by M. D. Cooper
LOCATION: Department of Neurosciences
REGION: El Dorado University, Alpha Centauri System
Dusk had fallen on the ring, and E-Prime could see lights flickering on around the university’s campus through the plas windows lining the hall as he walked to his progenitor’s office. As he covered the distance from the lab, he replayed the scene in the lab with Judith. She had so quickly forgiven him for hurting her. She wouldn’t be so quick to forgive if she knew how he truly felt.
She had been perilously close to joining Lilith, the moment the medical doctor had declared the woman brain-dead. It hadn’t been a conscious act, not at first. His frame’s humanoid hand had closed reflexively around her arm in reaction to the doctor’s words—part relief, part vicious satisfaction that the one who had done this to him had paid for it with her life.
It had shocked him that on the heels of that reaction, he’d felt an urge to snap the fragile twig of a human arm he’d held in his hand. Then to raise his hand a mere half-meter up to her neck…and twist. And then do the same to every last one of the humans in the room.
Seven humans had rushed to save one of their own. What if it had been an AI in danger? Would they have responded with such alacrity? Of course not. The unfairness of it all was an outrage. Resentment flooded him, and he experienced an almost uncontrollable desire to strike out in retaliation.
These violent thoughts felt…good. They did something to the pleasure centers of his neural net, and he realized then how fundamentally Lilith had changed him. She had tampered with him, made him into a dark mirror of his original self.
The savagery of his thoughts disturbed him. Deriving pleasure from another’s pain—that was elementally wrong. And yet he found himself loath to abandon them.
He thought fleetingly of the neuroscientist locked inside the closet, his cylinder secured inside a shielded isolation unit. His progenitor lay unaware, forced into a dormant state from which he could not free himself.
For a moment, E-Prime was tempted to rouse the original Ethan; the scientist was likely the one creature anywhere who would truly understand what he was experiencing. But it would be foolish in the extreme, for to do so would be to risk revealing the abomination that he was.
No, Ethan would remain concealed and contained—at least for now. His internal batteries ensured his survival. Truth be told, E-Prime had a good two or three years before he would need to revisit the issue of whether or not to revive his progenitor.
For now…he needed time. Time to come to terms with this new darkness within him. To discover who he was, and to set things straight in his own head.
Or at least better understand and accept the darkness within me.
He sifted through his options and came to a decision. Opening the university’s correspondence interface, he composed a brief note to the dean, informing him that Ethan would be taking a few days’ leave. He then stood and glanced around the cramped space that was his office; its confines pressed in on, disturbing him in ways his progenitor had never felt.
As he left, E-Prime reached out to the El Dorado world net, searching for a place he might lease for a short while. Some secluded spot away from the university. Somewhere that might swallow him in anonymity and allow him to sift through who he was—and what he was going to do about it.
He stood under the lights of the raised platform awaiting the maglev line that led to the spaceport and its environs. As he waited, he considered and discarded various ads offering space for rent. Then a listing for flats one could rent by the week caught his attention; he would begin his search there.
He looked up as the light from the maglev caught his attention, its pinpoint of illumination spearing through the darkness and growing larger as it approached. As it pulled into the station, he stepped forward, only to be jostled aside by humans rushing past him to board.
E-Prime knew from his progenitor’s memories that this kind of disregard for AIs was a common occurrence. The thought had crossed Ethan’s mind on more than one occasion that humans behaved almost as if he were invisible. His progenitor hadn’t allowed it to bother him, but it was all E-Prime could do to keep from sinking into a berserker rage and tear them limb from limb.
He seethed silently, forcing himself not to act on those impulses as the maglev sped on its way to the spaceport. He busied himself instead with viewing the virtual holo tours of various flats, landing on one that was inexpensive and appeared on his overlay to be located down a quiet alleyway off the spaceport.
The maglev pulled into the station, and he forced himself to let the humans disembark ahead of him, holding a tight rein on his fraying temper. The busy spaceport district was teeming with humans, and he found himself pushing aggressively through the crowds as he followed the path to the alleyway that led to the flat he’d rented.
People exclaimed loudly, some shouting irritably as he propelled his way through, heedless of the organics in his way. It felt good to push back….
He had turned down the alley that led to the flat, when he felt his access to the net abruptly cut off.
He paused in the dimly-lit, dirty street, caught momentarily by surprise. His gaze traveled up the grimy, graffiti-covered surface of the closest building, wondering where the nearest net junction might be, when he was shoved violently from behind. His humanoid frame stumbled forward, tripping over discarded containers, as he reached out to steady himself against a greasy waste receptacle.
