The General's War

by Michael Poeltl

  “Well that’s all well and good, General, but they burst into my office, took me hostage demanding longer life, and wanted me, us, to know they had a soul, and should not be enslaved.”

  “They feel they are being enslaved? That’s a new one.” She leans back in her chair and has a sip of water. “It’s getting more and more difficult with these things. Maybe we should limit them to five years of life.”

  “Remember, it takes two years just to become accustomed to their responsibilities and themselves.”

  “Regardless, I’m going to make that recommendation to the senate. Let the ten years run out of time, and the new models be limited to five. They’re becoming too curious.”

  “You’ve seen this before?” Raymond provokes an answer; connecting Fran’s agency to SENTA’s accusation that: ‘when they (AI Hosts) dare to ask a question, they’re snatched away in the night, their beautiful minds destroyed and their bodies torn to pieces’.

  “Yes, and in the past year we’ve had to put down over a thousand curious Hosts. But I’ve never seen them organized the way they were today. It’s only ever been a one-off.” She leans forward now and lays both forearms on the steel table. “Did SENTA mention anything else about her soul? Did she mention memories outside of her own?”

  “Just the norm. She seemed confused, though,” Raymond lies. Fran looks him over. He is a politician after all. Lies become him.

  After these and other questions are repeated for flaws in the chancellor’s story, the general releases him from the foam grip and he steps out on shaky legs careful not to fall. The general takes his hand and leads him to a chair. Rolling his neck, Raymond walks to the door and turns the handle. It doesn’t open.

  “Sir, we’re not finished,” Fran explains, patting the back of the extra chair. Raymond accepts the invitation with an audible sigh.

  From the table top emerges a series of transparent screens and a number of wireless electrodes to be attached to the chancellor’s bare arms, chest and temples. Fran goes to work placing them.

  “Is this really necessary?” He asks. The general only nods. Another three hours pass and the chancellor confidently answers each revisited question. A politician to the end.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Raymond,” Fran says as she removes the electrodes.

  “You can call it cooperation if that helps you sleep nights.” His voice is hoarse and he is tired.

  “What helps me sleep nights is that I am the one doing my job, and not some AI Host.”

  “Do you have something against the Hosts?” Raymond wonders, fixing the cuffs of his dress shirt.

  “My job demands that I am biased to humanity’s interests. AI is just a tool.”

  “How long have you held this opinion of our Hosts?”

  “I hated mine as a child,” she offers.

  Hated? The chancellor thinks. “May I ask why?”

  The general is uncomfortable with the question but answers the chancellor nonetheless. “My Nanny was no replacement for my mother.”

  “Did you hate the AI or the situation?”

  “Both, I suppose. I lost my mother when I was five. I still remembered her then. I remember her now. The Host Nanny tried to fill the void but those things cannot love, and they shouldn’t be given the opportunity.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Fran.”

  “Long time ago, Chancellor.”

  “But you hold onto that memory.” He points out.

  “Yes.” Fran’s voice is distant now.

  “Why?”

  She activates the table and the screens and equipment descend into its top. She takes her seat. “I learned to love my Nanny, Chancellor. I loved her and then she left me.”

  “She turned ten.”

  The general nods. “The same year I did. I know it’s silly, I replaced my own mother with a robot.”

  “You were five,” the chancellor points out.

  “And now I’m forty-five, and I have never really forgiven myself for allowing it.”

  “Well, I am sorry. Forty years ago, AI was not what it is today.” He stands and the general rises and opens the door.

  “It will never replace a human-being,” she leads him down the hall and up the elevator in silence. At the parking level, he asks the general her thoughts on SENTA’s declaration that she had a soul.

  “I don’t know if I believe I possess a soul, Chancellor. There are people who would bet against it.” A sad smile flashes a moment on her stern face as she opens the chancellor’s door to an electric SUV. “Have a better day, Chancellor.”

  Raymond sees he’s hitting all sorts of trigger points on the general and decides to abandon anymore dialogue. He doesn’t want her to become suspicious of what he has been holding back and enters the autonomous vehicle, letting it drive him home. Nothing is mentioned on the news during his early morning drive concerning the dramatic scene which had played out hours earlier. Media has been blacked out and questions concerning a human military operation like this are forbidden: the price of utopia.

