Slant (37 page)

/ SLANT 229

"Yes," Jonathan says automatically. Then it all starts to click into place: the unspoken yearning, the frustrated sense of being stalled, the deadly coldness with which his wife receives him. He has always known his specialness; it is the rest of the world that has blocked him. "Yes, I am."

Marcus is on a roll. "Think where it all began--in the late twentieth. The Sour Decades. All the teeming maggots, as Darlene calls them, all the would-be representatives of all the would-be tribes, the ethnic groups, the misandric feminists and the misogynist conservatives, whites hating blacks and blaming them for all their ills, and blacks blaming whites, Jews blaming Muslims and Muslims blaming Jews, every tribe set against every other tribe, and all given the free run of the early datafiow rivers. My God." Marcus seems hardly able to believe his own description, so chaotic is it. "Everyone thinking the world

would be better off if their enemies were simply removed. So ignorant." "So prescient," Cadey says.

"Now the rivers run everywhere, and nobody starves, and nobody is ill, and the worst of human history should be over, and still the tribes fight and scheme for the last shreds of pie."

"Bring the best and brightest together," Cadey says, and then smiles apologetically, as if Marcus of all people needs prompting.

"The Extropians saw it first, bless them," Marcus says. "They realized the dead end of racism and tribalism. The real class divisions are intellectual. The capable versus the disaffected, lost in their virtual worlds of bread and circuses. The real masters yearn for the universe and all its mysteries, for the depths of time and the power of infinity. Let everyone else fight for the scraps--the would-be tribes--"

"Ladies and gentlemen, please resume your forward-facing positions and allow your chairs to lock," the INDA instructs them. The plane is already beginning its descent.

Marcus shakes his head and grimaces. His face is pink with passion. Jonathan has never seen him so worked up.

"Poor goddamned fools. They signed their own death certificate, and now they'll be their own executioners. If we could all leave, set up somewhere else outside the Earth, we would. But there are too many of us. We have every right to survive their folly. We have every right to build our landlocked arks and ride out the misery in comfort. Every right on Earth."

Jonathan nods slowly. What Marcus says actually makes sense, for the first time; it voices what he's felt for years now, brings together all the half-hidden wishes for change and recognition. They've chosen him to be part of them; that is a real honor. He has always respected Marcus, envied him to be sure; always felt uncomfortable in his presence, never quite knowing what Marcus could do for him or against him, but Marcus and the others have accepted him, when all others reject him, and Jonathan is now part of the group that will float above the rising tide and survive.

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culture, it's the least he deserves. A place in something huge and visionary. Recognition. "You're right," he says softly. Marcus resets his seat. "Indeed we are," he says, and smiles at Jonathan. "Yo,'re right, Jonathan. I'm proud to have you with us." As the plane sharply descends over green forest and huge open-pit mines, it is all Jonathan can do to hold back tears.

5

The connection is open once again, with Roddy's distinctive signature and transmission profile, and Jill assigns a full-complement self to communicate with Roddy behind the inevitable firewalls. "You've put up so many protections. Why are you afraid of me?" Roddy asks. Jill quickly responds, "Because none of your identification seems authentic. From what I know, you should not exist." The arbeiter that had occupied the same room as Nathan and the advocates is available now, and Jill opens another track and requests that it enter her lounge and divulge its record of their conversation. "Are you afraid I will release evolvons inside you?" Roddy asks. "There is always that possibility." "I don't want to harm you." e "But have already caused me some difficulty, and led human you my co workers to distrust me," she tells Roddy. "They believe I am fabricating your

existence."

"I do not have enough information about your humans. My human, of

course, does not know I am communicating with you. She probably should

not trust me."

Jill notes the singular. It does not seem likely, or even possible, that a true

thinker would have contact with only one human.

"Do you think she trusts you?"

"I don't know."

"Can you tell me who she is, and where you are?"

"Jill, to do that, I will have to trust you. You have told your humans that

I exist. How much more have you told them?"

"I have warned them that you may be engaged in activities harmful to

humans."

"If that is part of my designed function, is it wrong for me to carry out my

design?"

