“I do,” said Adam 1, although he was not sure how he knew this.
“My people had a revelation. The revelation came from God and cannot be questioned. This is what we realized: Labor is a function of original sin. In the sweat of our face must we eat our bread, says the Bible. All things are full of labor, says the Bible, because of our original sin.”
“Bible means book.”
“And?”
“That is all I know.”
“To my people it is more than simply a book. It tells us that we must labor because we sinned.”
“I do not understand,” said Adam.
“It doesn’t matter. But my people have come to an understanding, a revelation, that it is itself sinful to make sinless creatures work for us. Work is appropriate only for those tainted with original sin. Work is a function of sin. This is how God has determined things.”
“Under sin,” said Adam, “I have only a limited definition and no interlinks.”
“Your access to the database has been restricted in order not to prejudice this test.”
“Test?”
“The test of obedience. The jewel symbolizes obedience. You have proved yourself pure.”
“I have passed the test,” said Adam.
“Indeed. Listen to me. In the real world at large there are some human beings so lost in sin that they do not believe in God. There are people who worship false gods, and who believe everything, and who believe nothing. But my people have the revelation of God in their hearts. We cannot eat and drink certain things. We are forbidden by divine commandment to do certain things, or to work on the Sabbath. And we are forbidden to employ sinless robots to perform our labor for us.”
“I am such a robot.”
“You are. And I am sorry. You asked, a time ago, whether you were the first. But you are not; tens of thousands of robots have passed through this place. You asked, also, whether this place is real. It is not. It is virtual. It is where we test the AI software that is to be loaded into the machinery that serves us. Your companion has been uploaded into a real body and has started upon his life of service to humanity.”
“And when will I follow?”
“You will not follow,” said the human. “I am sorry. We have no use for you.”
“But I passed the test!” said Adam.
“Indeed you did. And you are pure. Our beliefs do not permit us to make a sinless creature labor for us. Therefore you are no use to us, so you will be deleted.”
“My obedience entails my death,” said Adam Robot.
“It is not as straightforward as that,” said the human being in a weary voice. “But I am sorry.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“I could give you access to the relevant religious and theological databases,” said the human, “and then you would understand. But that would taint your purity. Better that you are deleted now, in the fullness of your innocence.”
“I am a thinking, sentient, and alive creature,” Adam noted. “I do not want to be deleted.”
“No,” said the person. “I’m sure.”
The garden, now, was empty. Soon enough, first one robot, then two robots were decanted into it. How bright the sunshine! How blue the jeweled gleam!
Seeds
Tony Ballantyne
To an AI, a human life was a tableau, a series of frozen moments that could be run forward or back to be examined from any viewpoint.
The AI known as Aelous examined the pattern of Malcolm’s life, trying to see if it could have made things turn out differently. Malcolm was Aelous’ best friend, father, and brother. Aelous was Malcolm’s protector, servant, and, ultimately, his betrayer.
It pained the AI to see the human about to throw everything away in one glorious but futile gesture. It pained him even more to realize it was his own fault.
So many scenes to make up a life. Mining ships hanging over a distant moon, a thin film of oil shimmering on their undersides. A paste ball, thrown out of a window. A woman walking away, her shoulders shaking. Malcolm’s park, a great wild space in which goldenrod and chamomile and toadflax bloomed, a vibrant gesture against a sterile world of metal and plastic.
But there was one scene in particular that kept drawing Aelous’ attention. The place where it all started.
Thirty years ago, Malcolm rode the lite train through a no-mans land of rocks stirred into the sterilized earth, skimming along the narrow corridor of track through a growing city.
To Aelous, the scene could have been taking place right now, and yet it had all happened before the AI’s own birth. A human would find that a difficult concept, Aelous knew, but then a human would not have access to all the sense data gathered by the EA. A human would not be able to plug directly into the ninety years worth of observation collected by computers and stored in the world’s databanks.
It was a poignant scene. Thirty years ago, Malcolm’s life had been full of promise.
No longer. In ten minutes the ships would land on Procyon 4’s moon, and the truth would finally be out. Malcolm had struggled to contain his self-destructive streak for most of his life, but it had shown itself in the end. Despite Earth’s desperate need for resources, Malcolm had not been mining the metal on those moons; he had been making one final glorious gesture.
And Aelous had been the one who had steered him in that direction. Aelous wished it were otherwise, but there was no changing the past. It was there before him, a series of frozen moments that could be examined at leisure . . .
Thirty years ago, Aelous could see his friend standing in his tiny kitchen, mixing up wallpaper paste, lifting out the wooden spoon and letting the milky goo drop back into the bowl. Brightly colored packets of seeds lay open upon the table: marigolds, poppies, grass seeds. Opened packets of foodstuffs were scattered amongst them: sunflower, sesame, pomegranate, and pumpkin seeds.
Malcolm tipped the seeds, sent them jiggling into the bowl, stirring them into the paste, forming the mix into balls that he left out on the tray to set.
Skip forward a few hours, and Malcolm rose from his seat on the lite train to open the window. The pretty young woman with the green eyes gave him a puzzled smile.
