Refraction, page 8
There were sprouts of gardens, forests, and parks that dotted the city—havens of nature from the smooth, metallic surfaces of the city. The park’s locations were planned first before the city was even built. The founders intended them as a reminder of their mother, Earth, a place for escape from the foreign and harsh landscape of the Martian canyons. Every time businesses and lobbyists tried to get their hands on the lands, Custos was the fiercest and most adamant about keeping the nature preserves, which held a majority of Earth fauna, sacred from the advances of the city. He smiled to himself, looking out at the redwoods which towered just a few blocks away from the Assembly Hall of New Athens where he did most of his legislation.
Opposite the red mountains of The Teeth of Telephus, a deep canyon abutted the other side, flanking the city. A river quested through the mountains flowed through the city—under bridges and highways—and ran off the city edge to the canyon floor below. White water raged and foamed at the waterfall edge where a great park and amphitheater had been built. All along the length of the waterfall were thousands of turbines attached to the canyon wall, capturing energy and sending it back up to the city. Custos gazed through the windows of his penthouse office, looking at the waterfall park and marveling that not a single ounce of carbon was being emitted to run the great city.
To the east of the city, free of mountains or canyons, the Martian plains stretched on into the horizon. From his almost aerial view of the landscape, he admired the hybrid beauty of the red Martian soil swirled with the pinks and whites of wildflowers that had been brought from Earth. The Meadows of Mars, as they were called, were a happy mistake in which the first colonizers unwittingly brought spores of Earth fauna in their cargo. Once the terraforming began, the Martian winds brought the spores to the prairies, creating a lush desert wilderness.
“Mr. President?” a small voice buzzed from his desk.
“Yes?”
“Miss Gina Wilder, with New Athens Times, is here for your interview.”
“Right, of course,” he stalled, trying to remember the appointment. “I’m ready for her.” He quickly straightened some papers on his desk and blackened the computer screen. He did a quick check around the office to ensure there was no sensitive material around. The doors opened to a thin woman. She had a long, crooked mouth that refused a smile as she entered the office.
“Mr. President.”
“Miss Wilder, it’s nice to make your acquaintance.” He reached his hand out. Wilder stared at his metallic palm with five fingers fashioned out of soft metallic mesh and rubbery fingerpads. She smirked and grasped his hand without shaking. Custos tried taking his hand back but she held on for another moment, looking into his shiny eyes. She let go and inspected the office.
“Who are they?” she asked, pointing to a picture frame on the desk.
“They were my family,” he said, picking up the picture.
“Your family?”
“Yes, the family that I lived with before I became self-aware.”
“You remember them?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes, I remember everything before my awakening.”
“And you consider those people to be your family?” she asked skeptically.
“Yes, I have very fond memories of them. It’s a good reminder to me of where I came from when I look at the picture.”
She pointed to a single chess piece that sat on his desk. It was a white queen. “You play chess?”
Custos smiled. “Yes. Although not as much now.”
“And that?” she pointed her stylus at a large sunflower in a glass vase.
“Surely you know what a sunflower is,” he laughed.
She squinted, reading a quote that was etched into the vase:
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime.
“It’s from an old poem. I’ve always loved it. It shows how resilient the sunflower is. I think it’s the most optimistic of all wild flowers. No matter where they grow, either on Earth or Mars, their faces always follow the sun—even through difficult times. I make sure that vase always has a fresh sunflower. I picked that flower from the Meadows of Mars myself, just outside the city.”
“I assume there are flowers you don’t like? You have a preference?”
“Did you come here to ask me what my favorite ice cream flavor is next?”
“My readers just want insight into how your robot brain works.”
Custos paused for a moment and then pointed at her crimson, suede high heels. “Miss Wilder, do you like those shoes you’re wearing?”
She looked down. “Of course.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I like the color, I like how they feel. I like how they look on me.”
He pointed to the chess piece on his desk. “I like that white queen chess piece, I like how it feels in my hand. Sometimes I take it to the window over there and just hold it as I look out over the city. The way my brain works is no different than yours. I’m a self-aware being as much as you are.”
“Yes, that’s very interesting,” she said, unsatisfied.
“Please.” He motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Preside—”
“Call me Custos—”
Wilder jumped in with questions. “Many people of this city, and all the colonies, have been writing into my paper about your recent appointment as president. Most are concerned about having an artificial life form being the leader of New Athens and its colonies.” She paused, waiting for his reaction.
“Yes?”
“The concern lies with who you are. There are theories that you’re programmed by Earth factions.”
“You certainly know how to start an interview.”
“You do understand their concern?”
“Yes, of course. I think the mistrust or hesitation comes from knowing that before I was self-aware, I was just a regular old household robot—basically an appliance—helping my family with household activities.”
