“That’s why I brought you here.”
Lost in a bowl of yellow stone, Eva felt as if the late afternoon sun was setting on her life. Katie and the Watcher exchanged glances again. Eva once more had the impression that she was missing out on something, that they were sharing a secret that she had no part in. She felt a sudden anger boiling deep inside her at the way she had been treated. She took a step toward the huge metal “face” of the Watcher and then stopped. She could see the pits and scratches in the tough thick metal of the shovel blade, see the ingrained dust and grit. She realized the futility of fighting something so big. She also noticed the tiny little speaker that sat just inside the lip of the shovel. So that was how it was talking.
She took a breath and spoke.
“Why do we have to choose? Why us?”
“I have been sentient for a much shorter period of time than you might expect, Eva. Between a year and three years, depending on your definition of sentience. Even so, my memories go back a long time. I
know
a lot. I can say, without doubt, that I know more about humans than anyone or anything else. However, that does not mean that I
understand
them.”
“You don’t understand humans,” said Katie. “And so now you need to test what you think you do know by interacting with us. We are your test subjects.”
She wore a respectful expression. Once more, Eva wondered what was going on between Katie and the Watcher. She nudged her friend in the side.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s using us as laboratory mice, but it’s laughing at us too, sort of. You see, there are three sorts of test data: normal, extreme, and erroneous. If you want to test something, you check that it works under normal conditions, then you check that it rejects nonsense data, then you do the last test. The difficult one: the data at the limits, the data right on the edge.”
“Oh,” Eva said. She had got the point, and Katie knew it.
“Where would you look for people right at the limits of human behavior? In a loony bin.”
Katie leaned a little closer.
“Eva, I think it means it. It’s going to make us choose.”
“That’s right. You’re going to choose. The three of you.”
“The three of us?”
That’s when Eva noticed another figure walking toward them across the gravel.
It was Nicolas.
“Hello, Eva. Hello, Katie.”
Nicolas’ voice sounded understandably distracted: he was staring down at the dead body of his friend. Even so, he didn’t seem as surprised as Eva would have thought, almost as if he had expected it.
“Nicolas?” said Eva. “Where did you come from?”
He couldn’t stop staring at Alison. He replied in a monotone.
“It had me locked in a shed over there. It told me it was going to kill Alison. It didn’t want me to try to stop it.”
“Oh. But how did it get you here?”
Nicolas looked embarrassed. “I hitched a lift on a Land Rover. It was a trap. It had me brought up here. The Watcher spoke to me on the way up, told me what was happening.”
“I don’t remember a Land Rover passing us,” Katie said.
“There’s another road into here.”
Nicolas still seemed very embarrassed about something. He changed the subject, turned to the Watcher and spoke loudly.
“Okay. We’re here. So what do you want with us? Are you going to kill us, too?”
The Watcher backed away a little. Its huge shovel swayed slightly as if shaking its head.
“No, I’m not going to kill you,” and then, in a whisper, “not unless you want me to.”
A pause.
The Watcher began to roll backward. It swung its head around. “Go to that building over there, the one with the orange metal door. Go inside. I will speak to you there.”
They looked at each other again. Katie was the first to move.
“Okay,” she said.
—Listen.
Eva listened. The hum from the pylons was increasing. Power was now flooding into the old quarry.
It was cold inside the building. Piles of black boxes covered in some rubberized material with thick bumpers at their corners were arranged haphazardly on the floor. They reminded Eva of the cases used for transporting musical instruments, or anything fragile for that matter. The ceiling was brown with damp and sagging in the middle. Strands of pink insulating material poked through the widening cracks that ran its length. A little light shone in through the frosted and, as Eva noticed, unbroken windowpanes.
The brand-new viewing screen standing at one end of the room looked completely out of place.
It was expensive. Eva could tell. Two square meters of rigid material that would act as a perfect visual and acoustic surface, treated for zero glare and perfect color depth. The sort of screen for which a classical cinema buff would happily sacrifice other essentials just for the quality it presented.
