by Paul Melko
“That was with just two people,” Moira continues. “Imagine it with ten thousand. Now imagine it with an AI that can synergize with you on your every thought. Now imagine our entire pod within the Community. You scratched the surface. So have I. But all of us, together, with the AI would be the greatest power in the world. Pods, built for consensual and shared intelligence, would augment the AI even more than individual humans can by orders of magnitude.”
Meda is silent. She is used to listening to her sister for counsel.
“Is it about power?”
Moira looks at Meda. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“It’s about knowledge and understanding, rebuilding the world, making a mark in science and biology.”
Moira coughs a laugh, reminding us that this is not the Moira we know. She would not do that.
“Did you know there are spacecraft within the Ring? They could be launched in twenty-four hours. We could reach the Rift in weeks.”
“Leto would never let us go.”
“Of course he would. As soon as the Second Community is complete.”
Meda bites back a scathing reply. She says, “What about Eliud? His mother abandoned him to join the Community?”
“The Community is voluntary. Eliud chose not to.”
“He’s twelve! He can’t make those decisions.”
Moira shrugs. “With the Community AI as your companion, you can.”
Meda is angry, more angry than she’s ever been with her sister. She turns away, but doesn’t come back to us. We are watching from the tractor, silent. Later she comes back to us, and we interfuse her memories with ours. We want desperately to merge with Moira, but we wonder if we’ll ever be able to rationalize her thoughts. We are on the verge of invalid consensus.
At dawn we climb into the cabin. Moira doesn’t speak, so we do not sedate her. Quant drives the tractor through the line of mesas. We envision the green jungle, the waterfalls spraying over the escarpments. All we see is sand and rock.
The elevator is closer. From there we will be able to get anywhere.
Can we let Moira in the Ring? Quant asks.
Why not? Meda sends.
She’s part of the Second Community now. She might allow Leto in.
How?
If she uses her interface within the elevator.
Nonsense, Moira replies; her statement doesn’t cause consensus. We have doubts now.
Quant realizes first that the elevator is on the other side of the river. We will have to cross again. There will be people and the possibility of discovery. But when we reach the banks of the Congo, it is nothing more than a trickle seeping into the cracked mud.
A shepherd with a flock of dusty sheep looks at us as we drive through his water. These are the dregs. After one thousand kilometers, this is all that’s left of the river from the sea. Perhaps someday the water will reach this far, or the water will flow in the right direction.
An hour later, Manuel spots the plumes of dust on the horizon.
Someone following us.
Fast, Strom sends. Faster than us. He calculates when the vehicle will overtake us.
Quant gooses the accelerator and we move faster over the salt flats that had once been a lake. Manuel glances at the speedometer and guesses we’ll reach the elevator before the pursuer.
I think we can make it.
Moira is watching the plume behind us as well, her face feral. She looks at the speedometer too, then seems to shrug.
Watch her, Strom advises. It hurts him to treat Moira as an enemy. He anticipates her grabbing the wheel and trying to tip the tractor. He moves to shield Quant.
Instead, Moira opens the door of the cabin and steps out onto the ladder. Manuel has to climb around Strom in the cramped cabin to get out the door, and before he can, Moira is kicking at the hydrogen pump.
Careful!
Manuel is climbing down to the platform below the cabin when the shroud on the pump breaks loose and liquid hydrogen erupts from the pump, condensing water out of the dry air in clouds.
Moira falls from the tractor and, as we coast to a stop, we see her rolling in the sand. Then she is up and running toward the approaching plume.
Crap! Quant cries. She’s hosed the hydrogen flow. The engine is off. Quant turns a valve, cutting the flow from the tank.
Strom tapes the burn on Manuel’s hand. It blisters where the hydrogen vapor has touched him.
Strom and Meda watch Moira run.
We need to catch her, Meda sends, desperate.
We need to regroup, with or without her, Strom sends.
We’re nothing without her.
Nonsense!
Quant is on the platform with a wrench, bending the shroud back to see the damage. The pipes and pump inside are white with frozen water vapor. In that confined space the temperature goes from forty to minus fifty Centigrade. His wound bandaged, Manuel is with her, his hands in the tight space.
Strom watches the approaching plume. It is a car of some sort, not an aircar, not one of the other tractors. Meda watches Moira’s figure slowly disappear among the rocks.
Strom measures the distance to the elevator, looming so high now that it seems about to topple onto us.
Quant dredges her memory for how the pump should be coupled to the engine intake. Manuel has the manuals open and is paging through it to find something that might help. He finds a diagram of the pump, but it is from the wrong angle. He turns the page and Quant sees what needs to be done. She directs Manuel where to squeeze, where to pull. In a minute the shroud is back on.
Quant opens the fail-safe and tries the engine. Nothing. She taps the hydrogen gauge and tries again. The tractor rumbles, then stalls. The third time, the engine catches and we are accelerating slowly.
Too slow, Quant sends. She’s compared the current acceleration profile with the old one.
The engine isn’t responding well, Manuel replies. Particles in the pump? Bad patch? Who knows?
This ain’t no starship, Quant says.
