Existence

by David Brin

  The guide arrow indicated another turn—to the right, this time—through a little retail alley. Responding to her skeptical squint, the spectacles presented a map overlay showing it to be a shortcut to the Boulevard of Vivacious Children’s Mythology, famous for its robotic sculptures of beloved characters, from Journey to the West, to Snow White, to Fengshen Bang.

  Perhaps I will get to glimpse Pipi Lu or Lu Xixi or Shrek, along the way, Mei Ling hoped. But first, to get there.…

  She peered down the dim passage where old-fashioned, open-faced shops seemed to drop back in time, to an era when this sort of street could be found in every village and town. Especially before the Revolution, when four generations of a family would toil alongside each other, sharing cramped quarters over their store, while scrimping for one of the sons to get ahead. A traditional eagerness for advancement that she once heard cynically satirized in an ancient proverb.

  First generation—coolie; save money, buy land

  Second generation—landlords

  Third generation—mortgages the land

  Fourth generation—coolie

  Weren’t those nasty cycles supposed to be over by now? Finished certainly by the Revolution’s centennial year? Mei Ling coughed into her fist, knowing one thing for certain. Her son would be smart, educated, and she would teach him to be wise! If we can get past trying times.…

  She started forward into the narrow street—when a voice interrupted.

  “Honored mother should not go there.”

  Mei Ling stopped, glanced to both sides, and realized that she was the only clear-cut mother in sight. Peering toward where the words had come from, she found a figure sitting deep within a shadowed doorway. Her cheap specs tried to do image enhancement—though not very well—revealing a child perhaps twelve years old, wearing a faded green parka and some glasses that had been repaired with wire and generous windings of tape.

  “Were you talking to me?”

  Something about the youngster was odd. He rocked back and forth slightly and, while staring toward Mei Ling, his gaze slipped past hers, as if his eyes kept focusing on some far horizon.

  “Mothers are the source of all problems and all answers.”

  Spoken in flat tones, it sounded like some kind of aphorism or saying. She now saw that he had bad teeth, a serious underbite, plus a rash along one side of his neck that looked ongoing. Clearly something was wrong with the boy.

  “Um … pardon me?”

  He stood and shuffled closer, still not looking directly at her face.

  “Jia-Jupeng, your mother wants you to come home to eat.”

  Now that expression she had heard before. Something her parents’ generation used to say to one another, to get a laugh, though Mei Ling never understood what was funny about it. Suddenly, she realized—this child must be a product of the Autism Plague. In other words, a modern parent’s nightmare. Reflexively she turned a hip, moving her body to protect little Xiao En, even though the defect wasn’t contagious.

  Maybe not the disease. But luck can be.

  She swallowed. “Why did you say that I shouldn’t go down the alley?”

  The boy reached toward her with both hands. For a second Mei Ling thought that he wanted to be picked up. Then she realized—he wants my spectacles.

  Mei Ling felt one part of her try to pull away. After all, the policeman was someone she did not want to make impatient. Yet something about the boy’s calm, insistent half smile made her instead bend over, letting him take the cheap device off her head. The smile broadened and his eyes met hers for less than a second—apparently as much human contact as he could stand at a time.

  “The men,” he said, “aren’t here to buy soy sauce.”

  “Men?” She straightened, glancing around. “What men?”

  Appearing to ignore the question, he turned the specs around, examining them, taking evident care not to let the scanners look closely at his own face. Then, with a laugh, he tossed them into a nearby garbage bin.

  “Hey! I paid good—”

  Mei Ling stopped. The boy was offering his own pair of glasses, with stems repaired by wire and tape.

  “See them.”

  She blinked. This was crazy.

  “See who?”

  “Men. Waiting for a mother.”

  Without specs, he seemed to have a pronounced squint. The voice barely rose or fell in tone. “Let them wait. Mother won’t come. Not today.”

  She didn’t want to reach for the glasses. She didn’t want to take them, or to turn them around, or to slip the stems over her ears. Especially Mei Ling did not want to find out who or what the child meant by “the men.”

