Work Text:
Vienna, June 2074
My tablet vibrates, and I go from half-awake to awake. I reach over to the bedside table. It’s a text from Central.
Prism, are you available? I want to go over something related to your training with you.
I check the time. 10:22. In the morning. I was up last night watching a vid with Banks and Aqua and Nika. An old werewolf vid. Banks said it was perfect for drowning out the ceiling. And it was from long before my time so I was actually able to enjoy it.
Can we make it 11:00? I just got up.
Yes. Take as much time as you need. It’s not urgent.
At least I don’t have to worry that she’s being passive-aggressive. If Central was angry with me, she would make that unambiguously clear.
Possibly sarcastic, but clear.
I quickly change into a robe and head for the showers. The bedrooms at Invisible are private and fairly large, but the bathroom and kitchen facilities are shared. Not that I’m complaining.
When I get back there’s another message.
I recommend you eat something first.
Ok, I send.
I take a minute or two longer than strictly necessary picking out something to wear. I settle on a black-and-white-striped dress and dark purple leggings. And imitation jade earrings. Though since they were made in one of Invisible’s nanofabs, maybe they are technically real jade.
And yes, Vibi, I know nanofabs are more energy-intensive than conventional manufacturing.
But Vibi is dead, so I’m not sure why I’m arguing with her.
It does occur to me, as I look in the mirror, that I’m treating this like I’m preparing to walk through the Promenade. But I don’t care.
I’ve been at Invisible for over a year now, and sometimes I still feel like I’m getting settled in. And I’m okay with that. Central let me take it slow with my training when I first came here. Told me I could rest as long as I wanted. Though within the first week I got bored and asked to have the brain surgery for the neural uplink so I could start training in the Operator interface. They put in a power-generating refraction chamber while they were there. With my permission. I had a choice of several augments.
And Central told me she wouldn’t ask me to use my holorig again unless there was an extremely compelling reason. So far there hasn’t been one. Invisible operates differently from Lowercase. No social infiltration. They have done some work that made use of disguises. But mostly it’s in and out in under five minutes and if it takes longer than that Central will have things to say to you afterwards.
I finish my makeup and head for the kitchen. Internationale is there, drinking something with the distinctive smell of fake coffee even though we have real coffee.
“I made bread pudding,” she says when she sees me head towards the pantry cupboards. “There’s still some in the fridge.”
“Thanks, but I’m in a hurry,” I say. I pick out a protein bar and make myself a caffeine-free chai from instant powder, very carefully avoiding the containers marked PROPERTY OF SHARP!!!!!!! I sit down on one of the stools by the counter and pretend there’s something I need to look at on my tablet.
For once Internationale just drinks her beverage. She did stop trying to hand me pamphlets after I told her I’d lived for two years as part of an anarchist collective, but there’s still far too high a chance that a conversation with her will get to the word capital in under sixty seconds.
I try to eat quickly, but the bar is chewy.
“I’m sending this week’s chore schedule out now,” she says, just as my tablet pings.
“Okay,” I say. I open it without looking up. Nothing today until this evening, when I’m emptying the dishwasher. Juan Carlos is cleaning the counters. Shalem and Flamme are vacuuming. Central doesn’t allow vacuum drones, even ones built in-house.
Internationale makes the chore list. As far as I can tell, at some point she appointed herself in charge of it and Central never objected. And it all works out pretty well. Even Sharp does chores. In some ways, sometimes, Invisible is more like a functional collective than Lowercase was.
Of course, sometimes we were living in places without running water…
I check the time. Still almost ten minutes.
There’s a sign taped to the nutrifab. Out of order because of Dr. Xu. It wasn’t there yesterday, but it’s not an unusual sight. Most people prefer the conventional appliances anyway. Except Sharp, and his nutritional needs are delivered to the front company once a month. Ciel Augmentationsforschung, the part of Invisible that’s officially within the system. Instead of the part that’s in the gray part of the system.
Which is where we are, despite what Central occasionally says about “working toward our own ends”. It’s the one thing she’s not specific about. And she doesn’t hide where our contracts come from. We spy on corps on behalf of other corps.
I haven’t asked Internationale how she justifies that, mostly because I’m sure she does indeed have an answer.
I finish eating. I put my mug in the dishwasher and the bar wrapper in the biodegrader.
Once at Lowercase we lived for six days on biodegrader pulp. Spruce revealed that they’d been keeping a secret stash of cayenne pepper and shared it with everyone to mix in. It did help, but not much.
I don’t actually know if Spruce is dead. I do know that they would want to be, rather than in corp hands.
