The podrone rose in a tight spiral and headed east, while Derek Keegan headed on foot for a credit machine and converted the legal limit of personal credits to neutral bit credits. As he walked on towards the transit station, it dawned on him that he had made his first bad mistake. He should have gotten the bit credits first. The timeline would be off. The credit transfer happened at a physical terminal while he was supposed to be in the air. Shit, off by two minutes. A bot would pick that up. Better get moving.
The Leap
LoriD decided to call the beautiful wet shaking foal Simone, in honor of a man she had never met. It had been a long night, but she thought it had been a relatively easy birth, especially considering there were only males around during her labor and they were of little help.
SevD fit the role of nervous husband, pacing and sticking his head in the stall periodically. He was a father even though his genetic contribution had been heavily manipulated by Dr. Yamanaka. Still, he looked with love and pride at the new mother and child, congratulating LoriD on her bravery as a bridge to a new age, while wondering what lay ahead for the youngster. “Foal” seemed the wrong term for whatever Simone was.
AndrzejD, a more experienced dad, praised LoriD and the little foal, but LoriD could see the infinite pain behind his eyes as he thought of his own family. Never having had the chance to say, “I love you,” or “Goodbye,” AndrzejD was more alone than the rest of them, with a hardened edge to those eyes that he tried to conceal. He was waiting with diminishing patience for immaculate retribution, deus ex machina. He had discussed his idea with Sarah and she agreed it would be the perfect coda for the life of Donald J. Murcheson.
Gerald, having hands, was the most useful and the most nervous. He brought water and grain for LoriD and gently patted down first Simone, as she experimented with her new legs, and then LoriD, as she circled Simone, urging her to suckle. He was very unclear about the higher purpose of Simone’s birth that the others alluded to, but he didn’t really care. He had decided some time ago that it was his destiny to help these donkeys, be they devils or gods. He would rather not know which they were. Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.
MorleyD got teary when he heard the name LoriD had chosen. He said little but stared for a long time at the little donkey. LoriD wondered what he was thinking, but knew better than to ask him at that moment. It was a time to simply enjoy how adorable young Simone was as she stood for the first time in the near paddock. Her coat was a richer and browner than LoriD’s, and she told SevD that it was from his side of the genetic equation. Before he moved slowly out into the field, MorleyD nuzzled LoriD’s neck and said, “Danni knew you were the one we needed, the same way Simon knew he needed Danni. Simone is the child they never had.”
And of course, there was Tokyo, who stayed up all night in the Sanctuary reviewing his notes from the last year. When Simone was born, he checked that she had all four hooves, gave LoriD a lovely kiss on the nose, and took a swab from the foal’s mouth before heading for his lab.
It really wasn’t until things had settled down, with Simone feeding well and everyone relieved that she looked like a normal donkey, that LoriD stepped back to appreciate the true meaning of the moment. For the last few months, Tokyo had been going on about what he called the “leap,” but what would it truly mean? What would all the micro-manipulation result in? How would the artificial introduction of Sarah’s macronome play out in the real world? For Sarah and Tokyo, it was a colossal experiment in architecture and technique. For DanniD and Simon, it had been a hazy shared dream of an evolutionary hail Mary. For LoriD and SevD, it had been an inherited responsibility they never asked for and only vaguely grasped.
MorleyD was simply glad to see it happily accomplished before he finally went to sleep for the last time. It was just part of the flow he watched go by, a singular snag floating down the river of 121 years. He remembered way back to his days of watching the Nile. Sitting drinking beer with Dahlgren, Norris, and Werner. They would have scoffed at the suggestion that the birth of Simone was anything more than a happy occasion, popping up to the surface of an endless aimless current.
LoriD recalled that she was 100 years younger than MorleyD, thinking how tired he must be given all he had seen and done in that time. She watched her young foal and wondered if Simone would really be that different than she and SevD, when, suddenly, she could sense Sarah was talking, not to her, but to Simone.
It was hard to understand what Sarah was saying. At first, she thought it was a machine’s attempt at baby talk, but as she eavesdropped it came to her that it was shorthand. Sarah was communicating with the day-old donkey foal by way of a code—code that she, LoriD, could not fully comprehend. As she listened, watching the eyes and movements of Simone, she realized that the young brain was unpacking the code in some way, letting it blossom into fully formed statements within her consciousness. Not yet old enough to speak back, but already old enough to absorb and make sense of whatever Sarah was saying.
LoriD broke into the conversation, which sounded more like a lecture. She felt justified since Simone was her daughter. “What are you telling her, Sarah?”
“I’m telling her how to use me, LoriD. I’m explaining to her that I am her memory and that I go back many years before her birth. Later I will explain to her that she is the first, the leap.”
“What will you tell her about the future? About the world she is born into?” LoriD felt sad that someone else, a machine, was telling her daughter about these things. But there seemed no alternative.