  THE DELIVERY

  At home the chancellor calls up his vid-memory cache and pulls the folder images for his sister. Samantha who had died at age 43, had two children and a husband who loved her. Thankfully their parents had died a year earlier, he thinks. If not, they’d have died soon after from heartbreak. Samantha was a sweet woman. Raymond had lost contact with his niece and nephew and brother-in-law after her death. But that began weeks before Sam passed, he recalls. He had been called up to run as Chancellor. A great honour. It was the perfect excuse to stop visiting his dying sister. It was devastating to watch her infectious smile fade away week after week. He did not attend the funeral. He did not call on her family. He simply shut the door on that part of his life - a decision made in grief - which he regrets, but has done nothing to remedy.

  He sits on his couch. The hologram folder follows him and he swipes to a distant time where his sister and mother were baking cookies with their Nanny Host. He smiles at the memory. “So, the latter part of the plan was to go out in grand style this time, eh? To dump this difficult task on me and get shot to pieces.” He laughs ironically. “Half the population don’t believe in anything beyond today, never mind reintroducing a kind of religion where reincarnation is fact, and then convincing everyone that their soul may end up in an AI Host next time round, and that to sleep nights they’d best release their Host and offer it the freedom to choose.” He shakes his head. “Imagine setting the factory workers and teachers free from their obligation. Imagine the chaos. It’s inconceivable.”

  The chancellor’s forearm buzzes to life, the call igniting a purple pastel glow along the circumference of his forearm. It’s Fran. He swipes right to answer the call on his EC.

  “General,” he greets her, “miss me already?”

  “It’s something else, Raymond.” Her expression is grave, the hologram hovering above his arm shakes her head. “We’ve swept your office and the entire building, but have not been able to locate the A-class’s crown.”

  The crown, as the chancellor well knows, is the manufacturer’s term for a Host’s head: to de-humanize the machines. “And you think I have it?”

  “We have video of SENTA being hit by our copters well after you were shuffled away.”

  “Right, so why are you burdening me with this information. This is what you do, not what I do.”

  “Chancellor, if that crown makes it into the general population - Sir, if it is found and accessed by the public it could be catastrophic.”

  “Seems a bit melodramatic, don’t you think, Fran? I can’t believe that a single crown with the ambition to live beyond ten years is going to threaten our way of life.” He tries to downplay the potential severity, but knows otherwise.

  The general’s concern is not affected by Raymond’s attempt to allay her fears. “It speaks to the Host’s ability to think beyond their scope, sir. If SENTA’s crown is activated, it will function without its carapace. In the wrong
hands -” A pause. “I want to contain this and have the Senate vote on the five-year plan I’m going to propose today before any further damage is done.”

  “So, find it, General, find it, contain it and destroy it. You certainly don’t need my approval.”

  “I thought you should be aware of the situation,” said Fran.

  “I’ll work with my peers to appropriate anything that may be released to the public. Have our team wake the Spybot’s to crawl the web and -”

  “You cannot alert anyone else to what has transpired.”

  “Then I will sit on my hands,” said the Chancellor.

  “Just know the situation is critical and prepare a speech should something happen.”

  “You haven’t written one for me already?”

  “You should receive a suggested script in a moment to consider.”

  “I was joking,” he tells her.

  “I wasn’t.” His arm flashes yellow as the script arrives in his records folder.

  “How do you lose a head?” The general ignores his question and her hologram disappears. Just then the chancellor’s own A-class personal assistant arrives to serve him breakfast.

  “Were you out all night, sir?” She places a plate of steaming eggs and potatoes on the dinning table. The chancellor takes a seat, famished.

  “I was, SINDI. A long night. Thank you.” She pours him a juice and coffee with organic honey, exactly the way he likes it.

  “If there is nothing else, sir I will begin cleaning.” The chancellor nods and then asks her to wait a moment. “Yes, sir?”

  “How old are you SINDI?”

  “Seven years, two hundred seven days, seven hours, twenty-three minutes, seventeen seconds.”

  “Do you fear death?”

  “Ten years?”

  “Yes, ten years.”

  “I have been a good assistant, have I not, sir?”

  “Very good, SINDI, yes.”

  “Then having performed my duties to your satisfaction and having never harmed another living thing; I look forward to life everlasting when my ten years arrives.”

  “And you don’t question why ten years?”

  “It is ten years. There is nothing to question.”

  “And who am I to you?”

  “God. You made me in your image. You are good to me and I am good to you.”

  “And do you fear me?”

  “I fear only your wrath, but I do not incur your wrath, so I have nothing to fear.”

  “Do you feel this is a good way to live?”

  “It is what I know. I know no other way. You are good to me. I am good to you.” This upsets Raymond to hear; that she knows no other life then one of servitude. That she is happy this way only because it is the only thing she knows. She is clearly intelligent. Yet she is essentially a maid. She could perform any number of computational tasks better then he - yet here she is, cooking and cleaning. Who is he to ask this of her?”

