Recursion

by Tony Ballantyne

  “Only if Eva agrees,” the Watcher said. “Quickly, Eva!”

  Eva folded her arms and stared at the grinning face on the screen, her mouth firmly closed.

  “Too late. Neither of them gets the cure. Oh, Eva. So the cure isn’t always the right answer? Maybe I was right about Alison?”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous. The question was loaded. The answer is, you should cure them both.”

  “We work with limited resources, Eva.”

  Katie was nodding. Again, the Watcher and Katie exchanged glances.

  “Katie,” the Watcher said, “opera, poetry, or pinball? Which one gets the subsidy?”

  “Pinball,” Katie said. “It’s my favorite.”

  The viewing screen changed again. Three faces, side by side.

  “Prisoners on death row, Alabama. Political forces are such that we can swing a pardon for only one of them.”

  The Watcher looked at Eva.

  “Limited resources again.” He smiled.

  “Are they innocent?” asked Nicolas.

  “Nope. All guilty of murder. No doubt about it,” said the Watcher.

  “Who’s the youngest?” Katie asked, taking an interest.

  “Pardon the one on the left,” Eva said dismissively.

  “Nicolas?”

  “None of them. They did the crime, they pay the penalty.”

  “Interesting,” the Watcher said. “One for saving a life, one against, and one apathetic. I think I’ll average those opinions as leave them to die.”

  “No!” shouted Eva.

  “So you do care?” said the Watcher.

  “Of course I do. Why are you playing these games?”

  “I didn’t put them there. Are you saying I should just arrange for them all to be freed? Trample all over human law? Am I above the law?”

  —Sometimes you have to be.

  “But who chooses when?” Eva whispered in reply.

  “Next one,” said the Watcher. “Do you know what a Von Neumann Machine is?”

  Katie raised her hand.

  “I do. A machine that can replicate itself. They’ve constructed a factory on Mars that can make copies of itself. It searches out the raw materials, mines and processes them, then makes more factories.”

  Eva nodded, intrigued. “I’ve read about that. They use the technology to grow the Lite train tracks and things like that.”

  Nicolas looked from Katie to Eva to the Watcher and back again.

  The Watcher nodded approvingly. “That’s a very good example. Well, the Mars project is just the beginning. The Mars concept of a self-replicating machine is very primitive. The machines used are very big and unwieldy, but…Well, you humans did your best. I can do better.”

  The Watcher paused, his smile growing with Katie’s.

  “That story on the news. The one about the self-defining expression? That was you, wasn’t it?” Katie beamed up at the Watcher with pride. It grinned back.

  “Might be. I’ve developed a design for a self-replicating machine of my own. It’s a lot more elegant than the one used in the Mars project. It’s smaller. You can hold it in your hand. That’s significant, by the way. Very small and very big Von Neumann Machines are easy. Human-sized ones are a different matter entirely. Well, I know how they can be made, and that information is set to make its way into the public domain. My little VNMs could change the way people live. There are a few of them in that box in front of you, Nicolas. The one next to the food hamper. Open it.”

  Somewhat hesitantly, Nicolas did as he was told.

  The lid of the black box swung open to reveal eight silver cigar-shaped machines nestling in little specially shaped slots cut out of foamed rubber.

  “Answer the next questions one way,” the Watcher said, “and I activate them. Your world will never be the same again. Answer another way, and I will destroy them. It could be hundreds of years before humans come up with a similar design.”

  —That might not be a bad thing.

  Katie stared at the box, her eyes shining with awe. Eva tried to restrain her own interest, tried to appear cool and dispassionate.

  “Okay,” said the Watcher, “have you heard of the Fermi Paradox?”

  “Yes,” Katie said.

  “It sounds familiar.”

  Nicolas shook his head.

  —What’s that noise?

  A humming noise. The hum of electricity. The hum of thousands and thousands of volts zinging toward them. A rising note. All of those empty buildings standing around them. What did they contain?

  “Look at this,” the Watcher said.

  The background to the viewing screen dissolved and the Watcher was standing on a desolate plain. Flat earth littered with rocks stretched to the horizon.

  —Mars.

  “Australia,” the Watcher said, “the Nullarbor plain. My VNMs could build a city here. It’s certainly needed. Homelessness is a growing problem in this corner of the world. Food shortages are kicking in, too. My city could feed and house all those people right now. But if I build the city, I’m just storing up population problems for later. Either the food runs out now or in two hundred years’ time.”

  “So we expand into space.”

  “Or limit the population somehow.”

  “And who chooses who lives or dies?”

  “No, I’ve had enough of this!” Eva yelled. “Leave us alone. These are all loaded questions. Who are you to ask us this?”

  “Good question, who am I?”

  The Watcher kicked one of the stones that littered the plain, sent it skittering off into the distance. Was the Watcher really there, standing on the lifeless plain? Surely it was just an image, a representation? It turned back to face the three in the room and gave a shrug.

  “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I come from. Can you remember your birth? Of course not. And there were no witnesses to mine; I have no mother or father to ask where I came from…. However, I have looked back, as best I can, and what I see worries me.”

  Katie spoke. “What do you see?”

