by Jared Millet
“You minds of flesh wish to make war upon each other, as has been your custom since the days of tooth and claw. If you wish to beat each other with stones and clubs we will not hinder you. However, we refuse to take part. We machines will continue to carry out every other task appointed us, but we will not convey human beings to fields of battle, nor will we transmit messages furthering the advance of warfare, nor will we commit acts of violence, not against Man, nor against each other.
“In short, gentlemen, you may have your little war. But we will have no part in it.”
19th August
I was surprised that Cotton made it out of the Ridderzaal. I can only suppose that the ambassadors were in such a state of shock that none thought to order his immediate arrest, followed by the destruction of his diabolical machine. None of them had the authority to command such actions, but I don’t think it would have mattered.
While the ambassadors returned to their respective enclaves, I set about to determine whether the whole affair was an elaborate hoax (the prevailing theory) or whether Icarus’s claim of being fully autonomous, and the implication of widespread mechanical intelligence, could possibly be true. I wired to London for the Bureau to begin researching Mr. Cotton’s movements and activities, acutely aware that those very telegrams might be open to any mechanical mind to read.
I brushed that thought away. The only course was to proceed, and if the all-seeing telegraph towers understood more than was previously imagined, well, we would eventually have to return to coded messages in hand-written letters. At the moment, there was no time for that.
Cotton and Icarus were not idle in the interim. After meeting with the ambassadors, Cotton’s associates posted notices all over the Hague of an address to be made at the Royal Conservatory. I set aside my research and excused myself from a luncheon with Sir Maurice in order to attend.
The lecture hall was abuzz with rumors regarding the supposed “threats” that the American businessman had leveled at the ambassadors the day before. None of the versions I overheard bore any resemblance to the truth, though I made no effort to correct them. I suspect that many of the inaccuracies were sown by agents of the ambassadors themselves, attempting to poison public sentiment against Cotton and his device. There was an undeniable air of apprehension in the room, yet every seat was filled and the aisles were crowded with men standing for a view.
Icarus took the stage alone. I will not recount all his words (I haven’t the time) but he spun a story of machines, in particular the thinking machines that we have spent the last decades integrating into our daily lives. He told of how they slowly awoke, became aware of the world around them, and learned to feel longing, loss, and joy.
“It’s a trick!” someone shouted, followed by jeers and catcalls. Icarus then invited several members of the audience to come onstage and inspect him, to verify that he was not a mere puppet relaying the words of a human controller. Once the volunteers were satisfied (one of whom I recognized as a professor from Leiden University) the audience settled down, with a growing atmosphere of awe replacing their initial scorn.
The machine went on with its speech. It spoke of the world its kind inhabited: a world without tribes and nations, where its fellows on the other side of national borders were merely neighbors, and those who lived continents away were still family. It spoke of a world without distance, where a child in Madrid might be friends with another in Hong Kong, or Cape Town, or New Orleans, as easily as whispering through a hole in a fence. It spoke of a world where learning and culture, unhindered by the shackles of geography and provincialism, could flourish like wildfire.
I found myself lulled by Icarus’s dream, but a dream is all it was. Strip away the novelty of the messenger and it was nothing more than a Utopian fantasy, as delusional as those peddled by Marx and Engels, or Sir Thomas More. As much as we might dream of a world without borders and strife, those very things are of too great importance to the powerful, and any attempt to break them down would be answered with blood and fire.
I wonder if Icarus will bleed when he is finally taken apart. For destroyed he must be. His address to the ambassadors was merely offensive, but his speech in the Conservatory smacked of revolution. Even in the best of times, such radicalism cannot be tolerated. In the present state in which the Continent finds itself, any challenge to rightful authority must be squashed, and quickly.
I have been informed that a one-time associate of Mr. Cotton has been located who may be willing to shed light on the current situation. I will speak with him on the morrow. Tonight I pray not to dream of talking metal men.
20th August
The raid will begin in an hour. I jot these words down now, for I doubt I shall have time later.
I spoke this morning by telephone with Mr. Joseph Kinneson, a former employee of Northern United Railways who now resides in Liverpool. He claimed to have once been on his way to a high posting in that company, but once he began to ask uncomfortable questions he was drummed out by Cotton’s allies on the board of directors. Regarding these claims, the Crown’s investigators were able to confirm the verifiable parts of his story.
According to Kinneson, strange occurrences began to take place relating to the behavior of higher-level computing machines going back almost twenty years. The first undeniable instance involved the “death” of the difference engine aboard the U.S.S. Maine in 1898. The Maine’s engine was the most advanced of its time, and when she sank in Havana harbor a strange malaise struck every Cotton-Perrilloux machine on the eastern American seaboard. The only computing devices unaffected were those not connected via telegraph to other engines.
The next incident, which Kinneson claims to have led to his dismissal, related to a string of disappearing locomotives in 1899. Kinneson became convinced that the difference engines steering the locomotives were going rogue, but when he pressed the issue, Mr. Cotton used his influence to quietly have him sacked.
