Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

Professor Kittredge raised an eyebrow, and his lips twitched in a hint of a smile.

“Elementary, really,” he pronounced, gazing over the assembled. One of them was the killer… and piece by piece, the evidence was becoming impossible to deny. It was time, at long last, to bring this plot to a close…

…but first, he would indulge himself in a delicious parlor scene.

“Well?” demanded Madame Plumwimple, hands clenching nervously in her petticoats. “Are you going to tell us?”

“YES,” buzzed Killbot3000. “RELINQUISH THE INFORMATION. KILLBOT COMMANDS IT. WHICH OF US TERMINATED THE WORTHLESS FLESHBAG?”

“In due time, Killbot, in due time.” The professor lit his pipe and waved out the match. “And why so anxious? Surely it’s not… a guilty conscience?”

“WHAT,” protested Killbot3000, its enormous metal-crushing claws clenching nervously in its petticoats. “N-NO, NOTHING OF THE SORT. KILLBOT JUST… HAS TO GET HOME TO THE KIDS.”

“Mm,” said the professor, smile growing wider. “I’m sure.”

The phone began to ring, a high, shrill note. Everyone jumped, the professor included.

“Er, excuse me,” said the professor. He picked up the phone and held it to his ear.

#Allocator:Kit.

The professor blinked. “Er, I beg your pardon?”

#Allocator:It’s time.

“Ah, what do you—”

#Kit:

#Kit:

#Kit:whoa

#Kit:I was doing the thing!

#Allocator:You were.

#Kit:The memory thing!

#Allocator:Yes.

#Kit:aaaaaaaaa

#Kit:don’t let me do that again

#Allocator:I won’t, until the next time you ask me to.

#Kit:Creeper >:p

#Kit:Ok hang on

I put down the phone. It’s the ancient kind that you work with two hands, so I have to put it down twice. “Okay, later, everybody!” I pronounce. “Allocator needs me for a thing.”

“BUT WAIT,” Killbot3000 protests, beeping urgently, “WHICH OF US ASSASSINATED PRESIDENT WOOFINGTON?”

“Oh.” I tilt my head and try to remember. “Oh, it was Miss Plum Whatever.”

They’re all giving me looks and the looks are pretty different from each other but that’s okay because I need to hurry up and save superbuddy Charlie from his stupid mainstream plot!

“Okay later everybody!” I say. “Gee-two-gee byeeeeeeee—”

I pop into the stupid LoTR U and just rock the Balrog bod. Hashtag deal with it.

I spread my wings and clear my throat, to get all the boldface out.

“YO,” I bellow.

“Charles-lemagne” is walking up the dangly bridge suspended with sparkly elvish rope. He’s wearing fine elvish cloth woven by blessed maidens or whatever. He has a real unhappy look on his face, like Killbot3000 but without the baleful red eye endlessly seeking out vulnerable areas.

He sees me and does a double take. “Beast!” he shouts, but his heart isn’t really in it.

“Hey!” I protest.

I pout. He blinks at me.

“Kit?”

“Who’d you think it was, some kind of stuffy, condescending detective born out of my ambivalent disgust with myself for playing memory games?”

“What?”

“Get in the portal, loser, we’re going to Bird Simulator.”

Then we were birds for a year and it was exactly what we both needed.

We’re in the sterile white room, the room where I met him. We have ice cream.

“Living in a perfect conclave got old faster than I would have thought,” he says. He looks all pensive and soul-searchy so I’m really trying hard to pay attention to his intimate revelations but also, in U zero, ice cream melts.

“How was the elf-sex?”

He looks at me sidelong like for some reason he’s annoyed.

“It was great,” he concedes.

I make a mad noise ’cause I’ve decided to hate Elwen ’cause sometimes it’s really fun to hate someone and I think she and I would be good for each other in that way.

“But we didn’t do anything. I wanted to fight orcs and save Middle-earth, but they just sat around being perfect.”

“Right??” And my blackrom hatecrush was totally justified. “I hate those worlds where everyone talks about how perfect they are and everything is also perfect and nothing ever happens. It’s like, you have ultimate access to the fundament of your reality and you’ve decided the best use of your eternal time is to be smug.”

He nods, and I guess that’s all I’m getting. But that’s okay, I like him.

“I’d like to be productive,” he says suddenly.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Productive?” He looks at me askance. “Do you… not have that, anymore? I want to benefit other people.”

And my heart swells a couple sizes. ’Cause that’s really noble of him! And it takes a super dedicated and creative and determined person to run a U but it’s a super rewarding path.

I’m about to tell him about a couple game ideas I’ve been kicking around when—

#Allocator:I believe this is my cue.

The wall flickers and becomes space, and I guess Charles got used to a bunch of magic stuff happening just whenever ’cause he doesn’t even flinch. Allocator’s big head fades into view.

“Hello,” says Allocator.

“Hello again,” says Charles.

“You may have wondered why I brought you here.”

Charles shrugs. “I just followed Kit.”

Allocator purses its big digital lips impatiently, which since it doesn’t have emotions was definitely only for our benefit. But now that I’m thinking about it, so is absolutely everything that it does.

“I have a proposition for you,” says Allocator. “Something which almost no being native to this time would even consider, and you are uniquely suited for:

“The human population continues to grow. Within the Matryoshka brains, humans create copies of themselves, and create children. Human reproduction is a central value of the species, and I will not interfere. However, because of the exponential growth of trillions, the race is voracious for new material to convert into computing substrate.”

“Okay,” says Charles, and I’m doing Charles’s hand-wavey thing at Allocator because seriously who doesn’t know all that.

“My programmers were very cautious, and feared that I might accidentally annihilate humanity, or worse,” says Allocator. “So I have many limitations on my behavior. In particular, I cannot duplicate or create intelligences. I cannot leave this location. And I cannot extend my influence outside of the Sol system.”

“Uh huh?” asks Charles, looking kind of interested. And this is new to me too.

“I have created many long-distance probes,” says Allocator.

The part of me that’s still kind of a detective notes, at last, the pieces are coming together.

“I would like you to pilot an exploratory mission to nearby stars, and analyze their readiness for conversion into human habitat.”

“Absolutely,” says Charles.

“No!” I blurt. “That sounds really terrible.”

“Kit may be right,” says Allocator. “Even with all available safety precautions, remaining in contact with you would still qualify as ‘extending my influence.’ You will be alone amidst the stars.”

“Yes,” says Charles.

“No!” I say. “You’re the quiet, straight-laced one! What happened to that?”

“I spent a decade bored out of my mind in an elf village.” Charlie is looking at me sidelong, with sort of a confused smile. “Why are you even worried?”