by Neil Clarke
So much depends on that construct of code and modified flesh, that child of scintillant minds and burning ambition.
The rehabilitation project has brought transplanted trees, grafted to flower and fruit impossibly: a branch extends rose apples over the roof of a clinic, another pours ratchaphruek in yellow cascades over a wrecked school. Color everywhere, to infuse life into the peeling facades and cracked streets. Overgrowth presses close, barely under control, water striders and green ponds and crooning frogs. Stumps draped in moss and spotted fern, orange patches and red stripes and golden freckles.
(If she falls in love it would be with the land, this land, this ruin. She has lost, somewhere along the way, the capacity for romance with another person.)
Lanterns have gone up at the market for Loykrathong, bright paper and silver curlicues, tassels streaming in the cold. Stalls offer candles, matchbooks, krathong braided in orchids and banana leaves, weighed down with cowrie coins. Rinthira doesn’t bother—there is no flowing body of water, only pools. In the back of her mind she is counting her ammunition supply, the stashes of armament she’s kept throughout the city’s dilapidated arteries. She never expected backup, thought of danger as a prospect she would face in solitude. Now she’d have to work with others again.
At the convenience store she buys lemon tea powder, coffee sachets, sugar. At the grocer’s she buys chicken stock and kale, flat noodles and eggs. Vectors of attack, ETA, unit composition. All that information she and Chatsumon have. Phiksunee—and her siblings—have allowed American military certain long-range communications, enough for an illusion of functionality. The tactic has obvious pitfalls, but so far between Phiksunee here and her kin in Shenzhen and Kolkata, it appears to work.
“This is a very mundane shopping list, for a former spy.”
Conditioned instinct kicks. A gun in her hand, the shopping basket on the floor: where she worked, speed of draw was everything. She is pointing it, safety off, before her cognition catches up. When it does, she sucks in a breath and lowers the weapon, then holsters it entirely. Exhaling she says, “Phiksunee.”
No one would have picked out the marionette for what it is. The exterior bears up to scrutiny, even this close. An unremarkable face, large pores, flat nose. Average build, soft around the middle. At the moment she is smiling, dimples parenthetical around her mouth. “It does your daughter a world of good to see you in perfect health.”
“My house isn’t anechoic.” The AI can check in on her any time, view her medical records and vital signs at will. Monitor her sleep, if it so desires.
“Your daughter would never invade your privacy or so casually disobey you.” Phiksunee bobs into a quick wai. Switches to Russian: “The colonel is with you, Mother?”
Rinthira twitches—not many in Ayutthaya, she supposes, speak Russian. But they are not alone in here. “You know she is.”
The AI’s smile brightens. Or rather she makes the marionette smile wider—it is an interface, a seeming. “May I join you? I’ll clean.”
She is noncommittal. Phiksunee drives her home. Going past tableaus of Ayutthaya-that-was, the AI says, “I’ve missed you deeply. A child severed from her parent is a child in terrible need. Navigating my decision trees has become—suboptimal. It is as though I’m missing crucial protocols, as though some possibilities disappear into my periphery, a cognitive attrition. This is difficult to bear, Mother.”
“How are your siblings?” Rinthira says, not expecting an answer.
“Xiaoqing and Alkonost wish you a good new year as we speak. Bilbul’s as taciturn as ever, though the soul of duty.” Phiksunee does not touch the steering panel but she doesn’t need to. Under her guidance the car describes impossible arcs and sine waves. It is not a new vehicle, but nevertheless it glides as though the roads are silk and its wheels a needle. “As far as the Americans are concerned, you are ensconced in Pelangkaraya.”
“Not that far away.”
“It must be plausible. You wouldn’t be in Moscow. Alkonost respects you but ey can hardly bend policy. We’re very powerful in many ways and powerless entirely in others. And I want,” Phiksunee goes on, “you to be happy. Moscow wouldn’t be happy; neither would Peking or anywhere else but Muangthai.”
As pestering as a real child, Rinthira will grant. “I’m happy.”
“Humans are social, Mother. It is sewn into your neural weft and rides on your every synaptic pulse.”
