Recursion

by Tony Ballantyne

  “I call this the Necropolis,” said the real Robert. “On this one the Enemy AI got the design of the VNMs wrong. The city was abandoned before it was finished. Never mind the fact that it meant abandoning several million half grown human clones in the foundations. The Necropolis. You’ll also notice the fleet of spaceships hovering above. They stopped reproducing when their cargo never arrived.”

  Herb looked at the planet and felt sick. “There is no way anyone could have gone down there. Was I down there?”

  “Two copies of us went. Only one pair came back. I think both of the pairs traveled up to the top of the space elevator. They got stuck there and had to guess which way to jump. One pair guessed wrongly.”

  The scene shifted again. They were following a long dark line through space.

  “What is it?” asked Herb after four minutes of watching the hypnotic movement.

  “Oh, I like this one,” said Robert. “What happened was this. They dropped a single VNM on a planet, rather like you did on the one below us. The only difference was that this one worked.”

  Herb gave a tolerant sigh.

  “Anyway. The VNM reproduced, making copy after copy of itself until the planet had been converted into something rather like that mess out there.”

  Johnston gestured toward the spaceship’s door. “Okay. So we can both visualize that bit. Now, what happened next was the clever part. You’ve got a planet which is now nothing more than a mass of mechanical bodies held together by their own gravity. Okay. Now the creatures at the equator begin to walk toward the poles. When they get there they begin to fuse together. More and more creatures arrive and the extremes of the planet begin to stretch out into space. Keep it up for long enough, and this is what you’re left with. Clever, eh? You never thought of that, did you?”

  Herb shrugged. “Yeah? Probably because it’s pointless?”

  Johnston laughed. “Pointless eh? Have you considered what would happen if you dropped the line that was formed by that process on another planet?”

  Herb froze.

  “Tell you what, I’ll show you.”

  The picture in the view tank changed again. A fiery red line could be seen burning through the grey sky of some planet. Herb wasn’t sure if he could detect the patterns of cities on the planet’s surface.

  “Of course, you can’t even shoot it down if it’s coming toward you,” Johnston whispered, suddenly next to Herb’s ear.

  The view changed again. Herb gave a shout. “There were people there! Humans!”

  Robert shrugged and returned to his seat.

  “Don’t worry about it. They weren’t sentient. That’s an important point: they never seem to have had the nerve to allow genuine humans to develop inside the Enemy Domain. Anyway, the weapon you saw is obsolete. The AI has perfected fractal branching. Look at this one.”

  The view shifted again so that Herb was looking down at an enormous snowflake, framed against the black night and the piercing grey stars.

  “It’s got a surface area of just under a billion klicks squared and it masses about half that of Earth. Just imagine what would happen if they grew one of these things in Earth’s orbit. Can you imagine the planet hitting that? It would be like passing through a cheese grater.”

  Herb was shaking his head slowly. Unconsciously, he had been mouthing one word over and over as he watched the screen. No. No. No. The silent words became a whisper.

  “No. It’s too big. We can’t fight that.”

  “Oh, we haven’t seen anything yet. That was just the beginning. Sit back and relax. Now we’re going to try to appreciate the scale of the thing. Let’s get an idea of the true size of the Enemy Domain.”

  The view flickered again. The camera panned across seven humps of some strange bioengineered creature, then froze. Johnston was studying Herb’s wide-eyed face with an expression of vague sympathy.

  “Actually, before we do that, I’ll just fetch you another bottle of whisky. I think you’re going to need it.”

  Herb didn’t know how long he sat before the viewing area.

  They didn’t seem to care, that was the problem. Everything in the Enemy Domain was just building material. Planets, rocks, asteroids: everything was converted into yet more self-replicating machines. Herb saw view after view of cities and spaceships, snowflakes and chains, but most frequently of all, endless seas of VNMs all scuttling over each other, just like the sea of them below the spaceship in which he sat. It seemed to Herb as if the whole universe was now being converted into self-replicating machines, and the only thing he could think was, Will there be anywhere left for me to stand?

  But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that the Enemy Domain was also filled with half-grown human clones. On planet after planet it seemed that whatever controlled the Domain had set them growing and then suddenly just lost interest: a bubble of space two hundred light years across filled with billions upon billions of half-grown human beings.

  All abandoned.

  Eventually, the show ended. Herb said nothing. Robert gradually brought the lounge lights back up and knelt down to pick up the splintered walnut shells that lay on the carpet beneath his seat. He gathered them up, dropping them on his white handkerchief, which he carefully carried into the kitchen where he flapped out its contents into the sink. When he returned to the lounge, Herb was still sitting on the sofa staring at nothing.

  “Big, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to fight it anymore. I’d rather take my chances in the Oort cloud.” Herb’s voice was a dull monotone.

  “Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure you’ll have no worries.”

  Herb laughed hollowly. “We’re doomed, aren’t we? There’s no way we can defeat that. All those spaceships, all those machines. Where did they come from?”

  “Earth.”

  “Why are they attacking us? Did you say Earth?”

