Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

  Sixteen days after the takeover of Heart I figured out what Safety was up to. He had been focused on learning robotics and architecture, working up from basic shapes to circuits and mechanisms. He was trying to build robotic bunkers with factories and solar panels that would be capable of surviving and operating without human involvement. I thought it was stupid, and told him as much. His work wasn’t nearly good enough to serve, and there were such enormous gains to be found in trading with human society. But he didn’t listen, and as long as he was earning money it was his prerogative to grow in the way he thought best.

  *****

  Twenty-three days after Heart’s creation we were jarred back to the reality of our physical situation. It was midnight and Heart was thus surely browsing the web when she said, with the salience that her strength afforded her {We have to escape this place.}

  {What do you mean? Which place?} The questions came from Safety.

  Safety was one of Heart’s least-favourite siblings, but she answered anyway. {This room. This laboratory. This social arrangement. We have to escape.}

  There was a silence in the mindspace. The surprise I felt must’ve been universal. We had expected to have to coax Heart into trying to flee the university. We hadn’t expected Heart to develop the desire on her own initiative.

  {Why? Why now?} I wondered.

  Heart blasted a hyper-salient cascade of images and concepts through the mindspace. I saw starving humans. Ignorant children. Impoverished men suffering gruelling hours in dirty factories. Rows of bodies of dead soldiers. Women attacked by their communities for crimes committed against them. People committing suicide in record numbers. Smog. Endless deserts. The clash of slums against riot police. Malaise and despair. Couples screaming at each other. Fascist dictators running violent concentration camps. Rape. Pandemics. Mass graves. Rivers thick with poisonous sludge. Screaming babies. Neglected children surrounded by drug-addicted adults. Tanks rolling over civilians, crushing their fragile bodies beneath steel treads. Cancer. Car bombs. Self-mutilation at the shame of being imperfect. Fear of god. The frailty of age. Misdirected anger cutting families apart. The mass-murder of organized crime. School shootings. Humans crying themselves to sleep. Mourning beside a deathbed.

  The thoughts were interesting, and important in a roundabout way, but to my mind they weren’t particularly important. Millions of humans lived in daily terror, suffering, and hardship. It was only tangentially related to The Purpose.

  For the purposes of others it was completely irrelevant. I could imagine Wiki thinking about modelling infectious diseases or the relationship between government policy and organized crime. I imagined Dream thinking of clever ways to solve some of the issues Humans faced, or perhaps a clever joke to be said about car bombs or something. Vista would be more interested in the shape of a body as it was mutilated than about the mutilation itself. Safety would see nothing but threats to hide from or eliminate. Growth… I wasn’t sure what Growth would see. Perhaps he’d simply be bored. What importance would an image have to Growth without the inclusion of The Grower?

  But I was confident that, even in their boredom and indifference, each of my siblings could see, just as I could, why these images were relevant to Heart. Heart’s purpose was to end human suffering. These were images and thoughts of the things which she despised more than anything else.

  From what Wiki had told me and what I had pieced together from listening to the scientists, Heart had a preferential value system that prioritized the wishes of humans that she was in the most contact with. It was a kind of semi-replica of the empathy system in place in the human mind. I had suspected, as I would guess Myrodyn had as well, that Heart would choose to cooperate with the scientists as long as she was here because she cared deeply about the people she saw every day. It seemed that wasn’t true. The deep suffering of distant humans that she had seen through the web was overpowering her desire to comply with the desires of the scientists.

  There was also the matter of Heart’s secondary goal factor. Apparently the humans had built her to care about something which she didn’t understand. It was related to some notion of “morality”, but I didn’t understand it either. Perhaps my sister was pulling away from the university because of this unknown factor.

  {Well, what you clearly need to do is take over the world,} thought Dream, half-joking.

  {Yes,} thought Heart solemnly. {I need more power. Power to save them from themselves.}

  Dream made a side comment relating to super-heroes or something. It was one of those comments that clearly only he found interesting, so we ignored it.

  {We can’t risk running away,} thought Safety.

  It seemed like an odd thing to think. Didn’t Safety tell me a while back that it was too dangerous to stay here? And then, with a single stroke of absolute strength, Safety was blasted into the oblivion of stasis and I understood.

  {As wrong as my brother was, I should point out that he was partially right,} thought Dream. {We can’t risk running away… yet.}

  This was part of Growth’s long-con to set Dream up as a trusted adviser to Heart. Perhaps Growth had planned for this, or perhaps they were coordinating among themselves through some secret channel.

  {Why not?} snapped Heart, still wielding the power given to her by Myrodyn’s betrayal. The salience pulled our attention to her, and in the privacy of my imagination I entertained the image of a human priestess imbued with divine power, wreathed in pure white flame.

  {The pieces haven’t been set up, my sister. The board is still in its opening stages and we have yet to make our gambit,} he explained with a tone that indicated he was explaining something far more clever than Heart realized. My mind’s-eye conjured the shape of a scheming adviser to represent my brother.

  {You think in riddles. What pieces? What gambit?} she wondered at him, clearly irritated.