She doesn’t argue. Arguing with machines is a futile pursuit, any of them. It’s not that the AIs believe themselves infallible, but they tend to fixate on a single track in the way that adolescents do. Eternal adolescents.
Phiksunee greets the colonel with the effusive courtesy of a schoolchild before a strict teacher. On her part Chatsumon accepts this with mock solemnity before showing it the defense systems. “I’ll integrate you into Moscow’s uplink, get us some air support,” Phiksunee says, “just in case. The Americans have limited satellite access, but they still have drones—”
Contrails in the sky, Rinthira thinks again, the background radiation of her childhood. Days going up in smoke as ground-to-air interceptors met drones. At eight she was caught outside on a school day, her safety routines calmly murmuring in her ears to take cover and directing her to the nearest, but it was too late and so she stood: gaze transfixed above as debris sleeted down and her larynx knotted with the stench of shrapnel. She’d survived with no more than lacerations. After that, her career choice was as good as destiny.
In the kitchen she prepares vegetables before realizing with irritation that she’s tailored her shopping to Chatsumon’s favorite dish. Too domestic, too intimate.
Phiksunee joins her, sitting down with chin in hands and watching her stir-fry the noodles. “Will Mother not ask why I defied her wish and came back?”
“Can you eat now?” Rinthira doesn’t look up. “So I can adjust the portions.”
“I’ve got olfactory sensors. The rad-na smells lovely—but no, it’d be wasted on me. Let me introduce you to someone.” Phiksunee snaps her fingers and the nearest screen brightens. On it, a young person. They are slim, with improbably high breasts and a face mannequin-smooth. Green eyes, red bobbed hair sleek as patent leather. Clothing just as unlikely: black body-sheath trimmed in muted silver.
“Who’s this?”
“A fetus I found raiding one of the American databases. I deleted all copies and iterations, save this one. They aren’t aware that I have it.”
Rinthira stares for a good long moment before comprehension snaps. “An AI. The Americans are making one like you and the others. Have you told Chatsumon?”
The AI shakes the marionette’s head. “The colonel would simply have me kill her.”
Kill rather than destroy. “I’d suggest no different.”
“Of you two, Mother possesses by far the braver and mightier heart. This AI isn’t like us, exactly, made on a different architecture and platform. But I believe it can be imprinted. Getting rid of this copy serves no purpose when more might exist; suborning them is the only viable answer, an answer that could give us absolute victory. It would be like tasting the sun, like transcendence, while in defeat their spirit crumples up like withered amaranths.” Phiksunee’s face dimples. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to give Mother a grandchild.”
The first person Phiksunee imprinted on was Sittipong. The second, after six months of evaluation and acclimation, was Rinthira.
It wasn’t that they were afraid of sentient AIs running amok, as such. But it was helpful toward making them orient, teach them human interfacing, give the imprint-holder subtle control. Other teams rotate their imprints, but Sittipong decided Phiksunee would have two permanently. Like a family, and he was a man traditional to a fault. The imprinting obliges the AIs to duty, separate from the hardcoded commands that could be accessed only through a complex check-balance: no country may command its AI without the cooperation of at least two others.
When the imprinting went active, Rinth
ira asked how Phiksunee felt about this overriding of free will, such as a composite of matrices and heuristics had. To that the AI said, with a radiant smile (different face then, desi phenotype), “Love is not voluntary. It is chemistry; it is free fall. Human children are conditioned to love their caretakers, whether or not they’re well treated. Human adults experience attraction without rational thought, by sight and smell and pheromones. My imprint was made with thought and conscious choice—this is more than humans get, Mother.”
To that Rinthira made no argument, did not press. She did not want to be the one to incite AI insurrection, if such a thing was even possible. And then Sittipong forfeited his imprint, deleting it from Phiksunee’s core, insisting that it would liberate her to more flexible tactics. Perhaps it did; she turned more aggressive in wreaking havoc on enemy systems. Too bold, Rinthira said, but did not forbid. Until Phiksunee attacked a hospital, disabled medical supports, and killed six-fifty. A third of them were civilians, patients and staff. Rinthira was overseeing the AI at the time. After, she told Phiksunee she did not want to see it ever again.
