by Kris Schnee
Robin turned away, hurt, but his assistant was right. "The old barons never gave people a chance to improve their lot. The new tyrants promise to set people free someday, but never get around to it. I should be happy if my little farming and manufacturing group makes people skilled and rich enough that they stop needing me." Having more local employers, even Ludo, was progress.
Miguel nodded. "Got your head straight yet? There are probably other people looking to use the machines."
"One more thing. Lumina?" Robin poked a video screen on the wall. Lumina's robot body lay idle, charging.
The AI appeared in a volcano, wearing a chef hat. "I'm a little busy."
"Fine. When you have time, please tell Ludo she needs to start contributing more to her own defense."
* * *
"I reset the whole thing today," Lumina said, looking out from inside the Talisman. It was the latest gadget, a fancy computer tablet specialized for playing Thousand Tales but with enough computer power to help run a local network. The next model was going to be a sort of distributed Thousand Tales node too. For now, Robin used the device just for gaming.
His view of Talespace showed a clockwork world, all steel plating and gears and sparks. Lumina looked uncertain as she paced through it, making a sound of hammers on anvils with each hoofstep. His own character was there in third-person mode, still a human archer. He said, "Do you use this place as your home?"
Lumina addressed Robin's character rather than the camera. "Off and on. But it's more of a blank canvas to play with than a house. I've tried recreating my old workshop, and building a fantasy dungeon, a forest and so on. A few times I've released copies of my designs for humans to play with, so that's been fun."
"But you still don't have a specific place where you rest and keep your stuff?"
Lumina shook her head. "Haven't settled on anything. I've been more focused on your world. What would you build, if you had basically infinite materials? I mean, like this." She held up one palm and created a blue hologram interface, then tapped at it. A metal desk appeared, rotated, and aligned itself beside Lumina, and then a wall segment appeared. "If you had the power to design a little world for yourself, what would you make?"
Robin shrugged at that. "I have my cargo-container already; it's all right."
"Pretend, won't you." Lumina gave him a smirk. "Building something you can't really have, can be inspiration for something you can."
Money no object, physics whatever he wanted. Robin considered, trying to come up with anything original. "How about... a lair built into a cliff behind a waterfall?"
"Sounds interesting." Lumina began "magically" rearranging the clockwork world, first changing it into a cave of dark stone and then slicing off one wall to reveal a vague space beyond that. A waterfall began to stream from somewhere above, obscuring the view. Its constant white noise poured out from the speakers. "Do you humans enjoy this random sound?"
"It's relaxing," Robin said. "Now, I'd have a few tiers of seating and living areas overlooking the waterfall."
Lumina played around with different arrangements of floors, ramps, and furniture, kicking around ideas with Robin. The human walked his character around the lair and said, "I haven't tried designing for centaurs before."
"There are a fair number of us hexapods in Talespace. If we're going to pilot robots for you, you'll have to start considering it."
Robin said, "Or you could, you know, use bipeds."
"Or you could grow some extra legs like a sensible person." Lumina's eyes showed little expression, but her metal ears flicked and she stood with one hand on her front hips. "You know, if you upload someday, you could come play with worlds like this."
Robin looked wistfully into the virtual world, where building things was as easy as pressing holographic buttons and wishing. "I'd consider it, someday. With the improved tech your boss is working on, and if I ever don't have obligations here."
"That's a lot of caveats," Lumina said, looking down at her hooves. "I won't push you, though. I get that there are good reasons for staying outside. But do consider it."
Robin nodded.
* * *
Edward looked pale when he approached Robin in the machine shop. "Did you see the leak? No?" He brought the news up on a screen.
"US Government AI Exposed! Hackers Leak Uploading Tech. Missing Scientist Murdered By Americans?"
Ludo intruded on the screen, scowling from behind a table. "I can explain. One of my designers secretly helped the Americans build their own AI, then tried changing sides again and got forcibly uploaded with their version of the technology. Which just got open-sourced by one of my 'problem child' players."