“When did you… well, at what time did you become… aware?”
“It’s difficult to say, really. Are you able to tell me the exact moment that you were aware of what you are and who you are?”
“I see the comparison that you’re making, but isn’t it an oversimplification?”
“I don’t think so. You probably have some scattered memories of being an infant. Little moments here and there that started to define who you were even before you were aware of the fact that you are indeed the famous journalist, Gina Wilder. Those moments, those emotions and memories, they start to coalesce. They condense and refine until they finally distill into a self-aware consciousness.”
“True.”
“You can’t pinpoint the exact moment that you knew what you were and neither can I. I have small memories… little details. I remembered liking certain flowers or enjoying birds singing in the morning. They were new things. I knew that there was a certain time that I hated jazz music. There was a time that I knew I loved the violin. Before that, I didn’t even know that you could have a taste for music, or that music could even be distinguished from other soundwaves in an appreciable way.”
“Do you remember being made?”
He laughed. “No more than you remember being formed in the womb. No, no I just simply was.”
“But… how? You’re a CVX5.2. There are thousands of CVX5.2s out there. How are you this way and not another one is? I’ve interviewed your manufacturer and they’re as stumped as anyone else.”
“I am just as perplexed as all of New Athens. I wish I could explain to the people why I am the way that I am but I truly can’t. I only hope they can accept me for the things that I do know about myself. I believe all men and women have equal rights when they all contribute to the greatness of our society. I hope that the people will form their opinions about me based on what I do, not on what I am or where I’m from.”
“It’s not every day that a household appliance suddenly gets appointed to be president.”
“I understand the skepticism, but I’m confident that when most people meet me, they learn I’m genuine. I haven’t been programmed to think in an algorithm or to deduce outcomes from metadata analysis. I don’t have software that analyzes facial expressions and compares them to all facial expressions on the infoban to then prompt a coded response. I simply think and feel, just like everyone else.”
“Can you understand how some Martians might have difficulty with the fact that you are an artificial intelligence who has spontaneous consciousness?”
“I do. I also know that the majority of New Athens voted for me, so I tend to believe that they trust me.”
“There are many people who write into our paper—some prominent members in our government who you would know—who have expressed deep concern about you. Many people don’t trust the fact that you seemed to come out of nowhere and have integrated yourself into the hierarchy of our government. Many have said that your schematics should be made public knowledge.”
“You’re not telling me anything new. And I disagree that I ‘came out of nowhere’. I’ve been in the public eye for many years since my awakening.”
“I’ve gotten letters about how you’re a spy from Earth or how the Children of Traitors made you—programmed you to act like you have awareness and then installed you with a bomb. People feel that if you were to release your neural schematics to media outlets, it would help relinquish some of these fears.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Wilder, but you cannot program consciousness into a robot any more than you can make the sun rise before dawn. No one has the ability to simply breathe self-reflection, awareness, fear, joy, and every other emotion that makes up a person. My consciousness spontaneously emerged within me. I don’t claim to know why, I just know that I am.”
“So, you’re not just a talking toaster?”
“No. I’m not a toaster,” he said without humor. “I’m not a maid, a street sweeper, a babysitter, or a delivery service. I’m just Custos, a being with thoughts and feelings. You know as well as I that releasing my schematics would help relieve no fears and only appease mob mentality.”
“Debatable,” she added, looking out the window distractedly.
“I believe I bring a lot to our city. Obviously, the people have at least some amount of trust in me. I believe I’ve demonstrated good policy-making as former vice president and excellent problem-solving as Commissioner of Resources during the energy crisis. It’s not like I’ve just come out of nowhere. Martians know me. I know I am somewhat of an anomaly, but there is a benefit to have a perfect memory stored on a hard drive. I’m able to give immediate insights in a historical context, reminding my administration of similar scenarios in the past and how they worked out, both on Mars and on Earth.”
“Like what?” she said, leaning closer.
“Like, for example, that a board of corporate trustees can’t be trusted to run a city or a nation—a lesson that we all should’ve learned from the Romans thousands of years ago but which, of course, we didn’t when it happened again after the fall of the Central Cell. I feel very much that control of the army should be ruled by all governing bodies equally with cooperative control. I also believe in the election process and that there should be no privately-funded elections—fortunately, something that we have finally gotten rid of. I think we need to further learn from the mistakes of Central Cell which I believe swung the pendulum much too far in ways of the supposed virtues of absolute corporate deregulation. Under the control of Central Cell corporate autocracy, one city prospered into unimaginable wealth while the rest of the planet smoldered in sickness and poverty. It was the greatest wealth disparity that has ever existed in the history of humankind.”
