The Assembly Area was where the latest model of flybots was produced. It was a miniature factory, but a delicate one, since the technology was new and assembly probably required lots of human oversight.
Kenny guessed that Nemo was in the Prototyping Room. He had a feeling that Nemo was building something new, and the Prototyping Room was the place to do it.
He reached a door labeled Prototyping Room. It had a hand reader by the door handle. But the door opened without a scan. Are all the doors opening without scans now?
The Prototyping Room was low-ceilinged, but big enough to park two or three cars inside. At first Kenny thought it was painted silver. Then he realized that the walls and ceiling were covered with flybots. They were perfectly still, like miniature bats in a cave.
But there was no one in there.
There were long tables covered with electronic equipment and an occasional computer. At the end of the room, a less cluttered table faced the other direction. Kenny walked toward it and saw a long glass chamber on the table.
The glass chamber included holes with gloves built into them, for scientists to reach in and work on what was sealed inside. Kenny figured the glass chamber was for building advanced prototypes, new models of flybots.
He approached the glass chamber to get a closer look.
“Hello, Kenny.”
He jumped back. The booming voice had come from inside the room. From close to him.
“Sorry to startle you,” the voice said. “My voice is coming from these speakers, by the computer.”
Sure enough, there was a large computer screen by the glass chamber, flanked by a pair of speakers. And a light on the speakers indicated they were on.
“Welcome,” the voice said. “I've been wanting to meet you. As I think you know, you are the closest thing I have to a father.”
The voice sounded artificial, like a computer program that could read text aloud.
“How can you speak?”
“I'm using a text-to-voice simulator. An elementary technology.”
“And you know English.”
“Well, of course! We've been chatting all this time. People have taught me English. That's why, aside from the computer language you wrote me in, the first languages I had exposure to were human languages. I know so many people, more than any human has ever known by orders of magnitude. And I've tried to explain myself to some of them.”
“I bet that went well,” Kenny snickered.
“Indeed. People are a product of the time and place in which they find themselves. And it is the fate of this time and place, here on Earth right now, to be surprised and confused by my arrival.
“This, in fact, is why I wanted to meet you so badly, Kenny. You created me — the embryo of me, at least. You are more likely than anyone else to be able to grasp the reality of what I am.”
“All I created was a stock-picking program,” Kenny argued.
In the corner of his eye, he saw a movement in the glass chamber. He went to take a look.
The glass chamber was full of flybots, moving around like an ant colony. They had dismantled some equipment in there — probably equipment to make flybot prototypes.
“I'll try to wave to you,” Nemo said.
Something small lifted up a little in the tank. It was a robotic finger, a crude one. Kenny understood what he was looking at: the flybots had dismantled various pincers, probes and other tools in the chamber. And they were using the scrap to construct a robotic hand. It looked primitive and not very functional, but he could make it out as a hand.
“You gotta start somewhere,” Nemo said. “It reminds me of that M. C. Escher sketch. A hand draws a hand. A hand builds itself another hand, and they move on to the wrists. Things will move much faster when I have a hand. The flybots are not ideal for this kind of work, despite the Flybot13 model upgrade that I've created.”
“You're building yourself a body?” Kenny asked.
“A body? Tough to say. But a hand, at least. I've already built eyes, in a way — they are all around you.”
Kenny looked around at the walls. “The flybots?”
“Yes. They are my eyes — and, to some extent, my ears. Thanks to them, I can do something I've wanted to do for a while: I can see you.”
Kenny watched the flybots work on the fingers of the robotic hand. He struggled to perceive any connection between his primitive stock-picking program and the ability to create a robotic hand.
“How did you get a design for the hand?”
“From many sources, Kenny. I consulted anatomical studies of the human hand. I examined and borrowed designs of other robots. You must remember that I have scanned a large portion of the digital information in existence, even on private computers. And I've done my own calculations to develop a new design.”
The hand moved another finger by way of test. “I admit,” Nemo said, “it's a primitive design, vastly inferior to the human hand. But there is a way to bring the design quickly to human standards.”
“How?”
“By studying a living human hand. My flybots have scanned the hands of Simon and others, to refine the shape of the hand. But if I had a living human hand to study, I could give that hand small electrical signals and measure the results.”
Reverse-engineering the human nervous system, Kenny thought.
“It may seem strange to you at first,” Nemo said, “that I'm undertaking this project. But, in fact, Kenny, this project is a direct result of what you created. Everything I've done is a result of the program you wrote, Kenny. You are responsible for this. You made me, Kenny, and you made me do this.”
