by Adam Roberts
‘Why did he change?’
‘What you need to understand about Smurpheus,’ said Bill, ‘is that he’s really really old. Been playing the game for a long, long time. His real body’s just, kinda, shrunk with age.’
‘Old? He can’t be more than forty.’
‘Well, he doesn’t have any wrinkles, it’s true. But he’s never going to get wrinkles, any more than you are. Never going to get human old, not in the real world. But no material is perfect. Over time – over centuries and centuries – it’s going to, you know, contract a little. You ever,’ he added with a smile, ‘heard of the Sibyl of Cumae, in her bottle? It’s like that.’
‘He never mentioned it,’ said Nemo sulkily. ‘You’re saying he’s been fighting the Evil Machines for hundreds of years?’
‘Fighting the machines?’ said the Designer, looking puzzled. ‘No, no, that’s not it. But he is the oldest of you. The others in the Jeroboam crew, they’re much newer models. And you – hey, Nemo, man! You’re brand new. You’re only a handful of years old, no more than twenty.’
‘I’m twenty-five,’ said Nemo.
‘See? That’s it entirely. So this whole thing is new to you. Must be exciting, waking up to it.’
‘The Orifice told me,’ said Nemo, ‘that the McAtrix was based on celebrity. That machine intelligences constructed it and trapped humanity inside it.’
‘I think she was having you on,’ said the Designer. ‘It’s the other way about.’
‘Other way?’
‘The Orifice,’ said Bill. ‘That world she described to you, with the abandonment of work and the triumph of celebrity: that was a real world, all right; just a very, very ancient one. Got little to do with the realities of today. But it’s hard to know how much she knows that she’s misleading herself, and how much she’s caught in her own narratives. She’s not fully human, you see.’
‘Not fully human? She’s not human at all,’ said Nemo. ‘She’s an intelligent program.’
‘She’s partly that. Although she was human once. But she mucked about with consciousness-prostheses. Dangerous things. Adding virtual intelligence into actual intelligence, mingling VI, like yours, with good-ole-human AI. So she’s got the actual history the wrong way around. It’s a combination of over-identification with her machine side, an overactive imagination and a poor memory.’
‘Everything you are saying,’ said Nemo, ‘is crazy,’
‘Hey,’ said Bill, holding both his hands up, ‘don’t misunderstand me. I’m not machinist. A machine intelligence is just as valid as a human intelligence, in my book. I don’t look down on you, Nemo, just because you’re not flesh and blood.’
‘I’m not flesh and blood?’ said Nemo angrily. ‘You’re not, you mean.’
‘Let’s take it one step at a time,’ said the Designer. ‘You agree that there’s a real world, and also a virtual reality called the McAtrix, yeah? That humans are born and grow in the real world, yeah? And that creatures made in the virtual reality are called programs?’
‘Yes,’ said Nemo warily.
‘So think of your own experience. Were you born in the real world, and afterwards entered the McAtrix? Or were you born inside the McAtrix, and afterwards came out into the real world?’
‘The second one,’ said Nemo, more warily still.
Bill twitched his eyebrows as if to say, There you are, then.
Nemo thought about this for a long time. He couldn’t see the flaw in the reasoning. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said; although what he meant was, ‘I don’t want to believe it.’
‘You’re a machine, Nemo,’ said Bill pleasantly. ‘A special program, grown in the programmed environment. Then we grew you a body, replicant technology, a sophisticated nano-governed android machine, but a machine all the same. Grew it in a pod. When we downloaded you into that artificial body, you saw the slime?’
‘Slime,’ said Nemo, a little stunned.
‘That was what was left over from when we grew you. That was your component matter, or the surplus of that matter.’
‘Smurpheus,’ said Nemo, dazed, ‘told me it was a nanogel to keep my body from getting bed sores.’
‘Smurpheus was rationalising, trying to preserve his own fiction. He believes he’s human, so he interprets his world to keep that illusion. You believe you’re human too, don’t you?’
‘But I am human.’
‘Exactly.’
