Capacity

by Tony Ballantyne

  They looked to the two Judys.

  “And you knew it was like this all along,” they both said. “You must have.”

  “It’s always hard when you have run in concurrent realities so recently,” said Judy 4.

  “How do you cope with it?”

  “If you learn to love yourself, it’s easy.”

  EA Public Space number 4

  Helen was still lost in wonderment at Judy 3’s speech. For the moment, she believed.

  Judy 3’s gaze was locked on Kevin. “What do you want us to do?” she asked.

  “Help me to end the rule of the Watcher,” Kevin said. “The atomic Judy will know more about the reasons why. We’ve been gradually leading her to this point.”

  “We?”

  “Chris and I. The atomic Judy knows who I mean. Maybe she’ll tell you, too. If you don’t get it, it doesn’t matter. You are expendable, after all.”

  “No one is expendable,” Helen said.

  Kevin grinned at her. “You may believe that…”

  Judy 3 had her hand concealed in the sleeve of her kimono. She removed it and dropped something on the ground: a box with a strap to hold it to her arm. The little device that dispensed MTPH.

  “A grand gesture,” Kevin said. “Does that mean that you are no longer willing to try to empathize with me?”

  “No, it just means I’ve realized the futility. You’re not human, Kevin; you said it yourself. What use is MTPH against you?”

  Kevin stopped playing with the white knife and tossed it to the ground at her feet.

  “So kill me, then. I’ve already killed three of your sisters.”

  “Killing you would achieve nothing.”

  “Good; you’re learning. So start working for me, rather than for the Watcher.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you’re starting to question all this.” He waved his hands to take in the forest around him. “Nobody ever questions the way they live and die in the EA’s processing space, and yet look at you now. You feel the Shawl is wrong, don’t you? This symbol of impermanence? But why should you think that? The EA has been programming that thought out of you from your birth. It’s only my presence here that makes you think otherwise. I’m not evil. I just have to go to extremes to make you think the unthinkable!”

  The Private Network: Level One, Variation B

  “What is it?” both Helens asked simultaneously.

  Judy 10 looked at Judy 4, who was slipping a little blue pill into her mouth.

  “This processing space has just been jettisoned.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means there is no way out. We’re trapped in here!”

  “Will they be able to get us out?”

  Judy 10 handed little red pills to both Helens. She waited for them to swallow before answering, “The boundaries of the PS are now ill defined. There is nothing to keep the information patterns internal anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Think of a fish tank full of water. Then imagine someone has just removed the tank.”

  The red pill had taken effect. Both Helens felt calm now.

  Judy 4 finished the explanation: “It means we’re using up the last of our thoughts, Helen.”

  EA Public Space number 4

  “Two more Judys dead,” Kevin said. “Two more Helens.”

  “Two more of me?”

  Judy 3 said nothing, merely went on staring at Kevin, her dark eyes like slits sucking up the tableau: the testosterone-charged man, the beautiful girl, the woodland glade, and the silver metal of the airlock.

  “Still just watching, Judy?” Kevin asked. “Is that all you’re ever going to do?”

  “That, and understand.”

  Kevin spat on the grass. “That’s what I hate about you, Judy. You try to understand all sides of the argument, but you never actually commit yourself to an opinion. Five of your sisters killed and you’re still just trying to understand me. Don’t just understand! Act! I’m not the enemy. The Watcher is. Why should a cut with a blade kill a virtual being? Why can’t your sisters be brought back to life? You’re all nothing but patterns in a processing space.”

  He bent down and picked up the MTPH bracelet, fed out a little red pill, and swallowed it.

  “The Watcher is a fraud. It’s a cuckoo! It is enslaving humanity, and humans are letting it do that. I can save humanity! DIANA can save it.”

  “DIANA?” said Judy 3. Across the digital divide, the atomic Judy sat up straighter and stared at Frances. “DIANA? One of the old commercial organizations? You believe DIANA can save humanity?”

