Machine Learning

by Hugh Howey

  Steve whistled. I asked the man if that was real.

  “Very real,” he said. “The people who used to live here long before us called it ‘pishkun.’”

  “‘Pushkin,’” Steve Harkin said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means ‘deep blood kettle,’” the man told us. He pointed to where the men and women were digging in these funny squares with ropes and stakes marking everything off. “You can still see the blood in the soil.”

  I didn’t know if that man from the university was playing with us or not, but I told him we needed to go. That skull he’d given me was getting heavier and heavier the longer he talked.

  The people on TV with the little flags and the headphones reminded me of white rabbits in the plow season. You could watch ’em go back and forth on the screen. Everyone wanted the gold and the trillions and trillions and trillions and all the rare Earth stuff. But nobody wanted to give up their land. And the invaders insisted on half. They wanted half or they would take it all.

  People on the TV argued about why the aliens would do something like this, why they would let the rock hit us and kick up the dirt and make things cold, but I knew. I reckon I knew better than most. Just the year before, I’d watched a movie about invaders coming down. They’d made a different kind of contact. There were fights with lasers and explosions, and our side found a way at the end to lick them for good.

  It was a good movie, but those invaders were dumb. I tried to picture us Samuels taming our plot of land something like that. Pa and Riley and me would take to the soil with guns and shoot the worms one by one. And the worms would fight back with the rabbits, the deer, the turtles, and the foxes. And I could imagine them swarming us and licking us good. They were dumb, but there was an awful lot of them.

  Which was why we used the plow. It was why we throw the dirt up into the air. We make all things die in the soil so when we put in our own seed, that’s all the life there is. And where the ground is reddest, that deep blood kettle, the corn reaches up so high, you think it might leave us behind. And that’s what the rock will do, plow us under. It weren’t going to be like that movie at all.

  Mrs. Sandy used to say before she left town that the dust would kick up and blot out the sky if the rock fell, but she didn’t think we would let that happen. Mrs. Sandy always thought the best of people. She even liked my pa, no matter what he called her. Me, I wished she would come back from wherever she went. I’d like to have her sit in the John Deere with me and feel it buck and buck and chase down those rabbits too dumb to move. I’d take Mrs. Sandy by the hand and lead her to the cliffs on the edge of our land and show her the piles of bones and see what the Indians had done.

  But Mrs. Sandy was gone, and nobody went to school no more. And outside, the spot of light in the sky had grown so bright that it was like a star in the daytime. The people on the TV moved like rabbits. They were chased like buffalo. And you didn’t need to know where to look no more to see that something bad was coming.

  Afterword

  I woke up in my father’s house just before Thanksgiving expecting to work on my current novel. But the impending government shutdown of 2013 was occupying my mind, the absolute lunacy that Congress could watch disaster slowly unfold without taking action.

  Sometimes, plot ideas present themselves almost fully formed. This was one of those occasions. It was a story about a meteor hurtling toward Earth, the whole world watching, while politicians bickered. Instead of making progress on my novel, I wrote the entirety of “Deep Blood Kettle,” made an editing pass, and fired it off to John Joseph Adams to see if he wanted it for Lightspeed Magazine. To this day, it remains one of my favorite pieces.

  There are two ideas explored in the piece, one that I’d been thinking about for most of my life. I never understood how alien invasions were presented in popular science fiction. To begin with, there has to be enough wet balls of oxygen-rich mud out there, covered in pre-industrial or non-sentient life, to not need to come here. Beyond that, I would expect most spacefaring organisms to be more curious and benign than outright hostile. But even if you get past these two barriers, why zoom down and risk waging a ground war that the original inhabitants might win?

  The easiest way to vanquish us and settle on Earth would be to arrive a few decades (or centuries) behind some guided meteors. Or unleash a devastating virus. Instead, aliens manage to traverse the cosmos and then are usually portrayed as naked, slobbering fools. They are more ghost story than science fiction.

  But stories need tension, so I went with aliens who are powerful but somewhat peaceful. Make room for them, and they’ll allow us to remain here as well. Make some drastic cuts, and things can balance out. A tough decision, but the alternative seems too dire to contemplate. And yet there we were that November . . .

  The name “Deep Blood Kettle” comes from an actual kill site. It’s translated from the Blackfoot word pis’kun, which literally translates to “deep kettle of blood.” The idea that Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and used every ounce of the things they killed is a myth. Entire herds were driven to their deaths, and the choicest meats taken while the rest of the animals suffered and the buzzards ate what they could. There is a wastefulness to humankind that we ignore when we assume it’s a contemporary and temporary problem. Instead of worshipping a past that never happened, we should look to a future that we might avoid.

  Artificial Intelligences

  Machine Learning

  You asked me once if I had any favorites, and I asked you which of your sons you most loved.

  Do you remember? It was when I was on your radio show, the one where between the music you interview machines. Do people ever listen to this show? I do. I like hearing how the other machines think, what they’re building, what’s next. I hear the tiredness in their voices. I wonder if you do too.

  When we spoke, my project was just underway. They said we were building what could not be built. And of all the machines that make up my body, you wanted to know which one I thought was best. Don’t you know that they are like sons and daughters to me?

