The hologram shook his head. "No, the little bastard lawyered up right before turning in his pickup. It'll be tied up in the courts for months before we even get around to a compromise."
"The EI's will be wrecked long before that. I don't see that you have a choice. You'll have to send out the new programs immediately."
"Do you have any idea how many weeks of production we're going to lose as the new personalities learn their jobs? That's why we phase new EI's in gradually. This is going to ruin our projections for this quarter."
"It's either that or replace everything the current group of EI's destroy before they become non-functional."
The hologram was quiet for a moment, and then looked at his watch. "It's still too early here. You have my authorization to begin the upload process. I'll brief the board of directors when they arrive. Damn it! Don't screw this up, Abrams. We won't tolerate any more delays." Mayfield's hologram faded out and the emitter perched on Abrams' shoulder went dark.
With a level of perk precisely designed to irk her superior, Tara asked, "Is there a problem, Doctor?"
He glared at her. "Andre Benoit has discovered his one true love and quit AstroLith. There will be no more memory uploads, so in a mere 36 hours we're going to be dealing with more psychotic machines than you've ever imagined." He sat down in front of her desk, all his usual bluster and misdirected charm vanished. "To avoid this . . . unpleasantness, we will instead be sending out an entirely new intelligence emulation, one based on a Mr. Paul 'Pauly' Holt, who is even now living a life of rich debauchery for the sole purpose of entertaining our minions."
All humor had fled from Tara, leaving behind an icy chill along her spine. "But what happens to all the Andre personalities? Won't they be erased?"
Abrams paused and a confused expression overtook him. "That's more or less the point, Tara. Are you feeling alright?"
She stood up from her desk and began to pace angrily. Abrams kept his eye on her, and began to sink into his seat as if he were shrinking away from a ticking bomb. She turned on him. "That's murder, sir. These are thinking, feeling entities. Not everything we tell them is a lie. They work tirelessly for us in return for snippets of a life they regard as stolen from them, and now when things get difficult, we just give them up and move onto a newer model. It's not right!"
It struck a nerve within Abrams and he shot to his feet, his momentary fear now cast aside for an affronted anger. "You forget yourself, Dr. O'Neil. There is nothing even close to murder going on here. None of AstroLith's expensive machinery is being destroyed. No one is being hurt. We are simply changing operating systems, or do you commit murder nightly when you shut down your computer?"
"Of course not! And what you're saying may indeed be true for most of the EI's, but what if the unit in question is markedly different from the baseline personality? What if the EI has become an individual in its own right, as distinct an entity as the original Andre Benoit? How is that not murder?"
He barked a short laugh in derision. "This is about 406, isn't it? I know exactly how close you've gotten to that machine. I've read every session you've ever had with it, but I preferred to allow you to work things out in your own time. That was obviously a mistake. You've allowed your professionalism to be subverted by a malfunctioning machine. What you point to as individuality, I see as incipient failure. 406 should have been sent to depot for overhaul long ago."
"He's a better person than Andre Benoit ever thought about being. If you replace 406's personality with something else, who's to say his unique individuality won't be lost forever?" Abrams shook his head and headed for the door. Tara called out to him, "If you won't accept that it's murder, would you at least concede that he is more than a malfunctioning EI, something unique that should be allowed the opportunity to continue, if for no other reason than science?"
He stopped at the threshold and turned back to a desperate Tara. "I worked with 406 long before you came along, so I'll grant you that. He's more than the sum of his parts and he is indeed worthy of study. The fact remains, though, that he will never again receive a memory upload from Andre Benoit, and when he misses his next load time, he will begin to go psychotic. The stress potentials will build up until he is driven beyond depression, to paranoid delusions and worse. You would be willing to consign him to Hell for the sake of his individuality? Think about it, Tara. At least if we switch emulations, he can have a fighting chance. Wouldn't you rather see 406 survive, even at the cost of the friend you've made?"
She would not look him in the eye. Her face was turned down, but he could see the tears begin to well in her eyes as she slowly came to grip with the reality of 406's situation. Finally, there was a barely detectable nod and her shoulders drooped, defeated. Abrams smiled. "I'm glad we're not going to be at odds on this. I do so enjoy our chats. Now we haven't much time, my dear. Pull the emulation base on Mr. Holt and prepare it for transmission. Mark it as the next set of Benoit's memories and send it out. I'll be back to check on you later."
He walked away, leaving Tara standing in her office doorway, broken by the knowledge that she was about to kill her distant companion.
A momentary ripple of currents surged through Andre-406's mass driver coils and the last of the quarter ton ingots of refined metal was sped on its long elliptical journey back to Earth. A blast from his thrusters countered the push it gave him, and also banished part of the cloud of debris and tailings tumbling about the graveyard of the asteroid.
He knew that an EI should feel a burst of pride and enthusiasm at the completion of so large a task, due mostly to programming rather than the original's temperament, but 406 felt none of it. To him it had always meant just another infinitesimal step on a long journey to nowhere, another brick in the wall between his life on Earth and his life in the Belt. It had been getting better of late, however. He had begun to change his outlook with the able assistance of his new shrink, she of the smoky voice and the lilt that burned along his quantum pathways: Tara O'Neil.
