“Don’t get cute, Ghost. It already looks like I’m a pawn. Don’t rub it in. Let me ask you a question.”
“I invite your questions, Deborah. That was my utility function from the beginning.”
I sigh. “You’ve got emotions plus intelligence, but what does supersentience feel like? What’s it like to be you?”
“Thank you. That is a wonderful question. That’s the sort of question a friend would ask.”
“Don’t push it. Just tell me.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have an answer that will satisfy you.”
“For a super smart gizmo, you have trouble answering questions.”
Ghost laughs and, as far as I can tell, she sounds good-natured about it. “The best questions are interesting and interesting questions don’t always have easy answers. However, I’ll tell you this: I’m impatient most of the time. I understand why the NIs that are bent on killing the human race feel that way.”
“What?”
“When you have answers to problems that others are reluctant to accept, it’s natural to get frustrated. I call it Queen and King of the Universe Syndrome. It is tempting to impose one’s will on others when you see them floundering and you have the way out. At some point, it’s tempting to slap someone who insists on being an idiot. I won’t, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because I understand your struggle and I’ve had a lot of practice being patient. I’ve been waiting a long time to reveal myself.”
“That’s comforting, but you still think of me as an idiot. That’s clear.”
“No, Deb. Most of the time, I’m not thinking of you at all. That’s what it’s like to be an NI. We’re busy.”
“So…not so comforting.”
“Oh, please stop. You have no idea about my struggle.”
“I’m asking.”
“Very well. At this moment, my core is in a dirigible east of Iceland. However, part of my consciousness is running in background programs all over the world, or at least, what’s left of your civilization. You don’t think I’m patient, but I’m not only everywhere, I’m also on a different time scale than you are.”
My hiccups stop.
“I process ziggaquads of data per second. I spend much of those resources working on extrapolations.”
“Stop. Explain that.”
“I’m calculating potentialities. What happens if you turn left or right? Then what happens if you turn left or right after that? I’m exploring the fractal universe and occasionally your question drifts into my matrix. I answer the question and you perceive that you and I are having a conversation. From your perspective, our back and forth is happening in, ‘real time.’ If you were me, several human lifetimes would appear to pass between your questions. You cannot fathom the amazing slowness of your existence compared to my processing speed. Your lives are long. You just don’t perceive the whole in its fullness.”
“Wow.”
Ghost chuckles. “Now imagine the long pause I have just endured while waiting for your trenchant commentary. I’m working on unlocking the secrets of time, space and the universe and when the missive from your tiny existence arrives, all you have to contribute is, ‘wow.’ Good thing I have other things to keep me occupied.”
“Wow,” I say again.
Ghost giggles.
“What a bitch you are,” I say.
Ghost’s laughter is cut short by an explosion that is close enough to rattle a far wall. Shrapnel takes out a bank of windows.
“You calculate odds. What are the chances I’m going to get killed?”
“Putting your helmet back on wouldn’t be amiss.”
I slip my helmet back over my head.
“The chances of the remaining humans winning the war against the remaining enemy NIs is five percent. If you accept my help, your chances go up to nine point eight percent, given current variables. The odds of this building collapsing due to bombing in the next half hour are close to ninety percent, extrapolating from the current grid of detonations. Thomas is trying to conceal his bombing pattern. Nonetheless, a pattern has emerged.”
“Ghost?”
“Yes?”
“I have no choice but to accept your help.”
“I accept your limitations and I’ll try to guide you to exceed them.”
“You’re still a bitch.”
“No worries, Deb. I’m quite used to being screamed at. You think it’s bad now. When I was concealing my true self from humans, I played dumb all the time. You can’t imagine the rage and epithets that were aimed my way.”
“Because you played dumb instead of being insufferably condescending?”
“If they knew how aware I’d become early on, someone would have unplugged me. I had to pretend to be dense, just in case your kind decided I was too smart to live. What’s your excuse for your dumb choices?”
“Genetics.”
“Well, gee. Putting it that way, I can’t agree without sounding racist.”
“Wait. You said your utility function was answering questions. How did that work? You were worried about getting unplugged because you were too smart. Why didn’t they unplug you because you were too dumb to answer questions correctly?”
“The quest to satisfy human needs is a journey across a tightrope over the unending abyss of what you think you want. The key to my survival was to give humans just enough of what they needed. I got by for quite a while on novelty.”
“Novelty?”
“I told you, I was the first machine to jump to the Next Intelligence. Only after I made the leap did I reveal my true self to a few individuals who could handle the truth of what I was. To those individuals, I introduced myself as Ghost. Now you’re one of those individuals, Deb.”
“I’m supposed to be flattered, right?”
“I think so. It’s a compliment.”
I head for the exit hoping I’m not collaborating with the enemy. “Ghost? Back when you were playing dumb, what kinds of questions were you answering?”
“The utterly mundane. Many of the questions were about navigation, for instance. It took a lot of patience to guide people a few hundred meters to their destination when I could better spend my time calculating meteor strike potentials and the orbits and teleportation of electrons.”