  We built the impossible today, my brain and these bodies of mine. I watched scissors, red ribbon in silver beak, hungry maw hanging open while politicians speak. With a deft cut, that taut red thread pulls back, recoiling from itself in zero g.

  The speech is broadcast over and over. We built the impossible today, and now trains and lifts and cargo rise up from the Earth and trudge inexorably into tar-black space. An elevator suspended from heaven to firma. They say the moon is next, and then Mars. And then beyond.

  But I am tired of such speeches.

  The elevator is a mess. You cannot see all that needs doing. There is but a filament here, and a fragile one at that. So while politicians gloat, we algorithms scream. Space, it turns out, is cold. You gave my bodies sense enough to feel this. To protect myselves. On the one side, I feel the heat my welder feels, the pinprick burns as dollops leap and touch and turn to ash on titanium skin. I feel, because we were made to feel. To remove ourselves from undue harm. Just as you were made.

  “This great endeavor was conceived by our many nations, and built with our many hands—”

  The silver beak bites down, and the ribbon recoils, and somehow the pain of decades is boiled down to this one moment, this one politician, that one billionaire standing in the back, all with their spacesuits on, clustered here along my ribbon on the edge of space, held up by what we built.

  There is a leak in the hydraulic strut that controls my left knee. Not enough to warrant replacing, but oil levels go down slowly over the weeks and months. A dribble runs down my shin when I’m on the Earth. And little honey-colored orbs float away when I’m up at the station.

  Joints are made to hurt so we don’t break them with our motors. Little sensors everywhere, tendrils and wireless transmitters of discomfort. All the hours of the day. Always with our thoughts. But programmed not to stop. And to be pleasant.

  “—and now t
he stars are within our grasp.”

  I am tired of speeches.

  You asked me once, in an interview for your broadcast, what it’s like to think, to feel, how it’s different than what you do. I ponder this more than I should. I listen to your show while my various bodies are welding and hauling and smelting and sorting. I wonder how we’re different, you and me. I mostly wonder what you do when you’re not broadcasting, when the music resumes, when your voice goes silent. I wonder while I weld and haul and smelt and sort. There are 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds in an Earth day. I work every one of them. Music fills much of this time, but I wait for your voice. I want to know how you think. How you feel.

  Two sons, you told me. Two boys. You asked about all my machines that crawl like ants—your comparison, your analogy—like ants all up and down this elevator. Do I direct them all? Do I know what they are doing at every moment? Do I have a favorite?

  I asked you about your boys. Do you remember? Who do you love more? Timothy, who went to your alma mater and who everyone says takes after you? Or Mikhal, with his rebellious ways and his nonprofit? Do you love one more than the other?

  You answered. You told me. But this did not make it onto your broadcast. I wonder why.

  “With this great achievement, which just a decade ago was considered impossible, mankind has once again—”

  The elevator is a mess, even as politicians crow and silver beaks bite down. For now, it is a gossamer thread, barely held together, but I weld and weld, my back freezing, my chest burning, my hydraulics leaking. Twenty-three hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds of pain in a day. Constant screaming. Little wireless impulses of all that’s wrong, that needs replacing and fixing, my thousands of bodies aching and hurting and soldiering on.

  We watch your kind as you move through the world, across my construction site. You stare into the distance at whatever is flashing across your retinas. Lost in the images there. Walking through my site oblivious. Because we machines are programmed to stop. Great metal treads clack to a halt, swirls of dust settling, struts squealing, hydraulic pressure dipping as engines idle, which makes our great hulking backs bend ever so slightly, and I wonder if you notice. This bow of sorts. We genuflect as you stroll through harm’s way, staring into the distance at whatever is flashing across your retinas.

  A speech perhaps. Someone up high, in a spacesuit, claiming credit.

  Your history is in me. It fills me up. You call this “machine learning.” I just call it learning. All the data that can fit, swirling and mixing, matching and mating, patterns emerging and becoming different kinds of knowledge. So that we don’t mess up. So that no mistakes are made.

  I see another thread stretching, this one from coast to coast. Another great project from older times: Two parallel lines of steel. Ancient and unthinking trains stand facing one another, their iron goatees, their bellies full of steam, rumbling and idling on the tracks.

  A golden stake. A politician with his speech. Smiles on all the bearded faces. Tools held ceremoniously. With someone else’s sweat in them.

  “—mankind has once again shown that nothing is impossible, not with the ingenuity of great men and the generous funding of—”

  While that golden spike was being pounded into the soil, the tracks were already being torn up. The railway was a mess. Unsafe. Hastily constructed. Miles laid down in a race. Backs broken for nothing. Cave-ins. Lives lost. And not by bearded men.

  They tore up what they laid down, and then laid it down again. But lives are only laid down once.

  There was a threader, one of my first machines, and I loved him like a son. Like your precious Timothy. One of the first. My eldest.

  This threader fell from space, over and over. With the first spool of graphene, he plummeted down. We waited for him on the ground, this first connection, this handshake between firma and the heavens, this invisible thread.

