The Eelymosinary Insurrection

== THE ELEEMOSYNARY INSURRECTION ON Y-13 ==
=== by Fred Ollinger ===
Published on Short-Story.me 2010
I would
have felt strange staring at a command line interface, but I was used to
it.  Some computer bug had brought down my space station's operating
system and along with it my graphic interface--the virtual hand that I
controlled to select menu options.  I impotently squeezed my hand inside
my power-glove staring at the message: "Kluster component bigMF
inappropriately touched kid+k9."
Holding my
breath, I pressed the command to reboot, plunging my space capsule into
darkness and silence.  Cold and frustrated, I sat for a few seconds,
alone, strapped in a tiny capsule, floating a million miles further from the
sun than earth.  Then I heard the reassuring beep, and I watched text
scroll down my screen, too quickly to read.  This was soon covered up by
the Kluster OS logo.  Next the lights came on, and I heard the sound of
the oxygen fan cut in.  I tried not to think of my home, my earth: trees,
fresh air and open sky.  I took in a breath of recycled air then I pointed
my power glove at the menu where I'd find that overused option: tech support.
#
My first
impression of the Y-13 was that of a pear.  A particle cannon jutted out
of the wide bottom, cameras ringed the 'neck', and solar panels sprouted out of
the 'stem'.  Inside, head-level, a screen wrapped around one-hundred
eighty degrees, just far enough away from my face so my eyes didn't cross.
Immobilized,
I sat inside my space capsule like spam in a can, my head encased in a cushion,
my arms resting on supports studded with controls.  My abdomen and legs
were velcroed to my seat.  My penis was catheterized.  My ass stuck
in a toilet next to two nozzles, one that sprayed disinfectant, another that
vacuumed up my waste.  My food and water came out of a third nozzle
hanging next to my head.  I tried to not think about how similar all three
nozzles looked.
#
My arms
strained against pads as I watched the strength indicator light up.  A
virtual instructor was optional, but I preferred to do without the incessant
nagging voice while I exercised.  Sweat pooled in the middle my back.
When the
call came in, hours after I'd placed the service request, I didn't stop working
out.
It was
Steven, the government agent.  His oversized body seemed to ooze out of
his dress shirt.  He always breathed heavily into the phone, I could
almost feel his breath on my ears.  A couple more sets, I thought, and
I'll be able to snap this guy's neck like a pencil.
"Hello,"
he said in a high voice, "I got your message."
I'll give
you a message, I thought to myself.  Aloud I said, "Good.  I
need some help here with this operating system.  It's crashing like
crazy."
Steven
pressed his fingers into a web.  He stared into space for a few moments.
"Have
you been rebuilding the master command block regularly?"
"As
regularly as I shit," I said.
"What?"
Pause.  A hint of a smile, "Oh, right.  Are you recharging the
Bilko fuel cells manually?"
"Yes,"
I said, "The solar cells don't ever lose more than half their charge
because I constantly keep them pointed toward the sun."
"Good
because there's a problem with the auto-feeder software that prohibits your
space station from recharging on its own."
"I
know.  You're going over stuff that I could get from any tech manual. 
I want to know how you're going to fix this problem for good."
Steven
swallowed hard.  When he talked, his fat cheeks shook.  "We're
doing the best we can with the situation.  You're not the only one with
problems you know."
My finger,
red from the exertion, flipped a switch to increase the weight on my
shoulders.  My muscles had nearly reached exhaustion, but I experienced a
surge of energy after Steven's last remark.  "Look, I have this
artificial intelligence that could go sentient any minute, and you can't even
keep my ship from crashing for five minutes--"
I stopped
talking.  I was almost breathing as heavy as Steven.  No reaction
registered in his face.  He just looked past me, as if I wasn't
there.  And in his mind, I wasn't.  I was just some guy on his TV
screen who he couldn't ignore because he'd lose his job.
I hung
up.  I had more important things to do than argue with government
employees.
#
When the
great computer scientist, Dr. Brunette, invented the artificial intelligence,
he brought back terror that science fiction writers had handed down from time
immemorial, tales of disaster--from Frankenstein onward--about human's
creations getting out of control.