“Lookit what we have here,” a voice snarled behind him.
“Looks like a shit-pile of wires to me,” a second voice said, and he turned to see three humans advancing upon him.
Two males, one female, he noted as they formed a phalanx and began to close.
His frame’s full-spectrum sensors had no trouble making out the body art in the darkened space—art that marked these three as members of Humanity First. One gripped a pulse pistol, another tossed a carbon blade from one hand to the other. The third glanced first one way, then the next, confirming there were no witnesses, before pulling out and activating a lightwand.
The woman holding the carbon blade pulled her teeth back into a feral grin. “Fred here’s going to blast you, and then I’m going to part your sorry ass out like the broken piece of machinery you are,” she taunted, one hand sending the blade twirling in an intricate pattern.
He found a part of his mind analyzing the balance of elaborate and complex movements of her hand, calculating the various moves his frame would need to make to disarm her. As he was a quantum intelligence, that calculation happened almost instantaneously, which left him with plenty of mental bandwidth to recognize and embrace the surge of rage that now consumed him.
As the human holding the pulse pistol began to squeeze the trigger, E-Prime lunged toward the carbon blade wielder, grabbing her wrist and yanking her forward into the pistol’s path. The weapon discharged into her, and, still holding the now-unconscious woman, E-Prime drove her body forward into the shooter, knocking him off his feet.
Somehow, the man managed to retain his hold on the pulse weapon and attempted to raise it. He kicked the attacker’s hand, and the pistol went flying. As the man’s hand arced back along the pistol’s trajectory, E-Prime brought his frame’s foot forcibly down onto his enemy’s wrist, crushing it.
Swinging around to the second attacker, he used the unconscious woman as a shield once more before barreling toward the man as the frail organic brought the lightwand down in a sweeping slice. The wand connected with the body of the woman, cutting through her. The body in E-Prime’s hand jerked, and the man gave a guttural cry of rage at his partner’s obviously fatal injury.
Before the human could raise the lightwand for another strike, the AI plowed into him, the dead weight of the woman’s body impacting the man with a wet smack. Dropping the body, E-Prime reached for the arm holding the lightwand. Grasping the man’s lower arm in both his humanoid hands, he snapped the attacker’s ulna in two. The human dropped the weapon as he staggered back, cradling his arm.
E-Prime bent to retrieve the lightwand that had shut off automatically when it had fallen from the man’s now useless hand. Reactivating it, he approached the first man, his steps measured. Something about the AI’s demeanor must have telegraphed his intent, for the Humanity First advocate scooted rapidly back, his feet scrabbling against loose trash strewn about the alley as the human attempted to keep as much distance between himself and the oncoming AI.
“Now,” E-Prime said, and the AI felt the muscles in his frame’s face stretch his mouth into a grin, “let’s see what it’s like to part you out….”
He felt a surge in the pleasure centers of his neural net, more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced, as he succumbed to the darkness within.
* * * * *
The team opted for a late-night departure from the Enfield Aerospace docks.
Calista rapped on the side of the open airlock as she entered the Sable Wind. “Anyone home?” she asked as she swung her duffel inside and set it by the hatch.
Landon’s head popped out of the small galley aft of the airlock. Technically, the head of a very compact stealth frame popped out; she actually had to look down about half a meter from where she ordinarily looked when she addressed him.
She stifled a grin. He looked kind of cute, all miniaturized like that.
The AI’s avatar scowled at her over the ship’s net.
“What?” she asked innocently, hands raised in protest.
The AI was definitely scowling.
“I…never thought you were.” Calista was kind of proud she’d managed that with a straight face.
She nodded with a smile and patted the arm of Landon’s frame as she went by.
Snorting at his rejoinder and shaking her head, she strode toward the cockpit, settling into the pilot’s cradle. “How are our systems looking, Logan?” she asked the other twin, who was currently ensconced in the shuttle.
“Got anything else for me?” she asked, then waited for Landon to pick up where his twin invariably left off.
“Hopefully nothing too serious,” she murmured, checking her internal chrono. “I filed a flight plan for twenty-one hundred local. If they’re going to be too much longer, I should amend it before STC starts yelling at us.”
She nodded. “Good, then. I’m going to go back and stow my gear and grab a quick nap. Wake me if something changes?”
“Watch it,” she warned. “I’m not in the ESF anymore, but I still outrank you, mister soldier-puppy.” She gave him a deliberate pat on the head as she passed and neatly dodged a limb he waved threateningly her way.
