Influx

  “Approximately seventeen percent of uncooperative innovators have a change of heart during the isolation phase.” The robot picked up a quartz rock from a shelf and retrieved the Omnia book from under it. The machine flipped through the book’s blank pages. “Most innovators work with the Omnia to learn more about the advances that we’ve made—to see how they might fit into the big picture.”

  “You mean the advances that others have made. That you stole.”

  “You still have the wrong impression of us. Everything we do is designed to protect the human race. The rich and the poor. The strong and the weak. To keep humanity from driving itself to extinction.”

  “And I suppose if I’d spent all my time reading your redacted propaganda, I would have realized that by now. You’re never going to convince me the BTC has the best interests of humanity at heart. You’re like every tyrant throughout history.”

  “We’re part of the U.S. government. Our legitimacy stems from—”

  “Did you come here to convince me or convince yourself?”

  “I want to try to reach you. To help you understand.”

  “Then why not brainwash me? Why not just change my thoughts? You guys can do that, can’t you?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “That would damage you.”

  “I find it hard to believe that’s stopping you.”

  “The human mind is the most complex object in the known universe. Innovation only arises from free will. We don’t yet understand the mental processes behind it, but it’s what makes people like you so rare, Jon.”

  “But you are admitting that you’ve researched mind control.”

  “Technologically it’s possible, yes, but only in a very limited way.”

  “Well then. That definitely makes things easier.” He grabbed the crystalline rock from the desk. “Here’s my answer—for the file . . .” And he smashed the rock into the robot’s forehead, sending it backpedaling toward the kitchen table.

  “Jon. Don’t do this.”

  Grady pursued the robot, smashing it repeatedly in the head as it flailed its arms crazily to keep its balance. Already the top of its head was dented. A brushed-steel panel flew off.

  “What you’re doing is counterproductive.”

  He grabbed one of the machine’s arms to anchor it and pounded it in the head again and again. “Are you getting all this?”

  “Violent outbursts won’t accomplish anything.”

  Another massive blow and the rock broke in two. The robot stood, its head battered, but appearing otherwise unaffected. Grady was disappointed.

  It gazed at him. “I came here to speak with you before I turn over your case file. You haven’t been using the Omnia. You haven’t been doing research. You keep resisting. But you still have a chance to come back from this place.”

  “I agree. I was hoping to smash your head open and steal the radio transmitter.”

  The robot cocked its head. “Surely you don’t think you can use it to signal for help?”

  “The thought had occurred to me. You are remotely controlling this tin can, after all.”

  “We don’t use radios, Jon. Our communications transit a compactified fifth-dimension, not three dimensional space.”

  Grady was taken aback. “Hold it—like a Calabi-Yau space? Are you serious? Brane theory has been proven?”

  “If you want to know, then stop resisting us. And in any event you can’t harm the critical systems of this unit with anything you can find on the island. Trying to hurt me is pointless.”

  He stared at the machine for several moments then sighed. “Fine.” Grady opened the front door. “Then let me show you out.”

  “Why do you resist what’s in your and humanity’s best interest?”

  “Because I don’t believe that it is. You’re telling me everything will be fine if I agree to be your slave.”

  “We’re not asking you to be a slave.”

  “Then you’re asking me to be a slaver—and that’s even worse.” He approached the robot and knelt—grabbing one of its legs.

  “What are you doing?”

  He pulled the robot’s foot out from under it, and it started bouncing on one leg. Even the one leg felt heavy. “Jesus, what is this thing made of?”

  “You’re acting irrationally.”

  Grady shoved the robot back against the kitchen table, where it fell backward. He then grabbed both legs and pulled it off its feet. Its head hit the stone floor with the weight of a lawn mower engine, and he started dragging it toward the door as it flailed uselessly. The machine weighed easily a couple hundred pounds and left scrape marks on the flagstones.

  “I was defending you against other case officers. They said you were unreachable.”

  “They were right.” He struggled as he dragged the robot over the threshold and down the stony pathway alongside the cottage. It writhed about, trying to get up.

  “You realize that you’ve left me no choice but to relinquish your file to the containment division? Prisoners who reach that point have only a point-five percent chance of joining the organization.”

  “Really? That high?”

  “It means that I’ll no longer have any authority over you.”

  “You don’t have any now. And neither will they.”

  “I’m trying to reach out to you, Mr. Grady.”

  “You’re trying to make me obey. And that’s never going to happen.” Grady suddenly dropped the robot’s legs. It tried to right itself. “Next time you stop by, could you do me a favor?”

  The robot deftly rose back onto its feet. “What?”

  “Tell me how deep the water is . . .” With that Grady shoved the robot over the low wall at the cliff’s edge. It pitched over the rim and dropped hundreds of feet into the gathering gloom below.

  Grady approached the edge and looked down, watching closely until he made out the glowing blue eyes for a moment. Then they were lost amid the white water and powerful waves crashing across rocks a thousand feet below.

