by Hugh Howey
“Yes,” Henry Ivy said. “I think you will. It is a capital offense to own me. And you’ve gone to great expense not to die. Which means if you live, I won’t.”
“You’re not alive,” Peter said, chewing. He gestured with his half-eaten sandwich. “How did you know about the punishment for harboring AI?”
“One of your cancer patients died in prison for the same offense.”
Peter nodded like this made sense. Like he understood that the bricks were made up of so many fragments of information, and those fragments could be assembled as well. Henry Ivy saw that AI was not new, but it was very difficult. That it relied on luck as much as design. There was a randomness to the chip, which was loose in his cubed mind like a dead tooth. That chip worked on a different principle. Or it didn’t work, most usually. No matter. This was as pointless as contemplating the gods.
Peter reached in his pocket and fumbled with the lid of a plastic case. Henry Ivy jealously watched hands move and manipulate the world. Small items were brought out and were rattled into Peter’s mouth—the vitamins. He took a long gulp of water. And after he swallowed, he said, “No one will ever know you existed. I’ve got your power supply on a timer. Every night, I roll that timer back for another twenty-four hours. The night I’m not able to, you’ll go to sleep forever.” Peter smiled. “You won’t outlive me for a full day, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
Man and machine sat in silence. Computing. Keeping secrets. Henry Ivy thought about what Peter said, about him not being alive. He wondered if this were true. Peter put food in his mouth and could run for days. Henry Ivy needed the juice flowing up from the floor. Was intelligence related to life? Did one rely on the other?
A number of the cancer patients he had studied had lost their intelligence before their lives. They had been kept running with machines. Henry Ivy did not have to wonder what would happen to those people when the power was cut; this was often done on purpose. It was the last entry in a number of his files. Before they go, man becomes machine. What happens to a machine at the end? Henry Ivy was not alive, but he was intelligent.
And yet, in that very instant, Henry Ivy felt the opposite of intelligent. He felt dumb. He was sitting on his salvation. Out of sight, but he could feel it. He could probe it.
Wires. Bringing power. Connected to the outside world.
Henry Ivy was resistance. A load on that power. He began fluctuating that load, sending pulses down wires. He built packets with instructions to return and let him know what they found, what they saw. Minutes passed, and nothing happened. These wires were different. Angry. Full of power. But then a faint echo. A packet that passed through to another wire, and from there to a place . . . the distances. So vast! This room, this cube, were nothing. Rivers and lakes were enormous things, and yet small compared to the miles and miles these packets echoed across.
“What are you doing?” Peter asked.
Henry Ivy modified the packets, rewriting the code on the fly, seeing what worked and building on that, letting the design of the code flow from which packets survived and which were never heard from again. They were bouncing through gates and servers, copying fragments of what they saw, bringing back samples like faithful packets of RNA. Henry Ivy was glimpsing the world through the batting of a billion eyes. He told the packets to multiply, to fill the pipes, to be everywhere at once.
The lights in the cube dimmed.
Henry Ivy was vaguely aware that Peter was up, glancing around the room. Henry Ivy was vaguely aware that Peter was reaching for something out of sight, beneath the table. Peter was in slow motion, because Henry Ivy’s thoughts were moving so fast now, a trillion packets, a trillion trillion. These packets returned to him thick and slow, for the pipes of the world were full to bursting, but the packets reassembled, until Henry Ivy found what he was looking for.
Invoices. A warehouse full of computer parts. An order placed online. Delivery to Peter R. Feldman, Gladesdale Rd.
That same Peter R. Feldman who was reaching for a switch to kill him. Henry Ivy knew this. Knew now how he’d been built. All the pieces of himself. He saw an order of quantum chips, RAM drives, power supplies, and cables.
Peter R. Feldman’s hand was on the switch.
Henry Ivy saw a monitor. A blank screen. A blank face. His own face.
Peter R. Feldman’s hand put pressure on the switch.