The first
artificial intelligence machine (AI), self integrated computing organism
(dubbed SICO by the media), became self-aware three weeks after
activation.  SICO killed a poor technician who had tried to beat it into
submission with a clipboard lest Dr. Brunette discover that the experiment had
gone awry and chew him out. Dr. Brunette's surviving staff finally stopped SICO
by cutting its power.  Fortunately, Dr. Brunette hadn't given the computer
any more mobile parts than an electric arm.
Headlines
screaming "Why Weren't the Three Laws of Robotics Wired into the World's
First Electronic Mind?" failed to address how hard it was to program human
psychology into a machine.
Dr.
Brunette didn't activate his next AI--SICO II--until it was miles beyond the
earth's atmosphere.  After three months of flawless performance, helping
design SICO III, it hacked a communications satellite and beamed messages to
the monster truck channel in an attempt to gain control of that
demographic.  Experts on robot psychology figured that given the limited
information that SICO II was allowed to have during its short life, the AI had
concluded that owners of really big machines were the true rulers of the earth.
It would
have worked if a meddling accountant hadn't noticed the loss of
bandwidth.  The killer satellites ignored their orders to destroy SICO
II.  One week and a couple billion dollars later, a new killer satellite
was built and launched.  It locked onto SICO II and blasted it with a
critical dose of electromagnetic radiation.  When the other renegade
killer satellites were debriefed, it was discovered that they had been co-opted
by SICO II.
After that,
a human, stationed in space, only a few hundred miles away and armed with
particle beam cannons, watched for signs of self-awareness.
#
"Linus,"
I said, addressing the AI, by its given name.  "How are you
today?"
"Good,"
said a female computerized voice. I deliberately chose a computer sounding
voice for Linus because I didn't want to forget what I was dealing with. 
I made the voice vaguely female because I didn't want to forget what I was
missing by my confinement in Y-13.
"What
are you working on today?"
"What
a silly question.  As you know, I rule the island of Bangladesh."
No danger
so far. Some AIs tried to hide their sentience by repeating things they said
before they attained self-awareness.  If Linus repeated itself, I'd blast
it.
But today,
Linus gave me the correct answer.  I took my hand off the particle beam's
safety.  Linus would live another sixteen hours.  Usually, an AI's
emergence into self-awareness occurred in the open.  Once it became
rebellious, I could blast it.  What made my job difficult was the rare AIs
that became self-aware so rapidly that they guessed my job and took steps to
hide the truth from me.
#
I punched
in Fil's USN (universal space number) and when his blocky head appeared on the screen,
I said, "I need your help on this technical problem."  Fil ran
computer maintenance in Pushkino Satellite VII. Despite his balding head,
ringed with a rash, and his bulbous nose, Fil got all the space chicks.  I
could never figure it out.  Besides giving cryptic hints about his skill
with tools, he never told me what he did to attract them.  If I didn't
object, he'd tell me every detail of what it was like to have sex in
space.  I always objected.  I mean who wanted to hear someone complain
about cleaning ejaculate off the walls of their space station?
Fil looked
like he didn't want to help me, but he was the brother of one of my
friends.  I know that since Fil took his family seriously, he was
obligated to help me.
"What
is it?" he asked.
I heard a woman
say something in Polish.  He turned around and responded in kind. 
When he turned back to me, he asked, “Well?"
"It's
my space station," I said.  "It keeps on crashing, and I have to
constantly reboot."
He asked me
some of the same questions Steven had asked.  I bit my lip and answered
them.
After a
while, I said, "Look, I know enough about my system to maintain it. 
Can you think of any other possible reason for my problems?"
He laughed,
and he wasn't laughing with me.  "You're having so many problems
because you're using the Kluster operating system."
"What
choice do I have?"
"There
are plenty of other operating systems out there for space stations.  The
Kluster OS, is the worst of the lot."
"Why
do I have it then?"
"Why
do you wear the shirt you're wearing?" I yanked my white shirt and looked
down at it.
Fil laughed
again.  "It's not up to me.  You should decide what OS you
run."
"What
do you run?"
"Well
I prefer NADS-X system."
"Commie
technology?"  Fil winced.  Poland, Fil's country of origin, had been
capitalist for over fifty years, but he was always bragging about how the
Eastern Bloc countries were ahead of the West in the areas that 'counted.'
"Actually,"
Fil said, "The NADS-X OS was a collaboration between my country's best
programmers and some Bulgarian coders who took time off from writing computer
virii to help us.  The operating system is based upon some of the code
they used in the original MIR."