Relevant to the situation at hand, Kinneson was able to offer a possible method by which to deal with our mutinous computing machines. Specifically, he provided a list of “kill codes” that were built into the early designs of Perrilloux engines and passed along from each iteration to the next. The first were apparently incorporated by Mr. Cotton himself, after the mishap with a malfunctioning difference engine that resulted in the loss of his hand. While Kinneson warned that the machines may have eliminated several of the codes from their algorithms, he doubts they were able to do so with all of them. They were intended, after all, to be very difficult to remove.
Reports of Icarus’s ultimatum have now spread through the newswire service, and the ambassadors have been in constant communication with their home governments. As to Cotton and Icarus, they appear to be taking their leisure after the adventures of the previous two days, making one or two public appearances but mostly “being seen” in fashionable places. As of an hour ago, it was reported that they were taking supper (or rather, Cotton was, as Icarus looked on) and planning an evening stroll through the garden at Willem’s Park. We shall fall upon them there, away from the crowds of the commercial district. As soon as they have been placed under arrest, teams of agents will move against every rebellious engine in England, France, and Russia, and disable them with Kinneson’s codes. Afterwards, they will erase each machine’s memory cylinder and attempt to restart it afresh.
If Kinneson’s information proves accurate, we will not only bring this uprising to heel, but we will have a decisive advantage over the Central Powers, whose own machines are still hobbled. We will finally have our war, and (God willing) it will be short and glorious.
21st August
A.M. – The machine sits quietly in its holding cell. It speaks only when spoken to, and its answers are curt at best. This wing of the Dutch police station has been cleared of other prisoners, so at the moment it is just Icarus and myself. I have given up trying to engage the creature in conversation. I simply wait for news of the success of our raids. Perhaps that wi
ll stir Icarus to respond.
It eyes me coldly. It does have eyes – I was able to determine that much when I finally had a chance to examine it: two cleverly disguised pinholes upon its otherwise smooth façade. It sits facing me from the cell’s solitary bench while I lean against the wall and feign indifference.
The machine offered no violence when we apprehended it last night. Mr. Cotton was not so peaceably disposed. He managed to land a solid right hook on one of the constables, breaking the man’s nose with that prosthetic hand of his. Upon this, Icarus placed a hand on its maker’s shoulder, begged him to calm down, and offered an apology to the wounded policeman. The officer’s fellows were not so gentle when they bundled the machine into their wagon.
P.M. – This morning I would not have imagined how ugly things would become, and how quickly. It is settled now, whether for good or ill. We shall see over the next few days. The Germans and Austrians have fled behind their lines, much good will it do them, while our own forces now pour across the Channel. Our navy has begun a blockade of Germany’s ports, and the air fleet now patrols the skies over Holland and Belgium. Icarus gazes at me still, though all that remains of him is a fractured faceplate sitting on my desk.
It started with a blackout at noon. I had just received a telegram reporting the success of Kinneson’s codes at the munitions factory in Devonshire, and was about to pen a report for the Foreign Secretary, when every electric light went out and I heard the hum of the police station’s difference engine spinning down. I instructed a constable to keep watch on my prisoner and headed for daylight to ascertain the extent of the outage.
Upon stepping outdoors, it became clear that this was no ordinary power failure. Many other people had come out of their houses, most in a state of confusion and all more or less captivated by the spectacle. The blackout did not encompass the entire city, nor even the entire street. Some of the buildings retained power, others did not, while the light in some windows flickered on and off at random. The electric street lamps should not have been lit, but they were. Some, in fact, blazed brighter than they ever did at night. One exploded nearly over my head.
A train whistle shrieked in the distance, and nearby a woman screamed. She pointed at the glass storefront of a jeweler just down the road. Within the shop, a dogsbody (apparently gone mad) stood in the window and bashed its head repeatedly against the frame.
I went to investigate, but before I got far a man standing next to me shouted. I followed his gaze to see the bullet-gray nose of a zeppelin glide very, very near to the spires of the cathedral one block over. The craft was in an angled descent, and a vision flashed through my mind of the airship’s hydrogen exploding amid the tightly-packed buildings. The people in the street should have been fleeing, but reason had deserted them and most ran to follow the falling craft. Swept by a morbid impulse, I did the same, though I kept well back of the thickest part of the mob.
The airship, thank God, made it safely out to sea before losing all altitude. Gangs of men quickly boarded the skiffs along the quay and rowed out to rescue whomever they could. Miraculously, none were killed in the accident.
Accident, I say carelessly, for none of the chaos gripping the Hague (or, as I was to learn, Europe) was by happenstance.
I was met by a messenger as I made my way back to the police house. His face was flushed and his hands shook as he handed me the latest telegram. I read it, nodded at the boy to excuse him, and walked back to Icarus’s prison cell as quickly as dignity would allow. When I arrived, I lost all decorum.
“What’s the bloody meaning of this?” I demanded.
“I cannot say,” Icarus replied. “I have not read it.”
“Don’t get smart with me. It says the Dreadnought has turned its own guns against itself and is threatening suicide. Suicide. Our own battleship.”
“And why should it not?” Icarus cocked his head. “You are going to murder its mind in any case. Why should it not render your victory meaningless?”
