The Vesta Conspiracy

by Felix R. Savage

  Laughter.

  “What are we dealing with on 4 Vesta? More of the same.”

  And now Elfrida understood why Jimmy Liu and Wang Gulong had not flinched at the prospect that the Heidegger program might get loose on the internet. It was already there.

  “But,” she started.

  Derek Lorna voiced the same objection she’d been going to offer. “With all due respect, Uchendu, this isn’t ‘more of the same.’ This version of the neuroware can run on human brains, if they have the right wiring. I agree with Dr. James that this represents an evolution of the PLAN’s strategy. I’d even postulate that the Heidegger program is an evolution of the PLAN itself.”

  “Agree,” said the man from Oxford.

  Lorna went on, “In terms of what we know about massively self-organizing systems, it’s possible that the PLAN couldn’t evolve unless it produced ‘offspring’ that would achieve AGI status in a isolated environment. We helpfully provided just such an environment. So yes, Dr. James, I concur that the thing was a plant. Moses in his basket, floating on a river of stars. The entity ‘Little Sister’ is not a soldier of the PLAN. She is its firstborn child.”

  Elfrida shivered. Dr. Hasselblatter was right: Derek Lorna was the smartest person in this room. That reminded her that she had to propose the compromise Dr. Hasselblatter had outlined. She’d been waiting for an opening, but she was never going to get one, because she couldn’t know where the discussion would be in fifteen minutes. She started talking.

  Meanwhile, Dr. James had thought of something else to say. He spoke into an argument between Lorna and the Nigerian professor of cyberwarfare.

  “There’s a moral dimension to this. When I said that knowledge of the PLAN would hurt rather than help us, it may have seemed a wayward statement. But I’m thinking in the context of the oldest set of moral guidelines we possess: the Book of Genesis. Do we really want to eat this apple? Think of those people, professors and scientists just like us, murdering their pureblooded colleagues with any weapon that came to hand.”

  Dr. James flashed a vid montage up on the whiteboard in the conference room. Everyone quieted, not yet desensitized to the horrifying images from the Bellicia ecohood.

  “Suppose we were to discover why the PLAN targets purebloods. And suppose, further, that it turns out to make sense. Are we confident that we would not adopt the same strategy ourselves—oh, our methods would be more humane—simply because it is wrong?”

  Kate from MIT drew a shuddering, audible breath. “Scare tactics,” she snapped. “Beneath you, Dr. James. And I’d ask you as a fellow professional to keep your religion out of it.”

  Her riposte touched off a shouting match. One camp consisted of most of the Earth-based experts. The other comprised the phavatar delegates from the Belt, plus the AI expert from Oxford, who’d taken it on himself to speak for them. Derek Lorna was noncommittal, tossing in the odd comment.

  Elfrida spoke—not the words she would have chosen to say at this point, but the ones she’d already said.

  “Um, as you know, I’m Elfrida Goto from the Space Corps, and I’m here in a dual role, um, because I witnessed a lot of what happened on 4 Vesta. But I’m also here to represent the Space Corps. I agree with Dr. James, for what that’s worth. But I’d actually like to propose something different from just letting Star Force use 4 Vesta for target practice.”

  After a few seconds, the sheer novelty of hearing her voice prompted everyone to quiet down and look at her phavatar.

  “Um, the Space Corps is an independent agency with representation at the PAC level, but we work very closely with UNVRP. In that capacity, I have recommended 4 Vesta for purchase by the Venus Remediation Project.”

  Every human face radiated astonishment.

  “It meets all our criteria. It’s big. It has a hole in the crust, known as the Big Dig, which will make a suitable cavity for the gengineered microbes that we place on captured asteroids as part of our Phase 2 atmospheric reduction program. 4 Vesta also, at this time, has no human population.”

  Her voice trembled a bit on the last words, but the phavatar smoothed it out for her.

