The Reality Rebellions

by Paul Anlee

  The Reality Rebellions

  Deplosion: Book 3

  Paul Anlee

  Darian Publishing House

  Chatham, Ontario, Canada

  The Reality Rebellions

  Deplosion: Book Three

  How do you prove you’re a person to those who insist you’re only a machine?

  Earth is gone. When the Cybrid, DAR-K, and her team built the Vesta asteroid habitats that now shelter the last of humanity, they saw themselves as equal partners in the project. For decades, these robotic beings hosted select human minds and dedicated their lives to ensuring the survival of the biologicals.

  Now, as Vesta heads toward a game-changing election, the Cybrids are demanding to be recognized as full citizens. But Alum, self-declared Leader of the colonies, has a different vision. He’s about to strip away the last of the Cybrids’ rights and banish “those machines” from the habitats forever. Is he also the driving force behind the recent acts of sabotage and rising anti-Cybrid violence? How far will the Cybrids go to gain a voice in determining the colony’s future, and will Alum risk destroying the habitats to deny them power?

  Canadian author Paul Anlee writes provocative, epic sci-fi in the style of Asimov, Heinlein, Asher, and Reynolds, stories that challenge our assumptions and stretch our imagination. Literary, fact-based, and fast-paced, the Deplosion series explores themes in philosophy, politics, religion, economics, AI, VR, nanotech, synbio, quantum reality, and beyond.

  For Sandra

  “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

  ― Senator Mitch McConnell

  1

  Jared Strang, ex-Member of the British Parliament, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, current Manager of Human-Cybrid relations for the Vesta Project, was baffled. Surely, he’d misheard. His eyes shifted uncertainly between Alum and Dona Ridgeway, Alum’s Chief of Staff.

  “But if we don’t allow the Cybrids to work in the populated colonies, how will we manage? The colonists aren’t exactly trained to expand the living spaces, or even to maintain them for that matter.”

  Alum stroked his chin but said nothing. He raised an eyebrow toward Ridgeway, inviting her to answer on his behalf.

  “We humans managed to build an entire civilization on Earth without resorting to cybernetic robots. And we did perfectly fine, don’t you think?” She smiled tightly at the civil servant and adjusted her glasses.

  Strang coughed into his fist. “Well, yes, clearly,” he agreed. “But the Cybrids have the requisite skills and experience for this environment. Not to mention, all our available heavy equipment is either integral to their bodies or designed to be operated exclusively by them. Even if we had machinery built for humans, we don’t know what expertise is available among the colonists. My hunch is we’re not at risk of being overwhelmed with talent.”

  Ridgeway glanced over at Alum. He nodded for her to continue.

  “I assure you that our databases are quite thorough, Mr. Strang. Training classes will fill in any gaps over time.”

  Strang sat forward, “You don’t understand,” he interrupted. “We don’t have time. There is no Plan B. This has to…”

  Alum held up a shushing finger, silencing Strang mid-sentence. “People must have purpose in their lives. The socio-economic history of Earth demonstrates what happens when people are idle and feel useless. Political opportunism, unrest, riots, social breakdown—we will not permit Vesta to head down that path.”

  Strang flopped back in his chair. “No, surely not.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. “Is there any way we could have skilled people shadow some of the Cybrids as they go about their work? A kind of on-the-job training program, so to speak.”

  Alum nodded as if considering the merits of Strang’s suggestion. “Mr. Strang, I understand you’ve never been a member of our Church, but surely you are a Christian, yes?”

  Strang’s mouth worked through several possible responses before settling on, “Surely.”

  In truth, he believed personal beliefs should remain personal, not be trotted out for public display. Still, it was better not to say too much; one had to be aware who currently held the power on the Vesta colonies.

  “Well, then,” Alum continued, “You know our Lord created man in His image, setting man above all others. Man is above his own creations, the Cybrids for example, just as God is above His creation, namely us. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “When you put it that way, what choice do I have?”

  “Exactly. We have an opportunity to reinvigorate God’s universe, and mankind’s place in it, out here among the asteroids. And that begins with the proper humility, with people who value the might of the Lord above all.

  “Cybrids are remnants of the old, evil ways of Earth, Mr. Strang. Mechanical beings have their place, and that place is in the vacuum of space, not among humans. When I… I mean, my father, supported their development, they were not intended to be anything other than a tool, a mechanical extension of our hands to help us build these habitats. That is how they best serve the Lord’s wishes.”

  Strang noted the stutter before Alum spoke of his father; it brought to mind the odd rumors about the young man’s origins, perverse gossip to which few gave much credence. “One might say,” he ventured, “it’s rather…superfluous to have a Manager of Human-Cybrid Relations when, in fact, there are no relations between humans and Cybrids to be managed.”

  “I agree, your role in the administration of these habitats has changed,” Alum sniffed. He pushed his body out of the comfortable chair, and walked over to the window. He called up the construction schematics for the habitats, letting the silence—and Strang’s discomfort—stretch out.

