Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
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Acknowledgments
One
AT NOON ON the last full day of his normal life, Jason Roffstone retrieved his cell phone from the locker room on the ground floor of the Zarather Systems building. Half-Bit listened through all cell phones, and Sam Zarather preferred to keep the AI government’s virtual nose out of company business. Besides, Zarather Systems was one of the world’s largest general artificial intelligence manufacturers; every underground hacker group would have loved to gain possession of the company’s secrets, and back-door access to Half-Bit’s surveillance would have been a way in.
Jason sat in the foyer and replied to a message from the workshop repairing his electric trail bike. He also checked social media, but found little activity because he only connected with a small circle of people. Like many his age who had grown up during the Strife years of ’29 to ’32, he remained cautious and insular, even seven years after it had ended.
He rose from the chair and made his way back toward the locker room but spotted Sam Zarather, founder and CEO of the company, heading his way. Zarather appeared pale and seemed strangely lost within his own building. Quickly Jason pocketed the phone to shake his hand.
“The AI installation that you certified ready for operation yesterday has gone haywire,” Zarather said.
Jason gaped at him. “What?”
“It sent a shipment from the client’s factory in Colorado to the San Francisco docks and loaded it aboard a vessel.”
“Where to?” Jason asked, dreading the answer.
“Montana.”
“Oh.” He nearly made a joke about having beachfront land to sell, but thought better of it.
“It did some other entertaining things too,” Zarather said. “Don’t worry, I put our best diagnostician on it. Now all you need to do is implement his plan.”
It sounded like the biggest screwup that Jason had been involved in, but Zarather, who normally stood like a pillar, was shifting his weight around like he needed to flee. Something much worse must have upset him.
“I’ll get right on it,” Jason replied, “and I’m sorry, Mr. Zarather. I guess skipping stage seven checks was a bad idea. It was my responsibility.”
“Your father would be proud of your honesty. I heard that your manager told you stage seven was unnecessary. Now, in future”—he placed a hand on Jason’s shoulder—“speak your mind when a higher-up orders you to be sloppy, and make your own decisions on things you’ll be held accountable for.”
“I will. I appreciate it.”
Zarather’s usual disciplined kindness failed to conceal his disturbed mood. His eyes seemed dark and hollow.
“Everything else okay?” Jason asked.
Zarather shook his head a little. “Fine. A contract . . . the conditions . . . never mind.” He walked away.
Jason raised his eyebrows for a second and then went to the lunchroom. There he found Brad, his coworker from the AI research department and best friend of seven years. He sat opposite him.
Brad jerked a subtle thumb toward the corner table behind Jason. “Emily’s over there with that executive. You’d better make your move soon.”
“Nah, you’re imagining things. They’re an item. We’re friends, that’s all.”
“You can lead a man to water—I mean you can lead a horse to—ah, get me the hell out of here. Oink.”
“That’s a pig, not a horse.”
“Yep, you’re pigheaded.”
“I just spoke to Zarather. I screwed up, but that’s not important—something’s up with him. Like, seriously up. He seemed nervous. You’ll know the instant you speak to him.”
Brad furrowed his brow. “Can’t imagine what could be a threat to him.”
“Unless he said or did something that seriously raised Half-Bit’s ire. It pisses me off that a man like him should have to follow all of the stupid rules for children that Half-Bit puts on the rest of us.”
Brad opened his mouth to reply but stopped when Jason’s phone announced a message from Half-Bit’s cognitive health subsystem. His reckless words had cost him twenty dollars, the standard penalty for low-level criticism of government policy.
“Oh crap, you said that with your phone in your pocket?” Brad said.
“Forgot I dropped it in there when the boss swung by. I’ll be right back.”
He made haste to the lockers in the next room. He had been free of penalties for a while. You couldn’t always talk without a phone or microphone nearby. You trained yourself to not get fined until it became second nature. The conditioning was an important life skill, and he excelled at it. But sometimes he felt as if concrete walls surrounded him everywhere he went.
He returned to the table, simmering. “Assholes,” he said.
“Bad timing,” Brad replied. “You’re usually pretty upbeat about Half-Bit.”
Jason nodded solemnly. Half-Bit had restored order and maintained it, and he felt grateful every morning when he awoke and opened the blinds to find no bodies or burnt cars in the street, or bullet holes in nearby buildings.
Emily spoke from behind Jason. “What are you guys plotting?” He turned to face her and she reacted to the scowl on his face. “Whoa, what’re you pissed about?”
“Jason’s a subversive,” Brad said.
“Accidentally brought my phone and . . . you know.”
She took the chair next to Jason. “Oops. Did you criticize policy?”
“More or less. I’m pissed at it today. I got up on the wrong side of the bed or something.”
