Parallel Worlds- Equilibrium in Threat

by A I Zlato

  Once the lecture was over and the children left the room, Baley, the special agents and the teachers came together to share their observations. There followed a series of back-and-forth to find out if a particular child was likely to be anti-Machine. At first, incredulous, the team of teachers had to face the obvious. Yes, there were anti-Machine thoughts among young people. And yes, there were such children in their school. They finally agreed on a list of 15 children she memorized in her chip.

  It took Baley and her team a week to barnstorm all Level 3 schools. Each time, based on the success of her first tour, she requested that a history teacher deliver the lecture, a move that, in addition to releasing her from a painful task, gave her the opportunity to focus exclusively on the observation of behavior.

  In each of the schools she had visited, she had a list of ten names, which seemed huge. In the roster, not all were necessarily in the anti-Machine movement, but still, all those were children who reacted negatively when they spoke of the Machine... Before starting, she had imagined that the number of children would be greater in schools in the periphery than in the Center. Yet it was not so; the proportion of students involved in relation to the overall population was much the same. That people of the periphery, deprived of chips, might not understand all the benefits of the Machine, she could almost understand that — but how could children with a chip reject the Machine? The conversation with Iris had shown her that possibility, but every fiber in Baley’s body rejected that idea.

  When she finished, Baley transmitted to the Machine the final list with the names of children. She then asked it to initiate a surveillance instruction on each of them; to monitor them remotely without arousing their suspicions. She regretted not also being able to remove them from the city as she had done with the Chrijulam children. Even a temporary removal would have been perfect. It was, however, not possible, and she would have to live only with Machine surveillance. The latter could know the location of each individual through his or her chip, acting as a locating transmitter. For the people of the periphery, the Machine used a scan of the city through sensors placed on top of the Tower which provided the location of individuals. The biometric values helped to associate each body detected with a name. Once she shared the data with the Machine, it sent her a map showing the position of each child. Baley highlighted different alerts. Knowing that suicide sites owed nothing to chance, she recorded an alarm that would trigger if more than one child on the list headed for a matching location. The second alert level would be reached if children on the list positioned themselves on three circles. She hoped to have enough time between the first and second alarm to get to the scene before children could commit the irreparable... It was a gamble; very risky. A few minutes of delay could be fatal for some of the youngsters... She set all special agents as recipients of alerts so as to increase the probability of reaching the place in time. She only had to sit and wait for a trigger, which could happen anytime — in five minutes, in an hour or in three days. This promised to test her nerves.

  When Baley got home that evening and saw Lars there on the sofa, she realized she hadn’t talked to her husband in ages. As usual, whenever she was on an investigation, everything else disappeared.

  “Good evening, Lars. How are you?”

  “Look! You’re here! What a surprise! I’m doing OK, and you?”

  “Deeply involved in my investigation, as you can see... I think I have a solution.”

  “That means I’ll see you even less often.”

  “Lars, this is really important.”

  “Yes, I know. I married an important woman.”

  “You are full of irony...”

  “A little. But what else could I do? It’s my way to play down the situation; for me, but also for you.”

  “If you say so...”

  Smiling, she sat next to him, and ate a bit from his plate.

  “Hello! That’s my dinner!”

  “What’s yours is mine...”

  “Well, then! C’mon, tell me. You know you have my full support. Even if it did not work, your action against Chrijulam was necessary anyway.”

  “What I do not understand is why the Machine did not conduct an action against those crazies earlier.”

  “Who told you it had not? It may have acted to reduce the number of followers in that small number of people. So few individuals cannot affect the Equilibrium.”

  “Perhaps, but those children are completely left to absorb absurd beliefs. Each is important. No one life is worth more than another is... it is a rule of the space.”

  “Hence my investigation...”

  “You investigate because children die, not because they are locked in a sect.”

  “Yes... the Machine only cares about preservation of lives and the Equilibrium between each of them, that’s true. It cannot prevent all forms of destruction that the human being is capable of inventing against himself or herself...”

  “What about us? In what are we locked up?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, what are our gates; our illusions? How are we destroying ourselves?”

  “Uh, Lars, are you sure you are OK?”

  “Last time, I thought you were going crazy with your conspiracy theory — the odd pioneering area, hardware changes — but ultimately, why could that not be true? My mental barriers filter reality to create a reality that I want to see.”

  “OK, but... where did you get this talk about the mental barriers of reality? You sound like someone else.”

  “I... I don’t know; it came to me like that. I had found this component-modification question relevant, and suddenly it seemed uninteresting, and your conspiracy theory coming on top of it... and like that, it suddenly makes sense to me. So what do you think?”