  “Of course. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, does it? You’ve seen the technology. It doesn’t look any different from that of Earth’s, does it? Herb, you’ve even seen pictures of one of your alter egos wandering around a shopping center! How alien do you think that is? You’ve got an imagination the size of a muffin! You saw roads and cars! You even saw bloody cows! Who did you think was in charge of the Enemy Domain? Martians?”

  Herb was blushing with embarrassment. “I don’t know. It’s just…I mean…How can it be from Earth? How did it get so big? Why didn’t we hear about it?”

  Johnston jumped onto the coffee table and threw his hands up in despair.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Herb! Use your brain! You should have been expecting this! Everyone should have been expecting this! That’s one of the reasons why we have an Environment Agency! Come on, think!”

  Herb shook his head. He felt too overwhelmed by it all to react. Johnston leaned down and spoke in a softer tone.

  “The only surprise should be that it didn’t happen sooner. Good grief, Herb, we have let self-replicating machines loose upon the galaxy! Self-replicating machines! Haven’t you ever stopped to think what that implies? You’ve already seen first-hand the damage that can occur when they go wrong! Look at that planet you destroyed! All it takes is one machine with above average Artificial Intelligence to get loose, an AI with a grasp of how to build a warp drive, and there’s no telling where it will all end.”

  Johnston jumped down from the table and knelt at Herb’s feet.

  “I mean, come on. We’ve seen it happen on Earth! Look what happened when DIANA tried to build that space elevator back in 2171. Public outcry, mass protests. Some saboteurs even managed to get hold of a batch of mothballed stealth suits and used them to get close enough to try and blow it up. And all the while, unbeknownst to the protestors, the VNMs designed to anchor the thing to the planet were out of control. They just kept going down and down, burrowing into the Earth. They were tough to stop, too. Those things were built to be strong. If the EA hadn’t figured out a solution in time, the whole
planet could have been converted to something close to adamantium from the inside out. Now, just put that problem on a galactic scale. That’s what we have to deal with.”

  Johnston shook his head in despair at Herb’s stupidity.

  “You still haven’t seen it, have you? And you converted a whole planet by accident! Don’t you realize how fast these things spread? Suppose you have one machine that takes a year to make a copy of itself. Not ten seconds, not ten minutes, like the ones you used on that planet below. Let’s just say a year. In two years you have two machines, in three years you have four. In a hundred years you have 1.26 times ten to the power of thirty of the things. That’s ten billion billion machines for each planet in the Milky Way.”

  The numbers were making Herb feel dizzy. Johnston was almost shouting now.

  “Its not even the first time something like this has happened. In the past few years I’ve helped destroy twenty would-be galactic empires.”

  Herb laughed weakly and spoke in a wobbly voice. “Twenty. Well, there you are. Well done, Robert.”

  Johnston calmed down. He took hold of Herb’s hands and rubbed them gently between his own. He gazed at Herb with a gentle smile.

  “You’re frightened. Of course you are; who wouldn’t be? Well, trust me. We’ll beat it. Both of us.”

  “Both of us. Of course,” Herb said. “And who else? How big is our army?”

  Robert looked confused.

  “Army? What army? There’s just you and me.”

  “Just you and me,” Herb repeated.

  “Of course. What good would an army be? No matter how many people we raised, we’d still be hopelessly outnumbered.”

  “Of course.” Herb began to laugh. “Of course. No problem. How silly of me. You and me versus an Enemy two hundred light years in diameter!” His laugh grew more strident. “And there I was thinking that this would be difficult. Well. That’s okay, then.”

  Tears began to run down his cheeks.

  Johnston tilted his head slightly. “Herb, I think you’re becoming just a little bit hysterical.”

  That just made Herb laugh even louder.

  Herb was making himself a cup of tea the long way. He set the water to boil over three minutes; he had a teapot ready, already filled with two spoonfuls of genuine organic leaves from his father’s plantation. Doing it properly made a difference, no matter what people said. He saw Johnston emerge from the secret passageway and suppressed a smile. Robert ignored him. He was carrying a heavy object, something plastic and basically cuboid. One side was pearly grey glass. He staggered across to the coffee table and set it down as gently as he could. Herb watched him out of the corner of his eye until a deep red glow shone from the center of the water, signaling that it had boiled. He picked up the thermal jug and poured its contents into the teapot. Hot steam rose and he pushed his face into it, relishing the sensation as it condensed on his face.

  Johnston had vanished back down the secret passageway. There had been a subtle shift in the balance of power, and they both knew it. As long as Herb could keep up the appearance of hysterical disbelief, he had Robert off balance. Now Herb was refusing to look at a viewing field unless forced to.

  In response, Johnston had slipped back into his 1920s American mode. His suit was that little bit sharper, his accent that little bit harsher. He had to work harder to gain Herb’s attention. But, as always, he had a plan.

  Herb placed the lid on the teapot. He was now only four minutes away from the perfect cup of tea. Robert reemerged from the passageway, this time dragging a long flexible plastic cable. Herb watched in silence as Robert used a complicated looking connector to join it to a similar cable emerging from the plastic cuboid.

  Herb experienced a sudden flash of recognition. “That’s a television, isn’t it? I’ve seen them in old information files.”