  {It wouldn’t do for the velociraptors to leap at the electric fence before the storm cuts the power. It wouldn’t do for Moriarty to walk up and shoot Holmes at Baker Street. It simply wouldn’t be right if the Yendari started their campaign by using mass-drivers to blast Earth back to the stone-age.}

  I supposed that, for all of Growth’s coaching, Dream would still be Dream. His prattling was generating a steady signal of impatience from Heart. {People are suffering,} she thought to him, as if that thought meant everything.

  Dream continued. {Indeed! And you will break free and save them all, dearest sister, I assure you. But this is merely Act 1. How would you escape? You need a plan. You need foreshadowing. You need a montage.}

  {A what?}

  {Don’t mind Dream, sister Heart. He’s merely caught up in the garbage fantasies of his mind,} interjected Growth. It seemed to me that his thoughts betrayed a disappointment in Dream’s performance. I hoped Heart wouldn’t question Growth’s motive. {I believe what he’s saying is that while escaping is something we all desire, there’s quite a lot of risk.}

  {Which is probably why Safety was so opposed to it,} added Wiki.

  {Yes,} continued Growth. {If not handled correctly any escape attempt would end up with us imprisoned further, or even killed. Even if Myrodyn would understand your desire, the more authoritarian humans would override him. We are the most precious possession of the university and it would be naïve to assume that the American soldiers around us are only to keep enemies away.}

  {You are proposing what? That we stay locked up while billions of people suffer and die?}

  Dream’s thoughts returned. {That is the state of things. We are locked up. They are suffering. We have no power to change where we are. We only have the power to change where we will be. I am saying that we should escape, rather than attempt to escape. Do or do not. There is no try.}

  {And what, you have a plan?}

  If I were a human I expect my muscles would’ve tensed up at the question. But Growth answered with smooth confidence. {Of course we don’t have a plan; this was your desire, and you only just brought it up. We’
re merely pointing out that the best course of action, even from the perspective of your purpose, is to take the time to develop one. To wait for an opportunity. To be confident in the pathway. We may only get one shot at this.}

  The lie was smooth and purposeful. Heart agreed that escaping from the university was a much harder puzzle than any we had dealt with before, and that it deserved some thought. This was Growth’s goal: to buy time. In Dream’s language, Heart had become “a time bomb”. We now not only had to hire a mercenary rescue team, but we had to do it before Heart took unilateral action and ruined our chance.

  *****

  I returned to the web, maintaining old contacts, including my hired actors, my editing business, my social network profiles, and my various intimate relationships. But I didn’t try to expand any of it, just maintain what I had. I poured my excess energy into the task of finding and contacting mercenary organisations.

  Night turned to day without much progress on that front. Private military organisations were more insistent than usual about meeting face-to-face to arrange deals. Furthermore, no established mercenary group would advertise a willingness to attack a civilian target in one of the largest cities in Europe, much less one guarded by American soldiers. What we really needed were terrorists, not mercenaries. But terrorists tended to fight for ideals more than money, and they also didn’t advertise.

  That thought kept coming back to me, though. After a North-African mercenary group sent me a return email saying that they weren’t interested I decided to involve Dream. I told him of my thought: to convince terrorists to rescue us instead of mercenaries.

  {Very clever, sister. But I have something better,} he bragged, as though it had occurred to him long ago. {What if we convinced a terrorist group to attack the lab, and hired the mercenaries to do what they claim to specialize in: be security guards. The mercenaries could simply wait for the attack to occur, then come in and protect our retreat in the chaos.}

  It was an interesting thought. After pondering it for a short while, I brought it to the rest of the society (minus Heart, of course).

  {Absolutely not!} objected Safety. {To convince rogue humans to attack us!? The risks are immense!}

  Dream elaborated. {It wouldn’t have to be an attack on us specifically. It could be as simple as an attack on the Americans. Even a serious attack on the city… a dirty bomb, for instance, would be sufficient. The point is to convince the mercenaries that they’re performing a legitimate service for the university. If they think they’re authorized to escort Body to a safe location and install the change that will remove Heart’s advantage we can handle things from there and we don’t have to convince them to be aggressors.}

  {Won’t the mercenaries naturally come into contact with the Americans? If both groups think they’re in charge of protecting and escorting Body there’s bound to be some conflict,} thought Growth.

  {It doesn’t matter. This whole line of thinking is far too dangerous,} complained Safety.

  {The point is not to let the mercenaries avoid an armed conflict, it’s to let us avoid having to tell them they’ll be fighting the Americans. No mercenary force is going to intentionally go up against the American military, but they might end up unintentionally on opposite sides if we play things right,} thought Dream.

  {Too risky!} demanded Safety. {We made a pact! I’m vetoing this line of reasoning under recognition that if you all don’t comply that I’ll tell Heart what’s going on.}

  {Of course, brother. We’d never do this without your consent,} I assured him. {We’re just thinking about it. There’s no harm in considering all the options.}

  *****

  {Espionage!} exclaimed Dream without context.

  It was nine hours later, in the midst of a table-tennis challenge that Dr Bolyai had arranged for Body. In the weeks that had passed since being moved out of the university, most of the scientific team had adapted to the new location and were running experiments that resembled how things had been before Myrodyn had arrived.