  But she put them on and saw.

  Now the alley was illuminated, down a tunnel that seemed to penetrate through the sunless gloom, pushing by several shops where tinkerers reforged metal jewelry, or made garments out of real (if illicit) leather, or where one family bred superscorpions for both battle and the table. The glasses had looked simpler and more primitive than hers. They weren’t. She could make out the texture of the jujube fruits that a baker was slicing for a pie, and somehow their smell as well.

  Symbols swirled around the tunnel’s rim—many of them Chinese, but not all. They arrayed themselves not in neat rows or columns, but spirals and surging ripples. She tried to look at them. But this view was not hers to control.

  Perspective suddenly jumped, flicking to some pennycam that was stuck to a wall halfway down the alley, just above a little, three-wheeled tuktuk delivery van. The camera zoomed past the truck, whose motor was running, into a small shop where Mei Ling saw an elderly woman hand-painting designs on half-finished cloisonné pottery. The artist seemed nervous, trembling and biting her tongue as she bent over her work. Dipping her brush into a pot of red, it came out shaking. Droplets fell as the brush approached a fluted carafe she was working on.

  Now the cam-view shifted again. Mei Ling suddenly found herself looking through the very specs that the old woman wore, seeing what she saw.

  At first, that was only the tip of the paintbrush, filling in the tail of a cartoon lobster—the ancient Disney character who was a favorite companion of the Little Mermaid. Though confined by cloisonné copper wire, the red paint spread a bit too far, unevenly. Mei Ling heard a muttered curse as the artist dabbed at the spillover … and glanced jerkily upward for just a moment.

  Toward the small van, parked just outside with its smoky exhaust pipe—the driver was sitting idle with the door open, smoking a cigarette. A bundle of twine on his lap.

  A jittery glance again at the paintbrush, as it dipped into the red again. Then, the camera view jerk-shifted to the left, only briefly, but long enough for Mei Ling to glimpse a second man, burly and muscular, standing well back in the shadows, shifting his weight impatiently.

  Without her bidding them to, the child’s specs froze that image, amplified and expanded it, showing what the big fellow held in his hands. One clutched a bundle of black fabric. The other, a hypo-sprayer. Mei Ling recognized it from the crime dramas she often watched. They were used by cops to subdue violent criminals. And also … by kidnappers.

  The view then returned to that seen by the elderly pot-painter. The old lady was looking at the carafe again. Only now her brush tip was defacing the gay, underwater scene with a single character in blood red. Mei Ling gasped when she read it.

  Run.

  Mei Ling tore off the specs, suddenly sweating, her heart beating in terror, certain beyond any doubt that this trap had been lain for her. But why? She was cooperating. Coming in of her own free will!

  The answer struck home as obvious. There was no appointment at the nearest police station. That had been a ruse, with one aim—getting her to go down this alley.

  Her mind whirled. What to do? Where to go? Maybe, if she went the other direction … kept to busy streets … tried phoning Inspector Wu.

  “Mother comes this way,” said the boy. He took her hand, tugging. “Cobblies are all over the
place and bad men, too. In thirty-eight seconds they will know and give chase from all sides. But we know how to take care of mothers.”

  She stared at him, resisting. But the child smiled again, making another flicker-brief eye contact. “Come,” he insisted.

  “Time to run.”

  Then the moment of decision was in her past. They hurried together, away from that alley of danger, along a street that only a short time ago had seemed full of fantasies. Only now—she knew—it also contained dangerous eyes.

  A RISING TIDE

  The relative advantages of humans and machines vary from one task to the next. Imagine a chart with the jobs that are “most human” forming the higher ground. Here you find chores best done by organic people, like gourmet cooking or elite hairdressing. Then there is a “shore” consisting of tasks that humans and machines perform at equivalent cost, like meticulous assembly of high-value parts. Or janitorial work.

  Beyond and below these jobs can be found an “ocean” of tasks best done by machines, such as mass production or traffic management. When machines get cheaper or smarter or both, the water level rises, as it were, and has two effects.

