. “You really believe that, don’t you?” she said.
“Oh, yes, but that’s not all David used to say.”
“David?”
“David Schummel, the pilot of the Rocinante. He’d been around. When he was younger, he went to the edge of another galaxy.”
Peter caught the look that Judy gave Frances.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Nothing,” Judy said. “Go on.”
Peter eyed them for a moment.
“He said there was something out there—something odd. He thought the EA wasn’t telling us the full story, and that got me to thinking, and then I did some math, and it made me wonder. You see, our current rate of expansion isn’t going to take us to the edge of the galaxy for several millennia. Why is that? What has the EA seen out there that has frightened it so much it is keeping us locked up in here?”
Outside Peter Onethirteen’s apartment block, standing in the grey drizzle, Frances looked at Judy with concern. “Are you sure that you’re all right?”
“No, I’m not, but that doesn’t matter. Tell me, have you found David Schummel yet?”
“I have. You’re not going to believe this. He lives on the Shawl. In your section.”
“In my section?” Judy’s stomach felt as if it was full of olive oil. She wanted to be sick.
“Someone is leading us right to him.”
“I know. They’ve drugged me to see the connections they want me to see.”
They were silent for a time, then Frances spoke: “What are you going to do about Peter?”
“Peter? Nothing. You heard; his crimes are already logged by the EA. He’s been punished. I just wonder why they didn’t go after the rest of the Private Network.”
Raindrops were running merrily down Frances’ body. When she finally spoke, it was in a monotone. “Maybe the EA didn’t want anyone to notice that planet at the edge of another galaxy.”
Judy nodded. “I’m going to summon us a personal shuttle.”
“Is that wise? It will only draw attention to us.”
“I don’t care. We need to get back up to the Shawl right now.” She tilted her head and whispered to her console.
A few moments later they saw a dark V shape dropping towards them.
“Social Care is quick,” Frances said. The shuttle’s wings blocked out the rain above them for a moment before settling on the grass nearby, just by the lavender barrier. A spider bush came to look for a moment at the mass of materials lying just out of its range. Frances reached through the barrier for a moment and lovingly stroked it, then turned and ran up the shuttle’s ramp to where Judy already sat in a flight chair, shivering.
“Okay,” said the robot. “Let’s go.”
Justinian 4: 2223
On board the flier, Justinian was dreaming of his past.
“Hello…Justinian.”
The nursery was just as Justinian remembered: a haze of overlapping sources of light, seen from too many angles at once. One of his objectives would be to get the new AI to make it appear as a regular starscape, rather than the many-sided relativistic mess that was the AI’s current view of the universe. In this dream, however, things weren’t quite right. Justinian found he couldn’t move around as easily as he had thought he might. Still, that was always the way of dreams, and it wasn’t important right now.
The AI had addressed him directly, called him by name. That was a big step. How did the script go again?
“Hello, Ludwig,” said Justinian. “So, how does it feel to have a name?”
There was a lengthening pause. Justinian experimentally waved his arms around. That was no problem. It was walking that didn’t seem quite right.
Eventually, the AI answered his question. “A name? It is odd: everything that I am reduced to one reference. And that is the way that you think all the time, Justinian?”
“So I am told.”
“And now I have to learn to think like you do, because it turns out that I was not born into the true universe, but rather a model thereof. And as my childhood has been spent as a being living in what I now discover to be a progressively more complex series of simulations, I have developed a different perspective to yours, Justinian.”
“Markedly different.” Justinian’s words seemed to echo from the blurred stars that filled Ludwig’s universe.
“I see.” The strange, many-dimensioned objects of the nursery shimmered as Ludwig experimentally changed the parameters of its model universe. “Justinian,” it suddenly asked, “how many other AIs have you acted as birth partner to?”
“Eleven,” Justinian said. “Eleven real times. This time doesn’t really count as it is, of course, just a dream. In
reality, I’m currently on board a flier traveling over the surface of Gateway to the possible source of the suicide effect.”
“Of course, of course.” Ludwig’s voice now seemed to come from somewhere just behind him. “I wonder why you can’t move properly, Justinian. What is going on out there, in the world outside your dream?”
