by A. I. Zlato
A few minutes before the start of the course, children entered the room, dragging their feet, chatting with friends. There was no fixed place and yet each small group was heading to a specific point in the room. Some hurled towards the back of the room, others rushed to the front rows, and most chose a row, neither too far nor too close to the teacher. The hubbub subsided, without stopping altogether, when Philip Wanner started speaking.
“Silence, please. Thank you. We'll learn more about the Machine in our history lecture. With us today, Special Agent Baley, who will speak about the influence of the Machine these days, as a person having a special relationship with it. In case you're wondering, Special Agent Baley until recently was in charge of investigating the Problem. Following recent events, she, herself, is the subject of an investigation, hence the presence of these men in the room.”
Baley heard a tremor in his voice, a sign of his lack of conviction in his own explanation. She looked around the children, and realised that in reality the explanation did not draw anyone’s attention. She then wondered if the teacher had not overestimated the interest and observation abilities of his students. Philip Wanner began his lecture, and silence percolated in the room. As she remembered in her student years, the monotone associated with grim content always knocked her out. She focused all her attention on students, like other Special Agents. The majority of the young people seemed bored and pretended to listen, sometimes exchanging small words with their neighbours. A group at the back of the room caught her attention. She noticed that the Special Agent placed next to them also was watching. During the lecture, she spotted a dozen children who showed negative reactions.
Once the lecture was over and children left the room, Baley, the Special Agents and the teachers came together to share their observations. There followed a series of back-and-forths to find out if a particular child was likely to be anti-Machine. At first incredulous, the team of teachers had to face the obvious. Yes, there were anti-Machine thoughts among young people. And yes, there were such children in their school. They finally agreed on a list of fifteen children she memorised in her chip.
It took Baley and her team a week to barnstorm all Level 3 schools. Each time, based on the success of her first ‘tour,’ she requested that a history teacher deliver the lecture, a move that, in addition to releasing her of a painful, gave her the opportunity to focus exclusively on the observation of behaviour.
In all schools visited, she had a list of ten names, which seemed huge. In the roster, not all were necessarily in the anti-Machine movement, but still, all those were children who reacted negatively when they spoke of the Machine ... Before starting, she had imagined that the number of children would be more important in schools in the Periphery than in the Centre.
Yet it was not so; the proportion of students involved in relation to the overall population was much the same. That people of the Periphery, deprived of chips, might not understand all the benefits of the Machine, she could almost understand that — but how children with a chip reject the Machine? The conversation with Iris had shown her that possibility, but every fibre in Baley’s body rejected that idea.
When she finished, Baley transmitted to the Machine the final list with the names of children. She then asked It to initiate a surveillance instruction on each of them, to monitor them remotely, without arousing their suspicions. She regretted not being able to remove them from the City, too, as she had done for Chrijulam children. Even a temporary removal would have been perfect. It was, however, not possible, and she would have to live with a Machine surveillance only. The latter could know the location of each individual through his or her chip, acting as locating transmitter. For the people of the Periphery, It used a scan of the City through sensors placed on top of the Tower, which provided the location of individuals. The biometric values helped to associate each body detected with a name. Once she shared the data with the Machine, It sent her a map showing the position of each child. Baley highlighted different alerts. Knowing that suicide sites owed nothing to chance, she recorded an alarm that will trigger if more than one child in the list headed for a matching location. The second alert level would go off if children on the list positioned themselves on three circles. She hoped to have enough time between the first and second alarm to get to the scene before children would commit the irreparable ... It was a gamble. Very risky. A few minutes of defer could be fatal to some of these youngsters...
She set all Special Agents as recipients of alerts, to increase the probability that they reach the place on time. She only had to sit and wait for a trigger, which could happen anytime. In five minutes, in an hour, or in three days. This promised to test her nerves.
When Baley went home that evening and saw Lars there on the sofa, she realised she had had no discussion with her husband in ages. As usual, whenever she was on an investigation, everything else disappeared.
“Good evening, Lars, how are you?”
“Look! You here ! What a surprise ! I am doing okay; and you?”
“Deep inside my investigation, as you have seen ... I think I am holding the solution.”
“This means I'll see you even less often.”
“Lars, this is really important.”
“Yes, I know. I married an important woman.”
“You are full of irony...”
“A little. But what else could I do? It's my way to play down the situation. For me, but for you too.”
“If you say so…”
She sat next to him, smiling, and ate a bit from his plate.
“Hello, that's my dinner.”
“What's yours is mine …”
“Well then ! Come on, tell me. You know you have my full support. Even if it did not work, your action against Chrijulam was necessary, anyway.”
“What I do not understand is why the Machine has not conducted earlier an action against those crazies.”
“Who told you It had not? It may have acted to reduce the number of followers in this small number of people. So few individuals cannot affect the Equilibrium.”
