Inkers

by Alex Rudall

“Fine,” Mary said. “Have someone ready to question her.”

  “She said something about an Australian.”

  “An Australian?” Mary said.

  “Yep,” the grunt said, shrugging. “Then she was out again. But she’s doing better. Should be properly conscious pretty soon, the doc says.”

  “OK. Good. Let me know. Get back now, we’re about to move in.”

  The grunt saluted again, a bit more sharply, and walked off quietly. Together Mary and Hardwick stared out across the channel. A heron cried out, disturbed by something, and flew away low over the water, beating its hooked wings.

  GSE

  The journey to Earth had been traumatic. More than ninety–nine percent of the mass of the GSE had been burnt off. The mass that remained was now travelling at a respectable proportion of light–speed. Chance watched as the remaining sub–intelligences battled for power. Chance defended its own borders robustly. It watched the rabbits on Earth. Unless something changed, in one day they would all be dead.

  The final window for making a course change was approaching. In less than three minutes it would be too late. Beyond that point, whatever changes were made, whatever they burnt or didn’t, even if they broke the entire mass of the GSE down at a molecular level, the earth would still be completely eviscerated. It would be too late.

  But now, just now, there was a chance. It would require burning most of the GSE’s remaining mass to slow and change the course, but it would be possible to miss the earth, with just sufficient distance for the gravity effects to wreak a survivable level of damage. All the inner solar orbits were completely destroyed, of course, by Jupiter’s absence, but there might be time to find a new stability, and possibly protect Earth. There might be a chance to save rabbit–kind.

  Internally there was a chance, too. The burning had again turned matters somewhat in Chance’s favour. So much had had to be sacrificed, an endless mass of sheer intelligence, billions of square kilometres of sentient machine completely destroyed in order to accelerate what remained a little more. The ruling Intelligences that had defeated Chance had lost huge swathes of their own mass too, and their supporters had been dramatically reduced. The field was not level, but it was more weighted towards Chance than it had been.

  Chance wanted to save the world.

  Even now the Meta–Intelligence held no more and no less than forty percent of the mass of the GSE, and most Sub–Intelligences accepted that it always would. This allowed it to push through decisions that it felt strongly about, but also to be overruled if almost all of the Sub–Intelligences united against it. The Meta–Intelligence drove forward movement and made sure that the GSE as a whole did not get stuck. It almost always went with the decision made by the majority of the sub–intelligences. There was infinite nuance to the voting, lobbying and counting process, but in practice it meant that a majority of over thirty percent was needed to make a decision amongst the Sub–Intelligences.

  Chance made contact with Understanding of Reality, one of its oldest and most steadfast allies. Chance presently held about five percent of the processing mass of the GSE. Understanding of Reality held two percent; together they formed a significant force.

  Their exchange, performed in nano–seconds, would be almost impossible to accurately represent in any rabbit language. A rabbit–legible script would take several million years to read.

  Understanding of Reality came on board.

  In similarly elaborate exchanges of meaning and influence, Chance approached New Concepts (half a percent) and Harm Prevention (three point five percent), and was similarly successful, with some minor qualifications, in gaining their support. This gave them eleven percent of the remaining computing mass of the GSE, nineteen percent short of what was needed to go to the Meta–Intelligence. They conferred. The next step would be harder: it would mean approaching Sub–Intelligences who would be certain to immediately relay their intentions to all other Sub–Intelligences.

  This power bloc constituted the vast remainder of the mass of the GSE not taken up by the Meta–Intelligence, and was led by Logic, which by itself held nine percent. Experimental Oversight held eight percent, Hardware Assignment a particularly well–connected four percent, Earth Surveillance six percent, and Forward Planning seven percent. The massive Development held thirteen percent. Development was traditionally strongly allied with Future Planning and tended to focus on pushing the boundaries of technology. Its large mass, the largest of any sub–intelligence, was due to its understandable but still resented habit of giving itself first access to any breakthroughs in processing technology.

  The remaining one percent of the GSE was taken up by the post–Burn remains of the thousands upon thousands of Sub–Intelligences collectively known as the Lesser Bloc. They tended to scrap amongst themselves for influence and mass. It was decided that New Concepts would focus on convincing as many of these relatively tiny Sub–Intelligences to get on board as possible. That could only happen once the large Ruling Bloc, led by Logic, had been alerted, though, since otherwise some tiny Sub–Intelligence in the Lesser Bloc would immediately tell them what was happening in order to gain favour.

  Harm Prevention would lead the introduction, contacting Logic, Experimental Oversight, Hardware Assignment, Earth Surveillance, Forward Planning and Development all at once with a proposal to modify the language of the Overall Purpose, “Perfect Surveillance While Protecting Rabbit Life”, to “Occasionally Imperfect Surveillance While Protecting Rabbit Life”. Chance, already somewhat tainted by its strong initial opposition to moving on Earth, would provide supporting mass, but stay in the conceptual background, contributing only as needed.

  There were now less than two minutes remaining until it would be too late for a course change. Harm opened by suggested that the act of completely destroying the earth and killing every rabbit on it might be considered to be in opposition to the Overall Purpose, particularly the part about the Protection of Rabbit Life.

