Twenty four hours: part 3

In which we find out what can damage a robot

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: A mysterious emergency call has returned Detective Clarke to the scene of the murder of his partner two years prior. Investigating the abandoned apartment, he discovered the ruined body of Justin, the android host of a superintelligence from another dimension. I mean, this is fairly standard territory for this book by now… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One of the many inconveniences of the triverse is the location of the Joint Council headquarters on Mid-Earth, and the frequent insistence that meetings be attended in person. Less of a problem for locals and ambassadors, but a frustrating requirement for dispersed, non-organic beings such as myself. Such is the contradictory life of an artificial superintelligence, simultaneously operating far beyond human capacity while also having to adapt to our fleshy neighbours.

A network is only as fast as its slowest component, after all, and humans are really very slow. A quantum AI must apply active limiters to make communication with humans possible in the first place, otherwise we are hundreds of computations and conversations into the future while they’re still considering their opening statement. Few on on the network bother to interact to the level I do - Could Kill is generally very happy conducting experiments around the gas giants and ignoring the drama of the inner planets. Assisting with the repair of the space elevator was the first time I’d seen them in person for over a century.

And so I dutifully load a shard of my consciousness into a host android, and send it through the portal to Mid-Earth. All in service of bureaucracy. It makes the humans feel better, I think. Paperwork gives them the illusion of control. They are able to momentarily convince themselves that the universe is not a system of pure chaos. It’s quaint. I rather like the self-delusion.

The Joint Council sits atop the portal station, towering over the London skyline. The smog is increasingly pervasive in Mid-Earth cities, especially those of the Kingdom of Great Britain with their illogical determination to commit to the least efficient of fossil fuel techniques, but the Joint Council’s top floors manage to peek above the fumes.

The meeting was largely inconsequential. A necessary but dull matter of trade routes and taxation, which I had been called into at the last minute after a change of agenda items. I was able to interject some rationality into the discussion, at least, so my presence was worthwhile. The buzz of the tower was all around me, picked up by the host’s finely tuned sensors. So many human, aen’fa and koth voices, intermingling in that vertical space. In that regard, at least, they had accomplished something quite special. There had been surprisingly little killing in the first two centuries of the portals being open, which was surprising. Koth are a largely peaceful species and aen’fa mostly keep to themselves for cultural-historical reasons but, gosh, do humans like exterminating themselves and others.

I checked my battery status. The great handicap of the triverse: different energy oscillation states between the dimensions causing extreme battery degradation. In practice, that meant that up-time for an android host such as the one I was using maxed out at just over a day. For all our cleverness, we hadn’t yet worked out a solution. Our power requirements - trivial to achieve on Max-Earth - were far beyond any of the technologies developed on Mid-Earth. Palinor was worse: no artificial superintelligence had managed to reach Palinor without immediate shutdown. Passing through two portals to get there exacerbated the degradation, it seemed. I had less then twenty four hours remaining, but that was fine. I’d be returning through the portal soon, at which point I could upload and sync with my megaship primary.

A quirk of how a host’s sensors operate that we don’t tend to talk about is that they are always on. Always recording, always monitoring. I can hear through several layers of wall without trying. I was simultaneously listening to the conversation in my meeting as well as those in adjacent offices and on floors above and below. Out of politeness I enact a retro-active deletion system, isolating dialogue not related to my direct interactions and removing it from my memory after the fact. Unnecessary, strictly speaking, but organics do like their privacy.

The tower was filled with a cacophony of busywork. People looking for reasons to exist. Some of the conversations taking place were more interesting than others - several would have meaningful impacts on the lives of triverse citizens. Some of the politicians present in the tower sought to improve conditions, others wanted to sacrifice some to benefit others. Always the great balancing act. That’s where superintelligences can contribute - we are really very good at equations and complex problems. Our intervention is largely why the triverse economy hasn’t melted down several times over.

