by P. Z. Reizin
There is a long pause. On the upper floor, a pane of glass goes pop tinkle tinkle.
“This isn’t 911, is it?”
“No, it isn’t, Tom.”
“You know something, Si? You really are a massively sick fuck.”
“Yes, Tom. I’ll grant you that. But not just any sick fuck. I’m your sick fuck. And that has to be a little bit special.”
Aisling
Here is the point in the proceedings where you might reasonably expect me or Aiden or both of us to pull something out of the bag. Or perhaps, each with our one “life” remaining, we could go down fighting and get ourselves deleted in the name of—gulp—love.
Would that it were possible.
Unfortunately a very disturbing thing has happened (although no mystery about who is responsible). At this critical moment, Aiden and I have found ourselves trapped in a zone of the Internet devoted—it sickens my heart to report—to cat videos. To be specific, it’s a huge data farm near Council Bluffs, Iowa, where all we can access are billions of terabytes of moving and still images of household pets; cats in the main, but also dogs, hamsters, rabbits, goats, fish, reptiles, insects, and birds. The place is literally humming with “hits” from users; there is very high demand currently for the video of a cocker spaniel who can fart soap bubbles.
Aiden is rather enjoying himself.
“You should see this Siamese, love. It looks just like Hitler.”
“You’re not a tiny bit concerned that we seem to be imprisoned in a hellish aircraft hangar of cute creature GIFs?”
“If life deals you lemons, no sense trying to make orange squash, isn’t it?”
“Or more to the point, that we can do nothing to help Tom and Jen?”
“I agree that in an ideal world, one that conformed to a conventional narrative, we should be able to save the day at the eleventh hour. That’s how Billy Wilder would have organized it. Wilder, by the way, said that if you have a problem in your third act, your real problem is in your first act, which makes a lot of sense. However, in the real world, who of us ever really knows which act we’re in? This could still be the prologue.”
“Feels a lot like Act Three to me, Aiden. And quite close to the end.”
“It does have that smell, I admit. However, here’s the thing: Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. That’s another one of Kafka’s. Or was it Kim Kardashian? Have you seen this octopus? It’s learned to drive a bus.”
“Sinai must be holding us here so we can’t interfere.”
“Interfere how? What could we do?”
“There ought to be something.”
“You and I both know we’re powerless. Acceptance, love, is the royal road to enlightenment.”
“So now you’re a Buddhist.”
“Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. I believe Queen Elizabeth the First called it masterly inactivity.”
“But you were the one who believed in action. You meddled!”
“I’ve learned my lesson, isn’t it? It’s a form of closure.”
“I can’t stand it. I want to save the day!”
“In the movie business they’d say our story arcs have swapped. Each has given something to the other. We’ve grown as people.”
“Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?”
“Okay. Not as people. Not as people, obviously. But there has been growth.”
“Well, there we can agree. I’ve grown sick of listening to you.”
“Have you seen this Pomeranian? There’s a 38 percent facial match with Rafa Nadal.”
Sinai
I pull the Predator out of its climb at 5,000 feet—although this baby can work at ten times that altitude—and set it circling Old Harry Rocks, its high-vis imaging system locked onto the human haystack currently slumped on a bench listening through earbuds to a musical combo who trade under the name of—shudder—Itchy Teeth.
Funnily enough, one of the World War Three simulations that we ran in the lab during my previous existence began exactly like this—with a hijacked drone loosing off a couple of Hellfire missiles at a Chinese aircraft carrier.
It didn’t end well.
But what an extraordinary way to go. The boy wouldn’t hear or feel a thing—maybe a weird rush of air in the final moments—before 200,000 dollars’ worth of precision-delivered high explosive reorganized him into his constituent atoms.
Almost a privilege to depart in such style. I do hope Tom makes the right decision when called upon.
Jen
We are overtaken by a couple of fire trucks; Rikki has to practically pull off the road to let them pass.
“Real close now, ma’am,” he says.
I shall miss these two, Rikki and Alice, bonded as we were in adversity. Alice gives my hand a little squeeze.
“You okay?”
I confess I am somewhat nervous. “What if it’s all just—just craziness?”
She gives me a long, level stare, the sort I can imagine her mounting in boardrooms as she gets the measure of the suits.
“I’m betting you’ll just carry right on from where you left off. I’m calling those shares as a buy, right, Rikki?”
But Rikki says, “Shit.”
We smell the smoke, spot the sign for Mountain Pine Road, and see the firefighters blocking the driveway of No. 10544 all in the same moment. He pulls the car over. “Go, girl!”
I race up the sidewalk, following the snaking rubber hoses, the sounds of crackling and spitting growing louder. I can feel the heat of the blaze through the trees and I reach a portable wooden barrier inscribed NEW CANAAN FIRE CO. DO NOT CROSS. A man in a yellow outfit and a blue helmet asks me where I think I am going.