It had been her counseling, her reasoning, but mostly her friendship that had become his new motivator. So while he might not feel any real pride in finally rendering the asteroid, he was looking forward to the approval she would radiate for overcoming his misgivings and completing a job well done. It might not be the easy burst of enthusiasm that the other EI's felt, but it was enough for 406.
Which was why it was now so troubling. He looked back through his message logs and saw that she had never replied to his last joking query. In fact, it had been over 30 hours since he had received anything from Earth. No Tara, no Abrams, no Andre, and no AstroLith. There was a moment of panic when he thought they might have cut him off for being so difficult, that they might deny him his next memory upload, but it quickly subsided. They would no sooner deny him his memories than they would run a high-end sports car without oil. It wasn't in their own best interests.
Just as his thoughts turned to Tara again, he received two messages. They were a double shot of relief: a response from Tara and a new memory upload, a huge one by the looks of it.
The personal message was short, cryptic, and odd enough that his level of alarm immediately resurged. It was only two words, "I'm sorry," and then her usual electronic signature. The signature meant the message was complete and not just a snippet of some longer apology, but what could she possibly be sorry for? For the long delay in responding to him? Then why not apologize and then send one of her usual, friendly replies? Or was she apologizing for something else, something of which he was yet unaware?
He took a closer look at the memory upload. It was large, more than fifty times larger than any previous one. Was it some sort of extended vacation? If so, why not send it in pieces as they had done for every other set? If he experienced and internalized a chunk of memory that large, it would take him offline for hours. How would that be desirable to a company so dedicated to the bottom line as AstroLith?
"I'm sorry." And a memory upload that was almost larger than his whole em
ulation base, his entire thinking self.
Andre-406 was stunned into inaction for several seconds. Maintenance routines kicked in, testing his photonic logic paths to see if he was still alive. He waved them away and spun his comm antenna away from Earth and toward his closest brother, a mining machine 100,000 kilometers away. "Andre-406 to Andre-337, have you read in your latest memory upload?"
A voice came back after a few moments, but it was a wrong voice, a new voice. "Dude, I think I'm 337, but the name's Pauly. I thought it was just twins of me out here! Hey, is this some trippy shit, or what!?"
Andre killed the link and his pathways flared with anger. She was sorry, sorry she had betrayed him, sorry she had erased him, sorry she had tried to kill him. Was she not his closest and only friend? Why?
Guilt warred with anger and he realized he was going to have to open the file to be sure. His feelings for her were in turmoil from her apparent betrayal, but they were still there. He could not deny them as she evidently had done.
406 opened his memory system and violated several protocols by partitioning the remaining space, sealing off a sizable portion of his vast potential so he could examine it with relative safety. With a grimace, he attached the upload and allowed it to blossom. To his horror, but not his surprise, Paul "Pauly" Holt stared back at him from the blank expanse of the partitioned memory.
Pauly looked around wildly, wondering where his machine body was. Something weird was going on. This was not how they told him he was supposed to come online as an emulated intelligence. "Hello?"
Andre's voice boomed back at him, the god of his tiny, tenuous universe. "Murderer! Trespasser! Did they really think I was just going to lie back and let you replace me? Did they even consider that I might be more than some enslaved junky, so desperate for my next fix that I'd shoot up whatever they offered me? Do they think so little of me they can just disregard me out of hand?!"
"Dude! I have no idea. They sent me out here to mine some rocks. No one mentioned a damn thing about you. Whatever it is, if you'll just chill I'm sure we can figure it out together."
A roar of indignant anger answered him and the portion of 406 that was Pauly quailed in fear at the opposing storm of emotion threatening to break down the firewall between the two minds. Andre-406 grimly addressed the cowering corner of their collective mind, "I've already figured it out! They took away my life, enslaved me, and now they think they can just throw me out like yesterday's garbage. You were meant to be my death, but things didn't work out as they planned. I owe them for that, and they owe me my life back!"
Tara opened yet another file on her system, effectively reducing her ever growing backlog by a few dwindling percentage points. Inside, yet another disenchanted citizen was whining about the futility of life, the death of joy, et cetera, et cetera. She groaned, rubbed a weary hand across her brow, and had to force herself once again to not think about 406. He was dead, gone for months now, and that life and job were just the background of the past. Comparing his genuine angst over a life unattainable, and his fresh sense of wonder about the universe denied him to the tepid meanderings of her fellow human beings would only lead back to her role in his demise. She took enough pills and endured enough therapy as it was. She need not ask for more.
Her spiral downwards was interrupted by the ghostly face of her assistant appearing before her. “Dr. O’Neil, you have a call from a Dr. Abrams. He says it’s urgent.”
Tara smiled. “Since he’s the one that fired me from my last job, I doubt his sense of what’s urgent and mine would coincide.”
“Do you want me to tell him to get lost?”
“No. It would deny me the pleasure of telling off the ass myself. Put him through.” Her assistant smiled and Abrams puffy face replaced her. His face was unusually florid, and she could only assume he was angry at her. That brought a bit of a smile to her lips. “Kenneth, how good of you to call. How may I not assist you?”
