by Joseph Lallo
“And you’re okay with that? You don’t feel any obligation to help those people?”
“What are we talking about, mobsters and miners? A couple hundred thousand of each? That’s not even one decent-sized city on a real planet. Earthquakes have wiped out more. No big loss. In my experience, most people are assholes. Getting rid of a half million of them will just raise the net quality of the universe.”
“Well what about VectorCorp? You’re just going to sit idle while a company, one that is willing to kill whole planets, seizes complete control over the whole galaxy?”
“Like it is going to make any difference. And quit talking about the ‘whole galaxy.’ We’re talking about the ten or fifteen percent we hang out in.”
“We’ve got to call someone! We’ve got to warn people!”
“And how are you going to do that? VectorCorp already does all of the communication in this area, and the only encryption strong enough to be fairly sure VC couldn’t read it would have to have already been set up with the receiving party, at least with a password. And even then, you’d have to send it from somewhere besides here, because they have almost certainly cut off communication in this region.”
Lex’s mouth opened and closed uselessly as he tried to put together a valid course of action.
“At any rate, I’m going to start going over what needs to be fixed. I want you the hell out of here as soon as Ma comes up with an exit window,” Karter said, marching off, his freshly replaced Solby in tow.
Lex sat down and stared at the floor.
“It would appear that this new information has not decreased your stress levels,” said Ma.
“No. That it most certainly did not. You got knocked around a bit. You sounded kind of messed up before. Are you okay?”
“There are no lingering effects, and recent backups exist in the event of unforeseen future degradation. A number of my debris field sensors have been damaged. I am fabricating and deploying replacements. An exit window that meets the specifications of your skill set and ship should be identifiable in approximately eighteen hours. Until then, is there anything I can help you with?”
“Yeah. You can tell me what to do.”
“Issuing orders is not my role. I can offer advice if you like.”
“Please.”
“What is your dilemma?”
“What is my dilemma? I just found out that at least two planets with people on them are going to be frozen, crushed, blown up, or roasted.”
“That is likely. What is your dilemma?”
“I can’t do anything about it, that’s what!”
“That is unfortunate. What is your dilemma?”
“How can I live with myself knowing that this is going to happen if I don’t do anything?”
“Simple. Had you not received that package, this would have happened without your foreknowledge. Had you died in the crash upon this planet when you first confronted Agent Fisk, or had you chosen virtually any other place to hide, or had timing and good fortune turned out any differently on both Tessera and Operlo, you would be dead and this would have happened regardless. It was the most probable outcome, and remains so. Your knowledge in no way obligates you to take action, and no action is likely to significantly alter the outcome. Thus, you could in no way be considered at fault for the coming events.”
“That’s all well and good, Ma, knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better. It isn’t that easy.”
“Why?”
“It just isn’t. You know what I mean?”
“No, Lex, I do not. As you quite flatteringly seem to have forgotten, I am not human. As a nonhuman, I lack the implicit knowledge of human nature that you enjoy. It is not something that can be programmed, or at least is beyond Karter’s skill, which means I am left only with observation. Karter, I think you will agree, is a less than ideal example.”
“You can say that again.”
“I attempted to absorb what information is present in media and entertainment, but the depictions of human behavior and interaction contained therein do not appear to be entirely accurate. You, Mr. Alexander, are the best example of a typical, well adjusted human that I have had the good fortune to interact with for any reasonable duration.”
“That’s... kind of sad.”
“Thus, I ask you again, why do you feel as though the weight of this tragedy, if it occurs, will fall upon your shoulders, in the figurative sense.”
“You’ve tried to save my life. You succeeded in saving my life, in fact. You know that saving lives is the right thing to do.”
“I did so only when it was within my ability to do so, and without risking another life unnecessarily.”
“Well... Well that’s the difference, then. When you see someone in trouble, you are supposed to help. You see a woman about to be hit by a bus, you push her aside, even if it means you get hit. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s what a MAN does. If you really know that it is the right thing, there is no such thing as risking your life unnecessarily. Risking your life is necessary, period. Anything less is cowardice.”
“Why is that?”
“That’s just the way it is. At least, that’s the way it is supposed to be. I guess that doesn’t make much sense to you.”
“To the contrary, that is a behavior that I fully understand. It is an imperative, a directive. I am designed with a number of base imperatives. They are used to weight my behavior. Failing to fulfill one requires an extreme circumstance, and I am programmed to avoid doing so at all reasonable costs. Self sacrifice for the greater good is evidently a societal imperative for humanity, or at least for you. Let us test the limits of the directive. If this hypothetical woman were to slip and fall from a ledge, would you be obliged to hurl yourself after her?”
“What, just because? With no safety gear?”
“Affirmative.”
“Of course not.”
“Would her resulting death weigh upon your conscience?”
“No. I mean, I’d feel bad that it happened, but there’s nothing I could have done.”