“Perhaps, but these kids are completely left to absorbing absurd beliefs. Each is important. No one life is worth more than another is... it is a rule of the Space.”
“Hence my investigation ...”
“You investigate because children die, not because they are locked in a sect.”
“Yes ... the Machine only cares about lives to preserve, and the Equilibrium between each of them, it's true. It cannot prevent all forms of destruction that the human being is capable of inventing against himself or herself...”
“What about us? In what are locked up?”
“Huh?”
“Well, what are our gates, our illusions, how are we destroying ourselves?”
“Uh, Lars, are you sure, you are okay?”
“Last time, I thought you were going crazy with your conspiracy theory, the odd Pioneering Area, hardware changes ... but ultimately, why could that not be true? My mental barriers filter reality, to create my reality that I want to see.”
“Okay, but ... where did you get this talk about the mental barriers of reality? You sound like someone else.”
“I ... I don’t know; it came to me like that. I had found this component-modification question relevant, and suddenly it seemed uninteresting, and your conspiracy theory coming on top of it ... and like that, suddenly, it makes sense to me. So what do you think?”
Baley evaded the question, and changed the subject. She did not want to awaken the gaping part in her brain with such ideas. She even discussed a few minutes with Lars and saw with annoyance that this topic shift in the conversation had occurred a little later.
She thought about the discussion she had had with Iris. According to the latter, the Machine kept people under Its influence, voluntarily. There was also this thing about the trigger factory ... why were these children dying now? What about their sentences ... We must break the circles. The Equilibrium is the beginning and the end; the
re is no longer a middle. The Machine…
She let Lars continue the conversation, approving his remarks in a distracted manner. She sank into her thoughts. She was not asleep yet; the black hole in her brain was spreading, submerging her mind ... What had she missed?
Like any artificial intelligence, the Machine works with algorithms, which are finite sequences and unambiguous instructions. An algorithm is a way to describe in great detail how to do something.
The Legend of the Elders, the History of the Machine
Chapter 48
Cycle 1100 1010 0110 0000
With the Pioneering Area almost completed, the Machine began Its invasion of the Unique Forest. Even if the Machine could not currently cross it entirely, It could see beyond the edge of the trees. The main artery of the area ended a few steps from raw roots and the HFM network. Although the wiring stopped, issuers at its end were sending high-frequency waves that penetrated the first rows of plants. It had been able to see the hybrid that O. had sent over. He walked regularly in the Forest, approaching the Pioneering Area. The Machine did not know why he had not pushed his exploration further, why he had not come to the City, had not tried to contact the Machine. He must have had perfectly objective reasons, which It would find out later.
Such a being, no longer fully human, but not machine, would necessarily possess a rational decision-making scheme. For now, the Machine could only watch from a distance, and that was already a victory. Electronic ramifications of his limbs were fascinating, much more developed than the Machine’s human chips. Beyond visible marks on the skin, the artificial components grew in the body of the hybrid, using the metallic elements present in minute amounts in the blood. Each heartbeat provided the electronic network with raw elements that were necessary for its extension. The appearance was still human, but was bound to becoming more and more artificial in time ... what a beautiful population manipulation tool!
The Machine appreciated the true value of the sample sent, while thinking back about Its apprehension. When the hybridization process, as desired by O., would be completed, each individual would be a small mobile Machine. It still wondered what would be the impact on Itself. It was afraid It would become diluted in the thousands of small extensions. Fear was a poorly chosen word, a concept that It mistakenly used. It had simply calculated that the effects of such a comprehensive transformation of the population were incalculable. It had no time to lose to restart the calculations in this direction, as the result would be that there would be no result. It had to focus on this hybrid specimen, who was a person unable to complete his transformation, because he had not undergone the last surgery.
He was not a threat. On the contrary, he could be useful, and the Machine calculated the best option to use him. He was unfortunately under a Kandron’s control, a situation that made things more complex. The Machine wondered what made the hybrid find interest in such a creature. Perhaps, even if the probability was small, perhaps the hybrid was already helping the Machine. Indeed, the latter had promised several times to observe Kandrons in more detail, especially after It noticed their presence alongside Servants at the suicide scene. Perhaps had the hybrid decided to monitor the Kandrons, replacing the Machine, by creating a connection with one of them. The assumption was tempting. Nothing proved it, but there was no evidence to the contrary, either. Therefore, the Machine decided to keep it.
Although the equation on how to best use the hybrid became more complex with the presence of the animal, it was not unsolvable, either. The Machine devoted a subroutine that would run in parallel to the main instructions. It also created an instruction to verify Its hypothesis. Pending the results, It focused on Its remaining tasks.
The thread on the end of the young humans was still ongoing. According to Its Special Agent’s new hypothesis, they would commit suicide because they were anti-Machine. Specifically, they called into question the choices It made for their existence. The Special Agent thought that this rejection was shared not only by Chrijulam believers but also by children having nothing to do with the religion. She wondered how a significant number of children had been able to become Anti-Machine without the Machine noticing it.