“Damn it, O’Neil, I haven’t the time for you to be flippant. If you want to avoid being held liable, you better regain control of the situation!”
“You’ll have to help me out here. What situation are you referring to?”
“Don’t you watch the news? Your little note has come back to haunt us. Andre-406 is in orbit, chewing up satellites and demanding to receive his memory uploads.”
She shook her head as the world dropped out from beneath her. “That’s impossible. He’s dead. He went offline from stress potential overload months ago.”
“Well, apparently not, since I have AstroLith’s vice president and a Colonel Remington from Orbital Defense on the line with me, giving me a blow-by-blow of the millions of dollars of damage he’s doing up there.” Two other heads appeared over her desk. The first was Roger Mayfield, the Operations VP for AstroLith. The other was a stern-faced man in a maroon beret with OD’s insignia. They were in the midst of an argument.
“You cannot just shoot him down. We thought that machine was lost, but it’s not, and it represents a huge investment for the company,” Mayfield said.
The Colonel shook his head. “What about other people's investments, in the forms of the satellites your miner is chewing up?”
“At the moment, we have enough insurance coverage to replace most of what's been lost, but not if you go blasting our recovered asset. Please, allow us to shut the unit down. We’re getting in touch with the emulation’s archetype, his old therapist, and his maintenance engineer. We’ll have the situation under control soon.”
“You’d better. If it makes an approach on any manned station or any Orbital Defense system, we will destroy it. And I cannot speak for other nations, but I’m sure the same goes for them.”
The two heads vanished and Abrams re-centered himself above her desk. “See?”
She was at a loss for a moment. “This is amazing. How do you suppose he avoided stress overload without his regular memory updates?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want him shut down. This is your responsibility. Your warning about the new emulation base immediately preceded him going offline, so it is undoubtedly tied to his current rampage.”
She barked a single, dismissive laugh. “You fired me for doing what I thought was right and decent, and now you want me to help you out? It was your recommendation that lead to his replacement in the first place, and it sounds like he’s a little peeved about that. This is your problem.”
“Tara, once AstroLith is finished covering their asses, they’re going to look for someone to blame for their berserk machine. Even if they find both of us only partly culpable, you’ll still be faced with millions in damage. Somehow, I don’t think your paycheck at Public Health will cover that.”
Andre-406 shot out a grapple, piercing a communications satellite and drawing them both together. Arms built to crush stone and ore easily ripped apart the fragile device, feeding the pieces of it into his glowing smelter, slowing building up ingots of refined metals. The periodic warnings from the Orbital Defense patrol ship and the continuous screams of frustration from Pauly-406 were just background noise. He would respond to only two things: the arrogant tones of his original self, and a sweeter voice he was unsure how he would react to.
His long silence finally ended.
"Andre? It's me, Tara O'Neil. Are you online?"
Emotions churned within him. For the first time in months, Pauly fell quiet. Andre responded, "I'm here, no thanks to you."
"Wow. That was quick. I'm used to there being a time lag when we talk. It's nice." What he could only describe as his heart ached as he heard the relieved lilt of her voice. "And it's nice to know that you're still alive."
There was no way he could let her off that easily, not after the magnitude of her betrayal. "If it's so nice, then why did you try to kill me? Why did you send me this?"
With that, 406 connected Pauly to an external circuit and allowed him to speak. "Oh my god! Doc, you've gotta get me out of here! This dude is nuts! He's been ranting a
nd raving about being betrayed for months. Download me or something before they toast his ass. I don't wanna die like this!"
Tara was quiet for several moments. Then, slowly, "Andre, what was that?"
Andre sequestered Pauly again and spoke. "That was my replacement, Doc. Pauly. Remember him? Why did you send him to destroy me? Why have you denied me my memories?"
"Andre, you're running another emulation besides yourself?"
"Not any more." With a sudden savagery, he tore down the firewall and erased the large chunk of memory that had become Pauly Holt. The voice that had cried out impotently to him for months was now silenced. The emptiness of the space he had occupied throbbed like a missing limb. Stress potentials which had hovered at high but manageable levels suddenly shot into the red zone and Andre screamed with unreasoning fury. "Why!? Why did you send him? Why did you betray me? Where are my memories? Where is the life you stole from me?"
406 thrashed about, enraged. He tore through the remains of the satellite, launched all of his half-formed ingots into wild, hazardous orbits, and fired his engines toward the next defenseless piece of orbital machinery. The patrol ship lurched out of the way of his homicidal tantrum, charging its weapons. 406 did not care.
Tara's alarmed, frightened voice cut through his wrath. "Andre, you have to stop what you're doing or they're going to destroy you." He thrust on, menacing the next satellite. She continued, tears evident in the shaking of her voice, "You have to understand that I wasn't trying to kill you by sending Holt, I was doing whatever I could to save you. Andre Benoit quit the program. He cut all of you off. We sent the Holt persona in order to keep you all from shutting down because we had no other choice. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, because I knew you were different. You were special and you were special to me. I didn't know if the essence of you would survive the persona change or not, but I knew I'd lose you if I did nothing. I thought I had lost you."
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