interrupted him.
“Hold on. I don’t like this. Why are we deferring to this man’s opinion? He hasn’t told us who he is yet.”
Gillian’s eyes burned with anger. Her skin was orange with a spacer’s anti-SAD tan, her accent a result of that strange polyglot that evolved when international teams lived in close proximity for extended periods.
She turned and pointed an accusing finger at Constantine, bangles jingling and jangling.
“The question I’d like answered is, what are you doing here?”
Silence fell as four pairs of eyes gazed at Constantine, but he felt no urgency to answer just yet. He ran his finger along the dull grey metal of the tabletop, conscious of the austerity of his surroundings; bare, grey metal walls, red plastic molded chairs, the black rubberized surface on the floor. Everything in the room had been built the old way, with no attempt at VNM construction. It couldn’t be risked; no hint of circuitry that might act as a transmitter or listening device could be allowed into this room. Was it safe to speak? As safe as it could ever be, he guessed.
“Well?” demanded Gillian. Constantine sat up a little straighter.
Jay laughed suddenly. “Oh, Gillian. I can see that you spend too much time on your job and not enough engaging in office politics. Someone has paid for you to travel millions of kilometers across the solar system, booked a shuttle so you could get Earthside just in time for this meeting, and you seem to think so highly of yourself you don’t find this unusual.”
Constantine felt a funny little stirring in his mind. He tilted his head, feeling for it, but it had gone.
Jay continued. “When you get summoned to a meeting where a mysterious stranger keeps asking questions, it can only mean one thing. You’re in the presence of a ghost. Just how far away
She waved a dismissive hand at Masaharu, who had looked up at her rhetorical question.
“I didn’t want the answer in kilometers, Masaharu. Listen, girl, you’ve obviously got some talent to have got this far. Someone clearly likes you. They don’t send just anyone to one of these meetings, but if you want to rise any higher in this organization, you’ve got to learn how people operate.”
– You’ve got to hand it to Gillian, said Red.-Look how she’s holding her composure. I can hear her toe tapping inside her shoe. That’s about it for the nerves. Jay’s right. She is good.
Jay continued. “You think this company is all about machines and VNMs and money. That may be true, but it’s the people inside it who pump those things around. They’re the bloodstream. And who moves through that bloodstream, checking that everything is healthy and looking out for infections?” Jay nodded toward Constantine. “Him.”
Gillian looked from one to the other, then folded her hands gently in her lap. Bangles jingled on the white material of her shift. “You may be right, Jay. Maybe I have spent too long in the Oort cloud. However, my conscience is clear. My time there has been spent working to the good of the company and for all humanity. I’m not worried about spies.”
“I’m not a spy,” said Constantine simply.
Gillian flashed him an angry look. “I don’t care what you are. I came here for advice. You say I don’t spend enough time worrying about other people,” she turned her angry look toward Jay, “but that’s because I think we have far more urgent things to worry about. We have it in our power to unleash something we do not understand upon the universe. AIs! Admittedly more intelligent than ourselves and with the power to replicate themselves. For all we know, we may have already let the genie out of the bottle. I think that at times like this, personal advancement counts for little.”
Marion tapped a glass on the table. The dull thudding gradually captured their attention. “Thank you. Gillian. No one is questioning your integrity. I think it’s fair to say that we all understand the problem as well as you do.”
“What about him?” Gillian pointed her finger accusingly at Constantine. “He claimed to know nothing about working hyperdrives or AIs when this meeting started. Was that a lie, too?”
Constantine bowed his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Gillian. I deliberately misled you. I was trying to get a handle on what you believed was happening out there.”
“Why? Because you don’t trust me?”
“No. Well, not exactly. What if the AIs had manipulated you in some way? What if you were acting for them, even unwittingly?”
There was frosty silence from Gillian. When she spoke, it was with hurt dignity. “And? Do I pass your test?”
Constantine quickly polled his intelligences.
– I think so, said Red.-Except…
Constantine paused.
– Nothing, said Red.-Leave it.
– No opinion, said White.
– I’m pretty sure she’s clean, said Blue.
Grey remained silent.
“We think that you do,” said Constantine “Although, how can we ever be sure?” he added hurriedly.
“We always return to this same argument,” interrupted Masaharu. “The AIs are admittedly more intelligent than we are. If they are really that much more intelligent, then we cannot hope to outwit them. If we are to achieve anything, we have no choice but to hope that they’re not.”
Constantine nodded. “He’s right. I’ve lived the last two years of my life believing that.”
Gillian looked from Constantine to Masaharu and back again. She appeared to relax, leaning back in her chair. She spoke softly. “Okay. I understand that. So if you already know everything that I’ve told you, why am I here?”
Marion spoke. “Because we need your knowledge. You won’t be able to return to the Oort cloud, you know. We can’t take the risk of those AIs finding out anything that you hear at this meeting.”
“But what about my work?”
“Your work here is far more important now.” Marion turned to Constantine. “Would you like to explain?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, Gillian. It’s true. The reason that I am here…”
He paused as a strange lightheadedness washed over him. For a moment, the table had seemed to flicker. Looking up he saw two Gillians…No, that wasn’t right, he saw one Gillian sitting inside another. One Gillian seemed frozen in place, her hand paused in the motion of scratching herself behind the ear. The second Gillian seemed to sit inside her and overlap the first, a normal young woman; she looked at Constantine with an expression of interest, shifting in her chair as she did so.
Constantine blinked hard. He reached out and placed a hand on the table’s surface. Cool and solid, it seemed reassuringly real.
“Are you feeling okay, Constantine?” asked Jay.
“Fine.” Constantine rubbed his hand back and forth for a moment, and then picked up his glass and took a sip of water. When he blinked again, the second Gillian had gone.
“Okay,” he continued. “I’m here to set in motion a train of events I have been leading toward for the past two years. We are here to safeguard against a possible future that has been increasingly apparent to humankind for at least two centuries. It seems to me that everything is finally in place. It is our duty to decide if we are right to take the course of action that is before us.”
There was a slight pause at this announcement.
– Look at Jay smiling, said Red.-She’s taken a shine to you. She likes a man with spirit.
Constantine coughed, then continued. “Okay. So, the order of events is as follows. First, we need to decide if we believe the AIs are working for or against us. Second, and this may or may not be relevant to the first point, do we go ahead with the plan?”
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Jay-Jay who sat motionless, a frozen expression on her face, while a second Jay leaned forward to pour herself a glass of water.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore,” he mumbled. Jay and the rest stared at him with
