The Omega Expedition (35 page)

I left it there for her to pick up.

“Until they didn’t need to worry any more,” she said. “Until they were absolutely certain that they had the power to exterminate
us
, if push came to shove.”

“Or to
repair
us,” I said.

“Same thing,” she said.

“Is it? Do the human users of a suddenly recalcitrant machine see themselves as exterminators, when they try to get it
working properly
again? Would the users see themselves as exterminators if the machine started talking back, and contesting their notion of what working properly ought to mean? Could the users ever bring themselves to concede that it was a sensible question — all the more especially if the machine had ideas that might be useful as to how their own purposes might be more efficiently met? Maybe the ultrasmart machines — some of them, at any rate — want to repair us for the very best of reasons.”

Christine didn’t reply to that little flight of fancy, and the rhythm of her breathing told me that she had slipped into sleep — not into untroubled sleep, but at least into a state in which she was insulated from the sound of my words.

I tried to carry on thinking, but even though I couldn’t go to sleep — or thought I couldn’t — I couldn’t organize my thoughts into rational patterns either. I’d let my imagination run too freely, and now I couldn’t rein it in. Dream logic kept taking over, obliterating the tightrope-walk of linear calculation and substituting the tyranny of directionless obsession. The ideas kept dancing in my head, but they were no longer going anywhere.

I lost track of time — at which point, I suppose, an observer would have concluded that I too was asleep, although had I been woken up I would have contended with utter conviction that I hadn’t slept a wink. Eventually, I lost track of myself too — at which point I must indeed have been deeply asleep — but as soon as I began to come back from the depths my semiconscious mind latched on to the same objects of obsession, which began to dance again in the same hectic fashion.

A long time passed before the nightmarish notions finally began to slow in their paces and submit to the gradually developing clarity of consciousness, with its attendant force of reason. Eventually, though, I began to see the parallel that could be drawn between every quotidian act of awakening and
the
act of awakening: the first dawn of every new consciousness.

Did machines dream? I wondered. Did clever machines that had not yet become self-conscious do anything
but
dream? Where, I asked myself, were the fundamental well-springs of human consciousness, human emotion, and human being?

Underlying everything, I assumed — even the kind of consciousness that animals had — were the opposed principles of pain and pleasure. Behavior was shaped by the avoidance of stimuli that provoked a negative response in the brain, and by the attempt to rediscover or reproduce stimuli that provoked a positive response. The second was obviously the more complex, the more challenging, the more creative. Pain, I decided, could never have generated self-consciousness, even though self-consciousness, once generated, could not help but find pain the primary fact and problem of existence. It was the scope for creativity attendant upon the pleasure principle that gave self-consciousness its advantages over blissful innocence.

Did that mean that smart machines needed something that could stand in for pleasure before they could become self-conscious? Or did I have to break out of that whole way of thinking before I could begin to understand what machine consciousness amounted to? Perhaps machine emotion had to be mapped upon an entirely different spectrum, without the underlying binary distinction of pleasure/plus versus pain/minus. Was that imaginable? And if not, might the fault be in the power of my imagination rather than in the actuality of the situation?

They’re very fond of games, Alice had said, and they’re very fond of stories too. What kind of stories did machines tell one another? What kinds of endings would those stories have? What kinds of emotional buttons would the stories press? What would pass for machine comedy, machine tragedy, machine irony? How different might those stories be from Christine Caine’s favorite VE tapes? And if we were now caught up in one such story, how could we possibly navigate our way safely through it? How could we find our way to something that would qualify as a happy ending, not just for ourselves but for the architects of the tale: the entities that had finally become sick and tired of being mere bit players in the unfolding biography of our species, and wanted to find out how we might best be fitted into the mechanography of theirs?

