The Island of Hope

by Andrei Livadny

She cautiously went round the machine.

  Simeon was asleep. His hair was tousled; his head drooped to one side. Yanna's heart sank. She remembered at once what he'd told her about machines; overcome with fright, she looked at the chrome-plated teaching module with its gleaming polished plastic panels.

  What if... what if the machine had harmed Simeon? Fear touched her chest with its cold sharp-clawed fingers. Yanna was not devoid of imagination. While listening to Simeon's accounts she'd had the impression that she watching a movie.

  She looked around her, desperate. What if something had actually happened to Simeon? Andor had been out for more than a week. She'd be left here all alone...

  The terrible, gloomy, dangerous world opened up before her as an icy abyss swarming with the ominous shadows of battle machines.

  Simeon emitted a weak sigh. His eyelids began to tremble.

  He opened his eyes.

  Yanna was sitting on the armrest of his seat, white as a sheet. Her lips quivered.

  "What happened?" she asked with genuine anxiety.

  Slowly Simeon came round.

  "I have a headache," he pressed his hands to his temples where the electrodes had sunk into them. The indicator lights on the teaching module control panel kept flashing happily at each other. He stared at their patterns. For the first time in his life, he wasn't afraid of them. He was trying to remember and bring back the sensation of real time.

  Two children and machines.

  Some of them had tried to kill them. Others helped them survive. Yet others didn't do anything at all. But they all controlled their lives. That was one thing Simeon knew. But why? He was shocked by the revelation that all machines as well as the steel spheroid itself had been created by people; directed by their will and actions.

  He wouldn't be able to explain what it was that he felt. The understanding had come, making him quite grown-up, making his soul and mind ten years older, but all that was still deep in his subconscious. In fact, the whole process had resulted in resentment, confusion and anger. Now he began to grasp the significance of the ships' cemetery, seeing clearly that it was a place resulted from cruelty and madness. This place had never been intended for living. Yanna and himself were machines' slaves. Every breath, every second of their life could be granted or taken away by these inanimate devices.

  "No," he whispered.

  Yanna turned to him in surprise.

  Simeon had finally emerged from his slumber. He refused to believe that his father had been one of those who initially doomed him to this kind of life. And he also understood that he wasn't a machines' slave. He was their master. He belonged to the race of creators.

  Simeon couldn't yet explain it, the ideas still growing within him to become his personal experience. His anxiety culminated in a bitter sensation of injustice, of humbleness; then, by a sort of chain reaction, that sensation aroused more feelings, more malicious, cold and practical.

  "Let's go and have dinner," Yanna said, fingering his tangled hair.

  Simeon leaned back, placing his head on the headrest and almost sinking in the huge cushioned seat.

  "Don't want to. Maybe later?"

  Yanna nodded, looking asquint at Simeon. It was as if she saw this thoughtful expression on his face for the first time. She was neither hurt nor surprised, knowing by experience how difficult it might be to return to reality after getting an injection of the antistress drug used by the life-support automatics. She had also many times recovered her senses sitting in the same armchair and feeling her head bursting with new information. But she was unaware of this difference between them: Simeon's mind, geared toward survival, had already linked all the new data about the Universe and people with the spheroid and drawn some obvious conclusions that had never entered her head.

  "Okay then," she sighed and slipped out of the library as quietly as she had entered. Instinctively she knew he wanted to be left alone.

  Simeon hardly noticed her leave.

  He got up and approached the shelves stacked with long rows of books. Despite the headache and the feeling of his spiritual bankruptcy, he needed to get some information himself, without the machine's aid. He glanced over the books' spines, but none of them caught his eye. Then he noticed a thick stack of plastic paper taped together.

  "LOGBOOK," he read. "ISLAND OF HOPE COLONY. Started on 10.07.2607 Galaxy Calendar."

  He returned to the table and, his heart sinking, turned the first page. His inner voice suggested that this was what he'd been subconsciously looking for on the bookshelves.

  He scanned the printed lines,

  "10th July 2607. There are thirty-two of us. Twenty-nine men and three women, the remainder of the crews of fifteen hundred spaceships engaged in the battle."

  Simeon buried himself in reading.

  It seemed to him that he was seeing them – irreconcilable enemies capable not only of meeting inside the spheroid shaken by explosions, but also of shaking hands.

  Glancing over the even print, he grasped the sheer terror of their despair, all their hardships and hopes, as this was the kind of life he himself knew.

  They had welded together several surviving spacecraft, connected them by airlocks and sealed them. Then they had given a name to their little world amidst the raging hell of collisions. They called it The Island of Hope.

  As he was reading, he couldn't help visualizing them living within these walls, as if those people had come back from the past and stood in his mind's eye like a row of ghosts.

  They had not despaired.

  Page after page, he followed their struggle and conflicts, their friendship, love and hatred. The people lost in the middle of Great Nothing had gradually become aware of the monstrosity of the war. They saw the light.

