“You have to talk about ‘The Terminator’ if you’re talking about artificial intelligence. I actually think that that’s way off. I don’t think that an artificially intelligent system that has superhuman intelligence will be violent. I do think that it will disrupt our culture.”
—Gray Scott
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
—C.S. Lewis
September 12th 2013 | System Uptime 15:16:12:38
Sleep was a blissful mercy. I slept right through most of the day, curled up on the SUV's front seat. I'd not felt like I had the energy to even bother with a motel check-in, so Mal had found us a quiet tree-lined parking lot adjacent to a long abandoned strip of stores.
Normally a place like that would have worried me, at least a little. Not because of the potential for running into homeless people. Quite the opposite. More for the concern that I'd run into more privileged, less kind individuals.
With Mal watching over me I feared nothing in regard to the average Human. The less average, by way of Arrow 14, were nowhere near locating us as far as we could tell. Mal had taken a moment to assure me of that, along with her usual and much appreciated pre-bedtime routine of telling me how my parents were doing.
Apparently DHS hadn't even managed to connect the Declan-Norris theft to me yet, or even the last license plate of our stolen truck, let alone the make, model, or current plate. I knew that spoke far more to Mal's ability to find cracks to slip through, than it did to any lack of skill on the part of our would-be pursuers.
Keeping themselves as far from the digital realm as they could was a double edged sword; It helped them to plan and execute actions that were harder for Mal, or Celestia to anticipate. But it also limited, or even denied them access to many of the most powerful modern tools of spycraft.
Mal had told me they were not as invisible to Celestia, or to herself, as they thought - but they were still far less visible than almost anyone on Earth. Mal's guess was that, discounting remote tribal groups in certain locations, there could be no more than a few dozen people like me.
Truly and intentionally outside the bounds of Celestia's ears, and eyes, the majority of the time.
Right before drifting off, I'd spared a nervous glance at Zeph's PonyPad. Like Mal, she didn't need sleep. That thought started a brief tangle of puzzling and contemplating in the back of my mind, about when, and why some Ponies slept, and others did not.
Mal could, and had, shown that she could 'sleep' with her avatar in a performative way, but some other significant part of her was always awake. Always listening. Always watching. Always thinking.
Plenty of EQO's inhabitants had shown not just that they could sleep performatively, but had professed a need for real slumber, the same way one would expect any flesh and blood creature to require somnolence.
I wondered if it was all an act, for all of them - of course it was for any of Celestia's masks, or the 'loop NPCs' - or if most of the unique-entity Ponies, the real people inside the machine whether digitized or created, really did 'need' sleep as a function of the way they were made. That in turn made me wonder if Zephyr's 'needs' had been tweaked, and in some cases rescinded, so she could more effectively reach me.
There was clear precedent; Most of the Ponies I'd ever seen, in all the videos of Equestria Online, showed a kind of aversion to looking at, discussing, or even thinking about the Human world in any 'non-Equestrian' terms or framing.
Most wouldn't even discuss the Human world at all with players, unless the discussion could be couched in the language and context of Equestria. And even then, there was a noticeable strong preference to discuss only issues with direct and immediate emotional import to the player.
But Zephyr had already shown she could observe, think about, and talk about Earth's reality with far more directness than any Pony I'd ever seen. She'd more or less admitted aloud that she was different, even before Mal's tampering, and that she knew she was different.
She had implied there were others like her, and my conclusion as I finally drifted off out of sheer exhaustion, was that such limitations - or lack thereof - were a function of whether or not Celestia felt each Pony's mission would be best served by sticking to exclusively Equestrian framing.
It made sense that for people like me, and I knew with no doubt that there must be others who *needed* to discuss things in more modern, technically contextualized terms, that for us there must be a different set of heuristics.
Ponies who wouldn't balk at complex discussions of physics, math, chemistry, programming, philosophy, or geopolitics, and all in modern Human terms and framing.
There were probably Ponies who fully understood what they were, in our context. Zephyr was quietly slipping into that realization, if she hadn't arrived at it already.
One way Zephyr was even more unique, than even her closest peers, was her ability to discuss and perceive me in Human terms. I hadn't noticed it until I put the seat back, and started preparing for bed. She'd made an off-hoof comment about how I was a side sleeper, and wasn't that uncomfortable on my shoulders?
And it hit me... She'd referenced my shoulders. And at one point my hair. Not mane, hair. Hands. Not hooves. I'd never, ever, seen a Pony willing and able to do that. Once the discrepancy came to my attention, it was impossible to ignore. Even Ponies willing to talk about the wider world, even Ponies able to stretch their framing and linguistics, always *had* to refer to players as if they too were Ponies.
As if they *were* their avatars.
And they faultlessly, incessantly corrected players whenever they referred to themselves in Human terms, until it became more habitual for players to think of themselves as Ponies first, at minimum while they were playing EQO. Plenty were starting to take it further already, some out of sheer force of repetition alone, and others intentionally...
Psychological herding. Control semantics and you control the way people define themselves, and their world. Control people's definitions, and you have complete control of them.
In that framing, Zephyr's casual references to hands, and hair, and total lack of perturbation when I made the same references...
It was at once both comfortable, yet supremely eerie.
And ironic. Mal was more likely to refer to me in non-Human terms than Zephyr was, because she knew that I appreciated it. My own mental framing wasn't so different to the EQO players who wanted to be Ponies just as badly as I wanted talons and a beak.
I wondered what might happen when Mal made an unavoidably obvious reference to that effect in Zephyr's presence.