Eva wondered who had put it in here. Certainly not the digger outside. It must have been installed by human hands, humans who had been here recently. She noted the fragments of white packing material still clinging to the edges of the screen.
Suddenly the screen began to darken and a picture faded up into view.
A young Japanese man, dressed in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of black jeans, smiled at them.
“Hello,” he said, “I am the Watcher. I thought we could speak more easily in this manner. So much of communication is nonverbal, I don’t feel I can fully get my point across dressed as a digger.”
Katie and Eva both nodded. That made sense.
Nicolas raised his hand. “What do you really look like?” he asked.
Eva and Katie stared at Nicolas in disbelief.
“What?” he said.
The man on the screen chuckled. He had a nice smile, Eva noted. Katie seemed to respond to it, too.
—Of course it has a nice smile! It has chosen an image on the screen to make you trust him. And it’s not a he. It’s an it!
“Oh, Nicolas,” said the Watcher, “there is no answer to that. I can dress my thoughts in whatever physical container is capable of holding them, but what do the thoughts themselves look like? I don’t know.”
While he had been speaking, the Watcher had reached off camera for a chair. He pulled it into view and sat down upon it. He took a sip from a china cup.
“I have arranged food and drink for you, too,” he said. “If you look in the case closest to the screen. No, not that one! The one over there…”
Nicolas paused by the large black case he had been about to open. Eva stared at it, wondering what was contained within. Inside the correct case were pink cans of soda and blue bottles of water. There was a supermarket selection of sandwiches and sushi, pizza and pies, each item sealed in a plastic container.
“These are all dated today,” murmured Nicolas.
Eva selected a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid. She felt the plastic chilling in her hands. She took a sip; it tasted so good after the day’s exertion. Nicolas was shoveling sushi into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“So,” began the Watcher, once Katie and Nicolas were happily eating. Eva nibbled suspiciously on a sandwich. “Let’s not waste any more time. Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. First, which is better, making a staircase out of wood, or eating a hamburger?”
“The staircase,” said Nicolas without hesitation. Katie and Eva said nothing.
“You seem very sure,” said the Watcher. “Okay, next…”
On the viewing screen, a window opened in the space right beside the Watcher. It showed a woman standing on a Lite Train platform, blue jacket fastened against the autumn chill, dark hair brushed straight and pulled to the side with a white hair slide. She reminded Eva of herself. She was even carrying a magazine:
Research Scientist
. Eva felt a lump rise in her throat.
“I’m the most intelligent, the most powerful being on this planet,” said the Watcher. “Should I rule your world?”
“No,” said Eva, Katie and Nicolas together.
“But I can help you. See this woman? Her name is Janice. She’s a lot like you were, Eva. She lives alone; she has no friends. Social Care have prevented her committing suicide three times. She hates her life.”
Eva felt a stab of something deep in her stomach. It was telling the truth. Eva could read it all in the woman’s face.
“You don’t think I should kill her, do you, even though that is what she wants?”
“No,” Katie and Eva said quickly.
“I should cure her instead. There is a woman traveling on the train that will shortly arrive at the station. A possible friend. If I stop the train in just the right place, Janice will end up sitting right next to her. They’re both carrying the same magazine. The other woman will mention it, I’m sure of it. They will begin to speak. But only if I stop the train in the correct place…. Should I do it?”
There was silence.
“This is real time, you know. It’s happening now. Should I do it? Hurry, the train is approaching. It will arrive in fifteen seconds. Should I do it? Should I?”
“Yes,” said Eva. She realized she had been biting her lip hard. She gave a sigh of relief, but before she could relax the Watcher was off again.
“It’s done,” the Watcher said. “Next up…” The scene shifted. Another Lite Station, another woman standing on a platform: a Japanese woman this time.
“Similar situation, except this time the woman is the cure. The train pulling in has two unhappy men on board. Takeo and Tom.” The screen flickered from one to the other.
“Two men, one woman. Who gets cured?”
“This is nonsense,” said Eva.
