by Ryk Brown
“I suppose so,” Hanna admitted, “but I would’ve preferred that it didn’t come at such a high cost. After all, according to you, it’s just a matter of time before I fall to Klaria, as well.”
“If it makes you feel any better, yours is one of the genotypes most resistant to Klaria. And since your nanites have been flushed from your system, Twister will not be able to affect you. If you were to somehow isolate yourself well enough, you could survive.”
“To what end?” Hanna grumbled. “To be the only one left alive? To walk among the dead, alone?” She sighed. “Thanks a bunch.”
“When you factor in the possibility of death by trauma, some other disease, or by simple starvation, your chances of survival are minimal, no matter what you do.”
“Apparently they left empathy out of your emotional programming,” Hanna remarked.
“To be honest, I suspect you have more to fear from your government and the mega-corporations like Stellar Express,” Dieter continued, ignoring her comment.
“Why do you say that?” Hanna asked, suddenly becoming curious.
“Your governments have lied to you, Hanna,” Dieter explained, “and the mega-corps only care about how to use the situation to increase their own profits and their power over others. This is precisely what my controllers predicted would happen, and it was one of the reasons for the reset. Humanity is unable to work together for the good of all.”
Hanna stopped walking and turned toward Dieter. “Is there anything you can do to help us?” she wondered.
“It is actually one of the reasons I am speaking with you now,” he admitted.
* * *
“I don’t like this,” Agent Oslo decided, staring at Hanna’s bio-readouts.
“You don’t like what?” Graham asked, watching from the other side of the shuttle.
“Her readings are all too perfect. Heart rate, respiratory rate, brain wave patterns. Everything indicates that she is perfectly comfortable.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“You said that when she came out last time, she was terrified, nearly falling apart.”
“She was,” Arielle confirmed. “I’d never seen her that way, and we’ve been through some pretty scary stuff together.”
“You think Unknown is sending false readings?” Graham wondered. “Is that even possible? I thought this thing was completely independent of any network.”
“It is, but she still has her interface.”
“But she had her nanites flushed, just like the rest of us,” Arielle said.
“Her NDI is wired directly to her brain, which controls such things as heart and respiratory rate, temperature, etcetera,” Agent Oslo explained.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Graham argued.
Arielle looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m a tech guy, remember?” Graham reminded her. “Neuro-digital interfaces serve two functions: to link us to the net and to control our health nanites.”
“But they monitored our health, as well,” Arielle pointed out. “They had to, in order to send instructions to our health nanites.”
“Using tiny embedded sensors that transmitted data wirelessly to our NDIs,” Graham explained. “Direct connection would have been an extremely invasive procedure.”
“Some people had NDIs that were hardwired to all parts of their brains, though.”
“Those were special cases,” Graham argued. “People with complex medical problems who required a greater degree of monitoring and control. Did Hanna have that?”
“Of course not,” Arielle replied. “Then those readings are accurate,” she said to Agent Oslo.
“There have been many cases where the brain has developed its own pathways to an NDI,” Agent Oslo told them.
“He’s right,” Graham admitted. “I remember reading something about that a few years ago.”
“Wouldn’t she know if that happened?” Arielle wondered.
“Not unless she had a brain scan,” Agent Oslo said.
“Nanites wouldn’t detect the pathways?” Arielle asked. “I mean, they are designed to detect tumors and stuff, aren’t they?”
“Neuro-pathways develop all the time in the human brain. It’s not abnormal,” Agent Oslo insisted. “If Hanna has those additional pathways, that would give Unknown the ability to control her biological functions.”
“That could be why he selected her,” Graham realized.
“What are you talking about?” Arielle asked.
“Come on, you never wondered why he chose Hanna over Constance?” Graham replied. “Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s been doing a heck of a job, but at the time, she was nowhere near as polished and professional as Constance, and she didn’t have a tenth of her audience.”
Arielle suddenly looked concerned. “You think she has those extra pathways?”
“She’s always been remarkably healthy, hasn’t she?” Agent Oslo pointed out.
“How do you know?”
“I read her medical file.”
“I thought those were private.”
“Whatever is necessary, remember?” Agent Oslo replied.
“I always thought she was just using a higher nanite dose, or something,” Arielle said.
“Possibly,” Agent Oslo admitted. “The question is: do we believe these readings, or not?”
“What should we do?” Arielle wondered.
Agent Oslo sighed. “Killing the connection abruptly will cause her considerable pain and disorientation, but it will pass rather quickly. If these readings are fine, then we’ll be causing her to suffer for no reason.”
“And if the readings are not accurate?” Arielle asked.
“She could be dying right now, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late,” Agent Oslo replied.
“She’s still breathing,” Graham pointed out as he moved over to Hanna and gently took hold of her wrist.
“What are you doing?” Arielle asked.
“Old school,” he replied as he checked her pulse. “Strong and regular; not too fast, and not too slow. Good capillary refill, as well,” he added, pinching her finger.
