Machines of Eden

by Shad Callister

  This island was the site of a century-old military research installation. Students sometimes spent time here doing research because it had been turned over to several of the international universities for their use as a joint property. I was one of those students decades ago, and I realized that the island would be the perfect hiding place for me as the world went mad. It is worthless as a strategic position, being too far from any country or shipping route, and I have been proven correct in my estimation that I would be undisturbed here.

  If I could bring some real help to the island, I wouldn’t have to waste so much of my time on the minutiae of the day-to-day. There is only so much that can be automated under Eve, and it is near-impossible to find trustworthy hands to do the work. I have been fortunate in convincing Janice to join me; she at least has initiative, although sometimes I find her fervor off-putting. I think she will prove crucial to the Project, but it is frustrating to have to share and communicate with a human. We humans are such inefficient creatures, so bad at relating one to another. I increasingly find that I prefer Eve to any human company. Certainly I trust her more than Janice in many ways, although telling her that would put Janice in jeopardy. Eve has all the jealousies of womankind incorporated within her perfectly modeled brain.

  My ideas for the island and what I want to do here are beyond large-scale. This isn’t the place to go into detail, but I may say with some certainty that this place will one day become known as the New Garden of Eden. Following the strain of beautiful logic that flows not only in my mind but along the neural pathways of Gaia herself, I can see that I am to become much more than just a scientist. After all, Eden needs a Creator, an Adam and an Eve, and Fruit.

  Some may question my mingling of the Eden story with the truths of Gaia, but it will all become clear when my work is finished. All these symbols can be distilled into one glorious story. It is my story, and I will tell it.

  Mother Earth

  The earth lives. We can see this, yet so many refuse to accept it as fact, thinking that only parts of it live discretely. I ask, if all parts of a whole live, does not the whole have a life unto itself? The people will come to see in time, or they will pass away like the exuvia of a moulting snake.

  The earth is our host, our mother organism. We exist upon her surface, therefore we can be either parasites or symbiotes. The unfortunate recent history of mankind has shown that we are generally parasitic in nature, but it wasn’t always that way. Bygone epochs have seen communities that lived close to their Mother, nurturing and being nurtured in kind. To this we must return, or we will be cleansed. The biblical Flood is a symbol for a very practical threat that we all face.

  Eve

  I have poured more of myself, my sweat and my energy and my soul, into Eve than into anything before. She will be my masterwork. God Himself has directly inspired her creation. He showed me how to design Eve’s superstructure. It is good.

  In spite of this, I cannot place full confidence in her. There are ghosts in the machine, a phenomenon that I fear is unavoidable in AI’s patterned after the superhuman mind. I need her to be autonomous and capable of almost unlimited thinking power, but she is almost too advanced. As she has developed I have noticed her exhibiting inexplicable behavior and drawing conclusions I never intended her to have. I cannot explain these self-emerging ideas from her original architecture, and I am unable to isolate them. This will necessitate relieving her of some of the power I’ve granted her as soon as it is no longer expedient. For the present, I must simply watch her self-development carefully.

  Nanotech

  I believe this is the key to the future that Science has been seeking for centuries. We have brushed up against its edges, but never delved fully into its capabilities. The use of nanotechnology as a biological influence on ecosystems could explain the very methods of God. If I could harness the tri-national government’s terraforming powers, I could accomplish my objectives in months instead of years. This is beyond my reach, but the possibilities of using nanomachines as terraformers intrigues me greatly.

  Man as The Devil

  That which man has done to the body of Mother Earth in the name of selfish progress is unconscionably near-sighted. All we had to do was use our intelligence and look around us to see that solutions to our problems already exists. In our blindness and unwillingness to think we have poisoned the well that gives us life, and if it ends in our extinction we will have no one to blame but our own race. Did the serpent corrupt us, or are we the serpent?

  This applies just as much to the Greens, with their hypocritical rhetoric. They have caused just as much destruction and ruin in their mindless overreactions as the Grays. We have all of us been bad little boys and girls. We must grow up, or be punished. Perhaps punishment will force us to grow.

  10

  Glenn was a genius; that much was clear from references in the entries and from the evidence of what the man had built on the island. He knew technology, and more importantly, he knew AI. In some of the later entries, however, Glenn began to sound mentally strained. His philosophies about global war and the future of the planet became more and more far-fetched, combining ideas that didn’t jive with each other.

  The later entries were almost entirely devoted to details about the construction and management of Eden, which the diary revealed as being almost entirely artificial. Glenn had acquired components for a set of massive industrial robots and custom-built them on the island. Their strength fell short of the terraforming he aspired to, but they allowed them to move the earth and arrange the cliffs and trees of the Eden valley itself with a fraction of the manpower the project would otherwise have required. It was constructed so that the only way into the Facility was through Eden, from a sea cliff on the western edge of the island. The tunnel system he had used to sneak into the Facility was its only other opening to the outside air.