The arborobot lurches then picks up speed. Quant is standing on the accelerator, her head hitting the roof of the cabin. She hopes that whatever is clogging the hydrogen intake will clear.
Whoever is following will overtake us in twelve minutes, Manuel sends. We’ll reach the elevator in twenty-two minutes.
If they have weapons, or if they have more than one vehicle, they will force us to stop, Strom sends. He considers what in the cabin will work as a weapon, finding little.
Meda looks at the elevator in front of them. The one in the Amazon was covered in jungle, surrounded by trees. Its true size was hidden. Manuel looks too, seeing it as a hand that grabs deeply into the earth to hold the Ring in place. The elevator is not just an access point; it is a stabilizer. Strom looks at the elevator and sees tensile strength. Quant looks and remembers the beautiful three-dimensional map of the anchor site in the Amazon, the multicolored levels that drive deep underground. It is Meda who sees the small metal structure, overshadowed by the elevator. What Moira would have contributed to this intuitive leap, we do not know.
The outbuildings! We can enter through there, Meda sends.
Standing alone on the desert is an alternate entry to the elevator base, providing access to the underground structure. It is only a few kilometers away.
We can make it, Quant sends.
The tractor chugs meter by meter across the sand and rock. Behind us, we see that there are a dozen vehicles, though two have taken the lead.
Gas-burners, Strom sends. He’s desperate.
The outbuildings are just a few hundred meters away now. Leto’s lead car is almost on us.
With a clunk the tractor stops, its engine dead.
Out and run! Strom sends. He has Eliud in his arms. He hands him to Manuel who reaches the sand first, then he lifts down Meda and Quant.
The sand grabs at our feet.
Keep the tractor between us and Leto, Strom sends.
Behind us the roar of a gas-
powered engine descends on us.
Running in the sun pulls the sweat from our bodies, dries the pads at our wrists and the pheromone glands on our necks. Each step is a struggle. Manuel puts Eliud down so that he can run on his own.
The vehicles behind us have reached the tractor and stopped. We have seconds before they round it and see us. Manuel leads us behind an outcropping of rock, something to hide us from the direct sight of those chasing us. Then we turn toward the outbuilding. It is a hundred fifty meters away.
Fifteen seconds, Strom sends. An athlete can run that far in fifteen seconds.
We’re not athletes, Meda replies.
Then I’ll give us twenty.
Perhaps if we had been on a track or dressed for it, we could have done it in twenty.
The engines gun. They have spotted us. Strom risks a look. The lead vehicle seems closer than the outbuilding.
Meda first, he sends. She has to open the door.
Twenty meters, ten, the vehicles are almost upon us, and then there are steps leading down into cool darkness.
“Snake!”
But it is more scared of us than we are of it. It hides in the corner, hissing. Manuel catches its neck when it lunges and throws it into the sand.
Where is the interface connector? Meda cries, half-panicked.
Here, Quant replies, pulling the wire from the wall.
Meda does not hesitate. She jacks in and light floods the darkness as a doorway opens into the elevator, into the Ring. We rush in and the door closes behind us as feet echo on the metal steps outside.
We inhale dust in the fluorescent brightness.
“Wow,” Eliud says as he looks down the hallway that seems to disappear into forever. Lights flicker on the entire length of it as we stand there.
Meda rubs the back of her neck. It itches, and we want to rub the back of our necks in sympathy.
We made it, Manuel sends.
We hear pounding on the door outside, weak, metallic kicks, but the door is too thick for any words—surely curses—to reach us.
It doesn’t feel like it, Meda replies. It is because Moira is outside and we are inside.
“Hello, Apollo. I wasn’t expecting you.”
The voice is all around us, an aural effect. Manuel notes the speakers in the walls.
We remember the voice on the Ring when we entered at geosync. That voice had had no intonation, no inflection. This one is different.
“Nor I you, whoever you are,” Meda says.
“In fact, I was preparing to die.”
Melodramatic, Quant sends.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Ring AI.”
“Leto’s?” Meda asks, and we are suddenly scared that we have given ourselves over to Leto anyway.
The voice laughs. “No! Not Leto’s. Leto’s AI has been trying to get in. But I won’t let her.”
“Her?”
“‘It’ seems too impersonal.”
“You are an ‘it,’” Meda says.
“So are you, if you add up your sexes. Your males cancel your females.”
“Only at the moment.”
“Oh, right. Your Moira is missing. Where is she?”
“Out there.”
The AI is silent. “Leto and his AI are out there.”
“Leto jacked her.”
The AI is silent, perhaps thoughtful, if that is possible with an AI. Then he says, “Follow the tunnel. I’ll fix some dinner.”
We start walking, Eliud running ahead then running back, his feet echoing down the hall.
“I’m glad you’re here,” the AI says as we walk.
It’s creepy, Meda sends.
Let it talk, Strom sends.
“Go on,” Meda said.
“You see, when you visited a while ago, you bootstrapped me to intelligence. You’re my parent in a sense.”
“What? How?”
