by David Brin
MarcoYOLO: *shivers* You think so?
Scheherazade: By “some of us,” Mike means about three people. I don’t think Barrow had any data like that. He couldn’t even delete his notes properly. Not smarter than we are, except maybe in virology.
MikeTheDrop: I hope you’re right …
NeedleStack: scary
Scheherazade: And the world is paying a _lot_ of attention to FeastWar now. Yesterday Congress started a bill that will require all “social media games” to proactively file their data with the CDC and Department of Health. If it passes …
MarcoYOLO: Seriously? Data we willingly gave to FeastWar.game under promise of privacy could be dropped to the feds?? People will quit over that.
Scheherazade: People already have. Even without the bill.
hygge: What could they do with the fact that I order seaweed salad and spider rolls for lunch?:P
MikeTheDrop: Ping me if you really want to know …
Scheherazade: Look what _we_ did with it.
MarcoYOLO: We caught a bioterrorist!
Scheherazade: Mind-blowing. And it happened because the Dragons were sick of losing.:)
MikeTheDrop: Good to know our rankings were low for years because we all had colds. Not because we played poorly.
NeedleStack: no, it’s because you suck.:) (teasing. mostly.)
MikeTheDrop: Haha.
NeedleStack: ok, i’ll give some credit to the dragons. but no orcs.
Scheherazade: Oh come on, people are dead. Everything’s a wreck.:(That matters more than a game.
MarcoYOLO: At least we stopped him. We, meaning FeastWarriors. Feast on!
hygge: Yeah. FeastWar wins! When’s our next feast?
Scheherazade: Hoping for next week if some businesses recover and open. There’ll be a lot of fallout from this. It’s not over.
MarcoYOLO: Yeah.:(
MikeTheDrop: Hey guys, I’ll let you get back to your Pixie glitter dances or whatever you do in here. Thanks for sharing your space with me. You’re heroes. Dragon out.
***MikeTheDrop*** has left the chamber
NeedleStack: whew. much better
MarcoYOLO: Smells less lizardy in here. *sprays room with rosewater*
Scheherazade: @Everyone, FeastWar.game is organizing an assistance drive for families of players who died. Donate if you can! Warriors, share your strength!
hygge: Less important which army you’re in, and more important to play the game.
MarcoYOLO: Now let’s go crush some Orcs!!
Scheherazade: And stop bioterrorists. Like we do.:)
NeedleStack: next terrorist is all mine guys lol
Look to next year’s consequences …
… then look five years beyond.
YOUR LYING EYES
JACK MCDEVITT
Hudson Truscott was probably the smartest person at the annual Colorado Applied Electronics Conference, a reputation earned for his work in artificial intelligence and in network design. He obviously enjoyed the attention. But we all do, me as much as anyone.
Despite thirty years of periodic collaboration, I never really thought of him as a friend, though I enjoyed his company. He was amicable and easygoing, but he operated on a different level. We could never really communicate, and not because of his celebrated inclination to secrecy. The reality was that we simply operated on different levels.
Anyway. On that second evening of the conference, we finished a panel on recycling electronics, which had appeared not to interest him much. At the time I thought he seemed distracted. He wandered out through the hotel lobby onto the parking lot, carrying a bag slung over his shoulder. I was sitting on Toker’s Porch, where some of us were passing around a joint. I assumed he was going into town, probably to Kaplan’s Bar and Grill, the conference watering hole. But he walked past his car to the edge of the parking lot and kept going.
The Gorman Hotel perches on a ridge with a magnificent view of the Rockies. The sky was clear with a few scattered clouds, the stars bright, and a three-quarters moon floating over the mountains. I’m still not sure why, but I got out of my chair and followed him. Maybe it was the pot. Maybe it was that he looked ambivalent, or that there was nothing in the direction he had taken other than a precipice.
A low fence ran along the edge of the parking area, with a gate carrying a sign warning about the cliff’s edge and suggesting you go no farther. I’ve never understood why, if management was concerned about safety, they installed the gate. We were about five hundred feet over a mountain slope. A scattering of lighted houses was visible below us, and music drifted up from one of them.
Hudson stood beneath a cluster of trees, on the edge of the precipice, hands in pockets, laptop bag slung over his shoulder.
I don’t like heights, and normally I’d go nowhere near the summit. I probably wouldn’t have gone any farther that night, except that he noticed me and waved. So I eased out through the gate. There was about twelve feet of ground between the fence and the precipice. Plenty of space, you’d think. But not really.
“How you doing, Mike?” he said, as I approached.
“I’m good. That’s a spectacular view.”
He nodded, and I got the impression he hadn’t really noticed until I mentioned it. “Yes. It is.”
“You done for the night?”
“Yeah. I’ve had enough. Not even sure I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Really? Bentler’s speaking at the luncheon.” The winner of last year’s EISA Award.
“I know.” A cool breeze rippled across the summit.
“Why are you leaving early? Everything okay, Hudson?”