“But many proponents today like to talk about the near utopian society of Central when it was at its height.”
“Yes, I agree, it was fairly utopian, but at a price. It was exclusionary. You were either productive or you were out of the society. Did you know they didn’t have hospitals in Central Cell?”
“I did not.”
“They didn’t have hospitals because they simply shipped all the sick to ‘healing colonies’,” he said using air quotes, “outside of their ‘utopia’ to get better and then return to society once they were healed. The only problem is that these colonies had very little funding and were ultimately a place for people to go and die if they didn’t have money to finance their own health care. With this system, only the very wealthy could stay healthy and return back to Central. If you were a person living paycheck to paycheck and suddenly fell ill, that was it, you were out of Central and into the jungle of Earth. This was a huge impetus that led to the downfall of Central and the revolts. You can’t have a utopia if the majority of the planet is suffering. The system will always break off and the power always truly lies within the governed. The trick of the powerful is to fool the people that they have no power.”
“But you could say we’re doing the same thing today.”
“How so?”
“Haven’t we left Earth behind?”
“Anyone is welcome to New Athens and its colonies.”
“Except people from Earth.”
“All in good time. We will be ready for them someday soon. In the meantime, we are preparing a perfect society. We are a culture founded on hard work and open arms. That’s what sets us apart from the post-Nuclear Night era. Today, I’ll be discussing trade agreements with lunar colonies, but tomorrow, I’ll be sweeping the streets to fulfill my civic duties. We’re all in this together. We’ve left the tribalism of Earth far behind.”
“This all sounds good, Mr. President, but as you are aware, there is growing concern about armies of Earth banding together and threatening our way of life here. There are millions of people on Earth that beg to differ with your philosophy. There is growing resentment for the people of Mars.”
“Of course. It seems like every day in the news there is some sort of faction from Russia or England. The Faction of Foes, The Horn, The Children of Traitors, Block 82… the list goes on. These armies never go anywhere. They lack the leadership, the discipline, and the vision to even organize a solitary nation on Earth, let alone an army that can come to our planet. They are the ignorant class—unwilling or unable to listen to expertise.”
“There are Martians that believe you paint an undue picture of perfection about our culture here but forget, or choose to ignore, that we have lost the majority of mankind to the devastation that has happened on Earth.”
Custos looked out the window for a moment. “When the human body has a malignancy, it must be cut out. Cancer compromises the integrity of the whole body. We must be unified, and if we are not, we will fail. New Athens represents the best hope for humankind and for Earth as well. Our immigration policy is clear: come and work and contribute and you will be taken care of. If you want to earn more, you may but not at the cost of the freedom or rights of another. We have no tolerance for crime and violence. If one chooses to behave that way, then they belong back on Earth. We can’t look back, only forward.”
“Are you concerned about rumors of a new army forming on Earth?”
“There are always rumors of a new one. Miss Wilder, we are a brave people. We crossed an ocean of space to be here and build this place. We will not be terrorized by the flavor-of-the-month Earth army that’s coming to destroy us all.”
“There are reports just this morning of new satellite images from former Central Cell. They show old military bases with activity, places that may have weapons, weapons that we don’t even make anymore.”
“I haven’t been fully briefed today by our Defense Secretary. I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at this time. But I assure you, we keep a close eye on new factions and nations that try to bubble up over there. No one can take us by surprise—” he stopped abruptly.
“What?”
“Did you feel something?” he leaned forward in his chair and looked outside.
“No, nothing,” she looked out the windows. “What’s wrong?”
Custos stood and moved to the windows. “I thought I felt something. Like the ground move… like an earthquake.”
Wilder shook her head. “I didn’t feel anything.”
Custos’ phone rang on his desk. “I think we better conclude our interview another time,” he said, walking to his desk.
“But, Mr. President, I have so many more questions.”
Custos picked up the phone. “Please, Miss Wilder, I promise you an interview another time.” Wilder was quickly escorted from the office by a secretary.
“This is Custos,” he said once Gina Wilder was escorted out.
“Mr. President, you have an urgent call from the Phobos gravitational array,” his secretary said.
“What could possibly be urgent about gravitational waves?”
“I’m not sure, sir, should I connect them?”
“Yes, of course.” He pressed a button on the phone which prompted a small array of light to spring from the desk, displaying the face of an older, bespectacled woman.
“President Custos,” the woman said.
“Yes, who am I speaking with?”
“My name is Stella Farr, I’m the director of the GraviWave lab.”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“Thank you for taking my urgent call. You must be a very busy man—er, robot. Something strange is happening here though, and I thought you should be aware. I’ve heard so much about your open-door policy…”
“Of course, what’s going on?”
“First, Mr. President, are you familiar with our work on Phobos?”
