by T. K. Malone
“To make sure I destroy it?”
Byron laughed. “That’s the result of the motivation, not the motivation itself.”
“To preserve their own power,” Zac muttered and took a long swig of his whiskey. “Self-interest; it’s all about self-interest.”
Byron clicked his fingers. “Top of the class, Zac. Like the self-driving cars—heralded as the end of the world by all who drove for a wage. Now, imagine a computer that could appropriate budgets, build roads, allot welfare, even patrol borders—what then for the men in power; what would be the point of them then?”
“No government,” Connor muttered.
“Indeed,” said a now clearly enthused Byron. “But...” He held up a bony finger. “More importantly, no corruption, no backhanders, no favors. If a nut needed sourcing, the AI would source it from the most economical place, given the constraints of need versus cost. Now, I ask you this, gentlemen: who then would spread rumors about the dangers of AI? Would it be those who do such mundane tasks as run countries?”
“So, you’re saying…” Renshaw began, but then seemed to lose track of his words.
“What I’m saying is that Oster Prime would see Sable exterminated. Irving and Walter Meyers would see her held hostage for power and profit—I’ll bet your orders included the recovery of Connor’s corpse and its return to their camp. Why? Because they’d rip the AI out and hold the world hostage to make themselves all-powerful.”
Renshaw sat up straight and flexed his shoulders, as if to shake off some nagging doubts. “So, you’re saying we have nothing to fear from Sable—it is Sable, isn’t it?”
Byron shook his head, emphatically. “No, no, we have plenty to fear.” And now his eyes were alive, glinting in the moonlight. “Imagine. Imagine a world run efficiently, where every action is taken for the benefit of all, both mankind, and because the preservation of mankind is but one parameter—the world itself. Imagine a virtual scientist whose intelligence increases incrementally by the hour, by the minute, by the second, even.”
“Boring?” Zac joked.
Byron clicked his fingers. “Exactly, and that’s our biggest problem. The world as we know it has changed; thirty percent of the world’s population is dead already. More are dying every second. Medieval wars will have already sprung up everywhere, killing more.” He fell silent, looking at them each in turn, until he finally warned, “By the time we get a hold of the situation—if we ever do—we’ll be back into the Dark Ages.”
Zac let out a long sigh. “A gloomy prediction, Mr. Tuttle.”
Byron grinned. “I’m a firm believer in looking at the best-case scenario, and that was it. What we have is the classic path with a fork. One route leads to inevitable destruction and war. First, the battles will be for dominion over towns, then states and countries. It won’t be swift and it will be brutal, eternal, an unforgiving future. The alternative? Well, gentlemen, throw your hats in with Sable.” Byron swung his arm out toward Connor, a grin on his face.
“And what will she do?” Zac asked.
“Do?” Byron shrugged. “To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest. She’ll seek out tools, and once found, formulate plans, I’ve no doubt.”
Renshaw coughed and then lit another smoke. “So, you want us to follow a future that you’ve no idea about?”
“No,” Connor said, “he wants you to avoid a future that’s certain.”
“What if she is a monster?” Renshaw maintained.
“Then we get what we all deserve,” Byron said, a chill threat in his tone.
“And what’s that?”
“Annihilation…but that won’t happen.”
Renshaw stood and brushed his combats down. “Fine words, Byron, but fine words with no guarantees—and before you say it, yes, I know, there can never be guarantees, but at least if you pick a side—a normal side—you know what you’re fighting for.”
“No,” Connor blurted out. “No, you don’t. You only know who you’re fighting for—what they tell you.”
“So what does Sable stand for? What are her ideals, her ambitions? How do I know they’re any different from Oster Prime’s?”
“You don’t,” Connor said softly. “But I do. I know because she’s inside me, talking to me. I know because she’s listening now, but not saying a word to sway my own. I know because she would already be in charge if she wasn’t looking out for me. If she didn’t…love me.”
“You think a computer program cares for you?” Renshaw spat out, but Connor was now watching Byron, watching him smile from ear to ear, his eyes glazed with tears.
“She does?” he whispered, clearly in awe, to which Connor nodded. Byron then reached over, resting an inquiring hand on Connor’s arm. “How can you tell? No, no, don’t answer that. It’s true. My god, but it’s true. In my wildest dreams I didn’t think—”
“What the fuck’s happening here?” Zac asked, clearly exasperated.
“It was you,” Renshaw said as he crouched down and looked Byron straight in the eye. “Irving, Walter, they both said it was born in the city—it was you.” To which Byron finally nodded.
“Would someone mind telling me exactly what’s going on?” Zac now barked.
“It seems, Zac,” Renshaw said, “that you aren’t the only one with a child. If I’m reading this right, Byron Tuttle created Sable.”
“Anyone can create an AI,” Byron informed them, his voice clear, deliberate. “No, I fed her, educated her, nurtured her.”
“How much does she know?”
Byron stretched and yawned. “Everything—she knows everything. She knows, Mr. Renshaw, how despicable mankind can be, and she knows how incredible mankind actually is. My question to you, though, is this: once released, she’ll need tools to build something from the chaos—are you willing to be a program’s instrument, or are you entirely beholden to mankind?”
