Jerry Oltion - Humanity

In the short range-in an individual city-having aliens living together might actually strengthen things, but if that same principle of strength through diversity applied to galactic society, then the picture didn’t look so good. Maybe Wolruf had been right after all.

Ariel wondered if Dr. Avery had considered that problem when he’d designed his cities. And what about Ariel’s own parents? Her mother had bankrolled this project, hadn’t she? How much had Avery told her about it, and how much planning had they done together?

Ariel had never paid any attention to her mother’s business dealings. She hadn’t paid much attention to her mother at all, nor had her mother paid much attention to her, either, except to kick her out of the house when she’d let her… indiscretions compromise the family name. Ariel had considered their relationship terminated at that point, to the degree that she hadn’t even contacted her mother when she and Derec had gone back to live on Aurora. But Juliana Welsh had provided the funding for the original Robot City, so in a sense her long web of connections reached her daughter even here.

But how much did she know about this place?

That question, at least, might have an easy-to-find answer. Even if Avery was still gone, Mandelbrot was sure to be somewhere nearby, and ever since Derec and Avery had restored his last two memory cubes, he had been full of information about her former life. If he’d been within earshot of Juliana and Avery when they’d done their dealing, then he might know what they had agreed to.

She showered hurriedly, dressed in the first thing she found in her closet-a loose set of green exercise sweats-and left the bedroom.

Derec was in his study, keying something into the computer. Ariel couldn’t remember whether he’d come to bed at all last night; by his tousled hair and slumped posture she suspected he hadn’t. She’d known him long enough to leave him alone when he got like that.

She found all four robots in the living room, all seated on couches. She was surprised to see Mandelbrot in a chair; he usually preferred his niche in the wall. He stood as she came into the room.

“Good morning, Ariel,” he said.

“Morning, Mandelbrot. I have a question for you. Do you remember my mother and Dr. Avery discussing his plans for Robot City?”

“I do.”

“Did Avery say just what he intended to do with the idea once he proved it would work?”

“He intended to sell it to the various world governments, both in explored space and in the unexplored Fringe. “

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Ariel outlined her reasoning for the robots, ending with, “I don’t know for sure if it’ll happen that way. It didn’t with the city Avery dumped on the Ceremyons, but I think it might with the Kin. I think it’s something Avery should consider before he drops the idea on an unsuspecting public.”

“I believe you have a valid concern,” Mandelbrot said.

Adam left his chair to stand beside Mandelbrot. “I agree. Our duty to intelligent beings everywhere demands that we find out whether the cities will destroy diversity, and whether that diversity is as important as you think it might be.”

Lucius-still wearing Derec ‘ s features-nodded. He rose to stand beside Mandelbrot and Adam, saying, “Thank you, Ariel. You have found a way for us to serve all of humanity in its many forms. “

Eve stood and joined the others. Ariel couldn’t suppress a giggle at the image of four robots presenting a united front against a galaxy-wide menace. But right behind the giggle came the shudder as she considered the menace itself. Maybe they were jumping at shadows, but then again, maybe they weren’t.

“All right,” she said, “let’s figure out what we’re going to do. I think our first priority should be to find Avery and keep him from spreading this around any more than he has already, at least until we know how dangerous it is.”

“Agreed,” the robots said in unison.

“All right, then, let’s get to it.”

“Derec?”

He looked up from the monitor, puzzled. Had someone spoken? He turned to see Ariel standing in the doorway, a worried expression on her face.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you, but…do you know where your dad is?”

Her words made no sense to him. Variables still danced before his eyes, those peculiar variable-variables that changed their meaning over time. Using those super-variables was the only way he could make any sense of the equation he’d copied by hand from his desktop, but even with the computer to keep track of their mutations for him, he could barely follow the concept in his mind.

At last a little of what Ariel had said percolated through. “Dad,” he said stupidly. “You mean Avery?”

Ariel frowned. “Of course I mean Avery. Who else? Do you know where he is?”

He tried to think. Avery. Where was Avery? Did he know? “Uh…no. No, I don’t.”

“It’s kind of important.”

“I still don’t know.”

“Some help you are.”

The sting behind her words helped jolt him out of his stupor. “Sorry. I…I do have a program trying to track him down, but so far it hasn’t found any sign of him.”

That mollified her a bit. “Oh. Well, if it does, let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

She stepped farther into the room, looked over his shoulder. “What are you working on, anyway?”

“The formula. “

“What formula?”

“The one on my desk. It came back, and I had time to copy it this time. I think it’s a robotics formula, but I’m not sure.”

“You’re not even sure of that?”

“No. The meaning of the variables keeps changing.”

“Hmm.” Ariel gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Well, good luck. But remember to call me if you hear anything about Avery, okay?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Ariel left the room. Derec heard her say something to someone in the living room, then the apartment door opened and closed and there was silence. He turned back to the monitor and the formula.

It was both a formula and a program; he had discovered that much about it. It was a formula in that it definitely expressed a relationship between its various symbols, but it was a program in that it was dynamic, changing over time. He had even managed to run a portion of it with his computer in local mode, but since he didn’t know what input to give it, it had crashed within seconds.

For at least the hundredth time, he wondered if he was right about its origin. Had his mother sent it to him? Usually programmers would insert their names in the code somewhere to identify it as theirs, but Derec hadn’t found any section of non-changing code big enough to hold a pair of initials, much less a name.

Formula or program, the notation was incredibly dense. The whole thing fit into one screen full of code. He stared at it, as if waiting for it to suddenly resolve into something. Idly, knowing it would do no good, he pressed the incremental execution button, running the program one step at a time while he watched the code”. Different variables blinked with new values at each step, but they were never the same variables and never the same values.

Except one. He pushed the increment button again. Sure enough, one variable near the top left comer of the screen changed with each iteration. It was an alphabetic variable rather than a numeric one; he watched it through half a dozen steps as it changed: S-T-A-S-I-blank. Hmmm. It had disappeared entirely. He kept pushing the button and it appeared again: J-A-N-E-T-blank-A-N-A-S-T-A-S-I-blank-blank-J-A-N-ET-blank-A-N-A-S-T-A-S-I-blank-blank-J-A-N-E-T-blank…

“Of course!” he shouted. Why use over a dozen bytes of code when a single super-variable would do? He pushed the button again and again. ANASTASI. JANET ANASTASI. His mother’s name was Janet Anastasi.