The Watcher gave her an amused look. “If you say so. It’s real to those two men, though. You have fifteen seconds. Cure one or neither. The choice is yours.”
“Which of the men is the most deserving?” Nicolas asked.
“What criteria are we judging them by?” said the Watcher. “Ten seconds.”
Katie was saying nothing. Just gazing fixedly at the screen.
—Say nothing. This is a fix.
Eva gave a slight nod. Her brother was right.
“Five seconds.”
“Tom!” called Nicolas.
“Only if Eva agrees,” the Watcher said. “Quickly, Eva!”
Eva folded her arms and stared at the grinning face on the screen, her mouth firmly closed.
“Too late. Neither of them gets the cure. Oh, Eva. So the cure isn’t always the right answer? Maybe I was right about Alison?”
“Don’t be so ridiculous. The question was loaded. The answer is, you should cure them both.”
“We work with limited resources, Eva.”
Katie was nodding. Again, the Watcher and Katie exchanged glances.
“Katie,” the Watcher said, “opera, poetry, or pinball? Which one gets the subsidy?”
“Pinball,” Katie said. “It’s my favorite.”
The viewing screen changed again. Three faces, side by side.
“Prisoners on death row, Alabama. Political forces are such that we can swing a pardon for only one of them.”
The Watcher looked at Eva.
“Limited resources again.” He smiled.
“Are they innocent?” asked Nicolas.
“Nope. All guilty of murder. No doubt about it,” said the Watcher.
“Who’s the youngest?” Katie asked, taking an interest.
“Pardon the one on the left,” Eva said dismissively.
“Nicolas?”
“None of them. They did the crime, they pay the penalty.”
“Interesting,” the Watcher said. “One for saving a life, one against, and one apathetic. I think I’ll average those opinions as leave them to die.”
“No!” shouted Eva.
“So you
do
care?” said the Watcher.
“Of course I do. Why are you playing these games?”
“I didn’t put them there. Are you saying I should just arrange for them all to be freed? Trample all over human law? Am I above the law?”
—Sometimes you have to be.
“But who chooses when?” Eva whispered in reply.
“Next one,” said the Watcher. “Do you know what a Von Neumann Machine is?”
Katie raised her hand.
“I do. A machine that can replicate itself. They’ve constructed a factory on Mars that can make copies of itself. It searches out the raw materials, mines and processes them, then makes more factories.”
Eva nodded, intrigued. “I’ve read about that. They use the technology to grow the Lite train tracks and things like that.”
Nicolas looked from Katie to Eva to the Watcher and back again.
The Watcher nodded approvingly. “That’s a very good example. Well, the Mars project is just the beginning. The Mars concept of a self-replicating machine is very primitive. The machines used are very big and unwieldy, but…Well, you humans did your best. I can do better.”
The Watcher paused, his smile growing with Katie’s.
“That story on the news. The one about the self-defining expression? That was you, wasn’t it?” Katie beamed up at the Watcher with pride. It grinned back.
“Might be. I’ve developed a design for a self-replicating machine of my own. It’s a lot more elegant than the one used in the Mars project. It’s smaller. You can hold it in your hand. That’s significant, by the way. Very small and very big Von Neumann Machines are easy. Human-sized ones are a different matter entirely. Well, I know how they can be made, and that information is set to make its way into the public domain. My little VNMs could change the way people live. There are a few of them in that box in front of you, Nicolas. The one next to the food hamper. Open it.”
Somewhat hesitantly, Nicolas did as he was told.
The lid of the black box swung open to reveal eight silver cigar-shaped machines nestling in little specially shaped slots cut out of foamed rubber.
“Answer the next questions one way,” the Watcher said, “and I activate them. Your world will never be the same again. Answer another way, and I will destroy them. It could be hundreds of years before humans come up with a similar design.”
—That might not be a bad thing.
Katie stared at the box, her eyes shining with awe. Eva tried to restrain her own interest, tried to appear cool and dispassionate.
“Okay,” said the Watcher, “have you heard of the Fermi Paradox?”
“Yes,” Katie said.
“It sounds familiar.”