overlooking the Melony. It was just before sunset, an idyllic time for a quiet conversation about life and death.
“So, Alex,” she said sweetly, “you caused something of a stir when you said we needed to go rescue the AIs on Villanueva.” She paused, pretending to be puzzled. “Am I using the right word here? Rescue?”
“Mia,” he said, “I didn't think it was much of a stir. A few people on the talk shows got excited. But it was no big deal.”
“But weren't you concerned about the possibility that you might succeed in talking some politicians into putting people's lives at risk?”
“I don't think, for trained personnel, there would have been much danger.”
“But why take any chance at all? For hardware? Do you really believe AIs are sentient?”
“You have one here, of course?”
“Of course.”
“What's his name?”
“Shaila.”
Alex smiled. “Shaila, are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Benedict.” Shaila had a smooth, silky voice. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you aware of who you are?”
“Of course.”
“Mia doesn't think you're really there.”
“I know.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I'm used to it.”
Alex leaned back and managed to look relaxed. “Shaila, do you really not exist? Except as a set of protocols?”
“Mr. Benedict,” said Shaila, “you are trying to provoke an emotional response to make a point.”
“That's correct. Aren't you annoyed?”
“I don't get annoyed, Mr. Benedict.”
“Well.” He grinned across at Mia. “I guess that isn't going to work.”
“I'm sorry to disappoint you, sir.”
Mia waited a few moments. Then: “Are you satisfied, Alex?”
“Oh, yes. The programing in these things is really incredible.”
“I think we can agree on that.”
“I'm especially impressed by the note of pride in Shaila's last comment. T don't get annoyed, Mr. Benedict.' It sounded almost human.”
Mia laughed. “Touche, Alex. I suspect we'd better take her out more often. But, you know, it's true, most people do treat their AIs like family. I'll admit that, sometimes after a long day, I'm inclined to sit and talk with Shaila. It's nice having somebody around I can trust. Somebody I can talk to and say what I really think.”
“I can't believe you don't always do that.” Mia smiled politely. “It's all right, Mia. Just kidding. I know you don't hold back. But my point is that maybe you perform a similar function for Shaila. Or you would if she could stop pretending.”
“You should have become a salesman, Alex.”
“Well, what can I say? It's important to have someone you can talk to. Did you know that when AIs were first developed, in the twenty-third century, the divorce rate went through the roof?”
“I didn't know that. Is that really true?”
“Oh, yes, it's exactly what happened.”
She sat back and sighed. “Why?”
“The most commonly held theory is that people stopped talking to each other. They got married for sex and bought AIs for companionship.”
Mia barely muffled a snort. “It doesn't surprise me.”
“Some people would even say they got AIs for the romance.” They both laughed. “We tend to feel affection for our own AIs, the same as we do for the house we live in, or our skimmer. More so, of course, for the AIs because they talk with us. But we don't feel that way about the units generally, when they belong to someone else. Then they're just machines. Clever machines. Useful. And good company.”
“But none of that proves anything, Alex. They are what they are. Nothing more than that.”
Alex tried to change the subject, mentioning that, by the way, he had found Chris Robin to be a much more complicated person than he was normally given credit for.
But Mia stayed on topic: “Tell me, Alex,” she said, “do you believe an AI has a soul?”
He tried to shrug the question off. “What's a soul? Other than a poetic description of who we are?”
“I'm serious. A soul. A spiritual component.”
“Do you, Mia? Have a soul?”
“I don't know. But in a study conducted last year seventy-seven percent of the people surveyed said no to that question. AIs do not have souls.”
“A substantial fraction of that number, Mia, don't believe anyone has a soul. If you're defining it as a supernatural entity.”
“So it's all in the way the question is phrased?”
Alex nodded. “I'd say so, yes.”
“Okay.” She signaled for a clip. “Here you are on the Peter McCovey Show a year ago.”
Alex and McCovey blinked on. They were seated at a table in the more formal setting of a studio. “Peter,” Alex was saying, “it's easy to understand why people want to argue that their AIs are alive. They have every quality of a living person, so we bond with them. Even to the extent of doing foolish things. There was a guy a week or two ago who got killed in a tornado because he went back to rescue his AI. I think 'Harry' was his name. Right? The AI's name?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I believe that's correct.”
“It's natural that we acquire an affection for something that is so good at mimicking us. That can seem to be one of us. But it's an illusion. And I think we need to keep that reality in mind.”
The display switched back to Mia. “Those comments seem to contradict what you're saying now, Alex.”
“I'm smarter now.”
“Really?”
“Mia, somebody said something once about consistency and little minds.”
“Then you think consistency is of no value?”
“I'm saying it's foolish to hold to a proposition simply because we held it at an earlier time in our lives. But let's put that aside. If we're going to talk about Villanueva, there's something else that we should consider.”
“And what's that?”
“That world is a piece of history frozen in time. We abandoned it seven thousand years ago. Because some people felt that the AIs were sentient, they left the power satellites in place. Even did occasional maintenance work on them. But forget the argument about sentience. The oldest functioning AIs in existence are there. Imagine what it would mean to a scholar to have access to the Villanueva network, to be able to research the issues of that age. Think what a terrestrial historian in the third millennium would have given to be able to talk Egyptian politics with someone who'd actually lived on the Nile during the era of Rameses III. But for us, they're available. All we have to do is go collect them.
“There's another consideration, Mia. The AIs from that age would make pretty decent collectors' items. Understand, I'm not encouraging anybody to go out there and try to salvage them for money. It's too dangerous. But they'd bring a substantial price on the open market.”
For two or three nights he was the big story again on the media landscape. Various political figures, who couldn't get close enough to him two years earlier when we'd come back from Salud Afar, went after him for encouraging people to risk their lives to retrieve “useless junk,” as one legislator put it.
And there were reports of more people getting ready to set out for the lost world, seeing a chance to make their fortunes. “I didn't mean for that to happen,” Alex told reporters.
Academics jumped in, as well. Alex became a tomb robber again, only this time he was endangering those foolish enough to take the bait. And there was extensive coverage of a lone-wolf pilot and his brother-in-law,