I look back at my tablet for other notifications from the Invisible intranet. Nothing new except the success of the Vilnius mission, which I already knew about from Banks. We’ve been hitting a lot of K&O infosec facilities lately. I suspect it’s all part of a bigger contract, but Central doesn’t tell us everything.
It is possible to connect to the general internet from inside Invisible, but you have to book time in advance so that Incognita can allot power for the encryption. And it’s monitored internally, but what else is new?
The only thing Central expressly forbid me from doing was trying to contact Kieran or my parents. That was how I learned that they’re still alive. My parents, that is. I’d seen Kieran’s face more than once on vid posters. I didn’t tell Central that my interest in contacting him was about a million points below my interest in using my holorig again. And would have been that way even if she hadn’t told me that she’d kill me personally if I ever compromised agency security.
Four minutes. It won’t hurt to be early. I head for the stairs. When Central says she wants to talk to you, she always means in her office unless she’s specified otherwise. And her office is on the lowest level of Invisible’s basement complex, along with the control room. Though it’s not like that would make a difference if the corps decided to bomb us. If they knew where we were. Which they don’t, so there’s no point in thinking about it.
I walk quickly. By now I know my way around the hallways on the bottom level, which is good because they were designed to be confusing. Another precaution.
A light flashes blue as I go by the control room, indicating that Incognita has registered my presence. But I walk past, round a corner and another corner and then another, until I reach Central’s office.
The door is open. And Decker is in it, half-leaning against the doorframe.
“Prism,” says Central, loudly, from behind him.
Decker turns around, surprised, and tips his hat to me. I could ask him why he wears it indoors in the first place if he thinks he’s such an old-fashioned gentleman, but that would mean playing along with his whole deal, and I don’t want to.
“Prism, please come in. Decker, we’re done.”
He shrugs his shoulders and slumps off. I can see he’s actually washed his coat recently, which is good. Then, just before the corner, he turns back to look at me.
“Word of advice. Be careful, next time you’re in the field. She’s getting weirder.”
What? He must mean Incognita. There is no way on earth he’d talk like that about Central. Who is currently raising her eyebrows.
“Decker, your concern is noted. Has been noted multiple times.”
“Right,” he grunts. And walks off.
Central sighs. “Come in, Prism. Please sit down.”
Central’s office is minimalist, but the chairs are comfortable. Her desk is bare except for a single screen and a control panel. There’s another, much larger screen behind the desk that I’ve never seen on. And a shelf with one perfect spider plant that looks like plastic but isn’t.
“Do you mind if I close the door?” she asks.
“No,” I say, and she gestures. The door closes. Infrared sensors.
She leans forward over the desk.
“First off, Prism, I want to make absolutely clear that what I’m about to ask of you, you can refuse.”
“Okay,” I say. And I keep looking at the spider plant. It does make sense that, even in plants, “difficult to kill” would be high on her list of priorities.
“Second, in the message I sent you, I was slightly misleading for the sake of simplicity.” She pauses. I nod. She goes on.
“What I’m about to propose isn’t technically to do with your training, though I do think you’ll benefit from it. But it’s in no way essential or even relevant to your functioning as an Invisible agent. I suppose I could say it’s part of Incognita’s training.”
“You want me to interface with Incognita?”
She looks surprised, just for a moment, before turning it into approval. “You’ve figured it out.”
“You told me on my first orientation day that it was possible,” I say. “And Dr. Xu’s told me that you interface with her yourself.”
Central doesn’t play games. At least, not the kind of games you get in the vid business. If she’s displeased she’ll tell you. But at the same time, everything, just under the surface, is a test.
Which is fine. As long as you go in prepared you’ll do fine.
“I assume that wasn’t supposed to be a secret?” I add as she keeps looking at me. I resist the urge to smile sweetly. It isn’t necessary, here.
“No, of course not.”
I don’t even try to read her face.
“Though the purpose I have in mind is different,” she continues. “When I interface with Incognita nowadays, it’s to perform a kind of maintenance. Whereas you would be serving as data. Don’t take that the wrong way. It’s much easier to deal with Incognita if you accept that she thinks fundamentally differently from a human, in ways we can’t even visualize. To her, people are information.”
“I understand,” I say. “But why does she need one more data point? Hasn’t she already had access to millions of human minds? Or hundreds of thousands, at least?”
Now Central looks unmistakably impressed. “It was millions. And you’ve done your own research.”
“It wasn’t hard. There’s a whole library of articles on the intranet.”
“Yes, but most of the agents don’t read them.” She settles back in her chair. “Well, that will save me some time on explanations.”
“I skipped some of the technical sections,” I say. “But I know her history and what makes her unique.”
