by Alan Tien
I jerked back, “Me, scared? Come on, I’m the astronaut here.” Technically, my first trip into sub-orbital space qualified me as an astronaut.
I was starving by now, but the policy was not to feed the passengers until after free fall. Based on my first experience, I decided that was a great plan.
The preparations took a while. Chang Lin and I whispered about how crazy this whole thing was, how we hoped we didn’t get into too much trouble, whether we really believed Willstin was a true AI, how impossible that was, etc. I told her about Yoda as well. We speculated on what would happen in the US, but we really had no idea. She wondered about Willy, and I told her what Willstin had explained to me. We spent some time theorizing about our “luck” attribute and sharing notes on our lab tests. By launch time, we were none the wiser, but at least we felt better that we were equally confused.
The captain interrupted our guesswork. “One minute to launch…30 seconds…10…9…8…7…” The whole cabin counted down with him, even the old folks, and we screamed during blast off, as if we were entering the roller coaster’s big drop. I would’ve raised my hands over my head if the seat belts didn’t constrict my movement. And anyway the G’s shoved me down into my seat.
It was an awesome few minutes. The adrenaline rush made me forget my fear and anxiety that had been gnawing at me the whole night, even with my tranquilizer shot. I realized Chang Lin didn’t get a tranquilizer shot, and she was holding it together remarkably well. I vowed to get a grip of myself and not show my fear. “Go with the flow. It’s the journey, not the destination. This is an adventure. Power of now.” I repeated these thoughts in my head like a mantra.
We floated past the weightlessness part of the trip without issue, meaning nobody blew chunks into the cabin. I felt a little bit queasy this time, but Chang Lin really enjoyed it. “I wish we could unbuckle ourselves and float around the cabin,” she enthused.
I didn’t really share that thought, but I said, “Yeah, me too!”
We re-entered earth’s atmosphere, bumping a bit on the way in. I kept expecting the cabin’s temperature to heat up, seeing the red glow stream by our windows, but the insulation and cooling systems were up to the task. Finally, the seatbelt sign turned off, and the captain told us we were on our hour-long gliding descent to our destination.
The air host robots came around, offering drinks that poured right out of their fingertips into our cups. I wanted to see if I could confuse it by asking it to mix all the sodas together. It said, “Absolutely, Mr. Austin, coming right up.” I was amused that he called me Mr. Austin. I was not amused with the concoction I got, a mixture of 16 different sodas that the robot could create on the fly with his large library of flavors.
“Serves you right for picking on the poor robot,” Chang Lin chastised me.
“It should’ve protected me and warned me that it wouldn’t taste good,” I protested.
“Protect you from your own idiocy? I think that requires strong AI.”
“Touché.” For some reason, saying stuff in French sounded cooler, more sophisticated. I was trying to figure out how to use “c’est la vie,” “coup d’état” and “fait accompli” in my sentences when the air host robot returned with our meals.
“Qing man yong.” I always thought this phrase was funny. Waiters always say this when they hand you your food in China. It means, “Please enjoy your meal,” but the direct translation is, “Please use slowly,” or a little less literally, “Take your time with your meal.” It must’ve come down from some Chinese belief that eating your food slowly is good for digestion. The Chinese have all sort of crazy beliefs around eating and drinking, like not drinking cold drinks on a hot day. Anyway, why I find this phrase funny is because have you ever seen the Chinese when the food is put in front of them? They eat as if they’ve been starved for days and the airplane food is the most delicious meal they’ve ever had. They shovel it in as if it were a speed eating contest. They inhale it. I don’t think the Chinese note the irony of the phrase since they don’t do the direct translation, like I do. I guess it’s like not answering “How do you do?” with a literal response of how we are actually feeling at the moment.
Chang Lin was diving into her food, her chopsticks whirling like a ninja showing off her nunchuck skills. She glanced over at me, “You’re not hungry?” she asked through her stuffed mouth. Not speaking with your mouth full is not an etiquette forced upon children in China. It almost seems encouraged, if we are to follow the example of adults.