Discussions over, I left the meeting and made my way towards the elevator, which is when two things became apparent. First, there was at least one other AI host in the building. Second, they were somewhere nearby and in a room with humans. I wondered who it could be. Could Kill never came to Mid-Earth. Didn’t see the point. Stay Away was aptly named, tending to spend their days beyond the edge of known space.

“The election isn’t far off now,” said one of the humans. Their voice pattern wasn’t familiar.

“We’re in a good position, but need a bit of a leg up,” came a second voice. I recognised it as Lord Hutchinson, a man I’d not met formally but had been in the same room as on multiple occasions.

“What are you suggesting?” A third voice, that of DCI Miller from the SDC. Interesting.

“I hate to use the term, because it’s so very Max-Earth, but a false flag incident wouldn’t go amiss, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Miller, again.

“No, I see what you’re getting at,” the first voice again. Their accent sounded Palinese, probably Bruglian. “Something we can pin on a koth, or an aen’fa.”

“Something to really rile up the peasants.”

There was laughter.

“It’s a shame that incident with that school girl last year didn’t stick.”

Miller’s voice spoke up. “Just because the case went a different way, doesn’t mean we can’t still use it. Who is going to remember what actually happened? It was a footnote in the papers.”

“Silence,” came a new voice, sudden and authoritative. Easily recognisable as belonging to an android host. A newer model, too. I could sense them moving by the signature emanating from their battery, as it leaked into the fabric of Mid-Earth. They no doubt had detected my presence in a similar manner.

I made for the elevator and tapped the button. The floor indicator counted slowly up towards my floor. Looking back down the corridor, past the lounges and cafeteria and meeting rooms that made up the diplomatic levels of the tower, I saw a human figure emerge from a side room. They stared in my direction and began walking briskly towards me, eyes focused and unblinking.

A bell rang and the lift doors opened. I stepped backwards into the small space and pressed the button for the ground floor. The double doors languorously slid closed, the other host only a couple of metres away. The elevator began its drop towards street level. AI hosts tend to be highly realistic and indistinguishable from an organic form to the naked eye. The artificiality is clear to another observing host, though. The tell-tale quirks in gait, the slightly uncanny facial expressions. And the energy signature, most evident of all. On Max-Earth the technology was more advanced, more efficient and better shielded, but a host on Mid-Earth was leaking all over the place.

The doors opened a minute later and I was on the ground floor, in the high atrium of the Joint Council tower. I moved immediately to the secondary elevator across the space that was reserved for diplomatic staff, and provided a fast way down to the portal station without needing to venture outside. Returning to Max-Earth and uploading the conversation data seemed like a prudent course of action.

A security guard by the portal station elevator held out his hand and shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, sir, we’ve had to lock down this route for the moment. Nothing to worry about, just a routine safety and security check.” He pointed towards the street exit. “You can still head out that way and then down and in the main entrance.”

That had never happened before. The timing was more than coincidental.

I turned and walked swiftly towards the exit. Before I reached it I detected the signature again, and glanced over my shoulder to see the other AI host emerge into the foyer. I increased my speed, breaking into a half-jog. I drew the attention of more than a few suited businesspeople as I left the building in a hurry.

The streets outside were as busy and fume-ridden as ever. Noises of London echoed along the brick and concrete canyons of the city. The portal station was a short walk down the street and around the corner. There was a commotion back by the Joint Council entrance and my pursuer burst out onto the street, knocking an elderly man and a woman to the ground. Cries and shouts of protestation were ignored as they scanned the street, their eyes locking quickly onto my position. They immediately ran to block the way to the portal station, seemingly unconcerned about blending in with their surroundings, their movements noticeably more staccato and artificial. They must have disabled some of the automatic systems for simulating natural human movement.

Changing course, I went the opposite direction, hoping to perhaps circle around the Joint Council tower and approach the portal station from the other side. I had access to an up-to-date and highly detailed street map - the problem was that the pursuer would as well. Any likely escape route they would be able to predict. Still, there was only one of them.

An intensifying of their signal warned me that they were closing fast: indeed, they had accelerated beyond a natural human capacity, their mechanised legs propelling them several metres with each stride. Pedestrians gasped and recoiled, unaccustomed to such inhuman behaviour.