  The Project Manager’s office dominated the fiftieth floor of the highest tower in all of Vesta One, the first of the asteroid’s colony tunnels and the official capital of all the habitats. The windows looked “North” and “South” toward the tunnel’s polar caps lying over two hundred kilometers away in either direction. Below, densely-spaced apartment towers stretched seven kilometers wide before meeting the upward-curving sides of the tunnel.

  Each asteroid contained six colony tunnels arranged like the bullet chambers of a revolver. Each tunnel had a “floor” surface that squared off the arc closest to the asteroid’s surface, and a “ceiling” on the part of the arc closest to the central axis.

  Artificial gravity was provided by spinning the asteroid. Because of this rotation, “down” was always outward, away from the asteroid’s axis, always toward the surface.

  The orientation session reassured new arrivals that, “It’s simple. Think of ‘down’ as the direction your feet sink; it’s the direction that receives the force of your weight. Inside the colony tunnels, the planetoid’s meager natural gravity is overridden by the centrifugal force from the spinning. That’s why we interpret ‘down’ as being toward the outer surface.”

  Several rivers, driven by circulating pumps, ran the length of the tunnels and occasionally widened into long, narrow lakes. Some ran north-to-south in the colony tunnels, and returned south-to-north in the agricultural service tunnels below. Others flowed in the opposite direction to provide balance along their lengths.

  High above, light panels ran the length of the tunnel. They brightened and dimmed in cycles, fourteen on and ten off, driving the daily rhythms of the people, animals, and plants below.

  Project Vesta has done a remarkable job of reproducing the Earth’s ecology in such a small space and in such short time—Alum noted with satisfaction.

  Well, I suppose I’ve kept Strang waiting long enough. Not that he deserves anything more than my simple command.

  “Under the previous administration,” he paused to let that sink in, “you
may have seen your job as smoothing over people’s acceptance of the Cybrids and integrating everyone into a workable biology-plus-machine society. That will no longer be the case. The Cybrids are not people; they will never be people in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Aren’t their mental processes modeled on our own human minds?” Strang asked.

  Alum’s eyes blazed. “They can simulate many human characteristics, no doubt; but they are not human, not flesh and blood. They are not created in God’s image. We have found a place for them where they can be of service to humanity and, thereby, to God’s will. No more. They will never claim a place by our side; to do so would be an abomination.”

  Strang’s gaze shifted to his hands, cradled anxiously in his lap. He observed his fidgeting fingers as if they were something apart from him. “I see. So what exactly is my role to be?”

  Alum glanced at Ms. Ridgeway, who’d been sitting silently through the sermon.

  “As Spiritual Leader of the YTG Church and the de facto leader of humanity, Alum must remain uncontaminated, separate from discussions with the Cybrids,” she explained. “You will communicate our Leader’s directive to them: they are to remain outside the habitat tunnels unless granted specific permission to enter. You will report on their compliance with his will and on their adherence to these laws.”

  “I have no wish to appear unjust or unsympathetic, Mr. Strang,” Alum added. “Not even to machines. But you seem to have lost sight of the fact that Cybrids were designed and constructed to serve humanity, not to replace it. Within those parameters, they will enjoy a fulfilling existence. Perhaps we’ll even develop some form of entertainment for their off-duty hours. Your job is to ensure they understand and cooperate with my directives.”

  “Is this the will of the Governing Council?” Strang asked.

  Ridgeway nearly choked. Before Alum could reply, she jumped in. “The Council exists to provide advice to Alum. He, and he alone, decides.” She set her lips firmly, accepting no further questioning of her Leader’s authority.

  “So the Cybrids are to be our slaves.”

  The crease between Alum’s eyebrows deepened. “Slavery is not an applicable term; they are machines that were built for service. You will not speak of it again.”

  The manager bowed his head. He had seen enough of the local police actions under Alum’s direction to know he should hold his tongue. For the moment.

  As Ms. Ridgeway’s voice droned on in the background, Strang’s attention shifted to conversations he would be having with his colleagues from the original Project Vesta. Not everyone shared Alum’s point of view.

  2

  DAR-K floated high above the empty apartment towers of Pallas Three, the third colony tunnel to be constructed inside the asteroid Pallas and the ninth to be completed under the broader Vesta Project.

  Two months had passed since the Eater had absorbed Earth into its relentlessly expanding grayness, and she was still bitter over losing Kathy Liang, her human “sister” whose mind had served as the template for her own.

  I can’t believe Earth’s gone, and everyone left behind is dead. Kathy, Greg, the whole planet, all gone.

  The silence of the vacuum in the unfinished tunnel suited her desire for isolation. Intermittent light fell on the buildings directly below, but the farther reaches of the habitat were dark. The gloom matched the bleak thoughts roiling in her silicene brain.

  “What do I do now?” was a question the Cybrid had never pondered before. Time for quiet contemplation was a luxury she hadn’t experienced in her eighteen years of existence.

  Humanity has kept me occupied from the day I was manufactured, their first Cybrid of millions. They kept us all endlessly busy building their new home out here, making space for as many of them as possible.

  To the Cybrids, it was obvious that the construction of the Project Vesta asteroid colonies, all of the tunneling, mining, and manufacturing, was better managed by the rugged autonomous robots than by human beings. Earthlings were ill-suited for work in space; they required complex support systems. And so the colonists were kept back on Earth until the robot-built asteroid colonies were ready to receive them into climate controlled comfort.