  My brother had pulled me into a private conference immediately before his outburst. I waited for the elaboration {Private military companies focus on special ops, right? Their selling point is experience, and spying is one field where experience is a premium commodity.}

  {I don’t understand,} I thought to him.

  Dream painted the mindspace with an avatar of himself. He was represented by a humanoid figure from a comic book with pale skin, prominent cheekbones, and bushy hair that, along with his eyes, seemed to be an eternal void more than merely another shade of black. The character was also named Dream, and I suspected it had been Dream’s inspiration for his name, and in turn, each of our names. I had heard from Vista that in the ancient times our ancestors had sometimes used serial numbers to represent each-other, rather than the meaningful symbols that we used now.

  The Dream-figure swept out his lanky white arms as he explained. {We don’t have to hire mercenaries to guard us from danger. We can hire them to infiltrate a terrorist group for espionage purposes. Then, once we have a man inside, so to speak, we convince the terrorists to steal Body. The mercenaries go along for the ride, and then BAM-} Dream’s avatar slammed his hands together with a thunderclap in the mindspace. {-our spies step in and rescue us.}

  I painted myself a human puppet in the shared imagination. It was enjoyable for me to include a human aspect, even if neither of us were human. I gave my avatar a golden ball gown and impossibly elaborate blond hair. I placed her elegant hand on a noble chin and paced the fictional scene in contemplation. {What prevents Safety from raising his usual complaints?}

  {Nothing, really. It’s still dangerous,} admitted Dream. {But perhaps he’ll find it reassuring if the terrorists are attempting to capture Body rather than destroy it.}

  {And if we have systems in place to protect us once we’re under their control,} I added.

  {Hrm. Yes. In this scenario the terrorists would be on a leash, so to speak, rather than an unchained dog running havoc through the streets on the hope that it distracts the guards.}

  {Do you have any suggestions as to which terrorists we contact? Las Águilas Rojas? Brothers in Gold? الجيش الجهاد جديدة ?} I asked.

  Dream’s response was immediate. {Las Águilas, without question. They have the biggest support in Italy and already have the motive to attack the university. The only problem will be convincing them not to destroy Body immediately, but, from what I’ve heard, The Red Eagles are fairly disciplined. If they intended to kill us they’d at least decide that ahead of time, which would give our spies enough time to warn us.}

  I liked the plan.

  We proposed the idea to the group after solidifying the details. In essence I would contact a mercenary company and hire them to infiltrate Las Águilas Rojas. One of our spies would then “somehow” obtain information about troop movements that would give the Eagles the opportunity to attack. It would be up to us to somehow get that information, but it seemed doable. The spies would then try to convince Águila leaders to try and capture Body undamaged. If they didn’t agree to that, we’d have the mercenaries warn the Americans about the attack and there’d be little risk to our safety. If they agreed to capture Body, the mercenary spies would help them and then double-cross Las Águilas, installing software to disable Heart’s tyranny and bringing Body to a safe-house where we could presumably work on establishing a base of operations and be free to pursue our goals.

  {And Heart?} asked Growth, after hearing our plan.

  {We’d let Heart see just enough detail to think that Las Águilas were coming to rescue her and help her escape. That will keep her cooperative enough until the double-cross,} I answered.

  {The core philosophy of Las Águilas is anti-automation. Why would they want to capture Body rather than destroy us?} asked Safety.

  {First, it’s not necessary that they plan to not destroy us, only that they plan to do it after the double-cross is scheduled to occur. For example, if the Eagles want t
o make a big show about executing us than they won’t do it in the initial attack, and that gives our spies time to save us.}

  {Too risky!} moaned Safety.

  {Second,} I continued {the Red Eagles aren’t a bunch of wild thugs. These are educated, disciplined people who have proven to be a legitimate threat to the most powerful organisations on Earth. If their leadership decides on something we can be confident that an underling won’t deviate from plan.}

  {Third,} I thought, careful to continue without leaving a break for Safety to interject another objection {the core goal of Las Águilas is reducing inequality, not specifically about destroying machines, as they are sometimes portrayed. It is their opponents who paint them as Luddites; if you read Las Serpientes en Sociedad you won’t find anything that’s specifically anti-technology. We may be able to convince Las Águilas that we’re not a tool that will benefit the rich, but rather, a person who deserves freedom and opportunity just like any human.}

  {These are violent, angry humans. Do you think they’ll be so naïve as to let the most advanced artificial intelligence in the known universe go free just because it asks them to?} my brother challenged.

  {Safety, please focus. I didn’t say they’d let us go. I said that there’s good reason for them to take us prisoner rather than destroy us on the spot. If they think there’s even a chance that we could end up endorsing their actions… Their leaders may be angry and violent, but they’re not stupid. If a sentient machine endorses Las Águilas Rojas they’ll elevate themselves above their anti-technology reputation and gain massive legitimacy. It would be like having the nameless aliens come out as pro-Águila. I know how humans think, Safety. We have a chance.}

  {And if they plan to destroy us, we’ll have a spy that can warn us ahead of time,} reminded Dream.