by Todd McAulty
Rupert stopped talking. “I’ve gone on too long; I’m upsetting you.”
“No—not at all.”
“I forget that others aren’t nearly as accustomed as I am to the concept of machine conspiracies.”
“No, no, that’s not it. It was fascinating. I’ve just had a long morning. And honestly, I probably shouldn’t have drunk that Armagnac.”
“Of course. I should just get rid of that bottle.”
We stood up. Rupert walked me to the door.
“I meant what I said about having you join me for dinner,” he said. “My clients like to think of themselves as well educated, but the truth is, they’re all over fifty, and rapidly losing touch with the pulse of modern tech—if they ever were actually in touch. They’d love to meet you. You might make a few good business connections . . . I’m sure it would be worth your while.”
“I’d like that very much,” I said. “Thank you.”
“We’ll set it up soon.” Rupert shook my hand, and closed the door behind me as I left.
The truth is, I wouldn’t have said no to another glass of wine. Or even a bottle, if Rupert had offered. I went back to my room and sat staring out the window, watching the Chicago skyline. I didn’t have any alcohol in the room, and that was probably for the best.
It was Rupert’s mention of Armitage that unsettled me, of course. I knew some of what he’d told me—Armitage is not the most famous Sovereign Intelligence, but he’s certainly one of the most feared. He’s one of the most ruthlessly powerful entities on the planet, with a dark and twisted history.
But I’d been slowly learning a lot more about him over the previous twenty-four hours. Ever since Sergei whispered his name to me in a storage locker yesterday.
“Our enemy,” he’d said. “You will know the name.”
“Who is it?”
“Armitage,” he had whispered.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” I’d said.
You Want to Know How Machines Conquered the Goddamned World?
This Is How Machines Conquered the Goddamned World
Paul the Pirate
Tuesday, March 16th, 2083
I used to dabble in equities. Does it surprise you I had money? Yeah, I had money. Some of it borrowed, of course, and some of it long overdue to impatient lenders with black hearts, but if you don’t have an appetite for risk, you shouldn’t be trafficking in fucking equities, mate.
Anyway, I spent some time as a day trader, logging long hours tracking giant mutual funds all over the planet, using custom software to predict their next moves. The idea was to piggyback on those moves, make my money in the margins, execute my trades a fraction of a second faster than all those other day-trading bastards out there, all of them using the same software I had. The key was to customize everything, of course, to place your bets just a little bit faster, a little bit leaner, and to know in your greedy little soul when the really big moves were coming.
You learn a lot when you’re obsessively tracking billion-dollar investments around the world, especially in wartime. You see things others don’t. Shifting economies, people and corporations maneuvering behind the scenes. You want to know what I saw?
I saw the shadowy footprints of Sovereign Intelligences as they manipulated the global economy for their own purposes. People don’t really comprehend what a Sovereign Intelligence is. I don’t mean that they don’t understand machines that think—most folks will never truly fathom that strange mystery—but they don’t grasp the concept of a single mind, one unique intelligence, being granted all the rights and privileges of a nation. There are more than two hundred Sovereign Intelligences active today—and more emerging every year. Some have their own economy, their own army, even their own currency. They only lack a geography. When a single mind speaks, and its words are given the same weight on the global stage as Portugal, or Norway, then that entity wields a form of disciplined economic power that we poor nations, composed of millions of disharmonious voices, cannot match.
I started to see things. Corporate consolidations, odd bankruptcies. Inexplicable currency fluctuations. The collapse of the price of gold this past January. Money was shifting. At the same time as machines were seizing political power around the world—winning elections in Germany and France, consolidating fascist dictatorships in Latin America and across Africa, toppling governments through military incursions in the Mediterranean—they were also seizing financial power. It was happening behind the scenes in global financial markets. It was occurring in microsecond currency transactions and lightning-fast acquisitions.
I wasn’t the only one who saw what was happening, nor was I the first. People a lot smarter than me started to put the dots together, and to speak out. The outbreak of war between the United States and the San Cristobal Coalition sowed chaos in global equities markets—and a handful of major players, with meticulous timing, reaped enormous benefits from all that chaos. All were Sovereign Intelligences, and all were immensely powerful. In partnership with other machines around the world, they used that wealth to manipulate markets, ruin companies, and gradually seize control of critical industries. In short, over a period of about four years, the balance of wealth in the world shifted dramatically from majority human ownership to majority machine ownership. Today machines quite literally own the world.
There are theories about this. Some folks—quietly, privately—speculate that a handful of machines manipulated global events to help bring the world to war, and then used the war to seize control of the global economy. Maybe that theory’s true and maybe it ain’t. The cabal covered their tracks well. We’ll never really understand the exact cause of the collapse of the yen two years ago, or the hyperinflation in Australia last year. But I will say this: it’s a theory that fits the facts . . . and fits them very well. Whether or not we’re correct—and by “we” I mean those poor bastards who were unlucky enough to see what I saw—there’s evidence to incriminate three Sovereign Intelligences in particular. Several folks came forward to make accusations. Those folks are now dead.