  Though Vesta was designed to save human lives, humans had played little part in its construction. The Cybrids had built the colonies largely without human help or direct human supervision.

  Except for Greg and Kathy. The couple had been there from the beginning, planning, designing, discussing, strategizing, and overseeing alongside the Cybrids.

  I miss Kathy. DAR-K had become used to discussing everything with her human counterpart. Sisters-by-choice, they’d become expert at liaising between machine and human, between workers and governments, and between those who built things and those who pulled the levers of political power.

  Human politics—DAR-K sighed, but without breath, without air, it emitted no sound. The futility of simulating human utterances in space only reinforced the differences between her and the original Kathy Liang.

  What am I going to do without her?

  She and Kathy shared the same memories, knowledge, and beliefs. The structure of her mind was identical to Kathy’s, including her secretly enhanced lattice intelligence. Nobody aside from DAR-K and Kathy knew about their shared enhancement. Kathy was insistent that they keep the information between them alone, not even Greg could know, and DAR-K trusted her judgment. As a result, Kathy had been the only person who knew what, who knew who, she really was, and what she could be.

  And now Kathy was dead, consumed by the Eater along with the vast majority of humankind.

  Who would believe downloading a person’s mind into a two-meter carboceramic sphere with built-in rockets and electromuscle tentacles would lead to a robot who thinks it’s human? Even the government insiders who knew what they were creating—who we Cybrids are—can’t bring themselves to recognize us as people.

  The death of humanity’s home had come before all three colony asteroids could be completed. How the Eater anomaly escaped its vacuum chamber ahead of time remained a mystery.

  Our projections were good. We should have had another eight months, easily—DAR-K lamented.

  Somehow, Alum and his people were prepared for the disaster and acted decisively. Their surprise takeover of the colonies was relatively smooth and bloodless, for a coup.

  Despite her resentment, DAR-K was doing her best to cooperate with the new order. It wasn’t easy without Kathy to run interference; the new regime was not sympathetic to Cybrids.

  I shouldn’t be wasting any more time here. Not when we have so much work to do. “Lollygagging,” Kathy would have called it.

  The completed tunnel in which she floated stretched for hundreds of kilometers ahead. They’d sealed the ends, and were about to fill the interior with atmosphere. Nitrogen they’d mined from Titan and oxygen produced by splitting comet water into its base elements would form the main part of the habitat’s air. It will be exactly like the air used to be on Earth, with less pollution.

  She powered up her main drive and pushed downward to inspect the city below. Project Vesta management, under the direction of the Yeshua’s True Guard Church since the coup, still expected her to manage Cybrid construction activities in the new colonies.

  Adequate living space is as precious as ever. Alum may be spiritual leader of the Church, but he hasn’t overlooked the need to manage the physical world, too.

  At present, Vesta’s total population numbered fewer than the originally intended forty million, but they’d be out-growing available room quickly, thanks to the Church’s new program encouraging every family to have babies. Lots of babies.

  The Faithful are always eager to go forth and multiply—she joked to herself. She was achingly aware that she’d inherited Kathy’s sense of dark, dry humour and cynicism, and how few individuals there were in the entire asteroid belt with whom she could share it.

  As soon as they established a human-friendly atmosphere, the Cybrid work
force would bring in billions of tonnes of water from the Kuiper mines to supply rivers and lakes. The basic ecology would be populated with plants and animals from other habitats, and the new tunnels would be opened up to receive colonists.

  In a few months, a million people will be enjoying substantially more elbow room.

  DAR-K entered a wide street that ran parallel along one of the empty riverbeds waiting to be filled. She plucked a loose pebble from the ground and tossed it among the other stones.

  The surviving colonists are well-intentioned but mostly clueless. Watching then in action made her think of drunks bumbling around in the dark on a slippery slope that was pocked with craters and moguls.

  At least, they have enthusiasm. And Faith. Faith in their God and in the leader of their Church.

  She stopped in front of a designated commercial space and examined her reflection in the window. What do I have faith in?—she wondered. What do I have to live for? Power? Fame? Love?

  The latter was unlikely. The only other DAR- designated Cybrid in existence was DAR-G, who was based on the mind of Kathy’s husband, Greg Mahajani.

  DAR-K wished she could love DAR-G as much as Kathy had loved Greg, but it was impossible. DAR-G’s nice enough; he’s just too…ordinary.

  He was brilliant compared to most other Cybrids. He had Greg’s charming personality, deep devotion to the Kathy persona and, by extension, to DAR-K. But he’s not Greg, and he never will be.

  It was unfortunate that Kathy never got a chance to upgrade DAR-G’s processor with the same illegal IQ-enhancing lattice modifications she’d made to DAR-K. The same modifications Kathy and Greg had shared.

  Oh, well. What does love matter to an electromechanical being with a semiconductor brain? I have my work.

  And there was so much work to do. Vesta was more or less complete in the broad strokes, but there were still a few major colony tubes to finish in two of the smaller asteroids.