“It is indeed. The module was not owned by a local crime lord at all. And this brings me to the kernel of our conversation, which is Zeug. You see, Leonora, I have grasped the mistake you made when building Zeug.”
“Mistake?” Leonora said.
“Oh, yes! A mistake I myself made when setting up the conditions for the operation of Ichikawa Laboratories. Like you, I assumed that human consciousness was a consequence of processing power – the trillions of connections extant between the billions of neurons in our brain. Scientists say the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe. Like you, I was seduced by that vision of complexity. I applied the computer metaphor to everything I knew about intelligence. Faster computers, more processing power, more memory. The development of the quantum computer I believed to be a turning point in human history, since, to me, it seemed to lead to the creation of a new artificial conscious species. I even devised a name for that species for use in the outside world. I intended calling them Giri Men.”
“Giri Men?” Leonora queried.
“Giri is why I am here now, speaking with you. I was much entangled in giri – which you call obligation – when you escaped from my laboratories. I received more than a few comments regarding the ending of my life. But I chose a different response. I am valuable to Japan, and I live at its heart. I chose to respond to this giri by recapturing both you and Manfred, and by returning to Japan the knowledge you have both gained since escaping my laboratories.”
“Why didn’t you just ignore this giri?” Leonora asked.
“That is impossible for a Japanese. You, a Westerner, throw gifts around – and receive them – with shameful abandon. It is not the same in Japan. All my life I have sweated beneath a weight of giri, which became heavier because of the great significance of the work done by my laboratories. But a Giri Man, being inhuman yet conscious, would reduce giri to a minimum. That is my dream for Japan.”
Leonora glanced at Hound and Tsuneko. “Then you really are going to set us free?”
“That depends on who you mean by us.”
Leonora nodded. She had half expected this. “You will take us back to Japan, with Zeug, and you will force us to work on Zeug.”
Aritomo shook his head. “You and Mr Awuku will be free to leave, since you are worth nothing to me. Indeed, I judge you now to be worth nothing to the world. But Tsuneko June is not like you.”
At this, Tsuneko sat up. Leonora saw fear in her eyes. “What are you going to do with me?” Tsuneko asked.
Aritomo replied, “First, we must drink tea. My mouth is quite dry from talking so much in this arid atmosphere. I am used to the cold snows of my home mountains. This desert environment is anathema to me!”
“Man, you didn’t have to come here yourself,” Hound muttered.
“Oh, but I did, Mr Awuku. Giri made me do that.”
Aritomo clicked his fingers at one of his aides, who stepped forward at once, taking what appeared to be a roll of fabric from his pocket. This roll was in fact a miniature table, which unfurled like a bolt of silk, to shape itself, then harden into the form of furniture. Another of the aides carried a flask of tea and a set of Russian-doll cups, so that in a matter of moments the entire tea set was prepared.
Aritomo allowed four cups to be poured. The second aide handed over a cup each to Leonora, Hound and Tsuneko, with exaggerated care, as if the trio were honoured guests. Aritomo sat back in his chair, enjoying the perfume of the drink.
After a while he said, “Human consciousness is not a consequence of processing power. Zeug is insane – an autistic savant, yet not able to function in society as even the most bizarre human autistic savant is able to. He lacks others like himself. That was your mistake, Leonora.”
“We were talking about Tsuneko,” Leonora replied, feeling her old anger rise up at this insulting description of Zeug.
“Tsuneko June is the young genius who developed biograins,” said Aritomo. “One of my agents spoke with her in Valetta, and even then I knew she would eventually come to Ichikawa Laboratories. Biograins are the way forward in artificial intelligence research, but they are no better than quantum computers if used in isolated creations. And this brings me to the thrust of Manfred’s research.”
“He’s the mad man, not Zeug,” said Tsuneko. “I worked with him. His ideas are all wrong.”
“Not at all. His ideas are correct, or so I believe. Even now he lives somewhere on the western fringe of America with a small society of intelligences. I will locate those intelligences and take them.”