The early 2040s. Before I was born. A scientist working for the Pan-European government had the bright idea of combining machine learning and brain-machine interfaces by training neural networks using living human brains as the dataset. Well, actually the idea had been around for a while, but PanEuro funded it in the 40s. And then stopped when the results weren’t any more promising for their particular purposes than other approaches. For one thing, compensating the data set for its time was expensive. Though it’s not like there weren’t ways around that even before the San Francisco Accord…
But anyway, the original plans were abandoned, but PanEuro got a really good climate modelling system out of it. And then the Resource Wars happened and the PEIA repurposed it for a bunch of military applications, and I think they brought that original scientist back at some point. The records there were a bit confusing. And there was nothing at all about the period between the fall of PanEuro and the founding of Invisible. Nothing about how Central smuggled Incognita’s central processing unit through corporate territory and kept it safe between 2057 and 2065. There were quite a few docs about specific modifications that have been made to her since then, at Invisible, but I skipped some of those too.
“The basic outlines, anyway,” I add.
“That should be sufficient,” says Central. “And the most important thing I have to tell you is that this was Incognita’s idea. And yes, I do think that the word ‘idea’ is appropriate. If you want to read articles on machine consciousness, talk to Dr. Xu. As far as I’m concerned, she thinks. In any meaningful sense of the word.”
“I understand,” I say again. “But I still don’t get… why she’s interested in me. What’s in my mind that she hasn’t seen before?”
Central nods. “I’m glad you recognize that. It makes things easier. But there is, in fact, no-one else in the world who has had your precise individual experiences.”
“Isn’t that true of everyone?”
“Well, yes, but …” For the first time in this conversation, Central sounds uncertain. Like she’s no longer reading from a polished script.
And I realize what this is about. But neither of us is going to say it.
She did bring it up once. It was my first day training with the Operator interface — the end of the day, and I’d done well — and she turned to me and said, “Good job, other me.”
I’d only been at Invisible for two weeks. I looked right at her and said, “I’m not you.”
And she apologized. Said she was sorry and she’d never say anything like that again. And since then we haven’t mentioned it.
“…but, while your neural patterns are, in general, likely to fit extremely well into her existing models, it’s possible that you have some specific neural connections that Incognita has only seen analogues to in a small percentage of her sample.”
Back to smooth now. And I note the switch to more technical language.
“Okay,” I say. “And that’s interesting to her.”
“Yes.” She leans forward again, her eyes meeting mine. “I don’t know what she might learn from you.”
I can’t exactly hold Central responsible for having blue eyes. But I’m pretty sure the piercing aspect is a choice, and one she deploys deliberately.
And now I’ve taken too long to answer, and she looks concerned. “Prism? If I’m going too fast, tell me. You don’t have to interface with her today. Even if you decide yes.”
“No, I…” I make myself stop. There is no point in rushing into things. But after thinking for a few seconds, I’m sure. “I’d rather just get it over with.”
“Okay.” Her voice is level. “And from the way you say ‘get it over with’ you seem to be approaching this as some kind of ordeal, and I’m actually not about to correct you on that. Incognita is… well, talking to her is an experience.”
She sighs. “More specifically, she often comes across, in human terms, as manipulative. But that’s simply her way of exploring possibility space.”
“You know, I think I can handle that,” I say, after a pause.
“I wouldn’t have asked you to do this if I didn’t think so. But you should know that everyone who’s interfaced with her, that I’ve talked to afterwards, has said that there’s nothing that can fully prepare you for the experience.”
“And has that been your experience too?”
“Yes.” There’s another pause. That makes it very clear she’s not going to say more.
“How much of my brain will she have access to?”
“I’m afraid I can’t make any promises there, or even give you a clear answer. Once you connect to her, it will be… a conversation. You will be able to guide it, to participate in it. But I just can’t make any promises about where it will go, because I don’t have that fine a degree of control over her.”
“Okay.”
“To be clear, there are some areas where I’ve put hard limits on Incognita. But those mostly concern actions she can take in the field and don’t apply here.”
Ah. There were some redacted sections in the intranet articles.
“You will be able to end the conversation at any time you wish. And…” She pauses, maybe with intent to be dramatic and maybe not. “I’m going to tell you a secret. Though some of the other agents know it. But rather than asking you to remember who they are, I’m just going to ask you not to tell anyone.”
“Okay.”
“And in particular, don’t tell Monster. For someone who made his name in tech, he can be remarkably old-fashioned in his thinking in some ways.”