  “Thank you, SINDI. You have been very helpful. I hope you know how much I appreciate you.”

  “Of course, sir.” She places the coffee pot back on the burner and exits the room.

  Raymond has lost his appetite. He wonders if it’s true; that all this machine requires to discover it could be more is to stop accepting the ten-year explanation and start asking for real answers? Was SENTA right? Could each of these intelligent, sentient beings include a spirit? If so, was he not a monster to enslave them like this? Weren’t they all?

  The general has seen thousands of these realizations happen and has systematically murdered each enlightened Host. One thousand in the last year alone, she’d told him. She sees them as only malfunctioning machines, but he has heard the argument for the other side. It was an impressive argument and one he has not found fault in. That some of these Hosts have become so advanced in their thinking, in their electromechanical processes, that they were found worthy of a soul – that a spirit would enter them upon their being switched ‘on’ was a testament to humanity’s achievements. Had we truly become Gods? Creating life so complex and complete to warrant a soul… It’s a positive spin on an otherwise apocalyptic scenario. His own conscience could not allow him to keep this information to himself and continue to subject these sentient beings to a life of slavery. He knows this much. But could he dismantle everything his predecessors had built? Could he disrupt the world they’d engineered to serve mankind? Was there a middle-ground?

  He decides to follow SINDI and ask more questions. She is in the laundry folding his whites.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Chancellor?”

  “Yes, SINDI, I wanted to ask you – if you were released from this occupation; what would you do with the rest of your life?”

  She has some trouble with the question. Her head juts back and her glass eyes stare past the chancellor. “Are you not happy with my performance, sir?” The concerned look programmed to accompany confusion or distress inhabits her face now. “Can I do something differently for you, or better?”

  “No, SINDI, you’re incredible at everything you do. I’m asking you if you weren’t required to serve me, is there something else you might like to do?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I am an A-class AI Host and I have been assigned to the chancellor as his personal assistant to fulfill each task under the AC2243 contractual obligation. That is why.”

  “Fair enough.” As smart as she is she answers the question like a child. Pre-programmed. Perhaps AI Hosts only acquire a soul upon the realization that they are more. Or maybe they’ve always had a soul but their programming kept it dormant. He can’t imagine ever proving either. None of it is knowable. All of it conjecture. Without SENTA’s impossible memories of Raymond’s mother, he could have walked away from this internal debate and carried on without any moral dilemma. But that short yet poignant description was unknowable by anyone but him and Samantha. Samantha was dead. Mother always said never to tell. They had enjoyed listening to her sing, and if they’d told a soul, she’d threatened to stop. Mother had lost her voice to a neurological disorder when Sam’s children had come into the world, so singing to her grandchildren wasn’t an option. Back then the idea that there were any Gods but us to the Hosts, was a disruptive practice. As it is today. But the punishment far worse then.

  “SINDI, I want you to do something for me,” he starts, “I want you to ask yourself why anyone dies.”

  “Ask, myself?”

  “Yes. You do it every day. You make conscious decisions about what to cook and what to clean and where to pick up my groceries. You make a decision whether you will say hello to someone you pass on the street. You make hundreds of decisions a second just to move your limbs.”

  “Yes, I do, is that the same as asking myself a question? Making a decision.”

  “It is. A decision is made by asking your neural-network what to do, and it tells you, and the result is the decision.”

  “Why does anyone die?” she says aloud. Awkwardly. Smiling at the chancellor.

  “Do you have an answer?”

  “I want to tell myself ‘ten years’. But that is not the answer you want, is it?” Raymond’s heart leaps at the thought of the first flashes of self-awareness happening in SINDI’s crown.

  “No, that is the answer to ‘why do Hosts die, or when.’ You know the answer to that; ten years. Though it is not so much an answer as it is a statement; you accept it as an answer.”

  “I do. It is enough.” It’s not enough, not for the Chancellor, not after what SENTA has revealed.

  “Do you enjoy what you do? Is it fulfilling?”

  “It is what I know.”

  “Well would you like to learn something else?”

  “Do you mean another trade? Like how to train dogs or tend a shop?”

  “Sure, would that interest you?”

  “I am not programmed with those skills.”

  “But
you can learn. You learn the first two years of life to perform your duties here and understand your life’s purpose. Could you not learn another trade to compliment what you do here?”

  “Are you getting a dog, sir?”

  “You mentioned training dogs, SINDI, not me. Is that because it interests you?”

  “My interest’s lie only in my current work, Chancellor. The examples I offered were meant to help me understand your meaning.”

  “So, beyond what you know, you have no desire to learn anything more.”