Within twenty years, the space egg sat almost hidden by young trees: oak, birch, balsam, spruce rescued from Keller’s Blight by genetic engineering, the fast-growing and trashy poplars that no amount of genemod had been able to eliminate. The egg wasn’t lost, of course; the worldwide SpanLink had its coordinates, as well as its history.
But few people visited. The world was converting, admittedly unevenly, to nano-created plenty. The nanos, of course, were of the severely limited, unprogrammable type. Technology leapt forward, as did bioengineered good health for more and more of the population, both natural and cloned.
Bioengineered intelligence, too; the average human IQ had risen twenty points in the last hundred years, mostly in the center of the bell curve. For people thus genemod to enjoy learning, the quantum-computer-based Span-Link provided endless diversions, endless communication, endless challenges. In such a world, a “space egg” that just sat there didn’t attract many visitors. Inert, nonplastic, noninteractive, it simply wasn’tinteresting enough.
No matter where it came from.
Transmission: There is nothing here yet.
Current probability of occurrence: 94%.
They had agreed, laughing, on a time for the Initiation. The time was arbitrary; the AI could have been initiated at any time. But the Chinese New Year seemed appropriate, since Wei Wu Wei Corporation of Shanghai had been such a big contributor. The Americans and Brazilians had flown over for the ceremony: Karim DiBenolo and Rosita Peres and Frallie Subel and Braley Wilkinson. The Chinese tried to master the strange names, rolling the peculiar syllables in their mouths, but only Braley Wilkinson spoke Chinese. O, but he was born to it; his great-great-uncle had married a rich Chinese woman, and the family had lived in both countries since.
Braley didn’t look dual, though. Genemod, of course, the Chinese scientists said to each other, grimacing. Genemod for looks was not fashionable in China right now; it was in authentic. The human genome had sufficiently improved, among the educated and civilized, to let natural selection alone. One should tamper only so far with the authenticity of life, and, in the past, there had been excesses.
Regrettable, but now finished. Civilization had returned to the authentic.
Nobody looked more in authentic than Braley Wilkinson. Well over two meters high (what was this American passion for height?), blond as the sun, extravagant violet eyes. Brilliant, of course: not yet thirty years old and a major contributor to the AI. In addition, it was of course his parents who had chosen his vulgar looks, not himself. Tolerance was due.
And besides, no one was feeling critical. It was a party.
Zheng Ma, that master, had designed floating baktors for the entire celebration hall. Red and yellow, the baktors combined and recombined in kaleidoscopic loveliness. The air mixture was just slightly intoxicating, not too much. The food and drink, offered by the soundless unobtrusive robots that the Chinese did better than anybody else, was a superb mixture of national cuisines.
“You have been here before?” a Chinese woman asked Braley. He could not remember her name.
“To China, yes. But not to Shanghai.”
“And what do you think of the city?”
“It is beautiful. And very authentic.”
“Thank you. We have worked to make it both.”
Braley smiled. He had had this exact same conversation four times in the last half hour. What if he said something different?No, I have not been to Shanghai, but my notorious aunt, who once almost destroyed the world, was a holy monk in Harbin.Or maybeDid you know it’s really Braley2, and I’m a clone? That would jolt their bioconservatism. Or even,Has anyone told you that one of the major templates for the AI is my unconservative, American, cloned, too-tall persona?
But they already knew all that, anyway. The only shocking thing would be to say it aloud, to publicly claim credit. That was not done in Shanghai. It was a mannerly city.
And a beautiful one. The celebration hall, which also housed the AI terminal, was the loveliest room he’d ever seen. Perfect proportions. Serenity glowed from the dark red lacquered walls with their shifting subtle phoenix patterns, barely discernible and yet there, perceived at the edge of consciousness. The place was on SpanLink feed, of course, for such an historic event, but no recorders were visible to mar the room’s artful use of space.
Through the window, which comprised one entire wall, the city below shared that balance and serenity.
Shanghai had once been the ugliest, most dangerous, and most sinister city in China. Now it was breath-taking. The Huangpu River had been cleaned up along with everything else, and it sparkled blue between its parks bright with perfect genemod trees and flowers. Public buildings and temples, nanobuilt, rested among the low domed residences. Above the river soared the Shih-Yu Bridge, also nanobuilt, a seemingly weightless web of shining cables. Braley had heard it called the most graceful bridge in the world, and he could easily believe it.
Where in this idyll was the city fringe? Every city had them, the disaffected and rebellious who had not fairly shared in either humanity’s genome improvement or its economic one. Shanghai, in particular, had a centuries-long history of anarchy and revolution, exploitation and despair. Nor was China as a whole as united as her leaders liked to pretend. The basic cause, Braley believed, was biological. Even in bioconservative China-perhapsespecially in bioconservative China-genetic science had not planed down the wild edges of the human gene pool.
It was precisely that wildness that Braley had tried to get into the AI. Although, to be fair, he hadn’t had to work very hard to achieve this. The AI existed only because the quantum computer existed. True intelligence required the flexibility of quantum physics.
With historical, deterministic computers, you always got the same answer to the same question. With quantum computers, that was no longer true. Superimposed states could collapse into more than one result, and it was precisely that uncertain mixed state, it turned out, that was necessary for self-awareness. AI was not a program. It was, like the human brain itself, an unpredictable collection of con-flicting states.
A man joined him at the window, one of the Brazilians…a scientist? Politician? He looked like, but most certainly was not, a porn-vid star.
“You have been here before?” the Brazilian said.
“To China, yes. But not to Shanghai.”
“And what do you think of the city?”
“It is beautiful. And very authentic.”
“I’m told they have worked to make it both.”
“Yes,” Braley said.
A melodious voice, which seemed to come from all parts of the room simultaneously, said, “We are prepared to start now, please. We are prepared to start now. Thank you.”
Gratefully, Braley moved toward the end of the room farthest from the transparent wall.
A low stage, also lacquered deep red, spanned the entire length of the far wall. In the middle sat a black obelisk, three meters tall. This was the visual but unnecessary token presence of the AI, most of which lay within the lacquered wall. The rest of the stage was occupied-although that was hardly the word-by three-dimensional holo displays of whatever data was requested by the AI users. These were scattered throughout the crowd, unobtrusively holding their pads. From somewhere among the throng, a child stepped forward, an adorable little girl about five years old, black hair held by a deep red ribbon and black eyes preternaturally bright.
Braley had a sudden irreverent thought:We look like a bunch of primitive idol worshippers, complete with infant sacrifice! He grinned. The Chinese had insisted on a child’s actually initiating the AI. This had been very important to them, for reasons Braley had never understood. But, then, you didn’t have to understand everything.
“You smile,” said the Brazilian, still beside him. “You are right, Dr. Braley. This is an occasion of joy.”
“Certainly,” Braley said, and that, too, was a private joke. Certainty was the one thing quantum physics, including the AI, couldnot deliver. Joy…O, maybe. But not certainty.
The president of the Chinese-American Alliance mounted the shallow stage and began a speech. Braley didn’t listen, in any of the languages available in his ear jack. The speechwould be predictable: new era for humanity, result of peace and knowledge shared among nations, servant of the entire race, savior from our own isolation on the planet, and so forth, until it was time for Initiation.