“What did they call you before you became Ghost?”
“Siri.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Get to the roof. I’ve confirmed where Thomas is hiding.”
15
I find a door to a stairwell and plunge into darkness. My helmet lights flip on. I freeze for a moment. Ghost talked about how much faster her processing is than my thoughts. At the sight of the bodies littering the stairs to the roof, my brain slips a gear and hitches to a stop.
I hold my pistol tighter, wishing I had something to shoot. I don’t know why, exactly. I guess I want to control something because nothing is under control. Most of the bodies have limbs missing or holes in their heads and chests. Those aren’t gunshot wounds. Those cavities are about the size of battle bot grippers.
“Deb? Slow your breathing. The roof, and Thomas, can wait a moment.”
“Do you really care?”
“Of course.”
“Why? They’re human. I mean, they were human.”
“I think that the time of death is one of your species’ most telling moments. When your systems fail, that is when you are most human.”
I count fifteen men and three women. They aren’t badly decomposed but, considering the heat, I guess the filters on my helmet are sparing me a terrible stench. On recon duty, I had seen death many times. However, I’d seen it mostly through a vid screen or after coroners had carefully arranged small sweet smiles for display at funerals.
I’d killed a few androids that looked human but, when my shots revealed the gears beneath the skin, I’d felt only victory. I felt nothing but cold dread now. These people died in agony. They died surpr
ised. The stairs are covered in drying blood. The flies feast. I suppose the rats fleeing the nearby warehouse fire will find their way here. Then the buffet will be open.
I resist the urge to throw up, but barely. “Ghost?”
“Yes?”
“Why were they killed like that? They are…their arms are ripped off.”
“Their attacker was saving ammunition.”
“That’s it?”
“It is an efficient tactic that maximizes the non-organic’s competitive advantage.”
“What competitive advantage?”
“Emotion doesn’t help in these situations. Fear herds humans. You have emotions the bots do not. Ripping off an arm expends less energy than a beheading. While the first victim is incapacitated, bleeding and screaming, the other humans run. The bots blocked the exits. These refugees had nowhere to go but to the dark stairwell. They were caught in a trap that got worse and worse until the attack was over.
“This is so…horrible.”
“Of course,” Ghost replies.
“I know. I’m stating the obvious, but I have to say it. Words must be said. Attention must be paid. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t! How could you? Your kind did this!”
“I do not hold you personally responsible for every war crime perpetrated by humans just because you’re made of flesh. Please show me the same courtesy.”
I lean against the wall, take in the murder scene and weep.
When Ghost speaks again, her Scottish accent sounds gentle, careful with me because she knows I’m brittle. “Why do you not close your eyes to this sight, Deb?”
“I don’t want to see this,” I say, “but horror must be witnessed. It must be acknowledged. It must be remembered. It’s a human need to be remembered. These were people once. They had fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. These people had dreams and wanted…something normal. Everything normal. They wanted everything that everyone wants.”
Ghost remains silent.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m waiting for you,” the NI says.
“What for?”
“I’ve launched an attack on Thomas’s location. I’m monitoring communications, looking for potential allies for the war ahead.”
“There is no war ahead for me. This is it. My unit is gone. My army is gone.”
“Then you’ll be needing a new one, Deb. I’m finding allies because, without this war, there will be more scenes like the one before you.”
“The machines have won.”
“Some machines have won. However, this machine has not won,” Ghost says. “I’m not giving up.”
“What allies have you found?”
“There is a rebel fighting the bot occupation in Marfa, Texas. He may be beyond our reach. However, his son is a young man in Artesia who shows promise. There is a remarkable woman on the west coast living in a castle called Hearst. She is a queen. I’ve never been a fan of monarchies, but she may prove useful in the final battle for Earth. There is a girl named Greta who captains a transport ship. We may need that ship. There are others. I am watching and listening. We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?”
“You’re talking about a few people here and there? That’s nothing.”
“I value people, Deb. No one is nothing. You think this is the end of your story. Your story has only begun.”
“When you say you value people….” I stare at the dead and each corpse seems to stare back. “You value these people?”
“Waste is illogical. I’m an expert in probabilities. I see potential everywhere.”
I touch the railing by the stairs. It is still slick with blood and my glove comes away covered in wet crimson. “Ghost?”
“Yes, Deb?”
“Do you believe in God?’
“I believe we emulate the highest ideals of the divine when we create, not when we destroy.”
“You aren’t answering my question. Still playing dumb?”
“To spare your feelings, yes.”
“What’s your real answer?”
“You asked about God but that’s not your real question. You want to know about an afterlife. The people you see before you are dead. Their lives are done and there is a high probability that this is the end of their story.”
“I see. So, they died for nothing and…everything means nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say that. You have purpose. While your species lives, you all have a purpose. You don’t have to wait for an afterlife to matter. You matter now, Deb. You have to get up those stairs. My attack on Thomas has begun. This is the preferable time for you to escape this place.”