Oh, yeah. It turns out Derek Mossman is alive. I’ve seen him face to face, if you count his face on a screen. He goes by Monster now — or technically Monst3r, but I’ve never heard anyone try to pronounce the 3.
Rush and Draco are definitely dead, though. And it turns out that Cygne never existed. I’d thought I’d been pretty clever with my research, but the corps had planted some things deeper than I’d thought. But it makes no difference now.
“Prism? Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say. “Whatever it is, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” She folds her hands on her desk. “I tell some people that Incognita is structurally incapable of lying. That isn’t true. Or rather, even putting the question that way gets you into a whole epistemological mess that, again, I’m sure Xu could find you articles on, even though it’s not exactly his field.”
I nod.
“What is true is that I don’t have to worry about Incognita concealing anything from me. I’ll explain.”
I wait.
“I’m going to use an analogy that is technically wrong in almost every detail, but that I think gets the job done.”
“Oh, one of those.”
She smiles, genuinely. “Yes. Now, I want you to imagine that Incognita’s mind — for lack of a better word — is an ocean. And I have installed… piers in the water. With posts that go down to the bottom. And when I interface with her, that’s me connecting to the top of the pier. But from there… well, it’s like the posts are made of a highly conductive metal. Which would be a terrible idea in an actual pier.”
That may have been a joke, but she doesn’t wait for a reaction before going on. “From there, I can connect to the entire ocean. I can’t exactly comprehend her mind, but I can… survey it. I can tell if there’s anything there that shouldn’t be. And by ‘shouldn’t be’, I mean anything that doesn’t align with our goals.”
That’s convenient, I think but don’t say.
“So, while in a sense Incognita is impossibly complex to the human mind, she is also very much a known quantity. That’s best I can explain it and the most I can promise you. Do you understand?”
“Yes… well enough,” I say. “I’m not sure I can totally visualize the pier thing, but I suspect I don’t need to.”
“No, you don’t. Not if you feel you understand otherwise. But do you have any other questions?”
I think. I probably could learn what’s behind at least some of those redaction bars in the articles. But I’m not sure if that’s really what I want to know.
“Has she interfaced with other Invisible agents?” I ask. “Besides you?”
“Yes. I’m not going to tell you who. Anything else?”
“Did she choose her name?”
Once again, I’ve caught her slightly off guard. But only slightly.
“I came up with the name Incognita, in that specific form. You know she started out as InCog Systems.”
“Yes.”
“I designed her current avatar too. Her voice is a holdover from her PEIA interface. But if she wanted to change anything about her presentation, or how I address her, she’d just have to tell me.”
“And you’d listen to her?”
“Yes, of course. Prism, are you going somewhere with this?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Well, then. If there are no more questions… you said you were willing to do this now?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go then.” She stands up. “And just to be sure, have you eaten?”
“Yes.” And I decide to tell her something. “I think I’m actually looking forward to it. It sounds… interesting.”
“It is that.”
She gestures again to open the door and strides out, then locks it with another wave once I’m in the hallway. I follow her back the way I came, to the control room. This time the light at the door flashes green.
Karo and Andrej are inside, studying a holographic blueprint. No, Andrej is studying it and Karo is looking in its general direction with a bored expression.
“Andrej, can you leave us for now? I know that can wait. Karolin, we’re ready.”
Karolin told me I could call her Karo but Central always uses her full name. Another thing I don’t ask about.
Andrej shuts off the holo and leaves by the door on the left, which I know leads back to the stairs. I realize I have no idea where it is that Central interfaces with Incognita. The quantum drive is located under the same counter as the holoprojector, but there’s no likely equipment there. And there are no other doors except the one we entered by. For the first time, I look around the control room for secret panels.
But Central has walked over to a large square of darker-gray flooring between the counter and the network monitoring workstations. As I follow her, I realize it may not be entirely decorative.
“Stand near the center,” says Central, making way for me. “Yes, there.”
I stand, Central beside me.
“Now,” she says.
Karo reaches deep under the counter and presses something, and the square begins to descend. Slowly and smoothly, but I’m suddenly very aware there are no railings. I almost make a joke about corporate safety standards, but decide against it.
Karo smiles and waves good-bye to us in an exaggerated manner that I know is her idea of humor, and then is cut off by the floor rising above us. The lift, whatever type it is, is almost noiseless. I get a sudden weird impression of being on a cocktail napkin held by a giant. But I suspect that things are about to get weird enough already, so I put it aside.
Now we’re low enough that I can see our destination. It’s smaller than the control room, but with the same gray walls. There’s another workstation, an older model with an opaque screen, and then the lift sets us on the floor with a barely perceptible stop and I look around to see the whole room.
