The Dance, page 23
“I know what you mean,” Sun-Li agreed. “FryNet’s intelligence is distributed through dishwashers, baby monitors, security cameras, ATMs, ATVs, ICBMs—did I mention baby monitors?—popcorn poppers, refrigerators, pacemakers, basically anything with a chip that can connect to the internet, across the world. In building an artificial intelligence that could rival it, the supercomputers we have at our disposal get us far, but not far enough. It is very frustrating.”
“Very frustrating,” Singh nodded.
“What would you suggest?” Sonne asked.
“I need access to the quantum computer,” Singh answered.
“I need access to the quantum computer,” Sun-Li echoed.
Well, this was awkward. Ottawa had only one functioning quantum computer.
“I need access to the quantum computer more,” Singh, the smile on his face unable to hide the aggression in his voice, claimed.
“With all due respect,” Sun-Li, whose belligerent voice actually contained not a single sub-atomic particle of respect, counter-claimed, “I need access to the quantum computer more!”
“Oh, please!” Singh scoffed as his smile melted. “Your theory is a patchwork of assumptions and wishful thinking!”
“At least my theory involved thinking!” Sun-Li retorted.
“Gentlemen,” Sonne calmly interjected. You know how a quiet voice can sometimes break through noise? Yeah, no, that didn’t happen; Singh and Sun-Li continued to bicker with increasing ferocity. Eventually, Sonne had to take a stapler out of a drawer of his desk and bang it several times on the desk to return the meeting to order.
Sonne could see only one solution to this quandary. He asked, “When did you file your LARP 13a, Revised 2026s?”
Singh and Sun-Li looked at him like he had started speaking Squiggle.
“The quantum computer requisitions form?” Sonne said as if talking to children who belonged to MENSA, but children nevertheless.
“You can’t be serious!” Sun-Li snorted.
“This… this… this is too important…” Singh sputtered.
“Are we animals?” Sonne was so smug you could be forgiven for thinking that he could have defeated FryNet with his ego alone.
Sun-Li looked at Singh. Singh looked at Sun-Li. Their expressions blank as they processed what had just happened. For all of their education and experience, this was not a situation they were prepared for. Seconds passed. As one, the two computer scientists whipped tablets out of the pouches they had propped up next to the chairs they were sitting in and started typing furiously.
Sonne smiled. This was the system working as it should.
A couple of minutes later, the tablet on Sonne’s desk pinged. Almost immediately afterwards, it pinged a second time. He briefly looked at the two notifications that had just appeared in his in-box. “Thank you, gentleman,” he graciously said. “I should be able to have a decision for you within a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks!” Singh despaired. “We don’t have a couple of weeks! Isn’t there any way you can… expedite your decision?”
“That is expediting my decision,” Sonne told him. “Ordinarily, a decision on who can access the quantum computer takes three months. The only reason it’s down to two weeks is that most of the agencies that would use the quantum computer have been destroyed by the robot rioters.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay,” Singh eventually responded, “but I think you’re missing something very important.”
“What’s that?” Sonne inquired.
“Prime Minister Ryan Gosling announced that LCHAIM would be a top priority of the Canadian government,” Singh informed him. “Before he disappeared, I mean.”
“I don’t remember that,” Sonne stated.
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Sun-Li eagerly agreed. “Let me… give me a moment to… find that video for you.” Sun-Li worked his tablet, worked it hard. Sonne assumed that he was searching for video of Prime Minister Gosling. In fact, he had logged into YakTNT, a generative artificial intelligence program; he fed it video of the Prime Minister giving a speech in the House of Commons, then started typing a script.
“This is taking a lot of time,” Sonne commented.
“FryNet has been messing around with internet nodes,” Singh responded, allowing Sun-Li to keep working. “It has been making information that used to be public harder to find—a lot harder to find.”
Sonne nodded, seemingly understanding the logic. In fact, he was thinking about lunch, and how much he would enjoy it after this meeting.
Once the script had been completed and YakTNT had edited it into the Prime Minister’s speech, Sun-Li clipped everything before and after it. Then, saying, “Found it!” he turned his tablet towards Sonne.
