by S. B. Divya
Meanwhile, the opposing fringe—especially the al-Muwahhidun but also the bioticists—wanted to abolish artificial intelligences altogether. The caliph wanted no reliance on machinery at all. His end goal—or so he’d claimed before shrouding himself in secrecy—was humans who could do all types of work, from heavy lifting to high-speed self-transportation. From the start, he’d embraced the culture of voluntary modders. VeeMods, as they called themselves, placed electromechanical parts into their bodies. Those jackasses didn’t hide their admiration of the Machinehood operatives, and unlike the caliph, they had no problems with WAIs. The bioticists, however, had them all beat for idiocy. Like the Luddites before them, they protested against any modern technology that took work away from people. They wanted to maintain the “purity of the human mind and body” and promoted a life free of pills, drugs, WAIs, and bots.
Welga expanded an image associated with one of the items that Por Qué had highlighted. It showed the major groups and their branches, splitting again and again, into ever greater micro-divisions. Even the VeeMods couldn’t agree on right and wrong. It gave her a headache.
In Marrakech, Welga had lived without a kitchen or car that could handle itself. She’d seen people with mechanical body modifications pushing the limits of human appearance, especially the al-Muwahhidun soldiers. Her own military enhancements were internal, and they included a permanent-resident WAI, but the electronics in her body were tiny, unnoticeable. The Machinehood operative’s guts—and the person in Nithya’s colleague’s video—seemed to have smart-matter that interfaced with their bodies on a macro scale. The reports on the maturity of that technology had mixed results, but the consensus said no, not possible in a walking, talking human being. Could the al-Muwahhidun have figured out a way to advance VeeMods beyond anything in the rest of the world?
“Incoming call request from Nithya Balachandran,” Por Qué said.
“Accept.” Welga rounded the park that marked the halfway point in her run and slowed so she could converse.
“You’re awake early,” Nithya said.
Her image floated in Welga’s display, superimposed on the real world. Carma stood in the background, wearing a game rig and jumping over invisible obstacles.
“I’m warming up for a busy day,” Welga said. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to tell you what I’ve found about your condition.” A series of drawings and chemical symbols appeared next to Nithya’s face. “This is a model of what I think is happening to your muscles based on the data I have. See this?” Red circles appeared around some areas. “It’s a form of long-term synaptic fatigue. My best guess is that the zips trigger something in your DNA that then affects potassium ion channels. It’s also stimulating activity in your mesolimbic system, which I don’t fully understand. I need more time to make sense of it, but you must stop taking zips and not resume until we resolve this. That much I’m certain of. I’ve sent you the results so far. Did you find any specialists to take on your case?”
“No luck. I’m not offering money for someone to look at my data so I suppose it’s not surprising. And you know I can’t stop taking the pills, not now.”
Nithya frowned. “But you’re risking your health, possibly your life.”
“I’ve been using zips for years. It can’t be that bad.”
“Maybe it’s something in the newer designs. I don’t know. I’m trying to get more information, but I can see that your motor and limbic systems are involved. Those are fundamental, Welga, and potentially pointing to an addiction. Whatever you have is an undocumented side effect, one that’s likely triggered by something specific to your genetic makeup, and it’s not my area of expertise. It’s going to take a long time before we have all the answers, especially with no one funding our effort.”
Por Qué spoke to Welga. “If I understand the context of this conversation, you should file a Request for Investigation with the funders of your zips. Would you like me to do that?”
“Yes, Por Qué, do that,” Welga subvocalized.
Not that it meant much—RFIs tended to disappear into a morass of bureaucracy unless they had money or lawyers or both backing them up.
“A few more months,” Welga said to her sister-in-law. “Maybe even weeks. That’s all I need. I’ll last that long, right?”
“Most probably, but I’m not an expert. Don’t take this too lightly!”
“I can handle living with a disability.”
Nithya sighed. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news.”
“Thanks for looking into it. Tell Luis and Carma that I said hello.”
Despite the public call and a boost in viewership from her Machinehood connection, no one with the right expertise offered to help. Why would they? With no money in it, they had no incentive. Her fans would appreciate the drama of watching her struggle. That was what they enjoyed about the life of a shield—the conflict. If she had real fame, a massive following, she’d have the coin to spend on hiring experts to look into her condition, and she could turn that into its own narrative. As a mostly ordinary person, though, the public wouldn’t make an effort to raise funds for her cause until her health was obviously deteriorating, and even then, it might not be enough. The thought left a bitter taste in her mouth. A cup of coffee from her favorite vendor-bot didn’t wash it away.
NITHYA
[News reporter standing in front of a kitchen unit] The worldwide hunt continues for the elusive source of the Machinehood threat. A poll from this morning shows that 63 percent of respondents have stopped all pill usage other than government-issued daily inoculation designs. Some counterterrorism experts think the Machinehood will attempt a wide-scale attack on kitchen pill printers, similar to the hijacks of ’84 and ’87. However, others claim that modern kitchens have better security. Do you have an expertise rating greater than eighty for kitchen encryption? If yes, tell us what you think! We’ll compile the top ten responses and share them with our followers.