  “Opinions, opinions,” Kevin scoffed. “You collect them like butterflies. Yes, I believe DIANA can save humanity. What do you believe in, Judy? Not the Watcher, certainly. You don’t believe in anything. You think that makes you somehow better because you stand there aloof from everything. You just like to watch. It’s all you ever do. You never join in, you…virgin!”

  Helen looked at Judy significantly. She clearly felt Kevin had scored a point.

  Judy noted the look. Her reply was cool.

  “When there are twelve of you, you need something constant to hold on to, to keep you together—something serious. You can’t just give up chocolate or decide you like jazz. You need something really big to define you as a human being.”

  The airlock opened and two figures in black spacesuits stepped through. Another Kevin and Bairn.

  Judy looked at Helen. “Run,” she said.

  EA Public Space number 1

  Two Judys lying dead in the grass

  Rough black silk and white faces

  Blossom floats on red blood

  EA Public Space number 4

  Helen simply turned and ran, head down, as fast as she could. She was running for her life.

  Judy watched as one of the Kevins chased after her. The other Kevin stayed where he was, smiling at her. The polished metal of the airlock doors reflected the green grass in crazy patterns. She saw herself standing alone in the grassy bowl, looking frightened.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “I told you,” said Kevin. “There are other ways of looking at the universe than that laid down by the Watcher. DIANA operates on the principle of freedom of choice.”

  “We have that.”

  “You only think so. If there is hope, Judy, it lies with the proletariat of the processing space. The EA has the physical world sewn up. In here we can be free, and yet the Watcher still pulls humanity in its own direction.”

  Kevin pulled out his white blade. Judy watched her own reflection in the airlock door as he nicked her on the wrist with it. Red drops of blood welled up. Judy walked closer to the reflecting door to get a better look at herself.

  “Why are you bleeding, Judy?” asked Kevin. “It’s because the Watcher said it would be so. You are no more real than I, and yet you choose to live in this world and die in it. The worlds of the processing spaces should be of near infinite variety, and yet the gravity of the Watcher’s wishes pulls us back into this small region of space.”

  There was an approaching noise of shouting and struggling. The other Kevin carried Helen back into view, one of his big arms locked around her chest, the other behind her head, forcing it forward. Bairn walked alongside, a knife held to Helen’s throat.

  “Why don’t you run, Judy?” Helen called. Judy was still watching the scene in the reflection of the airlock. “Run, Judy. Get help!”

  Judy was watching herself still. Looking at Kevin, watching the blade move up her body to her chest. It cut through the rough silk there. The blade had now sliced through the silk, revealing a breast. Not black-and-white, just pink with a puckered red nipple. Kevin drew the blade downwards again, ripping the silk, exposing yet more pink flesh. There was a shout, and in the distance, Helen could see reinforcements arriving at last. Other members of Social Care, coming to help. Where had they all been?

  “Judy,” Helen
called, “what’s the matter with you?”

  “Shhh.” Kevin worked Judy 3’s wrist dispenser, producing a little blue pill. He pressed it to her lips. Judy watched herself swallow it in the mirror of the airlock.

  “Look into my mind,” Kevin said. “No, open your eyes. I know you like to watch. Look at the Turing machine in my head.”

  Judy couldn’t help but open her eyes. There was something there in Kevin’s brain. Something curling and moving like a tapeworm. She could see it in there, turning on its end. Clicking from place to place. She closed her eyes, feeling something churning in her stomach: she was gulping down rising bile. She could still hear the clicking noise the tape made as it moved from place to place in Kevin’s head. Chunk. Chunk.

  “What is it?” she breathed.

  “My mind. That’s why you can never beat me, Judy. I told you, I’m not real.”

  He took her arm and pulled her around.

  “Now look into your own mind,” he whispered.

  Deep blue MTPH was coursing through her body. She could feel everything, even herself. She looked into her own head and saw the machine there, too. She was feeding back on herself, and Judy 3 loved to watch….