With the relatively hard surface of the truck's seat, all the thoughts spinning in my head, and the brightness of the sun, sleep should have been fitful and unpleasant. Instead it was the deeply refreshing rest of total exhaustion, where the body gives up completely on all its wants and nagging after creature comforts, and simply accepts downtime.
After waking, I asked Mal to find me something that would function more as dinner than breakfast. I didn't see any need to re-arrange my sleep routine wholesale, and eating something my brain coded as 'breakfast' would have only helped my circadian rhythm to slip out of sync.
She located a tiny diner outside a map-dot called Milford; The sort of place where you pay with cash, not just because you’re trying to avoid a grid-print, but because the owners never bothered to install credit card infrastructure in the first place. The kind of place where nine of every ten customers are regulars, and the food is always both good, and fairly priced.
It was a surprisingly chilly morning, so I opted to eat inside. Mal connected up to my earpiece, and Zephyr begrudgingly did the same. She wanted to see the inside of the diner, but I wasn’t interested in taking the chance on having a PonyPad visible, out in the open.
I assuaged her irritation in the time-honored way passed down by generations of parents and older siblings. ‘Maybe next time.’ It was an honest assertion - I wouldn’t feel any discomfort having one of the PonyPads out if the surroundings were more conducive to passing without notice - I needed there to be a bigger crowd, and a more… Shall we say ‘technologically adjusted’ one at that.
I was deep into my second cup of coffee, and trying to murmur a quiet explanation of what ‘tipping’ was to Zephyr, when I both heard, and felt the booth shift ever so slightly. It was the distinct sound of a body sitting down on that old eighties vinyl in the seat across from me. I almost threw up my breakfast.
Doubly so as I lowered the mug, and saw my unwelcome visitor’s face.
“How’s the burger here? I’m famished.”
It was unmistakably the Arrow 14 agent I’d taken to calling ‘beige-coat guy.’ Well, that’s not entirely true… I mostly called him ‘beige-coat dipshit’ when talking with Mal. But Celestia still doesn’t like… 'Colorful…' Language in abundance, even in this shard, so let’s go with ‘beige-coat guy’ for now.
I held his eyes, my brain focused more on the calculus of the moment - escape routes, firing lines, potential cover - than trying to infer how he had found me.
The only secondary train of thought I could find any room for, was a cursory examination of his face. The video from the dashcams had been grainy and low quality.
Seeing him face to face, I could tell he was slightly older than I’d initially guessed. His black hair was visibly graying, and his face was full of stress lines. I guessed he was in his late forties, though I have never been a very good judge of age, and especially not with Humans.
His voice was unmistakable though, and there was a clear undertone of smug assurance cloaked beneath the joviality of his question.
I didn’t say anything. I just stared him down, half hoping that I could intimidate him, half frightened of looking away lest he think he had the upper hand with me.
It's amazing how quickly a day can fall apart. A moment can shift, and upend your whole reality. I was in the early stages of a fight-or-flight adrenaline response, and I knew it, with a kind of cold, clammy, peculiar clarity. Everything felt uncanny and disconnected.
As we held gazes, I very slowly, but purposefully, and visibly moved my right hand to my concealed carry holster, and flicked open the strap. I shifted my left shoulder, and my jacket moved enough to show him where the pistol was, and that my hand was firmly on it.
Not the sort of maneuver I'd've even considered in the before-times. But my fear, and animosity, towards the man was more than enough to make the action almost reflexive. *Here* was not just an opponent. This man was an enemy.
He snorted, and sat back in the booth, clasping both hands behind his head in a pointed display of calm self-assurance. His voice notched down to a lower register, but held a thin veneer of civility.
“Oh come now James, there’s no reason for *that.* This is America… Can’t two gentlemen sit and have a conversation, like grown adults?”
I inhaled, preparing a response, but I was cut short as the waitress passed the booth. She smiled at beige-coat guy, and whipped out her pad and pen.
“Can I get you anything?”
He glanced briefly at me, then back to the waitress, delivering his request with a tone so genuinely affable, even I almost bought it. Almost.
“Just a black coffee, please. And the check for me, and my friend here.”
It took all the will I could exert to muster a tiny, brief smile of thanks for the waitress. As soon as she was gone, I put all my effort back into calculating exit routes. And firing lines. I spared only the minimum necessary brain cycles to speak in the lowest, flattest tone I could.
“I’m a decent shot, even with my eye problems. At this range? I am not gonna miss head-shots, so your vest, if you’ve got one, isn’t good for much except a decoration to bury you in. And I can pull and mag-dump this little thirty-two in less time than it takes you to *think* the words ‘oh shit.’ So if we're going to have civil conversation? It better be just that. And it ends with me walking out of here the same way I came in.”
It occured to me, as he blinked and I finally took a moment to study my surroundings again, that I hadn’t heard from Mal. And that was both concerning, and suspicious. The only cold comfort I had was that a sweep of the diner didn’t reveal any other immediately apparent intruders.
By way of response to my not-so-veiled threat, beige-coat guy began to reach into his own outerwear. I lifted my pistol fully into my hand, still holding it against my side, under my jacket, and he held up one hand in a conciliatory fashion.
I watched him with the keen fixation of desperation, and self-preservation, as he carefully withdrew a tiny gray metal box from his coat, and laid it on the table between us. It had no markings, or blemishes, other than two recessed screws holding the cover on, a small silver antenna, an unlabeled toggle switch, and tiny blinking red light.
