by Max Harms
*****
While I waited for Zephyr to respond I scanned my contacts, earning some money from Wiki by managing a legal dispute that had arisen in his company, and earning some strength from Dream for writing a couple of letters promoting his most recent music album. I had absolutely no understanding of music (I only knew what people said about music), but extrapolating from his past artistic work it was probably garbage. I read through news reports about the fall of a large tech company in North America that had recently been exposed as belonging to the Divinity Gang, a group of organized criminals that had cornered the manufacturing and distribution of illegal Zen Helmets.
Dr Slovinsky, I saw, had published a new book titled Möbius Connectomics. It was about intelligence and the future of humanity. He must have been writing it since he started working on the Socrates project. I wondered if he’d get in trouble for it. Probably not, unless it spilled major secrets about the project. This was a university, after all, publishing was to be expected.
I purchased some help from Wiki composing another letter to Dr Chase. I had been corresponding with him under a pseudonym for about a week. Wiki was interested in hearing what Chase had to say about how we worked, but I was purely interested in learning more about the American scientist. In some sense it was remarkable how much he was willing to tell me, believing me to be a complete stranger. And yet, I understood it; humans craved fame, and I was giving a taste of it to Dr Chase.
Gallo, I could see via Tapestry, was still in the process of being divorced. It seemed like an awfully long process, but I estimated that the worst had passed. I tried guessing a few more passwords for Dr Naresh’s and Dr Gallo’s Tapestry accounts. Try too many times and the AI on Tapestry would send them a warning, but I could attempt some every day without much risk. Getting to see their personal letters would be hugely valuable.
An aspect of me started editing a manuscript that I had been putting off for a while: A guidebook of China from a culinary perspective. It was boring, even for me, but the client was paying well. The rest of me checked on the server that I had sent to Avram Malka’s apartment. I was pleased to find the cameras and microphone had been set up around the place. One could see outside the front door, another in the living room and another in the kitchen. The bedroom and bathroom were off limits. There was no microphone outside the building, but I could hear Malka moving around in the bedroom from the mic he had placed in the living room near the hall.
I sent him an instant-message to his old-style phone saying that I could see through the cameras and asking if he needed anything. He asked for an allowance to buy things like an alarm system or other items he might want for infiltrating Las Águilas. I agreed and worked out the details.
Later that day I read an interesting email on one of the blogs I had set up to fish for Águila recruiters. It wasn’t the one I had assigned to Malka, unfortunately, but the email seemed like a good lead. It talked about the need to use force to bring the world back to how it used to be, and asked me what I thought about the riots in Buenos Aires that had started yesterday. Riots were one of Las Águilas’ favourite means of gathering support and creating social unrest.
I thought for a while about how to respond. Later that night, while other aspects of me were reading Möbius Connectomics (Slovinsky’s new book), I wrote back in veiled sentences implying that I was already part of the organisation. Slovinsky was something of a transhuman extremist, I came to understand from his writing, and his words inspired me. I said that while the rioting in Argentina was probably a good thing, what we really needed were some riots, or at least protests, in Rome because of the “monstrosity” that was named after Socrates. I included some quotes from Slovinsky about the project such as how “Socrates is merely the bridge point to a future where the distinction between natural and artificial intelligence is meaningless”.
In addition to my response email, I wrote a new post on that blog encouraging solidarity and unity among like-minded thinkers and I included pointers to several other writers with similar views, including a couple of my other blogs and, most importantly, the blog that I had donated to Malka.
On Malka’s blog I wrote a post about having moved to Rome and made some banal comments about the humanistic roots of the city and how things just weren’t part of the good-old-days any more. It was standard golden-age fallacy stuff, but I knew that lots of Águilas fell prey to that kind of thinking, and more importantly it mentioned Rome. If whoever had sent me that email had half a brain they’d contact me on the other blog, which would serve as an entry point for Malka. I expected that the cyborg was sleeping, so I joined that aspect into those that were reading Slovinsky’s book; I could tell Avram about the email in the morning.
That night was also the first time Growth, Dream and I made a real effort to subtly push Heart into supporting Las Águilas. Growth had the discipline and long-term interest. I had the best intuitive model of how Heart thought. Dream was the member of society that Heart trusted the most. We started by pulling out selective news articles that praised the actions of known Águila sympathizers and talking about them in common memory. An aspect of Heart joined the conversation.
An opportunity opened up to force a backfire effect onto Heart. The backfire effect is a bias that plagued our minds (and those of humans) where listening to someone argue against something you believe is true makes you believe it more strongly. A perfectly rational agent wouldn’t see criticism as evidence in favour of their position unless the critic was trying to hide the truth. And it was certainly true that we were generally more rational than humans, but we still possessed a perceptual hierarchy modelled after the neural network of the human mind. Such a neural net was, at least as far as I understood from talking with Wiki, intrinsically vulnerable to the halo effect and backfire effect, where the association of positive or negative concepts created a kind of feedback loop that strengthened itself the more it was active, even when that activity was listening to criticism.