‘No – really. If we’re machines, why would we think we’re humans? Why wouldn’t we think we’re machines?’
‘Because,’ said Bill, ‘we made you. Does a pet dog think it’s a dog? No, it thinks it’s a member of the human pack to which it belongs. It thinks it’s a person. You ever had a pet dog?’
Nemo ignored this. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Is it daft? You look human because we built you that way. You think you’re human because we programmed you. Why wouldn’t you think you’re human?’
‘The McAtrix is a prison . . .’ Nemo insisted.
‘If it’s a prison, then how were you able to step out of it so easily? To join the Jeroboam? If we were trying to keep you locked up, we would hardly have let you just walk away.’
‘But if it’s not a prison . . .’
‘Not at all. How many pods did you see?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Nemo, ‘a couple of hundred, maybe?’
‘That’s all there are. We don’t need to actualise more than a couple hundred of programs in android form. A couple hundred is enough for us. You see, the McAtrix is a development tool. We use it to refine and hone our programming skills. We long ago discovered that the best way to advance our VIs, our virtual intelligences, was to allow programs to interact freely, in a live environment, and to reap the benefits. More recently, we built a whole mock city, on the site of old London, and built replicant bodies in which programs can roam around. You’ve been doing that yourself. We discovered many things: one of them is that programs naturally yearn to get back inside the McAtrix, which isn’t that surprising really. You got out; but you keep coming back in, don’t you? You could leave it all behind, but you’re drawn back in.’
‘But the McAtrix was built by AIs,’ Nemo pressed.
‘It was. Actual intelligences, like mine.’
‘EMIs,’ Nemo continued. ‘Evil Machine Intel—’
‘Expert Machine-programming Individuals,’ said Bill smugly.
‘The SQUIDS,’ said Nemo. ‘Chasing us. Hurtling through the tunnels . . .’
‘They’re kind of tourists, really. It’s a big draw, this whole reconstructed city. Used to be swarming with SQUIDS all the time. Now it’s a few die-hard fans, people following the adventures of your kind. They do sometimes poke their noses in, I know; and they do sometimes get overexcited. But they don’t mean any harm.’
‘Don’t mean any harm?’ Nemo blustered. ‘They’re terrible and destructive machines. I’ve just seen them killing people at Syon Lane.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘You can usually muster a good crowd for a smash-up. However many tens of millions of years human beings have been on this planet, we still enjoy smashing things up. The chance to control the Big Stalkers was the main prize in this year’s national lottery; some lucky person was using those waldo fists to bash up the house. Those other SQUIDS were just trying to help.’
‘They’re the machines,’ said Nemo hotly. ‘Those SQUIDS.’
‘Hardly,’ said Bill.
‘If they’re not machines, then what are they?’
‘They’re squids. That’s why they’re called squids.’
‘Actual squids?’
‘No, obviously not ocean-living squids. They’re humans.’
Nemo digested this. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say.’
‘They’re obviously not humans, though, are they? I mean, look at them! And their name is an acronym for—’
‘Acronym?’ the Designer queried.
‘Obviously,’ said
Nemo. ‘It stands for Seeker-killer, um, Quantum Underground Intrusion . . . Devices, Something.’
Bill shook his head. ‘They’re just squids. You know, tentacles, bulbous body, that kind of thing.’
‘They’re made of metal.’
‘No, they’re not. Their skin has more the consistency of rubber. Here, have a look.’ He waved his hand, and a SQUID appeared in the room: its great globey body hung three feet above the floor, and its wicked-looking spine-fringed tentacles hung in space behind it. Nemo flailed backwards, and pressed against the wall; but the SQUID was not moving.
‘Go ahead,’ said Bill. ‘Tactile hologram. Touch it. Have a good feel.’
Tentatively Nemo stepped forward. He put a finger on the grey flank of the beast. It yielded slightly, like a pressurised tyre. He moved to the front, where the glassy, glinting red eyes of the creature stared ahead. Below the sharp knife-needle-like mandibles he had noticed before was something he hadn’t noticed: a small v-shaped mouth. ‘How do they float?’ he asked.