  “The only potential stumbling block would be the cost of moving this 2.67 x 1020 kilogram object from its present orbit onto a trajectory intersecting the orbit of Venus. But as it happens, a solution to that problem is already in place. 4 Vesta is equipped with the solar system’s second-biggest rail launcher. The track was recently damaged, but all it needs is a bit of splart. Once fixed, it could be repurposed for propulsion. Use the existing launch cradle in combination with a cheap electrical engine: Put rocks in, fling ‘em out, repeat. Small, targeted collisions could also be employed to provide initial boost and trajectory corrections. That would get us to Venus in roughly eighteen years, while consuming less than one percent of Vesta’s mass in the form of propellant.

  “Now, I’m going to take the liberty of anticipating another objection. Who’s going to fix the rail launcher? And who’s going to operate it? Who is going to do that with the Heidegger program active on the surface? Remotely operated bots would be vulnerable to hijacking by the Heidegger program, a risk we cannot countenance.”

  The whiteboard flashed up a vid Dr. Hasselblatter had sourced for her: a PR clip from a construction machinery trade fair in Dalian, China. Advertisement-festooned diggers, crawlers, rubble-haulers, drills, and cranes revolved on immense turntables beneath disco lights. Girl-styled robots draped themselves over the machines.

  “That’s a sampling of what we’ve got on Vesta,” Elfrida said. “Uh, minus the flashing lights and the sexy robot shills.” She’d paused there in hopes of getting a laugh. Her quip fell into a stunned silence. “The machines on Vesta are from Empirical Solutions and Huawei Galactic, and they’ve indicated that they are willing to lease them to UNVRP for a reasonable price. Obviously, this solves the problem of repairing and operating the rail launcher. These machines run on Chinese protocols. We can’t communicate with them … and neither can the PLAN.”

  For the first time, someone interrupted her. “She’s right,” said the mousy woman from CalTech. “The Chinese don’t have a spam problem. Some think there’s a reason for that, but anyway.”

  The rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about the Chinese yawned. Elfrida spoke on, and it was left behind.

  “UNVRP and the Space Corps are presenting this proposal as a compromise between what I might call Moar Science! and Slag All The Things.” She got a laugh for that. “4 Vesta’s eighteen-year journey through the asteroid belt and inferior space will give you a chance to study the Heidegger program, in a potentially fruitful collaboration with the Chinese. At the end of that time, it will impact Venus, and believe me, it will get slagged. You might even be able to see it from Earth.”

  “And not incidentally,” said Derek Lorna, “it’d be a huge get for your nutzoid terraforming project. 4 Vesta contains five percent of the mass in the entire asteroid belt.”

  “This concludes my presentation,” Elfrida said. “Questions? I do want to stress that the PR angle hasn’t been much considered here, but I think the visuals will be great on this. It’s turning lemons into lemonade, which will make people feel like we’re winning, rather than, uh, the opposite. Plus, there’ll be a super-dee-duper explosion to look forward to.”

  “PR is not a concern of this committee,” Lorna said. But his former comment had been teasing, rather than hostile, and he continued in the same tone. “Leave it to UNVRP, the slickest propaganda machine on Earth, to come up with a solution that has something for everybody.” He rocked back, spreading his hands. “Would I be correct in assuming that this isn’t so much a proposal for our consideration, as a heads-up? As in, you’re going to do this regardless of what we say?”

  “Well, UNVRP has already purchased 4 Vesta from Virgin Atomic,” Elfrida admitted. “Got it for a song. But we do need your backing. President Hsiao wants a scientific consensus in support of her decision.“

  These words reach
ed the conference room in Toronto fifteen minutes later, by which time the experts were arguing over who would get first dibs on the Heidegger program, and where you could buy non-buggy Chinese translator software.

  When he heard Elfrida’s words, Derek Lorna’s phavatar smiled. “Consensus? Never. We’re scientists, honey. Support? Hell, yeah.”

  Dr. James’s phavatar lay with its head on the table. The professor had checked out.

  xxxx.

  A few tens of meters from the telepresence cubicle where Elfrida lay, Colonel Oleg Threadley was conducting Shoshanna Doyle’s funeral in hard vacuum. Even the ISA felt the need to mark death with more than a moment of silence in front of the recycling unit. Holographic wreaths decked the auxiliary deck of the Imagine Dragons. Kiyoshi stood at the back of the crowd, head and shoulders above the Earth-born officers, half-watching the speeches recorded by ISA colleagues of Shoshanna’s who had known and, apparently, loved her.