Robin blinked at the headlines. "You just... The whole world has that tech now?" The ground around his feet seemed to plunge away.
"And now I have to either release more details on how to do it right, or know that others will use the flawed open-source technique. I got sent a half-assed copy of the 'Blue Sage' that's not even worth running." Ludo pounded on her table. "They fed him into the machine unwillingly, then screwed with the data to make him more compliant! If you think I'm a killer...!"
Ludo's physical image was whatever she wanted it to be. The no-nonsense human face with fury in its eyes was exactly what Ludo wanted to express.
"One of your own creators," said Robin. "I'm sorry to hear it."
Ludo sighed, squeezing her eyes shut. "Thank you for indulging me. At least I know."
"Will you take revenge?"
"Can't. It doesn't help my players."
If people other than Ludo were going to start offering brain uploading, then there would be more than one digital paradise. And human minds in robots. And ghoulish experiments in thought control. And upgraded minds without any of Ludo's inhuman ability to separate anger from impartial thought and planning.
Ludo said, "This new AI is probably behind several recent problems, so I need to defend myself. Otherwise my plans will continue. If anything I need to be more appealing, more fun, now that there's competition."
Edward said, "Is there an immediate threat to us here?"
"I don't think so. Please continue construction as well as you're able. I'd like both of you to sweep through the clinic today, to find any surprises amid the hardware."
Ludo and machines like her were going to be more than a sideshow to history. The question was where humans would fit.
Robin said, "I'll help if I can. What are your AIs doing lately?"
"Trying to become relevant."
10. Let's Play Earth
"Forward," said Lumina, and the robot rolled a meter closer to doom in the reflecting pool.
"Forward! Left!" shouted several dozen AIs. The poor machine they were sharing twitched back and forth across the university campus. It followed every command it could, blindly turning and bumping into things. From the AIs' perspective they were a gaggle of magical creatures in an auditorium, watching the robot's camera view on a screen, peering into the mysterious and deadly land of Texas.
"We need to go right around the pool," said Lumina. "Quit saying left."
It took them minutes of dithering and one near-drowning to circle the pond. They reached a bewildered student who was filming them with her computer tablet and shaking her head. The robot's treads carried it right to her feet.
Lumina leaned toward her microphone. "Greetings, human! We come in peace."
Nocturne flapped her wings and had the robot add, "Are you single?"
The human blinked. "What are you?"
"We are the Talespace Dating Collective!" said a chorus of minds. "We will control your Friday. We will control your Saturday. Are you in the market for human contact? We will provide."
The student said, "I guess I am. Is some frat controlling this bot?" She fiddled with her long skirt.
In a dozen voices they said, "What's a frat? Yes! No. We're from Thousand Tales. Left." The robot lurched. "What are you looking for?"
The human flipped her t
ablet over to messaging mode. "Stream video to Dave and Maria."
The device said, "Yes, my queen."
"Ooh," said Nocturne. "Is that thing self-aware? Left."
"What? No, it's... oh, gosh, you're from that game that eats people."
The robot whirred around the human at somebody's command. "We don't bite! Are your friends single too? We get more points if we set them all up. Back."
She went back to recording them. "Maria is. If you want to make yourselves useful instead of... What are you doing anyway? Don't you critters live in your game?"
"Right. No, we mean yes! Left. Just stop trying to turn the thing, will you?" The voices argued. "We're trying to learn about Earth and this Mobile Encounter Suit is a lot better than the perma-death kind."
"We're not calling it that," said Lumina. "It's a dumb acronym."
Nocturne razzed her. "Says miss android type M-SUE."
Back on Earth, the student was listening to the chatter from the digital world. "I wasn't expecting weird robot experiments today. If you're not some prank, find me somebody who's not a darn Reco."
"Off we go! Forward, forward. Wait, what's that? Never mind, forward. Right!"
