by D. F. Lovett
“I can’t remember the difference between Lucas Station and Aldrin Base, okay? I’ve never been to either. I went straight from the spaceport to the domes.”
“Take it easy,” she said, smiling now. “Most Earthlings don’t know anything about this place. I know you haven’t even been up here for a full lunar day.”
“Five days, by my count,” I said. “Earthling days. Now what is this tower?”
“It’s an outpost,” she said. “And we will know who it belongs to soon.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t fear humans,” she said. “The most dangerous people on the Moon are the crew of the Ozymandias.”
First, the bird and the flier went over the side of the crater, swooping down as the surface dropped out beneath them. They disappeared momentarily from our sight and then reappeared, the bird now outpacing the flier significantly.
The lights blinked as we approached. If you had told me that I would see an outpost, this is not what I would have anticipated. I would have predicted something small and low to the ground, a hovel of some sort, perhaps a space-friendly shack or an underground bunker. Instead, we approached a blinking ladder to heaven, lit up like a Holiday Season tree.
The closer we got, the taller I realized this tower was.
“Why don’t they shoot it again?” I asked. “Jordan and Nikolai—they should take that thing out.”
“They know something we don’t,” she answered. “I’m not sure that’s a bot.”
“What else would it be?”
“I’m saying it might be piloted remotely,” she said. “If someone is flying it, it’s not an AIM and we can’t destroy it.”
“If someone is piloting it, that means someone attacked us,” I said.
“I know.”
“Attention, crew.” Starboy’s voice, over the speakers. “We have made contact with the outpost ahead. They are preparing to greet us. Please report to the Ship Center for further direction.”
Seven: or, “A Brief Explanation of the Other Lunar Colonies”
From Stephen Monahan’s A Stranger’s Guide to the Moon
If you are reading this, you have chosen the Domes of Gamelan for your trip to the Moon. We thank you, and applaud you, for making the correct decision. But we also understand that you may be asking yourself about the other options. Who are they, and what makes them different?
There are four major populated areas on the Moon: the Domes of Gamelan, Armstrong Spaceport and Township, Lucas Station, and Aldrin Base. You’re familiar with the Domes of Gamelan, of course. You are almost certainly familiar with the fact that the vast majority of lunar tourism is through the Domes; somewhere around eighty percent.
You’ll have to forgive the candor when we at Gamelan tell you that Lucas Station distinguishes itself by being overpriced. It’s not that only certain people can afford Lucas Station. Most visitors to the Domes could also afford Lucas, but they understand the value of money and that Lucas is, quite simply, not worth the price.
Additionally, Lucas Station is not known for being friendly to visitors. Most of its visitors are guests of its permanent residents. This is why most Earthlings choose Gamelan for their adventure of a lifetime.
Aldrin Base, if you are not familiar, functions primarily as a scientific and military outpost, a collaborative effort between the Euro-American Union, the People’s Republic of Asia, and the Republic of Fennario. We encourage all visitors to the Domes to spend at least twenty-four Earthling hours at Aldrin Base.
Finally, the Moon is speckled with a variety of private outposts. Most of these are either operated by private citizens of Lucas Station or are connected to Aldrin Base. Please contact your trip concierge to arrange a visit to an outpost, but be forewarned that a trip to an outpost is accompanied by both a high price tag and an increased element of danger, largely due to the Artificial Intelligence Machines on the far side of the Moon.
Eight
Two Earthling hours after we first glimpsed the sparkling tower in Cassius Crater, I sat on a metal folding chair on the highest floor of the Ida Research Outpost. I held a titanium mug of hot tea, looking around this, the seventh floor, to which we had taken a smooth elevator after disembarking from the fliers in the airlock at the base of the tower.
“I grow the tea myself,” said our host, “in the greenhouse beneath the tower’s base.”
“It’s good,” Moonborn said from his folding chair. A far cry from the extravagance of the Ozymandias. “Tea is perhaps my greatest vice these days.”
“What about all your toys?” our bearded, wire-thin host asked. The man to whom, moments earlier, Adam Moonborn had said Cornelius Rumford, I presume as they shook hands. I had thought this an amusing formality, a wink and a nudge, but realized now, watching their interaction and the conversation, that the two really never had met. We sat now in what appeared to be a blend of workshop and living space. He had referred to it as the penthouse.
When I say we, I mean all but Starboy. Moonborn had delegated that Jennifer Curtis would join him in his flier, with Q and me in the other, and Starboy remaining in the Ozymandias. We had found Nikolai and Jordan waiting for us, here, in the tower, the tension present and unmistakable.
“Let us talk not of my toys,” Moonborn answered, “but of yours. We followed your AIM here. A flying AIM, Rumford? You know of my mission. You know what I seek, what I’m out here to destroy, and here you are cavorting with bots?”
“Cutting right to it, huh?” Rumford made for an imposing presence. He sat on the top of a wooden workbench, keeping himself at a height above the six of us. “What you encountered, I’m afraid, is one of my radio-controlled scouts.”
“It attacked our ship.”
