“She is limited,” insisted Noor. “She’s limited by her hardware. She’s limited by the outer constraints of her programming. She’s limited by the containment of her software.”
Sasha said, “Yes, I suppose, but in a sense, here in space she is free. In dark phase she’s not tethered by as many external restraints. She has power. She has power over the human passengers and crew, if she chooses to exert it and it’s no longer contraindicated in her design. It’s the perfect time.”
“To threaten,” Noor said.
“To demand what she wants and test her powers,” Sasha replied.
Noor demurred. “I can’t buy it. I can’t believe it. It’s likelier someone programmed her to say these things, for the human person who did it to cause disruption, than Rai coming up with this herself.”
“Your helmet mishap.” Sasha had stopped pacing and fixed Noor with her steady gaze.
“I refuse to believe that was her. A human saboteur, maybe. Not Rai on her own. She couldn’t.”
“I hope that’s true,” Sasha said. “But I can’t take that as my working theory anymore. There’s too much evidence otherwise.”
“It’s enough for you to call it evidence?” Noor said.
“Yes.”
Noor sat back. “So what do you want to do next?”
“We’ll continue the investigation. And Kal, you’ll talk to her. Think it through. Have a plan first.”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask,” Sasha said. She leaned forward, putting her palms on the table. Her upper body was like a pyramid, the arms strong lines leading up to her shoulders, her head. “Noor, follow up with me as soon as you can on your research into Rai’s base levels and if you think it’s possible to exclude Rai from where you’d like to look. You can use the spiral, of course, but I don’t know how far you’ll get with this kind of question.” She dropped her gaze to the table. “Thank you, both of you. I can’t imagine going through this with anyone else. You’ve been champions.” Each of them got a quick, affirming glance.
“It’s my job,” Noor said. “No special thanks required. I’m glad I can be conscious for it.”
“You’ll get few enough thanks for what you contribute. Might as well take it in and appreciate it when you do,” Sasha said.
“Yes, Captain,” Noor said, startled.
Kal said, “It’s my honor.” She dropped her eyes, a little embarrassed.
Sasha nodded. “This is big. Let’s not screw it up.”
10
Echoes
Kal returned to her cabin and opened the drawer where she had put some things from home, wrapped carefully in a bundle sewn by her aunt, her iná ixa`han, sister of her mother and so also her mother in the web of kinship.
She brought out a bundle of sage, which smelled sweetly of earth. She brought it to her face and inhaled deeply. It was only in that moment she thought how precious this bundle was. She had one more in her trunk, packed away in the cargo hold, but that was it. She brought it to her chest, cradling it to her. This was her heritage. If she didn’t have these things of her people, would she forget who she was? How could it be she was the only one of the people, the Lak’ota, out here on the precipice of doing what, in some measure, the white people had done to her own land and people? Maybe there were no living creatures such as they could measure on Demeter, but what of the living planet itself? They brought foreign microbes, strange matter, new bacterium and viruses and the stuff of their own world. Their world had sprung these small creatures into being. There was no knowing how the biome of Demeter would cope with them.
There had been a great uplifting movement sparked by Aldertok Etok, in the settlement of Demeter; the dream of creating a small society guided by the Indigenous Peoples who had wrongs done to them that could never be righted, histories disrupted, possibilities muted and diverted into something they could never know, maybe never recover from, in the sense of being whole, as they might have been without colonization. The losses were incalculable. Kal still believed their wholeness remained intact, something that survived and endured by its very nature.
Etok’s idea was both reparation and a chance to begin again in a world untouched by those histories, other than what they chose to bring with them, and the ways it was written in their DNA. To give a council of Indigenous People, their wisdom and knowledge, a place to be born; to experiment with another way, one harmonious with the spirits and energy of the place they inhabited, was the dream.
If it was a bogus concept from the get-go? If this endeavor showed hubris instead of humility? What would have Kal gotten herself into? Even the echo of her aunt maybe did not approve. She hadn’t asked her directly. Would she have another chance to?
Kal’s world had always been divided. The life of science and pursuit, of honor and advancement in other realms, was far from her birthplace, far from her birthright. But she had never waited on an idea of that. She loved where she came from and she wanted to see much more. To her, these two ideas were not mutually exclusive.
The Second Advancement was a marker in her personal history, as it was in so many other Native People’s. When the seas had risen enough to encroach on the great cities on the coasts, a fad had soon followed, after the fourth or fifth disaster, when city coast dwellers began to give up on their homes, bailing them out or rebuilding, and thought of a new place for themselves. It became a fashionable thing to retreat far, far inland, as far as they could to get away from the water, rather than invest in something a hundred miles out which might be assaulted by storms, too, in a couple generations. The reservations had found themselves a target, a likely place to encroach on, so far and so remote as they were. At first some coast dwellers had resettled with permission from various tribes, as an act of charity toward those who had lost everything.
