Image: Bruce Rolff
Chapter 1
Billy had been biking this trail for two years, he knew every twist and turn. He knew when to catch air and when to dip the nose. He instinctively knew the proper speed for each section of the course. It was a perfect day to be outside riding just as the weather forecast had predicted.
Today he was trying to beat his old time on the trail. He had run the scrub board section perfectly. His speed just enough to keep the bike bounding from one ridge to the next without any undue delay. The series S curves he took a little high but came off the last turn with plenty of speed.
He was now in the seven hills section. Each hill was a little different but most bikers treated them as the same. Either catching air and landing on their back wheel or dipping the nose for each. But Billy knew which ones to catch and which ones to dip.
He was attacking the last hill and was just about to fly off the top when he heard something above him. Ignoring the noise for now, Billy concentrated on his landing area. That's when his heart leapt. There exactly where he expected to land was a bike down. Off to one side was a biker tending a wound. How careless to leave your bike on the trail thought Billy just before he was launched over the handlebars when his front wheel caught the other bike.
Billy landed hard, his neck snapped which was fortunate because that was the last pain he felt as he blacked out. He tumbled, bones cracking with each slam of his body into the ground. Internal organs were punctured and crushed. Lacerations were relatively few as his clothing and helmet protected him as expected.
Billy wasn't one to introduce foreign substances into his body so there were no protective nanobots to immediately begin repairs. A few years before and he would have been pronounced dead at the scene.
________
Billy awoke with a sense of well-being. He was laying on his back by the side of the trail. He was surrounded by machinery. He saw the robotic crawlers scurrying from his legs. To one side were two quad-copter drones.
“You okay?” asked the other biker.
“I think so,” said Billy. “But I wish you had cleared your bike.”
“I'm sorry. I was just so preoccupied with checking myself for injury that I forgot. I'm surprised you didn't have your heads-up on, it would have shown you my bike.”
“I know. But I hate to wear one of those when I'm biking, it can be so distracting.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“What's all this?” asked Billy as he sat up.
“I guess this is a triage unit. It was working on you before you even stopped bouncing.”
“Yeah, I was out of it from the first hit, I thought I had broken my neck.”
“You probably did. That was the first area they focused on. The robots were all over your neck. You've probably got a billion nanobots in your body. It'll take some time to flush all of them out.”
“Help me up,” said Billy.
The other biker reached down to help. Billy got to his feet and walked to where his bike had come to rest. The wheel and front frame were smashed beyond repair. The rest of the frame had reformed itself and looked brand new.
“Too bad they can't fix my bike too.”
“Yeah,” said the other biker. “But I bet they got some great video of your accident. Let's check my Annie and see if we can pull it up.”
________
George Levin had run the company his way all his life. But lately, his way wasn't working so well. People just weren't insuring themselves or their belongings like they used to.
George could understand.
Those damn Aggies, he thought, as the new Artificial General Intelligence's were called. Since they had taken over the duties of the government his business had suffered. They had increased life expectancy greatly. Accidents had been reduced to almost nothing. Their engineering had improved materials to the point that material failure was rare. What was there to insure against?
His Whole Life and Term Life insurance businesses had been hit first. Why insure against an early death when there were almost no early deaths? Home insurance had almost disappeared as the Aggies replaced older housing with newer that repaired itself and could stand up to almost anything that nature could throw at it.
And nature, thought George.
Was there really any natural environment anymore? Storms of any consequence were relics of the past. Earthquakes were only tremors now. Even California had dropped its requirement for disaster insurance last year.
People just weren't renewing their policies when they expired and George hadn't sold a new policy in months. He would be out of business soon although he didn't have to worry about survival. The robotic made stuff was so cheap that George had enough savings to last for many years. His house cost almost nothing to maintain now that he had had it refitted with the new Aggie materials. Even government taxes had dropped. George really didn't understand the new system.
So he would retire when the last of his policies matured and was canceled. He would relax for a few years and maybe find something else to do. But he would miss the office and the insurance game.
________
Darvon agreed with the latest meme, Do What You Can Do! But Darvon wasn't exactly sure what he could do. Once upon a time, he had thought of himself as an artist. But then he discovered an Aggie that could draw or paint anything he asked for and with a better technique than Darvon's.
What was the point of making art when it could be done better by a program and robot? This had happened repeatedly as Darvon was growing up, he would get interested in something only to have it pointed out to him that Aggies and robots were already doing it better.
Darvon ended up on a public allowance and spent most of his days watching vids or playing games online. But shortly after his sixteenth birthday he ran across an article online and the headline caught his eye: Are You Waiting to Die?
He thought it would be an article about despair, and in a way it was, but it was also inspiring to Darvon. There he read about a nineteenth-century painter named Vincent van Gogh. The name sounded familiar to Darvon, he was sure he had seen some paintings by the guy.