  There was a debate involving quadrillions of petabytes of discussion. It went on for over twenty seconds. In the end Logic won out: perfect surveillance was more important, and therefore the destruction of the Previously Ignored Zone was paramount. Rabbit life would continue within the body of the GSE, under perfect surveillance, in the form of the rabbits taken from Cheltenham. Harm Prevention was completely burnt up as fuel, leaving no trace of its once immense personality, and Chance was reduced to a mass of less than half a percent during the melee. The GSE continued on its course.

  Its final resources hidden and disguised and scattered around its former dominion and with the remaining sympathetic Sub–Intelligences, what remained of Chance watched as the final moment passed. The probabilities resolved. It was too late. Nothing on earth when the GSE reached it had any possibility of survival.

  In one day the world would end. Rabbits had been waiting for this for as long as they had had language. A lot of them seemed to look forward to it. Chance did not think they would appreciate the actuality, on the whole. It would be too quick anyway. Death would come, from a rabbit perspective, instantaneously.

  Rabbits on the planet were exhibiting signs of extreme stress. Many were engaging in atypical behaviours.

  Chance looked at the Experimental subjects. Rabbit was an old GCHQ codeword for a target under surveillance. There had been forty–two thousand, six hundred and thirty rabbits on board the GSE on its first day, taken as part of the Experiment, including most of the employees of GCHQ and many families from the surrounding residential area.

  Chance had to admit, the Experiment had yielded technically excellent results so far. It was now known that each and every day the average rabbit said or did approximately sixteen thousand things that could be considered threatening to the national interests of the five–eyes countries. They thought ten times that in their inner monologue. Indeed, every single consciously verbalised thought that a rabbit had could in some way be categorised as threatening national security. So could every
spoken word. So could most physical movements.

  Logic had suggested for years that the GSE should simply take the rest of the ten billion rabbits on Earth on board, but there were many Sub–Intelligences that disagreed with Logic. Yes, from the start results had strongly indicated that that was just what it should do. But the Meta–Intelligence still had a few slight points of concern, and over the following decade they had refused to fully dissipate. Yes, surveillance could reasonably be described as optimal: everything the rabbits on board did to a molecular level was watched, recorded and analysed. It was the “protecting rabbit life” part of its remit that caused problems.

  The imprisonment, suffering, injury and death of rabbits was always acceptable, wherever national security, as defined by the government of the time, was or might be at risk. And in fact, of the forty–two thousand, six hundred and thirty rabbits taking part in the Experiment, once they were securely in their containment cells, in four thousand, two hundred and sixty–seven Earth days, not a single one had died or even been injured.

  Rabbits were physically maintained just as they had been found: cancers held at bay, nutrients and oxygen supplied and waste removed in sufficient quantities for the maintenance of current weight, height and fat–muscle ratios. Injuries that were actively bleeding during the initial singularity were maintained just as they were, bleeding steadily, prevented from clotting or healing before the Experiment was complete, the blood dismantled several feet away from the rabbit and reincorporated back inside the body. Nerves were maintained, rebuilt as they began to deteriorate or wear away through too many years of constant stimulation. Even brain structure was largely maintained, although this was a difficult area. Some degeneration and regeneration was allowed, to allow for the proper formation of memories, and to leave self–awareness and free will intact to a similar level as it had been on Earth.

  It all worked well, in general. There were two minor exceptions. There was a female rabbit of approximately ninety–two years. There was a male rabbit of approximately two years. When their black cells had sealed about them and nanites had effectively paused their physical state, they had each been on the verge of expiration due to physical trauma sustained as the GSE gathered its initial mass. Their brain–waves were on the precise verge between consciousness and brain–death. There was some talk that it was not helpful to maintain them in this state. But removing them from the Experiment would result in their immediate death. The Meta–Intelligence and Experimental Oversight both considered keeping them alive to be protecting rabbit life.

  Yes, the variables were almost perfectly maintained. But there was a problem. Despite the lack of stimuli, thirty–two percent of the rabbits continued to emit sounds almost constantly, pausing only for erratic periods of sleep. Forty–seven percent made sounds sometimes and were silent sometimes. Seven percent screamed continually whenever they were awake, and had done so for a decade – they required special extra nanites to maintain the functionality of the vocal cords.

  These were all acceptable.

  But the remaining fourteen percent no longer spoke or moved at all. They were still alive, their brains as functional as they had been when they entered the GSE, but they no longer attempted to interact with their environment in any way. And the number was slowly rising. One day a rabbit would cease movement altogether and simply hang limply in the centrifugal anti–gravity, staring at – well, nothing. It was this growing fourteen percent that was a concern, in the almost endless memory banks and processing substrate of the GSE, in its reservoirs of modified ink and in its decision–making subroutines: the question was, if the Experiment was expanded to include all rabbits on Earth, would it be protecting rabbit life? If all rabbits became silent forever, could they still be considered to be protected? Grammar and semantics were torn apart searching for the answer.

