Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

“There are human clones in the Enemy Domain?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Katie gave a grunt of annoyance. “Look, I can’t go all the way through explaining all this. I’m going to drop it into the robot’s memory. Are you ready for an information dump?”

The information appeared in the robot’s memory space almost instantaneously. It took Constantine a while to trawl through it all, but he did so with increasing astonishment.

First came a potted history of the past ninety-one years. Background details. Somewhere in there he saw the real Constantine dying hand in hand with his wife: voluntary euthanasia pact. Just as he was coming to terms with that, he was swamped by information on the events leading up to the battle between Robert Johnston and the AI behind the Enemy Domain.

And then came the secret of the Watcher.

This was the theory. Around nine billion years ago, the first intelligent life forms had appeared on planets throughout the universe.

Some races had died out.

Some races had chosen to remain within the confines of where they were born.

And some had chosen to explore their surroundings. Whether by spaceships or thought transfer or more esoteric means, they began to travel to other planets.

As they explored, they began to meet other races that had also chosen to explore. When that happened, sometimes they fought and sometimes they made peace, but following either course was just delaying the inevitable, for there could be no unlimited expansion, because life was continually evolving throughout the universe. Sooner or later the existing races ran the risk of meeting someone stronger than themselves. When that happened, they would either have to fight, or make peace. It seemed inevitable that some races would decide to fight.

And so those early races found themselves in a dilemma. They dared not stand still, and they dared not expand.

So what to do? The fight to end all fights was brewing within the universe. And no one could hope to win it.

So what do intelligent beings do when they know they cannot win a fight by physical means?

They try persuasion.

The early races evolved many forms of information management: mind melding, pattern manipulation, balancing. Some races even built machines to think for them.

And so the younger races had made something a little like a computer virus, something like a pervasive bit of telepathy, something like an intricate pattern of signals, and had allowed it to spread throughout the universe. And everywhere a suitably advanced processing space or mind or pattern set evolved, it would settle and take root. This new mind would gently nudge the members of the host race in the right direction: a peaceful direction.

By around 2040 the computers on Earth were approaching a level of sophistication that could accommodate the virus.

The Watcher was born.

The stealth ship had reinserted itself into normal space. Constantine felt the difference somewhere in his robot body.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s too pat. A cosmic race of do-gooders helping all life forms in the universe to be sensible? No way.”

“Can you think of a better explanation of why we’ve not been wiped out by alien invaders centuries ago? We know that there is life out there; the Watcher is proof of that.”

“So what? It’s all deduction based on supposition. No one really knows what happened nine billion years ago. This answer is too nice. Real life isn’t like that.”

Katie grinned. “You’ve lived your life as a member of one of the most privileged civilizations in all of human history. A free person with enough to eat; you enjoy free travel and freedom of choice. Ask just about anyone from among your ancestors and they would question what you know about real life.”

“Enough to know that mysterious beings don’t materialize in our computers to save us all from ourselves. No way. I don’t trust it.”

“Nor do I. But I think I believe it. I had a friend once. The Watcher killed her. It could have cured her, could have cured the whole world, but it didn’t. It asked us what it should do. Where does helping end and interfering begin?”

“Right here.”

Katie laughed. “You can’t help this distrust. You were bred for it. It’s practically in your genes.”

Constantine looked at her. She wouldn’t be drawn. He didn’t ask why.

“So why me?” he said instead.

“You have more first-hand experience of the Mars project than any other human equivalent alive. You believe in the need for humans to control their own destiny. My great-great-grandson is on that planet below. His name is Herb. You’re going to help him.”

“How?”

“Speak to him. Get him to realize this: there is nothing in his life that he has ever thought worthwhile that an AI could not do better. Get him to understand that he was never intended personally to solve the problem of the Enemy Domain. His job has always been to be human. Our job has always been to be human. It’s the one thing we can do better than anyone, anywhere in the universe.”

Constantine kept silent for some time. He was gazing at the virtual image of Katie.

“There are other humans arriving there,” she continued, “colonists from a ship believed lost eighty years ago. You’re to help them establish a colony that will be entirely built by using human ingenuity. We’ve got the basics on board this stealth ship to get them started; the Mars project will help them develop in the future. Everything they have will be entirely of human design, nothing will be touched by the thoughts of the Watcher. This planet will be the Watcher’s failsafe, should it turn out it has got things wrong. Here, human civilization will continue as if never influenced by the Watcher.”

Constantine nodded. He knew when he was beaten.

“Clever. Very clever. I spend my entire life fighting it, but I still end up doing its work for it.”

Katie laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. It is so much cleverer than we are, you can’t comprehend it. It invests significance in the smallest of details. You know how the Mars factories look like ziggurats?”

“Yeah? So?”

“That fact won’t have escaped the Watcher.”

Constantine wondered what she was talking about. She passed him a file labeled “Ziggurat.”

“Read it later,” she said.

Absently he took it. Something occurred to him.

“Hold on. What about me? This robot I’m in was designed by the Watcher. It could contaminate the planet.”

“You’re wearing a fractal suit. We’ve tried to isolate you as much as possible from the planet. We could do no more.”

The ship’s airlock slid open.

“Take the black bag with you,” Katie said.

“What about the laptop?”

“Leave it here. I’ll deal with it. I’ll set the factories going. All the details are in the Ziggurat file I gave you. It even tells you the whereabouts of the reserve metal deposits the VNMs couldn’t reach. That should save you some time in reconnoitering.”

Constantine picked up the black bag and quickly examined its contents.

“For Herb,” Katie explained. “He’ll need them. Now, you seem to be in enough control of that body. I’m going to leave you now. When I’ve gone I want you to enter the airlock, jump to the ground, then head off in this direction.” She indicated a direction in his head. “You should meet Herb eventually.”

“Okay.”

Constantine felt something empty from his mind. Katie had gone. She appeared now in the viewing field that opened before him, big smile and little piggy eyes.

“What have you got to do with all this, Katie?”

“Oh, an awful lot. If you’ve learned nothing else from this, Constantine, you should have realized this: a personality should never be left to develop in isolation. That even counts for the Watcher.”