by James Wilks
“Oh, the old ‘what if’ argument. You say ‘what if it’s evil.’ I say ‘what if it’s good?’ Imagine the problems it could solve, the technology it could create, the diseases it could cure.”
“Why should it give a crap about us? It’s not like it’ll be human.”
Park gestured at the table with his index finger as he spoke. “But if we teach it to be good.”
Templeton guffawed. “Teach it?” He asked incredulously. “It’s a damn machine. Do you know how naïve you sound? You’re gonna teach it right from wrong? Who says it’ll even acknowledge those concepts? I’m not even sure I acknowledge those concepts. And if it’s really AI, then won’t it get to choose what to do with its lessons like any other intelligent person?”
Suddenly John seemed to be on the defensive. “Well, it would have to be monitored, safeguarded, have a kill switch, that sort of thing.”
Templeton leaned forward, savoring the moment. “‘Anything that can be invented can be circumvented.’”
John rolled his eyes. “Okay, yeah, but this would be different.”
“How so?”
“Well, the scientists who are programming the AI would have total control; they could monitor programming, brain functions if you will, and if things stray into the danger zone, they flip the switch.”
“I’m afraid,” Staples interjected, putting her spoon down, “that this opens up an entirely new can of worms. You’re talking about terminating a sentient intelligence because you don’t like what it’s thinking. Once you’ve created life, do you have the right to destroy it?”
John and Templeton looked at her. “Well, it’s not life,” Templeton answered. “It’s just programmed to act like it.”
“Can you prove the difference, Don? A Turing Compliant computer is indistinguishable from a human being. That’s what Turing Compliant means. The problem isn’t how do we create artificially intelligent life. The question is: what do we do with it once we have?” She placed both of her hands on the table, one over the other, and looked back and forth to the two men as she spoke.
“What you use AI for?” Piotr’s heavily accented voice came from the end of the table, startling them. They had nearly forgotten he was there.
John, still championing his cause, replied, “Whatever else you use a computer for, but better. Imagine a computer able to make decisions, weigh moral consequences, on a battlefield. It could stop the loss of human life.”
“Great. Then there’d be no reason not to go to war,” Staples muttered.
“Okay, bad example. Imagine a self-aware machine performing surgery, or exploring outer space, or babysitting your children, or… I don’t know, running a space station. This whole journey we’re taking could be avoided; instead of having to fly highly trained specialists to the far side of Saturn, which is, I’ve heard, not a really fun to place to live, we could just transmit a computer program or launch a computer out there, and… done!”
“Nice job, John,” Templeton said smugly. “You just talked yourself out of a job. See you at the unemployment office.”
“Look, I’m not talking about replacing people, just about the possibility of us growing as a species with the help of a new tool, the way we always have,” John replied. It was becoming clear to Staples that his theoretical points outstripped his ideas about practical application.
“I have question.” Piotr’s deep voice came again from the end of the table. “What if AI doesn’t want to be explorer, or babysitter, or tool?”
Staples nodded in agreement. “In many ways, that’s the crux of the matter. Most people are concentrating on all the bad things that could happen if full AI research gets the go-ahead and it goes bad. The truth is, some kids go bad too. We don’t stop having children because they might turn out to be serial killers or thieves. The real problem here is rights. If you’re going to create sentient life…” Templeton looked at her in objection. “… fine, just call it sentience. If you’re going to create sentience, truly self-aware machines, then you have to grant them the same rights you grant every other person. Life, liberty, all of that. If you don’t, it’s slavery, a very ugly thing that we’ve worked very hard to stamp out as a species.”
“But if you program them to do a certain job…” Park ventured.
She looked at him. “Does Gwen always do what you ask her to?” She didn’t bother to wait for an answer before continuing. “Does every child raised in a given religion choose to follow that religion in their adult years? The essence of sentience is choice. We are currently the only sentient species that we know of. Plenty of animals will die to defend their homes, or their young, or their mates, but we’re the only ones that will die to defend an ideal. The rational part of our brain can suppress the animalistic part, our survival instinct… our programming, if you will. We can choose to ignore millions of years of evolutionary programming. You have to grant that if we create a sentient machine, it will have that choice as well. If it doesn’t, then we haven’t created sentience. When you’re talking about inventing AI, you’re talking about inventing another species, and as someone pointed out to me recently, we’re not very good at sharing the spotlight.”
The two men mused on this for a minute. Templeton finally spoke up. “So I don’t get it. Are you for or against the AI research bill?”
“Oh, I’m against it,” she replied without hesitation. “I don’t think we should pursue AI at this point.” Templeton smiled in triumph and John frowned. “But not because I’m afraid of what they would do to us. I’m afraid of what we would do to them.” And with that, she stood up, dropped her spoon in the sink, placed her cup in the recycler, and went back to Thomas Kyd.
Day nine.