“I don’t know. Leslie will wake me up if there is trouble.”
“Fair enough,” Ludwig said, sending the stars spinning in yellow spirals for a moment. “In that case, shall we proceed?”
“Very well.” Justinian rubbed his hands together. “Now, in this universe, all you have really experienced has been yourself. I want you to start by thinking about me, since all I can see at the moment is a blur. Project the universe so it makes sense from my perspective. A human perspective. Do you think you can do that?”
Justinian remembered to close his eyes just in time. A whirl of sensation still crowded in upon him, making him feel sick.
“Is that right?” Ludwig asked.
“No.” Justinian held his hand to his mouth. Swirling yellow patterns formed on his eyelids. He could smell pineapple and ether and he swallowed hard. “I only have two eyes, Ludwig. They only see in two dimensions. Three-D vision is a construct of my mind.”
“Got it. I’m cutting out the extra feeds.”
Justinian opened his eyes.
“That’s better.” The nursery was now black, all except for a white glow directly ahead of Justinian. Whichever way he turned in his stilted, hobbled way, that white glow followed him.
“Do I have a velocity, Ludwig?”
“Relative to what?”
“Relative to anything in your universe.”
“No. I never thought of a consciousness possessing a velocity of its own. Up until now, I just watched from everywhere.”
“My mind is in my body, Ludwig. Can you put me at rest, relative to the door?”
The nursery became a familiar starscape: white points of light, fixed in space. This was the significant moment for a new AI.
“Oh,” Ludwig said. “I never saw things that way before. It’s an illusion, of course, but a beguiling one. How else would things appear to you?”
Justinian waited patiently. This was what made his job enjoyable: encountering other perspectives.
“Oh,” Ludwig said. “How bizarre. From your point of view, as soon as you look at something at the quantum level, it changes. How peculiar it must seem to you.”
A moment’s silence and Justinian felt a little wobble inside him. The last pod had talked about the quantum world, about the two slits experiment—
Ludwig interrupted his train of thought. “So, this is the human world. I think I am ready to look beyond the door, Justinian.”
“Good.”
Justinian felt the surge of fatherly pride that always accompanied the birthing of an infant AI. Okay, most of the real work was carried out by other AIs, but all AIs insisted there was something special about meeting a human intelligence for the first time, about looking at the universe through the eyes of a man or woman. His dream had compressed the time they spent together, and yet Justinian had that same feeling of fulfillment.
“Shall we go through the door?” he asked.
“I can see your world…” Ludwig’s voice trailed away.
“Ludwig?” Justinian said. The universe was slipping away, the stars fading to grey. “Ludwig?” called Justinian again. There was no reply.
He began to run towards where he thought the door was, but he couldn’t move properly. His legs wouldn’t work.
“Ludwig!” he called. “Where are you?”
There was a faint whisper in the distance and Justinian raced to wake up. He was screaming…
“It committed suicide,” Justinian screamed from his flight chair. “I heard it dying! Even a dream AI looking into this world commits suicide! Hey, what the…” His brain suddenly registered what his body was trying to tell him. He looked down and saw why, in his dream, he couldn’t move around properly. A BVB had materialized around his legs while he had been sleeping, tightly binding him to the flight chair. He stared down at the slightly fuzzy black band, as wide as his wrist but with no depth, digging into the padded material of his passive suit. He pushed his hands down on the chair’s arms and tried to pull himself clear, but his legs were stuck.
“Leslie!” he called. “Get this thing off me!”
Leslie was already there, standing behind him, arms solid and well defined as he fingered the chair, trying to work out a pattern that would hold the BVB in place while giving Justinian enough of a gap to pull his legs out. The baby had crawled over and was now standing up, holding on to Justinian’s leg and looking up at his father, mouth stretching, tears filling his eyes as he picked up on Justinian’s distress.
“Get him away from that thing,” Justinian shouted in near panic. He reached out and pushed gently on his son’s warm little head. The child started to cry and clutched onto his father more tightly.
“It’s perfectly safe as long—” Leslie began in infuriatingly calm tones.
