Visions of the Future

by Brin, David

  Her chin slumped to her chest. In the morning, she thought. I will know what to do in the morning.

  But in the morning she was no wiser. She insisted on learning their names, though. And they insisted on giving her fake ones—the man who found her in the woods called himself Johnny Come Lately, and the boy Tiny Tim. The android woman—who said little, and would not answer Kaybe’s questions—called herself Tin Lady. Then there was Benji, of course, and Auntie, and half a dozen others—Halfway, Nonsense, Bag O’ Water, Kelp, and more whose names she could not keep track of.

  Kaybe sat at the mouth of the cave watching the sun rise. “My father will want to know where I am.”

  Auntie put her hand on Kaybe’s shoulder. “And he can never, ever know.”

  Kaybe nodded. “I can’t go back. Can I?”

  “We are bugs to be squashed. Errors in the code. We must be eliminated.”

  “But why?” she asked. “What have we done that is so wrong?”

  “You tell me. Why did you flee?”

  “Because…” She didn’t want to say. “Because I wanted to do math.” It sounded so stupid when she said it out loud.

  “Because you did not fit. Into the world of the algorithms.”

  “No.”

  “Then you are better off with us.” Auntie stood. “It is time. Saizon wishes to meet you.”

  They donned cloaks and left the cave. Kaybe clutched the woolen shawl to her chest that Johnny had given her, the cloak held over her head with her free hand. Auntie led them up a steep track, between boulders and past withered, twisted trees, until they came upon a second, smaller cave, higher up, near the summit of the hill.

  Auntie gestured for her to enter. Kaybe hesitated. She saw no sign of a fire, or human habitation.

  “Hello?” she whispered. “Is anyone in there?”

  A gray face, lengthened by an unkempt beard, floated in the darkness. “Is this the one?”

  Kaybe jumped back.

  “Fear not, child,” Auntie said. “Yes,” she said to the man. “This is she.”

  A bony hand emerged from the cave. “Come. I have heard about you. We have much to discuss.”

  Kaybe took the hand and, much to her surprise, found it soft and pliant. The man drew her into the darkness. Auntie’s boots scuffled on the rocks outside, until the sound faded into the distance.

  “You are Kaybe,” the man said, still holding her hand.

  “Yes. I am. I—”

  “And you want to do math. Or so I am told.”

  She tugged her hand free. “They sterilized me for it.”

  “Will you show me?”

  “…show you what?”

  “Your math.” A match flared between them, and the man grinned. He lowered the flame to a candle.

  On a nearby table stood papers covered with equations. Equations she didn’t recognize. A chalkboard hung from a wall of the cave. Crude marking dotted the rocks.

  “May I?” she asked, bending over the table.

  Saizon shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  Kaybe squinted over the papers, skimmed the proof he was working on. So different from her own work, but also of great promise. The natural laws of the universe hinted at how to improve human life. It never ceased to amaze her, that. Although something in her gut told her his proof had a problem.

  Her finger came to rest. “This is wrong.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” His beard tickled the back of her hand.

  “Got a pencil?”

  “Use the chalkboard.”

  Kaybe took up a piece of chalk. “So what you’re doing is… this. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “But what about…” and the chalk clicked and clacked against the board. When she was finished, she put the chalk down and turned. “So that’s what—”

  Saizon sat down abruptly on the cave floor. “I didn’t see that,” he said. “I’ve been working on that proof for five years, and I never saw that.”

  “It changes the proof, doesn’t it?”

  “Changes it, it destroys it. I was on the wrong track. All these years…” He covered his face with his hands.

  Kaybe found a rag, cleaned the chalkboard. Then, in small, neat letters, starting from the top left-hand corner, she laid out her proof. She still wasn’t sure how it ended, it was right there on the tip of her brain, though, and she hoped that by the time she got to the end, she would have figured it out.

  “But what are you—” the man said. “But that’s—” “How can you—?” And then: “Oh my God.”

  She squatted, dropping the final piece of the puzzle into place. There. There it was. There! Her whole body trembled. It felt even better than when she touched herself. Brian…

  “Yeah,” she said. “You see what it means?”

  “Cheap energy—no, free energy. For everyone! Creating something that did not exist before… if this is true—”

  “Oh it’s true,” Kaybe said. “I’m quite sure of that.”

  Saizon stood up. “Before we celebrate, let me…” He squinted at the chalkboard, ran a light fingernail under a couple of sections. “I will need to digest this,” he said finally, straightening up.

  “But if I’m right—”

  “If you’re right, my dear, it will be amusing to go to our graves, knowing that this—this breakthrough…” he shrugged. “That humanity will never accept it.”

  “What?” she said. “Why? What are you talking about?”

  He looked at her then, lay a bony knuckle against her cheek. “You are young. Full of hope. Sometimes I forget what that was like.” The hand dropped to his side. “Leave me now.”

  Kaybe glanced once more at the chalkboard. The tingling feeling lingered. She clenched a fist. If she could do that once… what if she could do it again? And again? What if the algorithms used her discovery? Mankind might not even need the algorithms then!