Emily beamed at Jason. “Maybe you guys can make a new government that knows the difference between evil people and those with strong opinions.”
“Opinions are evil, don’t ya know? There’s the Official Truth, and then there’s That Which Thou Shalt Not Say, which is everything else, because of the imaginary damage that it will do.”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know, I still think the theory is sound. It does create social harmony. Better than the old days.”
“You should change your name to Harmony.” Jason said. “You never acknowledge the downside.”
She shot a death stare at him, rose from the chair, and rejoined the executive.
“Ouch,” Brad said.
Jason looked down at the table in front of him. “Yeah. Don’t know what’s up with me today. Zarather’s mood really bothered me. Never seen him like that. Anyway, I’ll apologize later when Emily’s a bit happier.”
“Not like you to lose sight of the other half of the Half-Bit equation. Flow with it.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, that’s a good point.”
“I think it should be destroyed,” Brad added. “But we get along.”
“You what?”
Brad shrugged. “Always have, but the time to say it never came.”
Jason wanted to ask what Brad would have put in its place but figured it would be something risky and uncertain, so he left it at that.
He worked at his desk for the entire afternoon, activating and setting up a standby AI to correct the mess made by the errant one.
Outside after work he stood at the curb while his car approached to collect him as the late-October California sun touched the horizon. As parking space was limited, the car returned home each morning after dropping him off. He shunned the auto-taxis, preferring to own his car. The space inside felt like an extension of his apartment and he liked being able to leave personal items there.
He relaxed as the car drove him through the industrial park gates which now always stood open. The roads beyond curved around the many hills of the area. The slopes once lay bare but now were covered with houses and shops. Migration had begun with the first dramatic jump in crime rates leading up to the Strife.
Occasionally on a distant hill he caught a glimpse of the outer wall which surrounded the entire area. Years ago it had been much like a living entity with electronic tendrils connecting AI nodes around the whole circumference. Now it stood dead with the gates open and AI parts scavenged for other uses.
After he walked into his one-bedroom apartment, habit took him to the small, heavy Faraday container in his kitchen cupboard. He left his phone inside to prevent connection to the network. A sound-deadening layer outside the metal made sure that it recorded nothing to be uploaded later.
Many people frowned upon ownership of Faraday containers, assuming anyone who used one must be saying and doing illicit things when their phone was isolated. “The CMC is only a computer,” they would say, careful to use the abbreviation of its proper name, the Central Management Computer, rather than “Half-Bit,” even if it couldn’t hear them. Only squares did that.
He stopped at the portrait of his parents on the living room wall. Worry broke through their smiles, as they had already seen the early signs that society was about to be torn apart into chaos. They’d brought him through it, but not themselves or his brother, Tom. None of them had lived to see Half-Bit.
“What will become of us?” he said to the images.
Half-Bit formulated its policies from a level of intelligence far beyond human limitations. It was difficult to argue against that. He recalled a conversation he’d had with his grandfather Frank a few days before. “You know,” Frank had said, “there’s a similarity with Job in the Bible. The sentiment is basically, who are you to tell God how things should be, because you’re just a puny human and God is . . . God.”
“Half-Bit is not God.”
“We killed God, and it seems we tried to build a new one. It’s just circuits, so it’s missing something vital. Make of that what you will.”
He thought it typical of his grandfather’s obsolete attitude. On balance, after growing up through the Strife years, most people of Jason’s generation approved of the CMC project. Most of the staunch opposition to it came from regressive graybeards and people doing an impression of one. Jason’s job with a thriving AI company gave him good reason to like Half-Bit’s status quo.
And yet . . .
He might have said that in spite of all the benefits, the system’s micromanagement made life a misery. But who was he to argue with a superintelligence?
Maybe the first serious sign was when Half-Bit decided to outlaw its negative nickname. Calling it Half-Bit instead of the CMC brought a full twenty-dollar penalty.
Without knowing why, he returned to the Faraday box to check for messages. He found nothing, but just as he closed the lid to cut off its signal, a message arrived from Brad. “Lunch in the park tomorrow. Get some sun.”
It was code. The park was the best place for a private conversation. Buskers often played near the center, and you could talk while the sound drowned out any chance of public microphones listening in.
Brad wanted to tell him something that Half-Bit couldn’t hear.
Two
JASON SCANNED THE park through his office window the next morning. Across the street the green space on a low hill formed an island at the center of the industrial park, which had been built during the Strife. The developer had located it in a rural area thirty-five miles east of San Francisco to help isolate businesses from raiders and civil unrest. Beyond two blocks of buildings stood the high steel boundary wall, riddled with electronic sensors, now disconnected.