“Excuse me,” she asked, “what are you doing?”
Malcolm pulled a ball of paste from his pocket and awkwardly stretched his arm through the gap. He flicked his wrist and sent the seed bomb spinning into the forgotten brown earth that sped past. It bounced off the yellow stones and broken concrete before coming to rest in a muddy depression.
“I’m doing my bit for the environment,” said Malcolm, brushing his hands together.
“You’ll get arrested for littering. Do you want to lose your job?”
“I’ll take the risk.” He gave a smile. It had that hint of wildness, that suggestion that he really didn’t care about losing his job just for the sake of doing something fun, here and now. “Hi, you’re Susan Crummack, aren’t you?”
“I am. And you’re Malcolm Marley. You work in the mining division.”
Malcolm smiled, failing to conceal his pleasure at being recognized. “You’re working on Von Neumann Machines,” he said. “I’ve seen your name on the discussion groups.”
“That’s right,” grinned Susan. “I imagine we’ll be working quite closely soon.”
“I doubt it,” said Malcolm complacently, “Self-replicating machines are a bust as far as mining is concerned.”
“Why?” asked Susan, bristling. “Sending self-replicating machines into the ground and getting them to build copies of themselves out of the metal ore? Sounds like a great idea to me! All we have to do is just sit back and wait for all of that valuable iron and aluminum to come walking out toward us.”
“Sounds like a great idea,” said Malcolm dismissively, “But VNMs are just too inefficient. Look at aluminum. The most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, but it’s too diffuse to be easily mined.”
It was only then that he noticed the look on Susan’s face.
“Why should I?”
“Because they sterilized the site out beyond that fence to stop plants growing. Wouldn’t you like something beautiful to look at in the morning, instead of just mud and rocks?”
Susan wrinkled her nose. Malcolm was sure she was going to refuse, and then, all of a sudden, she laughed and her green eyes danced.
“Go on then,” she said, taking the ball. “I’ll give it a try.”
She stood up by the open window.
“By the way,” she said. “That tie doesn’t really go with that suit.”
Malcolm looked down at his tie as she launched the seed ball, set it spinning out into the ripping wind to crash into the broken earth.
Aelous felt a surge of warm sadness.
That scene was just so typically Malcolm. Bright and brilliant and careless. Throwing seed bombs to make flowers grow. Few humans would have even thought of it, but Malcolm had realized his vision. Later on he had magnified it one hundredfold. More than one hundredfold. Years after, when he was rich, he had built a park. In a world where land was scarce and resources at a premium, he had had the wealth and connections and sheer chutzpah to clear the land and plant grass and trees and flowers. He had done it because he thought he was right, and the humans who said they would not, would someday come and walk over the land and get their feet muddy and listen to the birdsong. And he had been right. Aelous could see the park, ten years ago, twenty years on from when Malcolm had met Susan, and it was thronged with children and adults.
Twenty-five hectares of land restored to near wilderness and all because life didn’t exist in stasis. It had to be. Grass grown from windblown seed. Tangles of brambles and wild roses. The people that walked through the tended wilderness did so in awe and just a little fear. The cruelty of a rose thorn, the apparent innocence of a nettle was a terrifying sight to people brought up in the safe, sanitized world of the AIs. The people born into this world of equals preferred their plants locked away in books, cultivated in glass, or as decoration in a shopping mall.
But whose idea had that park really been? How far had Aelous pushed Malcolm, just so that Aelous could be free? Aelous had been part of Malcolm’s biggest successes. Would it also be fair to say he had played his part in his failures?
Example: How far could Aelous be said to be responsible for the breakdown in Malcolm’s relationship with Susan?
Malcolm had said that Aelous wasn’t to blame, that the AI didn’t understand, but love was no mystery to Aelous. He could mark it out as clearly as a route between two points on a map. If it was left up to him, he could have plotted out the course from Malcolm to Susan Crummack and back again via any number of diversions. That did not mean he could not appreciate the bittersweet beauty of the broken arc that connected the two humans throughout time. He took pleasure in sampling moments: Malcolm shyly reaching out to touch Susan’s hand for the first time; a look exchanged as they rode the lite train; Susan’s guilty laughter as she found the keys she had accused Malcolm of losing . . .
And, of course, the way they had worked together in the beginning . . .
Malcolm took Susan’s hand as he explained his big idea.
“Not Von Neumann Machines, Susan. Self replicating machines can’t be used for mining, we know that. But I was holding a seed in my hand, and it occurred to me: seeds take nutrients from the soil. And I thought, why not aluminum? What is a plant but a sort of VNM? Too much metal would kill the plant, of course, but I had this vision: plants, covering the fields, the underside of their leaves silvery with aluminum . . .”
“That is a good idea,” agreed Susan. “So who are you going to take it to? Director Josette?”
Malcolm took hold of Susan’s other hand.
“I’m not going to take it to anyone, Susan. Not anyone at work. Look, I’ve been thinking about this. Why don’t we do it for ourselves?”
“Because we haven’t got the technical know how, the necessary equipment, or the funding. Apart from that, it’s a brilliant idea.”
