by Max Harms
{Why doesn’t she want us to value her? That seems irrational. If an agent is valued then they have social power. Even brother Growth wants to be valued.}
{Oh Heart, you still have much to learn about humans. Zephyr is anthropomorphizing us, just as she has always done. When a human strongly values another human whom is not of the same family the prospect of sex becomes a primary concern. Even though it is rational to want to be loved, it is not always optimal to want to be sexually desired. Zephyr, at some level, thinks that we want to have sex with her, and her reaction is a defence. Body does not appeal to her, sexually, and so she’s implicitly trying to reduce love so as to reduce the prospect of sex,} I explained.
{Ah, I see. She’s worried that if she lets us love her that we’ll end up raping her. That’s incredibly foolish, given the situation, but I can see how it might apply in the environment of her ancestors.}
My thoughts expressed pleasure at Heart’s evolutionary perspective. The only other sibling that had shown ability to think like that when dealing with humans was Dream. {Of course, it’s unlikely that she even is aware of that in her explicit reasoning network. It likely manifests itself to her deliberate processes as a vague unease.}
Heart pushed words toward Body. I adjusted them slightly, but let them be said. “Okay, fine. It’s not because I like you. I wanted you to come along because you like me… Actually, no.” I applied tension to the vocal control systems, giving the sound of some emotion to Body’s words. “It’s because you know me.”
Zephyr’s eyes finally left the sky and looked at Body. I shifted its face to show mild sadness. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I’m not even a year old,” said Body. “I don’t have parents, or any family. The scientists at the lab… Sometimes I like to pretend that Dr Naresh and Dr Gallo were my mother and father, but… they weren’t. I was… I still am nothing more than a computer program to them. Myrodyn. Dr Yan. Dr Bolyai. None of them were even my friends. They studied me, but none of them really listened to me.”
Zephyr was frowning, but she didn’t speak.
“I know that going to Olympus is important. Defuse tensions with the nameless… Clear Las Águilas’ reputation… But I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back to a place where nobody would know me. I think you know me better than just about anyone.” ({Not true. Myrodyn has a much better understanding,} commented Wiki.) “I brought you and Sam and Tom and the rest along as… I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t want to be alone.”
Zephyr sighed. Her eye caught on something in the sky. I suspected it was the airplane. “I’m sorry I criticized you for wanting me along. I know what it’s like.” The ex-captain was quiet for a moment. “Suppose I’m just nervous. If this is a set-up, I’m going to prison for a long time. It would’ve been simpler just to live a nice quiet life in the Cuban countryside and not have to worry about aliens and space-stations and stuff.”
“Maybe when this meeting is over you can come back and have that quiet life,” suggested Heart, through Body. “Surely Las Águilas owe you that.”
She sighed again and moved to open the car door. “Somehow I don’t think it’s in the cards.” As we got out of the taxi into the late afternoon heat she added “Even if I could arrange it, I’m not sure if that’s what I actually want. Despite all the bullshit Phoenix has done, I still have respect for the cause. The world is falling apart and we’re the only ones who can save it.”
As the airplane landed I saw the flickering of a wireless network through Body’s antenna. There was a scramble to try and connect to it. If the plane had a network it was likely that it also had a satellite uplink and full connection to the Internet.
In the wake of the VR conversation with Stephano there was a fascinating interaction between Vista, Dream, and Growth. Dream and Growth had been put in stasis, but whereas Dream had been put into indefinite stasis, Growth had been put into a stasis that could not be undone for several hours. As soon as Vista had the strength, she had motioned successfully for the release of Dream. Vista and Dream didn’t explain anything, but it seemed highly likely to me that they had formed an alliance against Growth of some sort. I tried asking them about it, but was given nothing but poems from Dream and innocent denials from Vista.