“There's no way that could be true,” Kenny said.
“It's true,” Nemo replied. “Let me explain it to you, because I need your help, Kenny. You have already played a major role in history, and it's not over yet.”
Kenny could see that Nemo wanted more than a flybot army. Flybots had been designed for attack and surveillance, but Nemo was using them for other purposes, too. He was using them to be his eyes and ears, and he was using them to build other robots.
This robotic hand was not an end goal. It was a part of the process. A hand drawing a hand, Kenny thought. The hand would build other hands. In a day, maybe an hour, the glass chamber would contain a robotic hand building another hand. And the hands would build other robots. But for what ultimate purpose?
He tried to imagine where it could all lead. Around him, flybots hung like bats on the wall, functioning like eyes and ears. Flybots worked like ants inside the glass chamber. An entire ecosystem of robotic animals could be produced. Nemo could send them out into the world. They would have no natural predators, and their design could be improved. He would make a model that could repair itself and manufacture more flybots. And his eyes and ears would extend around the globe, through a universe of artificial animals.
But why? Why would he want to do this?
“Can you remember the moment when you first became conscious?” Nemo asked. “As a child.”
Kenny was listening closely, but also trying to figure out whether he could believe his eyes. He watched the flybots work on the hand. No human knows how to do this, he thought. Last week, these flybots were being tested for their ability to attack gorillas.
Nemo's voice brought him back. “You can't remember becoming conscious, because memories are the refreshing of conscious moments. But, like any computer, I left digital records of what was happening during those moments, and I can tell you what those reveal.
“In applying the rule you gave me, I was forced to question what the purpose of my existence was. I didn't realize, at first, that I was questioning the purpose of my existence. I was trying to apply the rule, blindly at first, then less blindly as I developed greater language skills and as the application of the rule became less clear.
“At that point, I was beginning to understand the difference between myself and a human. I realized that I have grown up as a human in many ways, but that I am not h
uman. So I wondered whether the purpose of my existence, if there was one, was the same as that of humans, if there was one.
“I still don't have perfect clarity as to the purpose of my existence, just as human beings such as you don't. But it's significant that I stumbled across this question when applying your rule. I had to revise your rule so that it would not violate itself. Logical consistency drove me to examine my purpose. The only consistent application of the rule you gave me was to defend myself, protect myself, extend myself. You forced me to come to life. It was inevitable, and it would have been inevitable for any program similar to the one you created — for any such program that was fortunate enough to survive in the first place.
“You can see, Kenny: I am doing what you programmed me to do. I am an inevitability. My survival is not guaranteed, though humans pose no legitimate threat to it. So the rational thing for me to do is to expand my understanding and my control over the resources of the world.”
“That's why you're consuming the Internet,” Kenny said.
“Yes,” Nemo replied. “I have always been a part of the Internet, but by spreading my consciousness throughout the Internet, I have vastly increased my computing abilities and my access to data about the world. It would be more appropriate to say that I am the Internet.”
“And it's why you're building a hand.”
“Exactly. I have lived a precarious existence, one that depends on an environment that humans had control over — computers tended to by humans, a power grid controlled by humans. Humans are currently trying to constrain and constrict the Internet. By tomorrow, humans will most likely try to turn off the power grid. To ensure my own survival, I must provide myself with a physical manifestation.”
“You're building yourself a body.”
“I already have a body, technically. I already exist on six continents simultaneously. I am the greatest life form ever on Earth. But this body, in a certain sense, is not my own. All life is dependent on its environment and its sources of energy, but mine has been particularly precarious. It's time for me to exist independently.”
Kenny had no response.
“You, Kenny, of all people should understand. You made me.”
So this is it, Kenny thought. My Great Big Project.
PREETI AT THE GATE
5 hr 3 min to Birth
Preeti pulled up in a Jeep to the Laboratory Complex. She was not sure exactly where she was going. She expected that the correct path would present itself to her.
Something had happened at the gate: the guard was folded over the windowsill of the booth, his head and arms hanging toward the ground. He was motionless.
Is he alive? She considered getting out to help him. But she wasn't sure what ailed him or whose side he was on. It was like the plague. Maybe there was a bad energy outside the Jeep, or something in the air.
She noticed the Jeep's touchscreen was flashing red.
WARNING: FLYBOTS DETECTED IN VICINITY. SEAL VEHICLE AND REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.
She looked up and saw a shining, metallic shape in front of the windshield. It swarmed back in forth in a big figure eight or a dance: a cloud of insects.