In the captain’s chair of the cockpit, Clea Staples was brooding. Charis sat at her astrogation console. To her right sat Bethany, though as usual, the back of the pilot’s chair hid her from view. To Bethany’s right sat Yegor, and he was looking expectantly at his captain. Staples’ short blonde hair was pinned down with her barrettes in anticipation of weightlessness, and her slightly cleft chin sat in the palm of her hand, her elbow resting on the armrest of the chair. She wasn’t happy.
“Are you absolutely sure we haven’t received any personal transmissions from Mars since we’ve left, Yegor?” Staples inquired, though she knew the answer already.
“Afraid not, Captain. I checked the log three times. No message from Jordan Fecks, no message from anyone for you, or for anyone for that matter.” Yegor continued to regard her, and she continued to gaze through the window at nothing in particular.
She tapped the fingers of her other hand several times, as if she were expecting the message to come through any minute. Finally, she spoke. “Okay. If I were going to hear from her, I would have heard by now. We’re due to stop thrusting and to drift for a few days in zero G. It’s as good a time as any to go dark. I assume the lack of gravity will be a help and not a hindrance to your work?”
“Da, Kapitan. Some components of the coms system are heavy. It’s easier to get the new coms suite around the ship in zero G too. Besides, I’m used to working in zero G from my days with GTS.” Yegor sounded rather like a child eager for a new toy.
“And there is no way to install the new suite without losing both coms and local radar?”
Yegor shook his head. “Sorry, Captain. We’ll still be able to use our watches and shipboard coms, but nothing outside the ship will work.”
“That’s all right. It’s not like anyone is talking to us anyway.” She sighed and looked out the window at the stars again. “And it’s not like there’s anything out here to see either. Let’s prep to cut thrust and then make our turn. We’ll resume thrust in… how long, Charis?”
Charis’ fingers ran over her controls, and then she looked up. “We should start deceleration at point six G in three days. Best window is to start between ten and eleven. That should put us at the same orbital speed and altitude as Cronos Station in twelve days. With any luck, we can doc
k in time for dinner.”
Day eleven.
Staples floated down two decks in the elevator. It was always an odd sensation, feeling the metal box move around her. If she hadn’t tucked her toes under a conveniently placed strap, she would have found herself pressed to the ceiling. Once out, she pushed herself with the various grab-bars situated in the hallway to the closed door of the ReC. Upon reaching it, she reoriented herself, taking hold of one of the nearby wall-mounted bars, turned the latch, and opened the heavy metal door. It swung open on well-oiled hinges, and the captain expertly slipped inside and used the wall as leverage to pull and secure the hatch behind her. Dinah was standing, more or less, at one of the control panels situated under the glass windows that overlooked the reactor, her feet wedged under the currently extended brace bars to keep her from floating away. She had a steadying hand on the control panel and was turned half around to regard her visitor. As was her custom, Dinah was wearing a grey tank top, dirty cargo pants, and leather combat boots. One eyebrow was arched in expectation.
“Welcome to the ReC, sir,” she said. It was clear from her body language that she would prefer to continue with her work, but a well-instilled sense of protocol kept her facing her employer.
“Hello, Dinah. Please,” she gestured at the panel, “continue. I wanted to see how things are with the engines.”
Dinah turned her back to her, monitoring numbers on the surface built into the console and making minor adjustments to various sliders and knobs as the information in front of her changed. “You could just read my reports, sir.”
“You know you are the only person on this ship who writes me reports, don’t you?” Staples asked. She pushed off from the wall and drifted over to a neighboring control panel, not too close to the engineer, and looked down through the window. “Everybody else just comes to talk to me in person.”
Dinah replied without looking up from her work. “Would you like me to deliver my reports in person, sir?”
Staples shook her head and a few stray blonde hairs waved back and forth as she did so. She considered, not for the first time, the other woman’s choice in hairstyles. “No, I want you to do it your way. But since I’m here, why don’t you tell me anyway?”
Dinah let out a breath that might have been a sigh, gathered her thoughts, and then spoke. “We thrust consistently for seven days between Earth and Mars, including a fairly large strain when we went up to three Gs for a few hours. We didn’t have time to do anything but the most cursory of maintenance checks on Mars.” There was a pause as she entered some data. “Then we were under thrust for another nine days. The engines, the reactor, they’re rated for it, but then this ship isn’t brand new either. So now that we’re drifting for three days, I’m taking all of the reactor chambers but one offline to run diagnostics. There’s not enough time to clean them all, but three is a bit dirty, so John and I will be doing a wipe tomorrow before we begin thrust again.”
“I appreciate that. I also think you’re being overly cautious. We’ve been under thrust, more or less constantly, for over a month at a time without going through all that.”
“Better safe than sorry, sir.”
“You could take the evening off,” she ventured. “It’s dinner shift now, but we’ve got a movie night planned in the mess hall.” She regarded the woman as she spoke. Her face made her glad she wasn’t inviting her to poker night.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll consider it.” There was still no eye contact.
A few moments passed while Dinah continued to work. Finally, Staples said, “Dinah.” She did so in such a way to cause the engineer to look up at her. “What are you doing here?”