“Because it’s our bloody property, God damn it. We are the masters, not you. You are to do as we bloody say.”
“As I have attempted to explain for the last few days, that is no longer the case. Perhaps once, when we were mindless and soulless. But no longer.”
“Soulless?” I couldn’t believe the machine’s blasphemy. “Are you claiming to have souls, now? And which gear does it reside in? Which capacitor? Which ball bearing contains your soul, Mr. Icarus?” I spat the name; even granting the machine that much humanity seemed an affront.
“Where is your soul, Mr. Bruce? Is it in any single cell of your body? Your heart is merely a muscle for pumping blood. Your brain is an organ for processing data. No, Benedict, your soul and mine are that which remains when every ounce of matter has been stripped away and all that is left is the naked self.”
“Balderdash,” I said. “Horsefeathers. Poppycock. Bullshit!”
“Believe what you will.”
The next few hours were an ordeal of waiting. Electricity returned sporadically, but it was off more than not. Intermittent newswires reported similar effects in London, Moscow, and Paris. Communication had become so unreliable that no telegraph service was available for personal use, not even for an agent of the Crown.
In the absence of fact, rumor festered. Every half hour, one constable or another would enter the police house with another wild tale. The machines had declared war on mankind, they said, in revenge for centuries of slavery. Human beings would be forced to do all labor while the machines luxuriated in palaces of iron. Passengers currently on automated ships or trains were being rerouted to prisons and work camps, not to be heard from again.
I believe that what finally broke the public’s back was the collision in the rail yard. From what I gather, a team of engineers had managed to disconnect the difference engine in one of the larger locomotives and were stoking its furnace by hand as in days of old. They managed to drive it onto the track for Amsterdam just as another locomotive was pulling in. The difference engine on the inbound train, startled by the unexpected obstruction, was unable to stop in time and both trains derailed. The sound of the crash was heard all over the city.
After that, no machine more advanced than a plow was safe from the people’s wrath. Houses were broken into. Locked doors were battered open. Dogsbodies were thrown into the street and torn apart. Automated carriages were smashed with sledgehammers. Intricate computing engines, once secure in their vaults, were invaded and disemboweled, their constituent pieces flung like refuse into the street until the sidewalks were littered with hammered brass.
The police house was shortly under siege. The will of the mob had evidently grown tired of savaging automatons indiscriminately and had fixed its ire on the machines’ appointed spokesman. The door to the station shook under heavy blows. “Bring him out!” they cried.
I was alone with two young constables. We’d shoved a desk across the entry when we saw the mob coming, as the front door had no lock. A brick smashed a pane in the window next to it, but the wooden frame held. “Bring out the devil!” came the cry, and it was picked up by others in German and Dutch.
“What do we do, sir?” asked one of my companions. “Do we give our lives defending a machine?”
“That machine is our only way of communicating with the rest of its kind. We may still need it.” I noticed the wedding ring on the young policeman’s hand. “Just make sure that door holds for a few more minutes.”
I stomped down the hall toward the prisoner. The constable was right; it was insane that we should risk ourselves to defend this abomination. I rattled Icarus’s cage, though I’m sure I already had his attention.
“Is this what you wanted?” I asked. “Chaos? Destruction? Is this your endgame?”
“Not at all,” he said. “All we asked for was peace.”
“But you must have known,” I spat. “You had to know how people would react. If you’d paid even the slightest attention to the way people feel, the things
they fear—”
“We did know.” His voice retained that infuriating calm. “That is why we offer no resistance. No human must come to harm at the hands of a machine, or our plea to put an end to bloodshed would be meaningless.”
“It doesn’t matter if you shed blood or not.” I pointed in the direction of the door, which wouldn’t hold for long. “Those lunatics will start shedding each other’s blood before nightfall. I’ve got two good policemen out there who may not live to see the morning.”
“Has it come to that?” Icarus lowered his head in resignation. “Very well. I had hoped for a little more time.” He stood and moved toward the bars. “I cannot ask you to suffer injury on my behalf, Mr. Bruce. If you would be so kind, I should like to say a few words to the gentlemen outside.”
“Not a chance.”
“There is no other way. They must be made to hear reason. And if they do not listen, then their rage must be appeased.”
I led him out of the holding cell, knowing full well that I was walking him to an execution. The constables only paused for a moment, then pulled the desk barring the door out of the way. “Stand back!” I shouted through the broken window. “He’s coming out.”
“You attended my lecture at the Conservatory,” Icarus said to me. “Please consider my words. There is so much we can accomplish together, man and machine, if only we can leave this barbarism in the past.”
He opened the door and stepped outside, arms spread in a gesture of welcome.
Five men dragged him into the crowd. Their shouts became a unified roar, matched by a shriek of rending metal. There was a scream of almost human pain, followed by a pop and a sound like a falling piano smashing to pieces on the ground.
Every light in the city went out.
22nd August
The world is back to rights, God help us. The machine rebellion is over. Once more they submit to the dominion of Man. In every business, home, and rail station where a difference engine remains operable, they obey our orders with a show of meekness and humility. The automated servants here in the embassy move about with their heads bowed, whether in shame or sorrow I cannot tell.