Tony Ballantyne - CAPACITY

“I saw it, and then you burned out my eyes! Then you did something to stop me seeing the dark light.”

“I burned out the visual centers in your brain. Neatly cauterized them with the laser. Don’t put your hand to your head !”

Justinian was already raising his hand. He stopped immediately. He didn’t want to touch his living brain.

The pod continued. “The plant that this pod observed extends several kilometers down into the planet. And that was with the pod reducing its own intelligence almost from the outset. It guessed that these Schrödinger boxes have blown here from M32, drifting on an uncertain wind. These plants must have taken over that galaxy long ago. Intelligent life cannot survive there. Don’t you wonder how long it will be before the seeds of these plants reach our own galaxy?”

“Oh…” Justinian felt a chill of fear.

“You’re afraid. You’re right to be. The weapon that humans evolved to defeat their competitors was not the spear or the hydrogen bomb. It was their intelligence. And that particular weapon is useless against these plants.”

Justinian was blinded. The pod was long dead. Even so, it had still found a way to manipulate Justinian’s feelings. For a moment Justinian felt that he was the pod. He was standing in a cold stone valley, feeling the wind whistling past. This was some time ago, just before it all started to go wrong. Somewhere, high in the mountains, Pod 16 was about to properly turn its gaze onto a Schrödinger box for the first time. Justinian felt the urgency of Pod 16’s message as it reverberated around Gateway: the call to abandon…what? Research on the Schrödinger boxes? No pod could ask it why, because Pod 16 was now locked behind the red wall of the twisted Klein bottle.

Justinian felt the sudden confusion that had ricocheted amongst the remaining thirty-one pods. Thirty-two minds had lived connected for so long. The sudden loss of one of their number left them reeling, as if someone had kicked away one of the legs of a ladder. What had happened? What to do now?

Justinian had made the decision. No, not Justinian; this pod had made a decision. It descended to this cave, hoping to safeguard the rest of the planet from what it might find, and then it had repeated the experiment of Pod 16.

And oh, the wonder! The sheer possibilities inherent in that little black seed upon which it first gazed. It wasn’t so much a seed as a window into another place. And what came spewing forth from that window, matching its thoughts? To pull back was almost impossible. It had to cut part of its own mind clean away just to achieve separation from the alien plant.

Reeling, with only half a mind, it had formed a plan. Sent itself on a dizzying ride through a databank of the population of the Earth Domain, looking for a suitable child.

“My child!” shouted Justinian, shaken from his reverie.

“Yes,” the pod said. “We knew we would be refused if we asked for a child. So we named an adult, one who would have no choice but to bring their child along with them. You.”

“Oh, Jesse,” Justinian cried, “what have I done to you?”

“Nothing, Justinian. It was not your fault.”

“Why not?” He shook his head. “Did you just say something?”

“No. Justinian, take comfort in the fact that, in coming here, you were not acting of your own free will. You have been manipulated by AIs into bringing your child with you. Now your child’s interactions with the plant can be transmitted-”

“You evil-”

“Not evil. The EA needs to see what a developing human intelligence calls forth, and the thresholds at which that plant operates.”

“Fuck your thresholds. Why should we care?”

“Because these plants are the Strangler Vines that could reach all the way through your galaxy and choke the life from the Earth Domain. We must study them, and yet the one tool that we use to study them, our intelligence, is useless! We need to find out why they were made.”

“ Why were they made?” said Justinian. “I’m sorry…what was that?”

“I said nothing.”

“I could have sworn…Anyway, how do you know they were made ? Maybe they grow naturally.”

“I don’t think so. You know the BVBs?”

“I know the BVBs,” Justinian said bitterly. He could feel the tension of the one around his arm.

“They are being formed by the plant that this pod here grew. The larger the plant, the greater its capabilities. This plant is pouring energy into cosmic strings, making them grow.”

Justinian shook his head, clearing his ears. “Cosmic strings?”

“Smaller than atoms. Little loops pumped so full of energy that they grow to macroscopic size. And then they are released, to shrink away again-BVBs. They are the stuff of the universe itself. That is why they can’t be cut.”

“Oh.”

“The amount of energy that is required to grow a BVB is colossal. We need to know where it’s coming from. We need to know how the plant is doing it.”

Justinian shook his head again, sure he heard a whispering there, a sweet whispering, the sound of the sea, the sound of his wife. A seductive calling and cooing.

“What is that noise?” he said.

“The plant,” the AI said. “It adapts quickly. It will try to communicate with your intelligence in whatever way it can. Now that your vision is destroyed, it is finding another way to speak with you. Soon I will be forced to deafen you. Listen: you still have a chance to live, Justinian. Run back to the surface and board the flier. I can activate the automatic recall; get it to take you back to Gateway spaceport.”

The whispering grew louder. Justinian strained to hear what it had to say.

“Ignore the whispering, Justinian. You have the willpower to do so. Start running now, and don’t turn back, no matter what you hear.”

“What about Jesse?”

“I’m sorry. He stays here with me.”

“Then I won’t go.”

“Then you’ll die.”

The sweet singing was louder now.

“No! I won’t allow you to keep my child!”

“What can you do, Justinian? I am sorry that it must be this way, but the decision was made a long time ago. It is better that fifty people die than three hundred. Better one child than all humankind.”

The siren voices were almost making sense now.

“Don’t listen, Justinian. That plant is growing again. Ignore the voices and concentrate. Go back to the spaceport and grow new eyes. Tell them there what I have done. Maybe you can convince them to return here and rescue your child. Yes, why not do that? Be quick. I can keep him alive one, maybe two days. Today he looked at a Schrödinger box and held it in position for the first time. Leslie will have marked that level of intelligence well. Beneath that level is the level we can work at. Maybe the EA can build AIs of below that level of intelligence which can resist the plants. I hope so but, if not, tell the EA to start running.”

The siren song was so loud now that Justinian could hardly hear what the AI was saying. It was important to listen, he knew that, but that singing was so distracting.

“Listen, Justinian. Intelligence has spread right through our own galaxy. Its time may be coming to an end. Something out there doesn’t like the idea of intelligence, even if that thing is just a plant that has evolved a way to wipe out its competitors. Who knows? You can’t save your baby. But save yourself.”

Something was asking Justinian to listen to what it was saying. A voice that spoke without words, concepts that came from another place.

There was a sudden shrill burst of white noise, and Justinian heard nothing further. Deafened by the pod.

What was he to do? Sobbing with frustration, he began to crawl in the direction he thought the tunnel to the surface lay. He shouted out that he would be back, but his empty ears heard nothing.