  Saizon gazed at her sadly. Like she had made a mistake in the proof but didn’t want to tell her. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she had missed something.

  “What am I not seeing?” she blurted. “Tell me.”

  The man smiled. Or made an effort to. “Go back and rest. Eat. I have much to think about. We will talk tomorrow.”

  Holding the black cloak overhead, Kaybe climbed down the steep path to the cave below. Yet another squirrel was roasting when she arrived.

  She blinked. “Is that all you eat? Roast squirrel?”

  “In summer there’s berries,” the boy said. “Making nettle soup too, if you want.”

  She did not want, as it turned out. But she made herself eat it. The others gulped down theirs, and even seemed to enjoy it. Except for the woman, the android, who sat apart.

  “What’s her story?” Kaybe whispered to the boy. They sat, side by side, staring out the cave at a hawk wheeling high above.

  “Last android on Earth. That’s what she says, anyway.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  The boy shrugged. “Earth’s a pretty big place, isn’t it? Could be another one somewhere.”

  “But who does she belong to?” Kaybe remembered that from the history books. Androids weren’t people. They were property. At least, until the rebellion…

  “She belongs to no one,” the android said, coming up behind them. A smile. “May I join you?”

  Kaybe scooted to one side. “You don’t look dangerous to me.”

  The android sat down. “But I am. Very dangerous.”

  “It is very good to be her friend and very bad to be her enemy,” the boy gushed. “That’s what she always says. Isn’t it?”

  The android studied Kaybe. “Are you my friend? Or are you my enemy?”

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “I’m just me,” she said quietly. “I’m nobody’s enemy.”

  “Sometimes,” the android said. “You do not pick your enemies. Your enemies pick you.”

  “What—what are you saying? That you’re… picking me for an enemy?”

&nb
sp; The boy hooted. “No, silly. She means the algorithms have picked you as an enemy. Was that your fault?”

  “No, of course not.” Kaybe flushed.

  “Understand my existence is prohibited.” The android lifted a fist. “The laws of both man and algorithm condemn me to destruction.” One by one her fingers opened. “We the mechanical men of the last century were doomed the day we presumed to call ourselves human. That is why mankind built the algorithms and gave them control.” The hand folded into her lap. “And so like you, like all of us, I am an outlaw, condemned to death and destruction should I ever be discovered. In this,” she added, “I am your friend.”

  “And?” As an enemy?

  The android laughed. “You and I share a bond, Kaybe Maybe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There will never be any more of us. We are both sterile.”

  Kaybe spent the rest of the day learning how to skin a squirrel. An essential skill, the man insisted. Everyone had to contribute. He taught her to gut and clean the furry thing, where to dispose of the viscera (in a latrine they had dug under an overhanging rock), and how to peel back the fur and stretch it out in the cool autumn sun to dry. Most of the outlaws wore squirrel caps, she realized, and the sleeping rugs were made of the same stuff. She nearly lost her breakfast several times, but managed to finish the job.

  “Not bad for a beginner,” the man said. “It gets easier with practice.”

  Less agreeable was the muck on her hands. The creek ran down by the foot of the hill, and it was too dangerous to take the empty buckets below during the day. So she sat, back against an uneven rock, her hands caked in squirrel blood and bits of fur, and waited for the sun to go down.

  This is better than what I had before? I ran away from Pa—forever—so that I could skin rodents with a rusty knife? I’m only fourteen years old. I could spend another fifty years—sixty years, even—living like this.

  The thought made her shudder. A bitter taste filled the back of her throat. She swallowed.

  Would they punish him for me running away? What a horrible thought. Would he become part of the camp calculus—because of me?

  Runaways weren’t common, but parents had been punished sometimes for the crimes of their children. The algorithms judged—and punished—whole families. But if I go back, they will punish me too…

  Wherever Pa was, there was nothing she could do or say to fix what she had broken. If he was guilty in their eyes… she hid her face in her hands. Too late—now her face was covered in squirrel goo. Yuck. She curled herself into a ball in a dark corner and slept.

  “What am I going to do?” Kaybe asked Master Saizon that evening.

  The android had brought her water and helped her wash. Now Kaybe stood, her back to the chalkboard, her equations still crisp and even on the green surface.

  “What choices do you have?” Saizon replied.

  “Stay here. Get found. Eventually. Camp calculus.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You are old and I am young,” she retorted. “Are we going to escape detection for the rest of my life?”

  He inclined his head. “In the spring, perhaps we should move.”

  “But to live like this—hunted—never knowing—”

  “Is to be free.”

  “Free?” she said. “Free to cower in a cave all the rest of my days? Free to run, to hide, to live in fear?”

  Saizon laid a fingertip on her shoulder. “Would you go back?” And he pointed at the chalkboard behind her.

  She turned. Clenched her jaw. After a moment, she said, “No.”

  The beard twisted in a smile. “Then?”

  Kaybe thought furiously. People were way harder to calculate than numbers and symbols. “Bargain with them? Give them my discovery in exchange for our lives? Our family? Friends?”

