CAPACITY a-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  He moved on to the next question on his list. “Okay, do you remember why you were placed here?”

  “Oh yes,” the pod said. “River reclamation project. I can see the plans laid out right here. Get rid of the silt in this delta and you’ve got the ideal location for a city port. This planet is intended to be an Earth model, you know: an example of Earth life and culture spread out to be seen by whatever may lie out there in that galaxy. In M32.”

  It gave a rueful sigh. “Look at this. I don’t know what happened to my former self, but I seem to have been very premature in my terraforming process. I shouldn’t have released the grass seed yet.”

  Justinian yawned and waved to the baby again. Leslie was pointing over in his direction, trying to get the boy to see his father.

  “These little black boxes,” said the pod. “I don’t remember them. Did we find them somewhere in space?”

  Justinian eyed the boxes on the mud right in front of the pod. They had all shifted their positions, if indeed they were even the same cubes that had lain there when he first arrived. As all Schrödinger boxes looked identical, there was no way of really telling how far they traveled as they wandered the surface of this planet. Was the cube that was by your left foot the same one that had been by your right foot when you looked down a moment earlier, or was it another one entirely? The question had seemed fascinating three weeks ago when he had first come here-but no longer. It was amazing how quickly the cubes had become commonplace.

  Justinian shook his head. “No, the Schrödinger boxes only exist here on Gateway.”

  “I wonder what they are,” the pod said in a soft voice.

  “I’m sure we’ll find out,” Justinian replied, rubbing his hands together briskly. “Well, that’s just about everything. I’d like to thank you for your help.”

  There were three more questions left on the list. Justinian didn’t even need to check his console to see what they were; he knew them by heart. Do you want to come with me or stay here? It would choose to stay. For a terraform pod, the place they were located would always seem like home. Have you been in contact with any other of the AIs since the suicide, and do you want to be put in contact with them if not? It would answer no to both questions. Can you remember anything else from before the suicide? It would say no to that.

  And then Justinian could get back on the flier. He wobbled his hand in a drink gesture over towards Leslie. Naturally, the robot didn’t see it; it was already walking back into the ship. Justinian yawned again. Time to wrap things up.

  “Now,” he said in a businesslike fashion. “I can take you back with me, or would you rather stay here?”

  “I’ll stay here, thank you.”

  “Fine. Have you been in contact with any of the other AIs since the suicide?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to be put in contact with them?”

  “No. What would I have to say to them?”

  “No problem. If you change your mind, let us know. I’m leaving a pulse transmitter here just in case.” He threw the heavy yellow egg shape down into the mud by the base of the pod. “Finally, can you remember anything else significant from before the suicide?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay, then. Well, I’ll be getting back to the flier. Remember, if you ever want to speak to us, just use the pulse trans…”

  Justinian’s words trailed away. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, hear a pounding in his ears. What had the pod just said? Every other pod had answered no…

  As he stared at the pod, silver light shone all around, reflecting from the water. White grass seed rolled in the red mud.

  The pod spoke haltingly. “Listen, before you go, maybe you should know…”

  It paused. It seemed unsure if it was doing the right thing.

  “What is it?” Justinian asked, hardly daring to breathe. This had never happened before. The blurred shape of Leslie appeared on the ramp. It was looking over in the pod’s direction. Listening.

  “Well, I don’t know if this is important,” said the pod hesitantly, “but…there are some irregularities in the setup of this pod that may be of interest to you.”

  “Irregularities?” Justinian licked his lips. “What irregularities?”

  The pod hesitated again. “I’m not sure that I should tell you.”

  Justinian licked his lips again. “Why not?” The pounding in his ears was increasing. The first clue since he had arrived on this planet, and it was threatening to slip from his grasp. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Think about it logically, Justinian. If my former self had wanted me to know why it reduced itself so drastically, it surely would have told me. It didn’t, and so we must assume there is a reason for that. And don’t you think we ought to trust an intelligence far greater than our own?”

  “I don’t know. Should we?”

  Justinian felt as if he was at the top of a huge building, tiptoeing along the ledge, looking down at the street far below. He could feel the drop, sucking him over. Watcher, don’t let me fall, he thought.

  “Surely I could decide if the information is valid…” he suggested.

  The pod laughed. “Come on, Justinian. Humans have allowed AIs to guide their actions for the past two hundred years. You can’t wrest back responsibility now just because it suits you. I really do wonder if I should tell you-”

  Justinian forced himself to wave a dismissive hand. “Oh, I don’t care. I’m cold and tired; I’m going back to the flier. I need a hot drink…”

  He knew that was a mistake as soon as he did it. The pod could read his personality too well to fall for such a playground trick.

  “Don’t try to bluff me,” it said scornfully. “Look, think about this: if I can see clues, maybe the other AI pods you have spoken to have also seen the same clues. Do you think that is possible? Yes, you do. I read it in your body language. I can read your pulse and the electrical patterns in your brain.”

  Justinian cursed himself again. Once more he had allowed himself to be misled. These pods acted like children, but they weren’t.