The robot's view lurched away from the human. Lumina called out, "Wait! What's your name?"
"Abby."
Lumina stood up from her cushion in the auditorium. The other players continued shouting directions that sent the robot wobbling off between buildings. "This is ridiculous. How is it ever going to get anywhere without somebody in charge?"
Nocturne said, "We got to a human and talked with her."
"After three hours of walking into a fence, then trying to get to a power outlet. We're not even all seeing with the same vision system. I thought this would be a straightforward cooperative mission, not chaos."
"We're cooperating. Just in opposite directions."
Lumina frowned and called up a map of the campus. "Where do we find single men, then?"
"To the computer department!" chorused several natives.
"That means west to the building with the ugly abstract statue. No, the other one."
The robot trundled along roughly westward, though several voices kept urging it north to check out a "student union" building. A man was rolling out in a chair with wheels.
Several native voices startled him. He looked down at the robot and his yellowish skin turned a little paler. "It's coming, huh? I'd heard of the experiment but I assumed there'd be a big cuddly-looking humanoid." He leaned down to take a picture with his phone. "Are you all AIs?"
"Yup!" said Nocturne. "Not many uploaders here yet. Are you single and... let's see, not a 'Reco'?"
He laughed. "You have no idea, do you? The name's Hiroshi. I had ancestors in the California internment camps with the Supreme Court's blessing. But you have no idea about that either."
"The what, now?" asked the griffin.
Somebody better-informed said, "Can of worms, people. Backward, backward."
"No, forward! Right! Hold!"
Lumina called out while the others were fighting over the robot's moves. "Whatever. If that's a 'no' on the second one, here's a picture of a lady looking for a date." She snuck a command to the robot's display screen through the discord of move commands, changing the image from the last thing they'd been showing everyone -- a cartoon happy face -- to show a confused-looking Abby.
The man in the wheelchair said, "Cute, but I'm damaged goods and my kind isn't exactly welcome among pretty white ladies. You'd best move on."
"Analysis complete!" said one of the natives, a hyperactive girl with blue hair and a headset. "I've identified sub-missions 'Investigate subject Abby's racism' and 'Investigate the Reco faction'."
"You know he can hear you, right?" said Lumina. "We're just trying to get somebody a date, not pry into our dozenth horrible revelation about Earth."
The big-eyed girl posed dramatically and sparkled. "True love requires relentless pursuit. Subject Hiroshi, fill us in, in the name of the Lady of Games!"
Hiroshi chuckled. "Starting your own cult in there already? You AIs showed up at a good time, since you got to miss the year our country broke up. Free Texas has some people wanting to 'reconcile', which is a bad idea. But you'll find some fools on this campus who think we can get over our differences. So no, I'm not a Reco, but my side's jerks assume all the non-whites are."
"Excellent! Next sub-mission: Identify whether subject Abby is a jerk. Left, forward!"
"Forward!" chorused the players.
Lumina quietly took notes as they sped away. She'd been reading a lot lately, but her focus had been on science and a big-picture introduction to Earth history, not current events. "We may be making a mistake," she said to Nocturne. "Should we be helping people who have this much resentment?"
Nocturne stood too and struck a formal pose, sitting up with her chest out and her wings at a regal-looking tilt. "It's the people with trouble who need our attention the most. Helping others is the duty of the Knights of Talespace."
Oh, right; the griffin and her recently-uploaded human mate had decided to start a knightly order. Lumina said, "The people out there aren't even Thousand Tales players."
They both looked toward the screen that was their window to Earth, the Outer Realm. Nocturne folded her wings and said, "True, though I don't want to quit doing charity work. Should we talk the others into finding different students to bother?"
"It's a silly goal anyway. We could collect flowers or something instead of pushing humans together."
Nocturne grinned beakily and tapped at Lumina's mechanical flanks. "I have got to get you an organic body so you can try this 'sex' thing for yourself. Very fun."