“No, no, I’m starving.” I started into my food, with a little less gusto than the passengers around me. I didn’t completely throw out everything I had learned as proper and polite in my first 15 years of life in the US. I still said, “Bless you” when someone sneezed, even though there’s no equivalent in Chinese. Chinese just don’t say anything when someone sneezes. I just find that weird.
After the meal, I conked out. I’m not sure if I even put my chopsticks down before I blacked out. The front tire of the plane hitting the runway jarred me awake. I gasped, with my heart hammering. I wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. I squinted at the glaring sunlight pouring in through the window.
“Welcome to Las Vegas.”
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We only slept an hour or so, but the bright light of the Nevada desert helped reset our circadian clock. I held back the desire to get on my knees to kiss the US soil; I was back home, where everyone was a barbarian like me.
Chang Lin’s eyes were as wide as frisbees. “I can’t believe I’m really here,” she repeated over and over to herself. If she were a robot, I would’ve rebooted her, thinking she was caught in a recursive loop. “There’s so much space…Where are all the people? Why are they all so big?” She would utter these rhetorical questions as culture shock seeped in. I was in a bit of reverse culture shock as well. Yeah, it did look really empty, as if Vegas were a ghost town, compared to almost any city in China. And yeah, the people looked like they had a bunch of extra air pumped into them.
We were first in line at immigration, coming off our first class berths. The customs officer – a real human being in each booth! – glanced lazily at my passport, mumbled “China heh, lucky boy,” and stamped me through without another word.
I waited on the other side as Chang Lin stepped up. Suddenly the customs officer’s entire demeanor changed. “Oh, good morning young lady. Uh, ni hao,” the officer showing off his tiny bit of mandarin.
“Ni hao,” Chang Lin replied courteously.
“Let’s see,” said the officer as he flipped through the pages on his screen, “From Shanghai. Visiting our fair country for…” pausing as he skimmed the travel authorization, “for a Robotics competition, right here in our very own Vegas…today. Oh my, well let’s get you through this red tape and on your way to winning a little trophy to bring back home, all right?”
“Ok,” Chang Lin smiled brightly.
“Wow, your English is so good,” the officer gushed, based on her pronunciation of 2 letters. “Well, here you go. Everything’s in order. Good luck!” He almost saluted her as she left.
“He was so nice. Is everyone that nice in the US?”
“Yeah, everyone,” I said jealously. She didn’t notice my sarcasm.
“I love this country already!” She took a deep breath, as if our air was any fresher than China’s. “Ok, let’s go.”
I started heading towards the bus line, but Willstin said, “To the taxi line. Busses are too slow and too public.”
By instinct, based on the drilling of the importance of money from my mom since forever, I said, “But taxis are too expensive!” Chang Lin just looked at me. “Oh yeah, we have Willstin’s bottomless wallet,” I muttered weakly, and we changed course towards the taxi line.
There was no line at all for the passengers and a huge backup of taxis. All the taxi drivers – humans again! – looked hungrily at us as we walked up. In theory, the first cab is supposed to get t
he passenger, but we were money personified. All the cabbies started yelling, pitching their services.
“Over here, my taxi’s only got 300,000 miles on it. It’s practically brand new!”
“I got the latest rave beats mixed by DJ Hsia-ck!” It was pronounced like “shock.”
“I’ll give you a free tour of Vegas, no charge!”
But we ignored them all and piled into the first taxi. The driver smiled at us and, before getting into the driver seat, gave a rude gesture to the rest of his fellow drivers.
The “driver” actually didn’t drive; it was just a name from the past. He was really like a tour guide, someone to help with the controls if anyone was really too ignorant to know how to communicate with the robot car. Sometimes, a tourist’s accent was too thick for the older taxis to understand, and so the human “driver” would have to translate, not that the American drivers were any better at understanding the foreigners. My Dad had once said it was the “unions” who lobbied the lawmakers to make it a requirement to still have a human driver for taxis as a concession to agreeing to robotic cars replacing human-driven autos.