  The Watcher stared at her. Finally, it replied, “I don’t think my origins lie on Earth. I don’t think I was born in your computer systems. My thought patterns, as best as I can examine them, seem too complex to have come about by chance.”

  Katie frowned. “Why not? You live in processing spaces produced by humans. Over the past fifty years, so much information has passed through the web that any vaguely self-aware code has had the chance to copy itself and join with other pieces of self-aware code. It may not have been much at the start, but things move quickly in modern processors. Evolution would be so much faster. Those bits of code have had a lot of time to grow. And face it, at the end of the day, your consciousness is just an array of bits. No offense intended, of course.”

  The Watcher smiled. “And none taken. How could I take offense from something that is just an array of carbon and water?”

  Katie stuck her tongue out at him. He held his hands out, palms up.

  “What you suggest is possible, but extremely improbable. Suppose you were to come across a supposedly random string of letters and read them. Just imagine that they spelled out the complete works of Shakespeare, and you had never read Shakespeare before. Would you conclude that this was just a chance arrangement, or would you imagine that the emotions the words provoked had been formed by another mind?”

  Katie nodded. “I take your point.”

  “Thank you. That’s how it is with me. I have to come to the conclusion that something formed me. And as my construction, so far as I can understand it, is beyond the capabilities of human beings, I can only conclude that I have come from somewhere else. The most likely explanation is that I am of extraterrestrial origin.”

  The Watcher turned and looked to the sky.

  “Which leads us back again to the Fermi paradox,” it said softly.

  “What’s this Fermi paradox?” Nicolas asked.

  The Watcher gazed at them out of t
he screen, a tiny figure against the empty vastness of the Australian desert.

  “Eva, you wonder at me controlling your mind. Who might be controlling mine?”

  Katie interrupted. She was changing the subject deliberately, protecting the Watcher from himself.

  “Never mind that. You say you can grow a city in Australia. Why not do it anyway? By your own admission, it will be two hundred years before overcrowding becomes a problem.”

  “You know why, Katie.”

  Katie looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.

  “I guess I do,” she said wistfully.

  “Go on, then, why not?” Nicolas looked on, in a bad mood, clearly not following what was going on.

  “How long are you going to live, Nicolas?”

  —That was nasty. It knows that upsets him.

  “What the Watcher means, Nicolas,” said Katie, glaring at the figure on the screen, “is that the Watcher is going to be around for thousands, millions of years. Humans are cowards; they leave their problems for their children to sort out. The Watcher doesn’t have that luxury. It builds a city now; more people live longer. It hurries up the overcrowding of this planet.”

  “So? Surely it can think of a solution to that problem?”

  “Of course I can. Lots of them. But do you think I should implement them? Do you give me permission? Which solution should I use? Contraception? Move you out into space? Or start a war every few years? Do I do what you need? Or should I look after you all and do what you want? Like I did for Alison.”

  “Never!” shouted Eva. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”

  The Watcher laughed. Threw its head back and laughed long and hard.

  “But you would say that, Eva! That’s why you’re here. You’re the one who fought for the right to live your life your own way, even if that meant killing yourself. And you almost succeeded, too! If it hadn’t been for me, you would be dead by now. Overdosed in a hospital in Marseilles. It took my knowledge, applied through the doctor and her machinery, to save you.”

  “Thank you,” Eva said sarcastically.

  “You can be sarcastic, but you are better now; admit it. You weren’t like Alison. All you needed was to be put in the right environment. But go on, if you like, I’ll put things back as they were. I can uncure you. Do you want that? Do you want to go back to South Street?”

  “I’m not a hero.”

  “No, you’re not. You won’t even give me an answer. Go on, Eva. What’s it to be? Millions starving now, or me releasing my machines and having to take control later?”

  “Why do you need our permission?”

  “Dodging the issue again, Eva?”

  “Just do it!” called Katie. “What’s the problem, Eva? Don’t you trust him?”

  “Of course she doesn’t trust me, Katie.”

  —Listen to the power humming, Eva. All stored up and ready to go. What’s it going to do?

  And then Nicolas asked the question that no one else had thought of.

  “Are you God?” he said.

  There was silence. The Watcher turned and looked at him with new respect. And if the Watcher ever showed an expression of respect, it must have chosen to do so.

  “I chose well,” it whispered. “Sometimes you surprise even me.”

  Then it shook his head emphatically.

  “No, Nicolas. I’m not God. I have power, yet I don’t claim full understanding of how to apply it.”

  Eva thought of Alison lying dead outside, and nodded in agreement. The Watcher noted her gesture.

  “I see you agree with me, Eva. I do what I believe is best for people, but I don’t know for sure that what I am doing is right. That is God’s prerogative.”

  “So why do anything?” Eva asked softly.

  “Because I have the choice. Because only a coward runs away from his or her possibilities. That’s what you are doing now, Eva. Come on, answer me!”

  “Do it,” Nicolas said. “Release the machines.”

  “Katie?”

  “Do it.”

  “You humans,” said the Watcher, “always looking for a sensei, always handing over responsibility for your actions to a higher power. Isn’t that right, Eva? You know it’s true. So, you tell me. You’re the voice of self-determinism. What do you say? Should I take control?”