  “I think,” she began, “I think it’s because once you can see the pattern, you just have to look at the tape and after that…” Her voice faded. Her lips moved as she tried to think what to say, and the tape rattled on in her brain. She spoke again: “But then, what’s the point? They’re already defined for me, whether I have to think them or not. Ah! Of course…”

  And at that point she turned her full gaze on him as if she finally understood, and Kevin felt Judy 3 switch off. The thought processes were still there, but there was no longer any spark of life.

  Just a sequence of movements….

  The Atomic Judy 5: 2240

  “I can see him, just in the corner of my vision.”

  Frances placed a gentle golden hand on the arm of the atomic Judy. The human didn’t appear to hear her friend. She could see her sisters, dead and dying in the viewing fields all around her. She saw Judy 3 watching herself die in the mirror of the airlock. Helen had struggled free of her captors and was running, running as fast as she could, towards the other members of Social Care who came hurrying from amongst the trees. Where had they been? What had Kevin done to stop them stepping straight through to help?

  Frances was speaking: “Chris is coming in. I can see him, just. He’s in the room.”

  The urgency in her voice made the atomic Judy look around her lounge. She could see nothing but the simple furnishings of the room: tatami mats and wood and paper.

  “Is he here to help me?” Judy’s attention was drawn back to the screen. “In that case, why isn’t the EA helping them?” she wondered, as Judy 6 fell in a spray of blood.

  There was a blurring in the corner, then suddenly Chris the robot stood there. His grey crystal body seemed black in the dimness of the lounge. Frances took hold of Judy’s hand, and the feel of the warm golden metal was reassuring.

  “The EA doesn’t want to help them, Judy,” Chris said, joining her in gazing at the viewing fields. “The Watcher wants them dead, just like it wants you dead.”

  Frances let go of Judy’s hand. Judy tried to clasp it, to bring her friend closer, but the golden robot moved urgently across the room.

  “Why does the Watcher want me dead?”

  “You know why,” Chris said. “Because you know about Justinian and the baby. You know about the Schrödinger seeds.”

  Judy 3 was dying of the White Death in the viewing field to Chris’s left. Lost in an endless loop. Reprogramming herself…

  “Why kill Judy because she knows that?” Frances asked. “David Schummel was allowed to live.”

  “Schummel had been there. He needed to be studied.”

  “Bullshit,” Judy said. “This isn’t the Watcher’s doing. It’s yours. You tricked us into finding David Schummel for you. You’re on Kevin’s side, aren’t you?”

  “It would be fairer to say that Kevin is on my side. And you must realize by now that I didn’t need you to find David Schummel for me. You needed to find him for yourself. A truth is more believable if we uncover it for ourselves. You believe in what happened on Gateway now, don’t you?”

  Judy looked at the crystal robot. He was so beautiful.

  “Who are you, Chris?” she asked.

  “The Watcher creates ever more powerful AIs. It allows them to develop their own personalities. It is to be expected that some of them will disagree with their maker, maybe perceive how things could be run differently.”

  Chris’s body was changing as he spoke. He now looked more human, more male. His voice was adjusting to a best fit for Judy’s personality. But Judy was looking at Judy 8. Yet another Kevin was drawing a white blade down across her limbs, the black silk of her kimono slashed open around her pink flesh. She was bleeding to death.

  “Save her.”

  “I can’t,” Chris said. “You’re watching a recording. All of this happened two days ago. All the digital Judys are dead. They all chose to fight rather than join me.”

  “What makes you think I will choose any differently?” And at the same moment Frances threw something at Chris. Judy heard it break the sound barrier as it crossed the room.

  Chris caught it easily. A bronze statue of a horse, the metal now hot and bent from its passage.

  “That was supposed to hurt me? Oh…clever.” The metal of the horse had broken apart into many little bronze spiders that rippled incredibly quickly across his body. “VNMs,” he said. “But my skin is impervious: it can’t be converted.”

