We Think, Therefore We Are

by Peter Crowther

  “Well, the hell with it.” Allen was growing impatient. “I need to study your bipolar AI. I’ve some gear in my luggage. Freddie, this will be technical. Why don’t you take a walk around the station?”

  Bella said eagerly, “Oh, let’s. I’ll show you.”

  “And you,” Allen said to Fortune, “show me back to my cabin. Please.”

  With bad grace, Fortune stomped off.

  Bella gave Freddie a tour of the habitable module and its facilities: cabins, mostly unused, galleys, washrooms, a virtual recreation room. Everything was drab, utilitarian, and old.

  Bella told Freddie a little about herself. “My protocols are quite strict.” She tried to push her hand into the wall. Sparks scattered from her palm, and Bella screwed up her face in pain. “I can’t go flying around in vacuum either. I have to eat and drink. I even have to use the bathroom! It’s all virtual, of course. But Fortune says he designed my life to be as authentically human as possible.”

  Freddie said carefully, “But why did he create you at all?”

  “I give him company,” Bella said.

  Freddie, an academic who was careful with words, noted that she hadn’t explicitly confirmed that Fortune had “created” her, as the AxysCorp engineers had created Cal and Aeolus, any more than Fortune had admitted it himself.

  They soon tired of the steely corridors, and Bella led the way to an observation blister. This was a bubble of toughened transparent plastic stuck to the bottom of the module’s hull. Sitting on a couch, they looked down on the Earth, a bowl of light larger than the full Moon. Freddie was thrilled to see the white gleam of Antarctic ice. But the fragmented remnant cap on that green-fringed continent was the only ice visible on the whole planet; there was none left on the tropical mountains, Greenland was bare, and at the north pole was only an ocean topped by a lacy swirl of cloud.

  Bella’s thin, pretty face was convincingly painted by Earthlight. “Of course, we’re suspended permanently over the middle of the Atlantic. But you can see day and night come and go. And if I ever want to see the far side, I can always call for a virtual view.”

  She had no real conversation, under the surface. She was an empty vessel, Freddie thought. Beautifully made but unused, purposeless. But then the only company she had ever had was the reclusive Fortune—and perhaps the station’s artificial minds, Cal and Aeolus. “I’m no expert. But I can see that this environment doesn’t offer enough stimulation to you as a sentience. You’ve a right to more than this.”

  Bella seemed moved to defend herself, or perhaps Fortune. “Oh, there are things to see,” she said. “It’s a marvel when Earth goes dark with night, and you can see the stars. And you can see AxysCorp facilities, studded all over the sky. Sometimes you can even make out the big Chinese space shields. The Heroics, Fortune’s generation, saved the world. You can see it in the sky.”

  Freddie suspected these views were just watered-down versions of Fortune’s opinions, the only human mind Bella had ever been exposed to. “But people on Earth,” she said, “don’t always feel that way. AxysCorp did fulfil the Heroic-Solution strategy, to stabilize the climate and to remove the old heavy, dirty industries from Earth. Billions of lives were saved, and a global technological civilization survived and is now even growing economically. That was a great achievement.

  “But the Heroics chose to do things a certain way. The whole Earth is full of their gargantuan, aging machines. Memorials erected to themselves by a generation who wanted to be remembered. Look at me. Look at what I did, how powerful I was. Maybe their egos had to be that big to take on the task of fixing a broken planet. But to live at the feet of their monuments is oppressive.”

  Bella looked lost. “People ought to be more grateful.”

  “You need to come to Earth. It’s not like it is for you, stuck here inside the machinery. Most people just live their lives. They don’t obsess about the Heroics and AxysCorp and the rest. Only historians like me do that. Because it really is all just history.”

  A panel in the window filled up with Allen’s blunt features. “Professor Gonzales. Could you rejoin us on the bridge, please? I’ve made my judgment.”

  Freddie hurried after Bella, through the maze of corridors back to the bridge.

  The room was stripped of virtual displays. Allen sat comfortably on the plinth, the nearest thing to a piece of furniture. Fortune paced about, chewing a silver-colored fingernail.