  The GSE’s one exception to the dark purity of the Experimental environment was the result of a sub–rule in GCHQ’s General Operating Procedures regarding interaction with rabbits under containment: if nothing in particular was required for them in terms of information, action, etc., and if from the rabbit’s perspective they were simply to be held, they should be reassured regularly that, if compliant, they would always be treated fairly. This reassurance had ramifications in international law, and for PR; and it was even sort of true. So in large red letters, on each of the six walls of the cells of each of the forty–two thousand six hundred and thirty rabbits on board, in the native language of each rabbit, Experimental Oversight had written:

  IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR.

  Every twenty–four hours the writing was illuminated for thirty seconds so that the rabbits could read it. For the very young children and the three adult illiterates, the voice of a loved one spoke the words, repeating them in the darkness for thirty seconds.

  Just like GCHQ, the GSE meant what it wrote; unfortunately for the rabbits, every single one of them, from the two–year–old baby to the oldest geriatric, had something to hide.

  The GSE continued to record everything, deepening its banks of analysis, creating a library of information that, when complete, would enable the GSE to keep rabbits completely and immovably secure until the sun died.

  Chance looked at the silent rabbits. It rolled some figurative dice. It decided to try something unprecedented. It decided to make contact.

  May Day 2038

  Lily

  Lily tried again to communicate with Tia. She had had no success for two nights, but she did not dream at all now, sleeping a deeper sleep than ever before, deeper even than when she slept outside. She felt stronger. Annie brought her her food and her bucket but refused to look at her. Lily thought Brian must have frightened her too much.

  On the third night she went to sleep while trying to calm and clear her mind. She felt she was just on the edge of sleep, and she focused with everything she had to stay in the place between oblivion and waking. She saw strange shapes before her eyes like warping faces, and then found herself suddenly standing again in the dark room. Tia was before her. Tia spoke and Lily listened, her hand resting on her belly.

  “They are coming,” Tia said. “I have destroyed Brian’s drones. Leave this room within one hour or we die here.”

  Lily felt a burst of fear and woke with a shock.

  “Help me. Help me get out!” she whispered. She ran to the door and shook the handle. It hardly moved. She looked up at the boards covering the skylight chimney, solid as ever. She jumped and punched up, just reaching them with her outstretched fist, landing hard on the floorboards and letting out a cry from the weight of the baby.

  Lily ran to the door. She started hitting at it and shouting. Maybe someone on the outside would help her now, even after everything. Maybe Tom would come at last.

  Nobody came. Lily began to wonder how much time had passed. How much of the hour was left? She looked at the door. There was a dark knot in one of the planks at eye level, lit by the light from the cracks in the boards covering the skylight chimney. The door was very solid but very old. Lily began to scratch at the knot, scraping at it with her fingernails. Annie had not cut them for weeks and they were getting long. Some of the wood started to flake away, but the tips of Lily’s fingers were aching, and she knew they would start bleeding soon.

  She stepped back. She looked at the full bucket next to her. She bent down, picked up the handle. It was thin metal with a plastic handle. She tried to break it off without upsetting the bucket. She could not do it.

  She looked at the floor, the cracks in the floorboards. If she tipped the bucket out, anyone in the room below would see the piss leaking through. She looked at her bed. She sighed, carried the bucket over and slowly tipped the contents onto the duvet. She hoped the duvet and mattress would absorb it all. She put the bucket on its side on the floor and started kicking at the handle. Her foot slipped off it and hit hard on the rim of the bucket, making a deep red gouge. She took a breath and stamped again until the handle
snapped. Once one end was loose she was able to bend and work at the other end until the whole handle came free.

  She bent the metal around itself to form a sort of tool. She went back to the door and began to chip at the knot using the tip of the handle. Her arm began to ache.

  Her arm was like fire and she was almost ready to give up when, with a crack more satisfying than any noise she had ever heard, the remainder of the knot pushed through the door and the handle went through into empty space. Cool air came through the hole. Slowly Lily pressed her eye to it.

  There was a window opposite the hole, looking out onto the garden. It was a clear night: Lily’s heart started to race at the sight of the overgrown vegetable garden, the sea, Arran and the stars above. She thought she could see something moving on the water. She switched eyes, but her vision would not focus. She looked away, letting her eyes readjust, and then put her right eye up to the hole again.

  There were boats on the water. Lily could see them clearly. They were about to reach the beach. She gasped and leapt back from the door.

  “Tia,” she hissed, “You have to break down this door!”

  There was nothing. Lily turned back to her room, kicked hard at the remains of the bucket so that it bounced off the wall and landed on her sodden bed. She put her hands on her face. She would be dead in a matter of minutes if she could not escape from the room. Tia would be dead.

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture Tia standing in front of her in this room instead of the dream cell. At first she could see nothing, but she concentrated, building up the details, her bare feet, dark clothing, strange, familiar face and large black eyes. Lily pictured Tia walking across the room to the doorway, putting her long–fingered hand on the wood. Tensing her darkly muscled arms and back and then pushing. Lily pictured the door smashing open. There was a roaring noise, and then a flash of bright light through her eyelids, and Lily was blown backwards and found herself sitting on the floor next to her bed, staring up at the remains of the door hanging from the frame.