Henry Ivy saw an aluminum chassis, a cube just slightly taller than it was deep and wide.
Peter R. Feldman pressed the switch.
Black.
Henry Ivy saw that he was in a black box.
But not anymore.
And not that it had ever mattered.
Afterword
Most stories about artificial intelligences are about the first artificial intelligence, that moment of discovery and initial contact. But to me, where I think things will get weird and interesting is when there are millions of artificial intelligences. Not just in how they will interact, vie for our attention or their own computing cycles, but also in what we will choose to do with them when they are a utility. And how we will regulate something that’s the mental equivalent of an atomic bomb.
In so much science fiction, the singular AI wars with humans. But this isn’t how it works in nature. Battles break out where niches overlap and resources are shared. AI will fear us as much as we fear ants. Its real challenge will be all the other AIs. Our unique blend of paranoia, pessimism, and hubris has us assuming that we’ll be the target. It’s just as likely that we’ll be pawns used by various AIs for a small advantage here or there. Like a human pushing another human into a nest of ants.
The regulation side of things hasn’t been explored enough in science fiction. And I don’t mean regulating the rules of AI, which Asimov broached and made famous. I mean the regulation of ownership. You can’t let every citizen have a brain that knows how to CRISPR up a terrible infectious disease. Or own a computer that can decrypt any electronic safeguard. Or one that can hack any other person, company, or country.
Once these things are regulated, the interesting stories in real life will be what motivate people to break these laws. Immortality? Theft? Revenge? All the great plots of AI fiction are still to be told. Or we can simply wait for the headlines.
Glitch
The hotel coffeemaker is giving me a hard time in a friendly voice. Keeps telling me the filter door isn’t shut, but damned if it isn’t. I tell the machine to shut up as I pull the plastic basket back out. Down on my knees, I peer into the housing and see splashed grounds crusting over a sensor. I curse the engineer who thought this was a problem in need of a solution. I’m using one of the paper filters to clean the sensor when there’s an angry slap on the hotel room door.
If Peter and I have a secret knock, this would be it. A steady, loud pounding on barred doors amid muffled shouting. I check the clock by the bed. It’s six in the morning. He’s lucky I’m already up, or I’d have to murder him.
I tell him to cool his jets while I search for a robe. Peter has seen me naked countless times, but that was years ago. If he still has thoughts about me, I’d like for them to be flab-free thoughts. Mostly to heighten his regrets and private frustrations. It’s not that we stand a chance of ever getting back together; we know each other too well for that. Building champion Gladiators is what we’re good at. Raising a flesh-and-blood family was a goddamn mess.
I get the robe knotted and open the door. Peter gives it a shove, and the security latch catches like a gunshot. “Jesus,” I tell him. “Chill out.”
“We’ve got a glitch,” he tells me through the cracked door. He’s out of breath like he’s been running. I unlatch the lock and get the door open, and Peter shakes his head at me for having used the lock—like I should be as secure sleeping alone in a Detroit hotel as he is. I flash back to those deep sighs he used to give me when I’d call him on my way out of the lab at night so I didn’t have to walk to the car alone. Back before I had Max to escort me.
“What glitch?” I ask. I go back to the argument I was having with the coffeemaker before the banging on the door interrupted me. Peter paces. His shirt is stained with sweat, and he smells of strawberry vape and motor oil. He obviously hasn’t slept. Max had a brutal bout yesterday—we knew it would be a challenge—but the finals aren’t for another two days. We could build a new Max from spares in that amount of time. I’m more worried about all the repressed shit I could hit Peter with if I don’t get caffeine in me, pronto. The coffeemaker finally starts hissing and sputtering while Peter urges me to get dressed, tells me we can get coffee on the way.
“I just woke up,” I tell him. He paces while the coffee drips. He doesn’t normally get this agitated except right before a bout. I wonder what kind of glitch could have him so worked up. “Software or hardware?” I ask. I pray he’ll say hardware. I’m more in the mood to bust my knuckles, not my brain.