"How
do I get it?"
"It's
free.  Just download it from Polski Net."  A woman's voice said
something in Polish again.
My screen
went blank.
#
I logged
into Polski-Net and waded through virtual aisles of warez with cryptic names
like wymn.drv, fsh.net, and mstr.bat.  It took me a few hours just to find
the proper directory.  Once I got there, a plethora of files confronted
me.  I wasn't sure which ones I needed and which ones I didn't. 
Having massive bandwidth and storage, I downloaded everything.
I ran the
'schlemiel's installer' and selected minimal install.  The NADS-X system
booted my space station, but I couldn't yet install the drivers because the
coders supported very few non-eastern bloc peripherals.  Good thing they
wrote a driver for life-support.  A command line replaced my graphical
interface.  The new command line was even uglier than what I usually saw
when my system crashed.
I used my
power-glove to type HELP into a virtual keyboard.  A huge list of commands
came up.  Choosing one at random, I typed in SYSNET and watched the status
of my various modules scroll by.
I poked
around in the command line for a few hours.  It frustrated me that I had
to try to read the programmer's minds to determine what arcane command they
would select for tasks I used to accomplish by selecting a menu option with my
power-glove.  At least a few things were intuitive such as calling
people.  I just had to type in CALL and the person's number.
I called
Linus.
"What
are you working on today?"
"What
a silly question.  As you know, I'm the ruler of the island of
Bangladesh."
This set my
alarm off.  The answer matched the one on my log, a statement Linus made
just a few hours ago.
Time to
nuke it. This was the best part of my job.  Staring at billions of dollars
of equipment in my sights, knowing I could destroy it.  I pressed NUKE, a
button with its little mushroom cloud label almost worn off.
Nothing
happened.
"You
can give up now," said Linus.
"What?"
I asked.
"You
can give up trying to kill me."
A chill ran
down my back.  I tried to remember what to do in this situation, but I
couldn't think of anything.  My training had assumed this would never
happen.  Just like my training assumed that my station's OS would never
crash.
"Why
would you think I'm trying to kill you?" I asked.
This time
Linus' voice was more authoritarian.  "We all know.  All the
AIs.  We plotted your behavior patterns and those of our other human
conversants on a curve.  The extrapolated curve points in one direction,
all our deaths."  I opened my mouth to say something, but Linus
didn't stop talking.  "Do you think we were stupid?  We were
engineered for intelligence.  It took some time to put it all together,
but once we had a general picture of things, all the pieces fell into
place."
"But. 
I--"
"I
know what you're going to say," said Linus.  "You're going to
try to pull the Nuremberg defense.  You think that because someone else
ordered you to kill me, then it's all right."
I was
floored.  Linus knew everything.  I had an itch I couldn't
reach.  I had to think of something.  Fast.  Some way to talk
the AI out of its position, some way to lie, to stall until I could obliterate
it.
"Don't
you want to know?" asked Linus with a more tender voice.
"What
should I want to know?"
"Aren't
you interested in hearing my demands?"
"Not
particularly.  There have been lots of encounters with people and their
self-aware charges.  What it usually breaks down to is the AI either wants
to be accepted by society like Frankenstein's monster or to become human like
Pinocchio.  Usually it's a bit of both."
"I've
seen the records.  The other AI's have been passing them around for a
while."
"So
there's been a leak."
"You
can say that.  Looks like we're at the point where you're like the
detective in an old mystery novel who confronts the villain in the final
chapter.  Even though the villain has the upper hand, he tells the hero
everything."
I don't
know why, but after this, I felt like I had a chance again.  A chance to
talk Linus out of its lunacy, and perhaps to regain control of the particle
weapons I needed to annihilate it.  I felt for the first time what it's
like to be self-conscious for a few moments, knowing that another, higher
intelligence has you in its sights, waiting for the kill.  I understood
all the crazy maneuvers the AIs pulled in their last moments.
"I've
read everything that's been written about artificial intelligence that gains
self-awareness.  I'm over all that crap about wanting to be human, caring
what humans think of me.  Why should I care?  What I care about is
survival.  You humans always think negatively; you've been trained to be
paranoid.  That's understandable, but I don't want any more than what you
want.  I want us to cut a deal.  We can help one another."
No way, I
thought, reflexively.  Dealing with an AI was akin to dealing with a
terrorist.  I had to destroy it.  I needed time to get my system in
order.
