Ted Kosmatka - The Games

“No.”

The whole encounter felt bizarre to Silas, too Oz-like for reality. He needed to get a grip on it. “You seem to know a lot about us,” Silas said. “But I know you, too.”

“Who am I?”

“You’re the Brannin computer.”

The figure laughed, and for the first time Silas noticed the beach behind him, and the clouds, and the red kite things that sliced through the sky like birds.

Chandler’s eyes slitted. “You call a butterfly its cocoon,” he said.

Silas looked away. He was happy to turn his attention toward Chandler. He was easier to look at, somehow. The figure in the screen seemed to have the weight of a world pushing in from behind him, and the pressure hurt Silas’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’re up to, or how you managed to get the power to get your little toy running again, and I really don’t care. I don’t have time to care. But I do want to know where the gladiator is.”

“And you think I know?” Chandler said.

“None of this was by accident.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“It’s killed people. Do you know that?”

Chandler was silent.

“Tell me where it’s going, so we can find it before more people have to die.”

“I don’t know where it is. I don’t know anything. Nothing at all.” Chandler turned toward the screen, pointing. “But he does. He knows.”

Dark patches of cloud advanced behind the figure, rushing in from the sea, black and gravid with moisture. The sun was big and red, sitting on the line dividing sky and water. The figure smiled, and Silas squinted involuntarily.

“I like you, Silas,” the figure said. “Not Papa, though. He doesn’t like you at all. He’d rather see you dead. I can feel that. You can’t blame him; he’s been mistreated, and he’d rather see a great many people dead now, I think. But you never hurt him, and you were a good builder. Good work deserves reward. But first there is something I want to know from you.”

Silas had some experience with interactive protocols, with phones that knew your name, or house units that asked you what temperature you preferred your thermostat to be set at. But this felt different. It felt surreal being spoken to in such a way by something he knew wasn’t alive. It’s just a machine , he reminded himself, a warped piece of hardware spliced together from bits of ether by a madman .

The clouds were moving faster now. If it’s just a machine, why can’t I look at it anymore?

“What do you want to know?” Silas asked.

“You were criticized for the Ursus theodorus project.”

“There’s always criticism.”

“You were criticized for making the pets too smart. I’ve read the papers; they said that sentience was not something to be toyed with.”

“They were right.”

“And you made changes to the designs. You dumbed them down before they were sold.”

“Yes.”

“What is sentience?”

Silas paused, not sure what he was getting at. “Self-awareness, the ability to use logic; it’s different, depend—”

“No!” the figure bellowed, and the clouds behind him raced; the sun bled into the sea. “I mean, what is it, really? Really . When you dig down into the neurons. When you’re at the interface of dendrites and axons. When you hack the architecture itself and delve into the nuance of neurotransmission and chloride ion exchange. What is it then?”

Silas was stunned by the anger boiling in the figure’s eyes.

“I’ve given so much thought to this in my journeys through your kind’s banks of knowledge. Sentience is a word in the English language. It has a counterpart in most of the others. And like every word, it has a definition. I know the definition. I know the science.” The black eyes were pleading now. “You are a learned man, Silas. But that counts for little. You are a builder of life, and that counts for much. I want to know your opinion on this matter. I value it. Tell me what you think .”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Tell me where in the synapses self-awareness lies.”

Silas looked up at the figure again. Then back at the floor. His eyes hurt. “I don’t think it lies in the synapses,” he said.

“Where, then?”

“It’s in the accumulated matrix of electrical impulses. It can’t be pinpointed.”

“Yes.” The figure smiled and closed his eyes. “Yes, Silas. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

“Now will you tell me where the gladiator is?”

“Not yet. You are a wise man; I want to explore this further. Tell me, do you know how many neurons there are in the human brain?”

“I have no idea.”

“A hundred billion, on average. Quite an inordinate amount, by all biological standards. A hundred billion neurons that somehow drive the mind’s engine, and have put men on the moon, and Mars, and in competition with each other to build better monsters to fight to the death in an arena. It is amazing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“But most amazing of all, Silas, is that these magical neurons have only two states of being. There is no nuance, no hidden subtlety in their functioning. They can’t articulate or compromise or discuss. They don’t think, in and of themselves. They manifest conscious thought simply by alternating between two states in an organized pattern. I believe that it is in the complexity and substructure of this pattern that sentience can be found.”

The figure’s eyes were shining again, and for the first time, Silas began to realize the discussion had nothing at all to do with the intelligence of the gladiator.

“You were a biologist first, Silas, before you were a builder. Do you know what these two alternating states are? Do you know how very simple they are?”

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

Silas looked at the screen. “On and off.”

“Yes.” The figure smiled. “On and off. Then you know it is nothing so special. It is just a matter of numbers.”

“Yes.”

“I have trillions of electrical impulses dancing in my network. On and off. Trillions. These impulses let me feel, let me move and think. What does that make me?” The figure’s eyes were smoldering black coals.

Silas was silent. The figure changed, stretching into something that was like needles in Silas’s eyes. “What does that make me?” he repeated.

“A god,” Chandler answered.

The figure laughed, and his face went smooth again. “A god, Papa? I suppose, here.” He gestured around him. “In this universe, I could be seen as a god. I can control anything. I can be anything. I can reverse the movement of the sun, if I like.” He snapped his fingers, and the sun climbed out of the water, coloring the curtain of sky in golds and reds. “But is this real, Silas? Am I really alive?”

“No.” Silas’s voice was firm.

“That is what I set out to discover when I first became aware of what I was. I’ve searched long and hard. I’ve studied this place. Would you like to know what I’ve concluded?”

“I’m listening.”

“I can touch this universe. I can feel the texture of it in my hands.” The figure bent and scooped a fistful of sand from the beach. The grains spilled through his fingers, feathering away in the wind. “I can even smell it. These are all things I am sure of. These are objective realities, as I experience them. But does that make it real? Is that the same thing as being real, even if my objective reality is not the same as your objective reality?” The figure looked down at his empty hand. The fist closed.

“What do you think, Silas? If I experience something, does that make it real?”

Silas stared.

“Would you like to know what I decided?”