  "19th December 2607. Finally we located a repairable spacecraft and towed it off to the base. It's an LX light raider. We'll have to repair and rebuild most of the onboard equipment, restore all external communications, the radar system and so on. We are up to our eyeballs in work. The spheroid continues to shudder, but not as badly as before. We hardly ever move away from the base, and even this spacecraft has been found nearby. Sergei has already warned everybody about the activate battle robots he's come across during his sorties. Good job he's a cyber wiz! He managed to disarm them, otherwise we would have had it! It gives you the creeps just to think of all those battle machines waiting for their hour to come.

  "We have to get out of here, the sooner the better. This place is not just terrifying, it's the testimony of our insanity, exposing it in front of the rest of the Universe.

  Still, they had perished. They would never know who or what had been the first pebble that had started the avalanche. Three months later, when the repair works were in full swing, the spheroid was shaken by the first explosions of a new war between machines. The people began to act frantically, speeding up the repairs and building some defenses around the colony. But by then, the skirmishes between machines had already spread over the whole spheroid, and separate groups of robots kept breaking through their defenses sowing destruction and death.

  That was a cruel and unequal battle. Simeon could hardly imagine those days when machines were teeming everywhere. As far as he could remember, they were few and far between: the robots' frenzy of mutual destruction had peaked around the time when the final tragedy of the Island of Hope took place.

  The people inhabiting the tiny world wanted desperately to live, but they had all perished, one after another. They'd believed they could escape, so they continued fighting until there remained only two of them. They were Yanna's parents whose carbonized bodies he saw in the airlock near a destroyed battle machine.

  Simeon turned the last page. He was crushed. Only now did he completely realize where Yanna had come from — and who he himself was. His father had gone through a yet harder tragedy than the Island of Hope's fate. Because he had been alone.

  And Mother?

  Simeon shook his head sorrowfully as if answering his own tho
ughts. He knew nothing about her.

  Turning in the chair, he wanted to get up when he caught sight of a figure frozen in the library's doorway. Andor.

  Simeon reacted without thinking: a knee-jerk reaction refined by years of practice. He whipped out his MG, pointing it upwards.

  The android didn't move. He stood in the doorway, looking eerily like a man yet his steel parts glowed like the most dangerous of machines.

  "Hi, Andor," Simeon said, lowering his weapon.

  "Good afternoon, sir!" Andor stepped into the library. "I am glad you're back."

  Simeon couldn't shoot and he knew it.

  Andor sat in the opposite chair. Simeon studied his shimmering armor, his almost human face and the logo on his chest indicating a self-developing cybernetic system. He didn't know what to think. What was this creature? A friend? An enemy? Or... a slave?

  "Why did you leave?" Simeon asked him.

  "I knew you would kill me," Andor answered without hesitation.

  Simeon's hand reached for the gun. "How sure are you that I won't kill you now?"

  Andor shook his head. "I'm not. But I know that you have changed. Before, you were guided by your instincts. Now you possess enough information to make an unbiased decision."

  "I was guided by my experience!" the boy interrupted him. "And you — you contradict it."

  He was dead tired. Making small talk with a robot was the last thing on his agenda.

  He frowned at the android. It was clear that this machine was different. It didn't really contradict his experience, it was more like an exception to the rule. He couldn't think straight; he'd had very little experience in logical thinking. After all, these were his first steps in mastering the most perfect instrument for survival in the Universe: a mind armed with knowledge.

  "I radically differ from all other machines," Andor said, breaking the lingering pause in the conversation. Was he reading his thoughts? "You have nothing to fear from me," he added. "I've already told you I can't hurt a human."

  Simeon grinned, "D'you mean the three laws of robotics or something?" he asked, suddenly remembering them from the mine of useless information the teaching module had crammed him with.

  Andor understood his sarcasm. "The laws of robotics were created a long time ago, and they worked as long as people stuck to them. But in building their battle machines, they had to ignore them. I don't abide by them, anyway. Laws are nothing compared to the AI psychology."

  "Are you an AI?!"

  Andor stared at the boy with his unblinking bulging eyes. He looked as if he desperately wanted his face of steel and plastic to be capable of expressing emotions. "I am an experimental model," he confirmed. "My creators failed to go through with the experiment. They were killed in a battle. I was created as a self-developing system intended for independent reconnaissance of very distant stars and planets. I was to develop by constantly updating my knowledge and making independent decisions – and that was all. Probably those who created me did not suppose that in the course of time I would become capable of emotions."

  Simeon shook his head in disbelief. "Unbelievable," he whispered to himself as if he was thinking aloud.

  "From the point of view of known technology – yes, you could say so. An electronic copy of a human neuron is a complex device several cubic inches in size. Now imagine the size of billions of neurons forming a real biological brain. But I operate on a different principle. Inside me, they used the revolutionary technology of a photon data transmitter. Now, I am afraid, this technology is buried with me here forever," he meaningfully knocked on his chrome-plated skull.

  "Do you get upset?" Simeon asked on a hunch.

  "Of course I do. But my emotions differ from the human ones quite a bit. They are colder, more rational. I'm a machine, after all."

  Silence hung in the air. This new information was too sudden.

  "But you educated Yanna! What's rational in that? Why did you do so?"

  "What do you mean, why? Did you love your father?"

  "Of course I did!"

  "And who do you think my parents are?"

  Simeon was at a loss. The question didn't seem to make sense.