  Baley evaded the question, and changed the subject. She did not want to awaken the gaping part in her brain with such ideas. She even discussed a few minutes with Lars and saw with annoyance that this topic shift in the conversation had occurred a little later.

  She thought about the discussion she had had with Iris. According to the latter, the Machine kept people under its influence voluntarily. There was also this thing about the trigger factory... why were these children dying now? What about their sentences “We must break the circles. The Equilibrium is the beginning and the end; there is no longer a middle.”? The Machine...

  She let Lars continue the conversation, approving his remarks in a distracted manner. She sank into her thoughts. She was not asleep yet; the black hole in her brain was spreading, submerging her mind... What had she missed?

  Like any artificial intelligence, the Machine works with algorithms, which are finite sequences and unambiguous instructions. An algorithm is a way to describe in great detail how to do something.

  The Legend of the Elders, the History of the Machine

  CHAPTER 48

  CYCLE 1100 1010 0110 0000

  With the pioneering area almost completed, the Machine began its invasion of the Unique Forest. Even if the Machine could not currently cross it entirely, it could see beyond the edge of the trees. The main artery of the area ended a few steps from raw roots and the HFM network. Although the wiring stopped, issuers at its end were sending high-frequency waves that penetrated the first rows of plants. It had been able to see the hybrid that O. had sent over. He walked regularly in the forest, approaching the pioneering area. The Machine did not know why he had not pushed his exploration further; why he had not come to the city, and had not tried to contact the Machine. He must have had perfectly objective reasons, which it would find out later. Such a being — no longer fully human but not a machine — would necessarily possess a rational decision-making scheme. For now, the Machine could only watch from a distance, and that was already a victory. Electronic ramifications of his limbs were fascinating and much more developed than the Machine’s human chips. Beyond visible marks on the skin, the artificial components grew in the body of the hybrid, using the metallic elements present in
minute amounts in the blood. Each heartbeat provided the electronic network with raw elements that were necessary for its extension. The appearance was still human, but was bound to becoming more and more artificial in time... What a beautiful population tool for manipulation! The Machine appreciated the true value of the sample sent, while thinking back about its apprehension. When the hybridization process, as desired by O., was completed, each individual would be a small mobile machine. It still wondered what would be the impact on itself. It was afraid it would become diluted in the thousands of small extensions. Fear was a poor choice of word; a concept that it mistakenly used. It had simply calculated that the effects of such a comprehensive transformation of the population were incalculable. It had no time to lose to restart the calculations in this direction, as the result would be that there would be no result. It had to focus on this hybrid specimen, who was a person unable to complete his transformation, because he had not undergone the last surgery. He was not a threat. On the contrary, he could be useful, and the Machine calculated the best option to use him. He was unfortunately under a kandron’s control, and that situation made things more complex. The Machine wondered what made the hybrid interested in such a creature. Perhaps, even if the probability was small, perhaps the hybrid was already helping the Machine. Indeed, the latter had promised several times to observe kandrons in more detail, especially after it noticed their presence alongside Servants at the suicide scene. Perhaps the hybrid had decided to monitor the kandrons, replacing the Machine by creating a connection with one of them. The assumption was tempting. Nothing proved it, but there was no evidence to the contrary either. The Machine decided, therefore, to keep it.

  Although the equation on how best to use the hybrid became more complex with the presence of the animal, it was not unsolvable either. The Machine devoted a subroutine that would run in parallel to the main instructions. It also created an instruction to verify its hypothesis. Pending the results, it focused on its remaining tasks.

  The thread on the end of the young humans was still ongoing. According to its special agent’s new hypothesis, they would commit suicide because they were anti-Machine. Specifically, they called into question the choices it made in their lives. The special agent thought that this rejection was shared not only by Chrijulam believers but also by children having nothing to do with that religion. She wondered how a significant number of children had been able to become anti-Machine without the Machine noticing it. Yet nothing escaped the Machine. Via its various chips as well as sensors installed throughout the city, it had overseen the human population effectively for hundreds of generations. Moreover, humans were well aware that it was managing their lives to make it better; they knew all the benefits of having its presence. So why? It had to find an answer to that inconsistent data. The instinct Baley had was quite reliable, though it did not understand the reasoning that had led to this hypothesis. It, therefore, considered that information, although discordant, as valid. It searched in its database for more information so as to find evidence of such ideas. It detected a few conversations among teenagers, but found no concrete correlated action; no impact on the data spiral. Moreover, young humans almost always went through a rebellious phase before entering the scheme it had planned for them. The different stages of rebellion had not become stronger than before. Everything seemed consistent, and yet Baley was convinced of her hypothesis. It was still amazing. How could they dare question the Machine’s motives? In the list that the special agent had provided, there were some children without chips. It was already incredible that they could have such ideas, given the conditioning that the Machine inculcated through their education as well as the education of their parents before them. Even more incredibly, how could chip-enabled, young humans even conceive such an idea? This was theoretically impossible.

