Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

she used to think him pessimistic and paranoid. Conspiratorial, even. He moved closer to the access hatch. “Have you ever heard of the Turing Test?” he asked.

“I’ve heard of the Turing star system,” Molly said after a pause.

“Yeah, same guy. It was named after him. He was an old twenty first century math dude, or maybe it was the twentieth, I get those periods confused—”

“What in the world does this have to do with anything?”

“I’ll get to that if you stop interrupting. You see, Turing was one of the first guys to start thinking about artificial intelligence—”

“Is that what you think my mom is?”

“Gods, Molly, gimme a chance. And I can barely make out what you’re saying, anyway. Where was I? Oh, Turing devised what he called the Turing Test as a check for artificial intelligence. What you do is put your program in a room and talk to it through a door, or some other way, the important bit is this—if you can’t tell the thing on the other side is human or machine, it passes the test.”

Cole inched deeper into the mechanical space to make sure his voice was dropping down the hole in the floor. “Did you hear me?”

“I’m not interrupting you.”

“Well, that was it. That’s the story.”

Molly pulled her head out of the hole again. “What’s the point?”

“The point is, whatever we’re talking with passes the Turing Test, but that doesn’t tell us if it’s human or not. In fact, there’s this other guy, Surrel I think his name was, who came up with another scenario called the Chinese Room.

“You know, your mom speaking Drenard must have made me remember Turing. Anyway, Surrel said that you could have something stupid in a room, a simple program or a book that would look intelligent, but it wouldn’t be. It goes something like this: you have a man in another room that doesn’t speak Drenard. But he has a book of rules. Someone slides a piece of paper under the door with some Drenard on it. The guy looks in the book, follows the rules, and writes out a reply.

“The person on the other side will think they’re communicating with a real Drenard. The Turing Test will be passed. But the guy inside the room, or the program, is just following simple rules. And that’s all a computer does, really. Follow rules. It can look smart without being smart.”

Molly shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m listening to this instead of fixing the pressure problem with the thruster.”

“Hey, this stuff’s important. You need to keep it in mind when you’re talking to your mom.”

Molly grabbed a clump of hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. She rolled her eyes at Cole. “That Surrel guy was an idiot, just so you know.”

“I think I have his name wrong,” Cole said, “but trust me: the guy was a genius.”

“Well, I must be a Glemot, then. The guy following the rules might be dumb, but the woman who wrote the rules for him to follow speaks Drenard fluently and is quite intelligent. Which means there is a smart person in the room that’s passing the Turing Test, not just some algorithm. It doesn’t matter if she wrote her smartness down or was sitting beside the guy whispering the answers; if the result’s the same, the delivery method shouldn’t matter.”

Molly bit her lower lip and glanced past Cole. “Whether it’s a brain or a computer holding her memories– either way–I think that’s my mom out there.”

She ducked down below the decking, then popped back up. “And this is what I hate about these philosophy debates you drag me into. The questions are only baffling if you have the IQ of a Venusian sea slug—”

“Wait,” Cole interrupted, lifting a hand. “Did you hear that?”

They both fell silent. “That’s the SADAR alarm,” Molly said.

Cole scrambled backwards, out of the cramped space. Molly followed after, her hands leaving greasy prints on the decking. They both rose and sprinted toward the cockpit, forty meters away, the pounding of their feet on the metal decking waking the rest of the crew.

••••

“Contacts! At least two dozen ships!” Cole looked from the SADAR screen to the porthole on his side of the ship. A small fleet had appeared off their starboard side. Anlyn backed out of the cockpit, her eyes still on the nav screen, which remained full of bizarre symbols.

“Everyone in flight suits!” Molly called out, which broke Anlyn’s spell and sent her scurrying back toward the crew quarters.

“That includes you,” said Cole.

Molly looked down at her dirty work shirt and greasy hands as if confirming his suggestion. “Okay,” she said, “turn on the radio and find out who they are. And tell Mom what’s going on. I’ll be right back.” She left him alone in the cockpit and raced back to her room.

Cole plugged his own suit into the console between the seats. He put the radio on channel 2812, the galaxy-wide standard for hailing and ship-to-ship communications.

Someone was already transmitting.

“—yourself. Repeat. This is Naval Task Force Delta KPR76 calling the vessel point two AU’s off our bow, velocity zero knots absolute, identify yourself.”

Cole’s nav screen was covered in gibberish. He typed in a quick line to whoever was on the other side of Turing’s door.

TROUBLE. GOTTA RUN_

He hit the enter key and switched over to the Bel Tra nav charts. Comparing Parsona’s location to the position of the Navy fleet made his stomach drop. He heard someone run up behind him.

“Troublesss?”

Walter. His hissing voice scraped across Cole’s nerves even more than usual. “Go strap in,” he told him, “and stay out of the way.” He didn’t look back to see the expression on the boy’s face, which was just as well.

The next set of approaching feet left no doubt as to their owner. The vibrations came up through Cole’s nav chair as Edison stomped his way to the crew seats. Cole flipped on the cargo bay cam and made sure everyone had their helmets on and their harnesses secure. This would be the first time Anlyn wore one of Walter’s flight suits; he hoped his alterations would keep her smaller frame protected.

The radio demanded identification again just as Molly arrived in a dead run. She vaulted into her chair, landed on her feet in a crouch, and then let them shoot out from under herself into the pocket below the dash. She fastened her harness and plugged in her flightsuit, all with the coordinated swiftness of an emergency drill.

“Navy?” she asked.

“Yeah, and we’re in a spot here.” Cole pointed to the SADAR. “My anniversary gift is the hard place and that fleet is the rock.”

••••

Molly looked out her porthole. The “gift” Cole referred to loomed off the port side of the ship. It was a binary pair—a black hole and a large star locked in each other’s orbits. A wide trail of plasma leaked off the star and swirled into the black hole, the rotation of the system creating a pinwheel of light millions of kilometers across.

The display had been Cole’s one-month anniversary gift. Beautiful and touching ten minutes ago, now it created a gigantic wall of gravitational mass that prevented their escape into hyperspace.

“This is Naval Task Force Delta KPR76 to the stationary vessel off our bow, please identify yourself.” The voice had become more insistent—and the SADAR unit flashed a warning that they were being scanned. Molly admired the way the fleet spread out before closing in. Without a zero-gravity chunk of the cosmos to jump from, Parsona was trapped.

She grabbed the flight stick and pushed Parsona’s nose toward the nearby star. With one of her three thrusters on the mend, she was able to give the ship full throttle without worrying about the forces on her and the crew; the anti-grav fluid in their flightsuits could handle anything