“Then your anxiety is out of place. There is no evidence to suggest that risking your life would make an appreciable difference in the course of events regarding the Gemini Project.”
Lex considered the statement. Slowly he shook his head.
“I don’t know. It just... I don’t-”
“It is a binary condition, hinging upon the variable of ability. If you can help, you are obligated to do so. If you cannot, you should feel no personal fault. Since you do feel fault, your anxiety MUST stem from the belief that you have the ability to prevent this tragedy. If this is so, then you must pay any price to achieve such a goal, by your own rules. It is vital that one follow one’s own rules.”
“You’re saying that you think that I think I can save the day, and that’s why I’m all torn up?”
“I am saying that based upon known equations and known variables it is the only reasonable conclusion.”
“Okay, well supposing that I do feel like I could do something, and I’m not saying that I do, what possible chance could I have?”
“There are numerous highly unlikely or excessively dangerous circumstances that would prevent the destruction of the star systems. The sabotaging or destruction of either or both phased arrays.”
“No way. The last time those guys attacked us it took a black hole and a bunch of lasers to fend them off, and that was on our own turf. By now they’ve got to have both of those places locked down tight.”
“The delay or prevention of the activation of one or both arrays until after the planetary alignment has passed would provide approximately thirty-three years in which to formulate a more permanent solution.”
“Yeah, but how would I do that? They said something about a final security audit before activation. That means they are probably all set and ready to go right now. They could activate it any minute,” Lex said, but he paused, the twinkle of inspiration in his eye, “But they won’
t.”
“You sound confident of that.”
“They’ve got their State of the Company thing coming up. Some shareholders meeting. Preethy, Patel’s secretary, said they wouldn’t do anything to lose face before that. They wouldn’t want some massive disaster stealing their thunder. They aren’t going to activate the arrays until after the press conference, I guarantee it... And they won’t activate it at ALL if it could be traced back to the company. All I have to do is get the word out. That’s why they’ve been trying so hard to kill me. To keep me from doing it!”
“Then your solution hinges upon distributing proof of their intentions.”
“Yes! That’s probably what Sarah Jones was trying to do when she handed me this info. Obviously whoever she was trying to contact has been found out. We just need to find some other way.”
“They control almost all communication. Hand delivering the information could bypass their security, but that is a slow process, and they will likely find and silence you and any you are likely to reach.”
“… There’s got to be a way.”
And so the hours began to pass, man and AI working together to find a solution. Ma was not precisely creative, but she was comprehensive, seemingly able to see any scenario from all angles simultaneously. She was an inexhaustible source of figures and data, offering up transit times, probable security precautions, and a multitude of other facts at a moment’s notice. What she did not do, however, was suggest courses of action. That was left to Lex. He supplied the outlandish ideas, trading away huge amounts of safety in exchange for tiny doses of opportunity. Every resource currently available or conceivably within reach was considered, and finally, with several hours remaining before it would be safe to leave, they had settled upon a desperate and foolish plan so layered with contingencies and a veritable alphabet of Plan Bs that it had at least a whisper of a chance to save lives.
“Right. So that’s the best we can do,” Lex said.
“Indeed. Would you like to know the success calculations?”
“… I don’t know... DO I want to know?”
“I very much doubt it.”
“Well hit me with them anyway.”
“Probability of substantially decreasing loss of life: 48%. Probability of preventing activation of the array: 21%. Probability of your own survival: 12%.”
“Wow... Those are very low. Maybe we should take another whack at this.”
“These represent, by a wide margin, the best outcome scores we’ve yet devised. Improving upon them in the time allotted with the resources available is doubtful.”
“How exactly do you come up with numbers for this sort of thing anyway?”
“My modeling methods utilize advanced actuarial science techniques combined with successive simulation based upon known parameters to produce-”
“Hold it, hold it! Sorry, my brain sort of shuts down after you mention enough things I’ve never heard of in the same sentence. Can you dumb it down a little please.”
“Magic,” Ma replied.
Lex laughed, “That’s about my level. You know, Ma, when you and I first met, you were a lot more, uh, computer-y. Lots of ‘processing’ and stuff like that. Now you’re joking around.”
“Due to the limitations of my User Interface Module, I am incapable of sounding precisely as a human being would. In my rare interactions with humans, I became aware that, if a machine’s appearance and behavior cannot perfectly reflect humanity, then the closer it comes to perfection without achieving it, the more uncomfortable legitimate humans feel. The so called uncanny valley. I thus prefer to conform to a more traditional automated behavioral pattern in order to ease tension.”
“What made you stop doing that with me?”
“Initially because I felt you were inconsiderate and thus no longer deserving of that courtesy. Subsequently you revealed yourself to be more capable of accepting me as an individual than most.”
“To be honest, I’ve just sort of been pretending you’re a person.”
“To be honest, so have I.”