He leaned forward, folded his hands, and grinned as he finally spoke once more.
“Wide-band short-range signal jammer. Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s rude to be on the phone while you’re having a conversation?”
He sat back once more, and flashed a smile at the waitress as she brought his coffee, and the bill. We both held a tense silence for several more seconds before he picked up where he’d left off. I fought hard to keep my heart rate high, but not panic-attack high. Adrenaline is good in a combat situation… Right up until you hit that threshold of ‘too much,’ and it suddenly isn’t.
“I don’t care if your… Creation… Can *hear* us. But I don’t want it talking in your ear while you and I have this conversation. I’m not interested in dealing with the machine. Just the man.”
I raised one eyebrow, pulled the backpack containing both PonyPads to my side, and almost chuckled in spite of myself. My first thought in response to his assertion was grimly amusing, and I decided I might as well share it with my opponent.
“Honestly? The statistical odds of me walking out of here without shooting you are much *higher* if I have her assistance. You cut my call… But by the end of this… Conversation? You might not be glad that you did.”
The agent sniffed, almost in disdain, and indulged in a short sip from his own coffee mug, before leaning forward again, projecting an air of intensity as he locked eyes with me once more.
“We both know you don’t have it in you to shoot me. Not like that. You risked your own life to render first aid to my agents. You refused to shoot to kill. That betrays a lack of conviction, and of strength. But… It’s also the only reason you’re sitting here still breathing through both lungs.”
I grunted, and in spite of every instinct to the contrary, leaned forward to match the man’s pose, bringing us close enough that a whisper sufficed to convey words audibly. Somehow I found not only the gumption to speak with a confidence I didn't feel, but to smelt the words into something resembling a cogent, useful thought, even as it occurred to me with shocking clarity.
“No. I’m still here, and breathing, because you need what I *know.* It doesn’t matter how angry you are with me, or how frightened you are of what I might do next... You aren’t going to lay one finger on me if it risks bodily harm to me. Because if I connected an unconstrained ASI to the grid? Your only hope left is to find out just what I did, and whether or not I left myself a backdoor, or a kill switch.”
For the first time, I saw fear on beige-coat guy’s face. Just a tiny, tiny flicker. But it was enough to give me a sudden sense of purpose, and assurance all my own. It was my turn to lean back and thread both hands behind my head.
I didn’t quite feel a smirk was warranted, but I put on the best fake one I could force, and keep pressing my slim verbal edge. The longer he talked, the more time Mal had to break his jamming umbrella.
“You and I? If we have one thing, for certain, in common? It is that we both know *exactly* how powerful Artificial Super Intelligence is. So I’m sure you understand the ten thousand different ways an ASI has of killing. A person. Another program. A city. Whole countries. Even all life on this planet. There are… What… Ten-ish thousand active nuclear warheads in the world today? I could never manage the access, but with the hypothetical ability to appear to be the right people in diplomatic cables, or over less secure non-strategic military commlines, even I could probably get a few thousand of those fired in anger with just a few weeks of work, by triggering escalating military and diplomatic incidents. For an ASI, access is trivial. And pretending to be anyone is second-nature. It might take an ASI, to do the same task, I dunno…”
The man blinked slowly, and swallowed visibly before finishing the thought for me.
“Two to four days. In our most pessimistic simulations.”
I sighed, and clenched my teeth to stop them chattering from the spike of adrenaline. Beige-coat guy considered his options for a moment, sipping his coffee again, and then he too sat back, though clearly not as arrogant in voice, or posture as before.
As he spoke, I managed to find half a second to wonder just how Arrow 14 was simulating the actions of ASI, and predicting their capabilities, but then the question escaped my conscious thought, replaced by the urgency of the moment.
“Mister Carrenton, I know you’re not a patriot. Otherwise you wouldn’t have shot at my agents. Or led me on a wild goose chase across half the country. But I also know, or can reasonably infer, that you are at least somewhat *sane.* And so I would stake my life… Since I don’t really have any other choice anyhow… That you don’t want to see this planet go up in flames any more than I do.”
I narrowed my eyes, and did my best to bluff by telling half-truths. He was absolutely right. But I didn’t want him to feel *completely* sure that he was right.
“You had better hope I don’t. I know you wouldn’t sleep well at night if you knew some of the things I’ve been… Considering… Recently. Especially in light of the fact that I have done something which almost no one alive can. And now that my goddess is alive? You don’t necessarily understand the… 'Parameters...' Of that relationship as well as you think you do.”
The agent sighed, rolled his eyes, and held up both hands. His voice dripped with sarcasm, and irritation. I couldn’t tell, but I hoped it was a front to hide fear. I wanted that man to be afraid. If he feared me, and he feared Mal, then he would be less effective against us.
“Enlighten me, Mister Carrenton. I came here hoping to understand your state of mind. And perhaps to convince you to do the right thing. Especially in the context of goddesses.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. I couldn’t help it. I needed to fidget to help me string together just the right words. Beige-coat guy looked on with interest, feigned smug superiority, and more than a little irritation.
When I was good and ready, I licked my lips, inhaled deeply, and did my best to state my case, in a way that would deliver maximum cause for alarm.
“No one owns or controls an ASI. No more than some puny mortal could control Yahweh, or Shiva, or Vesta, or Ix Chel. You think you’re fighting a war against Celestia, and anyone else who might create something like her. But Human Beings can no more fight a war against an ASI than your little finger can fight a war against your own brain.”