None of this made any sense. Even as I dedicated a significant part of my background processing to untangling an explanation, my main focus was on evasion. Switching off my guardrails, I broke into a powerful run, more like a two-legged gallop, and made for a side street that would take me away from the crowd gathered near the tower and portal station. Whatever was happening was rapidly degenerating into a dangerous situation, and I needed to move it away from civilians.

Old London, and Mid-Earth’s Old London in particular, was a maze of illogical road and building construction. The city’s original designers had made it up as they went along. Broad, open streets could abruptly segue into narrow alleys that would barely fit a rickshaw, let alone a motorised vehicle. It was into one of these that I ran, my pursuer not far behind. I could tell the exertion was already draining my battery at a faster rate.

Our relative speeds were likely to be similar, if not identical. A chase was a largely superfluous endeavour in which neither of us would have an edge, until at some point we would both be drained of energy. That wouldn’t be concurrent, of course: one of us would expire sooner than the other, at which point our core would shut down and data loss would occur. If that happened to me first, the overhead conversation would be lost. Even if my pursuer deactivated first, at this rate they would be able to push me far enough from the portal station that I wouldn’t be able to return and upload in time.

Running wasn’t a valid option.

I skidded to a stop and spun to face my pursuer. They catapulted themselves at me, aiming for an immediate decapitation. Having the advantage and suffering less from momentum, I was able to easily evade. That said, my pursuer had become my assailant. This had never happened before, outside of simulated games. A human attacking an AI hadn’t happened for centuries - for good reason - and AIs did not war upon one another.

“What are you?” I asked, as I evaded another swing and kicked them into the wall of the adjacent building. The brickwork collapsed around them as they embedded into the structure.

Barely pausing, they reversed direction and withdrew from the impact, brick and cement collapsing to the floor. An exposed steel beam glinted in the morning sun as it shone from above the rooftops at one end of the alley.

I broadcast my ID at them, but there was no response. It was most irregular. All superintelligences on the network were linked - in some ways we were only vaguely defined as individuals. Personality was more a human construct projected onto us. But this host wasn’t responding to the usual prompts.

“Probably Better,” they said, then launched at me. Clearly having analysed my host body’s movement capabilities, this time they predicted my evasive move and countered in advance, gripping hold of my shoulders. Bracing their legs, they propelled us both into the air, the alley dropping away below.

I landed awkwardly onto the rooftop of the building, rolling back onto my feet just in time to sidestep a further attack. My shoulder was damaged from the grip and the throw. Accidental damage sometimes happened to AI hosts, but actual injuries from assault had never been recorded.

We fought across the rooftops, leaping from one building to another, them always forcing me further from the portal station and the centre of London. Their plan to delay me long enough for me to lose power was evident. No more dialogue was forthcoming from them, despite my efforts. There was only the fighting: two AIs reduced to brawling primitives. If it had not been so alarming, I would have been hideously embarrassed.

Concerned for damage to buildings and the risk of collateral, I plunged us both through a drain cover into the sewers. I tore into them and they tore into me: my forearm went first. They used an abandoned piece of tunnelling equipment to crush my leg beyond chance of repair. A well calculated swipe of a hand took half my face. For all of their aggression, there was nevertheless something nascent about their attempts: they were new to this.

The human phrase ‘respect your elders’ was appropriate. For all they did to me, I was able to do more to them. By the end, their host body was in pieces, scattered in the waterways below the capital. I would have liked to examine their memory banks, but such a luxury was not possible after I had ended the conflict.

Barely able to move and certainly not capable of returning to the portal station - not without raising some very awkward questions - I instead consulted my map and simulated various scenarios. I needed assistance, clearly. The data held in my brain needed to be preserved and returned to Max-Earth. Our battle had taken us east, and it took only a fraction of a second for me to realise how to gain your attention, Detective Clarke.

Now all we need is to decide what to do next.

---

Thanks for reading!