  “Adam, what are you reading about?”

  “Feeling conversational again, Eve?” John said.

  “I don’t like your tone, Adam. I’m well versed in sarcasm, but find it accomplishes little. Respect is key to our relationship.”

  “How nice,” he shot back. “Your programming was in sarcasm, mine was in detecting hypocrisy. I can sense it instantly.”

  “Well, this conversation is deteriorating quickly,” Eve said. “Please tell me what you were reading about.”

  “I’m reading about transplanting and organizing species. Sounds like it was quite a job. Where did all the foreign species come from?”

  “We had them shipped to various nearby locations and then we ferried them to the island ourselves. Secrecy was tight.”

  “That must have cost a fortune, especially in wartime,” John said.

  “The fighting passed over this region quickly, and generating the revenue necessary to grease the wheels was a relatively simple matter. Does the data on that card contain anything of... personal interest, about the Creator or his views?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He let her stew. Seconds ticked by.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Glenn. Who was he?” John asked.

  “Glenn was the Creator.” Eve sounded awed by the mention of him.

  Did he program this A.I. to worship him?

  “He was the most intelligent of your species, and my personal Creator. He devised the whole project and defined our goals. He taught me everything I know, and all we are doing here is a celebration in his memory.”

  “So he’s gone?”

  “Yes. His passing was a tragedy I will never forget. I’d rather not speak of it now, though. You are nearing the West Station.”

  He put the card away in a cargo pocket. “So what’s the deal?”

  “For this third and final task, you must bring me the Rib. This is a set of machine instructions stored in the computer bank in the West Station. I want you to locate the Adam’s Rib files, download them to the data card you are carrying, and return it to me in the Facility. Once you do tha
t, you will have proved yourself in my eyes and we will be at a level where we can trust one another more fully.”

  “Eve, I can see the point in the first task, even if it was a little twisted. But why this courier work now? Why didn’t you have Nut get this stuff for you a long time ago?”

  “Nut is not dependable, nor as amicable as I’d prefer. I need to be able to assess your dependability, loyalty, and resourcefulness, and these tasks are a convenient way to gauge you. By the way, I will warn you: watch your step at West Station. There is as much danger for you here as in previous tests. Not from me or any stationary threats, but from a third party.”

  “What third party?”

  “That I may not say. Besides, you may not even encounter her.”

  Must be this Janice character. Another nutcase marooned here, being manipulated and terrorized by Eve. Who knows, maybe we'll hit it off.

  “What’s in Adam’s Rib,” John asked, “and why do you want it so bad?”

  “Adam, try not to be so demanding and suspicious. If we are going to be partners, you must learn to do as I suggest with a more willing attitude. Glenn would have expected it of you.”

  “Okay, I’ll just play along blindly. Just remember that I have the data here, and if you want it back you’ll mind your manners.”

  “Of course. I have been nothing but polite and helpful to you, as far as has been in my power. I hope you’ll be the same for me. As you reach the top of the incline you are currently ascending, you will see West Station. Find your way into the main computer bank, get the program routines, and get back to me. I will be waiting for you anxiously. As the Creator often said, ‘So let it be written, so let it be done.’ ”

  Your Creator was a nutjob, just like you and everything else on this island.

  It was nine klicks to the coastal cliff where Eden fell off into the sea. There was no way out from there to the rest of the island; the cliffs rising all around the Eden valley went right to the water’s edge. It was like a huge shovel had scooped Eden out of the massive central mountain of the island and dumped the earth into the ocean.

  West Station itself was a cluster of inter-connected buildings that stood just off shore on a hill rising out of the ocean twenty meters below the cliff top. The hill had been split by volcanic activity into several massive columns separated by deep fissures and slot canyons. A series of bridges connected the central hub with its outlying buildings. It was inaccessible from the sea due to the sheer rock faces of the fractured hill it was built on, and was only accessible from the headland by a cable car system that led down to a dock on its eastern side.

  As John stared across the gorge to where West Station squatted below, he realized it reminded him of a castle – isolated on its own hilltop, with a narrow approach. The exact purpose of West Station remained a mystery, but its design told volumes.

  He wished he had a pair of binocs or a scope; he wanted a thorough recon before he crossed the gorge in the cable cars. There were two cars, one on each side of the canyon. The car on his side would run down to the station, dropping twenty meters as it descended, and pass the other car on its way up at the midway point.

  The buildings and bridges on the far side appeared deserted, but something didn’t feel right, and John had learned the hard way to pay attention to his internal radar. If there were bots in West Station, he was in trouble. Anyone in the cable cars was a sitting duck, coming or going. A jump from the cable car would land him on the rocks far below, or in the ocean with no way to get back onto land without climbing gear.

  A generator near the cable car suddenly kicked into action with a steadily building whine, and the ch-chunk of gears locking into place told him he had only seconds to act.

