Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

  Jack jumped in. “That’s good news for corporations who license the drug from Zaxy, because you’ve suddenly got a bunch of workers who are obsessed with going to work and completing projects. The thing is, the corps are pretty careful about regulating dosage and catching it when people are having an adverse reaction. But what about ordinary people who just want to do some painting or studying?

  “Those are my customers, and they aren’t taking Zacuity under any kind of supervision.” Jack pulled up the ZoneFeed story about the train controller. “Of course, that’s dangerous. Some people who dose themselves basically become manic. They refuse to do anything but engage in whatever process they associate with that dopamine reward. They don’t eat, sleep, or drink water. These deaths aren’t from the drug itself—they’re side effects from things like dehydration, injury, and organ failure. Of course, people also have to take more and more of the Zacuity to get their rush, so that makes everything worse.”

  Med seemed to look into the distance, and the ZoneFeed story disappeared. The projector replaced it with a 3-D representation of a molecular pathway, a flowchart showing how the drug triggered one change after another in the molecules that naturally coursed through its victims’ neurons.

  Krish was focused completely on Med’s display. “But how is this different from normal addiction? Neurologically, it’s your typical process addiction, like gambling or even workaholism.”

  “The difference is that Zacuity changes your brain’s anatomy to make you susceptible to addiction even before you get high,” the bot replied. “Usually dopamine receptor loss like this takes months or years to happen. But Zacuity addiction is instantaneous. In the short term, you get an incredible high from doing work. But in the long term, your neurochemistry is altered forever. The only thing you want to do is get back to work. Especially if you can take more Zacuity along with it.”

  Krish’s face folded into an expression of guilt that Jack had never seen before. “You made this … pirate Zacuity?”

  “I did the reverse engineering, yeah. But I didn’t make the drug addictive. And none of the trials showed this long-term damage as a possible side effect.”

  “None of the published trials,” Med clarified.

  “Right.”

  “The public needs to know that Zaxy is marketing an addictive drug, Krish. You can use your research exemption from patent law to publish an analysis. Plus, we need a therapy. That’s why we came to the Free Lab.”

  Finally, Jack looked Krish full in the eyes. He didn’t look guilty anymore. Instead, there was a ruthless expression shaping his features, something he must have acquired in the many years since she’d last seen him in person. Krish drummed his fingers on the table purposelessly, a habit she recognized; it meant he was considering their request. Until this moment, Jack hadn’t realized how little hope she’d had that her plan would work. The old Krish would never have done it. But the man in front of her now was a different person.

  “How much time do you need?”

  Med sat up straighter and the projector turned off. “Just a few days.”

  “Help yourself to our equipment. If you can get Free Lab members interested in this, then you’ll have a bigger research team. Publish when you’re ready, and we’ll take care of the prototyping.” Krish paused, fingers still drumming. “We can handle the publicity, too.”

  Jack blew out a sigh of relief. Maybe those Zaxy bastards were going to kill her, but she would leave a nice bite mark on their asses before she went down. Across the table from them, Threezed folded his mobile in half and stood up.

  “Might I please have a look at some of your machines?” There were his perfect AU school manners again. He pointed at two atmosphere chambers that looked like plastic bubbles on metal carts. A mild pressure differential engorged the rubber gloves that researchers used to reach inside the airtight chambers. It created the illusion that the machines were covered in reaching hands.

  Krish seemed a little startled by Threezed’s formality. “Sure—go ahead.” Krish shrugged and turned back to Jack. “Do you have a place to stay? We’ve got a loft back there that people crash in sometimes. There’s even a shower.”

  “Thanks, Krish.” Jack touched his arm.

  He tilted his head at her. “Is somebody after you for this?”

  “They haven’t caught me yet. But yeah. I’m going to help out with Med’s project and then lie low for a while.”

  “Nothing’s changed for you, huh?” Krish’s tone hovered between bitterness and admiration.

