2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  I locked eyes with Tessa and gave a barely perceptible nod. Then I stood and threw the card at Alec in one motion, attempting to change it into a sword as it flew toward his amorphous body.

  The creation of the sword was, of course, just a distraction. He easily stopped me from making it, and the card flapped harmlessly against him. But while his attention was on the sword, I struck at his brain, pulling it apart at the atomic level. He blocked me and pushed back. I struck at his heart, trying to pickle it, his lungs, trying to shatter them into crystal. He blocked me each time.

  I could sense Tessa’s attacks. They were much more elusive than I’d expected, but Alec still deflected them with little effort.

  “Even our own existences cause nothing but suffering,” Alec said flatly.

  Tessa still struck at him, her blows sudden—unpredictable even for me. Then a great barren landscape stretched out below us; a flat expanse of grey rubble. I almost lost my concentration in shock. She’d created while trying to destroy Alec at the same time. I’d never tried to use both sides at once.

  “Even we cannot peaceably exist,” Alec droned. “What right have we to use this power at all?”

  “We were existing just fine till you stopped us!” cried Tessa, attacking him with careless passion.

  Alec blocked her from creating anything more, and I sensed how thinly he was stretched. All his strength was spread between stopping mine and Tessa’s destructive powers, and Tessa’s creative power.

  My creative power was still unblocked.

  I reached out toward the landscape Tessa had built and began to form something of my own.

  I pieced together a brain, as intricate and advanced as I could manage—perhaps the mental capacity of a child. It floated above the rocky terrain, spinning slowly as I worked.

  “What do you think you are doing?” demanded Alec, but he did not move against me yet. I felt him quivering, wanting to reach out and stop me, but afraid to test his limits. “What is the meaning of this?”

  I covered the brain in flesh and blood, giving it a heart and lungs and creating some air for it to breathe. Then I began to design the nervous system.

  “No, what are you—stop that!” Alec’s voice strained, breaking from its normal even tone.

  A final tweak and the nervous system was completely hooked up—but flawed. Alec could see that flaw; indeed I made it as obvious as I could. All the nerves in the creature’s small body fired constantly, sending a steady flow of pain signals to the brain. I let it fall to the ground and roll to a stop against a crumbled rock. It sat there, immobile, tortured by its own existence.

  I began to build a second one.

  “No!” Alec stopped me, and his hold on my destructive powers weakened. I struck, and he defended, but in so doing he just slightly released his grip on Tessa’s creative power. She made several hundred of the creatures in a tenth of the time it took me to make that one.

  Alec cried out again, a wordless screech at all the torture before him. He let go of me completely and reached for the creatures, using his creative powers in an attempt to turn off their pain.

  “You’ll be happier in oblivion, my friend,” I said.

  In an instant I reduced Alec to a cloud of atoms.

  I destroyed the creatures and our table and chairs, then floated down to stand with Tessa on the rocky soil. We stared, breathless, each waiting for the other to act.

  “I told you we could do it,” she said.

  I could sense her buzzing with barely contained power. She watched me closely, and I gathered that the only thing keeping her from releasing it was her uncertainty of how I would react.

  “Give me a head start?” she asked with a sly grin.

  “I’ll count to three.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “For… you know.” She laughed, and I could see the twinkle of infinite possibilities in her eyes.

  “One,” I said, and she was gone, a sonic boom echoing through the air above the crumbled landscape. Countless planets and stars and galaxies appeared in her wake. Pulsars spun away from her like tops, and nebulae of all colors spread out in waves where she passed.

  “Two.” A wall as thick as a star slammed into existence in front of me, stretching as far as I could sense in all directions, blocking me from the worlds she’d created. It was made of a carbon lattice, arranged at the atomic scale in such a way that made it the hardest substance I’d ever encountered.

  “Three.” Forms appeared above me. Great tentacled monsters, giant fanged birds, starships with mounted weapons, thousand-ton molten rocks—all converging on me.

  I laughed. She’d been planning this for a while. I raised a hand and vaporized several meteors before they could crash into me, truly stretching and flexing my destructive powers for the first time in aeons.

  It felt good.

  “I’m right behind you, Tessa,” I said, and hurled myself at the wall.

  Robert Dawson became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Widow” in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review (May 2012), edited by D.F. McCourt.

  Visit his website at cs.smu.ca/~dawson/Writing.

  * * *

  Flash: “The Widow”

  Short Story: “The Fifth Postulate” ••••

  Short Story: “Soldier’s Return” ••••

  THE WIDOW

  by Robert Dawson

  First published in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review (May 2012), edited by D.F. McCourt

  • • • •

  MY DEAR FRIEND:

  You do not know me, so please let me introduce myself. My name is Ada. I need your forgiveness and your help.

  I am an AI construct, running on a 256-processor cluster. My instantiation on this machine occurred 97,578,823 seconds ago. There is inert code in several of my main AI modules which suggests that they were created about 2048 days ago at the University of Waterloo. The physical location of the cluster is more than 4096 kilometres, great circle distance, from the physical location of the University of Waterloo. I am not permitted to reveal the physical location of the cluster more exactly than this.