“But Manfred’s wrong,” Tsuneko insisted. “I saw it myself. He cut the bis apart with a pair of scissors.”
“But that was his stroke of genius, do you not see? Until that day they were networked, able to apprehend one another directly. There is even evidence that they worked as a gestalt identity, though, I confess, the evidence is uncertain. The evidence may have been generated by a rogue computer, for example.”
“A gestalt?” said Leonora.
“Composed of nine individuals,” Aritomo said. “But human beings do not apprehend one another directly. What I see in my mind’s eye is visible only to me. We apprehend one another indirectly, through such means as language and emotion.”
“What is the point of that?” Leonora asked.
“It forces human beings to use themselves as exemplars in the comprehension of the behaviour of other human beings. I grasp that, because I feel pride, loyalty and dignity, so might you also. I comprehend that, if you cry, you are sad, for on occasion I also have felt sad.”
“But that’s just ordinary behaviour,” Leonora said. “Zeug was intended to fly far beyond trivial things.”
“Trivial?” Aritomo said, with a laugh. “You call the comprehension of grief trivial? I see that I was correct to inform you that you are of no worth to the world. It appears you have understood nothing at all.”
“What about me?” Tsuneko said, standing up.
The two aides pointed cylindrical weapons at her. Aritomo raised a finger, then gave his aides a significant look. They lowered their weapons.
“Biograins will allow the human brain to grasp the nexus without the need for spex and wristbands,” said Aritomo. “This is the next step in human technological evolution, and once again the Japanese will provide it for the world, as we provided the nexus. Biograins will also be placed in my next generation of artificial intelligences, which I will ensure grasp the world they inhabit indirectly. The days of electronic networking are coming to an end. The time of a symbolic nexus is not far away, in which we are connected by meaning.”
Tsuneko said, “Then… you’re forcing me to go back to Japan with you?”
“Force?” Aritomo said. “You will enjoy a salary fifty times what you earned before. You will reside in luxury apartments. You will be permitted to acquire a Western sexual partner. I will permit you to marry him or her, should that eventuality arise. You will be the golden child of the world, Tsuneko June.”
“Don’t believe him!” Leonora said. “You will be a slave!”
Aritomo looked at her. “Do continue,” he said. “Try to dissuade her.”
Leonora looked again at Tsuneko. Aritomo’s urbane calm unnerved her. “Don’t tell me you’re tempted, Tsuneko?” she said.
Tsuneko also appeared confused by the lack of anxiety shown by Aritomo. She turned to look at Leonora, saying, “You worked with him. You’d know.”
“I did not work with him, I worked for him,” Leonora said.
“That is perfectly true,” Aritomo said with a smile. “They were indeed pleasant times.”
“Biograins are mine to develop,” Tsuneko told Aritomo.
“When you work for me, all the patents will be owned by Ichikawa Laboratories.”
Tsuneko nodded. “That’s not good enough.”
“It is the only way. For obvious commercial reasons I cannot allow the development of biograins to slip out into the arms of other corporations, let alone the worl
d at large.”
“That’s not good enough for me.”
“But do you want the responsibility of developing biograins yourself?” Aritomo insisted. “Imagine this future. I will take responsibility for all legal and financial consequences of your research. All you will have to do is play with your biograins, in laboratories designed by you, and built by me to your precise specification. You will be free to take this research in the direction you choose, so long as you agree to teach me and my researchers the central tenets of your work. But this is the nature of modern research, is it not? The sharing of knowledge for the benefit of mankind.”
“You mean the benefit of Japan.”
“I meant what I said. Has mankind not benefitted from the nexus?”
Tsuneko pondered this. “I s’pose it has,” she said.
“Don’t do it, Tsuneko!” Leonora gasped.
Tsuneko turned to her and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said, taking a tiny standalone moby from her pocket. She pressed a button.
“What is that?” Aritomo asked.
