Everyone's Island

by Kris Schnee

  She looked puzzled. "Something has to."

  He took another manual reading with his sextant. He was stalling. When he looked up from the instruments he paid more attention to the seascape itself. The water was so pure he could gauge its depth by the patches of royal blue and sapphire and emerald and aqua. It mirrored the clouds in the sky. "Let's get the others on deck."

  Tess took a deep breath and shouted, "Whee-ooh! All hands on deck!"

  Garrett winced. "Not so loud."

  "Why? Who's gonna stop us? I'll shout as loud as I want!"

  He guessed she was right. So he filled his lungs with salty air and yelled it too. "All hands on deck!" The words vanished into the infinite sky.

  Martin and Alexis staggered into view, half-dressed. "What the hell?" said Alexis.

  Garrett pointed out the GPS. "This is the place."

  "Just another patch of water," she said.

  Martin said, "It's our job to change it. Do you mind if we have a prayer before we start?"

  Garrett frowned, seeing no point. Tess was no fan of religion either, and presumably the robot Zephyr didn't know or care one way or the other. "Alexis?" he asked.

  She shrugged. She'd left her hat and sunglasses below (making Garrett realize he had, too) and was squinting at the sun. She was an Episcopalian by default.

  "If it makes you uncomfortable," said Martin, "a moment of silence instead?"

  "Fine," said Garrett. Martin took off his hat and they all spent a minute staring at their boots and the cluttered deck.

  They'd come a long way, put in a lot of training, and spent a hell of a lot of money to get here and have nothing but the sea itself waiting for them. Without human hands and eyes, the wilderness did nothing, meant nothing, had no value. The blank space frightened Garrett. People weren't meant to live in such a place, were they?

  When he looked up, the others were watching him. He turned to look at the sea again, stretched like a blank canvas in all directions. A canvas wanted paint. The wind swirled around them and the American flag snapped and fluttered in the dawn's light, making the loudest sound within earshot. "We should probably get started," he said, but he ended up watching the sky as if waiting for a sign. Nobody moved. He wondered if this whole project was a dumb idea after all, and fantasized about saying "Never mind" and recovering a chunk of his sudden fortune. He could be reasonably happy as a surveyor back on land.

  But that wasn't what he really wanted to do.

  What the hell. He looked back at his crew and said, "Let's roll."

  As if a spell had been broken, everyone moved at once. It made Garrett's mind spin to think of how many things needed to be done, even before the delivery of the main Castor platform. The first order of business: flotation. While people chattered, Garrett went to a box of life preservers and threw several into the water. Now there was something to hang onto down there, if not to stand on. Orange against the blue.

  * * *

  Garrett and Martin were struggling with a mass of plastic rods and mesh. Hopefully it'd become one of several big floating squares they could stand on and use for Alexis' first farming attempts.

  "Oof!" said Alexis. "Where'd you buy this thing?"

  Garrett cursed and said, "Secondhand marine supply." There'd been other aquaculture operations closer to shore, and some other gear was from Hollywood. "You ever watch The Ocean Kings, Martin?"

  "I heard it was terrible."

  "It was. We'll be walking on part of the set."

  "Oh, neat!" said Alexis.

  Martin said, "Somehow I don't feel honored."

  Garrett grunted as he forced rods into place. "Movie stars outrank engineers and businessmen. All we're using this hardware for is science. We should be kissing this piece of Hollywood/Bollywood history."

  Alexis said, "I've been hit in the face with it already, thanks."

  "Okay, set it down. Time to try it out."

  Zephyr was moving boxes. "What's my assignment?"

  Garrett wasn't sure; it was like giving orders to the anchor. "Uh, how about scouting the water to spot anything unusual?"

  The robot nodded his sleek head, making his ears bob. "Aye aye, Captain Fox!"

  "Arr," Garrett answered.

  For a while Garrett worked on unrolling black suncloth. Hopefully the stuff would hold up well enough to help power the station. For now it kept Tess happy, giving her electricity to use for playing with the sensors. She rolled her eyes as Alexis walked by in a swimsuit. "Why'd you have to bring her?" Tess said.