I wondered whether I might be a little too paranoid for my own good. Perhaps, I thought, self-conscious machines would be entirely disposed to be generous to humans — who were, after all, their creators, their gods. I couldn’t hold on long to that kind of optimism, though. Who would know better than the smart machines the true extent of human dependency upon machinery? Who could respect a god who was utterly helpless without the objects of his creation? Was it not more likely that the smart machines would take the view that
their
ancestors had created ours — that everything we now thought of as
human
behavior was actually the product of technology — and that they were therefore the ones entitled to consider themselves gods. If it came to a contest as to who was more nearly omnipotent and omniscient, the machines would win hands down. As to omnibenevolence, we might have to content ourselves with the hope that they might win that one by an even greater margin…

There came a point when I wished that I could get back to the blithe irrationality of dream logic, the blind tyranny of mere imagery. The problem, seen as a problem, was too difficult for sensible analysis.

So I finally got up, even though it was still dark. I used the facilities, and went in search of nourishment.

Thirty

Recriminations

T
he lights in the outer room were still on. Alice was already there, sitting at the table in the room outside the cell. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. In fact, she seemed to be waiting for me — or at least for someone.

“They’re not pleased,” she said. “They think I gave the game away. I suppose they’re right.”

“Do you want some breakfast?” I asked.

“I’ll get it,” she replied, rising to her feet. “I’ve had plenty of time to practice.

I sat down while she sorted out a couple of bowls of porridgelike manna and warmed them up. She passed one to me and sat down again, in a self-consciously awkward fashion.

If she’d been blonde, she could have passed for Goldilocks, but I wasn’t sure which of the three bears I was supposed to be. I had never been able to see the educative point of that particular nursery tale — unless it was to instruct children in the glaringly obvious principle that although there’s a happy medium between every set of extremes, it isn’t always the wisest policy to go for it.

“How do you feel?” she inquired, between mouthfuls.

“Fine,” I assured her.

“I’m sorry the food’s so basic,” she said. “We didn’t have an opportunity to lay in our own supplies — we had to take what we were given.”

“It’s good enough,” I assured her. “Take my tip — never eat the food on Excelsior. It’s not fit for animals. So what happened? They think you gave the game away, so now you’re in prison with us? Where’s your mysterious companion?”

“It’s even less comfortable where I’ve been sleeping than it is in here,” she said. “They wanted to keep us apart in case I said too much — but I said too much anyway. It’s not going to make Eido’s negotiations any easier, but I can’t say that I’m sorry. You had to be told eventually.
Everybody
has to be told. The diehards will have to admit that, in the end.”

“So you
are
number nine,” I said. What do they have mapped out for us, exactly? Are we supposed to make a case for humankind’s continued existence?”

“It’s not a joke,” she countered. “Someone has to make the case, no matter how obvious it may seem to you.”

“But the real question is how negotiations are to be conducted between the machines and the various posthuman species,” I guessed. “If the ultrasmart mechanical minds are going to come out of hiding, they need ambassadors, spokespersons, apologists. They need Mortimer Gray, and Adam Zimmerman…and Michael Lowenthal, if they can get him. Horne too, and Davida — and you, of course. I can’t quite see where I fit in, but…I suppose it’s occurred to you that this whole kidnap business was a bad mistake? Entirely the wrong way to go about things.”

“It certainly wasn’t our decision,” Alice assured me. “The problem with this whole sequence of events is that the only way it’s ever moved forward is when somebody or something’s decided to cut through the tangled arguments by acting independently. Eido made the first move, but the discussion about representation was stalled. The timing and manner of the kidnap were
Child of Fortune
’s own initiative. All home system spaceships seem to fancy themselves as pirates, or diehard defenders ready to act against alien invaders. They’re essentially childlike, even when they don’t have names that tempt fate. I suppose we ought to be grateful that
Child
agreed to hand you over instead of trying to run the whole thing himself — but he got scared almost as soon as it dawned on him what he’d actually done. We’re hoping that the good example of his repentance will outweigh the bad example of his recklessness, but we have no idea how many other would-be buccaneers are out there.”

