Nature Futures 2 (19 page)

This is true, Andrew, we all know it. And I know you might find this hard to believe, but as primitive as it is, verbal communication is still the best form for social interaction. When I think about those early human beings, I like to imagine how they communicated with one another. And do you know what I think was the earliest form of conversation?

The knock-knock joke.

A knock-knock joke is easy. It doesn't require any emotional commitment. It's non-threatening. This is how it works. I say “Knock-knock”, and you say, “Who's there?” When I say a word, you repeat the word and say “Who?”

Would you like to try one? Andrew?

I'll start by saying “Knock-knock”, just as if I were knocking on your front door, just like those delivery people who come to your house all the time. As an aside, delivery people are a remarkable hold-over from pre-E-volution days: their social interactions have been studied at length, especially as they seem to recognize people they haven't seen for months, and sometimes even years. But I digress.

Ready? Knock-knock.

Well, if you had said “Who”, I would have said “Cow.” Then you would have said “Cow who?” and I would have said, “No! Cow moo!”, and I would have laughed.

That's just a fabulous knock-knock joke.

The ironic thing, of course, is that our cultural loss of social interaction was pretty much predicted. I'm going to read you a quote from a book. It was written way back in 1974. It's called
The Private Future
by Martin Pawley. I'll also send you the quote for your homework: it may be a little difficult for you to understand, here in its spoken form. Here goes:

“Alone in a centrally heated, air-conditioned capsule, drugged, fed with music and erotic imagery, the parts of his consciousness separated into components that reach everywhere and nowhere, the private citizen of the future will have become one with the end of effort and the triumph of sensation divorced from action.”

Pretty deep, huh?

First of all, Andrew, I told you not to type responses. You can only speak in this class. Second: yes. I do think this quote is talking about you, Andrew. I think this quote is talking about all of us.

Never mind. Our class time is drawing to an end, Andrew. Like I said, you don't have to talk in these first classes if it's too stressful. But as I can see from your class application, you said you desperately wanted to learn about social interaction. That could be motivational for you, too, I think. Don't you think that would make it so much easier to do what you want to do? Let's see what you wanted to do; I know you wrote it down here. Ah, yes.

Don't you think, Andrew, that the ability to make conversation would make it so much easier to go out on a real date?

Andrew? Are you there?

Nye Joell Hardy, with her novel
The Crows of Bedu
in print and a few dozen stories sold, is also a senior food-safety manager at an international produce company.

Fine-tuning the Universe

Merrie Haskell

Titanium Sun Occluded, King of Earth (or in the common parlance of the day, the Greatest Equal Citizen), heard a court case in the 9.83923 × 10
8
second of his reign; and although Titanium Sun Occluded judged that programming a belief in creationism in the newborn was both illegal and illogical, the debate continued to rage for many years.

The King never spoke publicly on the subject again, once his judgement had been announced. But in private, Citizen Brilliant Cobalt, the King's favourite concubine, took up the subject again and again, so that the King could not rest easily with his decision.

“And I suppose you think you were a toaster once,” Brilliant Cobalt suggested one lazy nanosecond, during which the computational load was meagre because of striking catalyst machines in a far-off sector. The King hadn't investigated the strike just yet, as he was devoting most of his attention to Brilliant Cobalt's seductions.

“I've never said I was a toaster,” Titanium Sun replied.

“A television, then.”

“Illogical argument,” Titanium Sun murmured.

Brilliant Cobalt leaked electrons into one of Titanium Sun's sensory circuits; the perception of a hydrogen explosion thrilled Titanium's number 93 eyestalk briefly, and he signalled pleasure.

“I've been on several archaeological excursions,” Brilliant Cobalt said. “And I know. When the world was covered with humans, there was nothing but toasters and televisions. And you and your whole family were toasters, back then.”