Lex looked over the various notes and supplies that were now listed on the displays of the room, the details of his plan. The door opened, and a mechanical arm rolled in clutching a printed out summary of the mission.
“It is time to see if Karter is willing to play his part,” she said.
Lex stood and straightened his clothes.
“What are the odds we’ll convince him?”
“You don’t want to know.”
The mechanical arm continued to roll along beside him as he followed the lights that would lead him to Karter. Ma had probably calculated that having some physical representation of her beside him would make him feel a little more at ease. She was right. It was actually astounding that Karter could have built a machine that was so much better at being a decent human being than he was.
Before long the lights came to a stop at the door to one of the work rooms a few floors up. It was the room nearest to the surface that was still fully functional, and seemed to have been Karter’s base of operations for the last few hours. A glance through the display window revealed tools and parts strewn across every flat surface and a long list of damaged systems with estimated times of repair completion slowly scrolling by on a display screen. Some of them were measured in weeks. In the center of it all was Karter, who was sprawled precariously back on his chair, mouth wide open and engaged in what was either an epic snore or an earnest attempt to inhale his own tongue.
Lex knocked on the window, causing the snoring to stop abruptly. Karter’s head turned vaguely in the direction of the window, eyes squinted. They remained that way as he clumsily got to his feet and opened the door.
“Karter, listen, I need your-” Lex blurted.
“Hold on a minute,” Karter said, rubbing his barely open eyes.
He leaned heavily on the doorway, fished a grease pencil out of his pocket, and scrawled something on the door. When he was finished, he slammed it in Lex’s face. The message was a tersely worded statement inviting him to consume excrement and subsequently expire.
“For Karter, that was an act of remarkable restraint. This is encouraging,” Ma stated.
“Yeah, I’m feeling really optimistic about this whole endeavor now,” Lex said, banging on the window again.
“Go away!” Karter growled, settling down into his chair and pivoting away from the window.
“I need your help, Karter.”
“You always need help. You are a clingy little waste of space. Take off the diapers and solve your own problems. I’ve got bigger concerns.”
“You’ve got bigger concerns than saving whole planets?!”
“I am more interested in the contents of my belly button than I am in rescuing a bunch of strangers.”
“I’m not asking you to team up with me and go running into combat guns a-blazing. I just want you to supply some equipment.”
Karter angrily launched to his feet and stormed back to the door, throwing it open. Lex raised his hands defensively and backed to the wall.
“Do you have any idea how LONG it has been since someone actually woke me up? Years. YEARS!” he ranted, “I have been on my own schedule, doing my own thing, alone, for the better part of a god damn decade. And it has been AWESOME. Anyone I dealt with was either paying me or working for me, and not once did I have to clean blood off of a whole batch of funks. Now ONE person shows up and I’m looking at weeks of repair work. You think I’m eager to clutter up the universe with few hundred thousand more knuckleheads like you? Screw that. And while you’re at it, screw you. With the most uncomfortable apparatus you can find. We’re not friends, Lex. You understand that? We weren’t friends when we met, and this whole mess we just survived didn’t forge some kind of stuck-in-a-foxhole bond. All you are is a guy who fell out of the sky and started annoying me. You’re a pretty decent pilot, but all that means is that you’ve got exactly one more worthwhile skill than my dead grandmother. And in case my opinion
of you hasn’t been made clear-”
In lieu of further comment, Karter reared back and headbutted Lex directly in the forehead. With a soft, wet thud from Lex’s skull and a decidedly metallic clunk from Karter’s, the pilot fell to the ground.
“Consider that a period at the end of the sentence,” Karter sneered.
Lex lay still for a moment, waiting for the room around him to do the same. He was distantly aware of the door slamming again, but his greater concern was dealing with the suddenly challenging task of focusing his eyes.
“That was more indicative of his expected reaction,” Ma said.
“Yeah... yeah, that was about what I expected, too,” Lex said, making a brief and unsuccessful attempt to raise his head.
The mechanical arm rolled forward and delivered three sharp clicks on the window.
“No, no, don’t do-” Lex objected.
“If I have to come out there again, it’s going to be an exclamation point,” growled Karter.
“No more punctuation!” squeaked Lex.
“Mr. Alexander would like to volunteer his services to field test some of your in-development projects in a real world, espionage scenario,” Ma stated.
There were several beats of silence, during which Lex managed to hoist himself to his elbows. Then the door swung open.
“Which ones?” Karter asked, one eyebrow raised.
Lex woozily extended the hand containing the printed battle plan. Karter snatched it, flipped through it, and frowned.
“This plan is going to get you killed. What good does it do me to have you test my stuff and then have you die before reporting your findings?”
“If Mr. Alexander is able to survive by utilizing your equipment, then the tests would be considered an unequivocal success. His death indicates a failure.”
Karter looked over the pages again, then squinted his eyes and stared off into the distance, thinking.