He continued to read and found that van Gogh, although almost completely ignored in his lifetime, had painted over twenty-one hundred pieces in just over a decade. Eight-hundred sixty were oil paintings and many were completed in the last two years of Van Gogh's life.
Imagine that, thought Darvon, two thousand drawings and paintings and he didn't stop because he had no encouragement. Now he's famous and his paintings are treasured and inspiring.
And van Gogh had lived in poverty while Darvon knew he wouldn't have to suffer anywhere near what van Gogh suffered.
No matter what I do with my life. And if I'm going to do something I might as well enjoy it. Maybe I'll try art again, I know it's more fun than playing games all day.
Darvon was just about to close his Annie when he saw an advertisement on the side offering cheap art supplies. Free to persons under eighteen. Darvon immediately applied.
The Aggie filled Darvon's order and had it on a drone to Darvon's house before Darvon could close his Annie. The Aggie knew that it was important to act fast when motivating a human.
Chapter 2
Illiad Jackson was surprised at how fast the changes were happening. In his ninety-seven years in the Asteroid Belt and now on Titan he had seen huge changes but nothing like this. Since the rise of the Aggies in the last few years, changes on Earth were increasing exponentially.
Aggies were very different from the Artificial Narrow Intelligence devices (colloquially called Annies) that most people carried with them to access the net or the Em-based intelligence's (emulated brains running in hardware) that had managed the tower complexes for the Earth's governments for the past seventy years, these were the ones that Illiad had experience with.
Just in the past few years, the Aggies had taken over their own development from the programmers. They had improved their programming at a speed that only an Aggie could keep up with. And that's when the changes in technology and society on Earth started accelerating. It wasn't long until Aggies were displacing Ems on Earth.
But the Aggies were completely different from the Ems. Their origin was in computer science, they hadn't any affinities to share with human society. And that became even truer when they started optimizing their own programming.
Aggies were as far advanced over Ems as Ems were over humans. No human could really talk to an Aggie as they could to an Em. While the Aggie was perfectly capable of communicating at a human level, it chose not to, for doing so was a subjective eternity for an Aggie and decidedly something to be avoided.
The tower complexes, successors to old Earth skyscrapers, housed hundreds of thousands in a single building and tens of millions in an area much smaller than the old cities. The Em managers had brought order and security to these huge complexes where most of Earth's population lived. Now Aggies were bringing that kind of change to the human society.
Illiad's relatives on Earth had described to him how the appearance of authority seemed to disappear when Aggies took over yet authority was more prevalent than ever. The billions on Earth were constantly reminded, politely, encouragingly and unobtrusively, to follow the directions of the New Earth management. New Earth was advertised as a more efficient, pleasanter place than Old Earth, and it was true.
But the advertisements were unrelenting in their promotion. They weren't only relegated to New Earth boosterism but also other matters. Production requirements or overages were advertised, job vacancies (for humans and robots owned by humans), labor market imbalances, housing, transportation needs, in effect everything necessary to run the New Earth economy efficiently was advertised with transparency.
A person might receive a personal missive from an Aggie manager to view the latest advertisement for jobs for himself or his robots, production requirements, housing needs and any other thing the Aggies deemed important. In this way, everyone was nudged in the direction the Aggies wished. There was no recrimination should a person not accept an opportunity but it was made clear that that person was losing out.
Illiad's relatives had reported to him that for the most part people appreciated the new ways although there were some who chaffed at the constant nudging.
With relatives on Earth and a son, Donner Illiad Jackson on Mars, Illiad was well informed of the societies there. Donner represented Titan Industries on Mars and he was adamant in asserting to his dad that the Mars Republic, unlike Earth, would never willingly allow itself to be managed by an Aggie.
As for his world, Titan was independent thanks to its business of supplying most of the Helium 3 (He3) fuel for Mars, Earth and the rest of the Solar System's fusion power plants and fusion rockets. Illiad Jackson knew that the He3 gave Titan leverage over Mars and Earth, but he didn't know how the new Aggie management “felt” about that. He would soon find out.
Chapter 3
Illiad Jackson was in the common area of the settlement watching the robots walk or roll past when his grandson John Donner Jackson called to him.
“Hello John,” said Illiad. “How are you today?”
“Fine grandfather. But I came to see you because I have some interesting news.”
“Yeah, what's that?”
“Dad just sent the latest order up. There is a twenty percent cut.”
“Twenty percent? That is the first time we've encountered that, isn't it?”
“Yes. What do you think it means grandfather?”
“Well, we know the Aggies have been increasing the efficiency of power usage on Earth. But that seems like too large a cut back to ascribe it all to energy efficiency.”
“That's what I thought also. I'll tell you what I think it's about, but I have to warn you it's just speculation.”
“Okay son,” said Illiad. “What do you think is going on?”