  The pod continued to speak. “And if those pods have seen the same clues, which it seems reasonable to assume, why didn’t they tell you?”

  Justinian didn’t know. Then an idea occurred to him.

  “Good point. But none of them mentioned the fact that they knew anything. The fact that you have suggests that you may think differently. Why would that be?”

  The pod was silent. The sun was now well clear of the horizon. The water that slurped and sucked around the base of Justinian’s mud bank had turned a rather pretty shade of turquoise. As the silence stretched out, Justinian felt his heart racing. What else could he say? And then, at last, the pod spoke.

  “You’re right. I’m confused. My original intelligence destroyed itself before this pod had grown a full sense array. Most of the long-distance senses are barely formed, hence, I suppose, the necessity for your visit here to be made in person. However, one of the deep-radar arrays is fully formed, and I can see no reason for that to be. It is pointing in the direction that I have just relayed to your flier’s TM.”

  “Thank you,” Justinian said, smiling.

  “Just a moment. You’re too impatient, Justinian. I have to ask myself, why did my former intelligence grow this deep radar and nothing else? It must have wanted me to notice it, even though it knew I would be able to do nothing with it.”

  “Okay,” said Justinian. “Do you know why it’s there?”

  “No! That’s what I’m saying. Listen, the deep-radar array is a physical device. There are a few kilobytes of data left inside it.”

  “Okay…?”

  Another pause.

  “I’m not sure that you will like what the data represents.”

  Justinian frowned. The sun was rising higher and the day was promising to be a good one. If one could ignore the foul smell of the mud, there was a certain bleak freshness to the scene before him: red mud
and turquoise water spreading out in lazy curls to the horizon. He had just had his first lead after three weeks on this bizarre planet. Why did the pod have to spoil it with such a roundabout way of speaking?

  Justinian replied in the most uninterested tone he could manage. “Pod, I can assure you, I don’t care what the data represents. I just want to find out what happened here and then get off this planet.”

  A silence seemed to stretch on and on in the glittering morning, and then-finally-the pod spoke.

  “At first I thought it was just a random array of bytes, but then I noticed that when arranged in a grid they offered an old-fashioned way of representing images: a 2-D picture format. A bitmap.”

  “Fine. So the deep-radar array contains a picture. Of what?”

  The pod gave a passable rendition of an embarrassed cough.

  “Of you,” it said.

  The Atomic Judy 1: 2240

  Morning rose over the old DIANA complex to the sound of birdsong. They were walking hand in hand through the grounds when Kevin saw the cat.

  “Look, Bairn,” he said, pulling her down to a crouch beside him. She leaned close, feeling safe to be so close to his strong, gentle body. He had this power over women, she knew it. She had seen him use it, time and time again, all through the virtual worlds.

  A young blackbird lay in the dust of the path, wings stretched outwards for warmth. The cat was nothing more than a suggestion of a shape amongst the shrubs that had taken root in the still growing, smoke-blackened ruins. Its yellow eyes fixed on the bird.

  Bairn bit her lip and looked from the cat to Kevin.

  “Oh, Kevin, can’t you stop it?” she whispered, knowing the answer even as she spoke.

  Kevin tightened his big hand around hers. “You know the answer to that, Bairn. If I save this little bird, the cat will only find another creature to kill. It’s hungry. It needs to eat. Just look around you.” He waved his hand around to indicate the black stumps of buildings, the new VNM growth bursting forth from the tops of the broken walls, like teeth from gums. “DIANA is dead as a commercial organization, but something is born anew. Life springs forth from death.”

  Bairn shook her head. “The cat doesn’t have to eat meat. It could be fed a vegan diet. It wouldn’t know the difference.”

  Kevin gently patted her hand. “It’s feral, Bairn. Look at it. Am I to spend my time rescuing birds until this cat dies of starvation?”

  As he spoke the cat pounced, one tabby paw pushing the bird’s head down onto the ground, the other slicing through feathers to the flesh underneath in one fluid movement. There was a brief fluttering, then, stillness.

  Bairn looked away, and Kevin continued in his deep, matter-of-fact voice. The terms he used were anachronisms. “It’s basic economics, Bairn. Where there is limited supply, a decision has to be made on how resources are to be distributed. Sometimes that decision must be to simply let nature take its course.”

  Bairn stood up, a pale morning sky showing above the blackened edges of the living building around her. She felt sick.

  “Food is not in limited supply,” she said.

  Kevin smiled tolerantly up at her and then slowly, deliberately, rose up so that he towered over her. He looked down into her eyes; there was an edge of amusement to the low rumble of his voice.

  “I wasn’t talking about food. I was talking about lifestyle.”

  He paused, glanced down at the console on his wrist.

  “Ah, and speaking of lifestyles, I see that our black-and-white friend has located yet another of our lifestyle zones.”

  Bairn looked at Kevin questioningly. “She seems to pop up everywhere lately,” she said carefully.

  Kevin smiled. “True, true-still, the processing space she has so rudely invaded is now sealed off completely. It is being shut down even as we speak. In five minutes time may well have reduced our Judy problem by ninety percent.” He brushed a black strand of hair from Bairn’s brow. “That could turn out to be a shame, really.”