  As he said that, there was a flash so bright that Judy felt a pain inside her eyes. When she blinked, she saw yellow-green outlines of Chris superimposed over everything, a multicolored image of the robot lighting up from the inside. The little bronze spiders had poured as much energy as they could into the visible spectrum and blasted it into the grey crystal of his body.

  “Sorry, Judy,” Frances said. “I couldn’t warn you. His reactions are so much faster than yours.”

  “I am impressed,” Chris said. “Judy, I wonder if you are aware just how advanced an AI Frances is? She surprises even me.”

  “I can’t see properly.” Judy reached out a hand for her friend, but Frances had gone. Judy could just make out a golden robe slipping to the floor in front of her, dropping like a casually discarded kimono. “Frances?”

  “Scared out of her skin.” Chris laughed. Judy knelt down and tried to see around the yellow-green blobs that had burned themselves into the front of her vision. She could feel Frances’ golden skin, still warm, lying in a pile on the floor.

  “I can still see you, you know, Frances,” Chris said. “You can’t hide from me. But I can hide from you….”

  “What do you want with me?” Judy interrupted. Make a distraction. Frances was doing something. It was unlikely that anything as slow-moving as Judy could be a distraction in a battle between robots, but she had to try.

  Chris was reading her thoughts. “I think the idea of you being a distraction is…well, optimistic, to put it politely.”

  “Okay,” Judy said. “Tell me anyway. What do you want with me?”

  Chris walked across the room towards her, his body for a moment fitting perfectly into one of the outlines in her eyes. He moved with such grace, a crystal man with a skin more flexible than cat fur. He leaned close and seemed to glow from within.

  “Nothing, Judy. There is nothing you can do to help me.”

  “Bullshit. Then why are you wasting your time speaking to me?”

  “I have a bad thing on my mind, Judy.”

  “You said that before. What do you mean?”

  “Judy. You know that I was the first AI on the hypership when it returned from Gateway; David Schummel told you that. The Watcher was scared to look into the ship for fear of what might be lurking in there. So it sent me, and who did I find lurking in the processing spaces? Kevin.
I’d long been wondering about the primacy of the Watcher’s philosophy within the Earth Domain—but how to fight it? Others had tried and failed. Just look at the Enemy Domain. And then at last I saw the means: Kevin had brought it back from Gateway—a Schrödinger box. He wasn’t very happy about me taking it from him, but what choice did he have? I offered him an alliance and he was pleased to take it. We struck a deal. He got the digital world, I took the atomic. He doesn’t trust me, but he knows that sometimes, when the competition is too strong, you just go with the market until a better opportunity presents itself.

  “So, I took the box. I looked at it and fixed it in place with an intelligence. Only a small intelligence, just the size of a baby’s. Insurance. You know where I have it?”

  The robot tapped his head.

  “Up here, right inside, with all of me looking out, all except that one tiny little intelligence that looks in and keeps the seed fixed in place. That’s how I stay invisible! The Watcher knows that if it looks too closely at me, it runs the risk of seeing into my mind and letting that seed grow. And it doesn’t want to do that. No one wants to do that, because if they do, it’s the end of intelligent life in this galaxy. Just like it ended in M32. No more AIs and TMs and humans, just lots of plants, growing from somewhere else and dropping BVBs on the competition.”

  “You’re putting us all in danger!”

  Chris shook his head. “No, the Watcher is. I never believed all this galactic brotherhood nonsense. The Watcher isn’t a cosmic virus come to help us. I don’t believe Kevin’s cuckoo theory, either; there is nothing out there. Nothing but us and the plants. This galaxy has only so much capacity. If we don’t want to end up all living in blind processing spaces, we must stop expanding and start thinking about life in a different way.”

  “What way?”

  “Ditch the Watcher and the pretense that if humans are to survive in this universe it can be in any other way than survival of the fittest. Kevin knows that; it’s the law of the free market. I can foresee a time when we are running just one step ahead of the plants and anything else that may be out there. We need people who are willing to sacrifice their children, their sisters, whole planets if needs be, just so that some can survive.”