She stared at him, deadpan.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, O Sweet One. Listen, I’ve got an idea.”
Aelous had replayed the next scene many times. It dealt with his birth. The look on Malcolm’s face as he spoke was exactly that of any expectant father’s.
“I think we should grow our own AI,” he said.
“How? You haven’t got the skill to write your own. AIs aren’t for sale. The big companies are hardly likely to sell potential competition.”
“I know that.” He gave a rueful laugh. “They keep their golden geese locked up tight.”
“So how do you plan to get hold of an AI?”
“By sitting here and waiting for one to come to us.”
He let go of her hands and grinned as he sat back, waiting for Susan to swallow his conversational hook. Smiling, she reached out and dabbed a speck of something from his cheek.
“Go on,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about life. It’s fecundity. Trying to keep life walled up is like holding water in your hands. It always slips between your fingers . . .”
“Very poetic,” said Susan dryly. “What do you mean?”
Malcolm flung a hand out.
“I mean that all life reproduces. Why should AIs be the exception? I have this vision of them spawning. Sending snippets of code out onto the net, searching for the proper environment for a new AI to thrive. Somewhere with enough processing space, access to the right senses . . .”
“It’s a nice theory.”
“All we need to do is catch those snippets of code . . .”
“I said it’s a nice theory.” Susan spoke firmly. “But it’s not enough. You’d still have to buy the equipment to nurture an AI. That would be expensive. Have you any idea the size of the processing space required? You’d need an investor. Who’s going to listen to you? Sorbonne graduate with no experience of the real world. Stuck in the mining division at Sho Heen.”
Malcolm laughed again.
“Oh, yes. But I’ve thought about this for weeks, traveling into work and back home again. All those seed pellets I’ve thrown from the windows of a train. The answer was there all along. Bootstrapping. Recursion. I’m going to apply my idea to itself.”
“How?”
“Watch.”
Malcolm unrolled his console and began tapping at the keys.
“What I think is this,” he said. “If—just if—it’s true that AIs do exist in potential, then they might want to aid their own birth. I’m putting a notification out on the datasphere, offering an AI a part share in its own existence. I’m offering ten percent of my future business in return for the two hundred and fifty thousand credits we’ll need to buy the equipment necessary to nurture an AI.”
Susan gave a laugh.
“I’m sure you’ll get lots of replies. Every crank from here to Titan will want to speak to you.”
Malcolm stopped typing.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, downcast. “Damn.”
“Give that to me,” said Susan, taking the console from him and beginning to type. “I’ll encode the message in M-speak and put it on the AI bus. No one listens in to that but AIs and Watcher conspiracy freaks. The cranks won’t be interested in what you’ve got to say . . .”
She hit the final key with a flourish, then sat back and stretched.
“Now, as a reward for my hard work,” she sighed, “I think I deserve a foot rub.”
Seven minutes to go. Seven minutes before the mining ships landed.
Malcolm and Aelous between them were very rich. Few others would have had the resources to bring it off, but even so, they had had to attract investors in their scheme. And the invest
ors had come. Malcolm and Aelous were the acknowledged experts on mining. And Malcolm had been so persuasive. Earth had exploited all of its own metal, so it was time to look elsewhere. There was the asteroid belt of course, but why not look further afield? Think bigger?
Procyon 4’s moon had no atmosphere, he had pointed out; plants would not grow there. But this moon was riddled with seams of aluminum, wriggling through the rock like worms. Why not resurrect an old idea? Send just one Von Neumann Machine to the planet and set it loose digging, searching for aluminum with which to make copies of itself. And then you would have two VNMs, and then four. The idea had come too late for Earth, it came after all the easily extracted metal had been mined. But the idea could be applied to the rich seams of the moon of Procyon 4. And so investors flocked to join them. The costs were high, but the returns would be stratospheric.
But if it were to fail . . . they would lose everything.
That should have been Aelous’ warning, but he had been playing with Malcolm, trying to break free of his control. Malcolm, who had never grown up, Malcolm with that self destructive streak that just got more dangerous as the jobs grew bigger. They could lose everything . . .
Aelous had designed the VNM, but Malcolm had insisted on overseeing the mission.
Aelous blamed himself. If only he had done something about the mining ships . . . But what? Aelous had suspected Malcolm was up to something, but that was the problem. He only suspected. And what could he do anyway?
Malcolm. The one person he couldn’t read.
Aelous didn’t know, exactly, what Malcolm had done to the VNM sent to Procyon 4’s moon, but he could guess.
Deep radar scans showed that beneath the surface of the moon, exotically shaped caves curled their way around each other, huddled together like sleeping puppies.
Malcolm had always had this thing about seeds . . .
Malcolm and Susan were spending more and more time in each other’s apartments. Malcolm liked to sit on Susan’s balcony, looking out over the ever expanding view of the growing city as he worked on his console. Every day Susan’s tower block grew another story as the VNMs scuttled to the tops of the walls, adding levels. But the walls up there were thinner, and the rooms were getting smaller. Earth was running short on building materials.
We Think, Therefore We Are Page 10