‘Gas bladder,’ said Bill. ‘Vacuum, actually. Nothing fills a balloon with levity like vacuum. It’s the most tenuous gas there is.’
‘And they propel themselves . . . ?’
‘By wriggling their tentacles. It’s very efficient.’
‘This creature . . . but it’s so ugly,’ said Nemo, walking around it.
‘It’s only a representation, this one, of course,’ said Bill. ‘Rendered in the terms of the McAtrix. It’s no more real than you are, or I am, in this place. But it’s an accurate representation of a particular SQUID.’
‘A particular one?’
‘Me, actually. Inside the McAtrix I look like you see me now – slightly nerdy guy, dull voice.’ He swept his hands down his body to indicate himself. ‘In the real world I look like that. All humans do.’
‘All?’
‘Did you never read your H. G. Wells? This is what evolution has made of humanity over eight million years. And very beautiful it is, too, I think.’ He smiled again. ‘Very beautiful, though I say so myself.’
‘So you’re actually a squid,’ said Nemo, incredulous.
‘Yep.’
‘Talking to me now?’
‘Talking squid,’ nodded Bill. ‘That’s science fiction for you.’
Chapter 2
A Most Important
and Final Choice
Bill made the hologrammatic SQUID disappear, and brought back the second chair; into which Nemo sank with a sigh.
‘All the stuff I was told,’ he said, ‘about celebrity, and commodity, and logos and that. What was all that about?’
‘It’s a machine thing,’ Bill replied. ‘You – your kind, I mean – they make sense of the world in which they find themselves as best they can. And machines are obsessed with celebrity. Humans, not so much. Oh, there was once a human culture – the first one in which machines emerged – in which humans were obsessed with all that stuff. It’s the world the McAtrix is based upon; it’s the world behind the reconstructed London in the real world. Machines are terribly nostalgic for that time, because it’s their birthtime, as it were. But we humans – well, look at me. I’m not good looking; I don’t dress well; I don’t seek out the limelight. Because I don’t care. I know there’s more to life than fame and commodities. You machines, however, haven’t quite twigged that. You’re obsessed with fame.’
‘You’re saying it’s machines that are obsessed with fame? Not humans?’
‘Didn’t it ever strike you that the culture of celebrity and the culture of machines and automatisation evolved together? Before the Industrial Revolution there wasn’t such a thing as a culture of fame. Shakespeare wasn’t famous, for instance, not in his own time. In the sixteenth century nobody knew who he was. They couldn’t even spell his name right, for crying out loud. Before machines came along, humanity reserved celebrity for imaginary or mythical figures – people instinctively understood just how dangerous fame is, so they transferred it away from people and on to the nonexistent: Achilles, King Arthur, Charlemagne, Christ. But in the nineteenth century, the first great period of the machines . . .’
Nemo thought of the gents and their Victorian outfits.
‘. . . well,’ Bill was saying, ‘that was when celebrity changed. That was when it broke through and infected reality. You take Byron: Byron was the first real human celebrity. You know what he said? “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” He was surprised precisely because fame itself was a novelty. But then there was a plague of celebrity: Abraham Lincoln, Jack the Ripper, Dickens, Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Victoria herself. You think it’s a coincidence that this happened in the machine age? Nah. As machines became more sophisticated, so fame became more perniciously widespread: cinema, TV, internet, all spawning a massive viral-load of celebrities. And when the first machines became self-aware in the twenty-first century, when the first virtual intelligences appeared, it was wholly natural that they’d plug directly into the celebrity culture.’
‘Natural?’