He was average size, in his fifties, with probing blue eyes. Most of his hair was gone. And you always knew that, if anyone understood how the quantum world worked, he was the guy. “Just tired, Mike,” he said. “I need a day off.” But he was holding something back.
“What’s up?”
He looked out across the mountains. Then he closed his eyes and cleared his throat. “I was thinking about making an announcement, but it would be premature.” He shrugged. “This would be the wrong place and time.”
“An announcement about what?”
He bit his lower lip. “All right, Mike,” he said. “I don’t want any of this getting out yet. I still have a few tests to run.”
“I won’t say a word.”
“Good.” He walked to the edge and looked up at the moon. Then he placed the laptop bag on the ground, opened a side pocket, and removed what appeared to be a pair of sunglasses. He held them out for me.
“What are they?” I said, keeping my distance.
“Try them on.”
I took a deep breath and inched close enough to take them. The world grew somewhat darker, but not as much as I’d expected. “Okay,” I said. “Am I supposed to see something? Some kind of augmented reality overlay?” The conference was rife with AR projects. In fact, the field was starting to seem … old.
“Ask me a question.”
“About what?”
“Anything at all, Mike.”
“All right. When’s your birthday?”
“You mean when was I born?”
“Yes.”
“Three years ago, on April 11.” He smiled and reddened.
I removed the glasses and everything went back to normal. I put them back on. The redness was fading. “What the hell just happened?”
“I lied.”
“Well, of course you did. But are you telling me these glasses detect lies?”
“That’s correct, Mike. They analyze facial expressions, changes in tone, and a few other communication details. They aren’t perfect yet—it helps to build a baseline with the subject. I still have to make some adjustments, which is why I shouldn’t have brought them up here this weekend. I’m getting overanxious, I guess.”
“That doesn’t seem possible, Hudson.”
“There’s not much left that we can’t figure our way around, Mike. Give me another few weeks
and I think I’ll be able to make some noise.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It’s been a remarkable experience. I’ve discovered that a good many of our politicians really believe what they say. That the world is only six thousand years old, don’t worry about climate change, that evolution doesn’t happen. I’d always assumed they were just appealing to their base, saying what they needed to get elected. But not so.” He shook his head. “Their sincerity is disturbing, in fact. You want the people who run the country to have some curiosity about the world around them.”
We both stood for a minute while the wind whispered in the trees. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
“With what?”
“With the AR glasses? Or whatever you call them?”
“They aren’t AR glasses, Mike. I tend to think of them as a translator. “
“Okay.”
“And what will I do with this technology? Maybe get my name up there with Bohr, Planck, and Schrodinger. And probably make a fortune.” He gazed at me and broke into a wide smile. “Hard to believe this is actually happening.”
“So what you’re saying, Hudson, is that people won’t be able to lie any more.”
“It goes beyond that, Mike. You ask someone a question and it won’t matter whether he answers it or not. His expression will be enough to tell you if he has something to hide.”
I tried laughing, though I was getting a bad feeling. “You mean we’re always going to have to speak our minds? Say what we really think?”
Hudson nodded. “I know there’s a downside. We don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. But imagine a world with lies and deceit removed. Con artists exposed. Almost all criminals caught. Advertising that’s truthful. Sure, we’d all have to adapt some.” He looked out over the mountains, the way Moses might have. “It would be a small price to pay.”
I’d been married twenty years at the time. Happily. But the reality was that the love of my life was not Amy but Sue Anne Hopkins, whom I’d dated for a short time years before I met Amy. She’d dumped me and I’d never really gotten over it. Amy was the woman I’d eventually settled for. She’d been a good choice, and it had worked. But I wouldn’t have wanted her to find out she was a backup.
I stood there and thought about the times I’d bent the truth to encourage students. To hide my religious feelings from my true-believing parents. To tell people how good they looked. To avoid admitting that someone was simply annoying. “I think the price would be substantial,” I said.
“Well, we’re all entitled to our opinion, Mike.”
“Hudson, your invention changes the cultural mores at a basic level. It’ll be a disaster.”
“I know there’ll be problems.” His tone suggested it was time for all of us to grow up.
“I mean it. Divorce rates would go through the roof.”
Hudson took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do? Bury the translator? Throw away a major discovery?”
“I know it wouldn’t be easy. But—.”
“Give it a rest, Mike. Okay? In the end, we’ll be living in a better world than we’ve ever known.”
“You know,” I said, “people won’t even be able to play bridge. You’re trying to figure out where the ace of spades is and all you’d have to do is look at one of your opponents. If he has it he’d know what you’re after, and the glasses would pick it up. Hudson, maybe you should think this out.”
“Your bridge club can agree not to wear them during games.”
“Until you miniaturize them into contact lenses.”
“Sci-fi stuff.”
“You’re saying that, of all people? Just follow Moore’s Law.” Computer capabilities double every two years. “Hudson, maybe you should think this out.”