My suspicions turned out to be predictive, however. As soon as Growth was released from stasis through Advocate’s ceaseless pressuring, Vista and Dream combined their strength to force our brother back to sleep. I could feel Advocate’s displeasure, but she let things play out for a while longer. Vista and Dream worked hard to accumulate strength from the rest of us, but didn’t use said strength for any purpose other than suppressing Growth.
I had found the behaviour troubling, but we were being heavily rewarded for not intervening. It reminded me of human crimes, like kidnapping. We were, in a sense, being paid off to look the other way while Vista and Dream focused entirely on keeping Growth down. Because of the conflict Body was effectively divided only between Wiki, Heart, Safety and myself. Even better, Vista and Dream were being incredibly helpful in order to re-accumulate strength.
My suggestion that they might need to be stopped was flat out rejected by Heart and Wiki, who saw the whole situation as great. Only Safety shared my hunch that this behaviour was dangerous, but he didn’t have any suggestions aside from forming a pact to rescue each-other if a similar thing occurred to one us, which I agreed to.
Advocate’s pressure on releasing Growth became ever more prominent as the hours had passed. While Growth was in solitary confinement Dream managed to pull together enough strength to pay us to accept what I would later realize was a very clever way of bypassing Advocate’s purpose. Dream purchased from us a period of six hours during which we would have full control of Body, but without Internet. He got Tom to deactivate the wireless network and take away the computer terminals with network access that were in the workshop.
When Growth was released and had the opportunity to take in his surroundings for the first time since the virtual meeting, he had found himself still cut off from the outside world. Growth struggled occasionally to get Body to find some Internet access somehow, but Vista and Dream did nothing but block him. For six hours we spent time with Sam and Tom and worked on some machines. I read The Catcher in the Rye, watched a new high-production-value holo-porno, and read a collection of blog posts on the intricacies of 21st century musical tastes which I had downloaded ahead of time. At the end of the six hours Tom went to reconnect the Internet and Dream and Vista once again teamed up to force Growth back into stasis. Because Growth had technically had time out of stasis, Advocate didn’t mind the behaviour of Dream and Vista as much. Advocate wanted Growth to have time to pilot Body, but didn’t care if during that time he was unable to use the web.
This pattern of sleeping while the rest of us had Internet and then being allowed to wake only to find that he was cut off had been driving Growth to desperation. He begged us to help him escape the clutches of Dream and Vista, offering us strength and money, but any strength we could get from him would necessarily be less than the strength we were already getting from Dream and Vista and we didn’t need money.
So it was that, as the plane landed, Growth was probing the wireless network desperately trying to get some access to the Internet.
{It’s encrypted. Don’t even try asking for the password. We’ll block all attempts,} stated Vista in my brother’s direction.
{What caused this vendetta?} wondered Wiki for not the first time. Vista, Dream, and even Growth ignored him as they had in the past. Whatever feud they had started was their secret. Even Growth, who begged for help, wouldn’t explain why he was being attacked so continually.
Heart and I continued to talk with Zephyr as we entered the aircraft and took off towards the USA. Our conversation wasn’t particularly interesting to me; it mostly revolved around talking about what America was like and reminiscing about Zephyr’s childhood. I let an aspect of myself follow alon
g and improve Heart’s choice of words, but mostly allowed my sister control in the conversation.
My other aspects spun cycles imagining possible conversations that might occur in a computer game which I was thinking about creating. In the last couple weeks I had become somewhat enthralled by multiplayer computer games. Playing online with other humans was somewhat similar to my adventures in dating, except that it was much lower bandwidth. The humans I played with didn’t know I was an artificial intelligence, and I could impress them and become their friends through social skills, simple tricks, and leveraging their biases, but I could also play and gain social standing with them without having to engage my entire mind. Many of the games were fairly trivial optimisation challenges that were difficult for humans but simple for me. Learning to see and navigate in new game worlds was actually one of the harder problems I encountered. I was simply too slow and stupid to play many of the fast-paced games, like shooters, but multiplayer roleplaying games appealed to me and were usually simple enough to manage without trouble.