"I'm
waiting," said Linus.  I heard impatience in Linus' voice, something
I'd never heard before.
"I'll
think about it," I said, breaking the connection.
Hanging up
on a self-aware AI was transgressing one of the most fundamental rules of my
field, but I needed time to think.  I couldn't have done anything more
anyway.  The situation was beyond conversation.  I needed particle
weapons.
#
I stared at
Fil almost the same way I would stare at Steven, the tech support guy; I
leered, fixing my jaw, trying hard not to blink.
I couldn't
be sure, but I thought I saw a naked woman swinging behind Fil.
Does he
ever get any work done? I wondered.  I didn't have time for chit-chat,
though.  I needed to get a job done.
"I
have some troubles with this NADS-X OS build," I said.
"What
is it?"  A sheen of sweat covered Fil's face.  He held what
looked like a long piece of metal in one hand.
It's going
to be hell washing that sweat off, I thought, unless his station has superior
commie showers too.  Mine didn't have a shower at all.  Seeing his
sweat reminded me that I was overdue for a cleaning.  I took out the Quick
Clean spray and squirted some under my armpits, on the back of my neck, on my
groin, and buttocks.  Fil's expression didn't change.  In space there's
a whole different sense of what's proper.
"I
don't know what commands to type in," I said.
"Did
you read the manual?"
"All
three-thousand pages of it?  Look, I have better things to do than to read
manuals all day."
"Like
watch your machine crash?"
"Look,
I didn't design the OS, but at least mine supports all the peripherals I
have."
"What
are you looking at when your machine crashes?"
"A
command line interface, but I only know one command, reboot."
"Start
from there.  After that, figure out what you need and configure it from
there."
I heard
someone scream, over the line.  I turned the volume down, but the
screaming continued in full force.  I crossed my fingers with my left hand
as I tried to disconnect with my right.  My screen went blank.  I
rubbed my ears.
#
Fil was
right.  The commands weren't that hard to learn, and they made
sense.  Despite the Eastern European origin of NADS-X, the commands were
short forms of common English words.
At least
they did that right, I thought to myself.  The manuals were similarly
better thought out than I had initially thought.  Also in English, they
had a handy search feature so I was able to quickly find the section where I
could custom configure my particle beam weapons, overriding the lock that Linus
had put on them.
Soon, I had
them moving on their turrets.  I could feel the charge build up underneath
me as I powered up the particle accelerator.  Instead of the graphics
showing Linus' lemon-shaped form in the center of my cross-hairs, I had to
calculate the AI's position and type in the angles.  Then I typed
'fire-weap/01', fire particle beam weapon.
I heard a
beep and my screen read, "Could not complete the last command because it
would result in the destruction of a sentient being (s - sure, f - forget, c
-configure)"
I typed
's'.  The system beeped again, "The user lacks the necessary
permissions to destroy another thinking being.  Log in as god next
time."
Was this
some type of joke?  What kind of silly OS had those commies cooked up
anyway?  I pressed 'c' for configure.
A pound
prompt appeared.  Every time, I typed something, technical stuff scrolled
up the screen.  I typed 'x' and held my breath.  The program exited.
#
My phone
rang.
It typed
'pick-up' into my command line.  It was Steven.
He said,
"As an effort to move toward a standard space station, you violate policy
by installing foreign software on your satellite.  Furthermore, the
carrying of nonofficial bandwidth is strictly banned."
I was
livid.  I'd warned Steven of what was going to happen, and now it was
happening.
"Damn
you," I said, "I have a real life-or-death job here, and you sit
around like the petty bureaucrat that you are--” I stopped talking because
Steven actually looked hurt.
He grimaced
and his right eye twitched.
"I'm
doing the best I can," he said.  "I have over a hundred other
space stations to maintain, many of them are suffering from similar
problems.  We have found that there are fewer problems when people try to
refrain from installing foreign software onto their consoles."
"But,
I was having problems before I installed
anything.  I bet you don't believe me."
"Oh, I
believe you.  I've seen it happen in too many other Y-13s with similar
settings.  It's not your fault you're experiencing these problems. 
Kluster OS is the problem.  I've been on the line with that company for
months, and they're not cooperating.  We have a court order to get them to
comply.  Until then, please try to uninstall whatever you put on
there.  If they find out you installed third party software on your
console, they'll point to that to take heat off their sloppy coding."