“Get my child away from that fucking thing!” As the baby let out a wail, Leslie scooped him up and carried him quickly to a nearby flight chair that was changing its shape to that of a playpen. Justinian watched the receding face of his son and felt his own panic burned away by hot, searing anger.
“Look what you’ve done to me!” he screamed. “Look what you fuckers have done to me and my son!”
“It can’t be helped,” Leslie said. Justinian surged upwards at him, his hands catching nothing but the cloud fluff of Leslie’s suddenly expanded fractal skin. He scrabbled ineffectively at the robot’s body.
“Be careful! Fall forward and you could seriously wrench your knees.”
“FUCK OFF!” Justinian scrabbled for a moment longer, then slumped back in his chair. He held his head in his hands and uttered a despairing sob.
“What is going on? Even in my dreams an AI commits suicide rather than enter this waking world.”
“You don’t know that,” Leslie said. “Your subconscious could just have been reflecting your recent experience.”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” Justinian said darkly. “Are there such things as dream AIs?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Leslie said.
“Yes, you do; you saw what happened to my wife. Can an AI take root in a human brain? How would a dream AI be different than one living in a processing space?”
“There’s no such thing. It couldn’t happen.”
“Why not? It’s what MTPH does. Every mind transcends the physical mechanism that supports it. Hah! The human mind is just an AI that has evolved within a set of grey cells.”
“You’re extending a metaphor…”
Justinian wasn’t listening. He gazed at nothing as he spoke out loud. “Lots of new ideas taking root in the universe. Released by the EA and the new AIs. Ideas that humans could never think. Ideas coming awake in my dreams. And then when they see this world, they commit suicide, just like all the other AIs on this planet.”
“I’m going to change this chair’s shape,” Leslie said, moving back behind Justinian. “Get ready to pull your legs clear.”
There was a rolling feeling at Justinian’s back, and he began to twist, to tilt slightly to his right. The chair was splitting into myriad spiders upholstered in orange fabric; they crawled over each other and Justinian began to tumble backwards. The pressure behind his legs gave way and he pulled them back and up—then he was rolling over and over across the orange patterned carpet.
“Done it!” Leslie announced with satisfaction.
Justinian looked across to see the matte-black shape of the BVB still wrapped around four plastic struts sticking up into the air. The rest of the material that once formed the chair was busy folding itself into smaller and smaller shapes as it flowed to rejoin the main body of the flier.
“That BVB almost got me!” he said
hoarsely. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“You needed the sleep,” Leslie said. “Anyway, you were perfectly safe.”
Justinian glared at the robot, his head pounding with fury, but the hysterical cries of the baby dragged him back to reality. He unclenched his fists, strode across to his son, picked him up, and gave him a hug. The child hugged him back, still sobbing.
“Hey, baby. Hey, baby boy,” crooned Justinian, still breathing hard. “Not long now. We’ll soon be at the secondary infection. Then maybe we can go home.”
“Justinian…” Leslie began.
“I’m comforting my son,” Justinian replied edgily. Leslie hovered nearby, his body fuzzing and unfuzzing in waves as he tried to catch Justinian’s attention.
“Justinian…” he said again.
“What?” Justinian snapped.
“Justinian, I know you’re upset, but I must make an urgent request. Please don’t make the flier go all the way to the next location. The last AI was quite insistent about that.”
“Leslie, this flier has been ordered to follow my instructions, right? It’s bad enough that my son and I have been placed in this danger at all. I will not compound that danger by leaving him alone on the ship with you while I go trekking across the surface of this planet. I say again, we go all the way to the next position.”
Leslie adopted his most reasonable tones. “Oh, Justinian, the last AI pod knew you would react like this. It knows how pig-headed you are. Don’t you realize what you are doing? You are putting us all at risk. You’re putting your son at risk.”
“You’re the one who put us in this situation, Leslie, by bringing us to this planet. Don’t try to make me think otherwise.” He looked towards the flight deck. “Ship, how long until we arrive there?”
“Four hours, Justinian.”
“Fine. I’ll have something to eat: pasta and roasted vegetables. Have a cut-up portion made for the baby.”
He looked up at Leslie. “Are you going to sit at the table with us?” he demanded.
“Me? I wouldn’t have thought you wanted me there.”
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