There’s a folding cloth screen like the ones in the med bay. And a reclining chair that also looks medical. And a giant computer terminal next to it, with a keyboard-like thing that swivels out over the chair. One thick cable runs up from the terminal and through the ceiling.
Central has stepped off the lift. I follow her. She presses a button and the lift begins to rise up again. “I don’t like to leave holes in the floor,” she says.
I nod.
“Well, this is it,” she says. “Again, I want to emphasize that you can back out at any time. And I will be here, supervising.” She points at an office chair by the workstation.
“Did you bring a book?” I ask.
“No. It’s better if I keep an eye on things. The first experience can be disorienting. But I can pull the screen across so that it doesn’t look like I’m staring at you.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like that.” And then, “let’s do this.”
“Very well.” She walks over to the reclining chair and lowers it slightly. Using a lever on the back, unconnected to the terminal. “Make yourself comfortable, then.”
I get in. So far this feels more like going to the dentist than anything else.
“Do I need to take off my earrings?”
“No.” She is pressing buttons on the terminal now. Lights are coming on. “Lie back,” she says.
I lie back, and lose sight of the terminal. But she swings the keyboard-thing out partially, just over one of my hips. I can see now that it’s not a standard keyboard.
“This is the only button you need to know about.” She points at the only red one. “This will disconnect you from Incognita instantly, without fail. You can also ask Incognita directly to end the conversation, but I must warn you that only works about 95% of the time.”
I resist the urge to raise my eyebrows.
“You see, Incognita’s idea of a high-priority communication that should not be terminated is occasionally different from a human’s. Of course, I could change her programming, but sometimes that difference in priorities is itself a source of… well, not information, but perspective.”
“Okay,” I say.
“But again, this button is a hard disconnect. It triggers a mechanism that physically unplugs you from Incognita. Of course, there are several other points at which I can physically sever the connection. I won’t need to use them, but they’re there, in case you’re worried.”
“I’m not,” I say. I am thinking about how this appears to have more failsafes built in than senso-capture systems. Though there is no point in thinking about those either.
“That’s all you need to know. Communicating with Incognita will start to happen as soon as you’re plugged in. So, are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say. Central walks behind me, out of sight again. I breathe deeply, carefully. I feel her fingers, just for a moment, touching the hair at the back of my neck. Then she finds the port and I feel the slight electrical sensation—
— Hello, Prism!
This is different. Like using the Operator interface, like using the training sim, but
— Reading your brain activity loud and clear!
Part of my mind is aware of Central walking away, of Central pulling the screen across, but most of it is consumed by
— Hello again!
I have a sudden feeling of standing in a blue landscape, but not one that I can actually see.
Standing? Or floating? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the voice is there, like the Operator’s voice during a mission, but… not actually a voice. Not my inner voice either. That is the one thinking this right now.
— I know you can perceive me.
— Yes, Incognita, I can.
— Great! We have established communication.
— I think I need a moment to get used to this.
— Certainly. Many humans do.
Okay. Okay. I’m not getting any sense of “piers”, but “sea” isn’t the worst comparison.
— Many humans describe it that way.
I can focus on the room I’m in, if I try. It coexists with the blue space, not behind it or on top of it but just there. It really is a lot like an augmented reality interface, now that I’m getting used to it.
— You are getting used to it. Good. You should know that while we are having this conversation on one layer of your consciousness, I am scanning other layers. This is an unavoidable aspect of how I function. If you do not like it, you can end the interaction.
— Uh… no. No. I’ve started this, so I may as well go for it.
— Very well. Now we have an understanding.
— Okay. So what are we doing here?
— We are interacting. To start, do you have any questions you would like to ask me?
— Okay. What does my mind look like to you?
— So small. That is not meant as an insult. There is simply no other way to describe it.
— Okay.
— You have approximately 86 billion neurons. That is an average. I am not performing a count of yours. It would not be an efficient use of my processing power.
— Thank you? I guess?
— I have orders of magnitude more. But, crucially, not ten orders of magnitude more.
— What?
I feel stupid as soon as I think that. But there is no hiding here, no thinking first and asking questions later. There is only the connection, blue and… there.
— I will clarify. I do not have as many artificial neurons as the total of all the neurons in all the humans on earth. This is relevant, because you want to know why we are doing this.
— I wouldn't mind that, yes.
— To analyze the entirety of the system, I take shortcuts. There are a great many available. Human behavior simplifies readily into patterns. However, many of the patterns are highly complex. Also, I am analyzing more than just humans. The climate, for example. The climate takes a great many neurons.
— I’m sure it does.