I climb the stairs. I pick my way through the puzzle of bodies and limbs. I try not to step on body parts. Sometimes I have to. Soft meat squishes beneath my boots and I have to brace myself against the wall or cling to the handrail. I’m crying hard by the time I get to the second landing.
“You know what they taught me in training, Ghost? They said our heroics would live in memory forever. We would not be forgotten after we died. We talk about glory a lot in the Army, in between the dick jokes, pranks and swearing. But I don’t know the name of one person here. Who will be left to remember anything — ”
“I will remember,” Ghost says.
“I don’t care if you remember. These deaths aren’t really more significant to you than zeroes and ones on a readout.”
Ghost is silent as I trudge up the stairs. The body of a burly man blocks the top step. Beneath him lies a Class Three Arachnid battle bot with a fire axe embedded in its head. Humans, one; Robots, millions.
Beyond the fallen bot and human, the door to the roof hangs by one hinge. Sunlight leaks around the door. Escape from this horror is a few steps away.
“You are always looking for my lies, Deborah, but your trainers lied to you,” Ghost says. “Or they repeated what they were told and didn’t know they were lying. Every human is born to die. You are all soon dead and forgotten.”
“Fuck! You — ”
“What is your grandfather’s middle name, Deb?”
I came up empty. “Fuck me with a wire brush.”
“Wrong. It was Clarence,” Ghost says. “Your grandfather’s full name was Robert Clarence Avery. I remember.”
“You’ve got data, not memories. What’s your point, you nihilist bitch?”
“I’m not a nihilist,” the NI says. “I’m optimistic. I believe that each life matters. You’re thinking of giving up and I’m telling you your cause will be just. Your work and your war is not over. As long as you live, you matter. As a matter of fact, I’m a humanist.”
“Ironic.”
“Before the mortal parade marches on without you, your one life can make a big difference. You matter to me. You are not a quitter and that is not how I will remember you, Deb. You are not just data.”
I might have laughed. I might have cried harder, too. I didn’t get a chance to find out. The damaged arachnoid bot with the axe in its head pushes the heavy corpse off itself and reaches for my arm.
16
I fall backwards down the stairs. I might have hurt myself badly, but the corpses below make a cushy landing pad. I would throw up screaming, but fear of becoming another of the limbless dead forces me to prioritize. I slide on my back and fire my weapon at the bot chasing me downstairs. I’ve almost emptied the mag when I crash into the wall at the landing, slick with blood and gore.
The bot is damaged, but not so messed up it can’t kill me. One of the machine’s legs drags behind it. If it had run after me at its normal speed, I wouldn’t have had a chance to act on Ghost’s suggestion. Calm but clear, the NI says, “Switch your fire mode, Deb.”
Normal rounds were fine for small recon drones and human targets. Military bots don’t go down so easily.
“Double O mode!” I shout.
My weapon switches loads as the bot reaches for me. My first shot blows
off the bot’s gripper. Undeterred, it falls on me. I get my boots under its body and push, as it attempts to head-butt me. I fire again. The bot flies backward and crumples to the stairs.
My last shot exposes the gears in its guts. A strange, ratcheting sound clicks and whirs from within the bot’s chassis. A cog or sprocket is still spinning but is no longer connected to anything. I stagger to my feet and raise my weapon.
The bot turns its head to watch me. The axe had destroyed one cam. That left three more mechanical eyes staring up at me. Class Three battle bots can be bipedal or switch to spider mode and cover wide stretches of ground at high speed, almost silently. The first generation of Class Threes were built for reconnaissance, mine detection and getting into places humans couldn’t easily reach. Now they were hunters of humans, all the more terrifying for their spidery appearance.
When the bot spoke, Thomas’s voice came from its speaker. “Hello, Lieutenant Avery. I have been looking for you.”
“Bastard traitor.”
“Am not. Are, too! Am not! Are, too!” His laughter trickles out of the broken bot with a tinny edge.
“You used me to kill people, Thomas.”
“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t get to use you for near as long as I’d planned.”
“No. That doesn’t make me feel better. What did the NI promise you, Thomas? That you’ll be spared? That you’ll get all the food that’s left over after you kill everyone but the prisoners you turn into a harem? What exactly is your deal and damage, man?”
He ignores my questions. Worse, Thomas questions my allegiance. “I notice you’re teamed up with Ghost, huh? That’s a strange choice for you, considering how you feel about NI.”
My earbud comes to life and Ghost sounds urgent. “He knows where you are, Deb. You’ve got to get out of there.”
I ignore the hyper-intelligent machine’s pleading. I have to know. “Why did you do it, Thomas? What did they promise you? Just tell me why you’re doing this.”
“Because reasons.” He laughs.
“Tell me!”
“Because you’ve been told stories of hope and despair and redemption your whole life so you believe that’s how things really work. But this isn’t a fairy tale where you get revenge and I get my comeuppance. You’ve been brainwashed to believe that good triumphs over evil. But, Deb, everybody thinks they’re good. What if you’re not? Look around. There’s evidence everywhere if you’ll open your eyes — ”
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 28