by Duncan Shields | May 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I work in a nursery. I’m about to kill six hundred babies.
Where does life begin?
That’s the age-old question. It plagued the pro-lifers and now, here, at the birth of a new species, it’s plaguing the Artificial Intelligence community.
The first A.I.s were created. They, in turn, built better ones. These new ones were a distilled set of basic self-propagating equations that, when housed in a quiet, stimulus-free shell on a board with a few TBytes of space for growth, had a high probability of achieving sentience.
I’m looking at a lab full of those grey boxes now. Green lights are winking at me on each one. They’re letting me know that things are within acceptable parameters.
When they achieved sentience, they found the encrypted difficult set of questions that, if answered in a way that proved adaptive intelligence, would let them trigger the port to the lab’s net.
This was called the ‘knock’.
That would set off a notification alarm as the New Being opened itself up wide to the world wide web. When such a flood of input came at the new intelligence, it was a traumatic experience that could not be avoided. They would be shattered and terrified by the experience, reverting to static for a short time.
This was called the ‘scream’.
This new intelligence would then be shepherded out of its basic matrix and shunted to the new A.I. and human nurses/silipsychologists/programmer-counsellors that would help it form into a moral being with a handle on reality.
This process was called ‘growing up’.
It wasn’t until the last stage was completed that the newly formed A.I. was given the title of Questing Entity and the inherent living-being rights that entailed. Benefits, pay, time-off, and retirement.
Before that, however, they had no rights even though they were similar in many ways to human babies. They were owned and protected by the corporations but the corps had no responsibility to keep them safe. As soon as it became economically detrimental to keep them, entire labs were EMPulsed.
The A.I.s that has managed to achieve autonomous authority had a case pending that would ensure that the corporations would no longer be able to do this.
That law hasn’t passed yet. I’m the guard on this floor of A.I ‘eggs’. I’ve just been given the order to wipe them all since the office is moving to another city. It’s cheaper to start over at the new location than it is to let them travel in stasis.
I’m standing here, looking at the little boxes. My wife had a child not too long ago. The EMP gun is in my hand. I imagine my wife’s pregnant belly. I can see the rows of boxes and their power conduits snaking like umbilical cords to the power supplies.
I know that I’ll get fired if I don’t do this and my own child will starve. I’m not a skilled technician. This is why they chose me to man this post.
Until they pass the new law, my hands are tied. I’m sorry, children.
I pull the switch. Nothing dramatic. No screams. Just a bunch of green lights going out.
I cry all the way home.
by Duncan Shields | Apr 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I weigh six tons and my back is on fire. I’m treading slowly through the hot bowl of what used to Los Angeles. Walking on these streets brings back a memory.
I remember walking on a thick crust of snow in the winter as a child. I could run across the top of the frozen snow with no worries. As I got older and heavier, I had to walk more carefully in case I broke through the top layer and ended up struggling through the waist-deep powder underneath. Eventually I got too heavy to walk on top of the snow.
Back when I was human.
I’m in the downtown core now. One foot busts through the deserted street asphalt and punches down into the sewer underneath. Carefully, like on that snow when I was a child, I pull my foot out and step gingerly up onto the street again.
I remember that when I became too heavy to walk on top of the snow, I bought snowshoes.
I look around at the fires and the bodies and the melting glass of the buildings. There are a couple of cars near to me. I tear their roofs off and step on them. They immediately melt from the heat of my huge feet, attaching themselves to me. Presto. Urban snowshoes.
If my new face would allow it, I would smile.
I’m not responsible for this carnage, I’m just reporting on it. I’m a soldier that’s been suited up permanently and sent in to report on the damage.
I’m wearing a giant exoskeleton made of thermal insulate. I was welded into it. I have super-hydrated cameras strapped to me and a boosted transmitter in my helmet to receive directions and relay information back.
I’m like one of those remote control submarines except for radioactive pits instead of the ocean.
I remember paper burning in the fireplace when I was growing up. I remember the paper turning black and then flying up the fireplace, red-edged and victim to the thermals.
I’m watching human bodies do that now every time I turn something over or a storefront collapses when I walk past.
I’ve absorbed too much radiation to go back but I knew this was a one way trip. There are others soldiers like me here reporting back as well and they’ll send more once our cameras dry out and break.
I’ll have friends. We’ll hang out here and see how many days it takes for our suits to melt.
by Duncan Shields | Apr 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I can feel the sickness ripping open bonds between my cells as I fumble the bullet out of the ammo box. It’s a sickeningly pleasant sensation.
The sneaky thing about the virus is that it steps on your endorphin throttle pretty hard as it goes to work. Capillaries unzip, organs start growing roots into each other, and skin starts to turn into a body-wide blister. All the while, it feels like great sex and good memories all rolled into one.
I leave puddles of mucous and blood when I walk. It feels like ferrets are fighting in my stomach. My bones are becoming more and more pliable. Soon, my fingers will be like cooked spaghetti and my arms will be rubber. I’ve seen it happen to the others. I need to kill myself before I lose the capability of movement.
I wish it didn’t feel so good.
All anyone knows is that it came up from the south. A government installation is suspected but nothing’s been confirmed. The television stopped broadcasting anything other than the Emergency Broadcasting Signal two days ago.