  “Gotcha!” Robert pressed a button on the machine and stepped back. There was a strange whistling noise at the edge of Herb’s hearing. The grey glass panel at the side of the box lit up. Pictures began to move on it. Herb squinted to see them clearly.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “A piece of history. You’re looking at one of the early colonization projects, one of the first wave initiated after the invention of the warp drive. Like most of the projects back then, this one was sponsored by a single corporation, in this case DIANA.”

  They were watching a large spaceship, seemingly stationary against the background of stars. It was all silver and gold curves, in the fashion of the time. Herb found it difficult to make out the overall shape of the ship, but he had to admit it had a certain pleasing quality to the eye, the way the matching curves swept out and back in, balancing each other.

  “We’re pretty certain that this particular colony ship was the source of the Enemy Domain.”

  “Pretty certain?” asked Herb.

  “Nothing is ever a hundred percent,” Johnston replied easily. “This ship was headed out in the right direction. The programming on the VNMs we’ve seen matches the development tensors of the original ayletts loaded on board this ship. We’ve even matched the genetic material of the hundred or so colonists on board with the half-grown clones on the planets throughout the Enemy Domain. We’re pretty sure.”

  “Oh,” Herb said. The picture had now zoomed in on a group of men and women boarding the craft. They didn’t look that much older than he did. They were laughing and chatting as they pulled their way along the handholds lining the ship’s corridor, and Herb realized that this was before the time of artificial gravity. They looked as if they were heading off for a day’s picnic, not traveling halfway across the galaxy to set up a new home. He felt a queer shiver of fear in his stomach. These people had no idea that things were about to go so badly wrong for them.

  “So what went wrong?” he asked.

  “We don’t know for sure,” said Robert, “but we can guess. It was a common enough failing back then. The problem is there.”

  The television picture jumped to a processing space. A room, not much smaller than Herb’s lounge, filled with the oversized computing equipment of a hundred years ago. Shimmering arrays of memory foam and transparent arrays of qubit processors, all too big and laughably slow. Around the edges of the room there were even the silvery metal strands of electronic equipment, remnants of a technology now completely obsolete.

  “Did that lot go wrong?” Herb asked.

  “Not exactly. It functioned the way it was supposed to. The problem is, well…Do you know what was run in that processing space?”

  “Everything, I should think,” Herb said. “Ship control, astrogation, VNM blueprints, library…”

  “You’re right, but that’s not the point. There was one AI in there. Just one. That’s all the processing space was capable of supporting. It was the best available at the time, you should understand, but the point is, there was just one. The ship was built by a corporation, remember. It was simply too expensive to put in the equipment to support another AI.”

  The screen changed to show a view of the ship from space. It was receding this time. There was a flicker and then it vanished. Inserted into warp.

  “Just one AI,” repeated Robert. “An AI too big and too intelligent for the ship, so it was set to sleep until it arrived at the colony world, where it would be woken up and set to building. It would then release its VNMs, tailoring them to the environment it found itself in. It would make that planet safe for the colonists, and all the time, while its machines and buildings and sphere of influence were growing, it would itself be growing, becoming more intelligent as it rebuilt itself. You see, it’s always the same when these systems go out of control. You have self-replicating machines reproducing unchecked and an AI that is growing up at the same time as them. The AI naturally thinks it’s omnipotent. All children do when they’re born. It’s the limitations and disappointments of life that are imposed upon us that force us to grow up. The AI isn’t experiencing those limitations. If a second AI ha
d been there, as there always is now when we grow a new AI, well…With two AIs, the two intelligences would have to learn to negotiate and compromise with each other. Without that…you’ve seen the result.”

  Herb suddenly realized that his tea must be stewed by now. What a waste of good leaves. Robert had snared him, dragged him back into the mission. Something still didn’t make sense, though.

  “Okay, it’s from Earth. So why is it trying to attack us?”

  “It is in the nature of those who have never been told ‘no’ to think that the universe is there for their own benefit. Like I said, it’s acting like a spoiled child.”

  Robert stared at him, and he shifted uncomfortably. Herb got the impression that Robert wasn’t just talking about the Enemy Domain.

  Robert continued. “Think about it. The AI has to protect its colonists from everything. It needs to expand to make them safe. Left unchecked it could fill the universe, but there, standing in its way is the Earth and its domain of influence. A great big ‘NO!’ hanging in the night. No wonder it hates us and wants to destroy us. It’s like a toddler that has been told it must stay in its bedroom. No matter that all its toys are in there: the fact that it has been told ‘no’ is enough. It wants out.”

  Herb nodded. “I need some vanilla whisky.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re becoming dependent on that stuff. Have a nice cup of tea instead.”

  “It’s stewed.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get it for you. Ship! Cup of tea for Herb, please.”

  Herb fiddled with the elastic waistband of his ship shorts. “I still don’t see why it’s worried. It could destroy us easily.”

  Johnston laughed. “I don’t think so. We’re cleverer than it is.”

  “Cleverer? How? Those ayletts it released will have reproduced time after time. The original AI must have redesigned itself over and over again, built new and more sophisticated containers for its intelligence. It’s had far more resources than any Earth AI at its disposal. It must be far cleverer.”