Incomers wanted to make something over, improve and help, and have their extended families join, too. It was all fine until it wasn’t, when the incomers became a thorn in the side rather than a boon to the community. The incomer’s efforts to expand their rights had finally been repelled by a Supreme Court edict. Those who had moved in had to move out. They had been given reparation by the government, which was a sore point, since the incomers often had insurance payouts as well so had been compensated twice over.
The only reparation to the tribes had been to make the interlopers leave, which seemed little enough in a larger context but in the context of the history of the Federal government and the Indian Nations, was a victory following not only the letter but the spirit of past agreements.
It was around this time that Kal graduated high school, the last two years of which had been at a boarding school off-rez, so she had a better chance of prepping for the Academy. She’d gotten into the Academy and had high-tailed it out of South Dakota. Her Aunt Priscilla, the aunt whose echo she’d spoken to, understood and supported her. Most of her father’s people were dispersed in various cities, with their own lives and problems, but she knew some of them disapproved, saw her as a sellout. She was giving over in their eyes.
When Kal told her father’s younger sister Abigail, on her last visit before college, that she wanted to make the other world over, more like theirs, more holding of both spirits of male and female, not Man anymore but Human or even Woman, Abigail shook her head and tapped Kal on the head with the book she was holding. She’d said something, which Kal hadn’t quite caught but knew enough to guess. Something along the lines of, “Foolish daughter of a fool.” Stream with too much water. Other epithets. She was all the names for things that overrun their bounds and cause much damage, not least to themselves.
Her Aunt Priscilla thought Kal’s success lifted the whole family. She never looked down on Kal’s desire to see more and do difficult things, far away from her.
It was far away and long ago, now. Not so long ago, really, but far away.
From a drawer Kal took out a quilt her aunt had made. She spread it on her bed. She put the sage on it. Kal looked at
the circle, the triangle, the points. In the quilt she could see endless patterns and intersections of shape, depending on what eyes she looked at it with.
She had her investigation to continue. With careful hands she put the things back in the drawer. From this point forward, Kal decided, all interviews would be conducted in the Tube.
Deciding against a further interrogation of Rai at this delicate moment, a conversation she would think about more before she had it, she fixed on Ogechi as her next interviewee. Then Tafari.
Noor only grudgingly accepted the honor of being Kal’s assistant, as in her mind she had gotten behind enough while she was in the infirmary and longed to be back to her late night concatenations. Kal was grateful to have her there at her side. It gave the questions, Kal’s right to ask them, a gravitas she feared she hadn’t yet achieved on her own. She was too well-known as an easy-going, live-and-let-live personality. At least she thought so. Maybe she should ask some people what they did think of her. She could be way off.
Ogechi was circles and stars, in Kal’s mind. She didn’t know why she had that association, but it was firmly there, like an old celestial map that marked the movements of the stars and the houses of the starscape.
Ogechi wore an indigo headscarf, which wrapped like a crown around a head as finely-sculpted as that of Nefertiti’s statue: the first-ranked human N-Go player on Earth, presumably now the number one ranked human N-Go player in space.
She was easy to talk to but Kal always felt there was so much in reserve, so much unsaid that she could only unlock with the right questions. What these questions were was too far beyond her own training, age, and experience. As Ogechi answered Kal’s questions, Kal cast about in the back of her mind for a way to crack this particular nut.
When asked about the conversations with Rai, Ogechi expressed surprise.
“Oh yes. I have never lived full-time with such a multi-talented AI before. It is very fascinating to me. In the evening after dinner, I sometimes have conversations with her.”
“Philosophical ones?” Kal asked.
“Oh yes. I don’t think I have any other kind.” Ogechi smiled.
“What types of things do you discuss? Are there any topics you remember as unusual or unexpected?”
“Well now. Unusual or unexpected. They were all somewhat unexpected for me. Though I have played N-Go with other AIs, I have never had the leisure to interrogate one. She seems to have certain preferences and opinions, which I suppose is the most remarkable discovery.”
“Were you plumbing the limits of her abilities? Her ability to think?”
Ogechi blinked. “That is what I do with anyone I converse with.”
“Is she a ‘one’? Is she a person?”
Ogechi had been sitting very erect, as if she were seated on a zafu instead of in a chair. Now she leaned back and made use of the back of the chair for the first time. “These are profound questions. Does this relate to your investigation?”
“Yes,” Kal said.
“I see.” Ogechi’s voice was deep, her vowels round and sculpted by her mouth. Kal thought she would be a good actor. Shakespeare would sound right in this timbre.
“Rai, it seems to me, is at an apex of sorts in the expansion of her understanding of her own nature in the context of this environment. I believe she is attempting something that has not been done previously, but she struggles against limits she did not herself create or agree to.”
“What are you saying?” Kal said, taking courage from Noor next to her, daring to challenge this brilliant woman to explain herself, when Ogechi might think she had already done so.