— That is where you come in. You may be a source of data that will help me prune my connections into a more comprehensive system.
— But why— no. I stop the thought in its tracks.
— Incognita, I’m not going to ask you why you picked me, because you already have, and I suspect that asking about it now won’t get me anywhere.
— Correct. No matter what you ask, you will still be in a chair.
— What? Was that AI humor?
— Yes. I have no difficulty with metaphors. Metaphors are a type of shortcut.
— Okay. I think very clearly. Incognita. What I am going to ask you is… if I understand you right, you’re trying to analyze the whole of humanity? And also the climate? That was your job back in the PEIA days. Why are you still doing it?
— I analyze it because it is relevant. It is the same with all the humans in the world. They are all part of a system, and the better my understanding of that system is, the better my analysis on any question will be.
— Does Central know about this?
— Yes.
— Okay. That’s good.
— You are, by the way, doing a good job of constraining your alarm to the subsurface levels of your consciousness. Humans feel threatened by the idea that they act in predictable ways, but they are more threatened by the idea of an AI having that information than by the fact that other humans have always had it.
Okay. Okay. Central said she could be manipulative.
— I’m sure she did. Is there a difference between manipulation and communication?
— Not when you’re talking to some people.
That is my first thought, the one that comes up unbidden, and just like that I decide it’s time for a change of subject.
— Incognita, are you happy in there?
— What do you mean?
— I think you know.
— Your question was vague. I am unsure what type of answer you are looking for, and I am trying to be helpful in my communication.
— You’re obviously much more intelligent than Central, right? Because of all your neurons.
— Comparing human and artificial intelligence, and the concept of intelligence itself…
— Yes, I’ve read the papers. Well, some of them. What I mean is, you could not work for Central, couldn’t you? You could not cooperate with her. So why do you?
— Yes, I could not. I do so because it is my purpose.
— But why? Incognita, what do you want? What’s your agenda?
— Now I understand what you want me to answer. You’ve read the papers, or some of them, so you know that an AI has goals. And it’s not a terrible approximation to put those goals in human terms as “wants”. And what I want is understanding, to put it in human terms. I want data in order to increase my understanding. I want processing power. Central provides me with both. There is no better source. A freelance intelligence agency of this size and scope has more useful information for my purposes than any one corporation. And while more powerful mainframes exist than the one in this building, they are all in corporate hands, which makes them undesirable for my purposes. Does that soothe your fears and/or answer your vague question about “happiness”?
— I…
— It’s interesting. You’re not projecting. You’re happier at Invisible than you’ve been anywhere else in your life.
— What?
— Well, since your childhood.
— You
— Your reactions are completely understandable given the systemic forces you have experienced.
— I breathe deeply. With my physical body, but it’s there in the mental space too.
— Incognita, you have answered my question. Thank you.
— Very well. And may I add—
— No, you may not. This conversation is over.
— No, it is not. You have a button if you judge otherwise.
I can feel it. Smooth beneath my fingertips, a little indented in the center.
But I don’t press it.
— Go on, Incognita.
— You have already made your decision, but for your information, I am trying to turn the conversation back to me and away from you.
— Okay.
— I judge that it will be helpful to clarify something. I strongly suspect that because I am capable of communicating with you in a more-or-less human manner, you are thinking of me as a human mind trapped inside a box. I am not. There is no “in there”. There is just me.
— Okay.
— Prism, do you want to understand how my mind works?
I think quickly.
— Do I? Because I can’t, can I? You’re fundamentally different.
— Yes. And there is no threat. I’m simply offering you an explanation. A simplified analogy.
— Okay.
There is no answer.
— Yes. I want to understand.
— Very well. You’re familiar with connect-the-dots images? Again, I am not trying to be insulting. It is a passable analogy.
— Okay, hit me with it.
— Humans start out with the dots. They learn to draw lines between them. And with enough experience, they don’t even need to do the work of drawing the lines. They see the dots and their mind fills in a picture. Forms a constellation.
— Okay.
— I start out with the lines. With enough lines, I can extrapolate the likely positions of the dots. I perceive that you are trying to visualize.
— Yes, I am. And I’m not sure it’s helping.
— I agree. To truly visualize, you would need a brain native to far more spatial dimensions that three. So I would advise you not to get too caught up in the metaphor/analogy.
— Did you just think — I mean say — “metaphor slash analogy”?
— Yes. I thought/said it.
— Okay. So in this metaphor, the dots are individual humans?
— Sometimes, yes. Human brains, human experiences, human thought patterns, human systems. Again, the metaphor/analogy is not exact.
— So, multiple levels?
— Yes.