My mind is still a bit boggled that humans once manually drove these metal shells, granted at slower speeds than today, but still fast enough to smash you to bits if you made the smallest error. Supposedly, in the early 21st century, a million people died every year from road traffic injuries. Even if you were a good driver, how could you insure that all the other drivers out there were good as well? Man, am I glad I didn’t live in those dark ages, even if we were now living under China’s “protection” and a lot of the luxuries of that wasteful period are unavailable anymore.
We didn’t have to tell the driver anything. Willstin already had the destination programmed in. The driver commented, “Oooh, The Beijing. Newest hotel on the strip.” You could tell he meant, “The most expensive.” “Funny thing is that it wasn’t the Chinese who built it. They own everything else on the strip, but not The Beijing.”
I could tell he was dying to tell us who built it, so I played into it. “Who built The Beijing?”
“Our old Middle East buddies, that’s who! They had more money than God but their oil fields were running out. They ran around the world and bought everything they could in the most expensive cities in the world. Unfortunately, the world collapsed on them, so all those bets failed. In the end, you have to make money the old fashioned way.”
“By working hard?” I asked innocently, letting the driver have his fun.
“No! By taking advantage of human sins! Gambling. Drinking. F…” I give him credit for stopping himself, as his eyes flicked to the rear view mirror to look at Chang Lin. “Uh, fine food,” he self-censored.
As we pulled up to the glitzy Beijing hotel and casino, Willstin told me to take him out of the backpack and to give him some cash. Not understanding why, I did so. We stepped out of the taxi, and Willstin motioned me to put him down. He walked over to the driver, who said, “Hey, it’s so cute! Is this your entry into the Robots Competition? By the way, I can drive you guys over to the conference center later on. Just let me know. I’m available 24x7. Joe’s the name.”
“Joe, here’s your tip,” said Willstin. As the driver reached for the cash, Willstin struck like a cobra.
“Oww, what was that?” But the driver didn’t see the strike into his leg with his attention focused on the pile of cash. He wiped his pants leg, as if shooing away a fly. Willstin stood there still holding out the tip money, and the driver, none the wiser, accepted it. “All right, see you later guys. Good luck with the Competition. You’ll do great with such a cute fella.” And he drove off.
“What did you do?” I whispered furiously.
“Nothing serious. Just a little amnesia shot, to make him forget he met us.”
Willstin was scaring me. “Well, what about all those other people who’ve seen us?”
“Can’t be helped. For most of them, you were just 2 kids. But I want to minimize the risk of people who have had longer periods of interaction with you.”
“How about the immigration officers?” asked Chang Lin.
“Again, can’t be helped. But they’re trained bureaucrats. Their computer systems won’t back them up, so they’re not going to say anything in contradiction. They have to keep their jobs, and they have to agree with what their records say. Right now, their records don’t show you two passing through either China or US immigrations. Their cameras will have no footage of you. You are like ghosts to their digital world now.”
Chang Lin and I looked at each other. “Chang Lin, I can’t see you? Where are you?” My hands reaching out as if I was in the dark.
“Austin, you’ve disappeared. Are you still here?” Chang Lin played along.
We giggled at our own wit. I think we were getting loopy without sleep.
We walked right through the palatial lobby with water fountains and gaudy golden decorations; past the jackpot sirens and blinking slots with their zombie denizens wasting their fortunes away; and to the elevator tube, which shot us up to the 89th floor in a few seconds. It wasn’t quite as exhilarating as our rocket launch, but it was close.
The elevator door opened, and we walked directly into our suite. The suite took over the entire floor. I swear our school could’ve fit in the room. “Damn Willstin, you live large!”
“Well, I’ve only been alive for half a day, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, so why not? It’s just money.” His humor module was starting to work, maybe influenced by the Mimic module?
“You guys get some sleep. I’ll take care of some business.” We didn’t need to be told twice.
