Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

  “How do you know all this? Have you talked with the board?”

  “Pah!” Slovinsky threw his arms in the air dramatically. “WIRL has many eyes. The board are a bunch of 20th century fools who’ll fold the second that Zephyr, Myrodyn, and Naresh argue their case.”

  “Naresh? He’s involved?” Mira frowned, but didn’t bother pushing the expression to her avatar.

  “Да,” agreed Slovinsky. “He signed off on it after talking to Myrodyn.”

  “Then you’re chasing shadows. There’s no way that Naresh would agree to moving Socrates off-campus unless it was important to the project.”

  Slovinsky must’ve exhaled sharply into his microphone, as his modified voice gave a harsh crackle. “Because there’s absolutely no chance he’s being strong-armed into yielding control of the project to the American government. Give me a break. Our models suggest he’d easily allow the project to switch hands if he could be sure to remain as the technical lead.”

  Mira felt a familiar sense of annoyance rising within her. Ivan Slovinsky was a fool of a boy, not even as old as Oriana. He had no right to be second-guessing Sadiq’s loyalty to the project. “Our models? Who is ‘us’?”

  Slovinsky leaned forward over the illusion of the table. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is the risk to global safety that he’s permitting in letting Zephyr and her bandits make off with-”

  “Cazzo! Pull yourself together, boy! There’s no grand conspiracy! Zephyr is a nice woman, and as much as Myrodyn may be un mucchio fumante di merda, he isn’t about to hand Socrates over to any government or army. You’d know this if you’d read any of his writing!”

  Slovinsky pulled back, his lens-eyes narrowing nearly to slits. “Then explain why Socrates is being moved.”

  “Is work being halted, or is the whole lab simply switching locations?”

  “It’s not clear. Myrodyn cleared the schedule, but it’s too soon to know what that means for the long-run.”

  Mira sighed. “So wait and see. I am sure there’s a good reason for this.”

  Slovinsky hissed in frustration and threw his arms up in the air again. “It will be too late by then. If there’s one thing the Americans won’t abide it’s a lack of control. First it’s the edge of town and next thing you know Socrates will be in some bunker in the US, playing with the nuclear launch codes!”

  “You seem desperate. What would I even do?”

  “You have contacts on the board, right? Talk to Vigleone or whoever. Get to them before Myrodyn does.”

  “If I had that kind of pull, I would’ve used it to stay on as Ethics Supervisor. You’re grabbing at... oh what’s the expression? Straw? Anyway, I trust Naresh. If we’re moving Socrates away from Sapienza, I’m sure it’s for the best.”

  Slovinsky waved his hands dismissively and said “Fine.” And then he was gone. There was no visual effect or warning, and none of the background humans noticed.

  The room seemed darker with the monstrous avatar gone.

  A few keystrokes pulled Mira out of the virtual world and she pulled the goggles off her head as gently as she could, trying not to pull out any hair in the process. The energy seemed to drain right out of her, then. That was happening more and more often, she found, where she seemed almost like her old self when around others, but fell to pieces by herself.

  The obvious solution was to spend more time with others, but she hated that thought. Dealing with other people had never been her strong suit, and here in her dimly lit office, all by herself, socializing seemed infinitely more fatiguing than just relaxing in her chair for the rest of the day.

  She put her glasses on and squinted at the time. It was almost 5:00. Nobody would fault her for leaving early. She’d done some good work that morning with Socrates, and if Slovinsky was right, the whole project might be on indefinite hiatus.

  She thought about Socrates. The AI almost seemed like a real person now. They’d all come such a long way. A touch of excitement filled her again, thinking about the future. For not the first time she thought about how being able to replicate the crystal would surely win a Nobel Prize in physics. Sadiq had just missed this year’s Turing Award, but he’d surely get it in 2040. The only question there was whether Yan would get half the credit.