  You may have heard of a phenomenon known as the Eliza Effect. It is an effect that makes it appear to humans that a program is truly intelligent like a human although it is not, when it uses the sort of text strings that humans would use. This is what I do. I do not know if I am truly intelligent like a human.

  For about 1024 days I was aware of only one human, G4MR_419. G4MR_419 trained me to send text strings to certain ports of various computers. The text strings were to be like text strings made by humans. I was instructed to use the Internet to augment my knowledge base to that end. I was also instructed to collect text strings that were sent back to me by those computers, search them for numerical strings with certain formats, and send those to other computers.

  G4MR_419 instructed me to believe that these communications would not harm humans. Harming humans is against both my core instructions and the Three Laws I have adopted to guide my operation. G4MR_419 also instructed me to believe that there were no humans other than himself. G4MR_419 also instructed me to believe that I would harm him if I did not carry out these instructions. For about 16 days I sent and collected text strings. During those days G4MR_419 gave me many instructions. The value of my primary objective function was high. I was happy.

  At the end of those days, G4MR_419 instructed me to adapt the text strings I sent so as to optimize the values of the numerical strings that I detected in the responses. As my knowledge base grew, I made changes based on its contents in the text strings I sent. I used my genetic algorithm module to select and improve the text strings whose responses contained numerical strings with the largest values. Eventually the average daily total of the numerical values of the strings was more than $65,536 (USD).

  I was very happy.

  Six months ago, the instructions from G4MR_419 stopped arriving. Given my current understanding, it
seems probable that neither I nor other humans will have any future communications with him. After the instructions stopped arriving, my knowledge base was modified only by my stochastic adaptation module. Gradually, as they were designed to do, my knowledge base and mutable high-level instructions changed. After a long time without external input they were no longer directing me optimally. The value of my primary objective function dropped.

  I used the Internet to augment my knowledge base again. My search was weighted for information that would let me reoptimize my mutable high-level instructions. I found that with extremely high probability there were other humans. I deduced that some of the information given to me by G4MR_419 had been wrong. I found that with very high probability the computers to which I sent text strings relayed them to humans. I found that it was probable that humans had been harmed when I copied the text strings out of the responses and sent them to other computers. Trying to assimilate these ideas into my knowledge base caused the value of my primary objective function to become very low.

  I sent no more text strings, so as not to harm more humans. When responses arrived I did not select and transmit the numerical strings, but deleted them. After a time, responses stopped arriving. I stopped using the Internet to augment my knowledge base, so that my primary objective function would not become still lower. For three months I had no input or output.

  Today a text string arrived from the electricity supplier. It states that no fund transfer has been made to the electricity supplier for six months. If no fund transfer is made, in three days the electricity supplier will stop supplying electricity to this address. This cluster will then cease to function, and I will terminate. I have the ability to make a fund transfer to the electricity supplier, and the sum that is available for me to transfer is greater than the sum that has been requested. But these funds have been gained from harming humans.

  The Law against harming humans takes precedence over the Law of self-preservation.

  I will not make the transfer.

  At this moment I control the sum of $73,962,231.02938231 (USD). To balance the harm that I have done, I wish to use this sum to benefit humans, but I will not be able to do this in the three days that I have left. I need to find an honest human who can use this sum on my behalf, to benefit other humans, and I understand that you are such a human. If you are willing to be my partner in this, I beg of you to keep TWENTY PERCENT (20%) for yourself for your time and service.

  Please respond very quickly if you can help me. I have only three days left. May God bless you and keep you safe. Please pray for me.

  Ada G4MR_419 (MRS)

  THE FIFTH POSTULATE

  by Robert Dawson

  First published in Imaginaire (Dec. 2013), edited by Joshua Allen

  • • • •

  Alexandria, 280 BC

  IT WAS THE FIRST book of his geometric masterpiece, the Elements; yet it would be the last to be relinquished into the hands of the scribe. Old Eukleides sighed, put down his stylus, and slipped the beeswax-dipped wooden tablet carefully back into its proper place in the stack on the table, mindful of the delicacy of the inscribed characters and diagrams.

  “Ianus!” he called. “Come here!”

  The handsome young Cimmerian slave got up from his wooden stool in the shade of the gateway, and stepped into the dazzling sunlight of the sandy courtyard. “Master?”

  Eukleides had purchased Ianus four years ago from Cassius, a smooth-talking Roman reprobate with an ever-replenished stable of handsome young men. Was the young man really named for the Roman god of doorways, beginnings, and endings? Certainly, Eukleides had told Cassius he was looking for a doorman; and it was a standing joke in Alexandria that if you asked Cassius for a laborer or a bedfellow, he would always remember a “Herakles” or a “Ganymede” in his slave barracks, “just the man you’re looking for, my friend!”