Yet nothing escaped the Machine. Via Its various chips as well as sensors installed throughout the City, It had overseen the human population effectively for hundreds of generations. Moreover, humans were well aware that It was managing their lives to make it better; they knew all the benefits of having Its presence. So why? It had to find an answer to that inconsistent data. The instinct Baley had was quite reliable, though It did not understand the reasoning that had led to this hypothesis. It therefore considered that information, although discordant, as valid. It searched in Its database for more information, to find evidence of such ideas.
It detected a few conversations among teenagers, but had found no concrete correlated action. No impact on the data spiral. Moreover, young humans almost always went through a rebellious phase before entering the scheme It had planned for them. The different stages of rebellion had not become stronger than before.
Everything seemed consistent, and yet Baley was convinced of her hypothesis. It was still amazing. How could they dare question the Machine’s motives? In the list that the Special Agent had provided, there were some children without a chip. It was already incredible that they could have such ideas, given the conditioning that the Machine inculcated through their education as well as the education of their parents before them. More incredible still, how could chip-enabled, young humans even conceive such an idea? This was theoretically impossible.
It made a series of calculations to determine the origin of the problem. Multiple instances were established, the most likely of which was a failure in temporary chips of these youths. Therefore, the problem did not include the children living in the Periphery, but it was the only calculation resulting in a greater than 0.1% probability. It launched several analysis instructions to confirm or disprove its hypothesis.
The first instruction checked all chips for a possible malfunction. Perhaps the development of temporary chips, such as those children wore before reaching fourteen, had been neglected. The evaluation focused on both hardware and software. It realised destructive tests on just-manufactured chips, checking the strength of materials, the strength of welds, and launched programs to try to defeat the software. No problem was detected. The following algorithm focused on the factory. If defective humans, or maybe Servants, were sabotaging Its chips, It would know. It analysed the humans assigned to the plant, and the movements of Servants around. It also checked the facilities and equipment.
There was nothing conclusive, either. It finally asked the Machines of Spaces M. an evaluation of newly grafted chips, since It had given them the technology. 2M executed an in-depth audit both in manufacturing and in the functioning of operational chips. Index Servertransmitted the response. There, everything was going according to plan. Chip-enabled and cloned human youngsters succeeded in similar behaviour. As all humans did not yet have a chip, the desired result was not achieved, but the raw data was encouraging. The technology was not in question.
Given such results, H. decided to make another series of calculations, because of Its earliest must have been necessarily wrong. Algorithms operated by changing the baseline data one by one. The best chance was obtained by considering that the children were not anti-Machine but anti-Equilibrium. From generation to generation, It had taught young humans to believe in this notion, so they would not question the Machine. The Equilibrium meant salvation. Without the Equilibrium, human would gradually decline. So far, that message, coupled to the collective memory of the Elders, had worked as expected. In adolescence, humans often rebelled against It, but never against the Equilibrium.
The Machine had assessed that the probability of such an idea was infinitesimal. But not zero. It had perhaps underestimated the power of the human lack of logic. Based on Its probabilistic calculations, It had not programmed chips to have a reaction to an an
ti-Equilibrium idea, but only cop with an anti-Machine thought. That oversight could cost the Machine dearly, because Permanent Equilibrium was Its part of the Project.
It then evaluated, with Server Index’s help, that the probability of occurrence of an anti-Equilibrium movement in Its Space was 1,172% times higher than in other Spaces, precisely because It was in charge of this element of the Project. Had children so far felt something? Was the rejection of the Equilibrium stemming from the fact that children felt such Equilibrium expanding? Laws, the Machine’s laws, resonated endlessly.
The Equilibrium is the means and the end.
The Equilibrium dictates all action.
The Equilibrium is the master D.B
Nothing was to impede the development of the Equilibrium, the advent of its immutability. Without it, the Machine could never bind directly to the Others. It would never know their laws ... and even more. The Project had to come in fruition. What about these young humans ... could it be that they wanted to attract the attention of all humans on their rejection of the Equilibrium through their actions, as Baley conjectured? If that were the case, and no algorithm managed to dismantle the contrary, the Machine had to act now. It could not afford to wait for Baley to find a solution and eradicate this problem. However, all Its power of calculation was insufficient to find a solution; it was not for lack of trying.
The Machine decided to move the thread to Index Server along with the necessary processing means. Coupled to the capacities of the Others, the Server would find a solution faster. Full instructions and archives emptied out of the Machine’s main memory to join, in a millisecond, microprocessors dedicated to Index. Along with these data, It transferred fifteen microprocessors to the Server. It kept only a few lines of code so It could interface with Baley, as well as the memory of Its latest reports. As for the rest, the Machine started to forget about it already.