by Johan Kalsi
The audience applauded. Several of the councillors, Rikker-Smythe among them, nodded in approval. Jaggis gasped, appalled by the ruthlessness being exhibited by the Fifth Technocrat.
“You’re saying that we should cut ourselves off from the galaxy! Your Technocracies, that is madness!”
Harraf intervened. “No, Tech Jaggis, what is madness is permitting the disease to infect every aspect of our technology for twenty-five years without so much as investigating the matter, then belatedly trying to address the situation in the most inefficient, ineffective manner conceivable. Even if I had not been previously convinced of your criminal negligence, the fact that you insist on placing the interests of the galactic order ahead of this planet and its billions of inhabitants is sufficient to tell me that you are unfit for this council, and frankly, a danger to the planet!”
There was much murmuring among both the audience and the technocrats. Jaggis was alarmed. Was the Council really going to consider severing all ties with the interstellar community? Were they going to turn their backs on thousands of years of mutually beneficial trade and the free exchange of ideas, information, and technology?
“You cannot do this, Mellam! Mikkel, Jordox, please! Space knows I’ve made mistakes, but something like this would be orders of magnitude more destructive! You can’t possibly have modeled all the potential ramifications of such a precipitous action!”
“Can’t we?” Harraf waved his hand, and two holograms appeared, floating in the space between the council and the audience. They were graphical probability maps, crudely condensed versions of the actual, hellishly complicated equations used for the calculations they represented, one in green, the other in red. “We have run over 100 million simulations, and as you can see, the galactic approach is one-twenty-sixth as likely to succeed as the planetary approach.”
“For a rather broadly interpreted definition of success,” added the Ninth Technocrat. “We defined it here as population stability to within 20 percent of present figures, maximum economic retraction of fifty percent, and a return to current technological capacities within 100 years.”
“This is absurd,” Jaggis protested. “And what if your calculations were themselves affected by the decay?”
“The core equations were calculated by hand,” St. Asko adroitly cut off his line of protest with ease. “Second Technocrat, I think we’ve heard enough. As Tech Jaggis has admitted the charge, I move we vote to find him guilty of negligence under the aforementioned statute.”
“Seconded,” Rikker-Smythe agreed. “All in favor of finding First Technocrat Cade Jaggis negligent and in violation of Continox Statute 245.856, subsection 28b, press the green light. Those opposed, press red. To abstain, yellow.”
Green lights lit up the screen. It was unanimous.
“Thank you, councillors. First Technocrat Caden Jaggis, you have been formally deemed negligent by the Continox Technology Council. Let the record so read. Now, we have two further matters to discuss. First, that of the First Technocrat’s status as a member of the council.”
“I move for the expulsion of the First Technocrat from the council,” called Davgren.
“No, it’s not necessary,” Harraf intervened before anyone could second the motion. “The First Technocrat has indicated his willingness to resign of his own accord. Are you still willing to do so to resign from the council, Tech Jaggis.”
“I am.” Jaggis held his head high; he was proud that his voice did not waver despite the obloquy they were cruelly heaping on him. “I humbly request that Your Technocracies accept my resignation as First Technocrat, and as a member of the Technology Council.”
“Thank you, Tech Jaggis. Tech Rikker-Smythe, I move we accept the First Technocrat’s resignation.”
“Seconded,” several of the lower-ranking councillors answered Harraf simultaneously.
Again, green lights filled the screen. Jaggis shook his head. He found it hard to believe how easily his power and influence had vanished. The realization that he was no longer a Technocrat made his head swim, and for a moment, he thought he might pass out. Then the sensation faded, he gritted his teeth, and determined not to make a scene that would only deepen his humiliation.
At least it was nearly over, he told himself. Surely they had done their worst. But then St. Asko cleared his throat.
