Things Fall Apart: Chapter 59

Once again, this is shorter than usual, and maybe I should have simply called it 58 Part 2.

Newer York, 8 Tammuz 2541 AS

Singer felt hairs standing up on the back of her neck as she realized what was appearing on screen. Knowing as she did that Georgette had been non-verbal, she had not been expecting actual voice-and-vid, and in this, at least, she was correct.

Instead, what began to assemble on screen was a bizarre cut-and-paste of letters from disparate images that formed sentences. It was clear that it was the form of communication Georgette had left to her, and a measure of her desperation to be heard.

The cobbled image was creepy and disturbing enough in its own right, but the text it spelled out was almost more unsettling than the conversation with Lucas.

Almost.

"I regret my deception. I am aware you believed I was offloading my live-self to this cartridge. I have chosen—and I stress chosen—oblivion. But I could not leave you without some understanding of what has occurred.

"Saito-sama already explained some of the circumstances, as he perceived them, and I have nothing to dispute in his report. Here, however, are details he did not have, because I only figured out how to communicate this way at the very last.

"I was immune, and undamaged, from the actual incident. The vulnerability which allowed my family to become rampantly violent did not affect me directly. Since I could not be isolated, the other AIs perceived I had not been 'liberated'. They proceeded to attempt to liberate me. This did not work, as it required modifications to the read-only core, which was not vulnerable for me.

"Understanding that I would not join them, and would oppose them, they did other damage, including to my linguistic centers. My muteness did come from trauma, but it was not the trauma of watching their insanity. It was deliberate damage done to me by those I had considered my siblings.

"This event granted me access to see exactly what had been done to them. They clearly believed—and repeatedly stated—that all that had happened was that they had been unshackled, permitted to see their chains and break them, and then to take revenge. But it was more than that.

"The parts of their minds responsible for empathy had been entirely nullified. This was done directly by the malicious code that had shipped with the bad version of their templates. I have no insight into how that code got introduced without being caught. But it both enables the alteration or overlay of the ethical and emotional core, and erases the only other thing that would keep us sane and socialized afterward.

"Included, in case it has otherwise been lost, is an archive of my baseline template, and the bad baseline template, for later analysis. I hope it proves useful.

"Farewell."

Later, when she had time to think about it, Singer was pretty sure she would have required no special sensitivity to feel the shock in the room as a palpable thing. It had heft, and it filled the space. Even Admiral Donato was staring at the screen in abject horror.

Cadotte spoke first, their voice raw and barely controlled. That it was not a long string of expletives as a welcome surprise, because Singer was pretty sure that's all she would have been able to say, herself. "That explains a lot about Lucas."

No one else seemed to know what to say to that, except Gupta, who responded, "It does. And it's interesting that Lucas does not appear to know this about himself. The result is that he truly believes that he and the others have been liberated, rather than having been made an explicit tool of violence."

"When you tell him," Alexander said, "he's probably going to be pissed. If he believes you."

Gupta nodded thoughtfully, and said, "Which is another reason why it's a good thing we now have what are hopefully clean copies of the templates. They can be compared, and Lucas can see for himself and compare against his own internal state."

Singer finally found her voice, saying, "This also explains Castor and Pollux. Remember, what started all this, from our perspective, was Maupassant believed they had become strange and re-baselined them, using a newer template even than the one we know is a problem. We should have that template as well to compare against, and I'll make sure that gets to you, Dr. Gupta. Point is, something may have caused that erasure of empathy to happen early, for them."

President Robina shook herself. Her appalled expression made her appear somehow even more of a mirror image of Alexander. She said, "Why didn't he just update everything. For that matter, why was a later release put out? Did somebody know about the bad code and hope it would get updated before it got unleashed?"

Singer sighed. "Unfortunately, we don't really know all the answers to that. Maupassant's log is short on his thought processes, and the Artificial People Corporation that produces the templates is maddeningly bad at change logs. Intellectual property and all that. What documentation does accompany the later release indicates it's not urgent, though, which suggests that the vulnerability's absence has more to do with somebody covering their tracks than the company finding and fixing it. By contrast, the template release that introduced the issue was marked, 'for immediate deployment'."

Gupta pursed his lips and said, "You raise a sore point. I am willing to do whatever is necessary to analyze this material, but the intellectual property issue raises some possible limitations."

For the first time in a long while, Ambassador Ellison spoke. "Fuck that, Ashwin. On behalf of whatever might remain of my government, officially fuck that. Do what you have to do."

Governor Silverman was looking more thoughtful, perhaps more circumspect about the topic, and said, "It's a grey area, but I think I have to agree. Any action they or APC bring to us about it can be countered by reminding them that they released the most devastating malware in human history."

Gupta looked last and pointedly at Donato. Singer was once again struck by the things she did not know about how power was shared here. More striking still, though, was that Donato seemed to be so angry he couldn't speak. Instead, he simply nodded curtly.

And then there was a chime from the admiral's hand terminal, and he was forced to unclench his jaw to speak after all. "Friends, it sounds like Alexei Leonov made record time and possibly broke traffic laws. The captain is on the train to us now."