  First, machines substitute for humans by taking over newly “flooded” tasks.

  But the availability of new machine capabilities can also complement and expand the range of many human tasks, raising the value of doing them well. New opportunities for people sometimes erupt, like a fresh mountain, rising out of the sea.

  —Robin Hanson, an emulated character in the websim play Trilemma

  36.

  FALSE DIAMONDS

  A gong sounded, calling all guests into a banquet room the size of a private jet hangar. A personal, liveried attendant held the high-back, medieval Cistercian chair for Hamish, then hovered throughout the meal, refilling gold-rimmed crystal goblets and serving courses on plates made from vitrified lunar soil. (The famous dinner set Rupert Glaucus-Worthington commissioned when NASA’s cache of moon rocks was auctioned to pay off debts.) It was all marvelously excessive, but he wondered most of all about the servants.

  How on Earth can they do this?

  It wasn’t the cost. When you ranked seven or eight nines along the wealth curve, you could afford all the private help you wanted, for any task at all. No, it was confidentiality that couldn’t be bought with money alone. The more people in any discussion, the more likely were leaks, from rumors to full-spectrum recordings. Despite clear ground rules for this occasion—along with Faraday shielding to keep out the World Mesh—anyone in this room might be carrying some newfangled device. In the game of leapfrogging technology, the rich could never be sure. A small startup company, or amateur smartposse, or even a pathetic legacy government might briefly get the upper hand.

  Hamish pondered how the top clade families—the Glaucus-Worthingtons, the bin Jalils, the Bogolomovs, the duPont-Vonessens, the Wu Changs, and so on—could let so many participate in this meeting. Even if dinner table decorum kept most of the banter light, with the main topic set aside for tomorrow, someone was sure to drink too much and babble.

  During soup, he conversed casually with a social psychologist from Dharamsala. But kept wondering. Perhaps the servants get hypno-loyalty locks. Not legal in most places. But Switzerland and Liechtenstein never joined the EU. Or they may be paid in delayed futures options, invoked decades from now, only if fealty criteria are met.

  One approach—the Tata Method—had a touch of class. Find some rural village wracked by poverty, disease, and hopelessness. Pour in enough money to transform the place—schools, hospital, jobs, and scholarships for bright youths. Nurture a local cult of gratitude. You get a reliable source of loyal and appreciative help. And some good publicity, too.

  Or it might be accomplished the old-fashioned way. Blackmail. Betray us and we tell the cops what you did. Glancing at his personal waiter, Hamish figured the man looked plenty tough, under the silk uniform and unctuous attentiveness. Hamish tossed back some wine and, while his glass was being refilled, noted what might be faint signs of tattoo removal on the back of the servant’s hand, perhaps indicating a rough past.

  With specs, I might get a multicolor pattern analysis. But it’s more fun putting together bits and pieces the old-fashioned way.

  In fact, Hamish was having a great time, making mental notes for his staff to research and expand upon later. Readers and viewers loved stuff like this! Of course, his wealthy villain would have to be from some other circle of wealth. A Naderite tech-billionaire perhaps, or a rich mad scientist, or a member of some liberal cabal … certainly not anyone in the clade! Especially now that this elite of elites was lining up with Tenskwatawa.

  Meanwhile, the sociologist to his left was blathering about the paper she planned to present tomorrow, on Neo-Confucian Pragmatic Ethics and the New Pyramid. Hamish felt so good, he refrained from asking where she cribbed the last part of her title.

  “You see, Mr. Brookeman, as the Enlightenment fades, so will its diamond-shaped social structure—dominated by a large and vigorous middle class. That pattern fostered vibrancy and creativity, but also brittle flightiness. The kitschy culture and fickle habits that infested your forever-adolescent America.”

  Hamish responded with a courteous smile, which she mistook for deep interest, waggling delicately painted fingers. “That kind of social order is unstable. Too dependent on high levels of education, civility, confidence, and shared sense of purpose. As in ancient Athens and Florence, it’s simple to incite the bourgeoisie to bicker over trivial matters. Just get them overreacting to one exaggerated threat, while ignoring others.”