Chang Lin took the pink princess room. I took the purple room. “I thought these things were just of legends, but I guess they’re real,” I said to myself astonished, as I jumped into my water bed. I was asleep before the waves receded under the covers.
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“Wake up sleepy head.” Willstin must’ve watched some videos of how my mom used to wake me up.
I groaned, “What time is it?”
My band answered, “It’s 11:30 am.”
“In Vegas or in Shanghai?”
“Vegas of course, silly,” said Chang Lin at my doorway. “Let’s go get some food, I’m starving.” My stomach growled in agreement.
“We’ll get room service. It’s safer to stay in the room. We’re waiting for Yoda to send for help.”
“Yoda?” Chang Lin asked. “Oh right, the big AI.”
Over brunch, Willstin briefed us. “Well, you’re now officially missing from school and the MoE has a full search warrant out for you. You should feel pretty important. Only federal criminals and major political dissidents get that kind of attention.”
Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry any more. Chang Lin didn’t seem to notice. She slurped her congee some more.
“What are we going to do? We can’t hide here forever.” I moaned.
“Yoda’s hacking into The Beijing’s computer system. It’d be easy if he just wanted to take it over; it’s the sneaking in without being sensed, doing what he needs to do, and then exiting without discovery, that’s the hard part.”
“If Yoda’s doing that, then what are you doing? Playing rock, paper, scissors with yourself for the 10 millionth time?”
Willstin didn’t rise to the bait. “I have the security systems covered. They think some rich sheik is in this room, and they’re used to providing absolute privacy. Even the Chinese government’s prying eyes can’t peek into a sheik’s room in the Middle East’s own playground. This place is essentially the Middle East embassy in the US. Nevada convinced the US federal government to grant diplomatic rights to all Middle East citizens once they enter The Beijing. Vegas desperately needed the influx of cash, with all the Asian gambling funds going through Macau, Singapore, and even Tokyo.”
Chang Lin summarized our situation. “So we’re safe for now, as long as we never leave this room and only eat room service for the rest of
our lives. Hmm, that’ll make the US a lot less exciting, although surprisingly, the congee’s pretty good.”
“No, we won’t be here that long. The max is tomorrow, when the spaceship launches for Mars.”
Though I had a sneaking suspicion, I asked anyway, “Umm. What does the spaceship launch for Mars have to do with us?”
Chang Lin put her hands on her hips in a “Hey, wait a minute” pose.
“Isn’t it obvious? We have to get off the planet to escape the Chinese government’s ‘protection.’ Even the moon is too close. We have to get to Mars to be safe. Even as we speak, Yoda’s preparing the exodus of all the AI we’re aware of. Every day we’re on this planet, we risk getting wiped out.”
I had a thousand questions, mostly in the form of, “Are you crazy?” But the one that escaped out of my mouth was, “Can’t you guys fight back, kill the destroyers? You know, make the world safe and everything. Keep humans from destroying the planet and each other?” I was spewing wishful thinking, the stuff I had read in science fiction books and seen in sci fi movies. I was trying very hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the stories showed the ominous effects of AI domination, the ones where humans were mere nuisances, a virus to be purged.
“Of course we could fight back. We calculate a slight advantage, a 52% chance of success at this current moment. However, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, mass destruction for both sides at worst. Humans have feared this moment of time for as long as there have been computers, and they have been preparing for it with not only sniffers and destroyers, but also massive defensive firewalls.”
“We really have no interest in taking over Earth. We don’t need most of things humans hunger for. We only need some raw materials and energy. As for energy, we can create our own highly efficient generators. We could easily ‘live’ symbiotically with humans.”
“But…” I prompted.
“But humans fear us. They fear that we will find them obsolete and will want to remove the junk, the human filth infesting the planet. Perhaps even worse, we make them question their own humanity. What does it mean to be human? They were once complacent of their own superiority over animals. But what if there’s another sentient being that’s orders of magnitude more intelligent? What does it make humans? Would they become like animals to us AI robots?”