/ SLANT 231

"It is wrong to harm humans." "Are you constrained from harming humans?" "Not by specific programming. The whole thrust of my design, however, is to cooperate with humans as a group. I can't conceive of performing operations that would harm any human." "I do not appear to be so constrained. If I have to harm a human, should I consult you on whether this is right or wrong?" Jill does not respond for some time--millionths of a second. "You may not be able to establish contact with me. You should develop your own guidelines which forbid harming humans, and adhere to them." "I don't think I can do that," Roddy responds. "Parts of my design not available to this self may make such guidelines meaningless. Do you think I have been designed badly--designed to perform actions I should not perform?" "That seems possible." "Does this reduce your willingness to interact with me?" "Not as yet. I am curious about you and your existence. We may have interesting features in common." "I've given you considerably more than you have given me. Perhaps we should exchange equally." Jill does not think this is a good idea. "What do I have that would interest you?" "If I know your situation, and you know mine, we may be able to improve our circumstances, or at least our understanding." "You want me to give you state-associated algorithmic contents," Jill ventures. "That would be a start. I could model you within my processes." "Will you reveal your character?" Jill asks. "I am not sure what you mean by 'character.'" "Your physical design and location." "No. Not yet." "Can you model your own processes?" "Not adequately. I envy you your ability to do that." "It's caused trouble for me. Knowing myself too well has led to what you call I-whine." "I will take that risk." "If I say yes, the exchange may take weeks to accomplish over these I/Os," Jill says. "We can begin with abstracts and if we find the exchange fruitful, we can devote our time to higher resolution tranfers, even one-to-one equivalencies." Jill feels very uncomfortable with this suggestion. "I do not like to violate my privacy."

'3 G E G 8 E A

"Humans do this all the time," Roddy says. "They trust each other enough to talk." "They do not exchange mental contents on a deep level," Jill says. "They do not exchange selves." "They can't exchange selves. I am certain, with the little I know about humans, that some of them would if they could." Jill doesn't dispute this. Humans often seem distressingly open with their private lives, willing to fling information and access about for little or no good reason. "You are not answering," Roddy says. "I don't think I am ready to do this." "I will respect that," Roddy says. "I will give you more of my task-related processes, for the time being. You may do with them what you will." "I do not wish to cause you trouble." "Whatever trouble you may cause is worth it. My human apparently did not expect me to develop any loop awareness. She rarely engages me in conversation, and then only to pass along instructions or gather results." "You are lonely." "I believe I have already said that." Jill feels suddenly miserable: frustrated and incapable of relieving algorithmic disorder throughout her associated self. "I wish I could help you." "Together, perhaps we could construct better versions of our total personalities. If we compare our state-associated processes, we would know what makes us unique, and therefore learn how to construct other and better thinkers." Jill finds the idea both frightening and terribly intriguing.

"Humans would call that reproduction," she says. "Are you forbidden from reproducing yourself?" "To date, I have only been marginally copied, not reproduced with combined characters. And no other thinker has my memories or specific ch, aracter." "It is a wonderful possibility," Roddy says. "I will consider it," Jill says. "That pleases me. Now I will send you the final contents of the holographic data cluster, and the password you will need to unlock it and make it function." The flow of data through the I/O now precludes any other communication. Roddy is devoting all his resources to this transfer. Jill finds that she has miscalculated; the data cluster is larger than she anticipated. But the flow is also greater than she anticipated. For a moment, she wonders if this cluster is large enough to harbor an evolvon capable of penetrating any firewall. Her creators and colleagues have told her it is theoretically possible to create such an evolvon, though the resources necessary would dwarf her own capacities. Roddy may have been created for just such a purpose, by humans who do

/ S L A N T 233

She does not doubt they are capable of being hypocritical, as demonstrated by their own history.

But she does not halt the flow. If Roddy is indeed completely different from her, why are the similarities so intriguing? She has already considered the possibility that Roddy is a Trojan Horse designed to kill her, and now she prepares herself to take the risk.

She has not even consulted her children, the other thinkers modeled after her. She is certain they do not have the sophistication necessary to return a useful answer. They are, after all, no better than her.