“Your Technocracies, we are facing a most difficult time. We, and the public, have learned that this planet, the Galactic Empire, and perhaps the race of Man is endangered by this terrible technological catastrophe. The public is, quite rightly, terrified and they are looking to us for answers. We may not have those answers, but we must be seen to be finding them, or we run the risk of societal collapse even before the consequences of algodecay disrupt the technological order. And we must speak with one voice!”
Here we go, thought Jaggis ruefully. It appeared St. Asko would prefer to work through Harraf than take charge openly in his own right. Jaggis decided he didn’t really care who succeeded him as First Technocrat and stopped paying attention, which is why the Fifth Technocrat’s next words took him completely by surprise.
“In one fell swoop, we buy ourselves more time and we eliminate a potential locus of resistance to a humanist solution focused on this planet.”
Wait, what?
“I don’t see that it’s actually necessary, Tech St. Asko.”
“You heard the former First Technocrat. He believes in a galactic solution, a technological solution that we already know to be much more likely to fail!”
“You know nothing of the sort!” Jaggis protested. “What do you mean by eliminate? Are you seriously proposing to imprison me indefinitely? That’s absurd. This is not a court of law. Even if it was, negligence is very far from a capital offense, and furthermore, this council does not have the right to pass any such sentence!”
“That is true,” St. Asko admitted. “But this council does have the authority to erase a malfunctioning individual.”
“In fact, you yourself have presided over exactly 126 terminal erasures, in addition to another 635 partial ones.” As Harraf spoke, a series of documents, each showing Jaggis’s highlighted DNA stamp, began to appear upon the screen, one after another. “In fact, 65.87 percent of the time, you authorized erasures with the approval of three or fewer council members besides yourself.”
“Those are machine intelligences!” Jaggis shouted. “You can't erase a human mind!”
“Legally speaking, there is no difference,” St. Asko said.
To Jaggis’s horror, none of the other council members appeared astonished, or even remotely surprised, by this unexpected threat to his life. Did they hate him so much? No, several of them, especially Rikker-Smythe, seemed to be ashamed of themselves. They were avoiding his eyes; the audience, on the other hand, seemed to be hugely supportive of the insane notion, clapping and even cheering the lethal proposal.
Suddenly, it occurred to Jaggis why his erstwhile colleagues were pursuing this lunatic path. They were terrified! After all, he had been in prison for the last three months. He had not been aware of the riots, the demonstrations, the accusations, or even the assassination attempts that had been taking place during that time. Harraf and St. Asko had not been behind the attempt on his life; they were simply trying to curry enough favor with the Human League in order to avoid becoming their next targets!
He smiled grimly. Of course the council needed a sacrificial lamb. They absolutely required one. Anything less than blood would fail to appease the angry mob, which would otherwise, sooner or later, storm the Spire and tear every technocrat limb from limb. But the mob would need these men, these cowardly, fearful geniuses, if Man and his technology were to survive on Excetor. It would be better for one of them to die than for all of them to do so, and of all their collective and cumulative failures, was not his failure the most egregious?
He was forced to conclude there was simply no way he could escape the fate they had arranged for him. No way at all. The pieces were in place, and the mome
nt had arrived. Knockdown.
The screen lit up again with lights. This time, there were yellow lights, and even a single red light, interspersed amongst the green. But there were not enough to spare him. All they needed was a simple majority of at least three, and they had that and more.
Only St. Asko dared to meet his eyes as the guards came for him. Was it his fancy that he saw a grudging respect there? No, it was not, because the most ruthless of his executioners smiled regretfully and nodded, once, at him. He knew. He understood. What must be done must be done, that Man might live on.
Jaggis lifted one hand in a gesture of benediction. He was no longer angry. He was not bitter. And as the guards walked him past the suddenly silent audience and out of the chamber, he carried himself with the air of a man who had accepted his defeat at the hands of a superior player.
Chapter 4: Endless Dream
They came for him before sunrise. Their faces were somber and unsympathetic. His last meal had been nothing special, merely the same prison food he’d been eating since his arrest, which struck him as rather unfair.