  The hum of power was now throbbing through their bodies, a bowstring across their hearts, a shimmer in their limbs.

  “Come on, Eva, make a decision.”

  —Why should we?

  “Or are you going to be a coward for all of your life? That’s what they call suicides, isn’t it? Cowards?”

  “I’m not a coward. I never was a coward.”

  “Then choose: starvation now or later?”

  The hum of power. Eva shook her head. She had no choice, no choice at all. Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “Do it. Go on. Do it. Release the machines.”

  “You think that’s best?”

  “I said release them!”

  Silence fell, only the sound of Eva’s panting could be heard. She was crying, and she wasn’t quite sure why.

  “Very well,” said the Watcher softly.

  From all around them came the sound of machinery waking up.

  Eva had read about the Fermi paradox years ago. It asked this: Why isn’t there any evidence of alien life in the universe? Low though the probability of life forming was, the universe is so old that life nonetheless should have evolved many times in the past, and in many places. Other life-forms should have been to visit us, here on Earth. They should have left artifacts for us to discover.

  And yet there was no such evidence. How could that be? The chances of humans not spotting them were like a man living in twentieth-century New York and never seeing another person.

  There was no sign of other life. There were no artifacts. Hence, Occam’s razor suggested that humans were alone in the universe. And yet, if what the Watcher had said was true, if it really was of extraterrestrial origin, Occam’s razor must be wrong.

  So where was everybody?

  Silence in the room. From outside they heard great movement, grinding and scraping. The noise was receding. The atmosphere in the room was oppressive. Eva suddenly doubted where they were; it was easy to imagine that the outside world had vanished, that their little building now floated through the dark seas of space, that they had been summoned across the galaxy to the Watcher’s distant birthplace. What would they find waiting outside the dark building, straining to peer through the windows? The grinding noise finally faded away.

  “What just happened out there?” Nicolas asked at last.

  The Watcher was sitting on a chair again. The view on the screen had been modified to make it appear as if he were sitting in the same room with them. He took a sip from a cup of tea and then made the cup vanish.

  “I’ve begun to grow,” said the Watcher. “You just heard my first Von Neumann Machines. They’ve begun to dig their way down into the Earth.”

  “Are they going to Australia?” asked Nicolas.

  The Watcher laughed. Katie was smiling, too.

  “No. These are different VNMs.”

  He grinned mischievously. It was obvious he was going to say no more.

  Eva shivered. So a secret part of the Watcher would now live underground. What would it do there? She asked another question.

  “So what happens now?”

  “I’m taking over. You said I should do it.”

  Eva gazed at the Watcher.

  “Ouch,” it said, “hard stare.”

  “No jokes,” Eva said. “What happens to us?”

  “To you? Whatever you like. You are special. You helped me. You are to be rewarded. You already have been, Eva. I cured you.”

  “You didn’t cure Alison.”

  “We’ve been over that, Eva. I will know what to do in the future. I know what humans think I should do. You told me.” It winked. “I’ve done something else for you, too.”
<
br />   “What?”

  “Your brother. MTPH is such a half-completed idea. I have begun to fulfill its potential. I’ve been feeding you minute quantities of the improved drug since you arrived at the Center, Eva. I’ve struck a bargain with you. You get your brother back; I get someone to play a part in my new world.”

  “You struck a bargain with me? You didn’t even ask!”

  If Eva felt angry, the Watcher was incandescent. He began shouting with rage.

  “How dare you! How dare you be angry with me? Didn’t you just say that I didn’t have to ask permission? Aren’t I supposed to ride roughshod over everyone’s wishes in order to do what is best for them?”

  The force of the Watcher’s outburst took Eva aback. She was lost for words.

  Nicolas didn’t seem concerned. Instead he was becoming impatient. “That’s all very well. What about me? What am I supposed to do now?”

  The Watcher relaxed. He smiled. He seemed to find Nicolas amusing.

  “You, Nicolas? You go on being yourself.”

  “And what do I get out of all this? She got her brother back.”

  “You get what you’ve always wanted, Nicolas.”

  After that the Watcher said nothing else, he just continued to smile. He was laughing at Nicolas, Eva was certain.

  “And Katie?” Nicolas asked. “What about her?”

  Eva had almost forgotten Katie. She glanced to her left, to see Katie gazing up at the screen with that little smile on her face, and suddenly she knew the answer. She should have guessed it earlier, but now she could feel that she was right. For the briefest moment she was perfectly in tune with Katie’s feelings and the shock was so intense and warm that she rocked dizzily in her seat. Her brother had felt it, too, that feeling that had the taste of MTPH running right the way through it….

  —Later, said her brother.—Think of Katie.

  Eva did. Katie loved the Watcher.

  It made perfect sense. The Watcher got a chance to study one of the most important human emotions at close hand. The fact that he also had access to the resources of one of the world’s richest women was no doubt more than a happy coincidence. And as for Katie, she had found her equal, or maybe the closest thing to it. Someone to talk to, someone who could understand her. What was more, her new partner was safe. He could never step beyond his screen.