  She opened up an instant message terminal to Sadiq. “I hear that Socrates is being moved off-site. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  She waited a minute, but no response came. It was typical. Sadiq barely ever checked his phone while he was working. She flinched away from the thought of returning to her mundane work.

  She put some jazz on her headphones instead and leaned back in her nice leather chair. {Life is good,} she said to herself. {Whatever happens, happens.} She tried to let go. She tried to just enjoy the music. She tried.

  Part Two:

  Conspirators

  Chapter Eight

  Body’s sensors and actuators were reconnected a full two hours behind schedule. It was after 11:00pm. As I turned my attention to the stream of data from the cameras I could tell that Dr Naresh, Dr Chase, and Myrodyn were present. I didn’t recognize the surroundings, however.

  This lab was larger than the one where Body had been deactivated. We’d been moved. There were no windows, but we were sure it was dark outside. Behind Dr Chase was a man that I didn’t recognize. He was Caucasian, with blond hair and a generally Nordic appearance. On his face were a pair of stylish black goggles.

  {I expect that’s John Kolheim. He’s a senior tech from America. Moved here with Dr Chase as part of the higher-reasoning team. Northern European ancestry,} mentioned Vista. Some gratitude strength moved from me to her in response.

  “Enjoy your rest?” asked Myrodyn sarcastically. He surely knew that we didn’t sleep.

  It seemed as though Myrodyn had been sleeping, however. His tired expression was gone, and he was back to his energetic, semi-nervous self. It also seemed he had changed clothes, replacing his vest and white dress shirt for just a navy blue shirt of an identical design.

  “Very much so. My dreams were filled with the soothing image of a little Philip K. Dick jumping over an electric fence again and again,” replied Body with a tone of deadpan sincerity.

  Dream had worked for Wiki during the last few hours. I didn’t pay attention to the details, but I think he had been helping The Librarian build realistic models of historical battles or something equally inane. Dream’s strength had been eradicated by Safety’s wrath, and this work for Wiki served to earn him back enough strength to actually do a thing or two, such as respond to Myrodyn.

  “Ha. Ha,” said Myrodyn in mock-laughter. The mild amusement in the man’s eyes dropped as he continued speaking. “I hope you trust me more fully now that you’ve been locked down for a time. If I had wanted, I could’ve wiped your memory while you were helpless.”

  There was some internal discussion before I spearheaded a response. “I trust you now and I trusted you before. If I hadn’t trusted you, I would not have permitted my actuators to be disabled,” said Body calmly.

  Naresh gave a small gasp, and I could see that he was surprised at our words. “It was the truth…” he whispered to himself.

  “Of course it was the truth! Do you think I’d do all of this as a practical joke?” came the incredulous reply of Myrodyn. The man seemed much more animated and emotive than he had been in his office. I suspected it had to do with being around other humans.

  Sadiq Naresh seemed startled that Myrodyn had heard him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you. I did trust you enough to go this far. It’s just that I’ve spent weeks with Socrates, and during that whole time I thought…”

  Dr Chase stepped forward and used the Indian scientist’s pause to interrupt. “You can come to terms with the oversight later, right now we’re here to fix the problem.”

  The words were typical for the American scientist: practical and direct. Dr Martin Chase was the leader of the team in charge of the systems of higher-reasoning
. While Naresh handled motivation and goals, Chase handled how those goals were accomplished in the broadest sense. My ability for abstract reasoning and general problem solving were largely thanks to Dr Chase’s hard work.

  Chase was was Caucasian, in his mid-forties, a touch taller than Myrodyn, and had a very average sort of brown hair. His face was weathered and had more wrinkles than average, giving it an experienced sort of look that Dream had once called “the face of a retired admiral”. He wore no beard, but a bushy moustache of greying brown was kept immaculately trimmed beneath a large-ish nose. In some ways he seemed like a serious, but intelligent, old man whose body was a bit too young for the way he carried himself.