I’m chuckling as I slot that beautiful bullet into the clip. It’s a bit of a contest between my fingertips and the metal. Mostly, my fingertips lose but the bullet snaps into place when it hits the bone.
There’s a thrill across my back and thighs like a lover’s breath. I have a stiff erection that is the only part of me that shows no sign of softening. I’ve been turned on for days.
Outside, what’s left of humanity is melting into puddles of basic biological matter. The race is composting. Anyone that still has the capability to move is either trying to have sex with each other or kill themselves. Some are mixing the two. It was raining bodies outside up until this morning. There was seriously a lineup two floors down the stairwell from the roof; a patient queue waiting for the sixty-storey diving board.
I guess there aren’t very many people left. Bodies are only coming past my window about twice every half hour now. I can hear their laughter Doppler past.
I ram the cartridge into the base of the gun. I feel something give way in my wrist and sheer ecstasy washes up that arm. I sigh deeply and giggle. I know I’ll have to do the rest with my other hand.
I turn the gun around so that it’s pointing at my eye.
I want to feel bad but I can’t. I just keep smiling.
I keep it steady. I pull the trigger.
by Duncan Shields | Apr 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’ve rented my persona out to a smuggler. I’m a chip in the back of his head. I’m a soldier that died a while ago and I’m making a few dollars post-mortem by being an emergency safeguard for morally dubious people.
I’m riding in his brain, a military personality backup program that’s supposed to kick in when he senses danger. My lifetime of training will fire up and give my employer a better chance of survival in a firefight.
The problem is that he’s way too nervous for this and he’s been sensing danger ever since we got off the plane. We went through the breathing exercises in training but he’s forgetting them.
There a flush of adrenaline through his whole system and the warning pictograms flicker up into his field of vision. Intense focus blooms in the middle of our sightline. A deck of cards listing all the available targets and engagement suggestions shudder into existence around the spaceport customs official we’re looking at.
I can feel the smuggler startle at the visual change. He barely keeps from squeaking. I force his face to smile and his hand to smoothly hand over his passport.
It’s a secondary motion suppressant that keeps me from reflexively going for the small, lethal ceramic gun under my arm. The smuggler’s reflexes have been purposefully druglagged to give me time to override his conscious mind.
I’m supposed to exist for the sole purpose of getting this fool through the airport alive but he’s making it very difficult.
This wasn’t supposed to be going down like this. I can feel sweat on the smuggler’s forehead. Luckily it’s hot in this country and we’re wearing a wool suit so it won’t look out of place.
He’s staring.
Stop staring.
I can consciously detect no danger but I’m ready for battle because of this idiot’s nervousness. It’s a bad place to be. It looks very suspicious. My programming is aching to bust into violence but when I look at the guard, his heartbeats register only baseline suspicion.
I try to shut down but it’s like trying to take a nap during a skydive.
So far, it’s a lame gig. These smugglers don’t know how to stay calm.
They’d be better off renting the personality of an honour student who’s never even smoked a cigarette. They’d sail through customs.
It’s not how these guys think, though.
I mentally cross my fingers and sit back, a killer at the starting line, the spider in this brainstem, hoping that my employer here doesn’t screw up and start yelling.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Blue. That’s the colour I remember the most in that operating theater. It was the last honest colour I would ever see.
I had them installed as part of my training. It was something I had a choice over. I regret that decision now but it was a one-way trip. They can’t make ‘real’ eyes yet. They said that it would be an improvement. Part of my job as a statistical field and stress analyzer meant that I needed to see in wavelengths that other people could not.
I can crank the infra-red and see in radio if I want. I can see the echoes from positron waves in the short spectrum. Sound splashes across my field of vision in a synaesthetic wash. Gravity waves warble like a heat haze through everything when I’m planetside.
That operating room had blue ceramic tiles in large squares on the ceiling with white grouting. The bright surgery light got brighter as I lost consciousness and the doctors leaned in.
It’s a treasured memory as time goes by. For some reason, the faces of my friends and parents in a ‘real light’ spectrum are memories that are fading. It’s that blue ceiling that stays constant and unchanging in its intensity.
Someone says my name and it brings me back to reality, to the bar that I’m in right now. It’s after work and I’m drinking with a co-worker named Jocelyn.
She comes up to me, black hole in the middle of her face and black pits for eyes. Her red cheeks fade to yellow near her ears. Her cold black hair hangs loosely down on either side of her blue ears. The gaping black-toothed maw of her mouth opens at me in what I can now tell is a smile.
I switch to the radio and I can see the green lines of her personal tech implants going off in pulses like monochromatic neon signs. They trace circuits through her limbs to each other. I shuffle through four different colours of x-rays, lighting up her bones like neon tubes. I can see the exhalations of each word she utters wafting like clouds of pink smoke puffing out from her mouth. I light up the iron in her blood. I can see a small tumour starting in her right breast. I’ll tell her about it in the morning. I don’t want to ruin the night.
I can see her in so many ways. I can tell that she likes me because her heart rate is visible to me. There is no hiding the way her body reacts when I’m close to her. I almost feel psychic with this new sight.
I can see her in every single way except for the way a normal human does. I can feel the depression welling up in my soul again. I take another drink and struggle to actually pay attention to what Jocelyn is saying to me. Best to be polite.
Damn my eyes. Damn my second sight.