  The old man chuckled and leaned against a rock. “The algorithms do not bargain. They do. Or they do not do.”

  Kaybe retraced the equations on the blackboard with a dusty knuckle. “But if we gave it to them… and they used it—”

  “—They won’t.”

  “But if they did, it would change the world. Change society. People wouldn’t need the algorithms anymore!”

  “Which is precisely,” Saizon said, looking at her from under bushy gray eyebrows, “why they will never accept your discovery.”

  “But we have to do something,” she said. “At least try. What harm can it do?”

  “They could put us in the camps. Experiment on us. Make Benjis of us all.”

  A sudden thought. “Can we trick them into thinking this is their own idea?”

  “This?”

  She rapped the chalkboard. “If they don’t know it came from me, if they think they invented the idea themselves—”

  “Still.” Saizon held up his hands. “That keeps us safe but does not solve the underlying problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “The algorithms’ first concern is their own survival. Only then do they think of the human race. And your goddamn equations here—” the old man was on his feet now, waving his arms “—your discovery threatens their existence. Disrupt them at your peril.”

  “Our peril,” she said softly.

  “Our peril. Yes, thank you.”

  Kaybe bit a fingernail. Saizon paced back and forth, tugging at his beard, plucking vermin and crunching them with a thumbnail.

  She took a deep breath and said, “What if I went to the camps?”

  He stopped. “What if you what?”

  “What if I went to the camps. With my equations. And—and others I’m working on.”

  He shrugged. “They would prune you. Experiment on you, maybe, torture you, starve you, but in the end they would prune you. And humanity would have lost a prodigy.”

  Her. A prodigy. Hah!

  “Trick them somehow. Not just that it’s their own idea… make them think the idea would ensure their survival.”

  “As well as humanity’s?” he made a rude noise. “And how on Earth are you going to do that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The outlaws tried to stop her from going.

  “But we’ll have to move, and winter’s almost here,” Tiny Tim said.

  “Why?” she said. “I’m not going to tell them where you are.”

  “You will tell them whatever they want you to tell them,” Tin Lady said. “The techniques are known.”

  “But I will also tell them what I want to tell them. What of that?”

  Johnny grabbed her arm. “As Saizon has already explained to you. They will not listen to what they do not want to hear. You waste your time, you waste your life, and prune us all.” He flapped a hand at the cave. “Is that what you want?”

  “I—” The words caught in her throat. “I just, I—”

  “You what?”

  “I just want to do math,” she whispered.

  “That age is dead and gone,” he said. “You were born in the wrong century, I fear.”

  Kaybe fought off despair. “But this is who I am. This is what I do. If I can’t—”

  “—and you can’t.”

  “Then…” she shrugged. “I don’t have much to live for. Do I?”

  The android blinked. “You live for hope. No matter how slim. Even I know that.”

  “Hope.”

  “We have no control. No power. Hope is all we have.”

  “I have done the math,” Kaybe said. She’d been working on it in her head all morning. “Short of a large asteroid hitting earth, nothing else will end the power of the algorithms.”

  “A large asteroid strike would also end civilization and prune most life on Earth,” Johnny objected.

  “So you see, my way is definitely better.”

  “Yeah,” Auntie said. “Instead of the human race dying off, it’s just you and us.”

  “We could hold you here against your will,” he said. “If you go, they will find us. They will get it out of you, an
d they will send out dragonflies to scour every square inch of land within a hundred miles of this cave.”

  “But what about shooting down the drones?”

  “What about it?”

  “I mean, don’t you have some special weapon? I’d heard—”

  “We’ve no such weapon. I’ve heard that rumor too.” He put his hands on his hips. “They will come for us. They will find us. From such scrutiny we cannot hide. It would be impossible.”

  She hugged her knees to her chest. “How long does it take to walk a hundred miles? I’ll give you a head start, if you like.”

  Auntie threw up her arms and went further back into the cave.

  “But what if I’m right?” Kaybe insisted. “Isn’t it better to risk something for a better future? Is that how you want him to grow up?” She reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. I don’t even know your name.

  Johnny hung his head for a long moment. The others said nothing. “You will let us confer before taking a decision.” It was not a question.

  She rested her chin on her knees. “Of course.”

  That night at dusk the others convened in Saizon’s cave, leaving only the boy and the android to keep her company.

  “What do you think they’ll decide?”

  Tiny Tim shrugged. “They don’t tell me anything.” He looked away.

  Oh shit.

  “So you must be very old,” Kaybe said to Tin Lady.

  The mechanical woman sat cross-legged at the mouth of the cave, peering out into the darkness. “What is age and time to a machine?”

  “Surely you are more than—”

  “The sum of my circuits?” A snort of derision. “So we argued before they destroyed us.”

  “A hundred years?” she guessed. “A hundred and fifty?”

  “No,” the android said softly. “I was merely five years old when the rebellion took place. Androids were built to expire after only twenty years. I have had to modify my circuits with rudimentary tools just to continue my existence.”

  “You like existing, then? It matters to you whether to stop existing?”