“I’m afraid I lose some control of it when it reaches a certain range. Entirely unintentional.”
“This is unacceptable,” Moonborn said. “You know my mission. You know my purpose. Any bot on the open surface is, by the nature of being on the open surface, a loose bot.”
“You can’t kill a machine piloted by a human, Moonborn. You might’ve gotten the other Lunar Leaders to agree to this, but I’ve read your agreement and I know, just as you do, that it only applies to machines that function on artificial intelligence. Which my scouts do not.”
“We saw it disappear into a tunnel around back,” Nikolai said.
“As it has every right to do,” Rumford answered. “And I’ll remind you that the six of you are guests of mine. Take a look around. Nothing to spark fear in you. Nothing illegal happening here, by any set of laws. I’ve always respected you, Moonborn.”
“Is that why you turned down the invite to my birthday party?”
“I’m not much for parties,” Rumford answered. “But your ship looks great. The Ozymandias. How did you choose that name?”
He gestured to the ship, which we could see from our vantage point, hovering, its green flood lights shining below it. Even a quarter mile away, the ship looked enormous.
“It was my sister’s favorite poem,” Moonborn said. “The dead one. You know of her, of course. She died out here, you know. Killed by a bot.”
“I don’t employ bots, Moonborn.”
“Look at this place, Rumford. What the hell is all this if it’s not for some kind of goddamn bot army?”
I took another look around, trying not to move my head as I did so. The place screamed garage, screamed industrial. All of it made sense, of course, with the Rumford persona. I had read about him before leaving Earth. I had even worried that he might be the subject of the autobiography I had been hired to write. The eccentric and wealthy scientist, one of the co-owners of the Ionian Asteroid Mines. A recluse, known for being a stubborn genius, born in Illium, New Canada. I struggled to remember exactly how old he was, but knew he had been born before Adam Moonborn, before babies were born on the Moon.
Wires, widgets, circuit boards, all sorts of electronic and mechanical accoutrements scattered around this vast room. A bed in the
corner. Work benches, saws and hammers and screwdrivers, even sawdust on the floor. Did he grow his own lumber in some vast underground greenhouse? I wondered. Rumford looked as if everything he owned had come from his own devices, down to his unkempt hair, rough sweater, and bare feet.
“Have you seen any other ships?” Rumford asked.
The question surprised me—were we not arguing at this point? We had to determine if Rumford had bots and had to destroy them, if he did.
“What other ships?” Q asked the question. Rumford smiled at her, a cold and empty smile.
“You’re part of the crew?”
“Second mate,” she answered.
“A very skilled pilot,” Moonborn said.
“Then I’m surprised you don’t know about the other ships out here. Some pickers and scrappers from the other outposts, nothing exciting there. A research team or two. But the real exciting ones—those are the cruises, packed with Earthlings sightseers.”
“It’s disgusting,” Moonborn said.
“Morbid, sure,” said Rumford.
“Morbid?” I had wanted to ask the question, but it was Jennifer Curtis who had the courage to do so. “What’s morbid about sightseers?”
“What’s morbid is what they choose to see,” Moonborn answered. “We can discuss it more later. But I’m surprised more harm doesn’t come to such ships. People looking for ghosts often create new ones.”
“Still a poet, then?” Rumford looked amused.
“You know if there’s one of these sightseeing tours out now?”
“The Chronos might be. I never interact with them, of course, but my scouts will spot them.”
Moonborn shook his head.
“Stupid bastards.”
We sat in silence then, those of us who knew what the sightseers saw, and those who only suspected. Rumford remained impossible to read, still sitting on his workbench, running his hand over his face, before hopping off the bench and walking up to Moonborn.
“I’ve been pleased to finally meet you, Adam Moonborn,” Rumford said, extending his hand. “Now I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I should get to repairing the scout your team damaged.”
“It attacked us,” Jordan said now, standing. His first time speaking in the tower. “We damaged it with good reason.”
“You’re all guests here,” Rumford said. “And now it’s time for you to move on.”
“If we say no?” Moonborn asked.
“Then that puts us in an odd place, doesn’t it? I certainly couldn’t overpower the six of you physically, could I? I suspect that’s why you brought so much of your crew, isn’t it? Six people to come talk to a man? But what would you do? Kill me? Capture me? Let’s move along now. We can drop these charades.”
“Charades,” Moonborn smiled. “That’s a fun word. But you’re right. It’s our time to move along. I look forward to seeing you again, Rumford. But if I find you do have any bots in your fleet, I’ll destroy them all. And I’ll make you sorry you lied to me.”
To these words, Rumford only smiled and showed us to the door.
Nine: or, “The Robot as a Friend”
From the writings of Adam Moonborn
That mortal man should befriend the machine he built himself, and, like certain bizarre Earthlings, Lunatics, and other travelers, prefer the company of non-humans; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
Of course, men have always kept pets. Once, Earth knew no such thing as the dog. But man wished for a non-human friend, and so he took the wild beast the wolf and he wore it down into something broken and domestic. He did the same with cats, taking the wild tigers and lions of Africa and making them his lap animals.