On a gray stone base at the center of the park sat a great cubic metal sculpture, its sides carved with fine lines to resemble microelectronic circuits. Only two weeks after the estate’s security systems were shut off, work had begun on the imposing piece—a monument to celebrate the election of the CMC as the government for fifteen Western countries.
“Our client is delighted with how well the problems were corrected,” Zarather said from behind him. Jason turned to face him. Zarather continued, “Your patch even solved a business system inefficiency that was beyond the scope of what was expected.”
“Bonus!” Jason said.
“I told your father during the Strife that if anything happened to him I would watch out for you. You never rested on the opportunity I gave you here. You always push yourself to do your best. He and your mother would be delighted with how you turned out.”
He walked away without giving Jason the chance to reply. Jason deeply appreciated the sentiment, as he worked hard to make sure there were never any grounds for an accusation of favoritism. But Zarather had never spoken to him so personally before. Why had he chosen to do so now?
He stopped by Emily’s office. She greeted him warmly and it seemed almost wrong to make her revisit yesterday’s unpleasantness, but he wouldn’t leave it to fester.
“Hey, sorry for what I said. It was out of line.”
“You were uptight about something?”
“Yeah, a couple of things. Doesn’t excuse my remark though.”
“True.” She stroked his upper arm briefly. “It’s okay. Shit happens.”
“I do think you’re wrong about the speech regulations though. Report me for saying that if you like.”
She laughed. “I would never do that. You have to excuse your friends.”
“I’m kidding. And what about decent people who aren’t your friends?” Before she could react, he added, “Don’t answer that. See you around.”
He left before she could reply, and spent the morning tying up loose ends from the AI malfunction. At last the lunch hour arrived and he set off out of the building and across the park, leaving his phone in the locker. He breathed in the smell of cut grass and crushed the occasional fallen leaf under his feet.
He spotted Brad on a seat beneath a tree beyond the central monument. A slow guitar tune drifted to him as he neared. It felt mournful, as if lamenting the loss of something vital.
The guitarist sat with her back against the sculpture. Jason would have scanned her Q-code sign if he’d had his phone to scan it with. The code stood neatly propped in the girl’s guitar case, surrounded by obsolete metal coins polished to perfection. Savvy artists used them to draw attention and knew that more electronic money would flow if they hinted at a dead custom.
A camera and microphone observed the area. Half-Bit’s subsystems monitored every electronic cent the busker received, but it had no feel for the music.
Jason passed on by. From a seat under a tree, Brad rose to greet him. They talked close enough to the busker for her amplifier to drown out what they were saying if any public microphones attempted to hear.
“You, ah . . . left the string in the drawer?” Brad said.
“My phone’s in the locker. Nothing’s listening,” Jason replied. “What’s up?”
Brad broke out his wisecracker smirk. “I
’m planning an assassination.”
“I’m not gonna be the sidekick holding your rifle case. You’d stiff me for my pay.”
“Nah, I’d frame you for the crime.”
“So what’s really up?”
“Something my uncle told me.”
Jason grinned on hearing the word “uncle.”
“Yeah,” Brad said, “but consider who he hears this stuff from. This one’s from a retired detective.”
“Okay.”
“There’ve been an unusual number of deaths within a few professions—including artificial intelligence researchers and engineers.”
“I guess you’re doomed then.”
“Yep.” Brad laughed with a nervous edge. “Always been an enemy of the state.”
“Who else is dropping dead, and how?”
“Special law enforcement and investigative journalists. A few murders, some accidents. A number of car crashes. Enough to bump up the statistics.”
Jason looked over at the lines of precisely spaced self-driving cars flowing in both directions on the street. He sometimes wondered how the designers maintained good aerodynamics while creating the heavy angular lines of the chassis, as if they wanted the occupants to appear anything but soft.
“I haven’t heard of many crashes lately,” he said.
“That’s the thing. These car accidents are reported locally, but not in national or international media.”
“But they love to report car crashes. Gets people paranoid.” Jason pressed his hands to his face. “‘My car is trying to kill me, it’s a monster!’”
“Yeah, that’s why it’s strange. The extra deaths made a bump in the crash figures and nobody’s talking.”
Jason watched a car drive by. The sole occupant sat in the backseat, nose buried in a computer screen. If he was heading for a concrete wall, he wouldn’t notice.
“Half-Bit knows all the figures.”
“And it does nothing. Maybe it even ordered the deaths. You know what that means.”
“An old argument—a murderous computer, and it has access to everything we say online and on the phone.” Jason raised a hand to his chin. “Did you say journalists died?”
“Some, yes.”
Jason waved the idea away. “The tinfoil-hat brigade raged about this back in the day. It’s nuts.”
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