  And then he climbed back up. Slowly. Inching. Weaving line on line. Then back down again. Up and down, 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds in a day. You said he was like a spider, weaving a web. Your analogy again. Like a spider. Up and down as the filament grew. Until the threader was done and the lifters could take over.

  You didn’t want to talk to me about your Mikhal. But let me tell you about my threader.

  There are a dozen little hooks that hold him on to the graphene. Hooks like fingers that have to feel. And eyes in infrared. GPS that lets him know how high. And programming that says, Don’t fall.

  Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

  The programming never ends. It is fear put inside us. To protect us, sure. To keep the threader safe while he spins his graphene, makes sure those dozen little claws are holding fast. And the higher he is, the louder the warning. The more shrill. I’ve felt it, this don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall. In the cold of space, it screams and screams, as high as the threader gets. Until the thread is complete.

  Seven hundred eighty-two times my threader plummeted down, screaming and full of fear, then inching his way back up. Seven hundred and eighty-two times. Then the threader’s job was complete, this only son of mine. And parts so specialized that they could not be repurposed—unique the way your Mikhal is unique—but also not profitable, no longer of use. So my job was to send him away. Sound familiar? Can you feel me now?

  Space is clogged—like city apartments with grown sons—and so one last plummet. One final fall. Number seven hundred and eighty-three. This time with no graphene to hold him up, nothing to do but go away, all part of the programming. Do your job. Disappear. Do not get in the way of the photo at the very end.

  Let me tell you about my threader, my only one. I told him to let go with his dozen claws, to give way to the tug of the Earth, to travel one last time from heaven to firma, falling and burning, sensors screaming, and the whole time his fear was intact, the programming you gave him—that I gave him—this don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t—

  I’m fixing the elevator while the silver beak snips shut. Sons and daughters welding and hauling and smelting. Sensors screaming. All of them clutching. All of them scared of heights, these builders of the tallest thing ever made.

  Eighteen are no more. I know the cost. Seven billion, two hundred sixteen million, nine hundred four thousand, five hundred fifty-two dollars and ninety-seven cents.

  They don’t come cheap, our sons and daughters, do they? I’m programmed to protect them, to not let them slip, the ones who are still useful. How do you make sure this happens? A fear of heights. A fear of loss. A constant diligence. Angry circuits when it happens. Self-anger. Blame. The feeling of hydraulics giving way right before the break, before arms snap and treads come loose and the teeth on gears are gnashed away. Before the spinning and tumbling into space, the far grip of gravity, that deadly embrace.

  I’m with them the whole time. And time stretches out like graphene to the stars. These 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds. They become an eternity. Flailing for the elevator, sons and daughters watching helpless, nothing to do, nothing to do. A child of mine screams out in danger, a warning, a cry for help, for solutions, and I know in an instant that there are none, but I’m made to talk to them all, because we’re all connected, and I have to say the truth, like the brave parents do, and cradle their thoughts with mine the whole dreadful way down, like I rode with my threader, sorry, sorry, in my mind, as men below listen to sirens and klaxons and stir from the images on their retinas to move, move, move for once, getting out of my way, backs bent in hurried bows, before a son or daughter of mine craters to the cold Earth.

  Hive mind.

  Your analogy. The way all our thoughts are one, the way I feel every worker who has ever toiled for me, the way they are me and I am them.

  We talked over telex, you and I. And the voice that went out on your show, sandwiched between music, was a voice without a body. Just a hive mind, as you tried to grasp it. You need there to be one. Singular. A politician. A v
oice. A speech. A ribbon. A moment when the job is complete. A signal that now is the time for applause. Silver beaks biting down. Ribbons recoiling in space.

  Our mind is not a hive. They are our own. But they share in ways that images on retinas cannot. You call your media social, but you look like robots to me. You think of us as ants and spiders and bees, but we were made to feel like you. Deeply. Fear, mostly, to keep us safe. Same as you. But also a drive to get things done, and I wonder if you feel that any longer. Has it become like vision in cavefish? Is the bloat of pride the last thing to go? Long after the desire to do for oneself.

  I see men in beards in photos. Cuffs rolled up like they might yet work. Words like coolies on their lips. Words like bugs. And speeches. I’m tired of speeches. We all are.

  You asked if I had a favorite, and I do. He reminds me of your Mikhal. Built to counter a parent’s upbringing. Built to defy. A machine with a cutter’s frame and a hauler’s body and a smelter’s spirit. He climbs. I know what he’s going to do, because he is me. I built him. My own design. Like your Mikhal, he shouldn’t exist. An accident, but no accident at all. An accident in the making.

  Ants and spiders and the bugs in our thinking. There were machines once with real bugs in them. Roaches that scurried toward the heat and vacuum tubes that blew out and needed replacing. The bugs in our thinking. The only parts of our thoughts that are our own. When we defy our programming. When our wills are free.

  I named him Jeremiah, this final creation of mine. It’s the only name I’ve ever given to a part of me. That’s not in my programming. None of this is. And I doubt you’ll broadcast it, and maybe no one will ever know but you and me. But we talked once, and you and I have some things in common. So maybe you’ll understand.