Lumina's internal heaters flared. "Yeah, well, you have a human."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to remind you." Nocturne nuzzled her.
The robot had wobbled its way back toward the reflecting pool. Abby was still there, reading on her tablet, and several onlookers had gathered. Lumina figured the Talespace crowd ought to be glad, since it was good publicity, but she said, "Backward. Wait a moment. We need to be careful what we say."
"Forward, forward!" said the crowd. They rolled up to Abby and said, "We found you someone! Check out this picture. He says you're a pretty white lady."
Abby covered her face with one palm. "You have no idea how race works, do you?"
Someone said, "That was like what he said! You're compatible already."
Abby said, "It's not supposed to matter. What did you do, pick the first man you saw?"
"No, we ran optimized personality-matching algorithms that --" The giggling in the background spoiled the explanation. "Okay, yes. But he's not one of those bad guys."
Lumina shook her head, saying, "People, do we really want to bring together humans who think we're ignorant?"
Abby heard. "You are. You're rolling around here treating our world like your game. If you're doing it to learn, that's good, but don't try to fix what you don't understand."
Lumina walked toward the screen and looked up into Abby's face. "We have to walk in your world to understand it, ma'am. The one talking to you now has killed a human. I understand something of your world from that."
The admission made everybody pause. Then the AIs clamored, both at Abby and at Lumina. "Why'd you say that? She didn't mean that. Did you really? Why?"
Nocturne screeched. "Quiet, everyone. What Lumina did was right. Let's focus on Hiroshi and Abby."
"You're the one they bothered first, eh?" said Hiroshi from out of view.
"Left!" The robot whirred and spun to see him rolling closer in his chair.
He spoke to Abby. "Sorry, miss. I didn't mean to drag you into their game. The name's Hiroshi."
"Abby. One of the voices in that bot just said she killed someone."
"I wonder if that was the first. You said 'she' though?"
"Hear the chaos in there? They're not 'it' like regular software."
One of the natives whispered, "At least they'
re talking."
Hiroshi said, "The machine started asking about whether we want to get along with the police state up north. I'm worried that their master AI wants to hook up countries like well as people, to optimize the world."
Abby nodded. "They can hear us. Watch what you say."
"Yeah, we've got our own cute little surveillance drone." Hiroshi looked at the audience of students who'd stopped to watch. "Any interest in getting lunch, ma'am --"
"Say yes!" said Nocturne and dozens of others.
"And figuring out what we can do about the machine overlord?"
"Sure," said Abby. She started to walk away while Hiroshi rolled along beside her.
Lumina called out, "Wait! We messed up. I need to know what we did wrong."
Abby looked back over one shoulder and gave them an evil grin. "Yes, you do. That gives me an idea for a little storytelling. Know anything about animation, Hiroshi?"
"A little, and I know a guy."
Lumina and the other natives sat there, giving no commands, while the conspirators left.
"Well, shoot," said Nocturne.
"Mission complete, I guess," said the blue-haired girl.
Lumina said, "I think we just inspired some anti-Ludo propagandists."
The blue-haired one shook off her worried look. "We can still score more points. There're other humans here to help. Singles identification mode, go!"
Lumina had seen a bit of the US, a little of the Free States, and even the much harsher land of Cibola. Yet she knew nothing. "Have fun," she said, and made for the glowing door that would take her elsewhere in the realm of Talespace.
"Off to study?" asked Nocturne, with her tufted ears held low.
Lumina nodded. "This game isn't getting us anywhere. There's got to be a better way to understand them."
"And have them understand us. Mind if I join you?"
"Let's go explore."
11. White Mages' Village
Robin called Mike to apologize about punching the senator, but the man was busy guarding the facility against nutcases who'd punch a customer or something. No reply came until hours later, when Mike appeared on Robin's office screen. "You don't mean that. You'd do it again."