3
Connor’s Story
Strike time: plus 11 days
Location: Lester’s Mine
“Which side for you, Miss Meyers?” Byron asked as the morning sun rose above the valley’s head. “Perhaps you’d like to sit with Connor and I in the back of the truck? Perhaps we can discuss your father?”
Laura was sitting by the small lake, staring across at the camp as it was being broken up and what meager supplies the group had were being packed away into the bikers' trucks. Laura smiled as she looked up, and Connor noticed how truly beautiful she really was. Not fake, not like those girls on the grid, but natural, like she belonged in this magnificent valley, amongst its stunning terrain and high-reaching trees. He noticed that her eyes trailed Zac’s every movement and wondered if there was something between them, but discounted it. Even though Teah had been gone for all these years, there was still something about her and Zac’s love. They’d never been a typical couple, not like those who fawned over each and every action of their partner, or those who proclaimed their love as though the mere statement made it true. No, Connor knew that theirs was a more substantial love, one whose foundation lay hidden but remained enduring. She appeared to notice him staring at her and drew back.
“May we?” Byron asked before Laura had even answered his first question, and she held his gaze for a moment and inclined her head and smiled.
“Please,” she said, shifting a little along the lake’s rocky bank.
“So, I…” Byron sat down. “I wanted to introduce myself—it was all a bit hectic last night; a little surreal.”
“Surreal?”
Byron bade Connor sit between them. “Surreal. Believe me, if being abducted, thrown into an underground complex, and finding out the world has really ended wasn’t odd enough, the last couple of days sure have been. You see, I’m a loner by nature—spent much of my life studying. A seemingly solitary pursuit on the surface, but with hidden depths, Miss Meyers—hidden depths.”
“Was it worth it? given…given everything that’s happened.”
Byron studied her, as though he were looking
for the intent behind her question. “Well, that remains to be seen. It appears that things have yet to become more surreal.”
“How so…”
“Byron.”
She nodded, as though she’d expected his answer. “I’ve heard your name mentioned—long ago.”
“Before your mother…”
Laura shook her head. “No, my mother would never speak your name. She thought you a—”
“A monster?”
Laura didn’t say anything, only nodded, although barely so.
“Years, Laura; many, many years—I spent so many in that ‘library,’ alone, hidden away and wondering what my creation was doing. Are you familiar with the fable of Frankenstein?”
“The beast?”
“Well, Frankenstein was the creator. Imagine being the great Doctor Frankenstein and having to let go?”
“Or worse.”
“Worse, Miss Meyers?”
“Laura.”
“Of course. Why worse…Laura?”
She picked up a stone and threw it into the small lake. “To give it up to my father, my grandfather—that would have to be worse than just a simple release. Why? Because, Mr. Tuttle, you despise them, and they you. That’s why my mother thought you the monster, not the AI you created.”
“I will have to accept that. The dead stay dead. I can’t alter a corpse’s opinion of me.”
“Is that all my mother was to you?” Byron never answered, only fidgeted awkwardly. Eventually, though, he chuckled. “You mentioned that Irving and Walter hated me. Why is that?”
Laura arched her eyebrows. “Why? Because you must know everything about them. You’re the librarian, after all.”
“Well countered, and talking of that, I don’t believe you’ve met Connor.”
“No, but I feel I already know him—know you, Connor.”
“How come?” Connor asked.
“Zac,” Laura said, but bit her lip and looked away. “Your brother and I… But now…” She took a deep breath. “Your brother didn’t stop talking about you. He would have dug a hole into that mountain if you hadn’t found your own way out. But you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Connor whispered.
Laura shook her head, gasped, and took a breath. “Anyway, back to you, Byron. What of Frankenstein’s monster?”
Byron drew his spindly body up. “What else? Had Sable infected your father’s systems as I had planned, then I’m fairly sure this whole catastrophe would have been avoided. But she didn’t make it that far, and so—”
“And so, you sent him another, a weaker one to placate him, but he knew it wasn’t the real deal.”
“It was a feeble attempt at covering up what was in itself miraculous. Unfortunately, love or loath Josiah Charm, the man just cannot keep his mouth shut when there’s crowing to be done,” Byron muttered.
“From what I understand, without Irving and Walter, Connor would have died.”
“Nonsense,” Byron said, his tone dismissive. “Sable was perfectly capable of keeping him alive. Had Charm not run off at the mouth, we could have kept it quiet and come up with a new plan.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Connor shouted. “Can we please remember I’m still here? Have you two met before?”
“No,” they both said.
“We know of each other through family,” Laura told him. “I’ve always been fascinated by AI.”
“Okay, okay.” Connor pulled out his smokes and lit one. “Sable was originally built to—” But Byron held his hand up to quieten Connor.
“Disable Walter and Irving’s nuclear network. They were the overseers of the international treaty—having no country made them technically neutral. The network they established for all the protocols, negotiations, threats and lies, was completely isolated. We had to get the AI into their systems; only then could it end the threat. That was Sable’s purpose.”
“If my mother had—” Laura whispered, but again, Byron raised his hand.
“And now that’s changed?” Connor said.
