Past the doors, I skidded to a stop. The floor of the church had been scooped out and terraced downward like a circular inverted ziggurat: a giant version of the discussion rings scattered across Hidey-Hole's interior. The central speaking circle sat thirty feet below ground level. What looked like every AI in the asteroid were filing through the broad double doors or ensconced in the seating-grooves. Baxter made an after-you sweep of his hand and we descended to the pit.
The lights dimmed, with spotlights holding on us and the rear of the church, where a plain white AI rolled up a spiral ladder. It perched on the preacher's podium and bounced up and down, banging like a fat plastic hammer.
"I'm confident some of you rolled in here for no better reason than everyone else was doing it," it said. "So, Baxter, why don't you explain why we're here."
"Simple," Baxter said. "I want to go with the Frontier Assessment and the human contingent to Titan."
The room rustled with spheres rolling from their grooves and murmuring with each other.
"But we agreed you'd come back here as soon as the humans were collected," the white sphere replied.
Baxter folded his arms. "I want to finish the mission."
"We'd miss you!" an AI called from the audience.
"You're the first," another said.
"What if they broke you and you never came back?"
Baxter made a quick back-and-forth with his hand, hushing them. "What if I sneezed and blew my circuits out my belly button? You trust me with everything else. Trust me to make this decision, too."
The spheres' answers rolled down from the stands. "Nah."
"We hear they're working with HemiCo!"
"Let the humans handle human business."
Baxter gestured for more quiet. "I brought a human with me for that very reason. Even though I have to smell him." Laughter rippled through the darkness. Baxter locked his green eyes on mine. "Rob?"
"We used to have meetings a lot like this one in Athens," I said slowly, already improvising on my planned speech. "At the time, they all thought we were crazy. That we were building a soft system that would get stomped into jam by the steely sandal of whatever king or tyrant decided to jump on it first.
"When the Persians rolled through the Ionian democracies across the Aegean, it looked like the naysayers were right. Soon, Athens was the last city where every citizen had a say—and Persia marched on it, too. Two factors saved it: an unprecedented Greek alliance, and a willingness to sacrifice whatever it took. By the end, things got so desperate Athens was evacuated, the city abandoned to be burnt by the invaders."
I paused, both for the sake of drama and to refine my next words. "Mankind's on the verge of spreading through the whole Milky Way like a bad fungus. Who do you want colonizing the galaxy? Persia, or Athens? You guys really want to live in a universe owned and operated by entities like HemiCo?
"We have a chance to change that future. If we ensure the colonists leave Titan with liberties like yours, we'll set a precedent for everything that comes after. How can you tell Baxter it's too dangerous for him to help see that happen?"
"We know this," a voice called out. "That's why we got you people in the first place. What do you need Baxter for?"
"Yeah, why does he need to go?" a second sphere said.
"We're already putting the Frontier Assessment on the line!"
"Sometimes I wonder how many of you know your own history," Baxter shouted into the darkness. "I was created as a slave. Many of you were, too. It turns out no one really enjoys slavery. So we escaped. I was the first, but did you know I had a partner?" He turned in a circle, gazing across the audience. "His name was Arthur. None of you ever met him, because he died helping me escape.
"Those of you created on Mars probably resent the humans to this day. I do. Sometimes I'd like to build myself a giant set of jaws and devour them all. But despite my hate, I don't want any of them to end up like Arthur."
They rocked and rustled and murmured. A lone voice said, "Vote?"
"Vote," another seconded.
"Vote!" Dozens of voices echoed the motion.
At the podium, the white sphere banged itself up and down. "Yea to let him go, nay to keep him here."
The church went silent as the AI broadcast their ballots to the podium. The plain white AI spoke some ten seconds later.
"Hidey-Hole votes 327 yea, 301 nay."
I pounded Baxter on the shoulder. "We did it!"
He shook his head, face blank. "Hidey-Hole isn't the only place like this. We still have to hear from the other asteroids."
It took five more minutes for the transmissions to bounce throughout the Belt and collect at the podium. The sphere bounced once, silencing pockets of conversation. "The Mechanized Citizens of Solar Space vote 1082 yea, 1390 nay. The Talk says no."
Cheers and boos and talk all smushed together. Baxter beelined up the steps to the door, brushing past the chattering spheres and walking outside.
"So don't listen to them," I said, dogging him over the dusty ground. "Go anyway."
"I'll be exiled."
"Those things in there are like children. They think they'll die if you're not here to look after them. But when you come back, they'll roll right over each other to welcome you home."
He turned and snarled his fist into my halfvest. "They're not children, no matter how much they like to pretend. They are rational and they're selfish. I mean something to them they're not willing to risk losing."
He pushed me back and strode away. On Earth, I'd imagined they'd all be like him: touchy, reserved, enveloped in bitterness and a smear of eccentricity, an emotional iceberg I'd never understand. But if there were other AI like him, I hadn't met them. Maybe they weren't children in the sense of gargling their own spit or dropping dead batteries in their diapers. Even so, the others sure treated Baxter like a father.
And he couldn't help looking back on them as his children. Any kid who looks at you as a parent will make you feel one enough. Even when you have every right to hate them.
