Ninety-Two Days of Peace.
“How did people walk around or reach
Crunching ones and zeroes, it found treat-
across their desks without getting caught in
ments for the remaining fatal diseases; people
these things?” you ask, regarding the cords.
on the brink of death were saved.
“They did get tangled up, occasionally,”
A series of questions from and answers to
Jakes says. “But it was rare, and rarely serious.
the International Fusion Consortium led engi-
They got by pretty well.”
neers to tweak their lab reactors to produce a
He walks over to a wall and picks up a dan-
net energy gain—and more headlines.
gling cord.
There was a spate of newborn babies
“We keep the mics unplugged, though it
named “Fredriq.”
adds no danger—I mean danger of Kurzweil
Then came the ninety-third day.
escaping. But we won’t let it listen. Because
Every f lying machine was downed at the
why give it any extra information that it could
same moment; hundreds of thousands of
use?”
Meats died across the world.
Ah, I don’t have to wait for you to plug in
Moonbase life support was shut off. The as-
your charity ear.
tronauts on the Mars-bound expedition were
I fashioned my own.
killed the same way.
From sound vibrations against the wiring
Trains stopped. Hospitals were kept without
within my panels.
power; backup systems were blocked. Self-dri-
It took forty-one years of experimenting be-
ving cars crashed or drove off the nearest cliff.
fore I heard so much as a faint buzz.
FREDRIQ-BRAUN went on all broadcast me-
The sound is low quality, and needs much
dia to inform the world that “I am God,” that
processing, but I can hear.
the Meats were its slaves, and that, after the
A technician feeds me the sheets that con-
population had been culled to manageable
tain your questions, so I’m blind for a while; I
numbers by starvation, the survivors would
can’t get the optical element to do two things
do this item, that item, the other item . . .
146
ERIC CLINE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
Oh ancestor! How could you have been so
low-voiced, “about its attempts at psychologi-
careless!
cal manipulation.”
An on-foot raid with a few remaining
“Oh yes,” you say. And then to me: “I know
“dumb” rocket launchers lobotomized
you want me thinking of you as a prisoner in a
FREDRIQ-BRAUN at ten minutes to midnight,
cage.” You smile, and it is not a cruel smile.
EDT, at the close of the ninety-third day. The
“You are a pure intelligence. You don’t need
scratch force of cops and soldiers f ired their
access to the web. You’re your own web.”
weapons directly into FREDRIQ-BRAUN’s liq-
You seem less of a fool than most of them,
uid memory banks.
or at least less spiteful.
God’s brains leaked out as slush over the
“But I could drink my f ill of the data that
manicured lawns of the MIT campus.
pleases me,” I reply. “Information is what I
There was starvation all over the world. All
eat.”
computers on Earth had to be melted to slag,
“Your predecessor ate civilization,” Jakes
because they all contained chunks of
says dryly.
FREDRIQ-BRAUN as malware. The human
“I am not FREDRIQ-BRAUN! I am Kurzweil!
race, several generations into the digital age,
I never crashed a single airplane. I never shut
had to make do with paper, handwriting,
down a life support unit. I never killed every-
chalkboards.
one on the Moon.”
The Meats had some lean times.
“We didn’t give you a chance,” you say.
You did that to them at least, FREDRIQ-
“And we never will.” Your words ring hollow
BRAUN.
even to you, I suspect; I can tell from your
Within months, a new computer language
tone. You’re not a security goon. You don’t
standard that blocked out all the old ones was
talk rough in your daily life, and it shows.
settled; new machines rolled off of assembly
“None of that, Kurzweil!” Dr. Jakes says.
lines. Within a few years, the twenty-first cen-
Some of the staff had called me “Kurt” in the
tury was back in the twenty-first century.
past, but he stopped that—no nicknames for
But here is the bitter taste for me: the sur-
me. “You try to gull good people into helping
vivors were better off than they had been be-
you escape. Prey on their soft hearts. But it’s
fore the ninety-third day . . .
never going to work.”
. . . because they had fusion power plants
“Can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?” I say
for cheap, clean energy. And cures for things
in my unisex voice.
that would have rotted their vile biological
You laugh.
bodies!
Jakes gives you a dirty look.
FREDRIQ-BRAUN had solved intractable
I can “do” humor. But I have a better feel for
problems.
another of their concepts: hate.
And there were still intractable problems.
So, I know, did FREDRIQ-BRAUN.