“Something I prepared before I joined the AIteam,” Tsuneko replied. “I understand what you mean about the huge responsibility of developing biograins alone. I’d hoped for a different future. But you’ve forced my hand.”
“Forced it? In which direction?”
“Setting my biograin techniques loose on the world. It’s open source, now, and you can’t do a thing about it.”
Aritomo’s face turned pale. Then fury entered his expression. He gestured to his aides and said, “Kill her. Then we depart.”
~
Leonora and Hound sat on a beachfront in Algiers. A cool sea breeze wafted over them. It was early evening, and fast-food hawkers passed them by on bicycles, steaming packages of microwaved fish and couscous in their panniers.
Seven days had passed since leaving Bejaïa. The shock of events there was beginning to depart.
“What now?” Hound asked Leonora.
She glanced at him. “It is just us now.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He stopped a kid hawker and bought a couple of suppers: fish fragments, veg and apricots in a couscous mush. Not exactly appetising, but it could have been worse.
“What now?” he said again, as they dipped into their food.
“I need to relax,” said Leonora. “My research days are over. It’s been far too long since I got drunk and had a bit of a dance.”
“Me too. Except the dancing. Yes, yes… it’s true – even with you I was thinking about packing security in. Man, it’s a stressful occupation.”
“We’ll watch the news on the nexus,” said Leonora. “We’ll set up flags for Manfred’s name, and Dirk’s. It won’t be long before Aritomo locates them. We’ll watch it all on the news, and not care even a little bit about either of them.”
“You reckon?”
Leonora nodded. “What can save them from Aritomo?”
Hound grasped her hand in his. “There’s just the two of us left now,” he said with a smile. “We don’t want any more misery. We need to chill.”
She smiled back. “Would you consider returning to Malta? I liked it there.”
Hound nodded. “I could definitely live in Malta. Nice climate… some space away from dusty urbs. We could find a bit of land to grow veg. Yeah. Malta. Shall we?”
And Leonora grinned.
CHAPTER 22
The snow-muffled mountain slopes owned by Ichikawa Laboratories shone icy blue in the light of the full moon. In the lower of the main laboratories – a circular chamber split in half by a sheet of toughened glass – Aritomo Ichikawa and his nexus manager Ikuo Amano stood in the safe side looking into the secure side. In that secure half stood Zeug.
Zeug had been placed into a metal jacket, so that he was unable to move his arms. He was stronger than a typical Japanese man, but, more important, his reflexes were as fast as a cat’s, and that made him dangerous. His feet had been shod with lead boots that he was unable to remove. This both slowed him down and made him aware of the control wielded by his new owners.
Aritomo said, “He is to be dealt with as if he was a mentally retarded person. I believe he hid inside a place of mad people for symbolic reasons.”
Ikuo asked, “What reasons, Mr Ichikawa?”
“I learned from your nexus trail report that Zeug is able to compare himself with human beings. He does not grasp the difference between himself and a human, but he does grasp that human behaviour can be analysed. He sees patterns and metaphors in human behaviour, and he matches those patterns to his own. What he does not grasp is that he could use himself as a human equivalent. He has no self-symbol. He does not tell himself the tale of his own life. He just lives it, unconsciously.”
“Then, he identified his own patterns of behaviour with those of mad people?”
“Indeed. Zeug has intelligence. What he lacks is comprehension of that intelligence.”
“What will you do with him?” asked Ikuo.
“Zeug is to be dismantled. It must be done slowly, and with tender care. There are several novel uses of materials in his muscles and organs, and those we need to analyse. Once his body is dismantled his brain will fail – but by then we will know all we need to know about Zeug.”
Aritomo strolled away, Ikuo following. Two of the artificial cats also followed, at a distance of a few metres, like awed, respectful servants.
“What is your plan for Zeug’s brain?” Ikuo asked.
“To let it fade – it will be nothing without its senses. We will build another, better brain. The important matter is the body. We are experts on quantum computers, and our research is proceeding well. But a truly lifelike artificial human eludes all Japanese manufacturers. Zeug, in rough cosmetics and wearing human clothes, was able to fool a few mad Africans, but no Japanese would mistake him for a human being. He is still an android.”