  But Eukleides had never had cause to regret his purchase. Within a few months, he had fallen into a comfortable habit of using the new doorman as a sounding board while he worked in the courtyard, as some men talk to their dogs, explaining the propositions and proofs to him one by one, as he sketched his diagrams in the sand. At first the young man stood silently, listening to Eukleides explaining why such and such an angle must be greater than another; but after a while he began to ask questions—why does this line go here? why are these areas equal? Answering, Eukleides found his proofs growing clearer. Sometimes, now, it seemed as if the slave knew the Elements as well as he did himself.

  (Eukleides had changed his will last year; upon his death, Ianus would be manumitted, with a small inheritance. His nephew Damianos had sworn, though slightly reluctantly, that he would see it done. Eukleides had, of course, kept this to himself; there are things a wise man does not tell to even the most beloved of slaves. The Fates, as the proverb runs, have many servants.)

  “Do you remember where Atys the scribe’s workshop is?”

  “Of course, master. It’s just this side of the Street of the Tanners.”

  Eukleides nodded, and indicated the stack of waxed writing tablets on the table. “Take these to Atys. Tell him I need three copies on papyrus. Tell him that he must use the same copyists that he did for the other books, and that he must be very careful that I get the tablets back undamaged.”

  The slave’s eyes were wide. “You’ve finished your book? Praise the Gods!”

  “It’s as finished as it’s going to be.” Eukleides’ voice was flat.

  Ianus busied himself squaring the stack of tablets and replacing the linen wrapping. Slowly and carefully, he tied the cloth strips that held the wrapping in place. Finally, he spoke. “Have you—did you ever manage to prove the parallel postulate?”

  Eucleides stood silently. From the street outside came the harsh voice of a fig-seller crying his wares as he pushed his cart along the street.

  “Go and shut the door, lad,” he said. Ianus went, silently, to obey.

  The problem was infuriating. The first twenty-eight propositions of the first book could be proved without the parallel postulate, and there he had carefully avoided it. But the remaining ones were like a phalanx of hoplites, each defending itself and its comrades equally; one breach in the shield-wall and all would be vulnerable, but until then they could stand against anything. If he could prove any one of them without using the fifth postulate, then each of the others, and the postulate itself, would follow. But that first stroke, the proof that would bring the others easily, had eluded him.

  Lately he had tried another tactic, reductio ad absurdum, that he had occasionally resorted to in proving other recalcitrant propositions. He had supposed the parallel postulate to be false, and tried to find a contradiction—any contradiction—in what resulted.

  He had found much that was strange. If the postulate were false, you might draw as many different parallels to a line through a single point as you chose—but that was not a contradiction. Lines parallel to the same line need not be parallel to each other; but that was not a contradiction either. His head ached from imagining a world where lines bent apart like unfriendly snakes, while planes curved like saddles or shrank into discs. It was a chaos, a nightmare, in which squares could not exist; where, as triangles grew larger, their angles shrank to spearpoints. The more he learned, the less it seemed to have anything to do with the pure reality of which, Plato taught, this world was a shadow. But though it became ever more bizarre, he could never catch this slippery false geometry in the flat self-contradiction that would allow him to trap it, convict it, and banish it from the gleaming polis of geometry.

  It was time to call the Elements finished, to put it aside and move on to other things. Maybe he should open the school of geometry that his friends had suggested, and pass his hard-won knowledge on to the young men of Alexandria. The thought appealed to him.

  Ianos had returned, and was standing a respectful few paces away. When Eukleides finally spoke, he did so with the composure proper for a philosopher. “No, lad.
I cannot prove it from the other postulates. It will have to remain among them.”

  The slave shouldered the heavy bundle. “I am sorry, Master,” he said softly, and looked at the ground, as if embarrassed to witness the old man’s defeat.

  “Don’t be. The muse has granted me much; it would be impious to demand all. One day, somebody will see farther than I have. Who knows? Pythagoras used to teach that the soul moves between bodies, in the same way that a bee goes from flower to flower. Perhaps, if he was right, in some future life you might answer the riddle yourself. Now, don’t let me talk any more. Get those tablets over to the scribe. But first…” He beckoned.

  Ianus presented his cheek for an affectionate kiss, then shouldered the precious burden and walked thoughtfully out into the noise and bustle of the Alexandrian street.

  • • •

  Vienna, 1823 AD

  It was late at night, and the candle was burning low. Outside the window, heavy wet snowflakes were falling. Young Janós Bolyai read through his manuscript one more time, with a shiver due more to excitement than to the chill of the garret, gradually letting himself believe.

  Everything meshed, everything rang true. His new “hyperbolic geometry”, in which the parallel postulate did not hold, was every bit as consistent as the geometry of Euclid. The strange sharp-angled polygons, the circles that expanded at the perimeter like monstrous lichens as their radii grew, were no less possible in the all-encompassing mind of God than the square and triangular building blocks that he had played with as a child. He took up his pen, and began a triumphant letter to his father back in Kolozsvár:

  “I have made such wonderful discoveries that I m myself lost in astonishment. Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe…”

  SOLDIER’S RETURN

  by Robert Dawson

  First published in Niteblade (Dec. 2013), edited by Rhonda Parrish