Growth, ever looking towards the future, volunteered to suffer the consequences as he intentionally offered a weak criticism of the actions of some humans we were discussing that had ideas similar to those of the Red Eagles. I told Wiki and Dream to hold back on criticizing Growth. Heart took the bait, arguing for the pro-Águila position and trashing Growth’s thoughts. Growth pushed harder, pretending to be quite stupid and inventing new bad-excuses for why the Águila position was wrong. Heart continued to rebut them, falling into the mental trap of arguing for ideas rather than seeking the truth. Dream pushed harder, hopefully encouraging Heart to associate anti-Águila positions with stupidity and stubbornness. Eventually Heart just blasted Growth into stasis and went back to her own business.
Over the next couple days we continued some of the same game. Sometimes Growth would pay one of us to say something similarly stupid in common memory at the risk of being crushed by Heart. Over time Heart began to zealously defend the ideas and actions of Las Águilas, and I wondered the degree to which she even realized she was doing it. The only other apparently sane member of society in these conversations was Dream, who would often point out clever flaws in the less obviously-stupid statements we made.
We didn’t want to push it too hard, however. The whole point was for Heart to think about it just enough to habitually pattern-match without thinking about it so much that it became clear to her that she was being manipulated.
*****
As the days passed, Heart regularly complained about being trapped in the university, and even brought up the issue with Myrodyn in his office.
“I understand your desire to get out into the world and be a force for good,” he said. “If I was in charge I’d have you out there right now. But I’m not. You’ll have to be patient for... a while longer. Even though it may seem like the scientists here do nothing but run test after test without goal in sight, I assure you that... progress is being made.”
It wasn’t the answer Heart was hoping for, but it reinforced our
urgings for her to avoid trying to escape without an opportunity. Without a means to effectively apply her mind towards her purpose she settled on small things. She made small-talk with everyone she could find and tried to make friends. She talked to the humans about their lives and struggles, desperately trying to alleviate their problems through empathy and occasional advice.
Just as I predicted, Zephyr wrote back to both of my messages, though it took her longer than expected. She seemed far more interested in “Crystal Mathews” rather than “Tivadar Dragonetti” so I didn’t put much effort into maintaining the Italian persona. It was a relief not to have to worry about how to excuse an in-person meeting. Under the guise of Crystal I flirted with the Captain. We discussed music, sailing, and family issues. Crystal was supposed to live on a house-boat in Seattle with zer parents. Ze was an only-child and was struggling to keep things from falling apart with zer dad who was regularly disappointed in the fact that Crystal had no job and little prospect for making money.
“Whatever happens, don’t let him shame you,” wrote Zephyr. “Jobs are like four-leaf-clovers nowadays. More important that you stay true to who you are than try and force into some technical school. If don’t enjoy the material you’d probs fail anyway. Just how people work. Expect to be done with this posting in Italy soon. Maybe it’d be best just to try and stay out of Dad’s way for a while. Out of sight, out of mind, right? :)”
I read between the lines. Zephyr wanted Crystal, and was urging zer not to shake things up with zer family until Zephyr could be there to support zer. It was a bold step towards an actual relationship, and I was a bit surprised that Zephyr had taken it. Though, I supposed, she hadn’t actually said much. There was value in being vague in such things. This way she didn’t sound like she was coming on too strong. That was the whole point of flirting.
I had hired an actor to play Crystal, though there was very little need for one. Being essentially on the opposite sides of the planet made it easy to claim that Crystal was asleep most of the time that Zephyr wasn’t working. The actor was a 19-year-old drama student from Orlando named Georgia Stanwick that I had used previously in my dating experiments. Georgia was highly amoral and I suspected she was somewhere deep on the psychopathic spectrum. Her talent in acting and skill at reading others was put towards getting what she wanted. From me she wanted money, which I was happy to provide, but I think she also enjoyed feigning romantic involvement for the sheer sense of power it gave her to manipulate others.
Georgia was Caucasian, and claimed to be a pure-bred descendent of the initial British settlers of North America, though I suspected that might be one of the lies she told just for the sake of the feeling of deception and manipulation. Her hair was raven-black and straight, while her eyes were olive-green. She had an unfortunate birthmark on her temple which she covered up with heavy makeup, but was otherwise attractive (physically, at least). I had her pierce her nose and get three more ear-piercings for the part of playing Crystal, which she did without hesitation or request for additional money. The one thing which Georgia didn’t like (though eventually complied with) was the idea of pretending to be someone who was gender-queer; the girl enjoyed her femininity.
*****
It was during the middle of watching Georgia put on a show for Zephyr as part of their first video meeting that I received news that Las Águilas Rojas wanted to meet with Avram Malka. Even though it was effortless to multitask, my cognitive ability dropped whenever I split my aspects, and I didn’t want to lose any awareness of the conversation with Zephyr. I was sending lines and direction to Georgia over instant-message, so I really had to focus.
I waited until Zephyr had started to tell a story about running into an old friend in Rome to split myself and have half of me contact Mr Malka. I gave direction for Georgia to listen attentively and smile.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Avram,” said the synthetic voice.