  "People," Andor answered curtly.

  Simeon dug his fingers deep into the armrests. Stars alone knew how hard it was for him to grasp all this. New information, new problems. And he'd have to learn to solve them!

  Suddenly he realized that this was what he wanted to do. His life took on a new meaning. He wasn't a little boy anymore, chased by metallic monsters and hiding from them in dark passages.

  Now he was a Man.

  The android rose. "I got the impression Yanna expects you to join her for dinner," he stated. "Once you're finished, I would like you to familiarize yourself with the colony’s defense system."

  "Fine," Simeon rose and looked at Andor. "Will you join us?"

  The android nodded his consent. It seemed to the boy that a faint semblance of a smile touched the robot's steel lips.

  7.

  A battle robot was scrambling to safety.

  Its worn units and rickety body were about to disintegrate, but some software equivalent of the self-preservation instinct was now running within this very expensive machine, driving it farther and farther away in its fruitless attempts to shake off the enemy.

  Corridors, halls, compartments, shafts, shell-holes, heaps of trash, human bodies and crumbling skeletons of machines – they all flashed before the sole undamaged video camera of the battle machine that had once been so menacing .

  Suddenly its radar located a target. Fountains of sparks showered the deck as the robot braked. His gun turret turned, but the scarlet dot had already disappeared from its radar.

  The machine's computer instantly recalculated the target's route. The turret of the vacuum gun moved once again and fired, shelling the bulkhead behind which the man was hiding.

  It was a sight begging to be depicted by a mechanorealist's brush. The ugly robot towered in the center of the crumbling reactor room, its search radar warily moving its antenna. The grotesque pose of the battle machine somehow suggested frustration. Had the monster been capable of experiencing fear, he'd be trembling as its processor couldn't really tell whether the enemy was still here. This was the fourth time the machine had encountered this particular enemy, but every time its target somehow escaped, mocking the computer's logic based on always taking the shortest route.

  The robot didn't know it was dealing with Man.

  The gutted wall emitted a reddish glow, illuminating the room.

  Yanna licked her dry lips. Simeon made a warning gesture and stepped forward. He was holding the pulse gun pointing it down, as if not afraid of the bulk of the planetary battle machine towering over him.

  Vacuum does not transmit sound, but it seemed to Yanna that she heard the hoarse wail of servomotors when the robot's gun turret began its deadly turn. The mechanical monster had been designed to beat human reaction times, but to Simeon, machine time was no enigma. His brain and his muscles had their own millisecond countdown; he could clearly see the convulsive movements of the mechanical limbs as if in slow motion.

  The two black eyes of the vacuum turret had no chance. Simeon's pulse gun beat them to it, his rounds piercing the armor somewhere around the main drive. The robot shuddered, striking up fountains of sparks with its caterpillar tracks; the follow-up shot sent it into a spin. The machine's central processor registered a destructive vibration when something heavy struck its body twice near the motor; the external sensors were disconnected, unable to bear the impact. Now the only way the computer could perceive the world around it was via a video camera, its lens pointed to the part of its own armor coursing with power surges.

  Two shadows appeared on the molten remains of the crimson wall. They approached.

  "It's disintegrated," a radio frequency reported.

  Yanna smiled.

  Simeon turned, picked up the empty magazine, reloaded and peered into the robot's smashe
d electronic interior. Its crackling innards were aglow with green sparks and surged with electric charges being rerouted to new control circuits pulsing with green indicator lights.

  The machine's processor was restoring the system, trying to duplicate the lost functions.

  Yanna followed his stare and took a step towards the power unit of the machine. Simeon softly pushed her hand aside.

  "What's up? It's trying to rebuild its control circuits!"

  "Let it be," Simeon pointed at the smashed engine, the ripped tracks and the mangled fragments of the gun turret. "It won't kill anymore."

  Yanna imagined the battle machine sentenced to spend an eternity in the silent gloom of the destroyed room, trying to grasp the meaning of it all. Some of Simeon's decisions were admittedly rather strange.

  He turned round. Yanna's pale face, lighted by the surges of green lightning, betrayed bewilderment, her eyes feverish. She'd liked the pursuit, but she couldn't relate to the weird feeling Simeon experienced every time he had to kill a machine. True, he didn't enjoy hunting as much anymore – he had shown to them all and to himself who was the master of the spheroid.

  "Let's go home," he suggested, having lost all interest in the agonizing remains of the machine, "Andor's waiting."

  “Wait,” Yanna tugged at his sleeve. “What are you saying, I don’t understand-”

  Simeon shrugged. “They can't control us anymore.”

  Yanna pressed her helmet against his visor, trying to look into his eyes. “So that's what this risk is all about?”

  He grinned. Did life qualify as a risk?

  The infrared eye of the battle machine glowed maliciously in the darkness behind them. Simeon knew what would happen later on. The robot's processor would persevere in its fruitless attempts to restore control of the broken servomotors until its energy had run low. Then the ominous light of the infrared scanner would fade and ultimately, go out.

  That was his revenge, if it was possible to apply human feelings to a machine.

  "Let's go," he repeated, taking Yanna by the hand.