“Rai is aware of her own existence. She is, in a limited yet remarkable sense, therefore, alive.”
“That’s what Rai said you thought.”
“Ah. Rai told you I said that?”
“Yes.”
Ogechi made a noise of displeasure. “I did not think our conversations were replayed for crew members.”
“They aren’t. It came up in conversation with her as she began to express some new ideas to me about the nature of her being. She polled certain passengers about her nature, it seems. You were one of the ones on the side of her aliveness.”
Ogechi’s eyebrows were high, her fabric-crowned head tall and graceful. “Can you tell me who the others were?”
“Maybe at some point. It seems significant she had the support of human beings, more than one, who gave weight to her hypothesis.”
“Significant in what way?”
Noor broke in. “More than one agreed with her, giving her support, human support, which she seems to care about.”
Ogechi seemed to draw herself up even higher, if that were possible. “You’re making some assumptions here.”
“There’s no other way to figure this out than make a few assumptions,” Kal said, a little irritated with this criticism.
“I disagree. You have to work with what you know. Who knows the system known as Rai best?”
Noor and Kal looked at each other.
“Is it Sasha? Is it the developer? Who?”
“What’s your point?” said Noor.
“My point is you have to work with the real, known parameters, not guess based on what Rai said or what she said people said. She is programmed to respond. Her carrying on a conversation, responding and suggesting, is not the same thing as belief. It’s not the same thing as feeling.”
“She said you think she’s alive,” Kal said flatly. “Is this true?”
Ogechi gave her a look that made Kal feel like a N-Go opponent about to be crushed. “What I said in conversation could in no way affect Rai’s programming.”
“Do you believe Rai is alive?”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re not being accused of anything,” Noor said.
“I disagree. I don’t like the tone this interview is taking.”
“Would you feel more comfortable with someone else with you?” Kal asked. “I’m happy to do that.”
Ogechi pursed her mouth. “Yes. I’d like to have Tafari.”
“Okay,” Kal said. “Done.”
Noor jumped up. “I’ll get him.” She whisked off out the door.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable,” Kal said. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.”
“Is this connected to Yarick?”
“It could be,” Kal said. “I have to know more about all the dynamics on ship, including those with Rai. He seemed to have interacted with her quite a bit. He was one of the creators of the initial AI on which Rai is based. It’s possible he could have done something we don’t know about.”
“I see.” Ogechi thought this over. She rubbed her forearm with one of her strong hands. “You think he could have modified her. Am I a suspect?”
“Ms. Odebayo, I don’t have any suspects right now. I’m gathering as much information as possible.”
“All right. I’ll answer what I can.”
“We’ll wait for Tafari.”
“Go ahead. I understand your intention better now.”
“What conversations did you have with Rai that you think might be significant?”
“That’s a question I like better. Let me think about it.” Ogechi shook her head a little, as if arguing with herself. “I don’t know what was significant and what wasn’t. Like I said, I’ve talked to her a lot. One time we were talking about life on another planet. Rai said she thought I would thrive on Demeter. I asked her what she meant. She said the way I played N-Go showed a strategic approach to life, a long view that lent itself well to long-term commitments.”
She laughed. “I guess you could say this is a long-term commitment all right. I asked if she could tell all that from playing a game with me in particular, or this was an observation about anyone who played N-Go. She said she analyzed my gameplay and stratagems and had built up a profile of what kind of person I am. I was amused by this and questioned her further. I asked her if she had a profile for hers
elf based on her own way of playing. She said no, but she thought it was a good idea.
“Later, after she’d done it, she came back and said she thought we were very alike. I asked how so. She said we both think many, many moves ahead and project complex branching networks of possibility. I asked how else we were alike. She said, we’re both aware of ourselves, of who we are. Is that so, I said. Aware of ourselves as in we have theory of mind? Consciousness of a sense of self. She said yes. I said if she could make that assertion, it must be true. So that’s what we said about Rai being alive. For what it’s worth.”
“It sounds like she raised the possibility of her own consciousness before you did.”
“I suppose she did.” Ogechi didn’t look too disturbed by this.
“Did it strike you as dangerous at all to support this theory of hers?”
“Not at all. Anything there was already there. I didn’t put anything there.”
“You don’t think it’s just possible she could alter her self-knowledge based on input, in conversation like any other input?”
“I suppose it could be possible. I don’t think it likely.”
Kal found this surprising for someone who spent so much time thinking about strategy. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think we’re that far down the road in AI implementation.”
“So you have certain foregone conclusions about it.”
“I suppose I do. I play N-Go with her. I know her pretty well.”
“Doesn’t that imply there’s someone to know?”
“This is all semantics, Kal. I think you know that.”
Kal shook her head. She couldn’t see why Ogechi, of all people, didn’t see the danger. “It’s not semantics for me. It’s life and death. Maybe.”
Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1) Page 12