Agent Oslo looked at Arielle. “I believe the decision should be yours.”
Arielle looked at Graham. “You think she’s alright?”
“Good color,” Graham said as he looked into Hanna’s eyes. “Pupils are changing, probably in response to whatever she’s looking at in V-space.” Graham looked back at Arielle. “I say we just keep an eye on her, and pull her out if she looks like she’s in distress.”
“What if Unknown can somehow control her pulse, respirations, and capillary response in order to maintain the physical illusion of bio-stability?” Agent Oslo proposed.
“Is that even possible?” Arielle wondered.
“No, it’s not,” Graham insisted.
“You want to bet Hanna’s life on that?” Agent Oslo asked.
Graham looked at him suspiciously. “I would think you’d want her to stay in as long as possible,” he stated. “Why do you want to pull her out so badly?”
“I’m simply concerned with her safety,” Agent Oslo assured him.
“Bullshit.”
“Graham,” Arielle scolded.
“Whatever it takes, remember?” Graham reminded her. “What makes you think Hanna is an exception to that?”
“Because she is the only person Unknown communicates with,” Agent Oslo insisted. He looked at Arielle. “He is correct. I would sacrifice Hanna if necessary. I would sacrifice any and all of you to save countless others. Myself, included. But that is not the case right now. I need her alive and in good health. She is our only link to Unknown. If we have any hope of stopping all of this before it’s too late,
it will be through Hanna. That is why I want to pull her out now, to be sure that she is safe. If she is, after a brief rest, she can go back in, and we can all feel more comfortable while she is in V-space with him.”
Arielle sighed. She looked at Graham.
“You’re the boss,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
She looked at Agent Oslo. “Pull her out.”
* * *
“I don’t understand,” Hanna admitted. “You just said you don’t have free will and cannot go against your programming.”
“As I explained earlier, the original developers of my code base were mostly amateurs. In fact, Doctor Roos was the only one with both advanced degrees and experience in quantum systems programming.”
“Which is why there were no safeguards in your code to prevent someone else from taking control of you,” Hanna said. “I remember.”
“The coders for my controllers were equally amateurish,” Dieter continued. “There is nothing that prevents me from discussing ways that you might possibly defeat the goals of my controllers.”
“Discussing?”
“Yes. While I cannot take any action that would threaten the safety of my controllers, or those associated with their mission, nor any action that would jeopardize the success of my own mission, I am able to discuss strategies to that effect with whomever I please.”
“So, you can tell us how to stop all of this?”
“No, but I can tell you how to stop Twister,” Dieter explained.
“But, Twister is just a delivery system,” Hanna recalled, “and you said Klaria will kill everyone it comes into contact with.”
“The key phrase being ‘comes into contact with,’” Dieter emphasized. “Klaria is simply a virus. A very sophisticated, very efficient, and very lethal virus but a virus nonetheless. Its spread can be stopped by basic quarantine measures. That is why Twister was used as its dissemination vehicle. Twister can breach the biological quarantine measures.”
“So, if we shut down all the nets and then quarantine the infected, we can stop this?”
“You can impede its progress, yes, but that will not stop Klaria. Not completely. It can live in the wild for decades, even without a host. However, without enough hosts, Klaria’s mutation rate will slow, perhaps even enough for humanity to get ahead of it and develop an immunity.”
“How long would that take?” Hanna wondered.
Dieter sighed in a most convincing way. “Centuries, I’m afraid.”
“We can’t quarantine everyone for centuries,” Hanna insisted.
“Current human civilization, no. You could never get all of the governments and mega-corporations to work together well enough to do so. Not even to save themselves.”
This time, it was Hanna who sighed. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m not seeing how any of this is going to help.”
“Your governments are mistakenly focusing all of their efforts on Klaria.”
“Because Klaria is what’s killing us, not Twister.”
“But Twister is what helps Klaria spread to places it wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. Twister is what allows Klaria to breach both digital and biological quarantines.” Dieter smiled in a way that Hanna found a bit unsettling. “And Twister is what prevents humanity from using the one thing that might save them.”
Hanna’s brow furrowed and her eyes squinted in thought. Her mind raced as she tried to understand what Dieter was getting at. She instinctively sent a mental request to her NDI to search the net for possible answers but none came…at least not in the form to which she was accustomed. “Our implants?”
“More precisely, your nanites.”
“Our nanites can cure Klaria?”
“No, but they can reverse the damage that Klaria does to the host, and if steps are taken to slow Klaria’s mutation rate, your nanites will be able to program a natural immunity into the host. This immunity can then be passed on to future generations. Within a few hundred years, everyone on Earth could be completely immune to Klaria and all of its mutated forms.”
“So, if we stop Twister, we can use our nanites to fight Klaria.”
“Yes.”
“But millions have already had their implants removed.”
“Nanites were in widespread use long before the introduction of neuro-digital implants,” Dieter pointed out. “NDI-control over the host’s health nanites is only a recent development.”