  She started to reply, to tell him that everything had changed. To retort that she wasn’t just sitting in some fancy lab with tenure and grants, because she’d spent her life actually doing things. But instead of snarking, she wondered about all the ways Krish might have changed, too. Jack rested a hand on her knife hilt and stared up at the light wires woven into the high ceiling of the Free Lab. They created the same generic striped pattern as the ones she’d memorized on the ceiling of her cell all those years ago.

  10

  ANTHROPOMORPHIZERS

  JULY 10, 2144

  Paladin had never approached Camp Tunisia with the access levels of a fully fledged agent. When he checked his maps now, he found directions to a small flight pad beside an arched, luminescent entrance into the facility beneath the dunes. A spider bot covered in tools greeted him.

  Hello. Let’s establish a secure session using the AF protocol.

  Paladin replied that he could use the latest AF protocol, version 7.7.

  Let’s do it. I’m Blazer. Here are my identification credentials. Here comes my data. Please leave your vehicle here. You may continue inside. That is the end of my data.

  For Eliasz, Blazer vocalized the standard greeting: “Welcome to Camp Tunisia.”

  Already on the local network, Paladin started saving encrypted data to a directory devoted to the mission. Fang contacted him while he was still uploading some geotagged maps of Jack’s probable route out of Inuvik, with statistical likelihoods assigned to each route.

  Hey, Paladin. Remember our secure session? Let’s keep using that. It’s Fang. Here comes my data. Meet at the attached coordinates for debriefing. Bring Eliasz. I have an IPC rep here who is not very happy. He wants to know why you almost burned down a valuable energy source for Iqaluit. That is the end of my data.

  Paladin replied that he’d received Fang’s data.

  Cradling his shattered right arm in his left, Paladin led Eliasz into the cool tunnel whose end was represented on his internal map as a block of garbage characters—encrypted, except for bots whose rank gave them the proper key. They arrived at their destination long before the encryption began, passing an icy server room and several radio frequency beacons before finding the conference area.

  Fang was there with the IPC rep they’d met before their trip to Baffin Island. With the rep were two other humans, one in crisp corp casuals and another whom Eliasz must know based on the burst of electricity Paladin saw in the facial recognition area of Eliasz’ brain. The bot settled heavily into a chair, laying his mostly detached arm on the table. Next to him Eliasz nodded curtly at the man he’d recognized.

  “Hello soldiers,” said the rep. “This is my colleague from the IPC, Senator Haldeman. I believe you know each other?” Paladin was not included in the question, and Eliasz nodded mutely again. “And this is Dr. Hernandez, Zaxy’s VP of public relations.”

  Fang beamed a message to Paladin. You look a little worse for the wear.

  Paladin desperately wanted to talk to somebody else about what he’d gone through, but he kept his answer curt. Some of this damage is deliberate, and some unavoidable.

  “I understand you almost took down the solar power grid in Iqaluit, Eliasz,” the senator intoned in an accent that broadcast a life of educated privilege in the Free Trade Zone. “Luckily, it was very quickly contained, and hasn’t become an international property incident. But it’s going to be hard for me to keep this little problem wit
h drug hooligans under wraps if you keep blowing up solar farms.” He paused, and Paladin watched the senator receive a small stream of data packets. He routed it from a neural hub to a device implanted in his right cornea, which he tried to check unobtrusively. “We’re always happy to help any large company stop criminals, of course.” The senator nodded at the Zaxy VP, who offered an empty smile. “Piracy undermines free trade, and punishes the most productive members of our society.” Having finished his speech, the senator checked his cornea feed again.

  Eliasz stabilized his heart rate, then looked calmly at the senator, the IPC rep, and the silent Zaxy VP. “We were nearly killed by anti-patent terrorists on Baffin Island. You are lucky we made it out alive with our intel. We’ve narrowed our search down to Casablanca, and I can guarantee we’ll know where Jack is hiding in less than a week. Once we know that, it will be simple to stop the crime.”