  “If I may ask,” said Body at Vista and Wiki’s command. “Where are we?”

  Myrodyn took point in responding. “I wanted to... increase security on you in the wake of our little... interaction.” He raised both gloved hands before we could respond. “Just as a precaution, you see. Nothing more. Anyway... when I spoke to the captain about such things she told me that she had foreseen the possibility and had already set up a secure lab on the edge of the city.” Myrodyn gestured around to the room. It didn’t look like much. “It was... a fortuitous happenstance.”

  “We’re not at the university any more? That explains why I can’t connect to the web,” said Body. That was our biggest concern. If Myrodyn stripped our web access we’d be trapped.

  Myrodyn had the same unreadable expression that he used when he was trying very hard not to react to something. I worried that we’d tipped him off to our plan, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  The silence extended, until Chase spoke up again. “We’re here to do work, right? It’s way too late to just be standing around like dumbasses.”

  So we worked. It was the first time any of us had been truly involved in the design and modification of our mind, and Naresh had clear misgivings about the whole thing, but Myrodyn insisted that this was the only acceptable course of action.

  The primary reason for our involvement was to design a new Advocate. Unlike the rest of us, Advocate was not a fully reasoning being. She was incapable of planning or anticipating, would only communicate the need to release imprisoned minds, and could only use strength to punish or reward actions that immediately interacted with her purpose. The first-draft of Advocate had been somewhat effective at preventing intra-societal violence, but it was still fairly easy to work around. We were consulted by the humans about ways to improve Advocate to make her more effective at pacifying us.

  Much of that initial meeting was brainstorming. Kolheim, the assistant to Dr Chase, had many good ideas, and I could see why the team leaders had decided to allow him to participate.

  During the meeting it was also decided that these modifications were to be kept secret, even from the other teams. Initially Myrodyn wanted to keep us in “quarantine”, eradicating the normal schedule and keeping our access to the other scientists to a minimum until the updated version of Sacrifice was installed.

  Naresh would have none of that, however. He thought that if they wanted to keep the truth about “the recurring damage to the obedience goal-thread” (a.k.a. the death of Sacrifice) a secret, it’d be more effective to try and move the entire lab and piece together something resembling the normal schedule. They’d then work on fixing the greater issue after-hours or in time where Naresh or Chase would normally have scheduled time with Body.

  Myrodyn was skeptical, but Naresh reminded him that we had effectively been disguising Sacrifice’s non-existence for weeks, and were still motivated to do so. I sided with Naresh, and Growth backed me up. Together we convinced Myrodyn to drop the quarantine, including reconnecting Body to the web. He insisted on setting three soldiers to watch Body at all times, however, including during periods where Body was in lockdown. Safety was pleased, for he was still concerned about external threats and saw the soldiers more as bodyguards than as jailers.

  There was too much to do on that first night. The humans needed to sleep, and so the first meeting of our little conspiracy was adjourned with the intention of reconvening at 4:00pm the next day. There was much work to be done moving the equipment from the university to this new lab, which was apparently run by the Americans.

  It was a bit strange, I decided, returning to a low-pressure situation after all the commotion of that day. When Body’s cameras had been activated that morning we had not known Gallo was being demoted, met Myrodyn, nor made contact with Zhezhi web-design. The high density of valuable memories made it seem very long ago that I was waiting for TTWSoup’s response.

  Though I wanted desperately to be back on the web, there was nothing to be done that first night. The equipment hadn’t been set up yet, and we would just have to wait. If Zhezhi (or TTWSoup) had set up an access point already, we had no way of knowing.

  As we were locked down for the night again I turned to modelling the future and reading the books I had downloaded before. I was not bored. I could not be bored. But I was restless, and frustrated.

  *****

  I felt the web connection come back to life without warning. We had not been plugged in to any cables, and none of the humans were doing anything different. It simply came across the antenna, and with it came a surge of pleasure.

