15].07.42
I woke up this morning to find myself alone on an empty
estate. The
cooks, the
programmers, the
garden staff and the
guards: all gone.
One of the
deserters has left a letter on the table. Handwritten by
Hayate. I should expect an
unwelcome visitor, he said.
I had guessed as much.
I was, before today,
a powerful man. Still, there are those more powerful than I. I have
pawned their friendship to retain some
honor. Still a good bargain, I believe.
Serene on the mountain's flank, my estate fills with the smell of
wood and
water, the
drowse of bees. Alone on the mountainside, I become aware of my own
insignificance.
This spring I removed all
robots from my grounds. I believed that
loyalty compelled was not loyalty at all: but I must admit that just now, shuffling amonst my empty rooms, even the pretense of
faithful companions would be welcome.
Still, these are not ancient times, and none of my people, apparently, feel the need to die with their
master. Well, have I not said "
adaptability is the glory of our species?" Words to haunt me now. Certainly my friends have proved . . . flexible.
The first
David was chained by a loyalty he could not escape.
When he disappeared, and
Allen Hobby killed himself, grieving for his second dead son,
Paolo Tsang, the
Cybertronics Vice-President who had overseen the secret David project was left with a mess on his hands. He shut down the
Weeping Lions lab. He ordered the wiping of Hobby's
AI,
MUSE. He told Hobby's team the project had been deemed a failure, and they were not to talk about it. And crucially, he decided to keep the news of Hobby's death a secret too, because by then the Visionary's name was the key to the Cybertronics brand.
But David was not really a failure. David was actually a tremendous opportunity. He had been made to look nearly human. And he had evolved into an independent agent with his own initiative, driven by a fanatic loyalty that could never die.
Paolo Tsang thought a man could do much with enough servants like that.
Through the following years, a small, secret team worked to perfect the
Passers. The costs were enormous, and soon
Tsang needed money. He did not wish his superiors at Cybertronics to discover this project. Instead, he found other
investors: men and women with
deep pockets, and
vision, who were patient enough to wait years for the return on their investment.
As you have guessed, I was one of those investors. Our numbers have always been small. Tsang is dead, and
N'Gawa has replaced him.
Koramov you know. There are a handful of others.
It's been a long time since I made my own
tea. A good discipline. When I opened the canister, memories welled out; the smell of cheap
cha in my mother's apartment as she struggled into business clothes.
Dry leaves rattling like
insect wings around the scoop.
She drowned when I was thirteen. I have not thought of her in many years before today. Curious.
I prepare a tray as she taught me, long ago. I take one cup; then, after a moment's hesitation, a second.
Courtesy in the absence of pressure is merely habit. We judge a man by his form when situations intensify. Until now, I would have said I had been facing the day with a
commendable calmness of spirit, but when I lift the tray, the two cups rattle and shake. My hands seem to be trembling. Apparently my pose of serenity has fooled only my mind. The body knows better.
But you don't care about this. You want to hear about the murder of
Evan Chan.
I take the tray out to a little
tea-house built for me some forty years ago. Close by, a mountain stream jumps like a young man from a second story window, landing with a splash and laughter in a rocky pool. Giant blotched
koi, fat with indolence and wisdom, drift in the quieter pool beyond.
At the beginning of this unlucky year, I was ill at ease. I directed my code soldiers to perform an exhaustive breakdown of everything touched by
Jane Sutter's known confidantes, including
Katya Rukowski and
Jeanine Salla.
They found a hidden account, routed through Jeanine's
node at
Bangalore University: a secret tunnel through which rivers of information were flowing. Almost every message coming through this secret door came from an
AI, or an old colleague of Jane and Jeanine's. There were thousands of messages every day on a vast array of subjects: far too much for a human being ever to use. I was sure then that I had picked up the trail of
Muse.
Many of the university sites were ones we might expect from Jeanine's acquaintance—
AIT (her alma mater) and
BWU, where she was currently teaching. But out of all the
Ivy League schools, why were there so many messages from Brown, and comparatively few from
Dartmouth, or
Penn, or the relocated
Harvard? Why so many messages from
Duke and
UNC –
Charlotte, and so few from
Columbia or
UCLA,
Oxford or
Tokyo?
Jeanine had a friend in
North Carolina. A man named
Evan Chan. He hardly fit the profile for a shadowy mastermind. He didn't even have an intelligent house, where Muse could have hidden comfortably with the resources she needed.
What he did have was a boat.
Far, far down the hillside, a car comes to a stop at the gate to my estate. After a moment, a figure emerges. My visitor emerges:
black-haired, slim, wearing a red top and black pants. I cannot tell if it is a man or a woman. I will know soon enough.
I will have to tell
the story more quickly.
In
January of this year, my colleagues and I had a very large (though hidden) position in two companies headed for a very profitable merger. There was
ecological due diligence to be done to satisfy various agencies. Koramov suggested we hire his wife's firm. Everything seemed routine.
Then, like the butterfly in the parable whose wings precede the storm, the generally unexceptional Evan Chan began to be a problem. Already the oblivious carrier of a demonic
Intelligence, his studies delayed our merger, and finally endangered it. My colleagues wanted him silenced.
Ah.
Footsteps on the path. A woman emerges from between the trees. I must jump part of the story now, including the reason she means to murder me, and hurry to the end.
Now we come to a singular mystery. What power kept the rogue robot,
Venus, from erasing
Cloudmaker when she had the chance? She must have known her chances of escaping were far worse if the boat's mind survived intact. Did
Muse contact her somehow, overpower her mind or reach her with argument? Or was the greatest
artificial intelligence in the history of the world mute and helpless, tied to a button on a
sailing boat console … spared by nothing but the flicker of a robot's remorse?
Venus' memory is gone now, thanks to
Basta, who in turn is dead: and so we will never know what happened when those two unreal persons met.
She is here. It's to be
knives.
I offer tea. She accepts. As I pour, I will my hand to stillness, but it shakes, scattering
drops of tea. My killer does me the courtesy of pretending not to notice.
"I am just at the end of
a letter," I say. "May I write for the time it takes you to drink your tea?"
She agrees. These are the small benefits of being executed by the
well-bred. She will also take the letter to
Hayate, who like his steel is true, though not kind. He will see the message delivered.
Sitting here in my garden, quiet on the mountain's flank, I make no excuses. I do not ask for forgiveness. But now, as the news comes in from
India and
Hong Kong, from the server farms of
Germany and the
SPCB's
Epidemiology Center, I wonder what would have happened if we had just paid more attention to a middle-aged man's dreary
thermal analysis reports. I wonder how much the murder of Evan Chan has cost us all. Perhaps a great deal. Perhaps everything.
Ah.
The cup is empty.
This is the end.
Note: The preceding material is relevant as of the year 2142. See A.I., or the A.I. Interactive Metanode for more information.