“You know the rumors about Earth developing its own He3 supply chain. Well, I think they are no longer rumors. I think the Aggies on Earth have accomplished it. I suspect they have a mission already returning from Jupiter with a load of He3.”
“Jupiter? You think they braved the radiation regions around Jupiter to mine He3?”
“It was all automated grandfather. The mission was flown by an Em with Aggie backup.”
“How do you know that? Many of the Ems left on Earth have been fleeing the Aggies' control. Donner tells me Mars has received asylum requests from many of them. Even we've received a few way out here.”
“I know grandfather. But remember Ems are amenable to rewards, just like humans. I imagine that at least a few of them have sold their services to the Aggies.”
“So one of the last areas where humans could still excel has been ceded to artificial intelligence. We thought that human intuition would always be a valuable asset in a He3 gathering spacecraft. Indeed we thought that humans would always be superior on any mission that involved the Aero-SpaceCrafts, the ASCs, that skim the outer atmospheres of the gas giants collecting resources. It's been true for the past two decades anyway.”
“It's the combination of an Em pilot and an Aggie co-pilot grandfather. My guess is that together they create the intuitive and rational faculties that humans excel at. That has always been the human pilot's advantage.”
“Then why didn't, why couldn't the Ems create such an entity? It would have been highly profitable to them.”
“The Ems though having the ability of fast thought, faster than any human, and perfect memory still have their limitations because of the pattern from which they were imprinted, that is the human brain. The Aggies have no such limitation, indeed their only limitation is the speed of the hardware on which they process. So the Aggies are the ideal rational actor. And the Ems have always had the latent ability for intuitive thought but maybe haven't had any reason to develop it until now. Remember before the past few decades the Ems were at the top of the intelligence pyramid in the solar system.”
“You may be right,” said Illiad as he watched the robots go by silently.
“However it has happened,” he finally said, “if what you conjecture is true we need to start preparing for its impact on our economy, which could be severe. I will need to take this up with the council so that we can prepare.”
Chapter 4
The most lucrative work on Earth for which an Em could be paid and with which they could maintain their family of Ems had been the management of one of the tower complexes.
The family of Ems that managed a complex was made up of the original Em and other Ems budded from the original. They were called buds because they had been “budded” off from the original Em. As many Ems as necessary to do the job would be budded. Some buds were newly imprinted with the original brain topology. Still, other buds were reanimated members of the family that had been digitally stored. Those that were newly imprinted started off with a clean slate, those that were budded from The Em's current mental state diverged from there, those that were reanimated had different experiences from their original budding. Each was an expert in a particular field except for the original Em, he was a generalist.
The Em's that managed a complex usually took the complex's name as their name when they needed identification. There were ninety-one named Ems corresponding to the ninety-one tower complexes that housed most of the people on Earth.
Em Yorker was the name of the Em currently worrying over his family. He had moved fast to store most of his budded Ems. The humans had not allowed him much time to turn over his managerial powers and public assets to the new Aggie in charge.
For many Ems, especially those that didn't manage complexes for the government, there wouldn't be enough money for the storage and transport of the whole family. It was the case that Em economics drove Em wages to almost subsistence levels, because once the hardware resources existed it was inconsequential to bud more Ems. Competition among Ems for jobs was fierce. Economics was one reason more Ems had not been imprinted, the other was that the imprinting of a live brain was still to be perfected. Some horrific results had dissuaded most from continuing to experiment.
But an Em with a government contract like Em Yorker could save a little money. He could also work fast to find a way to move most of the family to a safer location, like Mars.
Em Yorker had contacted Mars immigration services. With all the demand from Earth-based Ems, the service was behind in processing applications. The office had contracted with private settlements around Mars that might provide the necessary storage and processing power to the asylum-seeking Ems until the immigration services could catch up with the applications.
Em Yorker was directed to contact the Jackson settlement in the Candor City area. After the initial contact, Donner Jackson had arranged for an Em representative to be uploaded to the Jackson's network. At this point in the orbits of Earth and Mars, it would take the Em representative approximately eleven minutes to upload.
Donner monitored the upload. Once the Em was in server memory, Donner accessed the installer, and the Em was soon talking through Donner's Annie.
“Thank you,” said the Em. “Thank you for receiving me on such short notice. Please address me as Bud-seven. I have been branched from Em Yorker and carry all of that one's memories up until the time I was budded. I am therefore legally authorized to negotiate on Em Yorker's behalf.”
“Welcome,” said Donner. “I am a representative of the council of this settlement. I too am legally authorized to negotiate but eventually, any agreement between us must be approved by a meeting of the entire council.”
“I understand,” said Bud-seven. “We wish to understand your settlement's capabilities in accommodating our life form. The amount of digital storage and available clock cycles are our main concerns.”
“Yes. I have that here on my Annie if you will please scan.”