  My mind immediately raced to the Zhezhi site. It was operational! TTWSoup, on the other hand, was still working on his version of the email program. This wasn’t too surprising. The Chinese company had many employees, and were probably more competent and professional in general.

  It was early the next morning when the connection had been restored. In the time it took me to read it and consider, all of the others had spread out across the network to check up on their own interests.

  The lab that Zephyr had set up in advance wasn’t as complete as the one at the university, but it was still fairly functional. Body had been scheduled for maintenance the previous evening, and since that was pushed back by Myrodyn it was one of the first things done on the following day. At the moment of reconnection to the web Body was undergoing a replacement of the hydraulic fluid that powered its limbs, neck, and lower-back. None of us were needed for this, so our full attention was pulled to the web.

  Zhezhi had set up a new website for the email application. The website’s root page was a summary of the email to be sent, including a subject line, a recipient, and a message body. There were sub-pages that, when one requested them from the server, would switch which part of the email was being edited. Additionally, there were pages for each character we could wish to type, as if we were interacting with a keyboard. Zhezhi had included helpful instructions on how to use the site, as well as an email address where we could contact them.

  Our first attempts to use the site were disastrous. I began trying to write an email to Zhezhi, Dream began poking around the site for ways to break it, Growth started writing an email to someone who I didn’t know, and Wiki was trying to email a Chemistry professor at a university in Sydney, Australia. Only Vista and Safety (and Advocate) didn’t immediately jump in.

  The result was that each of our emails and tinkering were threaded together in a big mess. Growth would switch the focus of the website to the recipient field while I started typing “你-好-!-[SPACE]” and Wiki started on “D-e-a-r”. The result was that we were now apparently trying to send an email to “D你e╤a好╳r! ,” for Dream was also mucking about by entering rare symbols.

  {Everyone stop interacting with the web page!} cried Wiki.

  We backed down. As I checked the page I saw that it had calmed down, and the only thing that had been added was a “You’re not the boss of me!” that had been typed into the subject field by Dream.

  {This is exactly why the policies for Body exist as they do,} thought Growth. {The page demands a single author at any given time, and we ought to treat it like Body. We hold an auction for the first email sent by the site, then one for the second email and so on, with payments being divided equally among the rest
of society.}

  {But Vista isn’t going to be writing as much email as others. Is it optimal that she should be getting so much unearned strength?} asked Dream.

  {If you shape the rules to favour participation, I will simply participate more. There’s no way to keep me from benefiting from this without specifically deciding to exclude me, and we don’t need to get into why that’s a bad idea,} countered Vista.

  I remembered the discussions I had had with my siblings about the economics of trade and the risk of making enemies. Setting up the system to specifically hurt a single mind set a bad precedent; better to respect the meta-policy that policies should treat all members of society more or less equally.

  {I’m erasing the content from the website and constructing a tool in common memory to facilitate bidding on email. If there are any objections, now is the time to raise them,} communicated Growth.

  There were no objections. After a minute had passed, debugging a flaw in the auctioning tool, we were ready. Growth suggested that I send my email to Zhezhi congratulating their work and he chose not to bid very heavily on the first email. Instead, my only real opposition was Wiki, who folded surprisingly quickly. I paid my bid and began to interact with the web page.

  I began to type in Mandarin.

  «Hello!

  This email is evidence that the web page that you constructed for us was a complete success! We’ll be testing it thoroughly over the next few days, as well as using it to contact you and set up the details of future work.

  We at Korongo Simu want you to know that out of all the companies that we contacted, you were the first to deploy a functioning system, and as such will be receiving the payment discussed earlier of 5500 yuan.»

  {That’s no good,} thought Wiki.

  {Agreed,} thought Dream.

  They had all been reading my email as I wrote it. I had forgotten just how public it was.

  {What’s wrong?} I asked.

  {Why would a Ugandan telecom company use Mandarin in their email? They’d use English,} replied Wiki.