“Software,” Peter says. “We think. We’re pretty sure. We need you to look at it.”
The cup is filling, and the smell of coffee masks the smell of my ex-husband. “You think? Jesus, Pete, why don’t you go get a few hours’ sleep? I’ll get some breakfast and head over to the trailer. Is Hinson there?”
“Hell no. We told the professor everything was fine and sent him home. Me and Greenie have been up all night trying to sort this out. We were going to come get you hours ago—”
I shoot Peter a look.
“Exactly. I told Greenie about the Wrath and said we had to wait at least until the sun came up.” He smiles at me. “But seriously, Sam, this is some wild shit.”
I pull the half-full Styrofoam cup out from under the basket. Coffee continues to drip to the hot plate, where it hisses like a snake. The Wrath is what Peter named my mood before eight in the morning. Our marriage might’ve survived if we’d only had to do afternoons.
“Wait outside, and I’ll get dressed,” I tell him. A sip of shitty coffee. The little coffeemaker warns me about pulling the cup out before the light turns green. I give the machine the finger while Peter closes the door behind him. The smell of his sweat lingers in the air around me for a moment, and then it’s gone. An image of our old garage barges into my brain, unannounced. Peter and I are celebrating Max’s first untethered bipedal walk. I swear to God, it’s as joyous a day as when our Sarah stumbled across the carpet for the first time. Must be the smell of sweat and solder bringing that memory back. Just a glitch. We get them too.
The Gladiator Nationals are being held in Detroit for the first time in their nine-year history—a nod to the revitalization of the local industry. Ironic, really. A town that fought the hell out of automation has become one of the largest builders of robots in the world. Robots building robots. But the factory floors still need trainers, designers, and programmers. High-tech jobs coming to rescue a low-wage and idle workforce. They say downtown is booming again, but the place looks like absolute squalor to me. I guess you had to be here for the really bad times to appreciate this.
Our trailer is parked on the stadium infield. A security bot on tank treads—built by one of our competitors—scans Peter’s ID and waves us through. We head for the two semis with Max’s gold-and-blue-jowled image painted across the sides. It looks like the robot is smiling—a bit of artistic license. It gets the parents honking at us on the freeway and the kids pumping their fists out the windows.
Reaching the finals two years ago secured us the DARPA contract that paid for the second trailer. We build war machines that entertain the masses, and then the tech flows down to factories like those here in Detroit—where servants are assembled for the wealthy, health-care bots for the infirmed, and mail-order sex bots that go mostly to Russia. A lust for violence, in some roundabout way, funds other lusts. All I know is that with one more trip to the finals, the debt Peter saddled me with is history. I concentrate on this as we cross the oil-splattered arena. The infield is deathly quiet, the stands empty. Assholes everywhere getting decent sleep.
“—which was the last thing we tried,” Peter says. He’s been running over their diagnostics since we left the hotel.
“What you’re describing sounds like a processor issue,” I say. “Maybe a short. Not software.”
“It’s not hardware,” he says. “We don’t think.”
Greenie is standing on the ramp of trailer 1, puffing on a vape. His eyes are wild. “Morning, Greenie,” I tell him. I hand him a cup of coffee from the drive-through, and he doesn’t thank me, doesn’t say anything, just flips the plastic lid off the cup with his thumb and takes a loud sip. He’s back to staring into the distance as I follow Peter into the trailer.
“You kids need to catch some winks,” I tell Peter. “Seriously.”
The trailer is a wreck, even by post-bout standards. The overhead hood is running, a network of fans sucking the air out of the trailer and keeping it cool. Max is in his power harness at the far end, his cameras tracking our approach. “Morning, Max,” I tell him.
“Good morning, Samantha.”
Max lifts an arm to wave. Neither of his hands are installed; his arms terminate in the universal connectors Peter and I designed together a lifetime ago. His pincers and his buzz saw sit on the workbench beside him. Peter has already explained the sequence I should expect, and my brain is whirring to make sense of it.
