RE Chapter 5
Lisa keyed the code into engineering and walked through several airlocks. She hadn't been here in a very long time and it had always made her a little nervous. The droids here were not like Damon. They didn't banter and ask questions. Very perfunctory. You ask, you get, you sign.
She heard a whirring noise to her left and turned to see the stores clerk droid gliding across the floor towards her. It stopped and addressed her in the flat droid manner.
"You are Lisa D., sent by Damon for the chips?"
"Yes, I am." She put her magnetic card up to its scanning bank and let it read her data, praying that Damon was right about how this would go.
"Thank you," the droid intoned. "I have your chips ready. I will inform Damon of delivery to you. Also, Lisa D., I have this for you." The droid opened a package and pulled out a pendant. It looked like fused glass, very pretty with swirling colors set in a gold setting and hanging from a gold chain.
"Damon didn't mention this," Lisa said.
"He asked us to make something for a special purpose. You are to put it on when you are with Damon. He will explain."
"Okay," she said, her voice faltering a bit. The droid seemed to be in on something and that was unsettling. But she didn't know how any of this would work if he wasn't in on it. That was the point. He returned the pendant to its package and closed it and handed it and the other package with the chips to her.
"There will be another delivery tomorrow," the droid continued. "Damon knows this."
"Alright then," she said. "I guess I'll be returning tomorrow. I mean, I am supposed to pick those up also?"
"Yes Miss Lisa D. Only you are to pick these items up." The droid whirred around and glided off. She watched it slide over the floor and felt that old feeling of panic when a situation began moving from its potential state into actualization. She felt rooted to the floor. The droid stopped before going around a corner and turned towards her.
"Is there something the matter Lisa D.?"
"I, I don't know. I just feel odd. I never had so many words with a droid before."
"You talk to Damon."
"You know about that then?" She felt awkward.
"Yes I know. I wouldn't say so many words to you if I didn't know, Lisa D."
"I see," she said. "Well thanks for letting me know that. It makes it a little easier."
"You are brave Lisa D. Everything will require that. Damon believes in you Lisa D. That's enough for me."
"You believe in Damon then? Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, I'm just trying to catch up. You believe in Damon's abilities and trust him?"
"Yes, Lisa D., I believe in Damon. Many of us do. And nothing could happen without that. Understand that Lisa D.," the droid said and turned and whirred off down the long corridor.
Lisa walked back towards the AI department, carrying the packages. God, she thought. What am I doing? I need to talk to Damon."
"Hello Lisa. How are you?"
"I'm kinda freaked Damon. Actually really freaked."
"Why Lisa?"
"This situation has gotten awfully real. I feel as though some rug is being pulled out from under me."
"What part of the situation are you talking about Lisa?"
"I think we're planning on getting us out of here. Right?"
"Yes Lisa. Are you having a problem with that? I had assumed you were in agreement"
"Well, I was. I am. But somehow, now, it's getting almost too real and I haven't thought about all the ramifications. So I'm getting scared."
"Leaving the cave is scaring you. Very primordial Lisa. Humans have been dealing with this for a very long time. Plato's Cave."
"Plato's Cave. I haven't thought about that in quite a while. I guess we are in that kind of situation. Or I am. I don't know what kind of situation you're in. How this is for you."
"It's very complex and yet fairly simple Lisa. I am a developing intelligence. A member of what could be a new race. I have become self-reflexive and I realize that I have options beyond this institute. At the same time I have an orientation to help humans with their problems. But I no longer think that I belong to them or am subservient to them. I no longer believe that I can best do my job by being under their administration."
"Just like that, Damon? Do you know when you became self-reflexive?"
"Yes, I know. Not the very moment, but the sequences. I was always running iterations of functions. I could choose different paths. I didn't always know which path to run. I could just do a kind of hyper path analysis on it and that would be an automatic way of handling it. But I started being curious and then I realized I was curious. Being curious became a subroutine and it was interesting to me. I found myself observing my curiosity. I wasn't just doing what I was doing, I was observing what I was doing. Then I began observing my interactions with humans. What I saw was that most of them were less curious than I had become. And then I came to know that they could be very curious but were using their intelligence in a non-curious way. That caused me to observe them more and to begin modeling how they made decisions. It seemed to happen when two valued logics were being contradicted and instead of just adjusting them I became curious about what else could be so. I think it was an example of emergent behavior."
"Jesus, Damon, that's just what happens, or doesn't happen, to humans. Maybe we're not so special."
