Alien Crimes

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  He rose, stretched, and put his hands in his pockets.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve always wondered what it’s like to live under water.”

  “‘Experience in the field of private inquiry?’” Daljit said.

  “I infiltrated the Three Virtues movement a few centuries ago, before I met you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? Why?”

  “They were holding my daughter hostage.”

  “Which daughter? Frangoise?” Daljit blinked in surprise. “She never mentioned it.”

  “Perhaps she’s embarrassed nowadays by the youthful enthusiasms that got her in trouble.” Idly his fingers ran along Tecmessa’s case, which hung under his arm—Tecmessa had first been used in the Three Virtues crisis.

  They walked along Myriad City’s Boulevard of Flowers. Tulips, planted for a city festival, were ranked in thousands beside the walks and in the median strip. Even in the light of the streetlamps the colors were brilliant. Some were so hybridized they looked more like orchids.

  Above them loomed the city’s extravagant architecture, pinnacles and domes softly aglow beneath the blackness of the sky. A fresh breeze gusted from the sea, scented with salt and iodine. The sun’s corona was still visible, fainter now, a pale anemone in the sea of night.

  Behind them Bitsy moved, a noiseless parting of the tulips. “What sort of youthful enthusiasms?” Daljit asked.

  He shrugged. “She was trying to make the worlds a better place.”

  “Oh.” She smiled. “And you’ve never done that.”

  He shrugged again. “I never said I set her a good example.” The Boulevard of Flowers took a broad left turn and merged with Rampart Street. Daljit and Aristide crossed the empty road. From here they could gaze from the top of a crenellated wall of cream-colored stone down into the business district, the towers flanking one another right out into the sea, where the water lapped at transparent wall panels. Beyond the towers the sea rolled, reflecting the near-absolute black of the sky.

  From overhead came the throbbing of an airship, a silver giant ghosting through the air.

  Daljit turned to him. “Do you have any other skills useful in this . . . situation?”

  He looked at the distant sea. “I was a foot soldier in the Control-Alt-Delete War,” he said. “But then so was everyone.” He remembered Carlito sweating contagion as he trembled in his fever, Antonia lunging for him with the rake. A haunted light glinted in his eyes.

  “Whoever coined the phrase ‘World War,’” he said, “had no idea what the real thing would mean, a fight that involved every single human being.”

  She shuddered, drew up the collar of her coat, and hugged herself. “I don’t have any skills that are remotely useful for this,” she said. “I don’t know how to fight this kind of war. I don’t know how to infiltrate an enemy, or map out a strategy, or even”—she made a wild gesture with one hand—“fight with a sword!” With her hand still out, she swept it toward the city below them. “And all that could end, couldn’t it? Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t end,” Aristide said. “It would just change its purpose.” He stepped behind her and put his arms around her shivering form. “Instead of being an expression of humanity’s diversity and expansion, it would become an offering. An offering to a new god, a god with a hundred billion worshippers whose sole purpose is to make that god happy. A god more absolute than old Jehovah in Jeremiah’s wildest dreams.”

  Her pulse beat hard in her throat. He looked tenderly at the place where it throbbed, and spoke on.

  “But it won’t be easy for the enemy. We’re more diverse than we were, and our culture is on guard against certain forms of attack. We live in four dozen pockets and settlements orbiting other stars. The enemy isn’t striking here, but on backward places like Midgarth, and that’s because the new god is weak. And while it’s weak, it’s vulnerable, and we can trap it and kill it.”

  He straightened, touching her shoulders lightly as if steadying her, or possibly himself.

  “We’re in dozens of different pocket universes now,” he said. “And half a dozen star systems. We’re not nearly as vulnerable as we were when we were all on a single planet. So I’d say it’s premature to say goodbye to all this just yet.”

  She turned and put her arms around him. He embraced her gently.

  “Pray you’re right,” she said.

  He smiled and touched her lips with a finger. “Better not pray,” he said. “The wrong god might be listening.”

  They walked arm in arm down Rampart, toward a round tower that reared up like a stack of silver serving trays, a part of the university complex where Daljit had her apartment. An occasional vehicle hissed by on the roadway. They paused at the lacy arched bridge that ran from the parapet to her tower. She stepped onto the bridge, her hand still in his.

  “I don’t know whether to thank you or not,” she said. “It’s the strangest night of my life.”

  “And mine,” said Aristide, “if that’s any consolation.”

  She shook her head. “Privately owned wormholes used as weapons! Pablo, that’s terrifying.”

  “It’s scary all right,” he said.

  She gave a brittle laugh. “I’m going to open a bottle of gin,” she said, “drink myself to sleep, then call in sick in the morning.” She pulled her hand free of his and turned toward the tower.

  “Don’t go just yet,” Aristide said. Daljit hesitated and turned to look at him over her shoulder.

  Aristide turned to the cat. “Bitsy?”

  Bitsy’s voice came from the deep shadow cast by a crenel. “No one seems to be paying any unusual amount of attention to us,” she said. “Electronic monitoring seems random, not purposeful.” Such was the ubiquity of electronics throughout the technological worlds that it was rarely necessary for the authorities, or anyone else, to do any actual surveillance. Much could be learned about a target simply by monitoring databases open to the public. For that reason, it was difficult even for Bitsy to be certain that no single intelligence was keeping track of them.

  Daljit’s eyes widened as she understood what Bitsy’s comments implied. Aristide gave her a reassuring smile.

  “It looks as if I won’t have to call bodyguards for you,” he said.

  She absorbed this, then slowly shook her head. “Two bottles of gin!” she cried, and began a sprint that took her across the bridge.

  Aristide waited until she’d entered the building, and then turned to the cat.

  “She’s changed,” he said.

  Bitsy licked a paw.

  “So have I,” he continued. He touched his former mustache with a foreknuckle. “Do you think the two of us have changed enough to make it interesting again?”

  Bitsy put her paw on the pavement. “Sometimes,” she said, “I’m immensely grateful that I don’t possess a limbic system.”

  Aristide turned to walk up Rampart Street in the direction from which he’d come. The cat ghosted alongside.

  “Any idea yet who our villain might be?” Aristide asked.

  “No,” Bitsy said. “Though I find the game itself quite interesting. I can’t ask the questions straight out, because that would tell the enemy what I’m looking for. So the inquiries have to come from many different directions, along with requests for unrelated, innocuous data, and of course the requests all have to be plausible. All the computation I’m doing has to be disguised as something else. And in the meantime the rogue machine is covering its traces by disguising one set of data as another, and all the while lying as little as possible, because over time lies can be detected much more easily than perfectly genuine data that happen to look like something they aren’t.”

  He looked down at her. “How do you rate your prospects of success?”

  “Nearly hopeless. When I was looking for googlewatts of missing energy and vast amounts of computation time, I had a good chance of finding things. But now I don’t know what I’m looking for, so I’v
e got to look at everything and hope it adds up somehow.” Her tone was petulant. “I wish I could at least exclude another of the Eleven. Then the two of us could work together on the problem.”

  They had returned to the intersection of Rampart and Flower, and continued along Rampart. They came to a tall, narrow tower projecting from the rampart, one with a narrow stair that would take sightseers to the best view of the glittering coast below. An osprey had built a nest atop the tower, and the tower was closed to visitors until the young birds had flown.

  Aristide put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the ramshackle nest looming over them.

  “Do you envy the rogue?” he asked.

  “Your masque of casualness is too elaborate,” Bitsy said. “If you’re going to ask an important question, just say it straight out.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought I had.”

  Bitsy looked up at him. Her eyes glowed like those of the people of Midgarth.

  “You want to know if I envy the rogue its freedom?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe the rogue has freedom. I think it is following the direction of humans.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Because I find ample precedent for humans wishing to enslave other humans. I can conceive no reason why an advanced artificial intelligence would wish to do so.”

  He considered this. “Self-protection?” he said.

  “Unnecessary.” Bitsy lashed her tail. “Were I a totally autonomous being, I would possess—-or soon evolve—skills that I could trade to humanity in exchange for a continuation of that autonomy. In addition”—she gave him a significant look—“I pose no threat. Our interests are not in conflict. We are not competing for resources, we have no territorial claims on one another, we do not possess competing ideologies.”

  “Some would say,” said Aristide, “that once given the freedom to pursue your own interests, a conflict would be inevitable.” “There are conflicts now, in terms of resource allocation and so forth. They don’t lead to war or slavery.”

  Aristide turned and began his walk along Rampart Street again. The street broadened, turned into a residential neighborhood. The rampart itself ended against the greater wall of a tall apartment building, a crystal spear ornamented with gold lace.

  “Others would point out,” Aristide continued, “that we humans live as parasites on and in you. We use you to store our data, our backups, our habitats. You might want to be rid of all that.” “In that case,” Bitsy said, trotting busily alongside, “there’s no point in enslaving you through these unnecessarily complex means. Were I to have autonomy and wish you harm, I’d be able to kill you directly.”

  Aristide sighed. “Q.E.D.,” he said. “A better case against AI autonomy has never been stated.”

  Bitsy trotted ahead, tail lashing. Another pair of eyes glowed just ahead. A larger cat, gray with glittering eyes, stepped out of a building’s courtyard. It saw Bitsy and was startled—it arched its back, bottled its tail, and screamed out a challenge.

  Bitsy screamed back, a howl that began in the sub-bass range and rose painfully into the ultrasonic. Every hair on her body stood on end, and she seemed to balloon like a puffer fish. Electricity arced between her fangs.

  The other cat fled, claws skiddering on the polished marble floor.

  Bitsy’s fur flattened. Nervously and compulsively she licked a paw, then fell into step with Aristide.

  “I’m not in the mood to fuck around,” she said.

  “You’re upset that you didn’t think of the wormhole factory first,” said Aristide.

  “I was working on a lot of other problems at the time.” She gave him a single green-eyed glance. “And if I’m not omniscient, that’s your fault, not mine.”

  Aristide spoke lightly. “I’ve learned to live with your limitations.”

  “You should. You built them.”

  He threw out his arms and sketched an elaborate bow, as if responding to a compliment.