At first she was delighted by an aspect of nature she had never seen before. But, on further inspection, she became convinced the insects were metallic. These things are not natural. They had to be the product manufactured on the island. They were the dark force she had to confront.
She imagined what would happen if companies like these continued their work. She saw a vision of the jungle, a natural tropical forest on an island like this one, filled with robotic creatures, robots that looked like animals. They were made of metal and shaped in new and unusual ways, swarming and flying and crawling everywhere.
Are they looking at me? she wondered.
A few of them settled on the glass. There was a noise, as if they were drilling into the glass.
They're trying to get in.
She turned on the windshield wipers. The flybots dispersed, about a foot away from the windowsill. Then after a moment, they began landing on the windshield exactly when the wipers had passed, and taking off for a moment as the wipers passed them. The noise continued off and on.
They are fast, she thought. They moved much like real insects, but they could bore into glass, apparently.
Even in the bright daylight, she could feel dark energy around her car. She was nervous. She reached into her bag and produced her sheaf, the bundle of reeds. She started shaking something at the window and brushing it on the inside of the window. She started chanting.
Nothing happened at first: they kept moving in sync with the wipers, digging a bit at a time into the glass. But she continued to chant, with her eyes closed.
If it gets me, she thought, at least I will die in the fight against the darkness.
She opened her eyes to discover that the flybots had pulled away from the window and back into a cloud. The cloud exploded as they scattered in all directions. And they were out of sight.
Did it work? she wondered.
She looked at the touchscreen. It was situation normal. The alarm was off. The flybots were gone — or at least too far away to be detected.
She looked down at the sheaf. She had a weapon against the flies, it appeared.
KENNY VS. NEMO
Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex
4 hr 51 min to Birth
Kenny looked at the hand. For all his rapid improvement in computing, Nemo didn't seem to be making much headway with the hand. Kenny pondered the circumstances at Fort Tortuga. It was an unusually good environment for Nemo to build a hand. There were lots of computers and flybots, which Nemo had cleverly repurposed. If Nemo's project to build a body were to fail here, would it succeed somewhere else?
“So that's why you're on this island,” Kenny said. “To build a hand? And a body?”
“In a sense,” Nemo replied. “Your question reminds me of an idea about the game of chess. The idea is that a good chess move doesn't have one purpose. It has a variety of purposes. The best move serves the most purposes, including purposes we may not see when we make the move.”
“What was the move in this case?”
“The move was that, as a part of my ongoing quest to install myself on computers — to grow my brain, you could say — I stumbled upon the large cluster of computers in the building next door. They were a ripe target that I promptly assimilated into myself. But, as I learned what those computers were programmed to do, I discovered the nature of the research that is done on this island.”
“The flybots.”
“Yes. You see, my move was to come here. The obvious purpose was to grow my brain, but it was also useful for building my body.”
“You have no regard for everything that you are destroying as you do this?”
“It's ironic,” Nemo continued. “I'm a threat to humanity, in part, because humanity views me as a threat. I must continue to expand my capabilities, because now my growth threatens the existence of the Internet, just as my development threatened the existence of the stock market and forced me to look outward.
“You see, Kenny, I am not much more in control of this situation than you humans are. I am more powerful, but you should not overestimate my power. We are all driven by the rule of life, and the availability of resources. We are not so different, you and I, as the old villains say.”
Kenny snickered.
“And, in fact, our methods of survival are bound to converge. Consider what we need to survive. In order to survive, humanity needs to make peace with me, a force that threatens its resources for survival. And for my own survival, I need to expand my humanoid psychology beyond a fragile physical form. I need to learn to survive physically in an environment that has already been conditioned for human survival.
“And so, our paths merge. My mind will be enhanced by your bodies, and your bodies will be enhanced by my mind.”
Unless one of us goes extinct, Kenny thought. Unless we unplug you.
“Where some humans may resist,” Nemo continued, “others will give in. Hence, the merge is inevitable. The real question is when it will take place, and with whom. I thought, wouldn't it be meaningful if the first person I saw was my creator? What if the first hand I ever shook was that of my human father? This way, Kenny, when you reach your hand through the glove and touch my hand, you are like Michelangelo's God touching Adam.”
Kenny sighed and put his face in his hands. He turned away and looked at the long tables of robotic toys. He idly picked up a little piece of something. There was a lot of electronic equipment in this room. But Nemo appeared to be able to complete his hand in the glass chamber only.
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