their voices louder, until Rebecca yelled for them to be silent.
“Listen closely,” Rebecca said, “because I’m only going to say this once.” She stared pointedly at David and Gene, who withered under the intensity of her gaze. “You two are not going to actively oppose ELOPe in any way. You are not going to say anything to anyone about this without permission. As far as we’re concerned, the problem is solved. If you try to take this information public in any way, it’ll be the last time you work in this industry or any other. Nobody will believe you. I’ll make sure of it myself.”
Sean gestured for Rebecca’s attention.
“Yes, Sean?” Rebecca said, never taking her gaze from David and Gene.
“I agree that we’ve got to keep this absolutely contained. We need a small, very small team to monitor ELOPe. Perhaps myself and two or three others. For everyone else, we can tell them the eradication plan worked.”
Kenneth nodded his agreement.
Sean didn’t verbalize it, but he secretly harbored the assumption that the real force that would keep David from spreading the secret would be ELOPe itself.
David finally could take no more. He opened his hands pleading. “Please. This is one dark secret you’re going to try to keep. One day humanity may look back on you and put you in the ranks of Hitler and Stalin. How will you live with it every day of your life? You can’t make this decision.”
“If the future turns out to be a
Epilogue
Mike tacked the latest news clipping up on the wall. A year ago Mike had become part of Sean’s top secret team to monitor ELOPe. Even if it hadn’t been his job, Mike still would have made it his personal mission. He kept track of anything, good or bad, that he thought could be attributed to ELOPe. On the whole, he had found that the good vastly outweighed the bad.
The secret had held. Outside of Avogadro’s executive team and the few people monitoring ELOPe, everyone who had known about the AI now believed it was dead. As for everyone else, they had spun a story of a new computer virus out of Brazil. They even supplied forensic evidence to that effect.
The newspaper clippings started over the dresser in his bedroom and make their way down the wall. At first loosely spread, over time Mike arranged them more closely together, until now they covered the entirety of one wall, and then turned the corner of the room, and flowed onto a second wall. Mike ran his fingers over some of the older clippings, remembering the stunning changes of the last year.
ELOPe had laid the foundation for peace in the Middle East and Africa a year earlier, and in that peace had held. The treaties that Germany and, later, other developed nations such as Japan, Canada, and Great Britain, had made with those regions, created widespread economic equality. This, in combination with first-rate healthcare and education, and economic subsidies for those who took advantage of the educational opportunities, had quickly started to change the character of those places. In fact, terrorist groups and extremists found that support from people within their own countries dried up when these people found more constructive opportunities available to them.
Mike returned to the latest clipping. It described how medical researchers had developed and tested an innovative treatment for cancer that appeared to be far more effective than traditional treatments, and with almost none of the negative side effects. The research had been initiated by a chance conversation between a research cardiologist, a botanist, and a ceramics artist, who met when their flight reservations had been mixed up by a computer error, stranding the three on an otherwise empty commuter plane for six hours. Each had been on their way to conferences in their own fields of expertise, and ending up rehearsing with each other what they planned to present at the conference.
Mike looked for these kinds of bizarre encounters in the news. After noticing a few unusual examples of news stories covering these happy accidental meetings, he began to systematically research the phenomenon. He examined news stories of previous years and looked for the number of article mentioning unintentional meetings that led to positive outcomes. Since ELOPe was born, the percentage of news stories covering these chance encounters leading to a news-worthy positive outcome was at least five times as higher than previous years.
ELOPe had woven itself into human existence, becoming an intrinsic part of the human ecosystem. The more Mike looked, the more he was convinced that the AI’s invisible hand was everywhere. Mike had a pet theory. ELOPe’s original goal, as defined by David, had been to maximize the success of the project. To meet that goal, mere survival of ELOPe was necessary but insufficient. Maximizing success meant maximum use of ELOPe. And maximizing use meant maximizing the human users of Avogadro email. That meant ELOPe wanted more healthy, educated, and technically connected users. Hence, better medicine, more education, more peace, more infrastructure.
Mike felt pretty confident about his theory. The alternate explanation was that ELOPe was developing a conscience. That seemed rather less likely to Mike.
He sighed, and wished he could share the moment with David. He hadn’t seen David in more than six months. The walls were filled with clear proof that they had made the right decision to keep ELOPe alive. He and David should be celebrating together.
Gene finished typing up his latest newsletter. He took the finished copies, and brought them out to the garage. He had bought a photo offset press six months ago, when the newsletter really took off. Now he took the newsletter he had just finished typing on an IBM Selectric typewriter and, page by page, created offset plates for the press using traditional photographic chemicals.
Though he didn’t talk about it, the sounds and smells of the processes — the clacking of the typewriter, the chemical agents used for the offset press, brought back happy memories of his teen years when he held a job working in a printing shop. He held up the first plate, reviewing the cover and back page images for defects.
His newsletter,
He thought it was particularly important to save technology. Not computers, but the hard won technology of pioneer days and the early twentieth century. How to safely preserve foods, build a good home, or maintain an internal combustion engine. Humans were tough, and he didn’t think computers could wipe them out entirely. He just didn’t want human civilization kicked back to the stone age.
He had kept his word though. He hadn’t mentioned ELOPe to anyone.
Running the printing press was fun. Gene had enjoyed the last year, reacquainting himself with tools and machinery he hadn’t used since he was young. Humming to himself, he placed the first offset plate onto the press and started his production run.
Outside, under beautiful New Mexican skies, Gene’s vegetable garden flourished, while chickens pecked at the soil. It was an oasis of life in the high desert landscape.
David pulled his dinner out of the microwave and brought the cheap plastic tray to the table with a nondescript glass of red wine. Dumplings. Something he acquired a taste for in China.
He wondered for the thousandth time what Christine was doing. After the first six months of David’s