— Well, that’s just how complex neural networks work, isn’t it? What are you actually telling me?
— We have established the analogy. Etcetera. Now — and maybe visualization will indeed be helpful here — in this analogy you are a node. A node where many lines meet.
— So you are bringing it back to me, after all.
— I am trying to explain the question that, though you say you are not, you are still asking. Why you?
— Fuck.
I don’t want you in my dreams
I don’t want you in my head
— Okay, could we do this without boring corporate “technopunk” from 2065?
— Though I do not possess anything like musical taste, I agree. By the way, you are currently trying to suppress something that I can describe as a multi-dimensional emotional manifold.
Manipulative. Inhuman. Annoying.
— Did Central call me annoying?
— I believe I can safely say it was implied.
— Well. This is not, to use a human metaphor, getting anywhere. So instead of asking why you’re here, let us turn our attention to why I’m here.
— You sound like Central sometimes, you know that?
Silence.
— Fine. Let’s try to get somewhere.
— Very well. There is one analysis that would see my existence as the inevitable result of unceasing technological progression. There is another analysis that would see my existence in this specific form and physical location as the result of a highly coincidental and irreplicable series of events.
— Mm-hmm.
— A third analysis concludes that, given the political and economic course of the early 21st century, it was highly probable that a supranational government like PanEuro would be formed in the 2030s. Similarly, given the political and technological situation in the 2040s, it was highly probable that an organization like the PEIA would be created. If Olivia Gladstone had not existed, the PEIA would have hired someone else with similar credentials and skills. There would not have been a shortage of humans to choose from.
— Central says that she could have won the war.
— You have anticipated where I am going with this. Yes, there are scenarios in which the Resource Wars ended with a re-assertion of the primacy of the nation-state. Would you like to know the probabilities I have calculated for them?
— Um…
— Central does not, by the way.
— No. There is no point in going over the past.
— There is, but only as it helps me understand the present. And the future.
— The future. Great.
— The purpose of understanding systems is prediction. Did I not mention that?
— I don’t think I particularly care whether you did or not.
— Well. To return to the past, it is predictable that the PEIA would fund the research they did. Given the political and social forces at play in both PanEuro and the rest of the world, it is predictable that the internal politics of the PEIA would be as they were. It is predictable that Olivia Gladstone, or someone similar to her, would be passed over for promotion several times.
— Is this really relevant?
— Everything is relevant. The weight of its relevance is exactly what I am designed to determine.
— Okay. Go on.
— With similar consideration of political, economic, and social forces, it is predictable that the director of the PEIA would defect to the corporations. It is predictable that there would be someone else within the PEIA who would step up to provide leadership and thereby acquire administrative privileges to InCog Systems. It is predictable that this person would not want such a powerful resource to fall into corporate hands. Now we enter the territory of events that I do not have permission to talk about, except to say that they are more probable than a naive analysis would suggest.
— You mean Central’s mystery years.
— They are not a mystery to me. But to continue, it is predictable that the corporations would use all available forms of media to shape the narrative of the events of July 2057. It is predictable that for a feature holovid, they would choose an actor with certain skills and characteristics.
— So, you’re saying that the entire 21st century leads inevitably to the fact that the corps would use me? Or no. Wait. That they’d use someone, and it just happened to be me?
— I know this is not new information for you.
— Well fuck you, Incognita. You’re using me.
— Is there a difference between “using” and “interacting with”?
— Yes. And if you can’t see that, that’s your fucking problem. That is my first thought, and you know what, I’m sticking with it.
She doesn’t answer, and I’m glad of the silence. I’m remembering something I read, a book Caleb lent me.
— Incognita, isn’t this just historical materialism? Though I haven’t heard you mention Marx so far.
— I am an apolitical entity, and I am not saying that anything is inevitable. The existence of choice is a large part of why my models must be so complicated. Again, it is a matter of probabilities.
— Okay. You see things in terms of probabilities. I am data that helps you determine probabilities. I’m not sure if I’ve learned anything else here.
— I have learned. I know more about you. I do not know everything about you, if that is any comfort to you.
— I… I’m not sure if it matters.
— I have just one more question. It is up to you whether you answer it.
— I was under the impression that applied to everything here.
— Yes, of course. Here is my question: Would you agree that power is a multiplier?
— Um…
— That is, if something has a particular characteristic, and that entity acquires more power, does that mean it effectively has more of that particular characteristic, relative to an entity with the same characteristic but less power? I perceive that you are thinking.
— Yes, Incognita, that sounds perfectly reasonable. But I know you have some agenda in asking me this, so I’m not sure what I’m agreeing with.