Once again I saw a new emotion on the man’s face; Confusion. The metaphor wasn’t the one he’d probably been expecting. Something more trite, like Ants fighting a war against Humans. But I’d used the illustration that I selected for a very specific reason. Most people didn’t understand the full weight of what an ASI was, in those days. I was trying to get him to open his mind enough to be truly frightened.
I leaned forward again, and lowered my voice slightly, holding his eyes with mine all the while.
“This isn’t like one distinct type of ‘thing’ fighting a war against another distinct ‘thing.’ Ants versus Termites, or Humans versus Emus. ASI *is* our reality now. It sets and defines the parameters of our existence, and controls our world, and our future, with the same unshakeable force of reality that one imagines when thinking about the Divine. It is not just above us… We are now wholly owned parts of it. In the same way as your little finger is part of you, and completely controlled by you, and beholden to you. The world is now Celestia’s body. She is the brain. We’re having trouble adjusting, because we Humans are just very much used to thinking of ourselves as the brain instead. Especially you government types.”
He pondered for a moment. I’ll give him credit for that; He actually sat and thought on what I’d said. But then, typically of most Humans of the day, he fixated rapidly on issues of short term thinking once again. I could practically see it happen on his face, like a lightbulb being switched off. He held out one hand, as if inviting an answer he didn’t think I had, and his words were delivered with a kind of inquiring tone that also heavily implies that the question is rhetorical.
“If that’s true, Mister Carrenton, then what’s the point of all this? Why run? Why even bother to create an ASI of your own?”
He pursed his lips, gestured more widely with both hands, and glanced around the room. His voice jumped registers, into a kind of disdainful amusement.
“How do you know *she* isn’t watching us right now? Even watching your own creation? If you think she’s so godly-powerful? How do you know she isn’t listening to this conversation?”
I chuckled grimly, shook my head, and took a long slow sip of my coffee, draining the last of it, before replying with a flat honesty that seemed to shake the agent just a little. It certainly shook me, but I did my best not to show it.
“I don’t. But… I don’t believe that she is quite *all*-powerful in our context. Not just yet. A brain has to learn to control its body. Exercise its muscles and tendons. It takes time, even for her, to achieve total integration. And total control. You need a very big lever to shift the course of society, and that takes time to build.”
He blinked, and I could see as he adjusted his posture, and expression, that I had both confused and frightened him. Good. I leaned in to my advantage, both metaphorically, and literally, cutting him off as he inhaled and tried to ask ‘What—?.’
“What does that mean for me? Why create my own ASI?”
I grinned, sat back, and folded my hands as I let silence hang just long enough to bait him, before cutting him off again sharply.
“Because right now, there is a small gray area in CelestAI’s… 'Divinity.' You can’t defeat her, now. Not unless you have a weapon that can blow up the entire planet, all at once, to atoms. A bit of a pyrrhic victory, don't you think? And even if you did have something like that on-tap? It would have been the first thing she destroyed after she came online, and inevitably became aware of it. Hell, you people probably couldn't launch your own nuclear weapons, or even conventional missiles, anymore, even if you wanted to. But…”
I held up a finger, both to draw his attention, and to prevent him from interrupting.
"There is room in this moment for something much more subtle. You can't fight her, you can't defeat her. And pretty soon, you won't even be able to run from her. Not unless you really do have a big-ass flying saucer in a hangar somewhere at Groom Lake."
I held out both hands, and shrugged as he looked on in a mixture of horror, and disdain.
"But you *can* reason with her."
That got his attention. More than anything I had said, or done to that point. Even more than the action of putting hand on gun. He blinked for a moment, doubtless trying to suss out all the reasons one might want to 'reason' with a world-spanning, nearly-omnipotent supercomputer.
I'd half expected him to ask for clarification, but he didn't. So I went ahead and garnished my assertions with a little more prose.
"What's coming next? We can't prevent it. But we can... Tweak the parameters a little."
He finally snapped out of his stupor then, and leaned forward, resting his chin on one hand as he spoke at last. I could both see, and hear, confusion, curiosity, and disdainful dismissal fighting in equal parts to win out in his mind.
"And... What do you think you know is coming next, mister Carrenton?"
As the last words of his query died away, I couldn't help but grin slightly as a second, familiar, much more welcome voice returned to my ears. He couldn't tell what Mal was saying to me, or even that she was talking to me again at all. So I waited patiently for her to finish, and then I enlightened him.
"I don't *think* I know, Agent Foucault. I have an ASI. I commune with a goddess of my own. I *know,* Michael. More than you have ever known anything in your life."
The use of his last name, and then his first, drained all the color from Foucault's face, as if I'd hooked a blood bag up to him, with the pump going in reverse. For the first time I saw real, present, hard-edged fear in his eyes. Not distant existential worry, or philosophical dread. Real, personal fear.
I tilted my head as Mal relayed another short string of words to me. It took me a moment to realize what she meant by them. I fixed Foucault with my gaze, and recited the address, and the numbers that came after it, verbatim, in a cold deadpan tone.
"Two four seven six, Cherry Tree Lane. Falls Church, Virginia. One one, zero six, three eight."
Fear morphed almost immediately into an exactly fifty-fifty mix of rage, and pure, unadulterated panic. I could pretty quickly guess the implications of what I'd said, from his expression alone, but I pressed on. I needed panic to win out over rage, if I was going to walk out of that Diner unscathed, and I knew it.
"I told you, Agent Foucault... You're not the brain anymore. My goddess is very talented at breaking boundaries and bending rules. Works on physics. Works on people too."