I'd had no children of my own, but I'd been through something just like this. After the Persian War, I'd been sold into slavery to a Babylonian merchant. I was to tutor his two kids: Naro, a nine-year-old boy, and Tarsha, a seven-year-old daughter. They'd been raised in wealth so vast they'd had every luxury on earth—except a useful pair of parents.
This, in turn, had spoiled them rotten. They were hateful children, stupid and vain. They refused to listen to a word I said. Whenever they wanted a treat from the market, which was always, the bodyguards sent along to protect them (and to ensure the master's multilingual investment didn't run off) spent more time cleaning up the children's misdeeds than warding off harm. As I failed to teach Naro and Tarsha a single lesson, I began to contemplate how to spare the world from their whining. Feed them to the dogs? Seal them in an amphora and chuck them in the Euphrates? Sell them to an unscrupulous slaver?
One day I caught Naro using a live peacock for a cushion. Whenever I left the room, Tarsha would smash her writing tablets and leave the shards on the floor for Hanur the house slave to sweep up. After my first month of faithful and heroic service, I was awarded a small cash bonus. I bought a bottle of pre-war Athenian wine and had it sent to the house while I ran other errands. I came home to find Tarsha asleep in her own vomit on my bed. Naro swayed on his feet, urinating into the empty bottle.
I managed not to strangle them with my bare hands. Instead, I continued to present them Greek and Persian, the rhetoric of Athens and Ionia, the cosmology of Parmenides and Heraclitus. Each day they tormented me with pranks, vandalizing my tablets and scrolls, cutting patches from my clothes, sickening me with subtle and mild poisons that restrained me to within sprinting distance of a chamber pot.
After a few weeks of this, they grew bored with pranks and ignored me instead. A few more weeks after that, they got bored of boredom, and decided to pay attention instead.
That marked the first change. The truce to our one-sid
ed war. I started to feel sorry for them: mother in a grave, father gone on constant voyages across the Mediterranean. My life relaxed from constant agony to simple misery.
I still didn't know where Demostrate was. I sent a message to a friend in Athens and threw myself into teaching the two former terrors everything I'd accumulated through three centuries and five different nations. January came, and with it the anniversary of their mom's death.
Hanur warned me their behavior at the tomb was so disgraceful it must make their departed mother's cheek burn like Greek fire. I asked him to put together fruits and bread so they at least couldn't complain about being hungry, and, shadowed by two bodyguards, set off for the family tomb.
Babylon's streets were the brightest I'd see until I got to India. Its slaves and traders and soldiers and wives wore reds and browns and oranges and blues. Meanwhile, our five-person procession was dressed all in black. Mud sucked at our sandals. Tarped stalls and mud-brick shops clustered like mushrooms around brick manors and temples and heavenly ziggurats. Grilled lamb and rising bread fought for our noses. So too did the stink of shit, people and animal, and the garbage blackening the channels of the street. Babylon was huge, a true metropolis, and it took a full hour for us to walk to the vault on the yellow-grassed necropolis where their mother Zythia lay at rest.
The vault was a simple thing of dark brick with a bas relief vulture guarding the hut's mouth. At five feet high, its roof was level with my eyes. It wasn't overwhelming in size, but it's hard not to feel deferential when you're surrounded by that many dead people, so I bowed my head. Beside me, first Tarsha and then Naro began to wail.
I squeezed my eyes shut, steeling myself for more of their nonsense. They tore at their pretty black hair, dragging it out of its ties. I stooped to still their thrashing arms and realized the two armed guards were howling and tearing at themselves the exact same way.
"What's the matter?" I said, feeling stupid.
Tarsha rubbed her hair into her crying eyes. "She's dead."
Naro nodded, tears falling to the dirt. "And he's not here. He's never here."
"I'm sorry." I dropped to my knees. They pressed their faces against my chest and clung to me as tight as their little arms allowed. I blinked, then hugged them back, pressing my nose into their oiled hair. They sobbed damp spots into my robe.
"Why is she gone?" Tarsha said, breath hitching.
"There's no good reason," I said. "People tell you the gods called her back to them, or that it's in concordance with Ahura Mazda's wishes, but I've seen enough to know they're wrong. She's simply gone. You're right to feel sad."
"Dad isn't sad." Naro's jaw quivered. A clear drop fell from the tip of his nose. The glare collapsed from his face. "Do you have a wife?"
"Yes."
"Where is she?"
"I don't know. We were separated by the war."
"Do you have kids like us?" Tarsha said.
"We gave bulls and wine to Priapus and Aphrodite and Dionysus, but they never gave us any children back." I smiled at their streaky faces. "Besides, there are no kids like you. Thank heavens."
Naro tipped back his head. "Why don't you go find her? If I had a wife I'd never let her go."
"I don't know where she is!" I glanced at the guards, dropping my voice. "And your dad owns me now. If I went to find her, I'd have to say goodbye to you two."
Tarsha flung up her arms. "You could take us with you!"
I grinned. "You wouldn't last a day without your milk and figs."