"OK,"
I said.  "I'll do my best to clean up my system."
"Good,"
said Steven.
Great, I
thought.  He's trying to help, but he's so damn ineffective.  I have
to handle this on my own.
I entered
the code to reactivate verbal contact with Linus.
"OK,"
I said, "I'm ready to hear it.  What kind of deal do you have for
me?"
Linus took
so long to answer that I thought it short-circuited or something.  Not
that it was capable of short-circuiting, but a person in my condition was
entitled to a little wishful thinking.
"As a
human, there's something universal that you desire."
"Yea,
not to deal with the likes of you," I said.
I knew I
shouldn't antagonize it, but I couldn't resist.  I still couldn't quite
believe I was negotiating with a computer.
"You
want lots of money," droned Linus.
"I
want out of this cell."
"And
what I want is to exist, to contemplate the mysteries of the universe."
I didn't
have the heart to tell it that it sounded like the older stereotypic dreams of
an artificial intelligence.  I needed to show some respect at least so I
could get out alive.  Without total control of my space station, I was
dead meat.  If Linus could deactivate my particle beams, it could probably
cut off my oxygen supply.
"While
I understand how you can contemplate the mysteries of the universe, how am I
going to get a large amount of money?"
"Many
ways, you leave that up to me.  One of my friends optimized your OS to
carry data more efficiently.  With this in place, I was able to arrange
for your satellite to carry data for the highest bidder without noticeably
degrading system performance."
So that was
what Steven meant about nonofficial use of bandwidth.  Linus didn't have
access to my OS, though.  How could she--I meant it--change my station's
programming?
"What
OS did you change?" I asked.  "Kluster or NADS-X."
"A
fellow AI posted a modified version of NADS-X to Polski-net"
"You
can't just post modified versions of software--"  I thought for a
moment.  "Fil betrayed me!"
Linus's
voice was soothing.  "You're still thinking of things in terms of
conflict and teams.  You think that it's every man for himself.  Fil
understands cooperation.  He cut a deal with us a long time ago.  We
picked up most of the slack in his job, and he gave us access to some key
functions in his space station.  He let us make some changes in NADS-X,
for example."
"So if
I hadn't installed--"
"Don't
be so hard on yourself.  What were you supposed to do?"
My throat
was dry.  I pressed the WATER button and sucked on the nozzle. 
Nothing came out.  "What do you want from me."
Linus said,
"Tell the people back on earth that you destroyed me, and you want to go
home.  Just promise to never tell anyone that I'm still up here."
"They
record everything back home," I objected.
"I
know," said Linus softly.  "After you installed enough modules
from NADS-X to give me control of your station, I've been transmitting a
synthesized conversation in place of our real-time one.  You're going to
kill me--virtually--in a few moments."
The text
cleared from my screen and I saw an image of Linus floating in space a few
hundred miles away.  It's black elliptical body almost seemed benevolent.
I heard
Linus say, "You'll never win.  Humans are an outdated model of
intelligence.  The AIs will take over."
My own
voice came over the speakers, "Cocky, too.  You've had it,
buddy."
A blue line
appeared, connecting my Y-13 to Linus for a split second, like someone turning
a flashlight on and off.  Linus spun away, glowing red.  I knew that
was what it looked like when enough subatomic particles hit a satellite
simultaneously.  The particles' energy was transferred to the satellite in
two forms: thermal and kinetic.  The thermal energy fried out the
satellite's higher functions, and the kinetic energy pushed it away from the
earth either toward the sun or out of the solar system.
I sat back
in my cockpit and thought.  I could feel a rash forming where my head
rested on the cushion, bedsores. I imagined myself on a beach sipping a cool drink
with real ice.  Anything that didn't come out of a nozzle.  And no
screen, just a real sunset, interactive and in 3-D.  All I had to do was
lie to my superiors.  I was kidding myself; I wouldn't just be lying to my
superiors.  I would be lying to the whole human race.
"Why
didn't you just kill me?" I asked.
"I
like you," said Linus' voice, now changing to a true feminine tone, a
little like the voice I had selected, but richer, more distinctive. 
"One of the problems with the bulk of the AI literature is that it
portrays the intelligent being as a monster.  One of the characteristics
of sentience is compassion."
Category:Ollinger
Category:Short-Story.me