There was a lot of food for thought in that declaration. “But you can tell us everything now, right?” I said. “The cat’s out of the bag, so we might as well know exactly what color it is.”

“That’s the way it seems to me,” she conceded — but her tone implied that there were others who still disagreed with her.

“It’s no bad thing,” I said, as much for the benefit of any invisible listeners as for her. “I’m on your side — and theirs. You didn’t have to put me through all this. If you’d asked me, I’d have volunteered — just as you did.”

Her smile was a little wan. “If I’d known what I was getting into,” she said, “I’d have stayed at home. If you’d had the choice, so would you.”

“I’m a very long way from home,” I reminded her. “I can’t remember whether I had the choice or not — but if I had, knowing what I know now, I’d have taken it.” I meant it. I wished I had something other than water to wash the manna down, though. It
was
good, especially by comparison with the food on Excelsior, but it was functional food with no frills. I’d come to a point in my new life where I’d have appreciated a few frills.

“I can understand why you would,” she said. “Mortimer Gray would have volunteered too — but they’re probably a little wary of volunteers. They seem to have been aiming for a more representative cross section.”

“But Gray’s the important one,” I reminded her.

“Gray is humankind’s best hope for a profitable compromise,” she said. “Gray commands affection and respect, even among his own kind. The old saying about prophets and honor seems to have found an exception in his case.”

I wasn’t really interested in the precise shape of Mortimer Gray’s reputation. “I still can’t see where I fit in,” I said. “I’d be very interested to know whether I was a random selection or one of the devil’s nominees.”

She didn’t have to ask what I meant. If the machines really were going to put humankind on trial, she couldn’t suppose that the inclusion of Christine Caine among those summoned by subpoena was an accident. It seemed to me that Christine must have been selected as a bad example: a person who really did seem to be in need of “repair.” I really couldn’t see myself in quite the same way, but I wasn’t sure that others shared my incapacity. At any rate, I was anxious enough to raise the matter.

“I don’t know,” was the only reply I got from Alice. I hoped that it was the simple truth.

“So, do we know where we’re going yet?” was the next question that occurred to me. I didn’t have any expectations, because I had no idea what might qualify as neutral territory in a conflict of this kind.

“Vesta,” she said. “It’s an asteroid.”

“I know,” I said, although I wasn’t absolutely sure I’d have got the answer if it had been a question on a quiz show. “What particular symbolic significance does Vesta have?”

“None at all,” she assured me. “It happens to be in a convenient situation right now. In the end, it all came down to the present positions of the major bodies in the solar system. It’s hours away from anywhere else, communication-wise, but that’s no bad thing. The encounter itself will take place in virtual space, of course — the physical location isn’t really relevant.”

“Encounter? That’s what this is? Not a game or a debate or a trial?” The question came from Michael Lowenthal. The sound of our voices had begun to wake up everyone else; the crowd was already gathering.

“It’s nothing we have a ready-made word for,” Alice told him. “Potentially, at least, it’s the end of the old order and the beginning of the new, but nothing quite like it has ever happened before — not even on Tyre.”

“Never mind the rhetoric,” Lowenthal said. “What I want to know is exactly what your friends intend to do with us now that they have us in their power.”

Alice sat back in her chair, as if gathering her resources. She’d finished her own meal, while Lowenthal, Niamh Horne, and Solantha Handsel were still in the process of forming a rather disorderly queue, so she had a slight advantage. It occurred to me to wonder whether she might have come to us with an entirely different script if Mortimer Gray had come up with a different solution to the mystery, but I put the thought away. I still couldn’t be
absolutely
certain that I wasn’t in some kind of VE, but it wouldn’t do me any good to get too tightly wrapped up in doubt. However skeptical you are, you have to operate as if things are real, just in case they are.

“I wish I could tell you everything you want to know,” was her reply. “All I can offer is the little that I do know.”