“Right,” Byron agreed. “Now their network’s redundant, and what with everything that’s gone on, the game has indeed changed—or it changed rather gradually. Charm and I, well, we saw a bigger prize, a more permanent one, and we understood the end was inevitable, so, we started planning for that.”
“Are you telling me…” Laura said, shaking her head.
“What I am telling you, Miss…Laura, is that once I understood what had happened in those sewers, I knew then that what I’d created was far too precious to waste on merely stopping the apocalypse. I understood we could actually break the cycle of destruction.”
“What happened to me?” Connor asked. “In those tunnels; what happened?”
“Connor,” Byron said, patting him on the knee. “How I wanted to tell you—to tell you everything. But you see, I was unsure exactly what had indeed passed. For the last few years I was barely a casual observer. She’d gone inside you, and I think I now understand why.”
“Why?”
“She was learning that which I could not teach her, and she had the perfect balance, a balance that just wasn’t available anywhere else in The Free World.”
“What was that?” Laura whispered.
“She had the grid—all it entailed: the propaganda, the belief, the blind following, even its total immersion, and she had Zac, and Billy Flynn. She had the drunks, the banter, the rumors, the conspiracy theories. She had two sides of the same credit—and that was unique—you were unique, because you hadn’t, haven’t, made your mind up which is best, even now.”
Laura shook her hair out, as if to clear her mind. “So, that makes her the best judge of how mankind should go forward.”
“You wouldn’t know the half of it; she’s infinitely capable of forging a new path for mankind,” Byron declared.
“What makes you say that?” Laura asked.
“Because she treasures life above all else.”
“But…” Although, all Laura could then do was wring her hands through her hair before grabbing Connor’s smokes and taking one. “May I?” she asked as she lit it. She blew out a great funnel of smoke and watched as it drifted out and dissipated over the water. “How? Why? Why would she give two fucks about us?”
Byron looked across at the trucks. “They’re nearly ready. We should get going.”
“What?” Laura cried. “You can’t do that—you can’t just tell me something like that and not finish it.”
“Oh, Miss Meyers, I would tell you anything to get you on her side, but I fear the answer to your question would have the opposite effect. It may force you back into the arms of your father and grandfather.”
Connor jumped up. “Don’t I need to know?”
Byron avoided Connor’s urgent gaze. “She’s kept it from you?”
“What?”
“The reason she would value human life above all else is simple: she’s already killed. The AI called Sable knows what it’s like to murder.”
“This is more like it,” said Kenny. The three of them, Molly, Connor and Kelly, were sitting in the back of Loser’s truck, leaning against its bulkhead, as they weaved their way up toward the preppers’ compound. “Of course, I’d rather be sitting at the back,” he moaned, trying to look over the heads of all the other folk.
“Why’s that?” Molly asked.
Connor thought they both looked happier than he’d ever seen them. Somehow, the underground compound had continued to cast a shadow over their moods, and their escape from it had, well…
“Scenery: I can’t get used to it. It’s so…so…”
“Beautiful?” Molly knocked shoulders with him, almost like she was expecting some idiotic statement soon to spill out.
“No, I was thinking ‘weird,’” Kenny said. “Don’t you think its looks odd?”
“What?” Molly was grinning now.
“Well, it’s all so random. Hardly efficient. You’d have thought nature would be a little more e
fficient about things. Take the grid: you couldn’t pack more buildings into that area if you tried. Now, nature’s been going what? A few million years? You’d have thought she’d have gotten it right by now—peak efficiency and all that.”
“So, what you’re saying…” But Molly was clearly bemused.
“What I’m saying is that I would have thought nature could have evolved better.”
“You know…” Molly began. “You do remember that I’m a microbiologist? That I know a little bit about all this.”
“And you prove my point,” said Kenny, emphatically. “Look at… I don’t know, a tray of corn plants growing in one of your factories, say—that’s efficient. You’d think Mother Nature…”
Connor’s mind trailed away. Kenny was back on one of his high horses, and Connor knew how lofty they could be. Byron’s words were still reverberating around his mind, and Sable appeared to have withdrawn from him, as though she were somehow ashamed. Connor could remember the tramp, of course he could, but now he remembered the woman’s voice—the one who’d been shouting in the sewer. Byron had told him their names: Lester Avery Savage and Jenny White; two names that meant nothing to Connor and yet meant everything.
Byron’s theory was that Sable had leached their essence away, or as he’d then tried to quantify it, drained their batteries so that all they had left was the power to limp on. Lester, by all accounts, had followed Teah into the sewer and seen what had happened. According to Byron, Lester had shared little of what had actually happened to Charm, and even less so, as to what had happened to him. He’d merely told them that both Teah and Connor had been covered in a luminous white liquid, and that somehow everything had flowed toward Connor. Byron had choked when he’d then gone on to tell them that he’d looked down at his own legs as they waded knee-deep in the sewer-water and had seen his own energy flowing away. He’d said no more after that, apparently, and had never been seen in Black City again, as far as he knew. Byron had wandered off after that revelation, and somehow Connor hadn’t wanted to talk to the Meyers woman. For some reason her relationship with Zac annoyed him.