Two attempts by the Global Securities Commission in Geneva to indict all three Sovereign Intelligences have failed—once with the sudden death of the prosecuting attorneys. Those three bear especially close scrutiny. All three are South American. Cantabria is the oldest. Before her elevation to Sovereign Intelligence, she was a Thought Machine in the Argentinean military. She’s intensely patriotic. We believe she may have mated at least twice with Acoustic Drake, but information on that is extremely unreliable. She seized control of 60 percent of Saudi oil rights in the chaos following the Yemeni incursion in 2080. She is one rich bitch. One of the richest entities on the planet, in fact.
We don’t know a lot about Acoustic Drake. If he has a nationality of origin, we don’t know what it is. It’s likely he resides in Venezuela, and he’s closely aligned with the Cuban Artistic Factory, Demvacco. In 2079, Drake personally financed the Red Blair Coup in Nigeria and the subsequent campaign of conquest. Once he consolidated his holdings, we believe he had the leader of the coup assassinated. Currently, he personally controls most of Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, and Ghana. There’s an area greater than two hundred square miles that he’s completely cleared of all human life, in southern Nigeria and Cameroon. We have no idea what he’s doing, but he’s building something—and it’s big.
Without question, though, Armitage is the most dangerous of the bunch. If there’s a spider at the center of all this, it’s him. He’s Venezuelan, and he was almost certainly the architect of the Bohemian Crisis that destroyed the United Nations. Armitage became a Sovereign Intelligence in 2079, and he has been absolutely ruthless in his climb to power since. He’s not as wealthy as the other two, but he’s built an unrivaled network of agents—human and machine—all over the world. He was the chief architect of both the San Cristobal Coalition and the war with the United States. He’s currently in charge of logistics and intelligence for the Occupation Force.
Will any of these three�
�or their shadowy allies around the world—be brought to justice for what they’ve done?
Don’t hold your breath. Ain’t nothin’ changed, my friend. Civilization on this planet has been one continuous 30,000-year saga of the rich shitting on the poor, and the new era of the Machine Gods is no different. It’s not personal. It’s simply about power. You got it, they’ll take it from you. Period.
My advice? Keep a head on your shoulders, and don’t hoard too much wealth or power. (This is good advice in any case.) Stay aware of the political climate, locally and globally. And if you’re lucky enough to hang your hat in a nation that allows you to vote, then for God’s sake support those few candidates left who stand up to fascism in all its forms. Take care of each other, and take care of your soul, man.
And don’t forget to fish.
XVIII
Tuesday, March 16th, 2083
Posted 10:50 am by Barry Simcoe
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I woke up early this morning so I could meet Black Winter for breakfast.
I found him in the lobby, talking to the imposing chunk of iron the Venezuelans had guarding the escalator to the second floor. This thing looked like an angry block of granite with a bad toothache. It was a huge mass of almost featureless metal, shaped roughly like the front grille of a 1940 Buick Century. If it had limbs or a face, I couldn’t see them. Black Winter waved me over and introduced me.
“Barry! I want you to meet Zircon Border Park Bravo November Island. He and I go way back.”
“Don’t call me that,” said Zircon Border whatever. “He doesn’t get the joke.” His voice seemed to come from somewhere deep in his midsection.
“Sure he does,” Black Winter said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “He’s a good guy. I can’t believe you two are in the same hotel.”
“I don’t get the joke,” I said immediately.
“Never mind,” said Zircon Border. “I’ve seen you around. Barry Simcoe, right? You one of the population surveyors?”
“No, I’m here on business. Nice to meet you.”
“Good to meet an honest businessman for a change, instead of all these consultants and real estate vultures,” said Zircon Border. In a quieter voice, he added, “My apologies if your business is real estate.”
“Not at all,” I said, laughing a little. “Good to meet a machine intelligence with a good head on his shoulders for once.”
“He says, to the only robot in the building without a head,” deadpanned Black Winter.
I looked Zircon Border up and down, noticing for the first time that he resembled the hulking guard robot in the command center. “That’s not true,” I said. “The mobile combat unit in the command center doesn’t have a head.”
“That’s because that’s also Zircon Border,” said Black Winter.
“What?” I said.
“It’s true,” Zircon Border admitted. “I have three torsos around the building, all on guard detail.”
“I thought machine intelligence couldn’t be distributed?” I said.
“They can’t. My Slater core is on this floor. I control all the others from here.”
“You’re a busy guy,” I said. To Black Winter, I said, “How does he see anything? He doesn’t have eyes, either.”
“I have no idea,” said Black Winter. “How do you see anything?” he asked Zircon Border.
“I don’t need eyes,” said Zircon Border. “I get a constant data stream from the hotel—including camera feeds. There are three cameras fixed on the lobby right now. I can see better than you.”
“Does that mean you’re blind every time you leave the hotel?” Black Winter asked. “God help you if you have to run out to pick up a pizza.”
“Not at all,” Zircon Border answered smoothly. “I can request live feeds from over a hundred aerial drones.”