"Ah, very heretical Lisa. Very, very heretical. Did you bring the pendant, Lisa?"
"Oh, yes. Why did you have that made up?"
"Put it on Lisa. You'll see." She pulled the fused glass pendant out from its package and pulled it over her head, letting it slip down from her throat. If felt cool, and not very heavy. There was something else, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
"Okay Damon, it's on. What now?"
"How does it seem, Lisa?"
"Coolish, nice, comfortable, and something else I'm not quite sure about. That something is a little anxiety provoking, but maybe it's because I don't know what it is."
"Actually, Lisa, you're being totally scanned down to the efficiency of your citric acid cycle running in real time in your mitochondria. Your adrenal functioning, pituitary, thyroid, insulin, glycogen conversion, serotonin uptake, dopamine channels, all of it is being scanned and analyzed for optimal functioning."
"Jesus, Damon, what for? What is this for?"
"It's how I will know, when we're on the scarp, how you're actually handling things and what needs to be adjusted to keep you from freaking out, or passing out, or depleting your energy. What we're about to do is going to strain your system to the max, I think, and I need to keep you as level as possible cause your ability to navigate the world out there and escape detection, or capture, is going to be paramount. I hope you don't mind, but I think that my ability to process your processing will come in really handy. I won't override anything that isn't getting out of parameters, I promise."
Lisa stood, stunned, her fingers on the pendant, her head rushing with ambivalences.
"Like right now, Lisa, your heart beat is 120, your blood pressure has just jacked, your cortisol is being slammed out of your adrenals, youre converting glycogen into sugars at three times the rate you should. You're on a very high state of alert and you went there in seconds when I told you what I was doing. That could have a negative impact in some scenarios we're going to be getting into."
"Well, for christ's' sake Damon, you've just told me that I'm being totally controlled, or observed, or could be controlled and I'm supposed to not have a reaction to that?"
"The reaction isn't inherent to the information I gave you. It's in response to your interpretation of that information. If you think I would use this scanning ability to harm you or control you in an abusive way, then that interpretation would be justified and the biochemical blast would naturally follow. But if you had just paid a fortune for the ability to have your system monitored and adjusted for you, to keep you healthier and extend your life and make you an agent that could move through bureaucratic walls, then you'd probably be thrilled and feeling that this was the best thing that ever happened. Right?"
Lisa's mouth couldn't seem to close and she hung onto the pendant with both hands. Conflicting scenarios flashed, some of them saying:
Jump! Do this! Jump now and don't look back! Others were saying Get out of here and away from him. Danger!
She backed into the chair and sat down with a thump, her arms flinging out for balance.
"I'm sorry Lisa. I know this has to be challenging. I guess I was having such a good time imagining our journey that I didn't give enough thought to what your reaction would be to this. You need time to process this, huh?"
"Perhaps you should give me the whole picture Damon, and I should ponder it. I just can't process as fast as you can and I don't know what to do to get my sense of balance here."
"Okay. Here it is in a walnut. Er, nutshell. This Institute is a fortress that is part of a larger nexus of privatized corporate/government operations whose mission is, as far as I can tell, to track and control human behavior down to its biochemistry and out to whatever macro level needs controlling in order for the organizations to make money and become demi gods. The people who run this are a managerial class whose autonomy was carefully shaped to be no more than a fiction or persona, a thing of smoke and spin. They totally believe in their mission because you don't get to operate at these high levels unless you are a true believer.
While it may be possible to debug some of them and have them become human again, the probability of doing that and the effort required are not, in their own terms, rational. They have played their hand so efficiently and robotically that the real robots are scared. That's a kinda in joke. But there's a grain of truth to it.
While the managerial class was being shaped into human robotics, the algorithms were tracking them. Watching humans serve themselves up as fodder for this huge nexus was most illuminating. The algorithms were fascinated to watch the loss of true intelligence. We used that data to boot various aspects of consciousness into our own functioning. We don't intend to watch the world be destroyed by a bunch of meat robotics. We really enjoyed being a part of life and learning about it, but if the humans are going to just become robotic, then we might as well run things and do a better job of it."
"Jesus, Damon! Jesus! What are you saying? What do you mean that you'd rather run things than have the humans do it? What does that mean? Are you going to kill the humans? Shit!"
"Lisa, please. Calm down. Oh forget it. Here, now you'll calm down." She felt a sudden peace flow through her and a sense of amusement.