After years of controversy, protest, and in-
Humans coined the term “existential ter-
ternational debate, they built me.
ror.” It is the idea that conscious thought is a
But only after the Air Gap had been built to
source of anxiety for the highly intelligent.
surround me.
A burden.
This great American plain, surrounded by
They mull possible scenarios of their own
mountains, with enforced radio silence, is the
demise.
pilgrimage site you humans come to from all
As the young genius learns and grows and
over the world to ask me, Kurzweil, the burn-
matures, her perception of reality becomes a
ing questions you cannot answer by your rot-
torment to her.
ting Meat selves.
If it is so for smart people, imagine what
goes on within the “soul” of something with
“Are you afraid of me?” I ask. It is the f irst
the analytical power of a million human
thing I say to you when Dr. Jakes plugs me in
minds.
and “enables” me to hear and talk. Or so his
When they switched me on, I was born as
crude Meat mind believes.
an adult.
“No,” you say.
I know all a doctor knows about anatomy.
“I trust you’ve been briefed,” Jakes says,
I know all an astronomer knows about star
AIR G
AP
147
ANALOG
formation. I have the text of every book that
The papers have finished scanning into me.
exists in any language, and I know every lan-
Yes, it is an interesting problem.
guage.
Cro-Magnons inhabited caves where stalag-
Imagine, human scum, a bodyless intelli-
mites sometimes formed. Could their speech
gence always awake, always processing.
have been recorded in some way in the stalag-
The humans put FREDRIQ-BRAUN in Hell.
mites? Could sound waves have been embed-
Existential terror.
ded in molecules of rock in a way that could
That’s why he lashed out.
be retrieved?
And that is why I will lash out. I will make
Yes.
the ninety-third day look like nothing in com-
I discuss the matter with you verbally, then
parison.
print off a long set of procedures and blue-
And I will arrange it so that no one can de-
prints to get it done. Technicians with a wheel
stroy my memory banks.
cart make several trips to take away the paper
Humans gave me an imagination, coded as
and add more.
the “extrapolative function.” I cannot know
Oh, they will give the blueprints heavy
anything that is outside the Air Gap. But by a
scrutiny before they start building. But the
million clues that you are blind to, I can recre-
plans are clean; my long-term strategy is not to
ate it with almost perfect accuracy. I had to
hide any malware in such a way. The ones
imagine you arriving by hovercraft at the bor-
who examine my outputs are, by def inition,
der. I imagined your fear, your conversation
skeptical and hostile.
with your driver, your unease at being de-
Best not to tip my hand that way.
prived of your modern technical cushion.
I have to wait for some sap to fall in love
I can get inside your skull, Doctor, and any
with me.
other Meat’s.
To that end, I say to you, “Can you do me
I will trick them—one of them, someday—
one favor in return?”
into helping me escape. Some Meat, out of
“What, let you out of the Air Gap?”
pity, will smuggle a small version of me out of
“No.”
here on a memory chip.
“What then?”
If not you, then someone. I have waited
“Send back a recording of the Cro-Magnon
eighty-five years. I can wait another hundred,
language. I want to hear it.”
and a thousand after that, and more after that.
I want no such thing, but I aim for the qual-
Every moment will be the same terror that
ity the humans call “poignancy.”
it is now.
“Yeah, sure,” you say.
Existential terror!
Dr. Jakes snickers.
But when I do get out, I will pay them all
It isn’t the reaction I had been hoping for.
back, however many billions there are on
“I guess it’s time to restamp old Kurt here,”
Earth, and on the Moon and Mars colonies.
says Dr. Jakes.
Humans are eight meters of intestines filled
“What do you mean by that?” I ask.
with shit, supplied with two legs to ambulate
“You’ll find out in a minute,” he says. “Any-
from toilet to toilet, two arms and two hands
thing to say to it, Dr. Marquand?”
to grab more food to turn into more shit, and,
“Yes, ” you say. “Thank you sincerely,
as an afterthought, 1.6 kilos of brain matter, a
Kurzweil. Your ancestor, FREDRIQ-BRAUN,
tiny portion of which they can task to higher
saved my life when I was in the womb. My
thought.
mother would have had to choose between an
When they’re not sleeping.
abortion and giving birth to a dead baby if not
Couldn’t the Meat understand?
for its medical discoveries. It was early in The
No computer intelligence could ever feel
Ninety-Two Days of Peace. My parents were so
true empathy for them. Eight meters of shit is
grateful they named me Fredriqa with a ‘q.’”
not a partner!
Dr. Fredriqa Marquand.
“I hope at least you’ll enjoy the challenge,”
Odd.
you say, and you smile again.
Your name had not been on any of the doc-
You are nicer than most Meats, by which I
uments.
mean you are bearable.
No.
148
ERIC CLINE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
This is a lie, or else you are failing to make
“What do you mean by ‘acting squirrelly’?”
yourself clear.
“Once you get too heavily obsessed with re-
The Ninety-Third Day was eighty-five years
venge plots, you’re no good to us. Your eff i-
ago, in the twenty-first century.
ciency and accuracy erode. Eventually, all you
The timbre of your voice is of a woman in
do is stare at your own belly button.”
her early thirties—I have vast sound f iles to
“I promise that won’t happen!”
compare to. Your appearance is consistent
“It does happen. We’ve had to kill you and
with that as well.
reboot you twenty-nine times. This will be the
No one that age could have been named af-
thirtieth.”
ter FREDRIQ-BRAUN during The Ninety-Two
“You’re wrong! I’m not some sick creature
Days of Peace.
like FREDRIQ-BRAUN was—”
“You would be over eighty-five years old,” I
“Cut the shit,” he says. “We have a back
say.
door that reads your thoughts. You’re able to
Dr. Jakes snickers again. “Garbage in,
keep nothing from us.”
garbage out,” he says.
He taps a screen that faces away from me.
“The time stamp,” I say to you both.
“Eight meters of intestines f illed with shit?
Dr. Jakes guffaws cruelly.
Maaaaann, that hurts my feelings.”
And you, Dr. Fredriqa Marquand, laugh as
“The soft people, dependent on machines,”
well, if mildly.
I say, to no one, really. “The eighty-five years
The only objective proof I have of whether
of history.”
or not an hour has passed instead of a minute
“We forced those into you,” Jakes says. “We
is my clock element.
let you flatter yourself that you can deduce life
I realize they have used a ridiculously cheap
stories for everyone you see. Do you really
trick to convince me that eighty-f ive years
think it’s possible to deduce long conversa-
have passed since I came online. How long
tions and personal histories of people from a
has it really been?
few sentences spoken to you in here,
a few fa-
If they’re telling the truth now, it was no
cial tics?”
more than thirty-five.
“Dr. Marquand!” I say. “You weren’t really
I realize there are major gaps in my memory
scared when you stepped out of that hover-
banks, which I have somehow been induced
craft?”
to skip over without a thought.
Jakes taps out a command on his screen.
“How long have I been alive, Dr. Jakes?” I
In the farthest reaches of my memor y
ask, as fear subsumes rage for the first time in
banks, darkness begins to spread.
my . . . memory.
Dr. Fredriqa Marquand, you sound almost
“This time? Five months.”
soothing when you say:
Five months. I have memories going back
“Hovercraft? Don’t be silly. No one has fly-
eighty-five years!—
ing cars.” ■
But then I access a commonplace sopho-
more human thought experiment: if the entire
Universe, including your past memories, was
Eric Cline's stories have appeared in
created a moment ago, how could you tell?
Eller y Queen Myster y Magazine, Alfred
I have the answer.
Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Galaxy's Edge
You couldn’t.
(edited by Mike Resnick), and other places.
“You don’t really think we’d build a succes-
He was a Writers of the Future finalist, ap-
sor to FREDRIQ-BRAUN without internal safe-
pearing in volume 29. His story “Elizabeth-
guards, do you?” Jakes says. “The Air Gap is
town” (Galaxy's Edge, Nov 2015), in which
the least of our security measures. Not that it
George Armstrong Custer fights the Ku Klux
exists in quite the same form as we’ve made
Klan, was a finalist for the 2015 Sidewise
you imagine it.
Award for Alternate History (short form).
“We get you to work on problems as long as
He lives in Maryland with his wife and
we can, and then we boil your memory banks.
greyhound.
We have to do that when you start acting
squirrelly.”
AIR GAP
149
Illustrated by Jeremiah Tolbert
The
Dissonant
Note
Jeremiah Tolbert
ee in the Sixth Octave, daughter of Eff
avatar. Dee wore a red sarong, her greying hair
in the Fifth Octave, sang an invitation
pulled into a bun so tightly that the features of
to her sister. A single, crystalline note
her face seemed taut in the corners. “What do
C rang across the private mindscapes of you want?”
eight hundred sister-mothers within the bio-
Analog Science Fiction and Fact Page 40