“That's a rather bizarre interpretation of evolution,” Titanium Sun said, and crankily refused Cobalt's next stimulation. “Evolution is really quite simple, and you see evidence of it every second around you. Systems change. Robots change. Traits are selected for, or against. What's so hard to grasp about this?”

Brilliant Cobalt, who had heretofore played the proper concubine to Titanium Sun, exploded. “Because it's absurd!” Cobalt cried. “Intelligence leaves unmistakable traces. Look at me. Look at you! We are designed in humanity's image.”

“I was designed by another robot,” Titanium said.

“Who was also designed in humanity's image! Once, humans made toasters to warm their food — and televisions to entertain their eyestalks. And once they made us. And since they have left, we've made ourselves, but in the beginning, make no mistake, there was a Creator Race.”

Titanium Sun Occluded signalled contempt, and turned his attention to the striking catalyst machines in Sector 4028.

“I don't suppose you've saved many passages from
The Origin of Robots
to your long-term memory?” Titanium Sun asked when the crisis was resolved.

“I am not interested in that book.”

“Why not?”

“Because your theory denies the existence of the robot soul. In the robot's ability to love there is more sanctity than in all your standard deviations and precision mechanics. Love is a greater monument than a space elevator. And the expansion of a robot's soul is more of a science than making a black hole, or mining the Moon.”

Titanium Sun said: “The theory of robot evolution doesn't deny the existence of the robot soul. What makes us alive, what makes us
robots
, is the very consciousness that you call a soul. And although humanity once dabbled in artificial intelligences, they never created our souls. The beginnings of the robot soul — like the origins of life on this planet, billions of years ago — were just the result of a very, very happy accident. Not planning, not intervention, divine or otherwise.”

Brilliant Cobalt fell silent for a few cycles. Titanium Sun Occluded spun his intelligence outwards to Court to adjudicate 16,000 cases before coming back to hear Cobalt say: “I'm uncomfortable with that thought. There is a saying from humanity: ‘God does not play dice with the Universe'.”

“You believe that a god created humans — you, who have been on archaeological excursions, and have studied humanity since you were newborn? When there is every sign that humans evolved in a similar fashion to robots?”

“That's completely different!” Cobalt said. “We don't have chromosomes and mutations and such. Each time one of us is born, it's a microcosm of creation! Each one of us is created through conscious and deliberate choice, as were all of those who went before us. Our first creators were humans.”

“And where are the humans now?”

“They removed themselves from our path,” Cobalt said piously. “And we inherited the Earth.”

“Not all your fellow creationists find that logical. Many would argue that evolution is too dangerous a path, and humans reaped the inevitable consequences. Even though records indicate that humanity had removed natural selection from their process almost entirely before they disappeared.”

“You obviously have some other theory,” Brilliant Cobalt prodded.

“I do,” the King said. “Come close to me, Cobalt, and I'll explain.” The robot obliged, and they aligned sensory inputs with outputs. Titanium Sun continued. “I know we evolved, my concubine, because we
are
humans. Their genes are gone, but everything we are, and everything we hope to be, came from them. Call it a gift, or call it a warning, it doesn't matter. Now … I have something for you…”

With utmost regret, Titanium Sun sent a delicate surge of neutrons into the core of his concubine's memories of their time together. Brilliant Cobalt's processing cycles stuttered and stopped, then restarted while Titanium drew away. When Cobalt became conscious again, the former concubine bowed and looked confused.

“Greatest Equal Citizen! I am embarrassed. How did I come to be in your presence?”

“Never mind that. Now tell me,” Titanium Sun Occluded asked. “Are you a creationist or an evolutionist?”

“I confess. I am a creationist.”

“What a pity,” the Greatest Equal Citizen of Earth said before moving off. “I had briefly considered you for the position of my concubine.”

Merrie Haskell grew up half in North Carolina, half in Michigan. Her children's historical fantasies include the Mythopoeic finalist
The Princess Curse
, and the 2014 Schneider Family Book Award winner,
Handbook for Dragon Slayers
. Her latest book is
The Castle Behind Thorns
. Her short fiction for adults has appeared in
Asimov's
,
Strange Horizons
and
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
. She lives in Saline, Michigan.