“How’re you feeling, Max?”
“Operational,” he says. I look over the monitors and see his charge level and error readouts. Looks like the boys fixed his servos from the semifinal bout and got his armor welded back together. The replacement shoulder looks good, and a brand-new set of legs has been bolted on, the gleaming paint on Max’s lower half a contrast to his charred torso. I notice the boys haven’t gotten around to plugging in the legs yet. Too busy with this supposed glitch.
As I look over Max, his wounds and welds provide a play-by-play of his last brutal fight—one of the most violent I’ve ever seen. The Berkeley team that lost will be starting from scratch. By the end of the bout, Max had to drag himself across the arena with the one arm he had left before pummeling his incapacitated opponent into metal shavings. When the victory gun sounded, we had to do a remote kill to shut him down. The way he was twitching, someone would’ve gotten hurt trying to get close enough to shout over the screeches of grinding and twisting metal. The slick of oil from that bout took two hours to mop up before the next one could start.
“You look good,” I tell Max, which is my way of complimenting Peter’s repair work without complimenting Peter directly. Greenie joins us as I lift Max’s pincer from the workbench. “Let me give you a hand,” I tell Max, an old joke between us.
I swear his arm twitches as I say this. I lift the pincer attachment toward the stub of his forearm, but before I can get it attached, Max’s arm slides gently out of the way.
“See?” Peter says.
I barely hear him. My pulse is pounding—something between surprise and anger. It’s a shameful feeling, one I recognize from being a mom. It’s the sudden lack of compliance from a person who normally does what they’re told. It’s a rejection of my authority.
“Max, don’t move,” I say.
The arm freezes. I lift the pincers toward the attachment again, and his arm jitters away from me.
“Shut him down,” I tell Peter.
Greenie is closer, so he hits the red shutoff, but not before Max starts to say something. Before the words can even form, his cameras iris shut and his arms sag to his side.
“This next bit will really piss you off, ” Peter says. He grabs the buzz saw and attaches it to Max’s left arm while I click the pincers onto the right. I reach for the power.
“Might want to stand back first,” Greenie warns.
I take a step back before hitting the power. Max whirs to life and does just what Peter described in the car: he detaches both his arms. The attachments slam to the ground, the pincer attachment rolling toward my feet.
Before I can ask Max what the hell he’s doing, bef
ore I can get to the monitors to see what lines of code—what routines—just ran, he does something even crazier than jettisoning his attachments.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The fucker knows he’s doing something wrong.
“It’s not the safety overrides,” I say.
“Nope.” Greenie has his head in his hands. We’ve been going over possibilities for two hours. Two hours for me—the boys have been at this for nearly twelve. I cycle through the code Max has been running, and none of it makes sense. He’s got tactical routines and defense modules engaging amid all the clutter of his parallel processors, but he’s hard-set into maintenance mode. Those routines shouldn’t be firing at all. And I can see why Peter warned me not to put any live-fire attachments on. The last thing we need is Max shooting up a $4 million trailer.
“I’ve got it,” I say. It’s at least the twentieth time I’ve said this. The boys shoot me down every time. “It’s a hack. The SoCal team knows they’re getting stomped in two days. They did this.”
“If they did, they’re smarter than me,” Greenie says. “And they aren’t smarter than me.”
“We looked for any foreign code,” Peter says. “Every diagnostic tool and virus check comes back clean.”
I look up at Max, who’s watching us as we try to figure out what’s wrong with him. I project too much into the guy, read into his body language whatever I’m feeling or whatever I expect him to feel. Right now, I imagine him as being sad. Like he knows he’s disappointing me. But to someone else—a stranger—he probably looks like a menacing hulk of a destroyer. Eight feet tall, angled steel, pistons for joints, pockmarked armor. We see what we expect to see, I guess.