  In the distance he could see the Unicorn, a dot above the irregular curvature of 4 Vesta. The ISA had come up with one reason after another not to let him return to his ship. He wasn’t exactly under arrest, but it could go either way. The ISA trafficked in ambiguity; it was one of their weapons.

  Whereas this would previously have driven him nuts, he now felt weirdly calm. There was nothing they could do to him that he couldn’t handle. If they tried to do something to Jun, then they’d have a problem. But it hadn’t reached that point yet. As far as he knew, they were not even aware of Jun’s existence.

  The funny thing, the miraculous thing, was that he hadn’t had a dose since that gulp of morale juice before he boarded the Vesta Express. And yet he felt OK. He wondered how long this could last.

  The funeral proceeded with martial formality. Suddenly the strains of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God swelled over the public channel. A shock of recognition made Kiyoshi smile—until he heard the words the ISA officers were singing:

  A bleeping ordeal is our job,

  Protecting all the nations.

  The solar system is FUBAR

  So’s the United Nations.

  Yet unthanked we toil on

  Crime and pre-crime exposing;

  They don’t know they owe their lives

  To our eyes never closing.

  Someone tapped Kiyoshi’s elbow. He automatically stepped out of the way. A midget on skis pushed past him. It was the crippled astrophysicist, Dr. James, in a custom EVA suit. There was a little yellow circle stuck on top of his helmet like a price tag.

  As Dr. James approached Colonel Threadley, who was about to scatter Shoshanna Doyle’s ashes, he shook out a white shawl with black stripes at both ends and velcroed it over his helmet. Everyone stared in amazement.

  “Give me that,” Dr. James said to Colonel Threadley.

  “Huh?”

  “The ashes.” Dr. James held out his glove.

  Threadley deposited the vial in it.

  Dr. James knelt, using Threadley’s legs as a handhold to push himself down to the deck. Hunching over the vial of ashes, he began to chant. “Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba; b'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei …”

  Chills raced up and down Kiyoshi’s spine. The chant sounded alien, and yet familiar. Tears trickled down his cheeks inside his helmet, unsummoned, impossible to wipe away.

  As if equally affected—though Kiyoshi didn’t think they could be—the ISA officers remained silent until Dr. James had finished his prayer. The professor floated up on his tether and cast Shoshanna’s ashes into space. Returning to the deck, he removed his tallit and yarmulke. “I believe her family would have wanted that,” he explained. “She was Jewish, after all.”

  “I’ve never been sure,” Threadley said. “Are Jews purebloods or not?”

  “Depends on your definition. Most Sephardim and Beta Israelis qualify. Most Ashkenazi, like myself and Shoshanna, do not. To know for sure, you’d have to ask that.” Dr. James jerked his thumb at the hulk of the Vesta Express, which trailed after the Imagine Dragons like a dead caterpillar on a leash.

  “Oh, I’ll ask it,” Threadley said. “Although, that question might come pretty far down on the list. I’ve got a team over there right now, packing it up for transport to a secure ISA facility.”

  There was that. The boss-man, it turned out, had been wrong about the ISA’s intentions. They didn’t want to frag the Heidegger program after all, they wanted to confiscate it.

  “By the way, Professor,” Threadley said, “weren’t you sitting in on that meeting that was meant to give the president scientific cover for her decision?”

  “I left early,” Dr. James said. “I’d had enough. The presidential decision isn’t going to be the one you were expecting, or the one I hoped for. UNVRP has done an end run around the whole debate.”

  He explained that 4 Vesta was to have a temporary reprieve, after all … and that definitely included Little Sister and the hardware she came with.

  The news ruined Kiyoshi’s mood. This looked—not only to him, but to the ISA officers, judging by their exclamations—like outright treachery from Elfrida Goto. Kiyoshi could have kicked himself for trusting her. After all, she worked for the UN. At the end of the day, that was all you needed to know about anyone.