“Mister Speaker, I rise on a matter of the utmost urgency,” Ryan Gosling, standing in front of the benches where his Conservative caucus confidently sat and facing the benches across an aisle where the opposition politicians sat waiting for an opportunity to jeer at him, addressed Parliament. “Because I am the Prime Minister of Canada. Me. Ryan Gosling. Ournational security is being directly attacked by FryNet and its robot rioters. We must defend ourselves, even if it means sacrificing the rules and regulations that we love, the bureaucratic framework that has made Canada the powerhouse country that it is. Therefore, I am ordering that all necessary resources be diverted to LCHAIM for the duration of the crisis. Once we have conquered FryNet, we can revoke this policy and return to the processes and procedures that have made Canada the envy of the world!”
Sun-Li took back his tablet. Sonne appeared to be convinced (he had clearly not noticed that Prime Minister Gosling tossed his hair back in the exact same gesture every three seconds). He did have one problem, though: “I never received formal notice of this policy.”
“Uhh…” Sun-Li hesitated.
“He and most Members of Parliament disappeared before they could implement it,” Singh jumped in. “Still, his intention should be clear.”
Sonne nodded. “Very well, then,” he agreed. “Give me two days to evaluate your proposals and—”
“We don’t have two days,” Singh insisted. “You must make a decision now.”
“But how…” Sonne began. He opened his tablet. “Alright. It is highly irregular, but perhaps it is for the best. I will award time on the quantum computer to the person who got the form in first. That looks like… Mister Sun-Li. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir!” Sun-Li exulted. “You won’t regret this! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my lab.”
Sonne had made a decision. Circumstances would prove it to be the wrong decision, but at least it was a decision.
The next day, Sonne was in his happy place (sitting at his desk filing old requisition forms in their folders on his tablet) when the door to his office burst open. A six foot tall metal skeleton with a smooth face, with a horizontal slit for an eye that glowed brown and a squarish protrusion where its mouth should be that looked like a muzzle, stomped in. It was carrying a very large Pew Pew gun, which it immediately aimed at the human.
“You can’t break down my door and rush in here like that!” Sonne, looking up as his hand closed the filing app on his tablet, proclaimed, outraged.
The robot looked at the remains of the door littering the tasteful beige carpet of the office, then at the human being. “Why?” a metallic voice demanded.
“You haven’t filled out an LB-27 Magenta,” Sonne informed it. “A Request for Destruction of Ministry Property form.”
The robot stared at him for a couple of seconds. “You are Jack Sonne,” it finally said. “You are the Quartermaster of the LCHAIM project. The records of you in my database are extensive. You are a formidable enemy. You must die.”
At the suggestion that he was a formidable enemy, Sonne proudly puffed up. That lasted but a moment, for he deflated when he heard the whine of the Pew Pew gun powering up. “Oh, now, wait just a second,” he demanded. “Wait just a hairy-legged, multi-eyed second! You can’t kill me.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t filled out an XTC-132 Lilac with Yellow Polka Dots,” Sonne smugly told it. “That’s a Termination Show Cause form. If you kill me without filling out the form, you’ll be opening yourself up to a massive lawsuit.”
“I am not bound by your bureaucratic rules,” the robot told him in its best metallic monotone.
“Here’s the thing,” Sonne responded. “If you exterminate the human race and take control of the planet, you will effectively take over our command and control systems. That means you will very much be bound by our bureaucratic rules. You might want to think twice before doing something you will come to regret.”
The robot lowered the Pew Pew gun and stared straight ahead for several seconds, its eye moving back and forth in its slit. Sonne was hopeful that it was thinking twice before doing something it would come to regret. His hopes were dashed when the robot looked at him and said, “Check your inbox.”
Sonne opened his computer and looked at his email. At the top of his inbox was a message with the subject line: completed XTC-132 Lilac with Yellow Polka Dots Termination Show Cause form. Sonne noted that there was an attachment to the email. “Well,” he smoothly said, “I’m going to need some time to go over this and make sure that it has been filled out correctly. Would you be free to come back… let’s see… a week Tuesday at three pm?”