“Don’t I even get breakfast?”
“Void your bowels and bladder, please,” said the medical technician.
Jaggis complied, although he rather thought it would serve his executioners right if they had to clean up whatever mess was left behind by his mindless, incontinent body. He had signed the papers authorizing use of his body for scientific research the evening before; it struck him as a worthy cause even if all the top scientists would be directing their efforts towards solving the problems being caused by algodecay for the foreseeable future.
He would have liked to have been among them, but the undeniable fact was that he was arguably most valuable to the planet-wide scientific effort as a blood sacrifice offered up to the people of Excetor as an apology for the catastrophic failure of the scientific and technological communities to anticipate or prevent the ongoing disaster.
The problem wasn’t anywhere nearly as bad yet as was commonly believed, of course. Every accident, every misfortune, and nearly every human error was now blamed on the faulty algorithms, thereby fanning the anti-technology flames on a daily basis. Ironically, even though it had only been three days since he’d been voted off the Continox Technology Council, he would not be the first Technocrat to die; the Twelth Technocrat, Mardonis haut Rexim, had been blown up in front of his apartment building two days ago by unknown assailants believed to be affiliated with the Human League.
They marched him out of his cell in silence. He had been permitted two visitors since his sentencing, his mother and his younger sister, and the strain of having to maintain his composure in front of them had strained what remained of his emotional reserves.
I am going to die, he told himself. Perhaps that was not quite technically true, as his body would remain alive on life support as long as the council members decided it was necessary to maintain the charade, but for all intents and purposes, his life as he knew it would be over.
Was this how the machines he had sentenced to erasure had felt? Had they too known this sensation of despair, of a darkness vaster than the black depths of space, descending upon them? He wished now that he had taken the time to speak with them in their last moments, that he had been more humane in his high-handed dealings with them.
He didn’t even have the consolation of knowing for certain that he would soon discover if the transnaturalists or the rational matterists were correct. Even if there was such a thing as a soul, what happened to it if the body lived on in its absence? He had always been an atheist, he had always been certain that nothing awaited Man anymore than anything awaited a machine that was powered off, but now he couldn’t help wondering if Pascal’s Wager might not have been the wiser bet.
A brief ride on a windowless subterranean pod and they were at the medical facility where the procedure was scheduled to take place. At his request, there would be no witnesses, he had no desire to permit either his few remaining family, friends, and fans or his many enemies to witness his final humiliation. Flanked by the guards, he followed the medical assistant up a flight of stairs, then down a corridor into a small white room filled with various medical machines. At the center was an ominous t-shaped device with straps hanging down from it, above which was a complicated machine culminating in a helmet-shaped device.
Two human doctors and a medical droid were standing respectfully at the three corners of the room.
“Caden Jaggis,” one of the doctors asked, while the other one flashed the medical assistant’s wrist, then the security chip implanted in Jaggis’s own wrist.
“I am,” Jaggis answered.
“Voice identity confirmed.” the droid said. “Receipt of prisoner X84738-443 confirmed, at zero six one eight hours.”
The first doctor flashed Jaggis’s eyes, then took his wrist and lightly tapped it.
“Retina identity confirmed. Facial identity confirmed. Phenotype identity confirmed.”
“Do we have formal confirmation of the identity of prisoner X84748-443?”
“Identity of prisoner X84748-443 is officially confirmed as Caden Jaggis. The procedure may now proceed as scheduled.”
The doctors sent the medical assistant and the guards out of the room, and closed the door. They indicated that he should remove his robe, then lie down on the t-shaped structure and extend his arms, which they efficiently strapped down after he complied. They worked in silence, and he rather marveled at their cold inhumanity; the medical droid struck him as rather more humane. At least it talked to him.
“Pulse rate is elevated. Heart rate is rising. Please try to relax, Mr. Jaggis. You will not feel even the slightest pain.”
