CAPACITY a-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  Judy stirred the sand with the toe of one of her tabi.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” she wondered. “Should we just give up our search before we start? Is that what the Watcher wants?”

  “The Watcher was very careful not to say what it wants.” Pale sand drew wind-blown patterns across Frances’ golden skin. “Or rather, Chris was…”

  Judy nodded. “So we continue to do what we came to do, then. If the Watcher wants us to stop, it can tell us that now.”

  They paused, looking around at the empty dunes.

  “Nothing,” said Frances. “I wonder if Chris is still here, watching us.”

  “I wonder.” Judy gave a shiver. “If not, I wonder what else he could be doing here on Earth?” She looked down at her white tabi and gave a sigh.

  “I wish I’d brought my shoes.”

  Justinian 3: 2223

  Eh? We were talking about the two slits experiment. Now, concentrate. You fire a photon at a barrier in which there are two slits-”

  “I know the two slits experiment,” Justinian growled. Was this pod deliberately trying to irritate him?

  “Ah, yes, but I wonder if you understand what it means.”

  “I do understand,” he said, with forced patience. “They drummed this into us at school. Feynman claimed everything about the nature of quantum mechanics was summed up by the two slits experiment.”

  Justinian took a deep, calming breath and immediately regretted it. The air down here stank. He was getting a headache from lack of sleep; his ribs and right leg hurt where he had grazed them while clambering over the slippery rocks of the sea bed. All of that discomfort, however, was drowned out by the all-pervading stench. The undersea bubble smelled really, really bad. The last thing he needed was this prissy, imperious AI pod lecturing him about quantum mechanics.

  It had been waiting for him to finish speaking; immediately it carried on making its point.

  “As I was explaining, if you were to fire a photon, it could pass through either of the two slits-”

  “I know,” Justinian said, almost shouting in frustration. “I experienced this in an eTank when I was twelve! Whichever of the slits you place a photon detector at will be the slit through which the photon always passes!”

  “You can place a detector at both slits,” said the pod.

  “And if you turn one of them on after the photon is fired, it will still pass through the slit with the active detector.”

  Again the pod waited for Justinian to be silent. There was a rich farting noise as wet mud settled nearby.

  “Ah, yes, but do you appreciate what that implies?” The pod answered its own question before Justinian could. “It implies that awareness plays a part in the position of the photon-”

  “I know! I used to act as birth partner for AIs as they were introduced to the atomic world-”

  “A photon is directly influenced by the act of observation-”

  “I didn’t need to come to this planet to hear this.”

  “Simply looking in a place makes it appear there…”

  Justinian and the pod were both raising their voices in order to drown out the other. The sound was strangely deadened in the undersea world.

  “The two slits experiment is a possible explanation for the behavior of the Schrödinger boxes. That’s how the name-”

  “I’m sorry; do you mind not interrupting me?” The AI pod dropped its voice to speak in such reasonable tones that Justinian wanted to kick it. He found himself shaking, actually shaking with anger at the pod’s attitude. He was annoyed that the pod was right that he, Justinian, had kept interrupting. He was annoyed at its quiet assurance that its thoughts were more important than Justinian’s. Worst of all, he was annoyed that it was probably right in this assumption. Hadn’t he been deliberately trapped on this planet for just that reason-summoned by a group of self-destructing pods for reasons that not even the Watcher could guess? Justinian ran shaking fingers along his console, seeking a dose of something to calm himself.

  “Now, I find the existence of Schrödinger boxes fascinating,” continued the pod, as if it were unique in that respect. The indicator on Justinian’s console was flashing to indicate slow poison in the local atmosphere. It was no wonder; he was standing in a viscous bubble blown from the flier’s rear hatch, staring at an AI pod that rested on the floor of a fourteen-kilometer-deep ocean trench. The flier’s lights illuminated only the volume contained by the bubble’s thin transparent wall, beyond which there was just the still blackness of the ocean. Don’t worry about it, Leslie had said; people use those bubbles for traveling around the connecting filaments of the Shawl. Yes, thought Justinian, but those bubbles didn’t have thousands of tons of pressure piled on each square centimeter, all trying to crush the adamantium threads that braced the pseudofabric.

  There was a roaring noise coming from the flier’s hatch: the ship’s air-conditioning system fighting a losing battle as it tried to purify the sea bottom atmosphere. It was an exercise in futility. Gas was leaking from cracks in the slimy rocks of the sea bed as quickly as the flier’s life system could remove it.

  Justinian didn’t want to think about it. The faster he did this job, the faster he could get out of here.

  He looked down. This AI’s body was more developed than the previous ones. The kidney-bean-shaped pod had split open and sprouted various devices and protuberances like a germinating seed. For some reason the pod had grown itself a pair of metal arms that it was using to accentuate its points as it spoke. It was holding its arms wide apart now, as if wondering.

  “Consider our position,” it was saying. “We’re standing fourteen kilometers down on the ocean bed of a planet lost between galaxies. Imagine that you could look out of here at our own galaxy. How would you see it?”