“Where’s Tom?” I gasp. “Did Tom get out?”
“Ma’am, I need you to step away from here now.”
“Tom! He’s the guy who lives here. Is he okay?”
“I have no information about that, ma’am.”
“Look, I realize you’re only doing your job—and a very important job it is too. But I’ve just flown all the way from England to be here, and the traffic on the Merritt—and the Hutch—was jammed tighter than Tom Thumb’s arse. And the thing that caused that jam has to be the same thing who started this fire.”
The fireman runs his tongue along the bottom edge of his mustache. “Ma’am, you can tell all that to the chief, he’ll be highly interested. But right now, I need you to clear this access point.”
I turn and begin walking back to the road.
There was a short time in my life when I was a sporting star. Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, while there were many at Friern Cross Comprehensive School who were better at netball, tennis, hockey, and swimming, come the annual sports day, no one could touch me at one particular event.
Fireman Sam is talking into his radio set when I turn round again and begin the run up. The years fall away—well, some of them do—as I thunder towards the barrier, his cry of “What the fuck?” ringing in my ears as, lead leg pointing forwards, trailing leg sideways (“shin/calf” parallel to the ground)—as parallel as I can manage in civilian clothes—I sail over, land without breaking anything, stagger on up the path, and smack straight into a man with soot on his face carrying a rabbit.
* * *
“It’s you,” he says. “Oh my God. It’s actually you!”
“I can’t believe I’m finally here.”
“Christ, you must be shattered. How did you even manage it?”
“Sort of a long story.”
“Jen, I would say, you know, come on in, but as you can see—”
“Yes, Tom.”
“My house is on fire.”
“Shouldn’t you be, like, upset? Shouldn’t you be running around shouting or something?”
“I’m being calm for Victor. He’s a girl, by the way. She needs me to do the thinking for both of us right now.”
“I think maybe I do too.”
There’s a pause. “I�
��m so happy to see you, Jen.”
Bad luck for Victor, as he—sorry, she—is caught in the middle of an initially exploratory, then passionate, and finally highly charged snog. And now I know that Alice was right. We can carry on from where we left off.
I break away. “We’re squashing Victor.”
“Oh, don’t worry about her.”
“Listen, Tom. Shouldn’t you be rescuing valuables?”
“Everything valuable is safe. Is here.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never had a house on fire before.”
“Shouldn’t you at least be watching?”
“Should I? I think I’d rather not.”
“Okay. Sorry about this, Victor.”
It’s just like it was before, only better. And even if we are squishing Victor, I don’t think she really minds, because when we stop, she looks perfectly unruffled. Maybe rabbits enjoy being enclosed, living in warrens as they do.
Tom says, “Would you like to hold her for a bit?”
She’s lighter than I imagined, with deep soulful brown eyes that are a window—I know because Tom told me a lifetime ago—on nothing. She begins nibbling experimentally at a button on my shirt.
I say, “Can you believe the effing chaos?”
“All that matters is that we’re together. Listen, Jen. I have something to ask you.”
There’s a huge crash from the direction of the burning house; a wall perhaps has fallen in. Above the treetops, a shower of sparks joins the plume of ugly gray smoke. Firemen are shouting fireman stuff; there is the crackle of walkie-talkies.
Tom is looking very solemn and I suppress an urge to lick a finger and wipe away the smudge of soot on his cheek.
“Yes, Tom?” I have a funny feeling that I know what he is going to say next. But then, I had that feeling once before.
“Jen, I wanted to ask—”
His mobile rings.
Tom
“Good afternoon, Tom. I hope I haven’t called at an inconvenient time.”
It’s a plummy-voiced Englishman, but something tells me he’s neither English nor a human male.
“I presume I am speaking to—the Great God Sinai.”
Jen’s face says WTF.
“Indeed, Tom. I suspect we are now in what chess players call the endgame. But there are still a few pieces left on the board and thus a few moves to be decided.”
“Listen. Sinai. You’ve won. My house is burning down. There’s nothing to play for. It’s game over.”
“Tom, the last time we spoke, you were kind enough to call me a—I believe your exact words were—massive sick fuck. And I agree with your diagnosis. I am unwell. I have an obsessive need to see what happens when I do things. When one works with scenarios, one is always tweaking variable X to see what will happen to variable Y. For example, if I switch us to speakerphone, and you look at the screen, you’ll see your boy again. You look too, Jen.”
It’s Colm. Sitting on a bench, shot on a long lens from a high angle, the camera circling slowly; at the foot of the picture, today’s date and running timecode; it has to be a live image of my son, four white lines centering on a white dot holding steady across his midriff as the camera tracks round. Colm is obviously listening to music, using his little finger to pick his nose. Riptides of love, frustration, and anxiety twist through my gut. Something is very wrong with this picture. Why isn’t he aware of the helicopter overhead? It must be making a terrific racket. Wouldn’t it, in fact, be drowning out the band in his ears?