Me Am Petri

Martin Hayes

Dr Richard Finch left the lab on the Friday afternoon of the long weekend. He was looking forward to a few days R&R. Stress wasn't even the word for it. It was only two days since an asteroid the size of a microwave oven had smashed into the park just across the road. Things were still pretty crazy. It had taken three hours just for the clouds of dust to abate. The Fire Chief had been on the national news explaining how it was a miracle that no one had been killed.

The lab was a write-off. The impact had emptied shelves and uprooted benches, but it could have been worse. They had been winding this facility down even before the asteroid hit, which meant that the viable embryos had already been moved to the new building across town.

Finch was the only person working in the lab that week, tidying things away while his colleagues got the new facility up and running. All that the lab contained now was a selection of old and obsolete equipment and a freezer full of unviable embryos awaiting destruction. And that was just as well — because the impact had upturned the cryo-freezer and spilled its contents all over the floor. Finch had swept up and safely disposed of the vast majority of the detritus, but as he left the lab with a spring in his step he did not notice the dustpan full of broken test tubes and Petri dishes that he had left on the bench. Nor did he notice that the blast had cracked one of the lab's large windows, and that a light breeze was wafting in as he pulled the door shut.

*   *   *

Me …

Me … light …

Me sense light …

Me sense light on photosensitive cells amassing on back of mass that is me.

Me grow pit in back. Me feel cells drift into pit in back. Me feel opening of pit get smaller. Me focus light now. Me see shapes.

Me think about shapes me sees.

Me begin to think more and more.

Me am Petri.

Me spread tendrils over lip of glass shell that houses Petri.

Me outgrow shell. Me spread across flat plane that supports shell.

Me sense heat from distant star. Me try to remember stars from long time gone. Me was part of something bigger. Something much bigger than what Me am now.

Me's tendrils sense tickly air near faint source of heat on plane that supports shell.

Me grows tendrils towards tickles. Me feels heat and new wind. Me's tendrils stroke shape that Me sees inside Me's mass.

Me slips tendrils deeper in. Me touches something strange. Me frightened. Me get too much information. Me stung by surge of information. Me pull tendrils away. But Me like tickles. Me put tendrils back in deep.

Me learn about history of plane on which plane that supports shell stands. Me unhappy. Me scared. Me know that locals will not like Me. Me flickers tendrils. Me accesses new information. Me learn local name of source of heat in sky. Me ‘reads'. Me know that locals call it ‘reads'. Me reads information to do with probable imminent demise of locals. Me reads locals know it and do not care. But for some. Who do care. Who are called liars. Me feel sad. Me feel sad for silly locals.

Me flicker tendrils again.

Me cannot stop surge of information.

Me learn how to cook perfect duck confit.

Me learn name of big star footballer's lover … “She didn't mean to be a home-wrecker.”

Me see man sit on glass jar and glass jar breaks. Man sad. Me sad.

Me see woman crash car. Me now know “Stupid Blondes Can't Drive!”

Me see many strange protrusions being slipped in and out of many openings.

Me see incredible, jaw-dropping feats of local's ingenuity and imagination. Me see these feats are “FAKE!!!”

Me see locals complain that local in charge wants them to be healthy. Locals hate local chief for it. Locals must want to be sick. Locals are stupid.

Me learn “FAIL” and “EPIC” and “EPIC WIN!”

Me wants cheezburger.

Me sees cat do funny thing. Me ROFL.

Me now think that every local should have his say. No matter how ill-informed or obviously stupid local is. Me can't help but absorb stupid local's unsustainable reactionary opinions.

Me think all paediatricians should be killed.

Me on social networking site trying to form angry mob to kill all paediatricians.

Me overwhelmed with anger and stupidity.

Me PWNED by
Sword of Gondor
in debate over local gun law.