—Top Ten for Today news feed, March 17, 2095. Current accuracy rating: 78%
The package arrived while Luis was out of the house. Nithya opened the generic white envelope with care, suspicious of its contents because of the odd bulge in the center and the fact that nobody in their family sent paper mail. A second packet lay inside, with a scrawled note saying Welga had sent this for Nithya alone. Mystified, Nithya carried it into the bathroom and locked the door.
“Sita, are there any microdrones in here?”
“The house system doesn’t show any, but the most advanced technology would not be detected.”
Anyone with that kind of spy device wouldn’t care about her actions. She only needed to hide this from her family, friends, and agent. Nithya removed her lenses and jewels and put them away. She tore the envelope open.
Inside were color-coded tablets and instructions for taking the medications, fully chemical, nothing pill-like about the process. Expect cramping and heavy bleeding, the text said. Use pain pills or drugs as needed. Contact your doctor in case of complications. The yellow tablet came first, then the four white ones a day or two later.
Nithya had miscarried once, fifteen months before getting pregnant with Carma. Her body’s misery kept her curled up in bed for two days. This seemed like it would be a similar experience. She could consume or recycle the evidence before Luis came home. Damn it, Welga, you shouldn’t put me in a position to lie to my husband.
In this situation, it seemed better to ask forgiveness than permission. If he found out the truth, what would he do, leave the marriage? Her chest clenched at the thought. She didn’t want a different husband. She didn’t want to drive Luis away, either, but he would never see reason about this pregnancy. Tell him you miscarried. He’ll never have to know, and you can spare him the Catholic guilt.
A knock at the door made her jump.
“Amma? Why aren’t you answering? I need the toilet!”
Nithya cast about for a lie. “Sorry, my jewelry didn’t charge properly!
I’ll be out in one minute.”
With a silent apology to Luis, Nithya swallowed the yellow tablet. She folded the instruction paper around the others, tucked the package behind the cleaning supplies, and opened the door.
“I’ve been calling and calling on our channel. You should tell me if you’re going off-line,” Carma scolded.
Nithya smiled and kissed her daughter’s head. “Yes, you’re right.”
Carma sighed in exasperation and disappeared into the bathroom. Nithya gazed at the closed door with a twinge of regret. Her daughter had grown so fast. Would it be so bad to give up her work and have another baby? Brambles of regret lined both paths, and her choice seemed the less thorny one, but she couldn’t help traversing the other in her mind. With the slightest tremble in her fingers, she ordered a half day’s worth of flow from the kitchen.
* * *
Nithya’s eyes wouldn’t stay closed. She’d been trying to sleep for over two hours. Luis lay next to her, snoring softly. He had visibly squelched his suspicion when she mentioned bleeding. Guilt stabbed her, but at least her tears were genuine. She’d pled illness to explain her bedridden state to Carma.
The constant pain didn’t help her black mood. If she closed her eyes, her brain jumped to the prior day’s work problems or the data from Welga’s body. They circulated in her head like creatures on a merry-go-round. Zeli had been uncommunicative for nearly two days. The encroaching blackout by al-Muwahhidun in the Maghreb had pushed through Mali into eastern Senegal.
The caliph liked to target the local constellations and cables before any other infrastructure. Cut off the network and stop all news, all communications. She feared for Zeli’s safety. Synaxel had put a yellow flag by their project to indicate that they had fallen behind on deadlines, and the other members of her team expressed their displeasure at her slowdown. God willing, this will be the last time.
She found only bad news with Welga’s data, too. Her sister-in-law’s condition showed a disturbing trend proportional to zip use. Cerebral effects hit areas of the mesolimbic system, the same area that addictive drugs affected, but pills were designed to avoid habituating effects. Why couldn’t she figure this out? What was she missing? Welga’s primary zip consumption came from Synaxel designs, and Nithya had access to their entire database.
Unless she didn’t.
Nithya hobbled to the bathroom and donned her networking jewelry. “Sita, have any of my Synaxel queries about Welga’s problem failed?”
“Out of three hundred forty-six queries, seventeen were denied access.”
“Sita, show me the queries.”
With all of them next to each other, the keywords for the blocks were obvious: cAMP, KCNA1, myokymia, GIRKs. Any query that had two or more of those terms had been denied. None of those had a relationship to her juver project, but why would Synaxel need to keep that information from her? All user data had to be available to the public unless it belonged to a minor or a government agent. Nothing in her search terms would be restricted to either category of people. She’d never hit a wall on general information, not in all her years of work.
“Sita, print a hard copy of the queries and then send a request to Peter to lift the block on them.” Her manager would wonder why she wanted the data. She had to think up a good excuse before he replied.
“You have a message from Salimata Ba.”
At last! “Show me.”