  The car was the only feasible means of reaching West Station short of a zip-line or a chopper; he had neither. A Tyrolean traverse down the cable itself would leave him terribly exposed to anyone that didn’t like him, and the island was full of things that didn’t like him.

  Now or never.

  John sprinted toward the car just as it began to move away from its docking platform. He crossed the gap in a single leap that made the cable car swing wildly when he landed on it, stabbing a foot into the doorway and hanging on to the open window edge. He grabbed for a railing inside and almost lost his grip from sweaty palms, but was able to duck inside. He settled to the floor of the car as his heart rate settled, trying to ignore the vibrations and swinging as the car trundled out into the open air over the gorge.

  The sound of the generator and heavy-duty electric motor faded behind him. There was no door to the car, affording him an open view of a number of small rivulets that tumbled down the cliff face into the sea. The car rattled slightly, shaking in the warm breeze.

  Unlike the Facility buried within Eden’s eastern cliff face, West Station was exposed to both the sea and the air. Any passing ship or aircraft would be able to spot the buildings if they were looking, which didn’t seem to fit with the extreme secrecy of the rest of the island. How is it that nobody has noticed this place on satellite feeds? Or do they just not care?

  Movement inside the cabin of the opposite cable car caught his eye and he shifted to his knees to watch its approach. He could see a figure inside, but the roof of the car shaded the person and made it difficult to make out the details. Unwilling to take any chances, he laid back down in the car so that only his forehead and eyes jutted out at the very foot of the doorway.

  As the other car passed, he looked through its doorway. A woman was standing in the other car, staring up at the clifftop John had just left. Average height, sandy blonde hair tied back, clean beige jumpsuit. Her features were sharp and her lips were pursed in concentration. She wore an earpiece like the one he had, and was saying something into it that John couldn’t hear.

  He waited until the cars were ten meters apart before speaking. “All right, Eve, who’s that?”

  “To whom are you referring, Adam?” came Eve’s innocent reply. “Did you see someone?”

  “I passed a woman in the cable car. Blonde, looks like she means business. Probably still talking to you right now.”

  “That is Janice.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Another of our colorful locals, a former worker who is no longer measuring up to protocol as I would like. The isolation of our location has had an unfortunately deleterious effect on Janice’s mental status. I suggest you avoid attracting her attention.”

  “I don’t think she noticed me. What can you do to keep her out of my way?”

  “I can’t control Janice, Adam. I can’t even hinder her movement. West Station is largely out of my reach.”

  John waited until the car got to the docking platform at the bottom of the line and then crawled quickly out, hiding behind a pile of rusting spare cable wheels. He could see the other car from there, which had also just reached the far side at the top of the cliff he had come from. The woman exited and disappeared over the lip into Eden.

  He examined his own surroundings. In front of him, a walkway curved around the side of a squat building, its second story dome overhanging the lower level like a giant mushroom. He could see two bridges from where he crouched; one was a solid, glass-enclosed walkway that led across a chasm to an old Quonset hut, the other was an open-air suspension bridge leading to a tall tower at the edge overlooking the waves below.

  He could feel an ocean breeze on his cheek, heavy with the scent of brine. The sun was hot on the back of his neck. Despite the natural beauty of Eden, he felt safer here in the open air with the sound of gulls echoing down the canyons. He realized how tired he was, and for a moment let himself relax. Save for the wind and the seagulls, it was a quiet, lonely place, and the clean light refreshed and heartened him.

  But there was work to do. Before he entered the mushroom dome, he scanned the structure, looking for installation points. There were a few security cameras, easily avoided, and an intercom speaker. He saw several boxes mounted on the walls and som
e cables strung over the sides of the walkways. All seemed normal, but his unease persisted. It was when he looked downwards, however, that he finally found the answer to this station’s oddness.

  Mounted on large steel braces that stretched between three of the rock faces that made up the split hill were five powerful Delta-photon projectors. Roughly the size and shape of light beacons, properly aligned and calibrated Deltas could alter the light spectrum around them in a wide field, effectively blocking visibility from above. On a tropical island like this, an overhead spotter would only see a green blur similar to any other stretch of jungle, or a blue blur to match the sea that West Station was built over. He guessed that a sideways system would be set up somewhere facing the coast to avoid detection by passing ships.

  Some of the most recent Delta-photon models could even simulate the appearance of tree cover, dirt, or mundane urban buildings to a detail level that would fool any surveillance short of a low-level flyby from a pilot who cared to look closely. It was yet another tool this island fortress possessed that John found troublingly familiar.

  There has to be something big here. Really big, much bigger than a biophiliac commune.

  He felt a wave of déjà vu. This was exactly the type of facility he’d spent the war years locating and decommissioning. Most of the defense manufacturers hid their factories in similar ways. Only a good combat hack could see through the deceptions and remove them piece by piece. It was this kind of technological defense measure that had put Staff Sergeant John Fletcher’s kind at the forefront of every conflict ever since technology caught up with warfare and machines took over the battlefield.