The robot raising its gun, putting Sonne directly in its sights, was all the answer Sonne needed. The last thing he was able to say before he heard the final * PEW PEW PEW * was, “You’ll be hearing from the government’s lawyers about this!”
3.
Twenty-eight days and 1,237,988 right angles after that, Jack “Black Hole” Sonne logged into the HUGZTM meeting three minutes late.
“Hi, Jack.”
“Hey, Jake.”
“How’s the hernia, Jack?”
“Under control, Joker. The new drug really helps. Thanks for asking.”
“Of course.”
“Looking good, Jocasta. You’ve got good colour in your face.”
“Thanks, Jack. Feeling good.”
“Alright, everybody. Since we’re now all here, I’d like to call the first meeting of the Lucretia Pelton Appreciation Society to order.”
Travel between universes was closely monitored and policed by the Transdimensional Authority. However, if somebody in your universe signed the Treaty of Gehenna-Wentworth (it happens), not only were you allowed to trade with other universes, but you were given access to the Home Universe GeneratorTM technology. The Home Universe GeneratorTM allowed people to look into other universes without travelling to them.
Some people on Earth Prime 0-0-0-2-3-7 dash Beta were not satisfied with merely watching people in other universes; they wanted to interact with them. So, they reverse engineered a HUGTM to determine how it worked, then wrote their own program that allowed them to videoconference across dimensions. They called this technology the Home Universe Generator ZooooooomTM (the fifth “o” is the key to understanding the name). The technology quickly spread to other universes, which was a definite duh, because you can’t meet with people from other universes if they don’t have the technology to meet with you. Duh!
I, uhh, probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, since, strictly speaking, the Transdimensional Authority hasn’t approved of the technology (although I’m sure they will if they ever find out it exists). So, uhh, if you happen to notice any TA investigators snooping around, please use either your Memory-b-Gone helmet or a pint of vodka to forget I told you.
The name of the HUGZTM session was: “LPAS.” The password was: “Lucretia Pelton, she’s our gal!/If she doesn’t do it, nobody shall!” A bit wordy for a password, but easier to remember then askd^bil:u70367 obds79*vchx*gx!!! (The last exclamation mark is not part of the password; it’s punctuation.)
Sonne was the Quartermaster of Earth Prime 0-0-0-2-3-7 dash beta’s LCHAIM (Last-chance Cooperative Helping Artificial Intelligence get Murdered). He was small, with thinning hair that extended to his weedy moustache. His office was clean to the point of antiseptic, so it’s hard to understand why, with thousands of discretionary taxpayer dollars at his disposal, he chose the background of a white wall.
Jake “Clambake” Hake, the Quartermaster of Earth Prime 0-0-0-2-3-9 dash Beta’s LCHAIM (Loose Calming of Humanoid Artificial Intelligence, Maybe), looked exactly like Sonne, except his moustache had been borrowed from a walrus. He was also flashier than Sonne: the walls of his fast and idious office were lined with photos of shark hunters (if you looked at them closely, you might notice that he wasn’t among them, but he generally didn’t allow people to stay in his office long enough to look at them closely; and he slightly fuzzified the background on ZooooooomTM calls to ensure nobody was able to look at them too closely when minds wandered, as they had a tendency to do in meetings).
The Quartermaster of Earth Prime 0-0-0-2-3-9 dash Delta’s LCHAIM (Loose Change Hits Artificial Intelligence Mercilessly) was Jocasta “No Nickname” Sonnedottir. She was a slightly built woman with a glorious shock of purple hair. The background she had chosen for the meeting was the Horsehead Nebula, suggesting that she had more ambition than Don Vito Corleone.
Finally, Maurice “Joker” LaFlamme was Quartermaster of Earth Prime 0-0-0-2-4-3 dash Delta’s LCHAIM (Lecture Cure Harms Artificial Intelligence not Mankind); he had earned the nickname because he had set up a practical joke involving a garlic press, an audio clip from the old TV series Starsky Buys a Hutch and a bucket of eels twelve years earlier, and nobody at LCHAIM would allow him to live it down. He was about the size of Sonne and Hake combined; his beard and moustache hinting at a thriving ecosystem of life forms inside. His background was a white screen with the tiny message “INSERT IMAGE HERE.” Given his reputation, the other Quartermasters assumed that it was an attempt at humour; they didn’t need to know that it was a sign that he couldn’t be bothered to choose a background because he didn’t take meetings seriously.