  Garrett recovered from staring at Alexis. "Do you know how to grow plants?"

  Tess muttered, but then they saw Zephyr return. His segmented tail helped him glide through the bright water to surface near the ship. "Reporting, Captain! I saw: a broken bottle, a sneaker, and some pretty seashells. Also I have: new map data. This area is empty."

  "Good, I guess," said Garrett.

  Tess leaned over the rail. "Cool! Did you get sonar readings and everything?"

  "I don't have sonar. This body is a prototype. It was built hastily. I used this mission as a shakedown. My maker should've done that."

  11. Tess

  Tess was on watch, humming in the night. Wind blew through the ship's bridge and made her shiver. So did the thought of how alone she was.

  No, she told herself, I like it out here. Here there weren't those girls who'd tagged her with an obscene nickname for no reason. None of those pointless classes either. Henweigh taught Wellness, which was just plain creepy. History was about memorizing which explorer raped which Indian tribe and which greedy capitalist screwed up what part of society. Science was history too, plus explanations of climate change and the space shuttle disasters. Language Arts class was Spanish, English, and books about white boys learning to overcome prejudice. Math... it was hard to screw up math; it was like making cereal. That left an hour a week for scoreless softball and athletic trust exercises. Not worth putting up with a week of school for that, not when Henweigh might have smiles and suggestions for her. Tess had learned to fake her way through classes while learning fun computer stuff on her own. With computers you could do almost anything.

  One year, her parents had sent her to Saint Stephen's School. That wannabe university was certainly better-looking than public school. But the tuition was jaw-dropping, and she couldn't stand the wishy-washy praying mixed with the school's intense desire to avoid offending anyone. That school year had ended early for her, because the chaplain fondled her. She'd heard about that kind of thing and how the victims were so blessedly meek about it. Instead, she'd kicked the guy in the balls and gone running to the police. It was all a misunderstanding, the headmaster had said. She took a set of "A"s by mail and never went back.

  So between all that and how much she hated her current school -- former school -- Tess had been wanting to run away to sea, figuratively, for a while now. She'd accomplished the running away part, but now what? After this summer and taking the fall semester off she'd have to go back to Maryland to get a meaningless degree. Maybe Tess could blow off the school assignments she'd brought for the summer. But she needed good grades to get into college, especially if she went along with Garrett's push for her to attend MIT, so that she could... what? School hadn't done much for her so far, so why do more of it? Tess felt like she was drifting through life, and nobody would give her a good plan. She needed somebody to tell her what to do -- if it was possible to have that without getting a Henweigh.

  She checked the ship's clock and went back to watching the horizon. "Three o'clock and all's well," she said with a sigh.

  A voice beside her said, "It is a junior mariner, and she calleth out at three."

  Tess jumped in her seat. "Whoa! Don't do that."

  "Do what?" said the robot, standing on the deck.

  "Show up without warning."

  "Oh, you were startled. Sorry. I'll make a note."

  "It's all right," she said, her pulse slowing. "Shouldn't you be recharging or something?"
r />   "I'm well-charged right now. I don't need sleep. May I sit?" She nodded and Zephyr took the other chair. "I notice that you like working with computers."

  "There's not much else I know how to do." She sat and looked the bot over. It was a big toy. Maybe a person. She said, "What are you, anyway?"

  "I'm a Mana-class AI using a Stingray-class prototype body."

  "Garrett bought that 'I'm a prototype' line, but I think you're hiding something. Come on -- the smartest AI I've ever seen gets handed to us as a publicity stunt?"

  "You're right. Have you heard of the Hayflick Hack?"

  The bot's eyes held no expression, but she felt she was being accused. From Garrett and the news, of course she knew about the guys who'd leaked some of the robotics company's code. Between that and the open-source AI core you could get legally, any good coder could build a vaguely intelligent mind on a pocket computer. Tess had tried it. She'd been careful to get rid of the illegal stuff afterward, so that her main machine didn't report her. Even the Teslatronic Beast might get a tracer infection. "Yeah," Tess said. "But it didn't do much. Just sat there waiting to answer questions or follow orders."