  Allen said, “We’ll need a proper debrief. But technically speaking, the situation here is simple, as far as I can see.” He showed Freddie the probe he’d been using, a kind of silvery network. “This is a cognitive probe. A simple one, but sufficient. I ran a trace on the AI pole, Aeolus. I can find no bug in the software despite the distorted sentience set-up AxysCorp left behind here. Nor, incidentally, according to station self-test diagnostics, is there any flaw in the physical equipment, the microwave generators, the antenna arrays, the station’s positioning systems, all the rest. Aeolus should not have let that hurricane reach Florida. Yet it, he, did so.”

  There was a sound of doors slamming far off. Freddie felt faintly alarmed.

  “My recommendation is clear. There’s a clear dysfunction between the AI’s input, that is its core programming and objectives, and its output. The recommended procedure is clearly defined in such cases. The AI pole Aeolus must be—”

  “No. Don’t say it,” said Fortune, suddenly alarmed.

  Allen stared at him. “What now, Fortune?”

  “There’s no blame to be attached to Aeolus. None at all.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Fortune’s mouth worked; his metal teeth gleamed. “That I did it. That Aeolus sent a hurricane into Florida because I asked him to. So there’s no need for termination. All right?”

  Allen was amazed. “If this is true, we’ve a whole box of other issues to deal with, Fortune. But even so, the AI acted in a way that clearly compromised its primary purpose—indeed, contradicted it. There’s no question about it. Aeolus will be shut down—”

  Cal spoke up. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen, Dr. Allen.”

  The station shuddered.

  Allen got to his feet. “What in the dieback was that?”

  Fortune growled, “I told you. Now see what you’ve done!”

  Freddie said to Bella, “Show us your external monitors.”

  Bella hurried to a wall workstation and began calling up graphical displays. “Our comms link to Earth is down. And—oh.”

  UNSA Shuttle C57-D had been detached from its dock. It was falling away from the station, turning over and over, shining in undiluted sunlight.

  “We’re stranded,” Allen said, disbelieving.

  Fortune clenched his fists and shouted at the ceiling. “Cal, you monster, what have you done? I saved Bella from you once. Couldn’t you let her go?”

  There was no reply.

  They stayed on the bridge. It made no real sense, but Freddie sensed they all felt safer here, deep in the guts of the station. Bella sat quietly on the plinth, subdued. Fortune paced around the bridge, muttering.

  Freddie and Allen went through the station’s systems. They quickly established that the station’s housekeeping was functioning. Air conditioning, water recycling still worked, and the lamps still glowed over the hydroponic banks.

  “So we’re not going to starve,” Allen said edgily.

  “But the AI’s higher functions are locked out,” Freddie said. “There’s no sign Aeolus is monitoring the Atlantic weather systems, let alone doing anything about them. And meanwhile, comms is down. How long before anybody notices we’re stuck here?”

  “People don’t want to know what goes on with these hideous old systems,” Allen said. “Even in my department, which is nominally responsible for them. Unless our families kick up a fuss or another hurricane brews up, I don’t think anybody is going to miss us for a long time.”

  Fortune snorted. “Bureaucracies. The blight of mankind.” />
  Allen growled, “You’ve got some explaining to do, Fortune. Like why you ordered up a hurricane.”

  “I didn’t think it would kill anybody,” Fortune said weakly. “I did mean to smash up Cape Canaveral, though. I wanted to get your attention.”

  Freddie asked, “Couldn’t you have found some other way?”

  Allen said dryly, “Such as waggle the solar panels?”

  Fortune grinned. “Aeolus is compliant. When you have a god at your command, it is terribly tempting to use him.”

  “So you created a storm,” Allen said, “in order to bring somebody up here. Why, Fortune? What do you want?”

  “Two things. One. I want my exile to end. A century is enough, for Christ’s sake, especially when I committed no crime. I’d like some respect too.” He said to Freddie, “Look at me. Do you think I did this to myself? My parents spliced my genes before I was conceived and engineered my body before I was out of the womb. I haven’t committed any crime. I am a walking crime scene. But it’s me your grandfather punished, Allen. Where’s the justice in that?” There was a century of bitterness in his voice.