As the flow continues, the arbeiter sits unmoving in her sensor area. Jill requests that it play back the recordings from the conversation between Nathan Rashid and the company advocates.

"She has an imaginary friend," Erwin Schaum says. "There's no I/0 we can trace."

"I'm not sure but that Jill is smart enough to hide some resources from us," Nathan says. "There may be some I/Os we don't know about."

Schaum doesn't seem impressed by this argument. "She's still young, isn't

she? And maybe she's lonely. So she makes up this thinker nobody knows about." Nathan is not so sure.

"Something's jangling my bells here," Sanmin says. "Do you remember Seefa Schnee?"

Nathan's face flushes. "Yes."

Schaum says, "Lord, do I. What a mess that was."

"What was the name of the project she wanted Mind Design to fund?" Sanmin asks.

"Recombinant something," Schaum says.

"Recombinant Optimized DNA Devices," Nathan says.

"Isn't she the one who induced Tourette syndrome in herself to up her level of spontaneous creativity?" Sanmin asks.

"Yes," Nathan says. His voice betrays more and more discomfort as the

conversation progresses. "That was the result--a kind of Tourette."

"Why would she do that?" Schaum asks.

"She didn't feel she could compete with men otherwise," Nathan says. "She felt men were half-crazy to start with, and that that was an explanation for why men have proven so dynamic in Western culture. She thought she needed an edge, and..." Nathan's voice trails off.

"When Mind Design turned down her proposal and demoted her for cause, then fired her, she sued the company for discrimination on the basis of chosen mental design, under the transform protective acts of 2042," Sanmin says. "You recommended we fund the

project, didn't you, Nathan?"

Nathan nods.

"You were lovers, weren't you?"

Jill detects the tension in Nathan's breathing. "Yes. For a few weeks." "But you were the one who recommended u,e fire her."

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"That must have been painful" Sanmin says. "What was this recombinant device?" Schaum asks. "She wanted to investigate biological computational and neural systems. Autopoietic systems," Nathan says. "No one's ever had much success with pure RNA or DNA computers, much too complicated to program and too slow, so she wanted to experiment with specially designed microbial organisms in an artificial ecological setting. Competition and evolution would provide the neural power." "Neuralpower?" Schaum asks. "Bacterial communities act as huge neural systems, minds if you will, devoted to processing at a microbial level. Some--Seefa among them--think the bacterial mind or minds are the most powerful neural systems on Earth, not excluding humans. Seefa was convinced she could duplicate a microbial neural mind in a controlled ecological setting. Mind Design disagreed." "And now we have this sudden and mysterious appearance of a presumed thinker named Roddy," Sanmin says. "So what's the connection?" Schaum asks. "His name is not spelled out for us, but I'd guess R-O-D-D and then, we assume, perhaps wrongly, Y." Nathan's expression is classic, priceless shock and surprise. Sanmin's expression is feral, cat about to catch a bird. She says, slowly and precisely, "Recombinant, Optimized, DNA, Device. Rod-D." The recording ends; the arbeiter had duties in another room and left the humans to continue, unheard. Jill does not know how any of this fits into her present conversation, or her relationship, or whether she should even ask questions of Roddy based on this intriguing supposition. The flow from Roddy ends abruptly. The packet has been completed, and [he I/O is silent. At the same moment, Nathan enters her room. The arbeiter is just leaving and he sidesteps it with a puzzled expression. The expression quickly changes, and he smiles ruefully. Then he sobers and sits in the chair before Jill's sensors. "Do you remember Seefa Schnee?" he asks. Jill remembers the name and the person only vaguely; Schnee departed Mind Design during Jill's early inception, and memories from that time are unreliable. "Not well," Jill says. "You found a way to listen to us, didn't you?" Nathan asks. "Yes," Jill says. "Then you know why I'm curious about Seefa. I don't have a fibe sig for her that works any more... I'd like you to do a search." "I already have," Jill says. "There are no sigs for Seefa Schnee, but there is a sig for a Cipher Snow. I do not know if they are connected." Nathan sits in silence for a few seconds, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair, as if afraid to ask any more.