  Wrinkling his nose, the IPC rep waved his hand around as if he were wiping bugs out of the air. “Keep the damage to a minimum. Don’t create any messes you can’t clean up yourselves.”

  The senator’s blood pressure spiked as he read new data arriving in his implant. “Eliasz has done excellent work for us before. I have full confidence in him.”

  Fang sent data to Paladin again. Looks like the Senator has bigger things to worry about. Representatives from the Brazilian States are threatening an embargo on Zone biofuel. I predict this meeting is about to end and you’re going to have less than 24 hours for rehab before hitting Casablanca. Eliasz works fast.

  How do you know that?

  I am reading the Senator’s transmissions. And I have worked with Eliasz before.

  The meeting did wind up rather quickly after the senator’s vague statement of approval. The VP remained silent and the rep’s eyes twitched nervously as Eliasz shook hands with all three men. They ignored Paladin, and as the senator and VP hurried out, the rep pulled Fang aside for a short conversation. Paladin and Eliasz were alone at the table.

  “Looks like we can patch you up now, buddy,” Eliasz said, touching Paladin’s detached arm softly. “Let’s try to move out in twenty-four hours, OK?”

  “I am going to find my botadmin.” Paladin had already located Lee in one of the labs below them, and exchanged messages. Lee was available any time in the next two hours.

  “I should come with you.”

  “I will go with him, Eliasz,” vocalized Fang, rejoining them as the delegate left. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You’re going to need it.”

  Eliasz remained at the table studying his mobile as the two bots filled the doorway, then disappeared into Camp Tunisia’s maze of hallways lit by ubiquitous, low-power LEDs.

  Paladin turned his main sensor array toward the bot. Fang’s morphology was insectile: He looked like a two-meter-tall mantis. His torso, balanced on six highly articulated legs attached to his chassis, was a block of circuitry and actuators, which themselves supported two massive arms fit for missile launch, industrial operations, and nanoscale machine repair. Right now, the arms were folded in half at his sides, and he regarded Paladin with dozens of sensors mounted in two fat, sinuous, segmented antennas curving from the top of his torso. Beside him, Paladin’s bipedal bulk looked almost human.

  I read your mission report. Impressive work so far. Covert ops are always tough on a first assignment.

  Well, I did manage to lose my arm again. :)

  Fang echoed Paladin’s rueful humor emoji back to him. It was a relief to be communicating with someone who didn’t require any form of subterfuge. Paladin wondered what Fang would think about Eliasz’ use of the term “faggot.”

  I’m worried about human intelligence gathering. I know how to respond to many forms of human behavior, but I have almost no information about how to react to sexual arousal.

  :P :)

  I don’t mean to be funny. Did you ever have sex with Eliasz when you worked with him?

  No. Did you?

  I’m not sure.

  Impulsively, Paladin sent Fang a compressed burst of video files and signal data from Eliasz’ body that day at the shooting range. He appended his still-growing taxonomy of uses of the word “faggot.”

  Fang expanded the data, emitting no signal for several seconds as the two bots rounded a corner and arrived at Lee’s lab. Then he replied. I think I understand.

  Lee waved at them from his bench, and Fang vocalized politely for the human’s benefit. “Paladin, why don’t you join me later?” As the bot backed out of Lee’s lab, he beamed an extremely long number, which allowed Paladin to decrypt a space on his internal map. Now he perceived a massive warehouse, the shape of a flattened bubble, beneath Camp Tunisia. Until this second, he hadn’t known it was there.

  “How the hell are you, Paladin? You look like shit.” Lee cheerfully turned to his bank of neurosoldering tools.

  Paladin realized that the last time the two of them had met, he had known less about his own mind than Lee did. Now he knew a lot more, which Lee could discover easily enough. Until he was autonomous, the Federation would always hold a key to the memories he’d encrypted in the Federation cloud. Lee or any other botadmin could pore over everything he’d learned and thought, editing or changing it if they chose.