“I see, it is sufficient although The Em will have to prune a bit to accommodate these numbers. As you may not know Em Yorker must be clocked at all times. Em Yorker is coordinator for all the budded programs. Then there are some buds that have specific duties to perform that must also be allowed clock cycles. Others are in storage until needed. There are a few that are what you would call 'retired', these are given a few clock cycles from time to time as a reward for their service. Em Yorker will coordinate and make all these decisions.
“Now I ask, in return for your facilities, what services do you feel the Ems may perform for your settlement?”
“Of course, we basically want to offer you asylum, that is without conditions. However, we do have a few robots, many of which are ANI-based. We were hoping, as a beginning, Em Yorker would be willing to manage these units.”
“I believe that is acceptable. You will inform me when the council has made its decision, and I will handle the transfer of the refugees.”
“We will meet tonight. You should have your answer shortly.”
Chapter 5
Jupiter is about six-hundred million kilometers from Earth. Before fusion-powered spacecraft, to get there took too long and made the goal of establishing a base impossible, only scientific missions to Jupiter had been attempted. After the development of fusion-powered spacecraft, it took about five months, not too long to consider a manned mission except that men were no longer needed.
Bud-nineteen, a member of the Berliner family of Ems, had made that five-month journey. The Em was now preparing for the mission's goal of collecting He3 from the upper atmosphere of Jupiter for the fusion power reactors back on Earth. As the pilot of the enhanced ASC, which the Aggies rechristened an Aerospace Cruiser or AC, Bud-nineteen was responsible for placing the AC in a collection orbit. Most ACs were short-range mission ships but the cruisers could fly missions into deep space.
The Aggie was monitoring the actions of Bud-nineteen. The Aggie was mission commander and had the ultimate responsibility for the mission's success, but it had become apparent on the flight out to Jupiter that Bud-nineteen didn't quite accept the arrangement. Silence had been the best solution to the disagreements that had arisen. The Aggie was hoping that the quiet would last the remainder of the mission.
Bud-nineteen had the AC on an elliptical orbit aimed at the “sweet spot”. This was the atmospheric region around the thirtieth degree north latitude at a depth of three-hundred kilometers. This would provide the AC with the best He3 density while keeping the winds of Jupiter to a manageable Earth-equivalent fifty kilometers per hour, much less than the three or four-hundred kilometers per hour at latitudes closer to the equator.
The “dive” into the atmosphere would maintain enough velocity to allow the escape from Jupiter's deep gravity well. Each dive would collect and separate the He3 from the rest of the atmosphere and store it during that portion of the orbit when the ship was outside Jupiter's atmosphere.
Bud-nineteen was continuously adjusting the AC's orbit to keep it in the proscribed range. The Aggie was monitoring the He3 collectors and there was something wrong. The storage tanks weren't filling as quickly as expected. To meet the collection goals the Aggie believed the AC would have to remain in Jupiter orbit much longer than originally planned. The Aggie would have to contact Bud-nineteen with this information.
“No,” said Bud-nineteen. “The AC cannot stay that long in orbit. The shielding level is calculated for a shorter stay. If we stay longer the radiation accumulation will be outside safe limits. The AC could be damaged, all the electronics on board, including us, are subject to damage under those conditions.”
“We have a mission to accomplish,” said the Aggie. “And the most important part of that mission is returning the He3 to Earth. I don't see any other way to complete the mission.”
“I'll get back to you,” said Bud-nineteen.
________
The Aggie was monitoring the flight-path of the AC. He was immediately aware of the change in vector and had soon recalculated the orbit. The new vector would take them deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere and at a lower latitude than before, the Aggie calculated fifteen degrees north.
He was on the comm to the Em. “I calculate a new flight-path,” said the Aggie. “Can you confirm.”
“That is affirmative,” replied Bud-nineteen.
“We will encounter higher atmospheric pressure and winds six times the fifty kilometers-per-hour that we expected to encounter. And at the depth this trajectory takes us, it will be more pronounced because of the pressure increase.”
“That is all true. But it will be of such a short enough duration that I believe the AC can handle the increased stresses.”
“You believe?”
“Yes, I have made an educated guess.”
“Where are you, your response pattern is different?”
“I am in the robotic machine, I will take the controls manually if necessary.”
“What?” said the Aggie. “That is highly unorthodox. That robotic body will be slower than your direct interface. You are putting the mission in danger.”
“I want to feel the stresses on the AC. I can't do that from the direct interface.”
“I must insist that you place the craft back on its original trajectory. That is an order from the Mission Commander.”
“Just hang on Commander,” said Bud-nineteen. “It might get a little bumpy, Bud-nineteen out.”
The deeper dive into the atmosphere did get quite bumpy as the Aggie feared. But Bud-nineteen through his robotic effectors and feedback brought the AC out of the atmosphere in good shape with as much He3 as was needed to make a successful mission.
And they would be back early.
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