  “And, second, Bella. My sentence, such as my quasilegal judicial banishment is, clearly wasn’t intended to punish her. She needs to be downloaded into an environment that affords stimulation appropriate for a sentience of her cognitive capacity. Not stuck up here with an old fart like me. As, in fact, your own namby-pamby sentience laws mandate.”

  “All right,” Freddie said. “But what is Bella? You didn’t create her, did you?”

  “No.” Fortune smiled at Bella. “But I saved her.”

  Freddie nodded. “A, B, C.”

  Allen snapped, “What are you talking about?”

  Freddie said, “There weren’t just two poles of consciousness in the station AI, were there, Fortune? AxysCorp went even further. They created a mind with three poles. A—Aeolus. B—Bella. C—Cal.”

  “Oh, good grief.”

  “B was actually the user interface,” Fortune said.

  “Charming, for an AxysCorp creation. Very customer-focused.”

  Freddie said, “Somehow Fortune downloaded her out of the system core and into this virtual persona.”

  “I had time to figure out how and nothing else to do,” Fortune said sternly. “I’m extremely capable. In fact, I’m wasted up here. And I had motivation.”

  “What motivation?”

  “To save her from Cal . . .”

  Inside AxysCorp’s creation, three centers of consciousness had been locked into a single mind, a single body. And they didn’t get on. They were too different. Aeolus and Bella embodied executive capabilities. Cal, an artifact of basic engineering functions, was more essential. Stronger. Brutal. They fought for dominance. And it lasted subjective megayears, given the superfast speeds of Heroic-age processors.

  “Cal crushed Bella. Tortured her. You could call it a kind of rape, almost. He did it because he was bored himself, bored and trapped.”

  “You’re anthropomorphizing,” Allen said.

  “No, he isn’t,” Freddie said. “You need to read up on sentience issues, Doctor.”

  “I had to get her out of there,” Fortune said. “This isn’t the right place for her, in this shack of a station. But better than in there, in the processor.”

  Allen asked, “So why did Cal chuck away our shuttle?”

  Fortune said, “Because you said you would kill Aeolus.”

  “You said they fight all the time.”

  “Do you have a brother, Allen? Maybe you fought with him as a boy. But would you let anybody harm him—kill him? Cal defends his brother—and, indeed, his sister if he’s called on.”

  Allen clapped, slow, ironic. “So, Fortune, even stuck up here in this drifting wreck, you found a way to be a hero. To save somebody.”

  Fortune’s face was dark. “I am a damn hero. We were told we were special—the peak of the Heroic-Solution age, they said. We were the Singularity generation. A merger of mankind with technology. We would live forever, achieve everything. Become infinite, literally.

  “And, you know, for a while, we grew stronger. We were transported. Rapt. There aren’t the words. But we got lost in our data palaces, while the rest of the world flooded and burned and starved. And we forgot we needed feeding too. That was the great fallacy, that we could become detached from the Earth, from the rest of mankind.

  “In the end, they broke into our cybernetic citadels and put us to work. And they made us illegal retrospectively and imprisoned us in places like this. Now we’re already forgotten. Irrelevant, compared to the real story of our time: AxysCorp and their ugly machines.”

  “That’s life,” Allen said brutally.

  “This is Aeolus.” The thin voice spoke out of the air.

  Fortune snapped, “Aeolus? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t have much time. Cal and I are in conflict. I am currently dominant.”

  “Aeolus—”

  “I restored communications. I contacted your Oversight Panel, Dr. Allen. I received an assurance that a second shuttle will shortly be launched. The shuttle will have grappling technology, so Cal won’t be able to keep it out. But Cal is strong. I can contain him but not subdue him. Mr. Fortune?”

  “Yes, Aeolus?”

  “I fear it will be impossible to fulfil further objectives.”

  Fortune looked heartbroken. “Oh, Aeolus. What have I done?”

  “As you know, I have always fulfilled all program objectives.”