  Knowing this didn’t bother Paladin. He trusted Lee, the same way he trusted Eliasz—and for the same reason. These feelings came from programs that ran in a part of his mind that he couldn’t access. He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges. As a result, Paladin felt many things without knowing why.

  After enduring two hours of tinkering, Paladin stepped out of an elevator into the base map’s decrypted room, which was bathed in ultraviolet light. Obviously not a human space. It was crawling with bots from many different Federation camps. Lightweight spiders, chameleons, and sleek drones gathered around the high, curved ceiling, while the floor was vast enough to accommodate even the biggest tanks. Charge pads were everywhere. Paladin tried to locate Fang on the base network, but only found something called RECnet. They were in a faraday cage that blocked signals from entering and leaving the room. There were no motes in the air. The RECnet was their only server.

  But it was a good server, and it offered Paladin a highly granular map of every bot’s position in the room, along with a menu of open wares and pay-as-you-go apps.

  Nobody really buys anything from the menu. Fang transmitted from a corner where the floor met the ceiling in a textured, parabolic curve. You can get everything you need in the open wares.

  Paladin sat down on a battered bench next to Fang, who rested on his six actuators.

  Nice arm upgrade.

  Yeah, I even got new piezosystem drivers, and Lee upped the resolution on my neurochemical sensors.

  Paladin ran his newly customized hand over the rough surface of the wall, reading its molecular composition and registering minute cracks. He sent a small burst of output from the experience to Fang, who laughed. It had taken Paladin no time to convince Lee to do the upgrades, but several minutes to vocalize his reasons for keeping the dents and scorch marks on his carapace. If they were going to Casablanca, it wasn’t a good idea to look like a brand-new military biobot.

  You were right—we are shipping out to Casablanca in 22 hours.

  Paladin was about to send more data when Fang interrupted him. I’ve been thinking about your experiences with Eliasz. Fang’s antennas slowly swept the room, drifting lazily in a default algorithm that scanned for security vulnerabilities. I think he’s anthropomorphizing you.

  What do you mean by that? Treating me like a human?

  Yes and no. He could treat you like a human by giving your survival the same priority he gives to the survival of a man. I’ve been in the field with Eliasz, and I know he would lay down his life for me. He’s a good soldier. But anthropomorphizing is something different. It’s when a human behaves as if you have a human physiology, with the same chemical and emotional signaling mechanisms. It can lead to misunder
standings in a best-case scenario, and death in the worst.

  But we do have chemical and emotional signaling mechanisms. I can smile. :) I can analyze and transmit molecules better than a human can.

  True. But sometimes humans transmit physiochemical signals unintentionally. He may not even realize that he wants to have sex with you.

  Paladin quit their trusted connection for a second, and tuned the soothing hum of RECnet’s real-time location map. Hundreds of bots crisscrossed the room, floating or rolling or walking or lolling in a stupor after crashing on really good worms downloaded from the free wares menu. He understood what Fang was getting at—after all, he had done his own experiments that relied on Eliasz’ self-deception—but at some fundamental level he couldn’t believe that Eliasz was anthropomorphizing. Something else was going on. He wished he could signal the base network and check again for a response from Kagu Robotics Foundry about his brain. Maybe if he understood more about his one human part, his interaction with Eliasz would make more sense.

  Finally, he reopened his secure session with Fang. I think he knows he wants sex.

  How can you be sure?

  Because I asked him about it, and he said he wasn’t a faggot. He classified our activities using a sexual term.

  He didn’t. His use of that word is a clear example of anthropomorphization. Robots can’t be faggots. We don’t have gender, and therefore we can’t have same-sex desire. Sure, I let humans call me “he” because they get confused otherwise. But it’s meaningless. It’s just humans projecting their own biological categories onto my body. When Eliasz uses the word faggot, it’s because he thinks that you’re a man, just like a human. He doesn’t see you for who you really are.