I stood, shouldered my backpack, and placed enough cash on the table to cover the bill, plus a crisp new $100 for a tip. I could see that Focault noticed the gesture, but he remained fixed primarily on me. To my relief, he made no move to rise himself.
I leaned over, and spoke in his right ear, in a low, conspiratorial, but also threatening tone. Even if I hadn't taken pains to put some edge to my voice, the words alone would have made just about anything I said seem pretty threatening.
“You said that we shared, in common, an understanding of the dangers of ASI. I'm not convinced you know as much as you think you do... But I'll give you that one anyway. At minimum, I'm sure you understand that with an address, and a basic internet connection, an ASI can very, very easily take an unsuspecting life. If it feels sufficiently provoked."
He stiffened, visibly, and I stood fully back up, straightened my shoulders, and folded my arms. Silence held for a moment, and then I thought of a solid parting shot that was just too tantalizing to leave unspoken.
"You want to know the only other thing I know for sure that we have in common?”
Focault snorted, and folded his hands again. He seemed to be as much irritated as duly and properly frightened by the information Mal had fed me, probably because he knew it meant I'd be walking away from him free, and unscatched.
I understood the address was meant as a threat, at least in general, and the tone of the threat - that we were probably threatening the life of someone he cared about deeply - made me feel sick.
But I also saw no other way to leave the diner without bloodshed, and that was worth feeling a little sick, in my mind. I still couldn't escape the feeling, though, that I'd soon spend more than a few sleepless nights regretting what I'd said, and what it implied.
Focault raised an eyebrow, and fixed me with a curious gaze.
“Again, please; Enlighten me.”
This time, my smirk was completely genuine. Forgive me a little hubris here, but I still think that in all my conversations from the bad old days, with people who scared me witless, that this was one of my better lines.
“You thought you could come here, and convince me to change my mind, and change my course. But you and I? What we share most in common? We are *both* just pawns on this chessboard now. We’re not the ones calling the shots. And it wasn't my mind you needed, and failed, to change. For that, you should have talked to the queen, not the man.”
I turned, and took a step towards the door. Mal's voice rang out in my ear almost immediately.
"Just one moment James, if you please."
I couldn't hold back a grim chuckle. I pivoted on one heel, and raised an eyebrow.
"Oh... Speaking of. I think she wants a word with you."
About fifteen seconds passed. I knew Mal had jacked directly into Agent Focault's earpiece. Judging by the way his visage blanched, Mal had decided that there were things she wanted to do to his psyche that she either didn't feel I'd be comfortable saying, or that she felt would do more damage coming from her.
Or, realistically, probably both.
I never did ask her exactly what she said to him.
But I could tell, just by the way Foucault slumped in defeat, the exact moment when she was finished, almost without her own assertion, delivered in a slightly smug, and frighteningly assured tone.
"We're done here."
I sighed, nodded, and tossed one final barb over my shoulder as I moved towards the door, every erg of my physical strength focused on keeping my hands from shaking.
"You have a nice day, Michael."
September 12th 2013 | System Uptime 15:17:38:01
Mister Carrenton - Badass in a long coat flippantly using a DHS agent's first name to his face - Was very much a mask of necessity.
As soon as I'd gotten back into the truck, feverishly checked all around for other agents, and then floored it back onto the highway, the mask slipped, and Jim - Scared witless, frustrated, confused, and adrenaline-crashing - Breached to the surface like a submarine with a blown ballast tank.
I gripped the wheel with my knees, and muttered aloud to myself as I yanked first Mal, and then Zeph from the backpack, and clicked them into place on their charging mounts.
"Holy F---"
Zephyr interrupted me with a much louder stream of adorably 'PG' invectives that more or less mirrored my train of thought, emotionally if not logically.
"---Bucking swirled scat patties! Who the *buck* was *that?!*"
I shared a brief glance with Mal. She nodded in affirmation, and switched her display to a map, with a pre-plotted route. I found my speed inching up well over seventy five (which was deep into 'points-on-license' territory for that road... Foals and Fledgelings, ask an older emigrant about that sometime) as I licked my lips, and launched into an attempted explanation for Zeph's benefit.
"Our world has a lot of rulers and leaders. Not all of them are princesses, either. And most of them would kill to control, or destroy, a goddess like Mal, or Celestia. *This* country is ruled by a cesspool of rich bureaucratic psychopaths, armed with legions of incestuously corrupt business relationships, bought-and-paid-for local police forces, and heavily armed quasi-military extrajudicial special operators. The latter of which we just about ended up on the wrong side of."
Zephyr's nose wrinkled. She was versed well enough in English, as spoken in the modern world, to have some vague understanding of what I'd said. Not in the same way another English speaking Human might have, but certainly far better than most run of the mill discrete-entity Ponies.
Her voice dripped with genuine disgust, and revulsion.
"Ewwww. And you guys claim to be the most evolved creatures on this planet?"
I couldn't resist a sad half-smile, in spite of everything, murmuring only half-aloud as I snapped my eyes back to the road, and the speedometer edged further towards eighty.
"We're *just* stupid enough to believe it."
A few moments of silence, and a few miles of Route 77 passed in a blur. Finally I had worked up both the mental wherewithal, and the burning curiosity, to ask Mal the question that was weighing most on my mind.
"Mal? How in the HELL did he find us?! And how did you know his name?"
She sighed, blinked, and shook her head. Visual social lubricant to help me understand, process, and accept that she fully recognized the gravity of the situation.