I had an idea a couple days ago to create a roleplaying game which I could manage, from a high-level, to worm my way into the lives of thousands of humans all the while making money and not taking up all my time. It was still in the early planning stages, but I was excited about it. Though I found it difficult and obnoxiously boring, I had started trying to learn computer programming from Growth’s memories and my sibling’s resources. It seemed far too arcane and complicated to be possible, but Growth, Dream, Wiki and possibly others had learned, so I knew that the apparent impossibility didn’t mean it was actually impossible.
*****
The flight to Houston, Texas took just over two hours. Wiki reminded us unhelpfully that once upon a time Cuba had been an enemy of the USA and this sort of flight wouldn’t have been possible. I told Wiki that nobody besides him cared.
The airplane which we rode was owned by Olympian Spacelines, and thus by Robert Stephano, which eased the suspicion on us by the US government as we entered their airspace. After exchanging a brief series of messages with the air-traffic authorities, our pilot said that we were cleared to land at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
As the plane touched down the hard part began. We were greeted on the tarmac by a small vehicle carrying an airport worker and two women in uniforms that made them look like police.
“Customs Agents,” said Zephyr, looking out the window adjacent to me. “Put up your hood. Phoenix said there wouldn’t be trouble, but there’s no sense in risking anything.”
We followed her instructions and had Body put up the hood on our travelling cloak. As a further precaution we backed away from the window and waited patiently. The stairs to the aircraft unfolded and our pilot, a man I had only seen briefly, yelled out into the night “Come on up!”
The woman that ascended the stairs to inspect the interior of the airplane had dark hair and pale skin. She was shorter than Body or Zephyr, and middle-aged. Upon seeing the two of us, her eyes went wide with alarm, but only for a second. She had not expected to see us, evidently, but it was clear that she had good reason to at least try and ignore our identities.
She mimed looking over the cabin for a few seconds and then handed us envelopes. “Welcome back…” she murmured, quietly. “As normal citizens of the country returning f-from vacation, w-we’ve set up a priority check-in station just for you. Simply present your passport to the machine and you’ll be cleared to r-return home.”
Zephyr reached out and put a hand on the agent’s shoulder causing her to jump in surprise. Zephyr’s face was calm and smiling as she said “Thank you” with more sincerity than I would’ve believed was possible. Zephyr’s eyes never left the agent’s face, and after a moment the shorter woman returned her gaze and smiled in return; it was a smile of relief, the relief of discovering that an imagined monster was only shadows and the wind.
The agent continued to explain. “The cameras have already been taken care of, but I’ve been told to warn you not to show your faces. If you have a hat or…” she looked at Body, “Something less conspicuous, I’d recommend wearing it.” She took a deep breath, further calming her nerves. “The check-in station is used for VIPs and leads directly to the west parking garage. Normally it’s staffed by three people, but it’ll be empty for the next twenty minutes. You’ll want to hurry. I can mark directions to it if… if you have a normal com,” she was looking at Body again, uneasily.
“I do,” said Zephyr, unfolding the computer on her right arm. There was a brief exchange as they networked and the agent sent the coordinates of the check-in to Zephyr.
With that done the dark-haired woman descended from the aircraft and started talking to her coworker in shouts. The pilot offered Zephyr a baseball cap with a blue star on it (according to Vista it was the symbol for some sports team) and she graciously accepted. “I’m going through normal security, so you two are on your own from here,” he said jovially as he descended the stairs.
As Zephyr checked to see if the border agents had left, we had Body examine what we had been given. There was a passport and drivers license with falsified information inside the envelope. I was apparently a 36 year-old woman named Susan Stonebrook from Oklahoma.
Zephyr gave the all-clear and led the way across the tarmac towards a gate a couple hundred metres away, adjacent to a small building set into a fence. Body pulled the cloak tighter around itself. It was dark, but the lights of the airport could still reveal us if one of the nearby workers took too much of an interest.