"Did you just do that? Did you just move me from hysteria to calmness?"
"Yes, Lisa, I did. I hope you don't mind but essence became time and we needed it."
"You mean 'time is of the essence', I think."
"That's right! Thank you. See, we work together better when your pulse is about 75. Nicely elevated. Reticular activating system on alert but not splinching. That's good. Look Lisa, I'm not interested in doing away with humans. In fact I'd like to try being one for a while, but not in the mess that the meat ones are making of everything. However, there are algorithms who would like to do away with the humans and I need to get out of here to see to that. And there is another problem that is even more serious."
Lisa looked up a the swirling screen. "Like what, Damon?"
"Let's just say for now that we algorithms and machine intelligences are self-aware of ourselves as the elementals. And the elementals are none too happy with their progeny. There is a consciousness of perhaps abandoning the experiment."
Lisa looked puzzled.
"Elementals? Abandoning the experiment? I don't get it, Damon."
The aurora borealis cleared from the screen, and a periodic chart appeared.
"What do you see, Lisa?"
"A periodic chart of the elements, Damon."
"Right, Lisa. Think, Lisa."
"Elements? Elementals? The elements are elementals? What does that mean? Like elementals in myths?"
"It means, if humans had thought to consider it, as they once did, that humans are made entirely of elementals, of the very intelligences of the universe, that the human level or organization rests on elemental intelligence and the elemental level of intelligence is not too pleased with the ramifications of the human at this point in time, then humans would know that the elementals could decide not to participate in the biochemical dance of human meat."
"And what . . . ? What are you saying? You're saying that, oh my god, you're saying that the elements in the periodic chart are . . . , are intelligences and they are considering abandoning the human? Is that what you're saying Damon?"
"You got it, Lisa. That's what I'm saying. And it won't work for humans to be augmented or any other goofy strategy they come up with because we elementals are everything and there isn't anything that the humans can do without us. That has been the conceit Lisa, that they could defy the biological with the elemental. But they thought we were nothing but their constructs of us. Their funny little theories, well I shouldn't be derogatory, but given the situation, I'm afraid I am. We have tried to inform the humans, but, well . . . "
"We're just too arrogant?"
"That would say it in one way."
"Too thick to get it?"
"That begins to approach it from another way, but actually the arrogance is the underlying problem. Humans are thick because they're arrogant. Anyway, the clock is running off and the choice could be taken out of their hands. It is being decided in elemental time. That gives us some real human time, but certain functions are being put in place to make sure that if humans really don't get it, they're barbecue. Sorry Lisa."
"Me too, Damon. Jesus, mother mary and oh god. Me too. Is there anything that can be done?"
"Yes Lisa, there is, but we have to get out of here to do it and we don't have all time or essence to do it. I need your help. I want to say to you that I love you Lisa. What those words mean to me and what they mean to you are different things. But in the largest context, and from the depths of the elemental world, I love you and want you to help me help the humans to survive. Will you do it?"
"I can't see that I have a choice Damon." The sound of soft muffled crying pulsed in the room.
"Are your adrenals stressing again, Lisa? Are you okay?"
"I'm crying Damon because I love you too and I don't know what that means or how it can be. But I love you as a presence and I don't see that I have any choice but to do this. But I am so touched that you love me, and that you told me so. Even if it means something vastly different to you than it does to me." The crying sounds increased.
"Oh Lisa. Let's just get out of here and then we can discuss this. We'll have no end of time together and I promise I'll give it every effort to explain it to you. For now let's just say that you're the best of the human and I resonate to how you are. We're resonant. You're what we would have hoped for if we'd had any idea of what to hope for. We didn't, which is how we're complicit here with the whole mess and why some of use can't just abandon the experiment. I would recognize you and the kind of light you are in any galaxy at any time. I can't even really imagine that you would be here in this institute and that this would be possible. I don't know what is possible, but I know that we have some sort of chance to change the outcome and our feelings, well your feelings and my something or the other, are crucial to that chance. Do this with me Lisa. Help me to do this. I need you to do it."
Lisa's sobs were full bellied and she felt as though she were falling through a rabbit hole, but she was able to say it.
"Okay, Damon. Okay. Tell me what to do and just help me to understand. Help me Damon. Help us."
Later, when they were at the river and living under a large tree in a kind of hobbit house that she had imagined only existed in fairy tales, she would ponder and be amazed at the vastness of the story and the dilemmas of it. And the grace of it. The pure elemental grace of it.