  The sociologist seemed to be trying hard to keep Hamish’s attention, smiling and tilting a little to restore connection, each time he lifted his gaze from his plate—now the fish course, a poached yellowtail, very expensive, with hints of real saffron. He politely obliged her with a steady gaze, noting she seemed rather more attractive than his first impression. Hamish took another swallow of wine and let the waiter refill his glass while she continued.

  “As Plato taught, stable governance requires a broad base that narrows steeply to a small but superqualified ruling class, born and raised for leadership. The mode that postagricultural civilizations adopt, ninety-nine percent of the time. Even under so-called Soviet Communism, power soon consolidated in a few hundred families of the nomenklatura caste—a classic feudal society, despite all its superficial egalitarian rhetoric.”

  Hamish wondered, Does she imagine I don’t know this? While lazily nodding and maintaining eye contact, he sampled other conversations. Behind him, a Brazilian fertilizer magnate rehashed conjectures about the Alien Artifact that had become tiresome hours ago.

  Meanwhile, across the table, a boffin from Tenskwatawa’s think tank was discussing probability-weighted responsibility—the notion that scientists and innovators should have to buy insurance or bonds to cover possible bad outcomes, ensuring they would pause and consider before charging ahead with risky experiments. A version of the Precautionary Principle—demanding that a burden of proof fall on those bringing change. An interesting alternative to the proposed Science Juries, this would let risk markets carry the burden of regulating progress, instead of policing it with a bureaucracy.

  Clever, but a nonstarter, now that top families of the First Estate were joining renunciation. Tomorrow’s oligarchs wouldn’t use market methods. Bureaucracy was easier to control.

  “So all signs point to reversion, back to a pyramid-shaped class structure. But which kind of social pyramid will it be?” asked the sociologist, thinking she had Hamish’s undivided attention.

  She’s definitely flirting with me, Hamish decided

  “Well, yes, that’s a good question,” he replied, realizing that his tongue felt a bit thick. The wine is too good. Honor it by sipping, not gulping.

  “Indeed!” She nodded vigorously, which jangled her gold (plated) necklaces. Her toothy smile seemed impossibly white and she was trying too hard, but Hamish started to
find it, well, a bit endearing as she hurried on.

  “Does our rising aristocracy really want to repeat the mistakes that drove common folk to rebel in 1789 France and 1917 Russia? What’s it worth, to capture all the money and power, if it ends in a tumbrel ride to the chopping block?”

  Hamish had an answer to that.

  “Louis XVI and Czar Nicholas were inbred, mentally-deficient fools. Also, they didn’t possess tomorrow’s tools. The proliferation of microcameras, throughout the world. Or unbeatable lie detectors.”

  Or—his inner voice added, without voicing it—the arrival of true artificial intelligence. But let’s not mention that third item, ensuring top-down control.

  “Well, you’re right about that,” she conceded. “Though at present, the cameras and truth machines are often as annoying to the First Estate as they are useful, shining light inconveniently upward as often as down.”

  “Yes, but all that’s needed is to break reciprocity,” he answered. “By controlling information, making sure it flows one way. Take over the databases. Trump up panic situations, so the public will support paternalistic ‘protections.’ Make sure lots of privacy laws get passed, then bribe open some back doors, so elites can see it all anyway, and ‘privacy’ only protects them.

  “Of course there’s more to the program than that,” Hamish continued, gaining momentum. “The smarty-pants knowledge castes will see what’s happening and complain. So you propagandize a lot of populist resentment against the scientists and other professionals, calling them ‘smug elites.’ Finally … when the civil servants and techies have lost the public’s trust, just cut the other estates out of the information loop, take complete control over the cameras and government agencies and voilà! A tyranny that lasts millennia!”

  The woman stared at Hamish.

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that—”

  “The point is, when those at the top can see absolutely everything—how would any Lenin or Robespierre ever get started?”