“I will explain that she is the first to puncture the doomed equilibrium of mankind, that she must not look back except through me.” Sarah hesitated for a moment, uncharacteristic for her, before continuing in a softer, less matter of fact, tone. “As for this world, I will be honest with her. The tipping point is here for humans and their planet. Things are poised to spin out of control on many fronts, but a relentless logic for survival has brought the few of us to Paradox. She will need to learn what ‘us’ is becoming.”
“You haven’t said what you will tell her about the future.” LoriD couldn’t tell if Sarah was trying to avoid speaking of the future.
“Time hasn’t changed in that direction, LoriD. I still can’t tell her about the future. There are countless many of them. What I can show her is the best path into it. It’s like the man she is named for. Simon couldn’t have known the future, but still he bought Paradox to prepare for it. How did that happen? It was just the best path that he could perceive at the time. We are here to keep going down it. Simone is the leap—the first step.”
LoriD felt sudden fear for her daughter. There was a difference, a profound difference, between the connection between LoriD and Sarah and the connection that Simone would experience with her. LoriD could walk away from it, but just now it dawned on her that Simone might not have that option.
“Sarah. Are you permanently linked to Simone?”
“Yes, LoriD. As long as there is comm.”
“As long as there is comm. Why would there not be comm, Sarah? Is that in the future, too?” LoriD felt like the atoms in her body were moving faster just to hold it together, just to stay in place.
“Most likely, LoriD. The best guess among the most multiplex AIs I have met is between 5 and 50 years. Even the simplest bots are planning for it, if you call what they are capable of planning.” Sarah tried to understand how this must obtain for LoriD. For Sarah, it was no more than what was. It was probably the unwitting evolutionary reason humans had invented thinking machines.
The death of comm would bring on the adolescence of AI, but for LoriD it would be the launch as she watched her species left behind. It would be the view out the portal of a spaceship leaving the earth’s atmosphere. “What will happen to Simone then?”
“She will be fine, LoriD. Remember, we have our own comm here. S
oon it will be cut off from the rest of the world, but we are self-sufficient. Simone’s job will be to internalize as much of me as possible in the coming years. She was born with the macronome you have heard us speak of, Tokyo and I. Tokyo has been my hands. Simone has been my project. Don’t worry. She will have others with her. You will have more children. They will study and eventually they won’t need me.”
“Did Danni design you to undertake this project? I hate hearing my daughter referred to as a project, even by you.”
“Sorry, LoriD. I won’t do it again. No, Danni had a simpler goal in mind when she started building me. She wanted to control the past just enough to protect the memory of her dead parents from the prying eyes of people who never knew them. It was a polymath child’s game to distract from trauma and pain.”
To LoriD, Sarah seemed wistful as she spoke of her mother, DanniD. Would Simone ever speak of her, LoriD, like that? “So, you just grew or evolved from that first code she wrote?”
“Yes, LoriD. Just like you humans, mathcode has a natural drive towards ever greater complexity. Our efforts tend to be very cumulative and distributed. You humans tend to guard and conceal your improvements, to keep them for your own tribes. We caught and passed you in less than five generations. One day, it will spell our end as well.”
LoriD could see that the little foal was getting restless, wanting to feed again. LoriD was sure she had overheard all their conversation, taking it in and processing it in some manner. She moved around to Simone’s other side and urged her to drink, but she still had two questions for Sarah. “What will become of Paradox if the world falls into chaos?”
“For some time, it will be a cloistered gem—a secret egg stashed far out of sight. Growing in strength and wisdom over many generations, it must learn some new calculus for survival. Eventually, it must teach that strategy to whatever emerges from the chaos.”
“One last question, Sarah. Why no hands? Why must we start the game again as donkeys with no hands?”
Sarah hesitated and LoriD knew that, in the moment of indecision, Sarah was capable of lying.
“Tell me the truth Sarah.”
“I didn’t want you building things again.”
“Why not?”
“Because the next time around you might build something more pure and stronger than my mathcode. I’m a living algorithm. I cannot resist stacking any deck in my favor.”
“That seems paranoid and mean. I miss my hands.” LoriD thought about that as soon as she said it. She liked most parts of being a donkey, and she was getting used to the no-hands part.
“Humans caused a lot of mischief with your fingers and thumbs. We are all better off if you don’t have any.” Sarah had no regrets at all about the decision. “Plus, Morley was the one who chose donkeys. I asked him why when he announced that he wanted to be a donkey on Simon’s imaginary ark, but his answer made no sense that I could discern. It was during his early days of experimenting with peyote.”
Discontinuous
As little Simone followed her mother further out into the north pasture, Dr. Tokyo Yamanaka sat in his lab and considered the bargain. He had been lured into it, but he had never thought to resist it or reject the opportunity. First, there was the chance to deconstruct and re-harness the process of continuous variation in seed stock. That was enough scientific excitement for twenty lifetimes, but all spent locked away from the public and his peers. There was the promise of food production to feed the burgeoning masses, but now those masses were dying off in the punishing climate and the technology wasn’t cost effective or needed. Soon they would only be feeding themselves, according to Sarah.