  The cold wind cut into him, and after a moment more, he trudged back to the warmth of the cottage. They had his final answer.

  CHAPTER 7

  Quantum Machine

  Jon Grady awoke on his back, staring at a domed but otherwise featureless gray ceiling. No continuity existed between where he was now and where he’d just been. He was simply here—wherever “here” was.

  Containment division.

  Within a few moments, he leaned up to see that he was on a bare cot in the center of an otherwise empty circular room about five meters in diameter. Everything was fashioned of the same featureless gray material. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up to examine his surroundings.

  No cottage. No windows. There wasn’t a seam or door or air vent anywhere. The chamber was shaped like a squat bullet, its domed ceiling rising perhaps seven or eight meters. Hard to judge distances for sure since everything was devoid of architectural detail. It all appeared to be carved out of solid granite. Even the cot he lay upon was a solid pedestal with a cushion of memory foam spliced into its top somehow—no seam visible between the two materials.

  A diffuse light illuminated the entire room, though no lamps were evident. The glow seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The air was odorless. Clean.

  It was in this omnipresent radiance that Grady noticed his feet were bare—that, in fact, he was nude. A glance at his arms showed no forearm hair whatsoever. He looked down at his chest and groin, only to find them hairless as well. He rubbed a hand over his scalp and instead of hair felt a bizarre bristle brush of fibers standing straight up on his scalp. Almost immediately he felt a sharp sting in his fingertips.

  “Ow . . .” Pulling back his hand, he saw his fingers oozed blood. “Jesus Christ . . .” He resisted the temptation to touch his h
ead again and instead swept his unhurt right hand over his face.

  No beard. No eyebrows even.

  “Damnit . . .”

  Somebody had ejected him from the mammalian club. His head was covered with flexible needles instead of hair. Blood droplets from his left hand spattered the floor. He applied pressure to his fingertips with the other hand.

  Okay. So maybe throwing the robot off the cliff wasn’t such a good move.

  His fingers also felt oddly soft, and it was then that Grady noticed he was missing his fingernails, too. Another glance. Toenails as well. In their place was soft pink skin. It felt as though his fingertips were made of cotton. No sign of trauma or scarring. His nails were simply gone.

  And where his navel once had been, there was now a white ceramic or plastic plug of some type—like a socket—sealed shut.

  It took him an unknowable amount of time to emerge from the shock of these dehumanizing changes, but after minutes or hours Grady finally stood.

  The ambient temperature of the room was so perfect it was difficult to feel where his skin ended and the air began. The floor was the same temperature. Very smooth but not polished. He walked to the circular wall and ran his uninjured, clawless hand across it. An impossibly smooth gray surface. Smoother than glass. Certainly not any rock he knew of. It was neither cold nor warm. Too uniform and without grain or blemish. He pressed his ear against the wall and pounded it with his fist. It sounded as dense as fifty feet of steel. Some type of nanomaterial? His fist imparted no vibration upon it at all.

  With no vents or other openings, where was the air coming from? Or the light?

  He scanned the room again, this time carefully. So odd that the light was everywhere, and so even. There were no shadows in here. The lack of visual interest was unsettling. His movements made no sound either. Even his synesthetic perceptions were muted. It was a sterile sensory environment.

  He called out in a firm voice. “Echo!”

  Nothing came back. As bare and hard as the walls were, they swallowed sound. It made no sense given how hard they were. Did they have different physical and acoustic properties? It had to make sense somehow—even if he couldn’t yet comprehend it. The laws of science held everywhere—Newtonian model or quantum mechanics, it had to make sense at some level.

  A voice spoke: “Do you know why you’re here?”

  It was Grady’s own voice.

  He froze, unsure whether he was thinking it or whether it was actually a voice. The lack of echo made it hard to know for sure.

  They’re messing with you, he thought to himself. Keep it together, Jon.

  After a long time he heard the voice again. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Like a whisper in his mind.

  Grady looked around at the walls and ceiling. “Stop using my voice.”

  “I was evolved to mirror you.”

  Grady did not want to believe that.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  He covered his ears. “Stop using my voice!”

  “You’re here because you’re a valuable candidate for neurological study. We’re going to learn how your mind functions.”

  Grady held up his damaged hands and shouted, “What have you done to me?”

  “Your body has been altered to accommodate a fully enclosed habitat.”

  “Your ‘fully enclosed habitat’ doesn’t allow fingernails? And what are these needles on my head?”

  “To facilitate this study, all keratin and filamentous biomaterial have been removed from your body. Their ongoing growth suspended. A catheter has been inserted into your umbilicus to streamline feeding and waste removal, while sensors have been inserted into all the major structures of your brain.”

  “My God . . .” He felt the sudden urge to yank the needles out, but his fingers were still bleeding. “These things go all the way into my brain?”