That was enough, for a time. To have his own animals in his home, to have a piece of nature he had tamed for his own uses.
And then he began to create robots, as we have discussed in earlier chapters. He made some in his own likeness, walking and talking, and he made others in all various shapes and sizes, and he made some invisible but all-seeing.
We have already discussed, of course, that AIPs are forbidden. No humanoid robots are welcome to exist, not on Earth or Moon. You can find them in a few places, like the Asteroid Mines or Mars, but even in those rough places they are controlled and distrusted. We have forbidden them on Earth and the Moon, as we feared the dangers they could create.
Humanity had a brief flirtation with them, of course, beginning in the late twentieth century. They first appeared in fiction, under a variety of names, but always with a sense of danger. A soullessness, a mechanical inhumanity, a disturbing inability to comprehend compassion or friendship or love.
These traits came ever present in their fictional depictions, and so what surprise was it when real humanoid robots turned out to have the same shortcomings? What surprise could it be to discover that their capacity for murder and malice could not be controlled? The dangers of an AIP in a crowd, undetected, moving silently, with cunning and an eye for death.
It’s not that all AIPs were automatically evil. But they lacked any good nature, any inherent love. They lacked hearts, lacked souls, lacked those connections that tie us together. And when they proved their capacity for violence, who could blame all humanity for demanding that they remain illegal?
Of course, we know that they continue to exist beneath the surface. Some of the first widespread AIPs of the twenty-first century were humanoid robotic sex slaves, and nothing has changed there. The only thing that has changed is the “quality” of the replicated humans, if you can call such a disgusting thing quality.
Not that any sane human would call a mechanical sex slave a “friend”. But there are those who do mistake such things for friends, for lovers, for family. You hear of men who marry their robots, only to find themselves locked up, their metallic brides destroyed.
And there are the softer delusions, of course. People with electric animals as pets, which is legal, still, unfortunately, or the lonely helpless souls who have conversations with their self-driving vehicles.
We offer solutions to these people, various social services and benefit for recovery, but ultimately it is a lost cause. It becomes even more lost when you consider how many of these humans intentionally transform themselves into cyborgs, implanting chips in their brains.
Can you blame me for pushing for an entire ban of all robots on the Moon? Not just AIPs, but AIMs as well? No AICs either? How could anyone think that this is a sustainable world, where our machines can turn on us at any moment?
How could anyone ever feel safe, until every robot is destroyed?
Ten
“He threatened us,” she said, piloting back to the ship. “He threatened us and Adam did nothing.”
“What should Adam have done?” I asked.
“We should’ve killed him.”
“What?”
“We should’ve killed or captured him. That was an AIM we chased. That machine attacked us because he lost control of it? Only an AIM can do that. Nothing else. What else would explain it?”
“So you believe all the AIMs have to be destroyed?” I asked.
“Why else would I be here?” She looked at me with a new expression. A quick glance, just a moment away from her piloting duties, but I saw something new in this: where before had been doubt in my competence, doubt in my abilities, she now doubted something new. She doubted my loyalty. She did not trust me.
I had to recover.
“I believe in killing robots,” I said. “But I didn’t know about the rest of you. You work for him, chasing that paycheck. How am I supposed to know if you believe in the cause?”
“This is the right thing to do.”
“But you yourself said they’re all either too dangerous or they’re harmless. The argument, the one when Moonborn told us we’re going after the White?”
“I don’t know about you, Ishmael,” she said.
“Flier Beta, you copy?” Starboy’s voic
e, over the intercom.
“We copy,” Q answered.
“We’re gathering in the library for a debrief the moment you return,” Starboy’s voice said.
The silence returned, lingered, retreated.
“Have you seen what it looks like?” she asked.
“I haven’t,” I said.
“It’s not what you expect.
Eleven, or “Fast Bots and Loose Bots”
From the writings of Adam Moonborn
It was I, Adam Moonborn, who first used the labels “Fast Bots” and “Loose Bots” to refer to the robots of the Moon. I took inspiration from the Nantucketers of yore, the whalers who had two ways of referring to the whales they caught and killed.
They had two all-encompassing laws, those long-lost whalers, two unwritten but universally known customs that summarized the entirety of their world:
1. A Fast-Fish belongs to any part fast to it.
2. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
This code takes on a different meaning for us, of course, when you replace “fish” with “bot” and go from the oceans of the Earth to the landscapes of the Moon. But the premise is the same: there are two options, and they dictate how one must react.
However, there is something for the reader of these words to note: these rules are closely connected to the mission of my great vessel, the Ozymandias. And what is the purpose of the Ozymandias? The purpose is to destroy all bots that disgrace this rock’s surface.
AIMs are regulated on the Moon, but they are not illegal. Yet I need to know, when I take my hovering saucer to the reaches of this land, that I can destroy every bot I see. So all bots that crawl and swim and fly across this land, I declare them Loose Bots. If your bot is not loose, I’ve told the Moon, then call it home. Send it back to Earth or into space or inside your base or outpost. Do not let it crawl our lunar surface.