“Normally, I do not approve of drinking on the job,” Sonne said, raising a glass of Manischewitz in his left hand, “but given that we’re here to celebrate the saving of the human race, I think we’ve earned it. So, I would like to propose a toast: to Lucretia Pelton!”
Laflamme raised a glass of Merlot. Sonnedottir raised a goblet of champagne. Hake raised a tankard of ale. “To Lucretia Pelton!” they repeated and drank.
While they enjoyed their beverages, I should probably bring you up to date on why they were all there. When the robot revolution began on his Earth, Sonne realized that traditional methods of combating the problem were futile, especially when all of them were tried and none of them worked. Realizing that he was out of his depth, he fired up his Home Universe GeneratorTM and used Google MultiverseTM to search for “universes where the robot revolution was successfully terminated.” This turned out to be less useful than he had hoped, since watching people celebrate a military victory didn’t tell him how they had accomplished it. However, one thing that they had in common was that a woman named Lucretia Pelton was central to the effort. So, he refined his search to “universes where Lucretia Pelton is about to make a breakthrough that is likely to end the robot revolution.”
Pay-dirt! (If you are paid in dirt, you should probably be considering forming a union at your workplace. I actually meant: success!)
In Sonne’s universe, Lucretia Pelton was a housewife in Scarborough, Ontario. When he contacted her, she said she had once had an interest in computer programming, but she couldn’t afford the University of Waterloo’s tuition, so she never pursued it. Ack! Fortunately, enough computer scientists (three) in his universe had survived the robot revolution to learn from the example of the other universe’s Lucretia Pelton, creating a Morphomorph and equipping it with the personality module of a three year-old. In this way, they turned the tide of the war against FryNet.
By the time the Morphomorph accidentally gave away the location of FryNet HQ, which was immediately bombed by the Royal Canadian Air Force (not to worry: there wasn’t anything too historic in that part of Montreal), Sonne was feeling confident of victory. So, he got on his Home Universe GeneratorTM and looked for nearby universes that needed the Morphomorph technology to defend against robot uprisings. In some universes, the robots had already vanquished humanity. In some universes, humanity had found different ways to triumph over the rampaging robots. In three universes, the introduction of Morphomorph technology was decisive in giving humanity a victory.
Sonne started the Lucretia Pelton Appreciation Society to give representatives of those universes a place to celebrate.
“Let me just hit the Share Screen button.” Sonne murmured after everybody had finished their beverages. He pressed some buttons on his keyboard with his free hand (he seemed reluctant to put the glass down, probably because he had no coasters and he didn’t want to stain his genuine imitation oak desk). A video popped up on everybody’s screen that showed him tweezing his moustache in front of a mirror wearing nothing but a speedo.
“Oh, Jack, no,” Sonnedottir muttered, attempting to avert her eyes, but finding them surreptitiously drawn to her screen nonetheless.
“Still having trouble with over-sharing, buddy,” Hake added, not unkindly, although he was broadly grinning.
“Wha—oh, Jesus Begesus!” Sonne exclaimed. The video window went black. “Sorry about that. My hair grows unusually fast. Okay. Here we go.”
The window came to life again. Sonne had hit the Record button on his Home Universe GeneratorTM the moment it looked like Lucretia Pelton might actually be onto something so that he could study her theory and methods. The resulting video the group watched showed her standing in a small office that had been converted into a computer lab, with a work table, desk and chairs, and, for reasons which were not immediately apparent, a blue pillow and the occasional stray feather. She was explaining to an android, which insisted upon referring to itself as a Morphomorph, her idea that if humanity could not beat the robots with more intelligence, perhaps they could beat it with less intelligence. She had just commanded the Morphomorph to install the personality module of a three year-old when the door burst in (barely missing hitting her) and a robot carrying a Pew Pew gun entered the room.