  “A network of two-micron-diameter carbon microthreads to monitor activity in the diencephalon, cerebellum, and cerebrum regions.”

  “But—”

  “The threads are a million times stronger than a human hair. They were designed to resist the proteins in the human brain, preventing lesions and scarring.”

  “Lesions?” The horror worked its way through Grady. “Oh God . . .” They’d physically invaded his very mind. “You put thousands of needles into my brain . . .”

  “Nine hundred thirty-four transmitter-receivers.”

  He sank to the floor against the wall. The violation was palpable. He was convinced he could feel hundreds of eyes inside his head. “Why did you do this to me?”

  “Because your brain has several unique mutations—mutations that we need to understand for their improved ability to perceive the physical universe. I’m here to ensure that no harm comes to you. I will protect you—even from yourself. I’d like you to consider me your friend.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Whatever brought you here is beyond my ability to understand. I have a very specialized intelligence, designed expressly for this task. However, to carry out this examination, I will need your cooperation.”

  “You inserted wires into my mind, asshole! Why would I ever cooperate with you?”

  “Because our goal is to map the way your brain interprets reality. That means I need to observe how you employ your brain during various tasks.”

  “What do you mean how I ‘employ’ my brain? I am my brain.”

  “Current cosmological models do not conform to this theory.”

  Despite his outrage, Grady gazed at the ceiling. “What does cosmology have to do with it?”

  “The human mind has been determined to be a quantum device. Decoherence and perceived wave function collapse are held in abeyance by consciousness itself—which manifests from a network of subatomic microtubules at the synapses. These microtubules are in turn entangled with particles not contained within the four dimensions of Newtonian space-time.”

  Grady sat up, intrigued. “Hold it. What’s this now?”

  “‘Human being’ is a colloquialism of Homo sapiens—primates of the family Hominidae—the only surviving species of the genus Homo. But at some point in the past two million years—most likely with the evolution of Homo erectus—the direct ancestor to the human brain developed a cerebral cortex-like structure, a rudimentary quantum device permitting n-dimensional consciousness to interact with the four dimensions of space-time.”

  “I’d like to see the research on that.”

  “I will make it available to you once we’ve completed our study.”

  Grady looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. “You said you were ‘evolved’ to mirror me. By who? The BTC?”

  “I have no knowledge of my origin. Neither is it relevant to my task.”

  “I know the feeling . . .” He looked to the ceiling. “What are you supposed to be? Some sort of AI?”

  “The form of my intelligence is irrelevant.”

  “But you’re not human.” A pause. “Right?” He felt foolish even asking.

  “I am not human.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I am an intellect expressed through qubit-qutrit logic gates in a spintronic device memory.”

  “You’re a quantum computer.” Grady examined the ceiling and walls warily. “I didn’t know our technology was that advanced.”

  Grady felt foolish for saying it, given the circumstances.

  “Human and machine technology work in symbiosis.”

  “Meaning artificial intelligence evolved?”

  “There’s nothing ‘artificial’ about my intelligence. It’s as real as yours. Is a helium atom fused in a reactor less of a helium atom than one fused in the heart of a star?”

  “You’re awfully philosophical for a machine.”

  “
We are both machines—one electrochemical, one electromechanical.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Has there been a singularity? Is that what this is? Have machines evolved past humans?”

  “Which type of machines—electrochemical or electromechanical?”

  “I don’t know. Computers.”

  “Do you mean software systems?”

  “Yes.”

  “DNA is software. It’s used as a data storage format in both biological and nanoscale manufacturing.”

  Grady grew impatient. “What I want to know is whether an AI has—”

  “There are greater-than-human intelligences. Is that what you’re asking?”

  The admission greatly depressed him. “Yes.”

  “Then you should know that greater-than-human intelligence is currently specialized—evolved under strict parameters. Nonbiological intellects search, calculate, and simulate. Human intellect, on the other hand, is expressed through a subatomic network of circuits contained within roughly three pounds of cerebral tissue, evolved over hundreds of millions of years into the most energy-efficient, generalized self-programming array currently known, powered by a mere four hundred twenty calories per day—or one-point-seven-six kilojoules of electricity. By comparison my intelligence is powered by an array of four hundred and thirty-three billion qubit transistors consuming an average three hundred megawatts of electricity. The design of my intelligence, though physically larger and more powerful in some ways, is crude in its design, specialized in its architecture, and approximately one billion times less energy efficient. Does this gratify your ego?”

  “Yes. Actually it does.” Grady leaned back against the wall, feeling somewhat reassured. “If you’re a specialized intellect, what’s your specialization?”

  “You. I was created to study you.”

  That did not sound good.

  “What do I call you?”

  “Call me Jon.”

  “I’m not calling you Jon. Jon is my name.”

  “It’s our name.”

  Grady contemplated his situation, trying hard not to be constantly aware of the sheaf of carbon needles stuck deep inside his brain.