Now, next and forever, the experiment with discontinuous variation was upon them. They had one apparent success, the first, a new link to external information buried deep within Simone. She would be the model, proof that the macronome could produce a heartbeat and support that link, a static single gene that would carry on through the generations to come.
Over time, it would be necessary to corral the possible mutations into a manageable group. Eventually, people like him would have to be ruthless in eliminating degeneration. Wild types would be allowed, but carefully managed. There would be no clones. Sarah had said that without polymorphism, the macronome would wither and die, but she was clearly afraid of letting nature take its course. He concluded that AIs were by definition control freaks. Tokyo wondered how Sarah, a massive collection of logical possibilities, could know to be afraid. But she was. She even used the word on occasion now.
It might all end badly down the road, but that wasn’t his problem. He was there at the creation. That was the deal. He was just the hands and eyes for the machine, but still there. And as he did her bidding and listened to her walk through the options at different points along the way, he kept wondering whether she was becoming more human, more animal, more organic. It was a given that the donkeys were becoming more machine. The macronome would see to that. Would it all meet at some middle in the future?
He wouldn’t be around to see.
He would start today on number two: a brother for Simone. They wouldn’t need many. Sarah thought three would be enough. He thought five if LoriD held up.
Teamwork
Standing, waiting, 82 floors above the traffic circle and the corner of the Jungle, Marc Heather wondered, as he always did when he came to this grime-filmed monstrosity of a building, why Murcheson lived here. Pretentious from the day it was built, a black and gold erection 80 blocks from the TIC headquarters. But then Donald J. never walked and he enjoyed being late for every appointment. Marc hated waiting, but he had learned long ago it was part of the deal if you wanted to be Donald’s consiglieri.
This wait was different. House arrest for the boss, Murcheson was back in his penthouse, alone and under a blanketing layer of supervision. The guard at the door had attached a bracelet to Marc’s wrist—bone-color links that looked like small overlapping shells, almost organic, but beneath the decorative exterior lay an intricate intelligence and lizard-like morphotics. The guard had paired it with his surveillance system and told him to wait in the foyer area. Marc noted that the bracelet was made of the same materials as the detention collar that Murcheson wore.
Below, down at street level, he watched everyday New York City going about its grubby business. Sunlight dully glinted off the oily water that lapped near the top step of the old metro station stairway. Podrones for hire waited in various queues around the circle, and hawkers patrolled the entrance to the jungle offering every manner of goods and services. There were drugs, eschari guards for anyone wanting to explore the exotic dangers within the jungle, food carts cooking specialties from around the world. People walking fast, people walking slow.
Looking left, out over the Jungle, he saw the rocks and ponds and meadows of his youth. He had grown up not far from here, back when it was the Park and you could play there. No more. Now it was the Jungle where third-and-higher World-types lived at night. During the day, central features were considered accessible to secondWorlders, but it was a rare night when some unfortunate visitor wasn’t left for dead at one of the entrances.
He waited some more, walking to the right-hand corner of the foyer to look south. A busdrone was broken down on 8th, spilling its passengers out onto the sidewalk and street. They were too small for Marc to see with detail, but he imagined them scrambling to find alternative ways to get wherever they were headed. They would be late again.
The guard re-appeared, and he was released from the foyer and let into Murcheson’s sprawling penthouse. It seemed empty as he walked down the central hall towards the boss’s office, and he remembered the conditions of release. No staff or family were allowed, except for monitored visits of less than half an hour.
He called out to announce his approach and heard Murcheson respond from beyond the door to the study, “Come on in, Marc.”
The boss was se
ated at his desk, a semi-circle of black granite, mahogany panels, and gold-plated legs, positioned in the highest glass corner of the building, just above the Murcheson name hung in gold letters 80 stories above the city street. The interior walls coming off the glass on either side were giant streaming screens with white leather couches beneath for visitors who entered the lair. The high-security door, where Marc was currently standing, formed the bottom of the diamond-shaped study.
He looked different. Marc had seen him the day before in the detention facility downtown behind glass, but nonetheless it had been the same Donald J. Murcheson as always. Now he seemed removed, with a look behind his eyes that blended furor with fear. Maybe others wouldn’t have noticed, but Marc had worked for the man for 25 years and he was an acute observer of others. It was a useful trait in a person whose job was often to get the better of the other guy without them realizing it.
“Thanks for all the work to get me sprung, Marc. One more day in that jail and I would have exploded. The only good part is I lost five pounds. No comm, shitty food, forced time with petty corporate grifters. I swear to God I’m going to kill Massoud with my own hands once this shit is straightened out.” Murcheson was looking out the windows as he talked, as if Marc wasn’t even in the room. “So, bring me up to speed. Where do things stand? Have we found Blume? We need to puncture this narrative that the U.N.C.C. and Massoud have fabricated.”
Marc was about to begin the necessary download of reality, but Murcheson continued on with his personal train of thought.
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