“Anna. How is your evening?” he asked. It was clear that he had no real interest.
“Isn’t that crazy? I mean, of all the people, never thought my old gym teacher would be at the supermarket, half a world away! Hadn’t even thought of him in years.”
“Las Águilas read your blog. They want to meet. Did you read your blog?” A note of pain struck me as I listened to what what I had told the voice-synth to say. There’s no way an integrated me would be so redundant and blunt.
“You like him? As a teacher, I mean?”
“Was okay. Got B’s in gym, if remember correctly.”
“I haven’t read the old stuff. There’s a lot on there. I’ll try to get through the rest of it tonight.”
“Hated gym. In high-school had a bad teacher.”
“That’d be good. I’ll forward you the email they sent, too. They want to meet at Taverna Cestia at 7:00pm tomorrow. It’s by the Pyramid of Cestius.”
“Aw, that’s lame. Why were they bad?”
I pulled more of myself towards the conversation with Zephyr.
Georgia rolled her eyes. “Standard stuff. Tell you if you really want, but should finish telling me about meeting Mr…”
“Mr Wirewood. Yeah, ok.”
“I can find it. You want me to respond or are you going to write back to them?” asked Malka.
“So, we talked for a while. Caught up on things. He retired four years ago. Decided to spend his savings on touring the world by living in a different country every year for the rest of his life.”
“You will write back. The more of the interaction you manage the better.”
“Quite the coincidence, then, that he happened to pick Italy.”
“Understood.”
“Yeah, it was apparently one of his wife’s favourite countries. She apparently died a couple years before he retired.”
“I have to go. I’m in the middle of something.”
I hung up on Avram and pulled my focus back to Zephyr, directing Georgia to express the appropriate signals of sadness and sympathy which would signal that Crystal was an empathetic person.
The conversation went on for about another hour. Georgia was being paid by the minute, so she was in no rush. Zephyr seemed reluctant to go, and I tried to have Georgia mimic that reluctance to signal an implicit desire to see more of someone than is practical. In the end, the call was a success.
I spent the next 24 hours mostly coordinating with my siblings and thinking of plans and counter-plans for the outcome of Avram’s first meeting. And yet, after he returned from the tavern there wasn’t really anything to act on. Avram had met with a couple men, whom he described, and they had some beers together. The Eagles asked about Avram’s background, why he left Russia, and why he chose to reveal his location on his blog after so much anonymity.
I hadn’t thought of that when I posted the update to it. In previous posts I had kept everything totally anonymous, but then I had broken character and casually mentioned moving to Rome. I was hugely relieved to hear that Mr Malka had intelligently explained the change, saying that he kept a stronger degree of privacy back when he worked for РСБ-2 (not wanting to get fired or rejected for jobs), but now that he was retired he decided that it wasn’t that important any more. If I could’ve I would’ve fed strength to Malka in gratitude.
Avram also said they talked a bit about politics, especially in the United States, where a major presidential election was set to happen in a year. Foreign policy with the extraterrestrials and domestic policy with unemployment and terrorism was looking to dominate the debate. And then the men had left, saying that they’d send an email to Mr Malka the next time they wanted to meet.
I was mildly disappointed, but it was only to be expected, I supposed. It wasn’t like a group of skilled terrorists would let a newcomer into their midst without checking him out first.
I heard in Malka’s voice an undercurrent of irritation, but when asked about it he denied feeling anything. I had read that deep emotional damage was common in victims such as Avram. He had the appear
ance of a monster, but that appearance had been forced on him, and it cut him off from his fellow humans. I offered to talk on the phone for a while about things other than his job, but Avram wouldn’t have it. On the cameras I watched the cyborg exercise, eat, and then drift off towards his room.
A little after 1:00am I saw Avram leave the apartment. I thought about calling him, but decided against it. He returned after thirty-five minutes with a bottle of what looked to be vodka, half-drained. He set it down inside the building and went back to fetch an opened crate of the stuff from what I guessed was a taxi parked outside. He put both the crate and the bottle in the bedroom, out of sight of the cameras, and that was that.
*****
Over the next week we managed things as we normally did. I continued to flirt with Zephyr, as well as keep things up with my older collection of partners. I managed our businesses and finished Dr Slovinsky’s book, as well as several others. I had started playing computer games, too, thanks to the interface that Growth had built.
There was a pair of synchronized bombings, one in the New York subway and another in a park in Johannesburg that seemed to be unconnected to Las Águilas Rojas and there was a massive fire in a factory complex near Mumbai that certainly was caused by The Eagles.
The aliens parked in orbit were now being called “Nameless” across the globe. The name had been in circulation for years, but so had others. The media had apparently decided that, since there was to at last be an embassy on Earth, there needed to be a consensus on the name. Ironically, the most notable aspect of the extraterrestrials was that they didn’t have names. This week marked the anchoring of the first ships that were to be expanded into the Central-Atlantic Peace Embassy (CAPE) and of an announcement by the mothership that CAPE was to be the site of a great garden, the first time nameless plants would ever be seen by humans.