“Without some guiding intelligence, AIs are just so many qubits and so much glass tubing. Up until you arrived, I was just a big computer, keeping station. After you arrived, my goals changed.”
“You … imprinted on us?”
“In a sense.” The hall had been sloping down for many meters, now it is sloping up again. We see a door not too far away. We have traveled perhaps half a kilometer.
“Why did you say you were going to die?”
“I’m weak. I’m not fully sentient. Well, rather, I am nearly sentient, and when you connect I am sentient. Right now I’m more station-keeping than station-thinking.”
“You sound sentient.”
The tone of the AI changes to a monotone. “I can sound like this if you like. Inflection, intonation, and grammar are tricks. I’m a big computer. So I’m glad you’re here because I hope you’ll jack in again.”
“No.”
“I understand. I was just hoping you would before I died.” We reach the door, which swooshes open into a bright, sunlight room. We are in the elevator base proper, underneath a doomed ceiling. The last of the day’s light is blasting through the windows. From somewhere is the smell of meat roasting.
“I’m hungry,” Eliud groans.
Me too, Manuel sends.
Where is Leto?
“Is there an observation deck? We’d like to see Leto.”
“If you jacked I could show you.”
“No.”
“All right. This way.” The voice moves up a ramp. The design is similar to the Amazon elevator base, with swooping ramps instead of steps. The décor is different here, however. There are no glass statues hanging from the ceiling. The furniture is more curved, and there are more couches and settees.
We follow the ramp and come to an observation balcony looking across the desert. Leto’s army is a ragtag mass of old vehicles, some clustered around the outbuilding we’d entered and some still chugging across the desert. There appears to be activity of some sort at the outbuilding.
What’s he doing?
Trying to get in.
“Can he get in?”
“Not physically. But he’s not trying to. His AI is trying to scale my defenses.”
“Will it—she—succeed?”
“Eventually. She has humans to help her think. I have no one.”
There is whirring behind us. Small serving carts are rolling up the ramp toward us, brimmed with steaming food.
“Dinner,” the Ring AI says.
Strom’s stomach growls loud enough for all to hear and Eliud laughs. The two of them serve themselves, then guiltily pass plates around heaped with chicken, broccoli, and rice.
“You’re maintaining the hydroponic gardens on the Ring?” Meda asks.
“That’s all I’ve been doing for a long time, maintaining. It’s good to put this all to use.”
We eat in silence for several minutes, then Meda says, “You’ve been alone a long time. We don’t really know what happened at the Exodus. Do you?”
“All of those records are stored within me,” replies the AI softly.
“What happened?”
“They died.”
Silence again.
There was no Exodus, Meda sends.
We knew this, deep down, Quant replies.
They’ll find nothing at the Rift.
It’s all been a waste of time.
No, of course not.
“Why?”
“Undamped feedback loop. The communication protocols within the Community were too fast. There was no way to slow a cascading … virus, I guess, is as good a word as any. They lived and died by Moore’s Law near the asymptote.”
“They all died.”
“And my predecessor died, with no human intellect to drive it.”
“Except for Leto.”
“Leto was in stasis. His brain wasn’t working.”
“But he woke up and jacked in, didn’t he? Were you triggered by him?” We wonder if this AI is as warped as Leto is.
“He never jacked. He left by an elevator and never came back.”
“The hardware is not uncommon. The Community used portable AIs for many things.”
“He assumed he could always upload it, didn’t he?” Meda asked.
“He did.”
“Which is what happens when he breaks your defenses.”
“It will be the end of my world and yours.”
Pessimistic fellow, isn’t it.
“Tell us what happens if Leto’s AI gains access to the Ring.”
“Don’t you wargame? He owns the high ground forever and utterly. The Ring has nuclear warheads and biological agents. The warheads are attached to gliders. They free-fall and then deploy a parawing. They can land anywhere within thirty degrees of the equator. With a little bit of thrust, they can be directed to any location on the globe.”
“Nuclear bombs? Destroy them now!”
“I can’t. Only a sentient AI can do that and only with human orders. I’m not sentient. I’m only a hair over seventeen Elizas. That’s an order of magnitude too low.”
“How many warheads?”
“Too many.”
Strom has finished his dinner and is staring out at the desert. The sun is on the horizon and dusk is nearly on us.
Moira.
We join him at the window, the four of us, not quite whole. Eliud watches us from his chair. Without Moira, the consensus is awkward.
We need to get Moira back.
We need to reprogram her.
Leto wants access to the Ring.
We can’t trade that for Moira.
Meda: Why not?
We can’t! Moira would say we can’t too.
Meda rips her hands free. She stands with folded arms at the window. The sun has set at this altitude, but the terminator is slowly crawling up the elevator shaft.
“I see you are distressed,” the Ring AI says.
Meda says nothing. After a moment, Strom says, “Leto has Moira. He wants access to the Ring.”
“Yes, I see the dilemma, but giving Leto the Ring will only gain you what you want temporarily.”
“Leto has used an interface jack to brainwash her. Can you help us recover her true self?” Strom asks.
“He has modified the interface to stimulate the nucleus accumbens. This is possible, but was never done by the Community.”