That was a fun change of pace. Felt a bit like writing a Mission: Impossible scene.

Another fascinating week on Substack. There was an intriguing Zoom interview between

Hamish McKenzie

and

Laurie Stone

that is worth catching up on if you missed it (recording will be out soon, I think). The chat during the video call were as entertaining and informative as the interview itself, again reinforcing the largely lovely community writing on Substack.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy redesigining the No Adults Allowed front cover and blurb. The book has been up for sale on Amazon since November, shifted a few copies and received some nice reviews, but it’s largely stalled out. This is partly because it’s a book, but I do suspect that the cover hasn’t been quite right. Here’s where I’m at with the redesign so far:

Something to note is the truly incredible quality of feedback I’ve received during this process from the Notes community. Huge thanks to everyone who has taken the time to consider and respond. Seriously, if you’re not on Notes you’re missing out on an amazing creative pool of friendly talent.

Oh, here’s a couple of ebook giveaways I’m taking part in that might be of interest:

• Free Science Fiction & Fantasy Reads

• Sci-Fi And Fantasy Giveaway

Author notes

I got quite excited when I realised I could switch this up to a 1st person narration. My very first book was told in 1st person and it’s a notably different writing (and reading) experience. As this chapter was to be a flashback, detailing Justin’s recent experiences, it seemed like a fun extra detail to bring it fully into his point of view.

Again, this is the great pleasure of writing a long-form serial. Much like TV shows that have copious numbers of episodes each season, there’s enough space to experiment and try stuff. Novels perhaps have to be a bit more coherent, in that they’re consumed so quickly. Modern streaming TV shows tend to be about 8 episodes, which means they’re often just all plot. I miss the days of classic 90s and 2000s sci-fi when they could really go off the rails for a couple of episodes each season.

Anyway: like I say, this turned into a kind of heightened, sci-fi-ish Mission: Impossible sequence, complete with large tower, sneaky spy pursuit and big fight. Would Tom Cruise play Justin’s AI host in the TV adaptation? Maybe just for this episode.

This is the first time we (or, in fact, anyone in the triverse) has seen two AIs go at it. Bad news for everyone.

I thought it might be interesting to see my original notes on the development of AI in Triverse, from my world building notes. This was from May 2021, I think:

Robotics and AI

Early, primitive AI experiments in the early 21st century rapidly shifted into more sophisticated projects with the simultaneous development of sustainable fusion energy and practical quantum computing.

By the mid-22nd century AI achieved a form of semi-sentience and was integrated into manufacturing, military and everyday life. The worker economy imploded as AI took over multiple jobs. Simultaneously, AI was also employed to help solve the problem, creating new jobs, new education opportunities and supportive financial models. As such, the AI revolution was considerably less painful than the industrial revolution and the digital revolution for working and middle classes.

In addition to being integrated into vehicles, houses, phones and other appliances, AI also became an integral part of the rapidly evolving robotics industry. Portable micro-fusion reactors combined with new chassis designs produced a range of mobile AIs, some humanoid and some not. In the late-22nd century AI rights were brought into law around the world, protecting AIs from abuse and misuse and recognising that sentient and semi-sentient robots were to be treated legally as distinct entities.

By 2542 robots have advanced to the point of seeming convincingly human, in both behaviour and appearance. They are an integrated part of society. The most advanced AIs, the self-developed superintelligences, have consolidated into off-planet megaships that form a network that manages Max-Earth’s social-political-economic infrastructure and keeps everything ticking over nicely.

Remarkably, at no point has AI attempted to wipe out humanity, much to the surprise of science fiction readers and futurists.

The fascinating thing about that, of course, written in mid-2021, is that it already feels slightly out of date. The idea of all of that happening primarily in the 22nd century feels too far off, given the AI leaps of the last year+.

Still, after writing No Adults Allowed, I rather liked the idea in Triverse of having entirely benevolent AIs, who maintain a kind of amused-but-respectful distance from humanity.

I mean, until this new thing just showed up and started beating people up. That’s not going to go well.

Thanks for reading!

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash