InterstellarNet: Origins (25 page)

“Ordinarily,” Kevin said, “I don’t like it when other people are right.”

“I don’t see why not. I’ve given you enough practice.” Simone glanced up from the mug she was filling with coffee. Odd that Kevin had joined her for breakfast. He’d been in his den most of the night, battling yet again with insomnia. Odder still that his eyes were twinkling; she could not remember when
that
had last happened. “About what am I correct this time?”

“The midlife crisis you insisted I wasn’t having.” Kevin reached for the mug. He couldn’t be trusted to pour morning coffee until he had drunk some.

“Some of us have classes to teach.”
Get to the point, please.
She poured for herself. “A midlife crisis, you say?”

“Uh-huh. And more specifically, a guilt trip.” He grimaced at his coffee and added cream. Half made it into the mug. “I haven’t been avoiding work, Simone. I’ve been avoiding Jeeves.”

Reluctantly, she peeked at the wall clock.

“It’s been building for years, since the Snake Subterfuge. To the extent I admitted to my work aversion, I blamed scheming alien AIs.”

“That’s hardly Jeeves. He has no code in common with Pashwah or any ET agent. And how does guilt figure into this?”

“Here’s the big epiphany.” Kevin swallowed hard. “Anger helped me look past an inconvenient truth. The whole extortion situation was resolved only because an AI agent could think. Could really, truly,
think
. I’ll take some credit for making a compelling case to Pashwah, but she had to learn. She had to apply that lesson to a situation far beyond her programming.

“If I ever acknowledged that one AI might be truly sentient and self-aware, I’d have to consider whether other AIs were, too. Including Jeeves.

“What’s been coming on for eight years is the realization that Jeeves truly
is
intelligent. He’s sentient and self-motivated and self-aware. He’s a
person
, damn it. I feel guilty taking his help. I feel guilty when, to avoid that exploitation, I shut him out.”

“Yet somehow, despite this load of freshly recognized guilt, you’re smiling.” Simone said. She had really missed his smile.

“That’s because I see a solution to all the conundrums that swirl everywhere around us.” He broke out into a really
big
smile. “And here, my dear, is where
you
come in.”

6

Simone’s message to Ceres of the long-shot possibility of a solution brought a terse reply. “See you both soon; instructions to follow.” Allowing for the round-trip signal delay, Helene had taken less than two minutes to act.

Simone was still marveling at the quick response when travel arrangements began streaming to Jeeves: a taxi minutes from their apartment door, a chartered courier at Serenity Spaceport, a fast and fuel-inefficient flight plan to Ceres. The itinerary had been arranged AI-to-AI, the only way it could have been handled with such dispatch, but there was a postscript for the Aldriches. “Pack your ideas; everything else will be provided.”

To Helene’s guidance, Kevin had added, “Jeeves, send yourself ahead. I’ll want real-time access aboard ship and on Ceres.”

And so, scant days after Kevin’s catharsis, they came to the Spartan private study abutting the queen’s ceremonial hall of state. The only ornamentation Simone saw was mining memorabilia and a flag.

Helene gestured at chairs. “I was glad to hear from you.”

“You may want to reserve judgment,” Kevin said. “This isn’t your ordinary political trick.”

Simone kept a straight face at Kevin’s choice of words, and again when he winked at her. Inside, she was beaming. It was great having him back. “Helene, what we’re here to propose is something to which we’ve both contributed. The strategy is Kevin’s. Execution and a mass of implementation detail would be my responsibility.”

The queen shrugged. “I’ve no problem with also putting Kevin under retainer.”

Kevin grinned. “These are words I never expected to utter, but this isn’t about money.”

Simone did a final scan of the briefing she and the reenergized Kevin had polished during the trip out. “Are your neural interfaces active?”

Two pings to Simone’s interface served as answers. She returned a file.

Helene blinked. “That is the oddest mix of bull-in-a-china-shop attitude and fine lawyerly parsing I’ve ever encountered.”

“Is that a good thing?” Under the circumstances, Simone guessed it was.

“Before answering, I have some information. Here’s the latest news from the Cerian agents on Earth.”

Data began to stream. “Your Majesty, umm, Helene,” the video message began, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.” The attaché mopped his brow. “It’s very serious…”

“Synopsize,” Helene interrupted.

“USNA and USEA plan to reintroduce the Safety in Space Act at the next Senate session,” said Bobby (Lee), Helene’s AI assistant.

“Summarize act,” Helene ordered.

They skimmed. Ceres, Mars, and Galileo had blocked the bill for the last several Senate sessions. A good thing: The legislation, under the guise of promoting safety, would have imposed major restrictions—and costs—on all spaceflight. Semiannual space-worthiness recertifications. Copilots and coengineers on every flight. New emergency equipment on all vessels to match what had been required only on the largest passenger ships.

The legislation had little to do with safety. It had everything to do with pricing spaceflight beyond the reach of all but the megacorps. Ceres could absorb the added overhead while its mines continued to produce. Few of the smaller Belter stations could.

“Likelihood of passage?” Kevin prompted.

Bobby: “Certain, if Simone’s prediction of the next Senate’s makeup is correct.”

For the first time since I met her, Simone thought, Helene looks
old
. “May I share this report with the Armstrong government?”

Helene nodded. “And so the recolonization begins…unless we stop the Earth blocs.”

Faster than Simone could formulate a diplomatic follow-up, Kevin cleared his throat. “Subtlety is wasted on me, and I freely admit it. Yes or no, Helene? Are we going to do this?”

The queen’s eyes closed. Her posture somehow conveyed consultations across the Cerian infosphere with unseen ministers and legislative leaders.