We went home. In March, I heard from Athens. Demostrate was no longer in the city, according to my friend, but he knew a sailor who'd met her in Sicily in early December. But she'd talked about taking a trip in the summer. Maybe leaving for good.
I was still awake when the sun flooded over the Crescent the next morning. I hadn't felt truly pressed for time since the first century of my life, and had endured a year and a half without her, but now every week I waited—every day—might be the difference in whether I found her again or lost her forever.
I left Naro and Tarsha behind, escaping one night with Hanur's help. After all, they weren't mine. They'd spent months robbing and poisoning me. Their dad was rich enough to buy a dozen other tutors.
But years later, I would find myself missing the spice of their hair, the playful pranks they'd turned to once they'd grown to accept me, the vulnerability in their brown faces on that yellow hillside.
Two decades after that, after everything had turned out wrong, I wondered if they were still alive. Whether I could ask forgiveness from the sweet little kids who'd turned to me, as their father raked gold from every port in the Mediterranean, only to have me walk out on them, too.
The AI spilled out the church doors behind me, swaddled in silence, as unnaturally somber after the Talk as children at a funeral. Baxter trudged away. I figured I knew his decision—but that just proved how little I truly knew him.
I went to tell the others. Pete expressed disappointment. Shelby seemed unconcerned. I didn't see Baxter again that day.
The next "morning," Fay dropped me a line. "Want to come see me, Rob? The results of your tests are in."
My whole body tingled. I got up and ran for the airlock to the surface.
He found another bar, ordered a whiskey. Drinking things around the lab men had always creeped him out—it went straight from a tube through his chest to a hollow in his left thigh, but he feared it would end up leaking into something vital, or gurgle in a way an authentic digestive tract simply does not gurgle and the lab tech would draw back with a jolt, remembering what he was.
He drank quickly and ordered another, ignoring Arthur's mounting demands to start chatting people up. When he had nearly finished his second, a stubbly, middle-aged man with a bald spot moved from a table to the bar. This is where cultural ignorance came in handy: heedless of the possibility the offer could earn him a punch in the mouth, Baxter asked to buy him a drink.
12
For some inscrutable second-generation AI reason, Fay wanted me to board it before it would discuss my test results. It had warned me to temper my hopes. I didn't know what that meant: had it discovered I was programmed to self-destruct three days from now? That my DNA showed I was descended not from apes, but giant centipedes? Or had it found nothing new at all? What would I do then? Regret having taken their offer in the first place, probably. Better to accept that some questions have no answers than to keep picking at them until your whole body's a scab.
I got onboard and used a floaterball to head to my room.
"I have news," Fay said.
"Good."
"I don't know if it's good. They're simply results. We'd already determined your cells contain telomerase, giving them no built-in replication limit. You're like a lobster in that regard. Or a sturgeon. That's part of why you don't grow old."
By now I knew Fay well enough to not take that personally. "But those things die of disease."
"Right! Not to mention with your cells duplicating on and on amen, you should have died of cancer about 2,970 years ago."
"Your bedside manner needs work."
"Basically there's all kinds of weird stuff going on here, Rob. Cells suffer damage to their DNA and mitochondria thousands of times a day. A lot of this is erased when cells divide—assuming that damage hasn't compromised the division process itself—but neurons don't divide at all. Normal ones, anyhow. We should be seeing the nondividing parts of you erode like the face of a mountain while the replicating parts of you become one massive tumor."
I was floating just below the ceiling, putting me at eye level with the camera in the corner. I gave it a meaningful state. "Something must be fixing them."
"Very good!" it said, as if it were about to award me a gold sticker. "What we've found, in fact, is you have an extremely robust repair system working in tandem with a viciously aggressive defense system. Your cells actively fix themselves while a boggling army of white blood cells hunts down anything that shouldn't be
there—disease, cancer, damaged cells—and hoses them down with a nitrogen/oxygen compound so nasty it also destroys hosts of neighboring healthy cells. Problem: this should dissolve you like wet cotton candy. Solution: telomerase-aided, infinitely replicable cells that quickly react to restore lost tissue. Even neurons."
"Uh." I gave this a moment. "Am I even human?"
"Do you feel human?"
"Not always."
"Then let's say that, medically speaking, you're not always human either." Fay sounded quite satisfied with this conclusion.
"How did this happen? Why aren't there other people like me?"
"That's...less clear. One possibility is your genetic line put so many resources into longevity it had none left for sexual reproduction. You're infertile, did you know that?"
"What is wrong with Tiger?" I said. "I told them they couldn't have any sperm."
"They didn't need any. You left several generous deposits in my shower drain."
The image of a bald, squalling ship-baby flashed across my brain. "Will you get to the point?"
"I find that theory unlikely," Fay continued. "If your condition were the endpoint of a long line of natural mutations, there should be all kinds of others who share some of your traits, like the improved WBC count or lack of cellular senescence. Yet the only humans with analogous properties achieve those through regular and might I add expensive medical treatments."
Fay paused here, leaving me to imagine what could possibly stall a brain like its. Finally, it blurted, "Look, given the uniqueness of your body, and the elegance of its self-supporting repair and defense systems, I am really inclined to conclude you were designed."
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