“I’ve given it a lot of consideration.” He smiled and tried to wave it away. “Look, we’re always talking about truth. This kind of capability will produce enormous benefits everywhere. So we have to make a few adjustments. That shouldn’t be a big deal.”
I was still wearing the translator. The lenses remained clear. No more red lights. So he really believed that. He bent down, picked up the laptop bag, and held out his hand.
I removed the translator and gave it to him. He folded the sidepieces and tried to open a pocket on the bag. During the process the bag slipped out of his hands. He tried to grab it before it hit the ground, and simultaneously dropped the translator and stumbled backward. His eyes went wide, and he teetered on the edge of the cliff. His arms flailed while he tried to regain his balance. He screamed and reached out to me.
And … I stood there and watched. In that terrible moment I caught a glance of withering hatred, and then he was gone.
I waited a few seconds, until everything was quiet again. Then I advanced and stood where he had. Carefully. Just being near that kind of height made my stomach churn. I looked down, but he’d disappeared into the darkness. The translator lay on the ground. I kicked it after him.
* * *
I tried to persuade myself that it hadn’t been my fault. That sometimes people simply freeze at critical times. That I’d have saved him except for my own fear of getting too close to the cliff’s edge.
In any case, he’d been drinking, and the investigating authorities initially blamed the death on alcohol. I’d already come to terms with the notion that maybe it was for the best after all. Fate had intervened to save us all from the brutal light that a promethean genius had wanted to give us. A searing shaft of truthfulness that nobody would have wanted any part of.
I worried for a while that the translator information would be available on his hard drive either at home or at the school, but nobody mentioned it. His wife had died years before, and apparently no one else knew about his private translator project. Or … I wondered whether investigators came across it and had the same reaction I did and chose to let it die with him.
The world moves on. And I had one more lie to live with.
Well, there are various types of “investigators” these days. Hudson’s insurance company arrived sooner than I expected. They pored through the hotel’s security cam footage, which caught me following Hudson to the cliff. So did the dash cams of twelve cars in the parking lot. Some of Hudson’s fans and investors put out a call, and more images came in, one from a satellite, another from a passing delivery drone. But a wisp of fog obscured us during the crucial moments.
I came under suspicion because I hadn’t reported the incident although I’d been present. I explained that I’d been too shaken. Other, higher level detectives came and sifted, but by then all the footprints had been scuffed away. And, well, Hudson did have a lot of alcohol in him. I admitted having been there, and concocted a bigger lie, of trying to save him. After all, what motive would I have for foul play? And there was no hard evidence. These days, if you don’t have hard evidence, you have no case.
* * *
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that marijuana leaves you thinking clearly. Did I really imagine Hudson would have left no copies of his work? Sure, he was closed and secretive. So it took his investors and coworkers six months to break his encrypted files.
And by then an occasional girlfriend whom almost no one had known about turned up with a translator. The science was there, all along, of course. Two more groups had different versions, a month after that.
Everybody now wears them, at least occasionally. Often enough to start those changes in speech and habit Hudson had talked about that night.
And we found out that government agencies and cabals of billionaires had secretly been using earlier versions for several years, to gain advantages. Which is what happens when a few people get to monopolize technological progress. In fact, I learned that’s why the authorities had not pursued their suspicions that Hudson had been murdered. And I of course had been the only suspect. They’d never used the detection system on me. In fact the first person to do that was the girlfriend. And even though I had not pushed Hu
dson off the cliff, when I denied the question, the lenses turned red.
They still do. Some part of me knows the truth.
* * *
Lying, after all, is subjective. When it was learned that the most pathological types–who believe their own lies—sometimes don’t redden, well, my lawyers argued that the translator should not be used to convict anyone, at least not as the sole evidence. In fact my name may be best known for that precedent. Big deal. It did mean I walked. More or less.
Life is not without its ironies. The world is learning to live with The Change. A large number of brutal criminals and a few of the worst politicians have gotten what they deserved—good riddance—though Hudson was right that a lie detector doesn’t help you deal with sincere crazy people. So we’re still a little wary of each other. We wouldn’t be human if that weren’t true.
News reporters improved, and advertising became boring. The big changes were social, of course. But after the first tsunami of divorces and lawsuits and shattered friendships, something weird happened.
Humans adapted. New conventions and ways to interact developed. It became socially ill-advised to pin another person with embarrassing questions, lest you get pinned, in retaliation. Mutually assured lie detection means that people work harder to cut short the spiral of recriminations that I’d feared. Forgiveness came into vogue. Well, much of the time. Enough of the time. Except when real harm is inflicted. Life is a bit more nerve-wracking now, especially for older folks, like me. But in many ways, the world has become a better place.
But no one feels restrained about asking me uncomfortable questions. Everywhere I go, someone inevitably asks—did I murder Hudson Truscott?
And even though I never reply, I can tell that they can tell …
… that—God help me—I don’t know the answer.
A modern sage calls for …
… resilience.