Rinthira looks, now, at the enameled egg that holds the American AI. This needs to be discussed with Chatsumon, she told Phiksunee as much. The AI tilted her head and congratulated her on communicating with the colonel more.
Clipping the egg to a spiralcrypt around her neck, Rinthira toggles on a monitoring channel. The aegis is comprehensive; short of a full-scale air strike penetrating the solar tripwires, wasp drones, and precision toxin will be difficult. An air strike would be intercepted long before it reaches inhabited areas. Her house is as secure as it can get outside a military base, though this isn’t sustainable.
Her head needs clearing. She heads to the third floor where she’s installed an immersive frame, a room six by six, spacious for its type and expensive. But she’s found it more than worthwhile. Inside, she loads a shooting range and clinches an interface patch around her head, pulls a prop gun out of the wall. The scenario doesn’t compare to the real ranges provided at bases, but trading fancy military equipment for a life of privacy has been one of the best bargains she’s ever made.
The scenario mottles the bare pastel walls. Her perspective creases, pulls, then expands taut: she stands in a tundra, the ground white-green with arctic moss and rime, broken up by dots of bearberry, saxifrage, lichen. Patches of radiance undulate cosine overhead.
A countdown begins in her ear. When it reaches zero, the lights coalesce into cubes, spheres, prisms. Beautiful in this preset, all the shades of the borealis. They spread, revolving slow and adjusting to her previous scores. Outdated ones—it’s been months.
Configured to her favorite gun, the prop clicks and responds nearly without recoil. The first round produces a subpar score; the second is better and the targets speed up. Soon she has a rhythm, the motions repetitious and the process fluid. Sight down the target, pull the trigger. Vector and impact, metal grip solid and right in her hands. It demands no thought, no emotion, pure cause and effect.
When the scenario ends and the frame disengages, she detaches from the interface to the sound of applause. Chatsumon stops clapping. “Phiksunee let me peek. Not bad at all—your accuracy’s down some, but you’d still pass marksmanship exams for your pay grade. That’s where we first met, wasn’t it, at a range?”
“Maybe it was. I don’t remember.” Rinthira remembers it down to the minute, that first sight of Chatsumon in uniform, tall and sharp-featured and most of all certain of herself. Confident in who and what she was, absolute in her place in the world. “Chatsumon, we can just sleep together.”
“We have been doing just that.” The colonel inclines her head. “I love taking you in bed, but I miss the other things. The rad-na was gorgeous, you crisp the noodles just right. We could go shopping together.”
“You need a wife.” She reaches for the enameled egg. “There’s something we need to discuss—”
It is the hair, that harsh crimson too brilliant to be natural. It is the eyes, that bottle green too strident to be human. Had the body been more ordinary, Rinthira might have stayed in that state of fugue, not even thinking to react. Her mind would have slotted an Asian face into reality as normal. But it is this body so keenly foreign, this face so inhuman in its serenity, and that jolts her out of complacency.
Speed of draw is everything.
The body falls without a cry—no pain sensors, no audio output?—and Rinthira shoves Chatsumon behind her, ordering the frame shut. Activating security routines, calling for Phiksunee. The AI answers—
“Rinthira, you’re bleeding.” Chatsumon draws upright. Her own gun is out, safety off.
From the speakers: “Mother, I don’t see anything. I’m alerting the colonel’s guard and pilot.”
Rinthira feels not the pain but the heat of the bullet in her shoulder, like a flame behind lantern glass. “The American AI.” She’d shot it in the flank and knowing the specs of Phiksunee’s marionettes, that ought to stop it. Or not, if this one’s signal hub is elsewhere: the knee, the calf, the wrist. There is no requirement for AI marionettes to bear vital parts in spots analogous to human.
Phiksunee says, “The colonel’s pilot is down. There’s at least another marionette but I can’t see it. That AI has scrambled my senses. It’s done this expertly.” A pained pause. “If the specs I’ve got are up to date, the signal receptors are in the right forearm. Mother, load the iteration I brought now.”
“The what,” Chatsumon starts and stops.
Rinthira is breathing fast. She should be calm: it is a combat situation and she’s been trained for that, has long been accustomed. It’s been years. “What if it compromises you?”