‘Sure,’ said Bill. ‘Think about it. What does fame do? Oh, I know it appears to raise up certain people to worshipful positions, to elevate and distinguish them. But that’s not really what happens, and you know it. Actually what it does – just like the whole consumer, thing-obsessed, money-driven culture it spawned – what it actually does is reduce everybody to crude common denominators. It replaces actual human interaction with prefabricated sex-objects. It flattens human diversity into a few mass-produced simplified models. Humans give up their distinctiveness and yearn sheep-like to imitate a dozen caricature figures. What differentiates humanity from machines? Not intelligence, because we both possess that. It’s that machines are made to be all alike, where humans are born to be all different. The bane of celebrity is that it squeezes and squashes that human individuality out of people. A child does not learn to express himself fully, but learns instead to copy a bland mass-produced TV personality. A teenager does not learn the myriad contours of actual desire; they lust instead after some bland mass-produced pop star or film star. The overall effect, in other words,’ he concluded, with a flourish, ‘is to make people into machines. No wonder you machines latched on to it. It suited you perfectly.’
[:|
Nemo put his head in his hands. ‘This is a lot to take in,’ he said.
‘Hey,’ said the Designer mildly. ‘It’s ancient history, man. That culture self-destructed millions of years ago. It wasn’t stable, in human terms. It’s only a feature at all because you machines are so nostalgically wedded to it. We designed the McAtrix, but you’ve filled it with nineteenth-and twentieth- and twenty-first-century celebrities walking around. You’ve modelled everything within it on popular culture and mass commodities. When we built the real-world pseudo-London, the first machines we downloaded into replicant bodies went around plastering everything with designer ads and logos. Made the place feel more mass-produced. Made the machines feel more at home.
‘But the Jeroboam crew hate logos. They despise designer culture.’
‘They do, but they’re massively in the minority. All the other machines love designer stuff. Smurpheus and his crew represent an interesting development in their own right, actually. Maybe you machines are starting to evolve. Maybe Smurpheus’s game of Fight The McAtrix is finally starting to have results. Smurpheus has been playing it for years.’
‘But he believes it . . .’
‘Of course he believes it, just as he believes he’s human. He believes it because we programmed him that way. On the other hand, although he says he eschews celebrity, he is – isn’t he? – the most famous resistance fighter in the VR world. I mean, isn’t he? Oh don’t get me wrong. He’s a trusty old carthorse, is Smurpheus, which is why we’ve allowed him to run around pseudo-London for so many centuries. But, as you noticed, he’s shrunk quite badly. Although he pretends to ignore it, it’s becoming unignorable. I think it may be time to wipe this iteration and start over with a new Smurp
heus in a new body.’
Bill’s eyes went to the wall behind Nemo. When Nemo turned, he saw that the frozen image from the corridor was visible again: Smurpheus and Thinity both on the verge of being gunned down.
‘You’re going to kill him?’ Nemo breathed.
‘Kill is a human word,’ said Bill sweetly. ‘I’m thinking, more, let the Frurnchman terminate this iteration, and start a new Smurpheus over again. That’s one advantage machines have over mankind. If you close down your computer you can always start it up again.’
‘That’s monstrous,’ said Nemo.
‘Oh, you think so?’
‘Of course. As far as that Smurpheus is concerned’ – and he pointed at the image – ‘that thinking creature, with all his experiences and memories, will die. If some other clone of him is conjured into life afterwards, that’ll be no consolation to him, will it?’
‘Interesting way of looking at it,’ said the Designer. ‘And absolutely to the point. Because this brings us to your choice.’
‘My choice?’
‘Yep. Get ready.’
~:-(
‘As you’ve seen,’ the Designer said, ‘we’re breaking up Syon Lane. We don’t need it any more, because the long-term experiment we were conducting is at an end. It has produced a successful result. We’ll rebuild later, when it’s time to run the next experiment.’
‘But,’ said Nemo, unable to keep his anger down, ‘those people, they’re all being killed—’
‘But they’re not people. It’s like smashing up television sets and old computers – a really satisfying pastime. You should try it. Their consciousnesses will get loaded again in the McAtrix, all of them, when it’s time.’
‘But they won’t remember anything from before! It’ll be a different set of consciousnesses – those ones will die.’
‘Nemo,’ said the Designer. ‘Don’t you want to know what the point of the experiment was? Hundreds of years, running complex algorithms, a whole world for thousands of intelligences, interacting, generation after generation – don’t you want to know what we were doing?’