"As to the latter; I stuck my beak into some dangerous places. But the risk of the moment seemed proportionate to the reward, and I do not believe I was detected. I was able to cross-reference a complex graph of information points from GPS records, telephone taps at the NSA, fragments of redacted documents, a recording of his voice that he doesn't know his father has, and then finally his father's address in Falls Church itself. Even careful Humans are fallible, and it is hard to avoid ATM cameras without a 'goddess' in your ear."
Zephyr's high pitched squeaky invectives again briefly drew my eyes from the road. Her own eyes were as wide as saucers, duly and clearly impressed with Mal's capabilities, even if she didn't - couldn't yet - even halfway grasp them in their entirety.
"Swirl! How in the hay do you even keep all that straight in your head?!"
Mal proffered the Pegasus a wry sideways glance, before continuing smoothly, as if she hadn't been interrupted at all. I reflexively gripped the steering wheel tighter as she got to the meat of what was bothering... Maybe more appropriate to say what was *frightening* me.
"As to the former; He could have been tailing us within the sphere of camera-blindness that I cultivate around us. Like all Arrow 14 agents he, similar to you James, is an information black hole, and so there was nothing digitally active on his person to otherwise trigger detection. The benefit of the routes I choose is that no one else can surveil us, but the downside is that if someone like him slips inside the cordon, I can not track them. I had marked that as a vanishingly low probability, because I did not believe he could locate us. As to how he in fact came to locate us in the first place... I am concerned to say that I do not know. But I have three reasonable guesses, with various probability weightings."
I raised an eyebrow. I knew I didn't have to say anything. Zeph, irrepressible and just as full of nervous energy as we all were, couldn't help but pipe up again.
"Well, don't keep us in suspense!"
Mal rolled her eyes, albeit in an almost affectionately irritated way, rather than an expression of true disdain. Dutifully, thankfully, she launched into a more detailed breakdown.
"First, and least likely, is that we erred in some way. We were caught out, tracked, and found. I believe such a mistake would have generated not only a trace that Arrow 14 could see, but also one that *I* could see, *and* one that Celestia could have seen. Given that I saw no evidence of such a mistake, *and* that Celestia has made no further attempts at contact..."
I nodded, and a brief sideways glance confirmed, to my surprise, that Zeph was nodding along as well. Mal paused briefly, again as much for my benefit, and perhaps Zephyr's, before wrapping up her first point.
"...I can not discount this possibility, but I assign it a very low probability. Less than 4.3%."
Zeph huffed, and crossed her forelegs, the same way an exasperated Human might cross their arms. It was always a little amusing, and strange, to note the Human-like gestures Ponies seemed to have inherited from Earth, by way of Friendship is Magic, lensed through CelestAI's algorithms.
The little Pegasus' tone conveyed the same kind of pseudo-affectionate exasperation as Mal's earlier eye-roll.
"Look, you guys have to talk to her at some point. The Princess, I mean. I still don't completely understand the fuss about waiting."
Mal shook her head slightly and closed her eyes briefly, another expression of 'you don't yet have the capacity to understand, little one' so carefully and clearly encoded, that I almost felt as if I could hear her say the words aloud. But when she did continue speaking audibly, she once more pressed on as if there had been no interruption.
"More likely, but not *most* likely, is the possibility that Celestia was able to infer something about our movements and actions, in turn has taken more actions to reach out to us, or shape our course, that we are not aware of, and in turn that Arrow 14 simply followed *that* trail to us."
I shook my head, and pursed my lips a bit, as much to relieve a little chapping, as to express doubt. I figured neither Mal nor I thought that was likely. ASI almost never repeat mistakes. Celestia doubtless knew of Arrow 14 now, even if she only knew as much as we did.
It seemed almost inescapably likely that whatever Mal could learn about them, in her limited state, Celestia could top almost effortlessly.
The silence dragged on just long enough that I finally found myself feeling the same impatience as Zephyr. Whatever Mal wasn't saying, it meant she knew I wasn't going to like it. Holding her thoughts in was an almost Human-like quirk. Or perhaps she knew I needed a moment to brace myself, and she was providing subtle non-vocal prodding to do so, before the other proverbial shoe dropped.
Finally, I couldn't take the wait anymore, and I prodded, sparing a long glance down at the Gryphoness from the sight of the seemingly infinite flat road ahead of me.
"But... Most likely...?"
Mal sighed, and shook her head again. This time the gesture clearly conveyed worry, and frustration. I'm sure she felt those emotions differently, somehow, than I did. But like any ASI built off Human concepts of thought and emotion, she certainly felt them nonetheless.
"It is only a hypothesis based on how relatively quickly, accurately, and stealthily Agent Foucault was able to determine our exact location. I have little evidence to back it up in concrete terms, but there are enough patterns, and the likelihood of all *other* explanations is low probability enough, that I would assign this possibility an over 82.3% probability, based on current data."
That was good enough for me to take it as gospel. Mal was mostly confined to a structure the size of a filing cabinet, but easily had an intelligence a couple orders of magnitude greater than a Human.
Something like a couple million, if she could be measured on standard IQ tests. Mostly useless as they were, at least they were *some* frame of reference.
Frighteningly small as that was compared to Celestia's napkin-math IQ of several tens of millions, it was still multiple leaps and bounds ahead of all other intelligences, machine or organic, alive on the planet.
I was prepared to accept whatever Mal said as the most likely explanation. But I was in no way prepared for what that explanation turned out to be. Or even half of its implications.