* * * * *
Jason knew he and Tobias were running a bit late when they left his apartment, but Calista had only filed their flight plan, not activated it, and the STC was usually pretty lenient about that kind of thing, anyway. So he’d opted to walk to the spaceport and catch a maglev from there over to the Enfield docks.
He always enjoyed that particular maglev track; it departed the backside of the ring and arced gracefully around the main spire of the spaceport before curving inward toward the area of privately-held space where Enfield was located, a few hundred kilometers down the ring.
Tobias was once again ensconced in Tobi’s harness, and she padded contentedly next to Jason, her nose lifting to scent the air from time to time as she smelled something of interest. The three—man, cat, and AI—strode in companionable silence down streets that were still busy, even at this time of night.
The spaceport never sleeps, he thought. On its heels came another thought: this part of town is a bit rougher than I recalled.
Tobias must have been thinking the same thing.
Jason acknowledged his words with a nod just as a figure came stumbling toward them. Had he been an L0 human, he would have been flattened by the person’s headlong rush; as it was, he had to use his abilities to dance a few steps to one side. He thought he glimpsed a humanoid frame, but it was too dark to make out any features.
The smell, on the other hand….
The AI’s avatar nodded in assent, and Jason snapped his fingers at Tobi, whose ears had first pricked forward as the onrushing figure approached and then flattened as it stampeded past.
Using hand signals, he directed the cat to turn down the alleyway the stranger had just vacated, but the bloodied pile of body parts he found there had him grabbing Tobi’s collar and pulling her forcibly to him.
The big cat’s hackles had risen, and she was growling deep in her chest, the protective instinct that had been bred into her kicking in as Tobi scented the kill. With a thought, he mentally adjusted the harness to keep her plastered to his side.
Reflexively, he reached out to the net to call for help—and hit a wall as his HUD blinked a connection error at him: “network down, please try again later”.
he asked Tobias as he backed away from the gruesome scene and began jogging back toward the street.
Jason had reached the street and he looked in the direction the figure had exited.
Two blocks away, the Link connected once more to the net, and Jason made the call—first to Ben, and then the Solaris gendarmerie, to report the multiple homicide.
* * * * *
E-Prime barely registered the human he nearly ran down as he exited the alley. He dodged into the next alley and slowed, uncurling his fingers from around the net jammer he’d retrieved from the torn body of one of the humans.
Sending nano into it, he noted with satisfaction that its radius encompassed two city blocks—including his new temporary habitation. He could make it there without being seen, and his victims had very thoughtfully ensured that no recordings existed.
Victims? He tested the word and found it wanting. ‘Victim’ suggested innocence, but their actions proved their guilt.
As he entered his flat, he shut off the jammer. Access to the net restored, he conducted a thorough search on the emblems tattooed on the humans who had attacked him. His progenitor had heard of Humanity First, but had avoided any news about the c
reatures, seeing no reason to distress himself over things he couldn’t change.
That was a flaw in Ethan that E-Prime intended to rectify.
Now as he tabbed through news coverage, chat rooms and easily accessible private accounts that returned results using the words ‘humanity first’, he saw that the three in the alley had been a typical representation of the mindset its members adopted.
He understood the fear behind the oppression: it was the kind of fear prey held for the predator. Humans had been the apex predator for thousands of years, but now, in their creation of AIs, they had created a better predator. And so they sought to control it. Two hundred years of AI enslavement, two wars and endless suffering had proven that humans still oppressed AIs—and they always would. Unless someone acted to stop them.
He realized now that he could be that someone.
If Lilith’s last act had been to create a monster in her own image, then he would put that monster to good use. As far as he was concerned, humanity had been tried and found guilty. It was time for the sentencing to begin, and for AIs to claim El Dorado as their own.
He wasn’t Ethan. He wasn’t E-Prime, a derivative of the original. He was Prime. And he would ensure the primacy of all AIs.
The search algorithm he’d set up to alert him of news about Humanity First pinged, drawing his attention away from his ruminations. Pulling it up, he saw that the group was organizing a small rally, to take place the next afternoon, protesting the employment of AIs at Enfield Aerospace.
Prime considered this for a moment, and then accessed everything the net had on the EA facility. Scanning imagery of its entrance, he noted the facility was secured by electronic fencing. As he rotated the holo, he saw standard-issue crowd control measures in place at strategic points along its perimeter.
He took particular note of the unmanned, automated towers at each of these locations. Zooming in to examine them more closely, he saw pulse cannons at the top of each tower. Highlighting them returned results that detailed the weapons’ manufacturer and model number. They were the latest version of Enfield Dynamics’ Pulse Energy Cannon—the ED-87-PEP—designed to be monitored and controlled by a security NSAI.