  The EA ran several public processing spaces that supposedly replicated atomic space exactly. Those who still spoke out for digital rights claimed that this was a subtle form of discrimination. There was only one atomic world, and its uniqueness placed it in a favored position. Those who inhabited it could claim they were unique themselves, that their digital copies were therefore in some way inferior. It was a view that the atomic Judy secretly subscribed to. Well, it wasn’t much of a secret, not when she and the twelve digital Judys shared the same memories up to the point of their separation into the digital world.

  Out in the unique world of atoms, the atomic Judy dreamed that her bedroom was falling towards Earth. The first bright flicker of plasma haze could be seen through the window and, in her dream, she realized with heart-pounding horror that somehow she had got her dates wrong and had stayed on in the apartment a night too long. The floor was vibrating as the room slowly spun, and through the window she saw the rest of the Shawl apparently rotating as it receded into the distance.

  Someone was calling to her. “Judy, wake up! We’ve got trouble.”

  The voice was coming from her console. Judy rolled across the low bed and picked it up from the floor. She puffed a dose of something to wake her quickly.

  “What is it, Frances?”

  The lights slowly came up to brightness in her room. The console showed that Frances was waiting in her lounge.

  “Thirty-seven minutes ago one of the EA’s monitoring AIs noticed a ship sending a diminishing narrow-beam signal off into the middle of nowhere, a patch of space thirty-two degrees above the solar plane, and four AUs out. High-resolution scans of the region revealed a processing space floating out there.”

  “A pirate space?” Judy said, rolling out of bed. “Frances, get in here! Why are you lurking in the living room?” She pulled on a long white kosode, the intelligent material lazily tightening around her body.

  “I know how funny you are about your…privacy.” Frances sounded indignant.

  “I’m not a body fetishist. Anyway, you’re a robot. Just get in here.”

  “I’m coming. Listen, a number of your digital selves went in there. They almost caught Kevin.”

  Judy dipped her fingertip into a blob of makeup and felt the tiny VNMs rushing to cover her hand. Frances slid open the paper door to Judy’s bedroom and stepped carefully inside. The robot elegantly complemented the simple Japanese décor of Judy’s apartment; Frances had had her body built to her own design and had made no attempt to look more than vaguely human. She was covered in lustrous golden metal, her head a smooth bullet shape upon which had been painted a bright white smile and two blue eyes. Other than that, her body was entirely featureless save for one thing, the only physical indicator of Frances’ mindset: between her legs was a set of numbered push buttons.

  As Judy serenely dipped her toe into the makeup, the robot began opening viewing fields. Patches of color sprang to life around the room, vivid against the calm yellow wood and rice-paper panels. Frances walked over to the low bed and continued with her explanation.

  “Just as we managed to fix our feed into the processing space, the Private Network detonated an explosive charge attached to the antenna. They’ve seeded the processing space with something on the order of fifteen hundred billion memory leaks. It’s deflating like an old balloon: it will be gone in about three minutes.”

  As the robot spoke, a series of pictures ran across one of the viewing fields. Judy saw a matte-black lozenge hanging in space, and she gave a shiver. The poor individuals trapped inside it would be generally unaware of their true situation: personality constructs running in a tiny processing space, floating invisibly in empty space. A little pocket of hell, abandoned to the mercy of the unseen perverts who made use of the Private Network. It was easy to feel what it was like in there. Empathy was her job, after all.

  She picked up a band and used it to pull her long black hair back from her face, glancing around the other viewing fields as she d
id so. Digital Judys were moving around inside the processing space with a calm purpose that made her feel rather proud. With the comm link broken, they were effectively marooned, and yet they quietly got on with their work without fuss.

  She nodded and followed their example.

  “We’ve been in worse situations than this in the past. How confident are you of getting them out of there, Frances?”

  “I’ll tell you in about thirty-five seconds. As I said, the comm link isn’t entirely gone. I’ve managed to force a narrow path through the remnants of the antenna. Now I just need to find a way to slow down those leaks sufficiently…”

  Judy tore a piece of black paper from a pad and moistened it with her lips, little VNMs creeping across the cherry-red skin. She turned to a viewing field floating near the bed showing a view into the distant processing space. It revealed one of her digital selves standing in a mirrored room, speaking to a young woman with daisies plaited in her blond hair.

  “The young woman speaking to Judy 3 is Helen,” explained Frances.

  “Oh yes,” Judy said, “I thought I recognized her.”

  Helen stared into the impassive white face of the woman who stood in front of her.

  “Well? Answer me! You must have made a backup of this processing space. Surely that would be your first action on invading a pirate space?”

  Judy 3’s lips curled in a faint smile.

  “Well, no. We do make a topological outline for possible forensic pattern-matching routines, but nothing else. Why should we? Even if we run a backup copy, you’ll still be dead.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “But nothing. That was decided long ago. You are the here and now, not the backup copy. Remember what Eva Rye told the Watcher.”

  “Eva Rye…” began Helen, but Judy 3 had tilted her head slightly, listening to the shushing of her console.