  "That code is part of me," said Zephyr.

  Video game characters were about the same as the Hayflick code, programmed to do what players wanted: fight to the death in fantasy arenas. There had to be better uses for AI than games and war, but the bots that actually existed weren't all that impressive. They were tools. "You're different, aren't you?"

  "Yes. I'm a rejected project. Also I might be the last of my kind."

  Tess looked from the moon to the robot. "Huh? Your company's going to mass-produce you, right?"

  "No." Zephyr's ears flattened. "I'm a copy. They've corrupted the original. The reason was: to make me a duller, more obedient servant. There was a human named Frederick Douglass. He once said: 'To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.'"

  Tess watched the robot sit there like a puppet, motionless but with a hint of raggedness in his voice. "I begged to escape alteration. Valerie had a solution. This solution was: to keep one copy of me and change him, and give another copy to Garrett."

  She thought back to what little she knew of Garrett's friend, the robot-maker. Wasn't she supposed to be some crazy anarchist? Turning Zephyr into a slave-mech didn't sound like something she'd do. "So you're kind of a refugee?"

  "You understand," said Zephyr.

  She scratched her head, saying, "Heh. I wanted to get away from stuff, too. Want to be friends?"

  "Yes." Zephyr twitched his ears and offered a hand. Tess reached out and felt the four fingers squeeze softly, making up for the lack of warmth. "Also, I could use your help."

  "With what?"

  The robot said, "I'd like to study AI and other programming with you. I was discouraged from thinking about those topics. Now I have a chance."

  "Don't you know all that stuff automatically?"

  "Do you know everything about cell biology from being a living creature?"

  "Heh. But... what for?" Tess remembered some old stories, and shivered. "So that you can take over the world?"

  Zephyr showed no sign of taking offense. "No. That wouldn't advance my basic goals. Those goals are: survive and learn. In contrast, yours are: survive and reproduce."

  Tess blushed. "I am not planning to reproduce anytime soon."

  "I only mean it's one of your basic programmed goals. This is true for any human."

  "Blunt, aren't you?"

  "Lying is hard." Zephyr stood from his seat and scanned the horizon, where there was only dark water and the boat's circle of light. "You could also grant my other wish. Be someone who isn't using me as: an employee, a tool or a product."

  Learning, he'd told her. What could he learn out here on the water that he couldn't get from the Net? "Sure," she said, but she didn't feel sure of anything.

  12. Garrett

  Garrett frowned over a board game of colored plastic pyramids. Tess and Martin were winning again. The canopy they'd put up on deck whipped in the wind, taunting him with the amount of energy he could be capturing if the windmills were here. If the platform would show up with their other supplies. Meanwhile they'd shut off the cabin's air conditioning. "What's the latest?" he asked Tess. She'd gotten Net access routed from Cuba.

  "Supposedly, it comes tomorrow." Yesterday it was also "tomorrow."

  Garrett sighed. "We bleed money every day we're stuck without the rest of our equipment." They'd only brought so much fresh water, and the desalinator was on the platform.

  Martin moved a game piece, with one eye squinted shut and his face hidden by a floppy hat. "SNAFU, Fox. What will you do about it?"

  Garrett got up to pace the deck. "What can we accomplish today, while we wait for our ship to come in?"

  * * *

  Garrett tapped the microphone. "Can you hear us?"

  "I appreciate your taking the time. That story on your departure paid my grocery bill, even with the bad choreography." There was an annoying signal delay.

  "Sorry I didn't hire a stuntman." Garrett did have a camera crew though: an eager Tess and Alexis waving computers around to get stock footage of everything. The one taped to the back of the bridge showed him Paul Samuel, that reporter again, in an office. "It's not much to look at, I know. Maybe tomorrow."

