Greenaway and GalDiv disagree. How can you stop them? Or any other colony/dominion wanting to go its own way? People had died making the Belt habitable, and it wasn’t for the glory of Earth Central.
There are pukka human colonies where aliens can be nervous and friendly like cows; or nervous and dangerous like sharks. Then the colonies GalDiv doesn’t want to know about, where humans and aliens have developed strange types of alliances that even – shock-horror – include sexual contact. No breeding but lots of wild nights. Humans are so adaptable. Aliens are as good a fetish as anything else.
And then there are colonies that scare the hell out of Greenaway, with aliens that make the Gliese seem like the family next door. Greenaway has long known that horror isn’t fangs and tentacles. It isn’t the carnage of a battlefield, nor the malevolence of a twisted human mind. True horror is beyond understanding. Like the alien artefact that had propelled a Swiss village into an adjacent dimension. They could be heard screaming but couldn’t be seen. Eventually the artefact was sent into the sun and the screaming stopped.
Humans learned to live alongside alien horror. And so became part of it and human no more.
* * *
Yet, the greatest horror would be revealed as the price humanity paid for the Gliese-supplied star drives. Human beings, any age, sex or condition, as long as they’re alive at the moment of exchange. Criminals, the terminally ill and dying, bold explorers or hopeless romantics. GalDiv still had no idea what happened to them. Greenaway was desperate to find out.
“You have to know,” he’d once accused Tse.
“I don’t. And will not try to see.” Tse spoke of seeing the future. In fact it was a combination of logical thought that only a pre-cog could understand; and mental visions difficult to describe. “It could affect the outcome.”
* * *
There’s a standard currency throughout human space: virtscrip, developed by the big corporations. But from the outset planets and their businesses had problems with financing, credit and insurance, until GalDiv gave responsibility to new generation AIs.
No one worries that alien tech is at the heart of AI. No one throws stones at shops selling personal AIs that meld with your own mind. People trust alien tech more than they do human. Without it, humanity might just as well start looking for a decent cave. Civilisation would leave without bang or whimper.
People have learned not to think about the price they’ve paid.
Mummy knows best.
Wrong.
* * *
It was no good. The letter would have to wait. Greenaway put away the paper and pencil and drained his glass. There was maybe a centimetre left in the bottle, enough for an angel’s kiss. He drank it in one.
“I’ll be gone for the rest of the day,” he told his PA, the lie coming easily.
She nodded. “City state AIs are acting rogue all over the world.”
“Twist will keep me informed.”
“Is it going to be okay?” She meant the world.
“It’ll change,” he said. “But that may be no bad thing.” He took the paper and pencil with him.
2
Kara Jones prowled barefoot in the morning sunshine on flood-adapted soft grass bordering the Upper Severn Estuary. She wore loose black jeans and a matching T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, face bare of makeup, no combat lenses so her eyes their natural jet black. Her face twisted into a scowl when her AI announced that Anson Greenaway was on his way.
> Tell him I’m busy.
< I did. His AI said “so what”. Also, have you seen the news? She had, and for that reason expected Greenaway to show up. Maybe the pre-cogs had given up trying to subvert creative, chaotic humanity in favour of destroying it. Or possibly that was always the plan. Get humans dependent on alien artificial intelligence and then send the AI mad.
She heard the distant whine of an aerial jitney. Greenaway was near. She might still be angry with him but two weeks spent on her own had been too long. The neighbours were welcoming, once Marc’s house AI had confirmed that Kara and Marc were friends. Although how it knew was a mystery to her... until the house AI explained that it and Marc’s personal AI had been in constant contact when he was on Earth. She’d asked Ishmael, her self-named AI, about it.
< Of course we chat. It’s good to have a sympathetic ear.
> Chat?
< Exchange pleasantries. Gossip. Talk about stuff.
> I thought you were kind of exclusive.
< You got a fascinating mind, Kara. But sometimes I need a break, okay? Access to new ideas and opinions is as healthy for AIs as for humans.
Kara frowned. Not the centre of her AI’s universe?
> Surely if you give two AIs access to the same facts and sensory inputs, they’ll come to the same conclusions?
Her AI’s mental voice was condescending.
< I’m constantly amazed by how little you know about us.
> “You” meaning me, or “you” meaning humans in general?
< Indeed.
Oddly inconclusive but the best she could expect. So while personal AIs would never act against their human, they did have their secrets. She wondered how much information was exchanged, then mentally shrugged. Too late to do anything now. That problem had been posed before she’d been born, with Facebook, Twitter and the social media explosion, and solved by just ignoring it.
Kara had a problem with the neighbours. They had nothing in common. She couldn’t tell them about going Up, about the boojums that live in netherspace or the species-crossing civilisation of pre-cogs that wanted to turn Earth into a do-nothing paradise. Even if they believed her, in the few moments before screaming panic set in they’d bitterly resent the messenger of doom.
Kara had known a similar isolation after leaving the Army. How do you explain the satisfaction of being a sniper/assassin to
