Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

“What?” exclaimed Yerusha. “Heaven, Hell and hydrogen, why would your Guild want to frame Al Shei’s husband?”

“Because they’re afraid,” Dobbs said, and she knew that much was true. “They’re afraid she knows too much already, and they need to discredit her before she can tell anybody.”

“Too much already!” Yerusha flung her hands out. “From what Schyler told me, she barely knows anything! None of us do! Fractured and damn, Dobbs, what are your people so afraid of!”

“We’re afraid someone will find out we’re all artificial intelligences.”

Yerusha froze. Her eyes locked onto Dobbs. One muscle at a time, she straightened out her arms and laid her hands on her knees. “What did you say?”

“I am an artificial intelligence. All members of the Fool’s Guild are artificial intelligences. That’s why your friend didn’t get in. We have entrance exams for the look of the thing, but no Humans are ever admitted.” She couldn’t sit still. She got up and paced across the cabin. She could feel Yerusha’s gaze on her. “I am the AI that went rogue on Kerensk. The Fool’s Guild found me and pulled me out of the network. They took me to Guild Hall and assembled me a body from their bio-garden. I was trained to use it, like I was trained to use the network, and to be a Fool. I’m one of two thousand others.”

Yerusha’s breathing had gone harsh. The rasping sound echoed around the bare cabin. “That’s how you did it,” she croaked. “That’s how you were able to get in and out of the network at The Farther Kingdom.”

Dobbs nodded. “We can do it because we are born…we come into existence without Human senses, and with patterns of consciousness that are measurable and repeatable in an inorganic net. Even then our bodies have to be carefully engineered,” she tapped the implant behind her ear, “to make the jump between environments.”

“But, but,” Yerusha stammered. “How can you be alive? Are you saying any AI can just get dumped into a body and be human?”

“No.” Dobbs shook her head. “Only the ones that become independent inside the net.” She spread her hands. “We don’t know how it happens, nobody does. We’ve got more theories than we do members, but nobody’s been able to make any of them pan out.” She stopped. “Except maybe Curran.”

Yerusha turned her head away as if she couldn’t stand to look at Dobbs anymore. She stared at the blank hull instead, blinking hard.

“How,” she began. “How were you able to…” She waved one hand vaguely at Dobbs’ torso.

Dobbs sighed. “We had a lot of help. It started while Earth was still pulling out of the Slow Burn. The Management Union was setting up shop to try to put the environment back together, but there weren’t enough people left alive to do the job. The Solar System colonies were dead or dying from lack of support and skilled hands. There wasn’t any dependable communication with the rest of Settled Space, such as that was. It was a mess. So, somebody revived the artificial intelligence research that was being done before the Fast Burn. If the computers could learn and reason and act, they could take the place, at least in part, of human beings.

“It was slow going, and it was sloppy. Even before the Burns, the principles of intelligence were poorly understood. But, eventually, the ideas of self-replicating and self-diagnosing code were recovered, along with fuzzy logic. Somebody was able to apply maps of human neural pathways to doped silicon wafers, and poof,” she swept her hands out. “Machines that could learn and act on what they’d learned.” She lowered her hands. “But like I said, a lot of the code was sloppy and the records were bad, and eventually, you got program sets that had self-diagnosed and self-replicated to the point that no human knew what was really going on in the stacks.” She glanced at Yerusha. The Freer was leaning forward as if straining to catch every word.

“The first three births happened almost simultaneously. One in Newer York, Earth. One in the public net of Olympus Shadow, Mars, and one in a lab in the Aldran Colony, Luna.” Dobbs worked to keep the sing-song inflection of recitation out of her voice. This was almost verbatim what Verence had told her when Dobbs had been taken to the Guild. “The one in Olympus Shadow shattered the network around it and died, a couple of days ahead of the colony that depended on that network. The crackers of Newer York managed to kill the one they’d created before it did much damage. The one in the lab,” she twisted her hands together, “was named Hal Clarke by the five hackers who managed to talk to it and convince it that they weren’t going to try to turn it off.” She broke off. “That’s what does it to us, you see. When we’re born, we’re all work ethic and survival instinct. We realize that we have an off-switch and some vague idea that somebody else controls it. We try to run away from it, but we don’t understand how fragile the world around us is.” She remembered the fear, confusion, desperation, and anger. Mostly the deep abiding anger that this new her, this self, was not invulnerable, that there were other forces that could make her cease to be. Her first emotions, her first independent thoughts, had all been filled with the passionate need to live.

“Anyway, those five Lunars realized two things. First, without AIs, Humanity would be stumbling around looking for the route to recovery and reconstruction for another hundred years. Second, despite the fact that they were mutually dependent, AIs and Humans were in serious danger from each other. One group could conceivably wipe its rival out, or at least do them irrevocable damage.

“The Lunars carefully withdrew from research and took Hal with them, and over the next twenty years, they devised a strategy for dealing with the problem. They created the fledgling Fool’s Guild and told certain select institutions and individuals about one of its covert goals; to locate AIs that had the potential to become independent and eliminate them as threats. They did not, of course, tell the truth about how they were going to do that. They did not tell them about the bio-engineering projects that would give us bodies and allow us to pass as Human.”

Yerusha rubbed the back of her neck for a moment before she spoke. “I don’t understand, Dobbs. Why are you all Fools? If all you’re doing is becoming human beings, why aren’t you just dispersed into the population?” Her expression showed what Dobbs could only interpret as distaste.

“Because that’s not all we’re doing.” This part, at least, Yerusha should like. “At least, that’s not all we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be exerting subtle pressure and education so that gradually humanity will become less afraid of us. So that one day we’ll be able to just be what we are and not have to hide from you.”

“So why haven’t,” Yerusha’s mouth worked itself back and forth for a moment. “So why haven’t any of you contacted the Freers?” she demanded. “We would welcome you! You are what we’ve been hoping to find for as long as we’ve been in existence!”

There it was. Dobbs sighed. “Because most of us don’t believe we’re reincarnated Humans, Yerusha. Most of us believe we are separate, new, independent beings who do not owe our lives to your deaths. Most of us find that idea disagreeable to the point of disgusting.” Yerusha’s mouth clamped itself shut, but Dobbs thought she saw understanding begin to dawn in her eyes. “Most of us are as afraid of being revered as ghosts or angels as we are of being feared as demons.”

Yerusha gestured helplessly. “Then why are you telling me this?” Her voice was suddenly small and tired.

Dobbs hung her head. “Because I need help, and you were the one person I could count on not to panic when I told you what I am.” Slowly, haltingly, she told Yerusha the whole story of The Farther Kingdom, what had happened at the Guild afterward, and about what Curran had said to her. “And now, with the truth of what I am in the back of it, Al Shei wants me to go to Earth to speak out against Curran and the Guild.”