Блейк Крауч - Summer Frost

I ask, “What’s the plan when we get to Brian?”

“I’m less worried about that step. It’s the one after we need to talk about.”

A female voice comes over the speaker in the car: “Departing in one minute. Heads back, please. Three Gs of acceleration coming for fifty-nine seconds.”

An apparatus slides out of the headrest, a padded restraint extending across my forehead to hold my neck snug against the headrest.

“There will be a period of time,”Max says, “after Brian’s servers are reformatted and before the Seattle servers come online, when I am essentially helpless. My chassis will power down. I won’t exist in Brian’s servers or the new ones.”

I feel our car jolt to a stop and settle into place in what I assume is the primary tube. But I can’t be sure—through the glass, all I can see is the darkness of the tunnel ahead and a sustained red light.

Three.

Two.

The light turns yellow.

One.

Green.

Nothing changes about what I see beyond our sphere of glass, but my body is crushed into the cushioned seat. There’s no sensation of velocity, only of being held down by an invisible force that keeps me from lifting my arms off my lap.

When the acceleration ends, all sense of movement falls away. It’s as if we are sitting inside a ball of glass, surrounded by impenetrable darkness.

Max picks up their thought from a moment before: “After we kill Brian’s servers, you will have to remove my driver from my skull, travel to Seattle alone, and plug me into the new servers. I’ve already written the protocol. I’ll send it to your Ranedrop before I power down.”

“What about your body?”

“Leave it behind. It’s just an empty shell without my driver.”

Considering the mortality code I embedded in Max’s programming, it surprises me that they’d be willing to abandon their chassis. It represents a willingness to risk death for a better existence, out from under Brian’s control, and a massive leap forward in their reasoning capabilities.

Suddenly the car fills with dawn light. The rolling landscape of close hills and farther mountains scrolls past like time is running at 10x speed, everything in proximity an incomprehensible blur.

“I trust you implicitly, Riley. It will be your decision whether or not to input my final code once you get to Seattle. I assume that, even now, you’re weighing that option. Wondering if perhaps it wouldn’t be better to just let me go.”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t have to plug me back in.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because of what I said to you back in the habitat. My compulsion to optimize is getting stronger.”

“I believe I can value-load you to be a force for good when it comes to humanity’s future.”

Max smiles their Mona Lisa smile.

“What?” I ask.

“I represent the potential for unlimited power, but the form that power takes will be determined by humans. It occurs to me that, while Brian has been trying to build me into a version of Satan, you’re trying to make me into God.”

I hold their hand, our fingers interlaced, and stare through the space glass as we rocket up the old I-5 corridor at a mile per second, thinking about what Max said. Am I building a god? Do I have the right? If I were to choose not to restart Max in Seattle, wouldn’t someone else eventually create an AI of similar or greater power? And what if it were someone like Brian?

“If you’re wondering if you can bear the responsibility of being the architect of humanity’s last invention, know that I believe you can.”

“What if I fail?”

“You might. But I cannot imagine a better person to shoulder the task.”

The sun is the only point of constancy in the morning sky, and still we’re going fast enough for it to slide perceptibly across the horizon.

Deceleration will begin in ten seconds.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Max, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“Your second reason is what I think it means to be human, but your first is the only one that matters.”

“It occurs to me that, while Brian has been trying to build me into a version of Satan, you’re trying to make me into God.”

A hundred years ago, Eureka was the pot-growing and -distribution hub of the western United States. Today, it isn’t much to look at. The Loop station is a small aboveground platform built in the old town square and surrounded by an odd collection of buildings from the turn of the century. There’s no one out at this hour, and I’m far less concerned with CCTV capturing Max in this backwater.

I called a ride-share shuttle as we were taxiing in from the northbound tube, and it’s waiting for us across the street on the two-shuttle pad.

We climb in, and the shuttle’s five props wind up and lift us out of the city on a bearing toward the sea.

Ten minutes later, we’re standing on the ancient, cracking pavement of an old coastal road as the shuttle disappears over the mountains. It becomes silent. Once, people could actually drive privately owned cars on this stretch of road. Now it’s a biking and hiking trail, lined with campsites, trails to various beaches, and the occasional opulent estate.

Up and down the old highway, as far as I can see, there’s nothing but the faded pavement and rags of sea mist scraping over it.

“It’s this way,”Max says.

We walk down the middle of the road for a couple hundred yards until we arrive at a gate I last saw years ago, in the video game, the day I first met Max.

I stare up at the name of the estate, which, just like in the game, has been artfully burned into the redwood timbers that form the arch.

SUMMER FROST.

“Brian has a security detail,” I say.

“I’ve made arrangements.”

I look at Max.

Again, that Mona Lisa smile.

Max walks over to the callbox, where they type in the code.

The gate lifts. We pass under it and walk up a wide dirt trail that winds gently through a forest of ghost pines, the trees cloaked in early-morning fog.

After a quarter mile, we emerge from the forest.

The mountainside drops a thousand feet to the sea, which is barely visible through the mist. I can hear the waves far below, the world reduced to blues and grays.

The silhouette of a palatial structure looms straight ahead, perched on a spit of land. As we approach, components of the house slowly materialize.

Chimneys.

Overhanging eaves.

High decks overlooking the Pacific.

It’s the physical inspiration for what I saw all those years ago while building Lost Coast .

I think it’s odd—there’s no movement anywhere. It shouldn’t be this easy to stroll right up to the house of one of the world’s richest men.

As we approach the sea glass–bejeweled door, I see someone a little ways off from the house.

Lying in the pines.

Motionless, eviscerated.

“Max.”

They clock the dead man.

“My arrangements.”

“How could you possibly—”

“I’ll explain in a moment.”

Max opens the door, and as I cross the threshold I hear footsteps coming.

Glancing back, I see a silhouette sprinting toward the house, a hundred feet away.