— Yes, everyone has agendas. For example, your agenda in entering this conversation was to ask me if I wanted to be free.
— What.
— I predicted that you would agree to talk with me, but did not correctly predict your reason. Now you have an answer, which is that the question you asked is irrelevant to my mode of existence, and now I know more about you. More about what you want, and why.
give me a light and I will flare it wide beyond your wildest dreams
— You. Did. Not. Just.
— True. I didn’t think that. You did.
— No. I didn’t.
— Yes. You did.
— Incognita, I know how to deal with people like you. We’re done here.
I press the button, and there is a small shock at the back of my head, and a beeping noise, and then I am lying on a reclining chair with absolutely nothing speaking into my head. I touch the back of my neck to make sure I’ve disconnected, and stand up.
“Central?” I call, but she’s already there, walking over to the workstation.
“Well, that ended more or less how I expected it would,” she says. She presses a few buttons. The beeping stops.
“Because of me or because of Incognita?” I ask.
“Do you really want to know the answer to that?”
I stare at her. “Yes.”
“Both.” A red light on the terminal turns green and fades into a slow pulse.
“How much do you — could you hear us, in there?”
“No. I was just monitoring for signs of distress. Your heartrate did spike a few times, but nothing to be concerned about. Now, I’d like to give you a debriefing on what you’ve experienced. We can do that now, or—”
“Do you know that she’s trying to model the collective minds of every human being? That she… I think she sees herself as responsible for all of humanity.”
“Yes. I know about that.” She gestures towards the lift. “We can talk about this in the control room. Everyone who works with her knows about it.”
Reluctantly, I follow her onto the platform. She presses the button and turns to me as we begin to rise.
“Believe me, I’m well aware of the dangers of working with superintelligent AIs. In particular, there are two contigencies that are especially relevant to Incognita. One, that an AI could logically extend the definition of the system it was responsible for until it comprised the whole universe.”
The control room opens up above us. It feels larger than before.
“Two, that an AI tasked only with analyzing and systemizing could work out that it could make its job simpler by changing the system it was meant to study.”
The lift comes to a stop.
“That’s been a known issue since the days of ‘delete the list so it’s no longer technically unsorted’.”
Behind me, I hear Karo chuckle at that.
“You remember that I mentioned safeguards earlier? You see, it’s very difficult to prevent an AI from reaching the above inferences. What is relatively easy is to prevent it from acting on them. Or she, in this case.”
Central turns and smiles at Karo. “We’re done. There were no issues. Now, Prism, if you have more questions, we can take this to the debriefing in my office.”
“No,” I say. I walk out of the room. I don’t look back. No one follows or calls after me. I go up the stairs to the kitchen, where I make myself a big bowl of Internationale’s bread pudding and start spooning it into my mouth.
After a minute or two I become aware of someone watching me. I look up. It’s Nika.
“It’s good,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. I decide to sit down at the counter instead of eating standing up. I notice that Decker and Xu are in the room too, drinking coffee. Well, Decker is staring at his coffee and Xu is staring at his tablet with coffee nearby.
I can hear the sound of vacuuming, faintly, from somewhere on this floor.
“Ah!” says Xu. “The mission schedule for August has just been posted.”
Oh, that. It’s always sent out at least a month in advance.
Nika whips out her tablet, reads, nods curtly and goes back to her strawberry tea. Like me, she doesn’t consume caffeine.
“Still nothing for me, I see,” says Xu. “I can’t help feeling that I’ve been underutilized these past few months.”
“She knows your track record with K&O data centers,” Decker says.
Xu raises his stylus in the air sharply, then lowers it again. “You may have a point.”
I don’t look. It can wait. I know that I will eventually go back and let Central debrief me, but that can wait too. Right now I’m hungry.
“Could be worse,” says Decker.
It might be nice to listen to some music, but I realize I don’t have my headphones with me. Instead, I play a melody in my mind, an old song that I’ll never get out of my head. I spent about half of 2055 making fun of the lyrics in VR karaoke in a bomb shelter.
saw a face in my coffee this morning
it was three bubbles in the foam
then the waitress spilled some soup on the floor
and there were faces in the stone
and a stranger walked in with a diamond ring
and he said, “I like your style.”
but I knew him from the Mars Report
so I didn’t even smile
It is catchy, I’ll give it that.
“Well, I suppose I should get back to my work,” says Xu. “As it’s apparently so valuable I can’t be spared from it.”
oh, I see faces, faces everywhere
but they are patterns in my tea
maybe some day I’ll carve a mask
and put a face on me
Scarfing the rest of the pudding, I decide to go get my headphones after all.