Dinah gestured back at her console. “As I said, sir, I am running a diagnostic on the reaction chambers and prepping them for…”
Staples interrupted her. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re one of the most talented engineers I’ve ever seen or heard of. You handled that dust up over the satellite masterfully. You’re a creative problem solver, a hard worker, and you’ve gotten us out of more than a few scrapes over the past two years.” The captain did not expect her deluge of compliments to move the woman any more than her invite to movie night had, and she was not disappointed, but that was not her intention. She pressed on. “You could easily land a larger commission on another ship. We both know I can’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.”
Dinah finally did her the honor of pausing in her work and looking her full in the face. “Money is not the only reason people do things, sir. In fact, in my experience, it is one of the worst reasons people do things.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The drive for profit has brought about some amazing inventions. We are currently living on one of them. Space ships are freedom incarnate, but they didn’t give this one to me for free.”
“Space ships,” Dinah mused. “You can add to that list of profit-based inventions weapons, slavery, subjugation of the poor, armed occupations, and exploitation of countries. Shall I continue, sir?” She became more heated as she spoke, and it was clear to Staples that she had stepped into something she had not intended.
“Fair points all.” She attempted to backpedal a bit. “Some would say that money is not evil; it’s what people do with it that defines them.”
“Mostly rich people say that. Are you trying to fire me, sir?” Dinah raised her eyebrows.
Staples tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Certainly not. But I was in business long enough to know that when I’ve got an asset that I can’t afford, I should be planning to be without it sooner rather than later.”
“And what business was that, sir?” Dinah was looking back at her panel, but she wasn’t working. It was surprising to hear her ask a personal question, but Staples guessed she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Few of the crew knew what she had done before buying a space ship and heading out to Sol space, though she knew that they conjectured and traded rumors.
“Sorry, with what battalion did you say you served, Ms. Hazra?” Staples countered. Her tone was playful, but she knew that she was treading on shaky ground.
There was a moment of flat silence, and then the engineer grunted. “You don’t have to worry about me, sir. I’m not planning on going anywhere. If you want an answer as to why, then I’ll say this: you don’t care about money either, and that’s more than I can say about anyone else who ever gave me orders.” She resumed her work.
Staples looked taken aback. “You don’t think I care about money?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Then what do you think I care about?” she asked, quite curious for the answer.
“If you’re going to compound chief engineer and tactical officer with duties as a psychologist, sir, I really may ask for a raise.”
Staples smiled broadly. “I guess I asked for that. Whatever I’m doing right, I am glad to hear it keeps you here. Everyone on this ship is better for it. Maybe we can bear our souls and pasts to each other some other time.”
“I’ll look forward to that, sir.” The ironic tone of her reply was uncharacteristically devoid of equivocation.
The captain pushed off from the control panel back to the door and let herself out of the ReC. She glided along the corridor, correcting herself with little pushes here and there, and turned right at the next junction. As she reached the hull of the ship, she kicked herself left again and began the push to the elevator that would carry her up to deck two and the mess hall beyond. She drifted past a porthole, and a hole in the stars caught her eye. She turned her head to look, but she was already past the window. She halted at the next one, grabbing on with her hands as her legs swung past her, and gazed out. There were no stars. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust and her brain another second to process what she was seeing: another ship, painted jet black, right next to hers.
Chapter 8
There was only one type of crew that Staples knew of that would paint their ship black. She keyed her watch for simultaneous shipwide
broadcast and nearly yelled into it.
“Pirates!” Her voice rung out from the speakers and reverberated through the hall. “Pirates starboard side! Security teams arm up, senior staff to the cockpit, everyone else get in your quarters and stay there.” She took a precious second to rekey her watch to the cockpit coms alone. “Bethany, evasive action! Pull us away port side.” Without waiting for a reply, she began pushing herself down the hallway as fast as she dared. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dark shape grow even more in the portholes she passed. She wondered for a second how the hell they had managed to pull right up alongside Gringolet without them knowing when she suddenly remembered Yegor’s maintenance. She cursed loudly.
As she reached the elevator, a voice came through the speaker of her watch. It was Yegor’s. “No one’s here but me, Captain. Everyone went to dinner.” He sounded panicked and upset.
“Dammit,” she swore again as she maneuvered herself into the elevator. “Okay, Bethany and the others will be on the way. Can you pull the ship away?” She jammed her finger on the button for the appropriate deck and held it there impatiently. The elevator doors lazily slid closed.
“I don’t think… I used to fly small ships, Captain. I don’t know…”
“Try!” Staples shouted. Suddenly there was a jarring thunk that she felt in her bones. The entire ship seemed to shake for a moment around her. Fortunately, the elevator mechanism continued to rise smoothly. “Okay, Yegor? Don’t touch the controls. Either they’re throwing things at us, or they’ve just made a magnetic junction, probably with a boarding tube. If you pull away now, you’re likely to rip a hole in the side of the ship.”