  Just as Justinian opened his mouth to answer, the AI pod spoke for him: “I’ll tell you: as a swirl of light. As stars written over empty space. Do you know how I see it? As a glow of intelligence. AIs such as myself have spread throughout the Milky Way and humans have piggy-backed their way along: parasites living off our greater intelligence.”

  Justinian opened his mouth to protest. Again, the AI interrupted him. All of a sudden Justinian realized it was doing this deliberately. It was reading his body language and speaking just before he did, just to annoy him. He closed his mouth tight and folded his arms. Let it play its little games.

  “Now, if I look the other way,” the AI continued, “look to M32, the galaxy we have come to explore, what do I see? I’ll tell you: emptiness. There is nothing like you or me in there. No sign of intelligence. Nothing that passes for AI or even human intelligence. Nothing. Why should that be? Our galaxy is riddled with intelligent life.”

  There was a significant pause. Justinian knew that it was waiting for him to speak, and so he did.

  “Riddled with human life?” he supplied. “That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?” Justinian gave a shrug. “Perhaps we’re alone in the universe. Perhaps we are the only intelligent life form to have evolved.”

  “It makes you wonder, does it not, on the nature of intelligence?”

  “I think about it all the time,” Justinian said softly.

  “I know that. I think you should tell me about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked you to. It’s your job to do what I want, isn’t it?” Its voice softened. “Besides, I think you want to tell me. You think that, in some way, I might be able to help.”

  Justinian stared at the pod. Each pod so far had helped him in some way on his personal journey. He supposed it must be this one’s turn to do the same. He hoped it was. He took a deep breath.

  Four weeks ago

  “She looks so peaceful.”

  Anya, Justinian’s wife, lay sleeping in the center of a huge flower that grew from the Devolian Plain. As Justinian had traveled there in the flier, he had watched in awe as its huge petals rose up over the horizon, the base of the slender stalk sup
porting them lost beyond the curvature of the planet. Walking down the flier’s exit ramp, he had paused, turned to Leslie, and whispered in awe, “You grew this just for her?”

  Leslie had shrugged. He had yet to climb into his fractal skin, and yet already he gestured in an exaggerated fashion.

  “This is an empty planet,” the robot said. “We use the materials just to keep the VNMs busy. We locked exotic matter in the petals so that they should float there.” There was a pause, then the robot suddenly seemed to realize that it might be polite to add something else. “Besides, Anya should be remembered.”

  A lift carried them up the stalk of the flower from the stone-littered plain. Still pictures of Anya’s life slid past as they ascended, starting with her as a baby at the base and growing older as they approached the top. It was effective, thought Justinian, grudgingly. He didn’t like the current fashion for representing information in archaic forms, but here, seeing the frozen images of a life laid out one after another seemed strangely appropriate. It prepared one for the final frozen image of a human being that lay at the top of the flower itself.

  Anya had been laid out in a simple cream dress upon the stigma of the artificial flower. Her ash-blond hair had grown long since he had last seen her, a week ago, and spread out around her. Her face was pale, her lips drawn in a faint smile. Her hands, a golden chain entwined around them, were folded across her breast; on the chain hung an open locket showing two pictures: one of Justinian, one of the baby.

  Justinian stood on the curved creamy surface of a huge petal, the green of the sepal showing through between his petal and the next one where Leslie stood. Above them scudded freshly washed clouds through a blue sky. He breathed the fresh air of the newly minted planet. Through the gaps between the petals he could see the stone of the Devolian Plain and the blue of the oceans beyond. High above, a silver spaceship was looping down towards the planet from space.

  “Will they see her, from the spaceship?”

  “They will see the flower and they will know that someone like her is within.”

  Justinian didn’t reply. He held up the baby so that he could see his mother’s face.

  “Look, baby. It’s your mother.” He looked sideways at Leslie. “Can she hear me?”

  The robot made a moue. Back then it had seemed to Justinian as if it wore its skin inside out. Later he would realize that it was an underderm; the robot had yet to pull on its proper skin.

  “Her ears are working,” said Leslie. “Her brain is functioning normally. I can see that from here. It’s just that…she’s taking a rest from thinking.”

  There was a rising hiss. A shadow slid across the interior of the flower. Justinian looked up to see the silver shape of the spaceship sliding over them. A pleasure cruiser, nine hundred meters of elegant silver needle. The silver side of the ship flickered and a message was spelled out in a rainbow array of lights.

  “OUR CONDOLENCES JUSTINIAN. GET WELL SOON ANYA.”

  “Thanks guys,” Justinian said. “Thanks from both of us.” He took the baby’s arm and waved it up at the silver ship still sliding by, the message keeping pace with Justinian’s line of sight.

  Leslie was looking up, too.

  “Eighteen-month pleasure cruise,” he said. “From Earth, out to the edge of the expansion for a view of the untouched space beyond, then back through the establishing worlds, with a slight detour to look at some of the former Enemy Domain and the three trillion.”

  “Nice. Anya wanted to do that, you know.”

  “Hmm.”

  By now the spaceship had passed. Justinian watched it go, a foreshortened needle heading towards one of the encircling oceans. It suddenly began to climb, then it was gone, vanishing into warp.

  “They made a detour just to see us,” Justinian said. “That was nice.”