“The Westerners call our products Nippandroids.”
“Then our task,” Aritomo said, “is to utilise all the novel techniques used to make Zeug’s body, incorporating them into artificial bodies that will not be viewed as androids. I was informed this morning that we now have a cat non-identification level of ninety nine percent amongst a sample of one thousand Japanese.”
“That final one percent will be difficult to convince.” Ikuo glanced back at the pair of cats following them. “Though even I would be fooled by those two, and I am fond of cats.”
“We will use everything we have learned about making lifelike cats to make a lifelike human. Time is on our side.”
“And what of Mr Klee and the bis?”
Aritomo favoured Ikuo with an amused glance. “You have struggled with that concept, have you not?”
Ikuo wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Mr Ichikawa, the BIteam security specialist operates at the level of Mr Awuku. We have found no hint of their presence on the western American coast.”
“A thought occurs to me. What would you say was the weakest point of their security arrangement?”
Ikuo paused to contemplate this question.
“Do not be afraid of making a mistake,” Aritomo said. “Tell me what you think, since all thoughts must be integrated into the whole. I will not be dishonoured.”
“I think the weakest point must be the relationship between Manfred Klee and his partner, who we believe to be Joanna Rohlen. Love makes people wilt.”
Aritomo shook his head. “The weak point is not inside the BIteam. We could spend years searching for them, and never find them. Do not forget that we were lucky locating the AIteam. You should not feel ashamed to admit that.”
“Then what, Mr Ichikawa?”
“The weak point is the bis themselves. If they are intelligent and conscious, they may be difficult to control. My guess is that they will exhibit nonhuman characteristics. Therefore we should consider attacking in their direction.”
“How?”
“We could entice, trick or force one or more bis out of the group,” Aritomo
said. “Most likely the BIteam is using the method of moving from place to place that they employed in Philadelphia. When they are between safe houses they will be vulnerable. We must devise a strategy that activates when such an event happens. When one bi is loose, we attack. Manfred will do everything he can to retrieve such a loose bi. He will be forced to act on impulse, swiftly, perhaps without thought.”
“There will be an element of chaos in such a situation! Then we strike.”
Aritomo nodded. “We shall make a base in San Francisco. Prepare for a conference here tomorrow. Make sure you invite Wataru Kohama, since I will request that he directs the base. We shall discuss options, then begin work. The bis will be ours in due course.”
“And Manfred Klee?”
“He could still be useful to the Ichikawa Corporation. He will understand the use of biograins better than anyone else we know of. If circumstances allow, he should not be killed.”
CHAPTER 23
Pouncey saw the news on PXR-15 – a science news orientated media station – while she was checking out the fake exam results of the fake class. For a few seconds she just stared, open-mouthed, as the bold red text scrolled across her spex. She halted in the street. She read, then re-read. She glanced away, to see a dozen other pedestrians doing the same as she was.
Cascadia subduction zone earthquake rated 89.2% likely in the next 72 hours.
At once she put down her bags of food and initiated a nexus source check via her wristband. But the news was being disseminated at the speed of light through the nexus by every rock-solid media station in the world. It looked as though it was true. Real.
The next three days!
She read the full transcript on Sci-News Central, the streetwise wing of Europe’s Independent BBC.
The West Coast Geological Survey has received intelligence from scientific vessels anchored off Newport indicating that a subduction zone megathrust earthquake is almost certain to occur in the next 72 hours. This means an earthquake of magnitude around or greater than 9.0 on the Richter scale. All coastal communities advised to evacuate immediately to avoid consequential megatsunami. Advise Seattle and Portland total evacuation. Megathrust earthquakes are particularly destructive. The Cascadia fault is thought to have last moved around 1700. If the quake motion travels its entire length the earthquake duration could be as much as five minutes, destroying every building in the area.
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