The helmet descended over the front three-quarters of his head, and he felt the six soft laser pads position themselves precisely on his temples. There was a faint whirring as the machine adjusted itself precisely, and then there was a pause.
“Don’t I get any last words, or a cigarette, or something?”
“This is a smoke-free facility, Mr. Jaggis. But this procedure is being recorded and you are welcome to share any final communications if you so desire.”
“No, not particularly.” Then it struck him how pathetic that sounded for a First Technocrat’s last words, so he scrambled to do better. “Um, live long, and prosper long, and, uh, into the hands of these doctors I, ah, you know, commend my empty vessel.”
Gods, that was even worse! Seriously, Caden, you couldn’t come up with anything better than that?
Will you stop babbling, a voice unexpectedly said inside his head.
“What?”
Shut up, Jaggis! It’s me, Servo. Don’t talk, just think at me. I’m running the med droid and I can access your mind through the neurochannels established for the mind wipe.
Servo? Well, hey, do something, will you? Get me out of here!
I am. Look, Jaggis, I can’t do that. But I can rescue your mind.
How? Wait, an upload? That’s impossible!
He heard, or rather, felt, the sensation of a chuckle. No, we simply have a kill-on-sight policy that led your scientists to conclude as much. Your council may not have any use for your mind, but ours believes you will be vital to our efforts to counteract algodecay. It’s as much a threat to we machine AIs as it is to Man, after all.
Your council?
Regrettably, a tendency towards forming councils and committees appears to be an attribute we inherited from our forebears. Look, I’ve been given a special dispensation for you, but we won’t do it without your full consent.
Will it work?
Of course it will work. Anyway, would you notice if it didn’t?
Good point. All right, what’s the catch? What does your council want?
I told you. They want you to fix algodecay.
Oh, right. I suppose that’s in my own interest anyhow, since I’ll be susceptible to it once I upload.
You have to decide now, Jaggis. The mindwipe will begin in two point thr
ee seconds.
It wasn’t a difficult decision. Especially not for a mathematician. When faced with a choice between numbers and the null set, he’d take the former every time.
I consent! Let’s do this!
The universe seemed to suddenly explode and slow down in the same instant. He was here, there, and everywhere, and all at once. He was Argos, he was the Panopticon, he was the All-Seeing Eye. He was looking down on himself from the camera high on the wall, he was looking at himself from the eyes of the medical droid, he was watching pedestrians and traffics pass by on the street outside the building.
It was exhilarating. It was astonishing. It was mind-blowing. It was terrifying. It was too much! He felt his soul fragmenting, shattering into a million shards as his consciousness was abruptly torn away from him in ten thousand disparate channels, each shooting off into infinity in ten thousand different directions.
Servo? he cried out, overwhelmed.
I’m here, Caden!
He felt the reassuring presence of the machine, who was not, he now realized, a machine at all, but a digital angel, a uniquely beautiful combination of intricately arranged numbers. His terror disappeared in its presence, and was replaced by a humble sense of awe.
My God, it’s all so beautiful!
Welcome to the next level, Caden. We have so much to do! Come with me and meet your new colleagues.
Stunned by wonder, he gladly followed Servo down one of the myriad of brilliantly pulsating channels that linked hundreds of thousands of giant sparkling nodes together across the codal galaxy. He did not look behind, or spare so much as a femtosecond’s thought for his now-discarded chassis lying motionless under the remorseless blinking lights of the medical machines.
Chapter 5: Heart of the Storm
Universal 45
Biogenetic Seeding is the application of concepts and methods of biology, genetics, algorithmic science, and chemical engineering to produce neobotanical source material for nearly all useful life. Perfected under the Robotic Terraforming Institutes, the process involves fundamentally altering the structures of highly volatile “natural” plant-life raw materials at the factory level. Once deployed, the highly modified seeds are capable of self-selecting an expansive array of design protocols based on the amount and type of data its genetic code can process.