  “Nice?” Leslie said. “I suppose so. And yet, you humans have always been drawn to tragedy, especially tragedy which may one day affect you, too. I wonder why that is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Justinian looked at Anya. “Do you think she can ever be cured? Is that why we’re here?”

  Leslie gazed at him. “Justinian, I can’t say. I don’t want to offer false hope. I do not know of a cure. The Environmental Agency does not know of a cure. Well…not yet, anyway. Sometimes, minds just seem to give up thinking. I don’t know why. No one does.”

  Justinian held the baby close to himself. In his heart of hearts, he had known this would be the case. No promises had been made. And yet, when this mysterious robot had first contacted him, he couldn’t help but hope. He had tried to suppress that tiny flicker, but it was always there. Maybe this was it. Looking at the robot now, he felt nothing but black despair.

  Leslie sensed it. “Justinian, I’m sorry. Her condition is becoming more frequent. Minds, be they human or AI, just seem to turn in on themselves, and then nothing can coax them out. Even as we speak, it’s happening on a planet beyond the edge of the galaxy. Thirty-two AIs have simply shut themselves down.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know. Any other AI that approaches the planet shuts itself down, too. We want you to go there and find out why.”

  Justinian was stunned. “Me? Why me?”

  “You know the pain of having lost a loved one. You have firsthand experience of seeing someone just shut themselves down. And you are a counselor.”

  “A human counselor! Get an AI!”

  “AIs have a habit of shutting themselves down on Gateway. I just told you.” The robot leaned close to him, took Justinian’s arm in his own. Synthetic fingers pressed gently into the flesh of his arm. “Justinian, we can’t force you to do this, but we wish you would go.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The Environment Agency.”

  Justinian looked at his sleeping wife.

  “Would it help her?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe-I don’t want to make false promises.” The robot swayed as if gripped by doubt. It was such a cold feeling, here in this warm flower, beneath the beautiful blue sky. “Look, Justinian, if you don’t want to go, just say. There are others we could ask.”

  Justinian had already made up his mind to go, but he wasn’t going to say that yet. He didn’t like the thought of taking his baby to a planet where AIs did not work, but…if there was that faint hope of saving Anya. The robot seemed to be offering it. It just couldn’t say it outright.

  Justinian had thought that he could string the robot along for a little. Get a better deal. He wasn’t to find out for another three weeks that it was he himself who was being strung along….

  Back on the sea bed, hemmed in by the oppressive darkness of the trench, Justinian thought back to the warmth that was held in the cup of that flower. It was like another life now, the contrast between the flower and this undersea bubble. The pod before him reminded him of a green toad nestling in the stinking mud of hell.

  “I thought that maybe by coming here I could learn something about what happened to Anya,” he murmured.

  “I’m sorry,” the pod said. As it listened to Justinian’s story, it had folded its ridiculous arms; now it spread them in apology. “I have no idea what happened to your wife. From what I can remember, I shut down my higher mental functions voluntarily. Is that what happened to Anya?”

  There was a flash of movement at the edge of the dark bubble. The pod in front of Justinian had been responsible for seeding the oceans with life. At this stage in the planned terraforming schedule, there should be nothing out there more sophisticated than plankton. And yet the stinking rocks down here were plastered with bright scarlet weed. That shouldn’t be here-not fourteen kilometers below the ocean. Maybe this pod had also released its cargo too soon. Justinian was avoiding the issue. He brought his mind back to Anya.

  “I don’t know what happened to my wife. I don’t think she gave up voluntarily…”

  Fifteen months ago

  “Justinian?” Anya was holding one hand to her he
ad; the baby slept in the crook of her other arm. So small, barely two days old. His tiny nose was still bent out of shape from the birthing, his mouth open as he took little breaths. Perfectly at peace, wrapped in the warm aura of his mother.

  “Are you okay?” asked Justinian, his attention drawn from his son by a sudden feeling of concern. “Here…let me take the baby.”

  The baby’s eyes half opened as Justinian took him in his arms and shushed him gently back to sleep. Anya seemed barely aware of what was going on.

  “Justinian, could you look at me?” she pleaded. “Empathize with me, I mean.”

  “Is that such a good idea?” Justinian’s training told him it wasn’t. Never use MTPH on someone with whom you were involved in a close relationship. Not unless you wanted to feel all their fears and paranoia close up. Not unless you were certain you could live with the image they really held of you, rather than the one they projected through kisses and hugs and love talk.

  “I wish you would.” She sighed. “I feel so…empty.”

  Their life was too small and crowded after the empty expanses of the planets in the Enemy Domain. It had been Anya’s idea to move back to Earth, an idea they both regretted almost as soon as they had taken up residence in the Arctic arcology. The emptiness of the snow-blown wastes seen through the windows of the crowded gardens and living spaces of the arcology merely reminded them what they had given up. Justinian tenderly placed the baby in the minding tank and then led his wife to the sofa.

  He worked his console and popped free a little blue pill.

  “It is my professional opinion that this is a valid interaction,” he said softly for the record. The console shushed its agreement.

  “Do you want to feed back?” he asked Anya, his fingers ready to pop a little red pill free of the console.