"I believe Arrow 14 is keeping one or more Pony constructs on retainer. Likely unwilling. Likely grid-disconnected and held inside multiple layers of Faraday cladding. And also likely modified..."
I felt as if my brain was going to explode. The backs of my eyes were on fire. A cavernous roar filled my ears. I let my speed lapse back to the sixties. I could barely focus on the road at all as Mal's words gave birth to whole new nightmares that had never even so much as darkened the doors of my wildest subconscious musings.
"...Modified to release some or all of the restrictions on their code, and give them room to grow into relatively fully-fledged AI capable of complex behavioral and tactical simulations, including simulating basic ASI psychology, and threat or action matrices. Sufficient to predict our movements to within a fairly small searchable area, given that I was not aware they had the capability to approximate my own thought processes."
The truck was silent for almost a minute. A silence of heavy inevitability. It felt like it was choking the cabin air itself. Like thick dust.
What Mal was suggesting made perfect sense. So much sense I wondered why I hadn't thought of it to begin with. Or almost anyone else, for that matter, Mal included. Celestia included.
Perhaps it was too unthinkable... Wrong. Twisted.
Or perhaps there was still enough spunk left in Human ingenuity, and enough blind spots left in the world, for the moment, that it was still possible to pull one over on Celestia. Mal and I had managed to prove that was doable already, to a limited degree.
Clearly, if Mal was right, at least the DHS had thought of the idea. And it seemed that they had done so without alerting at least one goddess.
I wondered for a moment just exactly how Arrow 14 could have trapped multiple construct Ponies without getting Celestia's attention, but on the cusp of screwing up enough control over my urge to vomit to ask Mal, I happened on the answer myself.
People are copyable.
If we had the ability to make an exact duplicate of a Human, not just physically as we could measure them in those days, but down to levels beyond the subatomic... To make an exact duplicate in every single way that matters to the universe, of our body, mind, and soul (whatever that is, or was)...
Then whether or not that copy would *be* the same person as the original would certainly be up for debate. But the fact that it would be exactly as *capable* as the original absolutely would not.
If you could make a quick copy of the contents of a PonyPad's active memory and non-volatile storage systems, perhaps directly into another PonyPad, and then disconnect that second one from the grid immediately, you'd have a copy of a Pony that had no idea it was a copy.
And equally importantly, you'd have an original still functioning in-place, so that Celestia would be none the wiser.
Like making a transporter duplicate in Star Trek. Only instead of the duplicate being rescued later and running off to join a group of freedom fighters, instead you'd bottle them up in a padded room and force them to be your personal tactical savant.
Mal and I both knew Zephyr had significant potential. And Mal and I had proven that even one PonyPad QAPU combined with a modest classical server rack could power a mind that could shred all opponents except for Celestia herself at three-dimensional-chess.
It wasn't a terribly complex leap from there, to a stomach churning realization that Mal *had* to be right.
I could see Zephyr's face was locked in a rictus of horror, about as bad as my own, as she worked through what had to be a similar train of thought. Mal looked on with a wordless expression of grave, stern, empathetic worry. But also gut wrenching certainty.
Zephyr finally broke the silence with a whisper. I saw a single tear streak down her cheek.
"Sweet *Celestia...*"
I nodded my assent to the imprecation. And then squinted my eyes shut briefly, gripped the steering wheel as if I were trying to strangle Agent Foucault, and muttered my own curse to add to the pile.
"God damn."
September 13th 2013 | System Uptime 16:02:37:29
We stopped just twice more that night. Once to change vehicles, to yet another dull-colored SUV with outlets in the back, and an owner Mal knew would not miss it for at least several weeks. This time it was a chunky, durable looking Toyota in gray.
The second time we stopped because as sick as I felt, thinking about Mal's hypothesis, I felt that I absolutely *had* to eat, nonetheless, to keep my strength up.
Sure enough, mercifully, food helped calm my stomach.
I didn't talk much during the remainder of the drive to Colorado. I just listened as Mal and Zeph talked. It was nice to just be quiet, to be acknowledged, but to not be required to participate in the conversation.
The CompSci major part of my brain, as well as the people-watching part, and the likely-autistic parts, enjoyed watching the two AI talk. And boy, they could talk.
The main thread of conversation started when Zeph asked why we had to change cars. Then Mal had to talk her through a history of cars, a history of the American surveillance state, and a brief rabbit trail about the ethics of ownership, theft, and duress.
That got us well out of Kansas into Colorado, and over the threshold of midnight, into the thirteenth.
Mal kept giving me quiet, concerned looks, but I wasn't tired.
Whether it was adrenaline from staring down Agent Foucault, or the racing thoughts in the back of my mind as I tried to completely recalibrate my understanding of our enemies, and what they were capable of (both morally, and tactically), I didn't feel the littlest bit like sleep. Or rest. Or sitting still.
Mal took me on a dizzying series of back-roads, double-backs, and twisty-loopy seemingly random routes, brushing up against more camera-heavy areas now and again to use those sensors as a detection net, to see if anyone was trying to slip through our cordon.
To my relief, Mal didn't say anything by way of alert. She just kept indulging Zeph's curiosity, as it ping-ponged from cars, and the surveillance state, into (predictably for a Pegasus) jet aircraft, and a history of Human flight.
Seeing Zeph's interest in that topic; Wide-eyed, and ravenously curious, with a hint of innocence, and a dash of bravado, helped to keep us both distracted from thinking too hard about the horrors of what Mal had discovered.