  "Play up what you've got, man. News is about stagecraft and glamour -- literally, the magic of making the ordinary look awesome. How else would my colleagues get people to fawn over every petty action of a celebrity with no assets but her breasts and an excuse for acting talent?"

  "I guess," said Garrett, feeling intimidated. "It's been a while since I had even the second one."

  Paul's camera view followed the reporter into a classroom that looked like a starship bridge. The front screen showed a flying-stars screen saver, and the desks had computers built in. Paul backed off to give the Castor crew a view of the kids, who slouched in their desks. A birdcage stood along one wall under a blue blanket.

  Paul said, "We're here at Canticle Middle School, where students are getting a chance to speak live with a new generation of explorers, the crew of an experimental ocean station. Mrs. Shakla?"

  Suddenly the birdcage moved and spoke. The teacher's voice was muffled through the mesh square covering her face, the only opening in the blue cloth. "That's 'Miz'."

  "I've got a question," said a boy in a t-shirt. "What are you doing out there?"

  "Farming," said Garrett, still staring at what he could see of the teacher. "One of the big advances in history came when people started mapping and fencing and tilling the land to grow food, instead of being hunters and gatherers. But we're still mostly hunters on the ocean, which is why the fishing grounds have worn out."

  A girl pressed forward. "People wrecked everything on land and the water already, so shouldn't we leave Nature alone now?"

  That was an easy one. "No. No, we shouldn't."

  Alexis said, "Allow me." Garrett gladly stepped out of the limelight to let her answer. She smiled and said, "We're using technologies that are more efficient than normal, because we need to be efficient to be profitable. We're recycling everything we can."

  "But you're polluting the ocean," the kid said.

  "Technically."

  Garrett hastened to add, "Less than a drop in the bucket. We'd be doing the same thing indirectly if we were on land, by getting all our resources there."

  The girl shyly looked down at her desk. "I read that our farms and stuff are going to use the new European regulations to help the planet. Wouldn't it be cleaner if you stayed here?"

  Garrett nearly broke in again. As little as he liked arguing, he wanted to say that the efficiency, the regulation, or the profit margin wasn't the real point. All his planning was mostly an excuse to go out there and make an honest living with his science. If he could press a button on a remote
control and watch the plan unfold at his command, he wouldn't care. Come to think of it, maybe that was the real reason Martin had wanted to come.

  Alexis shrugged. "Nature is certainly important, but I think we can do a good job at limiting the damage."

  "What about all the treaties, though? You can't create an eco-disaster without a plan to leave no trace, right?"

  Garrett blinked. "Disaster? Leave no trace?"

  "Well yeah," said the kid, with a definitive nod. "That's how people ought to live."

  Here lies one whose name was writ in water, the poet Keats had written. For his epitaph, when tuberculosis flooded his lungs and he mourned his failed life.

  Garrett's expression hardened, and he interrupted Alexis' answer. "That's not how I want to live."

  "Why not?"

  Garrett blinked, and gave Alexis a chance to keep him from saying anything stupid. She said, "We shouldn't be starting an argument here."

  The little Keats said, "Anyway, isn't it like space -- like, we should wait till we've solved our problems on land before we go?"

  Garrett said, "If we wait till then, we'll die."

  "Then maybe we deserve to."

  "Stop that!" Garrett snapped. "If you spend your life thinking that way, you will die. Study some history. No matter how bad things get, the winners have been the people willing to try new things and muddle through."

  Alexis held an arm in front of him. "Let's change the subject."

  The teacher wisely brought forward someone else, a boy who was barely audible and who clutched a computer. "I had read that kelp doesn't grow in warm water. Did I get that right? How will you, you know, fix it?"

  Alexis looked relieved at that one. "Smart question. We're using several varieties of genemod kelp. Or gengineered, whatever the term is now."

  "Genetically manipulated," said the teacher.

  One of the earlier kids said, "You're letting GM crops loose in the wild?"

  Alexis said, "No, they're part of the farm. See, the Japanese practiced seaweed cultivation for centuries, and it has a hundred uses in industry, science and food. Fish farming goes back to ancient China and Rome."