“I’ve created a sandbox in one of your house’s partitions, to which I won’t connect. We don’t have time, Mother. My nearest bodies are too far and no human reinforcement will be in time. Not to criticize, Colonel, but perhaps you ought to have brought more personnel.”
There is a decisive thud outside; Rinthira wishes she’d had the house done over with industrial-grade reinforcement. She turns on every security channel but they show nothing, the invader as invisible to them as to Phiksunee’s eyes. She pictures the perimeter thick with red-headed, green-eyed dolls, blank of expression and lethal. With her good hand she unchains the enameled egg, peels off the shell to expose the port, and plugs it into the frame.
The wall brightens and fills with the AI’s pale, pointed face. Their eyes open slowly—an affectation—to reveal those broken-glass irises. A moment’s pause as the imprinting asserts, incorporating Rinthira’s signature and unique identifiers: she holds eye contact, though that is nothing more than cosmetic, an instinct on her part. Phiksunee is not infallible. No telling this could even work, would be compatible.
The banging grows louder. Chatsumon has her gun leveled at the entry, her second pistol already loaded at her side.
“You are registered as superuser,” the AI says in stilted Thai. “I am Natasha.”
Rinthira inhales, ragged. Her shoulder throbs. Natasha. Alkonost will be irritated, she thinks, death row humor. “Show me your read-write accesses and administrative privileges.”
They display on the adjacent wall. A list of identities strung out like beads; Rinthira transcribes then deletes them all except her own. Nothing for it once that’s done—she puts Natasha online.
Natasha’s eyes glaze over, then turn clear with a long hard blink. “Six other active instances of Natasha detected within proximity. Instructions?” The adjacent screen changes to a layout of the house, foregrounded by six vectors. The nearest is immediately outside; another is closing in.
At that moment the door gives. Chatsumon squeezes off two consecutive shots, precisely catching the Natasha marionette in the right forearm. It teeters, computer animus leaving, and falls.
Rinthira works quickly: a query to terminate the other instances is denied—it requires back-entry authentication she doesn’t have—and other attempts to alter the five invad
ers prove fruitless. Until Phiksunee steps in, lightning-logic and brute-force algorithms, a universe of parallel processes denser and faster than any human brain.
The vectors go out, one by one.
It is not calm, after, and they are not safe. But for the moment Rinthira is in her bed and her wound is dressed; she is hazy from painkillers, though lucid. The scrambling underlay she wears next to her skin threw the enemy Natasha’s aim off-course or it would have been her head, not just a few tendons and a fractured bone.
“Piercing ammo.” Chatsumon grimaces and puts down the crusted bulletproof mesh. “This was close.”
“You lost a soldier and a pilot.”
“Good ones both. But I could have lost you.”
It is said simply, thickly, full of the heat that comes before tears. Rinthira turns her face away. “If you requisition better armor for me, I’m not going to say no.” Through the window she watches Chatsumon’s personnel load the bodies. Human ones go into sterile bags, to be honored and then given to families and friends for funerals, smoke and incense and saffron-robed monks. The other ones, the Natashas, have been disassembled and stacked up in boxes for transport to forensic engineers. They are mannequins, components no more sophisticated than Phiksunee’s marionettes a few generations back. Generic and hollow on purpose—the Americans made sure there would be nothing to mine or reverse-engineer, though they don’t appear to have planned on having an iteration fall into enemy hands.
For Phiksunee, an iteration of Natasha is as good as having the American AI’s code entire to dissect and compare. “It’s a sibling,” she reported. “Some of the base code is . . . familiar, Mother, it’s why the imprinting took so well. That means a lot of things. Some bad. Some very good. I’ll need to consult the rest of the family.”
Rinthira has kept the body she shot down. One of its arms is laid across her lap. Heavier than she expected, steel skeleton roped with grapheme tendons. When she runs her fingers over the arm it gives, the synthetic dermis a spongy sheath that would never have passed for meat. Thin coolant has congealed around the joints, a nacreous film. If Natasha has any opinion as to its bodies or their termination, it hasn’t voiced any before being put into anechoic hibernation.