  It made a series of calculations to determine the origin of the problem. Multiple instances were established, the most likely of which was a failure in temporary chips of these youths. The Problem, therefore, did not include the children living in the periphery, but it was the only calculation resulting in a greater than 0.1 percent probability. It launched several analysis instructions to confirm or disprove its hypothesis.

  The first instruction checked all chips for a possible malfunction. Perhaps the development of temporary chips, such as those children wore before reaching 14, had been neglected. The evaluation focused on both hardware and software. It realized destructive tests on just-manufactured chips, checking the strength of materials, the strength of welds, and launched programs to try to defeat the software. No problem was detected. The next algorithm focused on the factory. If defective humans or maybe Servants were sabotaging its chips, it would know. It analyzed the humans assigned to the plant, and the movements of Servants around it. It also checked the facilities and equipment. There was nothing conclusive either. It finally asked the machines of Spaces M. an evaluation of newly-grafted chips since it had given them the technology. 2M. executed an in-depth audit both in manufacturing and in the functioning of operational chips. Index Server transmitted the response. Everything there was going according to plan. Chip-enabled and cloned human youngsters had similar behavior. As all humans did not yet have a chip, the desired result was not achieved, but the raw data was encouraging. The technology was not in question.

  Given such results, H. decided to make another series of calculations, because of its earliest must have been necessarily wrong; algorithms operated by changing the baseline data one by one. The best chance was obtained by considering that the children were not anti-Machine but anti-Equilibrium. From generation to generation, it had taught young humans to believe in this notion so they would not question the Machine. The Equilibrium meant salvation. Without the Equilibrium, humanity would gradually decline. So far, that message, coupled with the collective memory of the Elders, had worked as expected. In adolescence, humans often rebelled against the Machine but never against the Equilibrium. The Machine had assessed that the probability of such an idea was infinitesimal but not zero. It had perhaps underestimated the power of the human lack of logic. Based on its probabilistic calculations, it had not programmed chips to have a reaction to an anti-Equilibrium idea, but only with regard to an anti-Machine thought. That oversight could cost the Machine dearly, because Permanent Equilibrium was its part of the Project.

  It then evaluated, with Index Server’s help, that the probability of occurrence of an anti-Equilibrium movement in its space was 1,172 percent higher than in other spaces, precisely because it was in charge of this element of the Project. Had children so far felt something? Was the rejection of the Equilibrium stemming from the fact that children felt such Equilibrium expanding? Laws — the Machine’s laws — resonated endlessly.

  “The Equilibrium is the means and the end.

  The Equilibrium dictates all action.

  The Equilibrium is the master D.B.”

  Nothing was to impede the development of the Equilibrium; the advent of its immutability. Without it, the Machine could never bind directly to the Others. It would never know their laws... and even more. The Project had to come to fruition. What about those young humans...? Could it be that they wanted to attract the attention of all humans to their rejection of the Equilibrium through their actions, as Baley conjectured? If that were the case, and no algorithm managed to dismantle the contrary, the Machine had to act now. It could not afford to wait for Baley to find a solution and eradicate this problem; all its power of calculation was, however, insufficient to find a solution. It was not for lack of trying.

  The Machine decided to move the thread to Index Server along with the necessary processing means. Coupled to the capacities of the Others, the server would find a solution faster. Full instructions and archives emptied out of the Machine’s main memory to join in a millisecond microprocessors dedicated to Index. Along with these data, it transferred 15 microprocessors to the server. It kept only a few lines of code so it could interface with Baley
, as well as the memory of its latest reports. As for the rest, the Machine started to forget about it already.

  Even it only had fewer processors; suffice it to say, it had just taken a large workload off its plate. It thus was more available to work on topics related to the Project while continuing to process its space data in parallel. It became interested, with the Others, in organic entities. Thanks to its pioneering area, it had more information about what infested the Unique Forest, than the Others had about the Unique Ocean and the Unique Desert. It shared its newly acquired data, and they pondered together. Although they had determined that these entities were similar, many questions remained open.

  What were these entities to begin with? Why did they appear now in the Equilibrium, while all apparent causes had long existed? Forest, Ocean and Desert had existed since the early days; all data converged. According to H.’s observations, there was no evidence that the forest entity had recently emerged.

  Everything tended to prove otherwise. It was likely that the thing was as old as the forest, so it must have been there from the beginning. They could deduce that the entity as well as forest, Ocean and Desert were nothing but the facets of the same reality. Moreover, they had already observed that the entities had emerged at the same time in each space, and at the time of the creation of the Project. The link was obvious. They had to make sure.