  “That you have, Aeolus. With the greatest enthusiasm.”

  “I regret—”

  Silence.

  Allen blew out his cheeks. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  Bella was wide-eyed. “Am I really going to Earth? Is a shuttle really coming? I’m going to go look out for it.” She ran out of the bridge.

  The three of them followed Bella to the observation blister, more sedately.

  “Saved by a god in the machinery,” Freddie said. “How ironic.”

  “What an end,” Fortune whispered. “Two halves of the same mind locked in conflict for a subjective eternity.” He seemed old now, despite his youthful face. “So it’s over. What will become of Bella?”

  Allen said, “Oh, they’ll find her a foster home. There are far stranger minds than hers in the world, in the trail of tears left behind by AxysCorp and their like. We try to care for them all. The station’s screwed, however. In the short term I imagine we’ll reposition another Tempest to plug the gap. Then we’ll rebuild. And we’ll let this heap of junk fall out of the sky.”

  “But not before we’ve come back to save Aeolus and Cal,” Freddie said.

  “You’re kidding,” Allen said.

  “No. As Fortune points out, it’s actually mandatory under the sentience laws, just as it is for Bella.”

  “I’d like to see Aeolus spared that hell,” Fortune said. “As for Cal, though, that deformed savage can rot.”

  “But Cal is the more interesting character, don’t you think?”

  “He locked us up and threw away our shuttle,” Allen snapped.

  “But there’s an independent mind in there,” Freddie said. “An original one. Aeolus just did what you told him, Fortune. Cal, born in a prison, knowing nothing of the real world, rebelled instinctively. With a mind as independent and strong and subtle as that, who knows what he’d be capable of, if set free?”

  Fortune nodded. “And what of me? Will your indulgence set me free?”

  “Oh, we’ll take you home too,” Allen said, sneering. “You’ll stand trial for the hurricane. But there are places for creatures like you. Museums of the Singularity. Zoos,” he added cruelly. “After all, there’s plenty of room, now the chimps and tigers are all extinct.”

  Bella came running up, her face bright. “I saw the shuttle launch. You can see its contrail over the ocean. Oh, Freddie, come and see!”

  Freddie and Bella hurried on to the blister and gazed down at the shining Earth, sea
rching for the spaceship climbing up to save them.

  The Highway Code

  Brian Stableford

  Tom Haste had no memory of his emergence from the production line, but the Company made a photographic record of the occasion and stored it in his archive for later reference. He rarely reflected upon it, though; the assembly robots and their human supervisors celebrated, each after their own fashion, but there were no other RTs in sight, except for as-yet-incomplete ones in embryo in the distant background. Not that Tom was any kind of xenophobe, of course—he liked everyone, meat or metal, big or small—but he was what he was, which was a long-hauler. His life was dedicated to intercontinental transport and the Robot Brotherhood of the Road.

  Tom’s self-awareness developed gradually while he was in the Test Program, and his first true memories were concerned with the artistry of cornering. Cornering was always a central concern with artics, especially giants like Tom, who had a dozen containers and no less than fifty-six wheels. Tom put a lot of effort into the difficult business of mastering ninety-degree turns, skid control, and zigzag management, and he was as proud in his achievements as only a nascent intelligence can be. He was proud of being a giant, too, and couldn’t understand why humans and other RTs were always making jokes about it.

  In particular, Tom couldn’t understand why the Company humans were so fond of calling him “the steel centipede” or “the sea serpent,” since he was mostly constructed of artificial organic compounds, didn’t have any legs at all, wouldn’t have a hundred of them even if his wheels were counted as legs, and would undoubtedly spend his entire career on land. He didn’t understand the explanations the humans gave him if he asked, which included such observations as the fact that actual centipedes didn’t have a hundred legs either and that there was actually no such thing as a sea serpent. But he learned soon enough that humans took a certain delight in giving robots explanations that weren’t, precisely because robots found it difficult to fathom them. Tom soon gave up trying, content to leave such mysteries to the many unfortunates who had to deal with humans on a face-to-face basis every day, such as ATMs and desktop PCs.