Emissaries from the Dead

7. INTERFACE

 Every human being who’s ever dealt with the AIsource knows them through their ubiquitous traveling remotes, hovering flatscreens approximately one meter square and only a handful of molecules thick. These remotes travel so widely in diplomatic circles that it’s easy to consider them the AIsource in flesh. It’s hard to remember that the AIsource are really only intertwined sequences of multitiered code and not just aliens who look like floating black rectangles.

On One One One, the AIsource eschewed appearances and interfaced with visitors on their own terms.

The portal into the Interface was a hatch in the wall of a narrow corridor near the dock. Entering it meant enduring almost a minute of what felt like free fall, another minute of what felt like steady acceleration, then a third minute of vague disorientation as air currents guided me to someplace where gravity was negligible.

My destination turned out to be a vast chamber lit by a soft blue light. I drifted through the warm and richly oxygenated air, feeling a sense of well-being that belied what should have been terrifying disorientation, until the caress of unseen breezes brought me to a halt at what might have been the chamber’s center. Between the blurring effect of the light and the AIsource’s refusal to provide a reference point, there was no way of telling where the hatch had been or how far I had traveled. The room itself seemed to extend for an infinite distance in all directions.

The sense of entire kilometers of space below me should have wrecked the composure I’d managed to rebuild since reentering the hub. Instead, it felt womblike. I was nervous, and off-center, but no more than they must have wanted me to be.

Interesting.

This had to be the AIsource equivalent of maintaining an intimidating home office to cow troublesome visiting dignitaries. Such a tradition was the main reason human bureaucrats still sat behind used imposing desks, long after the transfer of record keeping from paper to hytex relegated such work surfaces to the technology of the past. It was cheap theater, nothing else. But effective theater.

The AIsource had always frightened me, a little. All other sentient species, however alien, could be counted on to need the same things needed by just about all other biological life: sustenance, habitat, the ability to procreate. Among sentients who shared those needs, there was at least a basis for understanding. But the AIsource had no biological needs. They were pure intelligence, driven by imperatives comprehensible only to them, and I’d never believed them as conscientious regarding organic considerations as they’d always been careful to pretend.

That and the fact that I liked being able to look other sentients in the face.

The chamber spoke in a feminine voice that always seemed to originate from some unseen presence directly in front of me regardless of how much I drifted. It is a pleasure to see you again, Andrea Cort.

This was no surprise. Flatscreen remotes had been treating me like an old friend for years. Not that I’d ever made the mistake of confusing that for actual friendship. “You saw me yesterday, didn’t you?”

You must be referring to your conversation with the Subroutine piloting your skimmer. It is a limited individual, enjoying only limited interplay with our diplomatic functions. As far as meaningful communication goes, this is your first contact with the bulk of the AIsource shared intelligence aboard this facility.

I didn’t waste time returning the empty pleasantries. “Two human beings have been murdered.”

The AIsource never simulated laughter, but the voice took on an amused tone even so. Many human beings have been murdered, Counselor. Almost all of them by other human beings.

“I’m referring to the two murders aboard this station.”

We surmised that you were referring to the situation here, but we felt some specificity was called for, given the carnage you’re known for.

If the AIsource intended to rattle me with that remark, they were far clumsier than I gave them credit for. “Me personally or my race as a whole?”

You’re certainly known for carnage, Counselor, but in this context we meant your race as a whole.

I refused to take offense. “Irrelevant either way. I want to focus on the two murders that have actually taken place on your station.”

We have no problem with an informal discussion as long as you remember what you were told by Mr. Gibb: that you are not in these circumstances a recognized diplomat, and are therefore not entitled to the usual array of diplomatic protections.

In other words, the AIsource could decide to take any punitive action they deemed fair, at the first moment I proved inconvenient. Another intimidation tactic.

“I make my inquiries as a concerned private citizen.”

Very well.

Whenever questioning sentients who consider themselves smarter than you, it helps to approach the interrogation from an angle they don’t expect. “Would you mind if I asked, first, just what you’re doing here?”

Please be specific.

“Why did you engineer the Brachiators?”

A pause. That is a surprising first question.

“It’s hard to investigate crimes unless you can understand the worlds where they take place. Do you have any objections to answering?”

No, Counselor. We hate to disappoint you on this subject, but the Brachiators are not the only reason for the establishment of One One One. The Brachiators are just part of a complex multitiered ecosystem, any part of which may be more to our interest than the activities of a minor species created only to fill an environmental niche. There are, for instance, acidic worms in the lower regions of One One One’s oceans, that we find most fascinating indeed.

“I’m sure they are. But I have trouble believing that they’re as important to you as the Brachiators.”

We confess interest in your reasoning.

“Sentient species evolve in environments where problem-solving presents a survival advantage. That’s far from the case here. The Brachiators live their lives clinging to vines and sucking on nourishment you provide for free. There’s nothing in that rendering sentience an advantage. If you only created them to fill a niche, it would have been much easier to engineer mindless animals, with hardwired behaviors. You had no persuasive reason to make them sentient.”

It was impossible not to read amusement in the hesitation before their next reply. You assume that their sentience was a deliberate part of their design. It could have arisen as a by-product of other physical requirements. Your human brain evolved in an environment that rewarded a certain degree of animal cunning, but gave no immediate advantage to higher intelligence capable of producing Shakespearean sonnets or discovering quantum physics. Your intelligence developed far past your immediate requirements only because there were other evolutionary rewards, such as your inefficient birth process and the physical requirements of binocular vision, in producing a skull that conformed to a certain shape. This innovation produced significant but, we assure you, accidental benefits to the development of that part of your brain capable of abstract thought. Much the same happy accident occured in the case of the Brachiators. Their brains simply developed beyond their absolute needs.

“I still have trouble believing that.”

Again: we retain a vivid interest in your reasoning.

“The Brachiators didn’t evolve by accident. They were engineered. They were created for a purpose. And if you didn’t have any particular need for the Brachiators to be sentient, then it would have been simple enough for you to create a simpler species incapable of developing that trait.”

There was another pause, longer by many orders of magnitude than the interval the software intelligences should have required to frame a reply. We have never taken action to discourage the development of sentience, even inadvertent sentience.