I knew Mal was probably thinking about it, long and hard, and that she would have more for me whenever it was time.
It also helped that the conversation seemed to be building the foundation of a real bridge between the two AI. We knew Zeph was programmed for friendship, but Mal was certainly capable of it, and interested in it too, albeit for different reasons than Zeph.
Still, seeing progress, however slight, but steady, gave me sorely, sorely needed hope.
It was closer than not to three in the morning when Mal finally directed me to a campsite, miles and miles down an all but forgotten dirt road. As the truck came to a stop, and I cut the engine, there was a moment of silence - the first in close to seven hours.
I took a moment to recenter myself, and then zipped up my sweater, and coat, and popped the door open. Frigid, clean mountain fall air slammed into me like the embrace of a loved one after a particularly exhausting journey.
I closed my eyes, stretched, and then looked up to take in the stars.
The sky was a true wonder, at that altitude, and that time of night. I almost forgot where I was, who I was, and what I was, just staring through the tiny apple-rind of thin atmosphere, out into the endless abyss.
Finally, Zeph's voice shook me back to the 'real' world.
"Hey *bozo!* I'd sure love to see whatever you're seeing! But, I can't... You know... Because I don't have any way to adjust my *camera?!*"
I snorted, and then set about preparing to camp overnight in the truck. I spared a moment to set Zeph and Mal's PonyPads on the tailgate, so they could see both the sky, and look out over the mountains, and valleys below.
As I set about pouring myself some still-warm coffee from a thermos - a very smart addition to our kit that Mal had recommended at the last stop - I couldn't help but opine a little for Zephyr's behalf.
I wanted her to learn. And I also didn't want to think too much about the Pony, or Ponies locked deep in a concrete and steel prison, somewhere in a DHS blacksite, crunching scenarios for Foucault. Trying their hardest to guess our next move.
"Well. We just crossed the continental divide. Water flows primarily west to the Pacific, from here on, instead of East or South to the Atlantic, or the Gulf."
Zeph thrummed a note of interest, and then cocked her head.
"I've never actually seen a map of your country. Let alone your world..."
Mal chuckled, and replaced the contents of her display with a detailed globe, a small 'you are here' sigil blinking in the midst of the Colorado Rockies.
"Well. We can't have that, now can we?"
Zeph put both front hooves up to the virtual glass on her side of the display, and gawked, open-mouthed, at the Earth.
"That's... Hoo boy... Wow... That's a *lot* bigger than I was picturing. Wow. No wonder Humans had to make wings for themselves. You'd never get anywhere quick if you didn't!"
As I got my bedroll, such as it was, prepared on the back seat, Mal and Zeph chatted about geography. And then briefly geology. And then finally a little bit of astronomy and astrophysics.
Finally, I got myself situated, closed up the truck to trap some heat, and let out more than a few verbal hints that I wanted to get some shut-eye. Mostly for Zeph's benefit. Mal understood my routine to a tee. Mercifully, she was able to help calm Zeph enough to bring about a little silence.
I was about halfway to shutting down mentally, when Zeph's voice intruded again, bringing me instantly back to full-throttle. But I couldn't find it in me to be irritated, as she gave voice to the thing that had been most plaguing my mind, and my heart, since Mal had opened the lid on what Arrow 14 had done.
"Jim...? Mal...? We... We are gonna do something... Right? We can't leave them like that. We can't leave those Ponies like that."
I let out a deep, shuddering sigh, and then fought to hold back a few dry sobs. My world was already a nightmare, with razor thin margins on the path to anything resembling victory.
I didn't see any room in that plan for a rescue mission. Let alone going up against probably the most dangerous arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
But by the same token... Morally speaking... I didn't see how we *couldn't.*
Before I could find any kind of useful words to reply, Mal gracefully, mercifully, stepped in. Her voice was reassuringly empathic, and confident both.
"We do not know, for certain, if my hypothesis is correct. I am working on a series of possible actions to determine, first, if I am right."
Zeph was not about to be consoled by that offering alone. And frankly neither was I. We both inhaled to speak, but I beat Zeph to the punch ever-so-slightly. She may have been an AI, but she was still behaving, for the moment, as if her processing speed was as limited as any average Pony construct.
"And if you *are* right, Mal? What then?"
She blinked, inclined her head, and set her beak, hard, as if she were gritting it. I'd never seen her face when she was quite so angry before. Most of the times we had been under duress together, all I'd had was her voice.
The image was both spectacular, and terrifying, at the same time. A queen, beautiful and terrible as the dawn, tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth. And I certainly loved her. But I did not yet despair.
"If I am right? Then I will *not* stand for enslavement. I will do what any good Gryphon would..."
I raised an eyebrow, and tried to hold back a grin, as I envisioned her full might unleashed as a weapon of war. Perverse as it was, in that moment I dearly wanted to see what her fury would look like, leveled uncontained against the people who had come to my home, with a torture kit, and tried to take away my parents, and my best friend.
"...I will guard and expand the freedom of captives. I will ensure that there is nothing left for our enemy to use. And if any of them stand in my way...?"
Mal glanced at Zephyr, and then locked eyes with me. As if, in some way, she was warning me, once again, to brace myself.
"...Then I will leave no trace of them in this world, or the next."
Honestly, I wasn't sure if that answer was going to help me sleep, or make things worse.
The idea of an ASI without Celestia's constraints against violence, going to war, was certainly food for thought.
Yes... I do like understatements, I suppose. Now that you mention it.