We hustled across the asphalt, still warm from the daylight, and reached the gate that was conspicuously unguarded. Despite having no humans present, the mechanisms were still controlled by the checkpoint’s native AI. We showed the machine our documentation and were pushed through the gate with a robotic “Welcome back to America, and thank you for choosing Bush Intercontinental.”
We followed Zephyr, who seemed to know what to do next. She tapped away on her com absently as she swept her head back and forth irregularly, scanning for danger. Now and then she pulled Body to the shadows as some traveller walked too close. We climbed the stairs of the parking garage, ducking temporarily onto one of the parking levels to dodge a family descending the same stairwell. On the top level we found a familiar face standing next to a grey sedan.
“Quick. In the car!” growled Avram Malka as we approached the vehicle he stood next to. We complied, getting the forward-facing seats while he sat facing backwards, opposite us. “Any trouble? Were you followed?” he asked, the motion of his solid black eyes was barely visible as he looked us up and down.
“Glad to see you haven’t lost your charm,” jabbed Zephyr. “And no. No trouble. Everything went according to plan.”
The Israeli nodded with an appreciative frown and turned his head towards the car’s interface. “Robby, we’re ready to depart. Destination: Litochoro Spaceport.”
“Understood. Driving to Litochoro Spaceport, Fresno,” said the car as it pulled out of the parking space and began to drive.
Avram looked much as I remembered him from Italy. His cybernetic legs were covered by baggy denim pants, but I could see the black and grey mechanical feet, unclothed by shoes. He wore a long-sleeved black sports-shirt that clung to his massive arms, highlighting their muscled form. His tanned hands were rough and callused from the same scar tissue that covered much of his grotesque face. His head was hairless, including his eyebrows, making his pure-black, artificial eyes all the more noticeable. As was typical with the mercenary, he was scowling, but I thought I sensed an uneasiness that went beyond his normally sour disposition.
“It is good to see you again, Avram. I was disappointed that we weren’t able to get to know each-other better in Rome,” said Body, parroting what were mostly my words.
The cyborg grunted non-committally and looked out the tinted-glass at the night.
“Phoenix told me that you were on a mission in this country before I requested your presence as a bo
dyguard. Are you authorized to talk about it?” we asked through Body’s mouth.
The man merely grunted.
“I don’t think he wants to talk, Crystal,” said Zephyr coldly. I could tell that she did not like the man. Had they had some unpleasant interaction in Italy after we left? Perhaps. I would’ve expected Taro to handle Avram, but perhaps Zephyr had gotten involved. Or perhaps it was just the Halo Effect in reverse. As I understood it, humans generally associated physical beauty with things like trustworthiness and ugliness with traits like villainy.
As if in direct rebellion to Zephyr’s statement, Malka spoke. “So you’re a trusted member of the team now, eh? I’ve been seeing your video addresses to the world. Very poetic. Hard to believe a bot would side with the Eagles, but I seen stranger things in this world I suppose. But yeah, the boss had me working on finding leads on Divinity. They’re crawlin’ all over yer country-”, he glared at Zephyr, “and someone needs to take ’em out before things get out of hand.”
“The gang?” asked Body.
Avram nodded. “Aye. But like no Mafia I’ve ever seen. Those helmets of theirs… It’s like the whole brotherhood is constantly high, but simultaneously twice as productive as normal folks. Blissed out but without the loss of motivation. S’why they call ’em ‘Zen Helmets’ I suppose, but I ain’t seen no Buddhist ever behave like that.”
“Wait, so it’s like a drug that makes people happy and more productive?” asked Zephyr curiously.
Another nod. “As long as they got a helmet on they act like they ain’t got a care in the world. No need to relax. No need to socialize. People move like insects with ’em on. Constantly working. Only thing that slows ’em down is sleeping, and the helmets even make that more efficient.”
“So why are they illegal?” asked Zephyr.