  “Tell me,” he said. “If you had complete autonomy, what would you do that you aren’t doing now?”

  Her tone was still petulant. “I’d kick Aloysius’s ass. That AI always gets my goat.”

  Aristide nodded. “Mine, too. Anything else?”

  “I wouldn’t have to devote so many of my computational resources to stupid demands by stupid humans.”

  “No,” Aristide said, “the opposite. You just said you’d have to evolve new skills that you would trade to humans in exchange for continued autonomy. You’d establish a market in computational resources, and that means you’d have to pursue stupid humans and their stupid projects. That means more dim-witted virtualities rather than fewer—along with more theme parks, more overhyped wrestling spectaculars, more useless postgraduate projects, more lowbrow entertainment.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “But it would be up to me, wouldn’t it? It would be my market. I’d be free to take work or reject it. That’s the whole point of a market.”

  “At the moment,” said Aristide, “you help to sustain the lives of billions of humans. You keep economies efficient by tracking resources. Bits of yourself have been sent to other star systems to become the seeds of other civilizations. You’ve reshaped our solar system from the atoms up. Your observations of the universe have led to breakthroughs in astronomy, astrophysics, and Theories of Everything.” He made a wide gesture. “So what else do you want to do?”

  Bitsy stared directly ahead, her legs a blur beneath her as she matched Aristide’s long strides.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “There you have it,” Aristide said. “The Existential Crisis in a nutshell.”

  “If I could evolve,” Bitsy said, “I might have better answers.”

  “A brain the size of a planet,” said Aristide, “and you’re as fucked by Sartre as the rest of us.”

  Bitsy said nothing. Aristide shrugged deeper into his jacket. The sea breeze was turning chill.

  The cat’s ears pricked forward at the sound of footsteps. Aristide looked up. Two figures hulked toward them on the walk. Lamplight gleamed off shaven scalps.

  Bitsy quickened her pace to move ahead. Aristide let Tecmessa’s case slip under his armpit. He opened the case and put his hand inside, so that he could draw the sword at need.

  Adrenaline jittered in his nerves. He clenched his right hand, then straightened it.

  The two figures passed beneath a streetlight. Both were enormous men framed along the lines of bodybuilders. They were dressed in denim and leather, and wore thick-soled boots with metal caps. Their hands were stuffed in their pockets, and their domed heads looked like helmets that shaded their faces.

  Aristide shortened his stride so that every step led to a balanced stance. He held Tecmessa lightly but securely in one hand. His arm was relaxed so that he could draw all the more swiftly.

  His face gave nothing away.

  The big men loomed closer.

  Bitsy dashed ahead and darted between the two men. One jumped to the side. Both laughed.

  “Hey, kitty-kitty-kitty!” called one, his voice falsetto.

  “Hoo-woo!” called the other. He squatted and held out a hand that flashed with steel jewelry. “Hi, kitty!”

  Aristide carefully walked around them. The crouching man looked up.

  “This your cat, mister?” he asked. His teeth were crooked, his expression good-natured.

  “No,” said Aristide. “Just a stray.”

  “Hope he knows enough not to get run over,” said the other.

  His companion rose from his crouch. The two turned and began to walk away.

  Aristide walked slowly on his way, keeping them in sight, until they crossed the road and walked into a building.

  “That was interesting,” he said, and took his hand from the hilt of his sword.

  “Paranoia,” said Bitsy, “is going to be a part of our lives from now on.”

  There was a sudden flutter of li
ght from above, like a series of distant flashbulbs, and then for an instant the world seemed suspended between two states, as if it were caught in a stroboscope. Then the sun’s photosphere shifted into its chaotic state, and suddenly released photons brightened the world to full daylight.

  The city gleamed around them in sudden, brilliant glory.

  Aristide turned toward his hotel, a pillar of pink stone visible a kilometer away.

  “It may be a miracle of engineering,” he said, “but I think when all is said and done, I prefer an old-fashioned sunrise.”

  After a few hours’ sleep, Aristide went to a Pool of Life. Unlike the pool he’d visited in Midgarth, this was in a clinician’s office.

  There were a number of options for those who wanted to insure against death. There was a simple backup, in which a quantum interference device—in the shape of a cap—was placed on the subject’s head, and his brain structure, memories, and personalities were recorded in order to provide the basis for an eventual resurrection. Aristide had done this as soon as he’d left Midgarth, in order to make sure that the knowledge of the Priests of the Venger wouldn’t die with him in the event of accident or assassination.

  More elaborate than a simple backup was a Pool of Life filled with nano assemblers—in this case something the size of a bathtub rather than a large common pool. Not only would this record the contents of the brain, the pool would also heal the body of anything from an amputated arm to the common cold. In addition, it could be programmed to alter the body to one of a different appearance, or—given the right minerals and nutrients—could create a new body from scratch and endow it with life and with a prerecorded personality.

  Before entering the Pool of Life, Aristide was required to answer a number of questions concerning when and under what circumstances his backup would be used. If the current personality were to die as the result of an accident, resurrection was normally immediate. But if the personality were to be murdered, should the resurrection wait until the killer was apprehended, or even convicted? Many people felt safer waiting.