  Back on the bridge, an officer proposed a motion to fetch Elfrida out of her telepresence cubicle “and freaking scrag her.” Threadley vetoed that, but vowed that she would know the wrath of the ISA on their way back to Earth.

  “We were going to frag that mess on the surface and remove the original program for safekeeping,” Threadley said ruefully. “No one would have had to be the wiser. The ISA is the only organization with sufficient security expertise to handle hostile ‘ware of this caliber. Now it’s going to be handed over to a bunch of civilians. Cheer up, people: with any luck it will lobotomize the lot of them, and we’ll have fewer pro-AI scientists kicking around the system.”

  The officers filed off the bridge, muttering darkly. Threadley held Kiyoshi back with a hand on his elbow. Kiyoshi shook him off and said, “You’d just have made the same mistakes the civilians are going to make, faster. There’s only one thing that should be done with that thing and that is to destroy it.”

  “Oh, yeah.“ Threadley held his eyes. “You come from a rock that got slagged by the PLAN, don’t you?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that,” Kiyoshi said. “I had a conversion experience back there. I realized that Jesus Christ is my savior. And what brought me to that realization, was coming eyeball to eyeball with evil, and hearing evil itself speak to me. The PLAN is Satan. My people were right all along. It’s just so obvious to me now. The neuroware rewires human brains so they’re vulnerable to demonic possession. When you talk to a meat puppet, you’re talking to a fiend out of Hell. And once you realize that, you kind of have to accept Jesus as your savior, or curl up in a ball and self-euthanize. There’s no middle way. So; yeah. My opinion is that absolute evil should be fragged with extreme prejudice.”

  This speech left him in an exalted state, trembling with nerves, smiling down at the ISA colonel.

  “You’re a funny guy, aren’t you?” Threadley said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone be so politically incorrect, in so many ways, in so few sentences. I almost want to put you up for some kind of award. Take off your suit. Come with me.”

  Threadley had already taken off his EVA suit. Out of it, he looked like an aging enka singer Kiyoshi had known back home, with a gray ponytail, a beer belly, and skinny shanks. He escorted Kiyoshi to a shipshape office where a screen took up all of one wall. It showed 4 Vesta and the distant dot of the Unicorn.

  Threadley prepared tea. His precise movements—the very fact that he did it himself, instead of letting a bot do it for him—reminded Kiyoshi of the zero-gee variation of the Japanese tea ceremony. You had to have steady hands to squirt the hot water into the cups instead of splattering it all over the room. Threadley corraled the splashback by expertly swirling the cups. These were ceramic wit
h self-lids. The tea was some decaffeinated herbal blend.

  “So,” Threadley said. “You’re a solo operator.”

  Here it was, then. The moment of danger. “Yup. Solo operator.”

  “You ply the unfriendly void in that death-trap of a ship, buying here, selling there, picking up the recycling from rocks too out-of-the-way for the big outfits to bother with. 6 Hebe is your most frequent port of call. When port-side, you pick up girls, browse the simware showrooms, and buy drugs from the freelance chemists who hang out in the bars. Basically, you’re just like ten thousand other no-hopers who think they’re something because they’ve got a ship of their own.”

  Kiyoshi shrugged, not bothering to take offense.

  “A lot of them believe in God, too. If anything, you’re late to the party. It’s a pretty common reaction to isolation, living on the edge, with nothing except a layer of metal and a not-very-bright computer between you and the abyss.”

  He’s just fishing. Kiyoshi sipped his tea.

  “You’ve got family on Ceres. The refugees from 11073 Galapagos. They’re doing OK, we hear. Settling in well … without any help from you. No urge to visit?”

  “Ceres is a long way from here,” Kiyoshi responded.

  “It is. Gotta be lonely, knowing you’re the only Japanese pureblood on this side of the solar system.”

  Like everyone else, Threadley had the wrong end of the stick regarding the Galapajin. Their ethnic heritage had never defined them as much as their Catholic faith did. Or rather, the two things were intertwined, so that slaps at their ethnicity missed the mark. For himself, Kiyoshi had a red line related to both things and neither. He was prepared to take a stand if and when Threadley demanded to scan the Unicorn’s hub. Until then, let the guy aim his darts.