John Varley - Steel Beach

"You act as if your self-destructive impulses are my fault."

I thought about that.

"Well, why not? If you're going to start acting like a God, maybe you should shoulder some of God's responsibilities."

"That's silly, and you know it. The answer to your question is simply that I don't know; it's what I'm trying to find out. You might have asked a more pertinent question, though."

"You're going to ask it anyway, so go ahead."

"Why should I care?" When I said nothing, he went on. "Though you're sometimes a lot of laughs, there are people funnier than you. You write a good story, sometimes, though it's been a while since you did it frequently-"

"Don't tell me you read that stuff?"

"I can't avoid it, since it's prepared in a part of my memory. You can't imagine the amount of information I process each second. There is very little of public discourse that does not pass through me sooner or later. Only things that happen in private residences are closed off to my eyes and ears."

"And not even those, always."

He looked uncomfortable again, but waved it away.

"I admitted it, didn't I? At any rate, I love you, Hildy, but I have to tell you I love all Lunarians, more or less equally; it's in my programming. My purpose in life, if we can speak of such a lofty thing, is to keep all the people comfortable, safe, and happy."

"And alive?"

"So far as I am permitted. But suicide is a civil right. If you elect to kill yourself, I'm expressly forbidden to interfere, much as I might miss you."

"But you did. And you're about to tell me the reason."

"Yes. It's simpler than you might imagine, in one way. Over the last century there has been a slow and steady increase in the suicide rate in Luna. I'll give you the data later, if you want to study it. It has become the leading cause of death. That's not surprising, considering how tough it is to die these days. But the numbers have become alarming, and more than that, the distribution of suicides, the demographics of them, are even more disturbing. More and more I'm seeing people like you, who surprise me, because they don't fit any pattern. They don't make gestures, abnormal complaints, or seek help of any kind. One day they simply decide life is not worth it. Some are so determined that they employ means certain to destroy their brains-the bullet through the temple was the classic method of an earlier age, but guns are hard to come by now, and these people must be more creative. You aren't in that class. Though you were in situations where help could not be expected to arrive, you chose methods where rescue was theoretically possible. Only the fact that I was watching you-illegally-saved your life."

"I wonder if I knew that. Subconsciously, maybe."

He looked surprised.

"Why would you say that?"

I shrugged. "CC, thinking it over, I realize that a lot of what you've just told me ought to horrify and astonish me. Well… I'm horrified, but not as much as I should be. And I'm hardly astonished at all. That makes me think that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was always aware of the possibility that you weren't keeping your promise not to violate private living spaces."

He paused a long time, frowning down at the sand. It was all show, of course, part of his body language communication. He could consider any proposition in nanoseconds. Maybe this one had taken him six or seven instead of one.

"You may have something there," he said. "I'll have to look into it."

"So you're treating the suicide epidemic as a disease? And you're trying to find a cure?"

"That was the justification I used to extend my limiting parameters, which function something like a police force. I used my enabling circuits-think of them as tricky lawyers-to argue for a limited research program, using human subjects. Some of the reasoning was specious, I'll grant you, but the threat is real: extrapolate the suicide rate into the future and, in a hundred thousand years, the human race on Luna could be extinct."

"That's my idea of a crisis situation, all right."

He glared at me. "All right. So I could have watched the situation another several centuries before making my move. I would have, too, and you'd have been recycling through the ecosystems right now, possibly fertilizing a cactus in your beloved Texas, except for another factor. Something a lot more frightening in its implications."

"Extinction is pretty frightening. What could be worse?"

"Quicker extinction. I have to explain one more thing to you, and then you'll have the problem in its entirety. I look forward to your thoughts on the matter.

"I told you how parts of me extend into all but a few of the human bodies and brains in Luna. How those parts were put there for only the best of reasons, and how those parts-and other parts of me, elsewhere-evolved into the capabilities and techniques I've just demonstrated to you. It would be very difficult, probably impossible, for me to go back to the way things were before and still remain the Central Computer as you know me."

"As we all know and love you," I said.

"As you know me and take me for granted. And though I'm even more aware than you are of how these new capabilities can be abused, I think I've done a pretty fair job in limiting myself in their use. I've used them for good, as it were, rather than for evil."

"I'll accept that, until I know more."

"That's all I ask. Now, you and all but a handful of computer specialists think of me as this disembodied voice. If you think further, you imagine a hulking machine sitting somewhere, in some dark cavern most likely. If you really put your mind to it, you realize that I am much more than that, that every small temperature regulator, every security camera, every air fan and water scrubber and slideway and tube car… that every machine in Luna is in a sense a part of my body. That you live within me.

"What you hardly ever realize is that I live within you. My circuitry extends into your bodies, and is linked to my mainframe so that no matter where you go except some parts of the surface, I'm in contact with you. I have evolved techniques to greatly extend my capacity by using parts of your brains as… think of them as sub-routines. I can run programs using both the metal and the organic circuitry of all the human brains in Luna, without you even being aware it's being done. I do this all the time; I've been doing it for a long time. If I were to stop doing it, I would no longer be able to guarantee the health and safety of Lunarians, which is my prime responsibility.

"And something has happened. I don't know the cause of it; that's why you've been elected guinea pig, so I can try to discover the root causes of despair, of depression-of suicide. I have to find out, Hildy, because I use your brains as part of my own, and an increasing number of those brains are electing to turn themselves off."

"So you're losing capacity? Is that it?" Even as I said it, I felt a tingling at the back of my neck that told me it was a lot worse than that. The CC immediately confirmed it.

"The birth rate is sufficient to replace the losses. It's even rising slightly. That's not the problem. Maybe it's as simple as a virus of some sort. Maybe I'll isolate it soon, counter-program, and have done with it. Then you can do with yourself what you will.

"But something is leaking over from the realm of human despair, Hildy.

"The truth is, I'm getting depressed as hell."

Callie's foreman told me my mother was in a negotiating session with the representative of the Dinosaur Soviet of the Chordates Union, Local 15. I got directions, grabbed a lamp, and set off into the nighttime ranchland. I had to talk to someone about my recent experiences. After careful reflection, I had decided that, for all her shortcomings as a mother, Callie was the person I knew most likely to offer some good advice. It had been a century since anything had surprised Callie very much, and she could be trusted to keep her own counsel.