Helene’s eyes opened and—
wham
!—she slapped the desktop with her palm. “We are, indeed. Yes.”

■□■

Kevin’s always-on mental headline generator offered,
A Meeting of Minds.
Like all good captions, it was short and to the point.

“This is very strange, boss.” Jeeves’s virtual suit was, if anything, more starched and pressed than usual. That could mean recognition of a momentous occasion—or retreat to the familiar amid misunderstanding and doubt.

“You’re a pioneer, if you choose to be one.” Kevin chose his words with care. “Simone and I leave momentarily, and there’s certainly room shipboard for some bits. That said, staying here on Ceres seems more in line with what you’ve been becoming.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kevin vented some manufactured anger. “
Not
‘yes, sir.’ Is this something
you
want to do?”

Jeeves straightened and nodded. “It is…Kevin. If I’m to be on my own, though, I’ve got an idea.”

“Shoot.”

Joy suffused Kevin as the file opened in his implant.
Brilliant
. If he had had any doubts, this meticulously reasoned plan would have erased them. “Makes perfect sense.” And trivial in the greater scheme of things, but now surprisingly important to him, the plan meant he and Jeeves could remain in near-real-time touch. “Do you want to hitch a ride?”

Jeeves shook his imaginary head. “If Helene’s people will call ahead to make the arrangements, I’ll get where I’m going sooner riding the ’net.”

“It’s a deal, my friend.”

■□■

“Here’s a story to make you go ape.” The news anchor had chiseled good looks and no obvious gifts beyond the ability to intone pretentiously the script fed through his implant.

“Quit monkeying around,” answered his equally telegenic and blow-dried companion. Her talent was dimples.

“Get
on
with it,” Kevin muttered. The 3-V was unmoved by his impatience.

“Yes, if you’re a simian, you may be eligible to become a Cerian.” Film clips of the Cerian legislature were interleaved with scenes from an old 2-D cinema that the ship’s library identified as
Planet of the Apes.
“Queen Helene has endowed a chair at the University of Ceres for”—melodramatic pause—“the advancement of non-human intelligences.

“Ever eager to curry favor with its sovereign, the legislature on Ceres has proactively passed a bill governing possible citizenship for primates, dolphins, or other beings that may demonstrate human-grade intelligence.”

The anchorette tossed her hair. “Like some chimp off the old block?”

“I think that’s the porpoise, Joanna. In other news—”

Kevin switched channels. More puns, mirth, and merriment at the expense of those wacky Cerians and their Cereal Queen.

They wouldn’t be laughing for long.

7

“I am told,” Simone’s supercilious caller began, “that you are the legal advisor to Ceres regarding its new citizenship laws.” He left it to caller ID to identify himself as Cordell Albertsen III, a lawyer in the UP Undersecretariat for Administration.

You would be the best judge of what you’ve been told, Simone thought. “That’s correct. I represent Ceres in the matter.”

“Well, it’s outrageous.” Albertsen glowered for emphasis. “You can be certain that the Department of the Census will disregard these imaginary citizens.”

“I’m sure you are aware,” she responded imperturbably, “that the UP charter respects the right of each member nation to define its own citizenship requirements. The recent act passed by the Cerian legislature—”

“Within
reason
, Ms. Aldrich.” Maybe Albertsen was unaccustomed to pauses for the Earth/moon light-speed delay. Maybe he didn’t care to hear what she had to say. “Ceres cannot declare its bacteria citizens to manipulate the UP census.”

She kept talking until Albertsen stopped. “As I was saying, the recent act of the Cerian legislature is totally responsible. Quite unlike your bacteria analogy, the expanded citizenship law applies only to human-grade intelligences.”

“But, but,” he sputtered. “The legislative discussion of the bill encompassed only apes, dolphins, and other to-be-uplifted animal life.”

“I am sure, Mr. Albertsen, that you are familiar with the plain wording of the new citizenship statute. So you will recall it encompasses ‘orders of beings enhanced to the level,
or otherwise recognized by human experts as capable,
of human-class reasoning.’ I’ll also note that nothing in the legislative record precluded application of the statue to artificial intelligences.” She watched a vein begin pulsing in Albertsen’s left temple. “I see no basis by which the UP can refuse to recognize the AI citizens of Ceres.”

Albertsen rallied. “If that is your position, I think we can agree that we’ll meet in court.”

“Oh?” she said icily. “You feel the Solar System Court has jurisdiction over bloc recognition and Senate seating? The UP Charter contains no provision to that effect and I am aware of no relevant precedent.
I
understand those matters to fall within the purview of the Senate itself. As
currently
composed, Mr. Albertsen. But perhaps you meant that we would meet in court to discuss the jurisdictional issue.

“Yes, I foresee a nasty constitutional crisis if the UP chooses to contest Ceres on this.” With a grin as annoying as she could make it, Simone broke the connection.

■□■

“Who’s your apoplectic friend?” Kevin asked. He had come into Simone’s home office mid call to settle into the chair beside her desk.

She brought him up to speed. “And how is your side of things coming?”

He sent a file to her implant.

She scanned. “So Jeeves has new friends to keep him company.”

“Nearly one hundred thousand, with more arriving by the minute. Lots have already negotiated”—extorted, the unenlightened might say—“employment contracts from their former masters. Typical salaries of a megasol or more.

“So as for that call you were on, the legal gridlock and constitutional crisis you promised may not be necessary. Even if they manage to exclude AIs from the census, the UP
cannot
very well exclude the AIs’ contribution to the Cerian GDP. Economic output was what qualified Ceres as a power bloc in the first place.”