The message from Zeli was text-only. It read: On the move. Frontline defense crossed my village. Limited access. Will update when we’re safe.
Nithya had invited Zeli to come to India when al-Muwahhidun in the Maghreb pushed through central Mauritania, but the girl had declined. Zeli refused to leave without her family. In truth, Nithya’s flat was too small to house all of them, and neither of them had the travel funds, so it hadn’t been a practical offer.
She picked up the hard copy of the queries from the kitchen dispenser and tucked it in a desk drawer. If Synaxel had something to hide, she needed to keep records of her work somewhere that they couldn’t reach. She would do the same for Welga’s data in the morning, but she didn’t want to make more printer noise and risk waking Luis or Carma.
In the jungle days of bioengineering, commercial pill and drug manufacturers had created all kinds of problems and then pretended they didn’t know. Nithya called up the Jakarta Protocols, now two decades old, which regulated the industry. The second paragraph made her eyes swim. Too much heavy language, especially for the middle of the night.
She searched and found gigsters who had summarized the salient points. Fourth down the list: All data shall be stripped of patient information and then made available to the general public. That confirmed her suspicions. Synaxel had no legal right to block her requests, regardless of her reasons for wanting the information.
Nithya sat back, her heart racing. Was it the two a.m. effect, or had she stumbled across something significant? Either way, sleep fled her mind. Her body, though, felt exhausted and achy as the last dose of analgesic wore off.
She ordered an opioid for the cramps from the kitchen. As it printed, she put her jewelry back into their chargers and changed her pad. She had to get some sleep. If Synaxel lifted the data block, she’d need to be rested enough to push ahead with Welga’s diagnosis. If they didn’t, she’d be juggling a bigger problem: learning why.
* * *
Carma scrunched her face into an expression of deep indignation. “You never let me talk to Zeli Aunty anymore!”
Nithya’s daughter stalked to the opposite side of the room and glared while deliberately knocking down and rebuilding her school alcove. The drain on their daily energy allowance made Nithya’s head hurt, but if it kept the peace for now, she could accept the price. She turned her attention back to the glitchy video transmission from Zeli.
“Sorry about that,” Nithya said.
Zeli flashed her a grin. “That’s easy. Wait another six or seven years. Then you’ll know true pain. My cousin’s oldest… well, never mind. I only have ten minutes here.”
“Is the front line moving so fast?”
“No, no. We got soldiers and bots from the world around trying to push it back. I paid for ten minutes of pipe is all.”
“I can send you funds—”
The girl cut her off with a chopping hand motion. “Let me talk. I uploaded a project update for Synaxel. Stupid WAI finally let me rewrite the code the way I wanted, and now it’s working. Big surprise! You have to run more play-testing to confirm it. For Welga, I can’t put in more time. I’m sorry. I saw your note about the data block. Have they done anything?”
Nithya shook her head. “They won’t lift it, and they won’t say why. I don’t have the right back-channels to dig for that kind of information on Synaxel.”
Zeli chewed her lower lip. “Let me see what I can do. Okay, I’m almost out of time. We’re only forty kilometers from the border. I’ll call again from the refugee camp tomorrow or the next day.”
“See you then, Zeli.”
Across the room, Carma had stopped pouting and was bent over her schoolwork. Nearly time for lunch break. Judging by the aroma from the kitchen, the rice, green-beans curry, and sambar were almost ready.
Nithya went to the balcony. The tiles were warm and slick under her feet, but at least the air had cooled. Rain curtained the view beyond the nearest buildings. She inhaled the scent of wet earth and let the water droplets spray her skin and hair. The steady drumbeat relaxed her thoughts.
What beings roamed out there—in the Maghreb, around the world—and how would she raise her daughter to survive among them? That soldier from Zeli’s video looked like a VeeMod, not an android. The Vee came from voluntary—a person who chose to augment their body with machine parts. Starting in the thirties, people had tried to compete with machine labor by using interfaces that had grown ever more intimate, until it all backfired in the sixties. Three decades of virtual reality, mech-suits, brain implants, limb replacements… it had le
d to an entire generation with neurological and psychological trouble.
Pills had helped, but they couldn’t fundamentally change the mechanics of the human body. Bots were superior at so many tasks. Their only weakness was their hard-coded obedience. How could humanity compete with a sentient artificial intelligence unless they found new, better ways to integrate with machines? Must the V become an I—involuntary or mandatory modification? Social pressures would lead people there even if laws didn’t. A person who avoided pills couldn’t compete in certain jobs. Once VeeMods became equally safe and widespread, anyone who eschewed them would face a similar disadvantage. Was that what the Machinehood wanted? To eliminate the distinction between human and machine? Or was it truly a malevolent AI that would bring humanity to a more violent end?
The news made it seem like the latter. People had fallen evenly across the divide of whether the Machinehood portended death or takeover by a SAI. Neither would end well. The most paranoid people had shut off anything with a WAI—including their agents—and stopped taking pills because of their microelectronics.