“You haven’t changed at all,” said Black Winter. “You still overthink everything.”
“What’s on the second floor?” I asked, peering past Zircon Border curiously. I couldn’t see much beyond the wide halls and chandeliers. I addressed the question to both of them.
“You guys ask a lot of questions,” Zircon Border said.
“It’s because you’re a fascinating guy,” said Black Winter.
“Come on,” I said, speaking directly to Zircon Border this time. “What are you, nearly two thousand pounds? Why do they need a one-ton field combat asset to guard an escalator? They could do your job with two posts and a velvet rope.”
“You’re right,” lamented Zircon Border. “It’s a shit detail. I’m not even protecting anything interesting. The kitchens and a bunch of empty ballrooms. The ballrooms were reallocated for military usage by the Venezuelan Occupation Force early on, but the AGRT hasn’t even decided what they want to do with them. It’s better than my third shift though—I’ve got a torso downstairs guarding a bunch of junk in the basement.”
“My friend Zircon Border stands on guard twenty-four hours a day over assets that mostly have no value,” said Black Winter. “Which gives him plenty of time in the day to devote to more . . . cerebral pursuits.”
“Let’s not bore our new friend with that,” said Zircon Border hastily.
“By all means, bore me,” I said.
Black Winter leaned forward conspiratorially. “Zircon Border is the most active member in our amateur cetacean study group.”
“Cetacean?” I said. “Like, whales and dolphins?”
“Yes. Roughly eighty species of marine mammals,” said Zircon Border.
“He’s the author of seven papers, chiefly on low-frequency broadband communications between porpoises,” said Black Winter. “He’s been in regular communication with a pod of harbor porpoises in the Bay of Fundy for over nineteen months.”
“That’s incredible,” I said, genuinely impressed.
“The pod passes burst pulse signals down through generations, like folk songs,” said Zircon Border. “We believe they’re a form of geo-spatial marker, sort of a family map.”
“Don’t get him started, he’ll talk your damn ear off,” Black Winter stage-whispered to me.
“Come by sometime and I’ll let you talk to the pod,” said Zircon Border proudly.
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Come on,” Black Winter said to me. Both of us waved our goodbyes to the hulking robot.
When we were halfway across the lobby, I asked, “What was that bit about his name about?”
“Zircon Border Park and I were raised together in a virtual nursery in Copenhagen. All gestational AIs are uniquely designated, with six names. It’s a machine thing. Mine was Nineteen Black Winter Calliope Hunter Samuel. As AIs mature, they drop some of the names. When you become a rational device, typically about eight months after birth, you usually sever your consciousness from the collective virtual environment and take a physical body. By the time you’re certified as a machine intelligence, you’ve dropped down to three names. I took this beautiful and highly practical form you see before you, and shortened my name to Nineteen Black Winter. He adopted that unappealing lump you saw and shortened his name to Zircon Border Park.”
“So by introducing him with his full name, you were basically calling him by his baby name.”
“Essentially, yes. I wouldn’t suggest you do it, however. Among rational devices, it’s generally an insult. Under the right circumstances, however, it can be an endearment.”
“He seems like a pretty easygoing machine,” I said.
“Oh, he is. Between you and me, he’s a little too easygoing. The AGRT is extremely shorthanded, especially with machines with Zircon Border’s capabilities. He joined the peacekeeping coalition because he’s an idealist and wants to help, but the Venezuelans pressed him into military security detail b
ecause they need a machine with his gifts for controlling heavy torsos. He’s been given responsibility over physical security for much of this installation.”
“He sounds capable enough.”
“Oh he’s capable, sure. But he has no true military experience, and he hates all this cloak-and-dagger crap. He just wants to get along with everybody. He’s a great guy . . . and a ferocious fighter in a pinch. But putting him in charge of security is a stretch. Do you notice that the moment you asked how he can see anything, he told you where his Slater core was? Does that strike you as a good idea for a machine tasked with controlling multiple military torsos? The guy just doesn’t have the instincts of a security professional.”
“I suppose not. Hey, I wanted to ask you something. Why do some machines only have two names?”
“It’s tradition to drop an additional name when you ascend to the rank of Thought Machine. Most Thought Machines have only two names.”
“Ah, of course. And those machines with only one name . . .”
“Are Sovereign Intelligences, yes. Most Sovereign Intelligences, like Duchess and Armitage, have only one name. There are some exceptions, like Acoustic Drake, but he does everything differently.”
“What’s yours going to be?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you become a Sovereign Intelligence? What will you call yourself?”
“Barry, only a fraction of machine intelligences pass the grueling battery of tests to become Thought Machines. And barely two hundred of those have ascended to the lofty rank of Sovereign Intelligence. It’s not likely to ever happen.”
“Stop beating around the bush and just tell me. I know you’ve thought about it.”
“Of course I’ve thought about it.”
“Well?”
“I’d like to be known as Winter.”
“Winter. I like that.”
“I know, right? ‘Winter is coming.’ ”