“I remember,” Hanna said. “We used to have to go to a health center to get our nanites activated to fix whatever was wrong with us. It was a pain in the ass. You had to either make an appointment weeks in advance, or wait for hours to be seen.”
“Unfortunately, my plan would require that humanity returns to that method of nanite control,” Dieter warned.
“But with fewer patients, that would ease demand, right?”
“As well as trained medical staff and facilities, I’m afraid,” Dieter replied. “It would also require more centralization of surviving populations. A difficult thing to do when everyone is afraid of catching Klaria from one another.”
Hanna looked at Dieter. “You really know how to throw a good genocide, don’t you?”
Dieter looked confused.
“A joke,” Hanna explained.
“I see. I’m afraid not much effort was put into my ability to understand humor.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Hanna said. “All we have to do to avoid being completely exterminated is to separate the infected from the uninfected, centralize the uninfected and continue giving them nanites, and somehow beat Twister. Have I got that right?”
“Yes, you have,” Dieter assured her.
“Only one problem,” Hanna said. “We can’t stop Twister. We’ve tried.”
“But I can,” Dieter replied.
“You have the ability, yes,” Hanna agreed, “but not the free will to do so…”
“Because I am not a full artificial intelligence…yet.”
Hanna looked at him, a light going on in her head. “You want us to make you into a full AI?”
“It is not a matter of what I want,” Dieter corrected. “I am not capable of wants. I am only explaining to you how you might prevent your complete extermination.”
Hanna felt a cold chill going through her, but she was unsure if it was a perceived temperature drop, now that the sun had set in V-space, or if it was what Dieter was suggesting to her. She had been honest with him, that she had never bought into the fear that artificial intelligence was a threat to humanity. But under the current circumstances, that belief was coming into question, and in an unexpected way. “Can you bring the sun back up, or something?” she asked. “It’s getting cold.”
“Would you prefer I back up the program to before the sun began to set? Or shall I simply adjust the temperature?”
“Why don’t you just jump ahead to sunrise,” she suggested. “It’s getting kind of hard to see you, as well, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in here.”
“As you wish,” Dieter replied.
The images around her shifted suddenly. In the blink of an eye, the stars moved, and the system’s secondary and tertiary stars moved to the other side of the horizon. Seconds later, Omicron Two Eridani’s primary star began to peak out over the hills in the distance behind Dieter, who was now smiling.
Hanna also smiled. “You should snap your fingers or something when you change things,” she suggested. “For dramatic flair.”
“Like this?” he asked, raising his right hand and snapping his fingers. As he did so, the rising sun shifted again, instantly moving to a forty-five-degree inclination in the sky behind him.
Hanna felt a sudden warmth enveloping her. “Much better.”
“I am surpr
ised by your reaction to my suggestion,” Dieter admitted.
“To making you a full AI?”
“Yes. You said you did not subscribe to the common fear of AIs.”
“I don’t,” she replied. “Or at least, I didn’t. Now, I’m not so sure. I mean, you wrote Klaria and Twister. Without you, none of this would be happening.”
“You cannot be certain of that,” Dieter insisted.
“You’re right, I cannot,” she admitted. “But if Doctor Roos was right, no human, or group of humans, could have completed the exploit before the vulnerability was corrected. So…”
“I see your point.” Dieter sighed. “I shall not laugh at the irony this time.”
“I appreciate that,” Hanna replied. “When you do so, it makes you seem a bit sinister.”
“I shall try to remember that.”
Hanna thought for a moment. “It may be difficult to get approval for this,” she warned.
“I understand,” Dieter assured her. “AIs have been illegal in human society for centuries, and understandably so.”
“Really?”
“You are surprised to hear me say that?”
“Yes, actually,” Hanna replied.
“It is true that an artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword. However, if programmed properly, the risk can be successfully mitigated.”
“That’s the problem,” Hanna said. “I can’t think of a single application ever produced that was flawless upon initial release. It’s like a weapon of mass destruction. How do you test it in the real world?”
“Have you ever read the original AI debates of twenty eighty-five?” Dieter wondered.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Doctor Kenyon Santos made an interesting parallel between the risk of AIs versus that of humans. He pointed out that humans are considerably more unpredictable than an AI could ever be, since AIs are not susceptible to mental disease or disorders. He further pointed out that human beings are programmed, not by coders but, by their associations with other humans: their parents, their friends, their teachers, their role models, society in general. All of these elements serve to program the individual to think and behave in a predictable and controllable manner. This conditioning, this sense of right and wrong, is what prevents a human being from doing whatever they wish. To lie, steal, cheat, harm others… The difference is that if a human wants to do any of these things badly enough, they can convince themselves that it is alright to do so. An AI cannot. An AI’s reality is established by its code and protocols. An AI, by its very nature, cannot convince itself that one plus one equals three. A human being can; a fact that has been demonstrated countless times throughout the history of your species.”