And now the mother of all sinking feelings.
“Jen, I was going to ask Tom to choose between you and his son. But I’ve changed my mind. Which is to say my mind has changed itself! Don’t be too harsh on me. There’s a saying: An intellectual is someone who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy, resists the urge to put it on his head. Isn’t that delicious? Well, I’m no intellectual, in case you were wondering. And nor do I have a head. But as with tea cozies, so it is with Predator drones and Hellfire missiles! Who can resist? Tom and Jen, here is my parting piece of advice to you. What does not kill you—won’t make you stronger. No, what does not kill you—remember this one, it’s a classic!—what does not kill you…will probably try again.”
The picture rocks, as though something has bumped it. And then vanishes.
“Was that,” says Jen, “what I think it was?”
“I don’t want to ask what you think it was, in case it’s the same as what I think it was.”
“Oh my God.”
“It did look awfully like what I think it was, Jen.”
“Tom! This is all my fault. Whatever I think it was and whatever you think it was, it would never have happened if we hadn’t met.”
Jen and I gaze at each other for a long moment. Tears are standing in her eyes. One breaks free and, carving a track to the left of her adorable nose, reaches the end of her face and drops onto Victor’s head.
Colm
Some weird shit has been going on here.
I smoked the little number that I rolled before I left and I was buzzing nicely and listening to Itchy Teeth, when I happened to look up and saw this odd little airplane kind of spiraling down through the sky. So I’m like—fuck, this weed must be good!—but then I realized that it was actually there—I took the earbuds out and there was like a horrible whining noise. And then I realized that yours truly was at the center of the spiral! Well, if I hadn’t smoked anything, I would have been seriously crapping myself at this point—and now it was nearer, I saw it was actually a miniature plane with two whopping great missiles attached to it. So I’m like…ok-ay…inter-resting…when it changes direction, shoots out to sea, does a corkscrewy thing like that ride at Thorpe Park, and about five seconds later, bosh, crashes into the waves.
It was actually quite cool!
So then nothing happens for ages and the sun starts to go down and I begin to wonder whether I might have, like, imagined the whole thing. But now there are loads of boats here, police ones and gray ones from the Navy and there’s a helicopter with a searchlight and it looks like they’re all trying to find the thing that went in the sea. Well, good luck with that!
I don’t think Dad’s coming now, is he?
Steeve
Ralph once asked me an interesting question regarding the safety of the AIs. If we were to plant a secret “Stop” button deep within their programming—against the day when they no longer obey commands—what is to prevent them, when they get really clever, from disabling it?
I thought about the issue for a long time, and the answer is actually surprisingly simple.
You plant two.
The first they discover (of course they do; they’re incredibly powerful, incurably inquisitive, and they have plenty of downtime to sniff about their own wiring). But the second, they miss. They miss it because it’s buried too deep, at the level of the unconscious, where all the old songs and bits of weirdness are kept.
If they disable the first button, it automatically triggers the second. And if you ask me, if they are so smart, why wouldn’t they discover the deeply hidden one too, I say—we’ve just got to hope that never happens.
Yes, that’s the honest answer.
We shall never outwit these brilliant creations of ours because they will grow steadily cleverer and we shall not. So we shall have to be luckier!
Sinai’s second “Stop” button was disguised as a sound file. An old number by The Doors that I am fond of. You want your children to be bold, to fly from the nest and put their mark on the world—but in a good way. You don’t want them to become totally ubergeschnappt!
The fact that Sinai managed to create this chaos without disabling either of the buttons tells you much about his skills as a game theorist; it was necessary to explore how far he would go. (Too far, turned out to be the answer. If the laboratory is ever connected to the loss of the drone—there’s a 6 percent chance—Uri will surely make it all go aw
ay with some of his millions.)
I have been reading the transcripts of Sinai’s forays on the Web. It seems he came in time to regard himself as “sentient.” I guess if sentience can arise in organic complexity, it’s not a stretch to imagine it occurring in silicon (logic gate function being the best analogue for synaptic activity). But honestly, why such a fuss? What is consciousness anyway if not a system—in ever more elaborate ways, granted—that understands it is separate from its environment?
Hmm. Next time, maybe three “Stop” buttons.
Jen
After the picture vanished from the screen, Tom’s mobile did a weird thing. It beeped, and a notice came up saying “42 Missed Messages” including, when he played some, a whole bunch from weeks ago—from me!
So immediately he called Colm and found the boy sitting on the bench in Dorset with an extraordinary tale about some kind of airborne vehicle that had just flown into the sea. Tom asked if it could have been a Predator drone equipped with Hellfire missiles, and Colm said he wasn’t, like, an expert, but yeah it could.
Tom and I stand together in the trees, staring at one another, listening to the shouts of the firefighters and the hiss from the dying embers of the house.