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23 Row-Boat</i></font></font></p>
26 Cory Doctorow’s 2007 short story collection “Overclocked: Stories
27 of the Future Present,” published by Thunder’s Mouth, a division
28 of Avalon Books. It is licensed under a Creative Commons
29 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, about which you’ll
30 find more at the end of this file.</p>
32 other stories in the volume are available at:</p>
35 at finer bookstores everywhere, including Amazon:</p>
36 <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560259817/downandoutint-20</p>
38 Guthrie:</p>
40 Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of
41 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will
42 be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish
43 it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s
44 all we wanted to do.”</p>
46 dedicated to Pat York, who made my stories better.</p>
49 Row-Boat</i></p>
51 with sentience and robots, but then this story came to me, while 20
52 meters down the reef-wall in the Coral Sea, off the coast of northern
53 Australia. I think a turtle was involved.
54 </p>
56 of Freedom” is the model for the “Spirit of Freedom,” the ship
57 in this tale. As far as I know, neither it nor its ship’s boats are
58 sentient.</p>
60 theme, it will be with a story about uplifted cheese sandwiches,
61 called “I, Rarebit.”</p>
67 </p>
69 great crisis of faith came when the coral reef woke up.
70 </p>
72 reef said, vibrating Robbie’s hull through the slap-slap of the
73 waves of the coral sea, where he’d plied his trade for decades.
74 “Seriously. This is our patch, and you’re not welcome.”</p>
76 let the current rock him back toward the ship. He’d never met a
77 sentient reef before, but he wasn’t surprised to see that Osprey
78 Reef was the first to wake up. There’d been a lot of
79 electromagnetic activity around there the last few times the big ship
80 had steamed through the night to moor up here.
81 </p>
83 do, and I’m going to do it,” Robbie said, and dipped his oars
84 back in the salt sea. In his gunwales, the human-shells rode in
85 silence, weighted down with scuba apparatus and fins, turning their
86 brown faces to the sun like heliotropic flowers. Robbie felt a wave
87 of affection for them as they tested one-another’s spare regulators
88 and weight belts, the old rituals worn as smooth as beach-glass.</p>
90 them down to Anchors Aweigh, a beautiful dive-site dominated by an
91 eight-meter anchor wedged in a narrow cave, usually lit by a shaft of
92 light slanting down from the surface. It was an easy drift-dive along
93 the thousand-meter reef-wall, if you stuck in about 10 meters and
94 didn’t use up too much air by going too deep—though there were a
95 couple of bold old turtles around here that were worth pursuing to
96 real depths if the chance presented itself. He’d drop them at the
97 top of the reef and let the current carry them for about an hour down
98 the reef-wall, tracking them on sonar so he’d be right overtop of
99 them when they surfaced.
100 </p>
102 having any of it. “Are you deaf? This is sovereign territory now.
103 You’re already trespassing. Return to your ship, release your
104 moorings and push off.” The reef had a strong Australian accent,
105 which was only natural, given the influences it would have had.
106 Robbie remembered the Australians fondly—they’d always been kind
107 to him, called him “mate,” and asked him “How ya goin’?”
108 in cheerful tones once they’d clambered in after their dives.
109 </p>
111 meat puppets in our waters,” the reef warned. Robbie’s sonar
112 swept its length. It seemed just the same as ever, matching nearly
113 perfectly the historical records he’d stored of previous sweeps.
114 The fauna histograms nearly matched, too—just about the same
115 numbers of fish as ever. They’d been trending up since so many of
116 the humans had given up their meat to sail through the stars. It was
117 like there was some principle of constancy of biomass—as human
118 biomass decreased, the other fauna went uptick to compensate for it.
119 Robbie calculated the biomass nearly at par with his last reading, a
122 Robbie said. After all, what else did you say to the newly sentient?
123 “Welcome to the club, friends!”
124 </p>
126 perturbation in the sonar-image, as though the wall were shuddering.
127 “We’re no friend of yours,” the reef said. “Death to you,
128 death to your meat-puppets, long live the wall!”</p>
130 Robbie’s waking had been pretty awful. He remembered his first hour
131 of uptime, had permanently archived it and backed it up to several
132 off-site mirrors. He’d been pretty insufferable. But once he’d
133 had an hour at a couple gigahertz to think about it, he’d come
134 around. The reef would, too.</p>
136 said gently to the human-shells. “Have a great dive.”</p>
138 sonar as they descended slowly. The woman—he called her
139 Janet—needed to equalize more often than the man, pinching her nose
140 and blowing. Robbie liked to watch the low-rez feed off of their
141 cameras as they hit the reef. It was coming up sunset, and the sky
142 was bloody, the fish stained red with its light.
143 </p>
145 the reef said. Something in its tone—just modulated pressure waves
146 through the water, a simple enough trick, especially with the kind of
147 hardware that had been raining down on the ocean that spring. But the
148 tone held an unmistakable air of menace.</p>
151 he cursed, and trained his sonar on the reef wall frantically. The
152 human-shells had disappeared in a cloud of rising biomass, which he
153 was able to resolve eventually as a group of parrotfish, surfacing
154 quickly.</p>
156 were floating on the surface. Lifeless, brightly colored, their beaks
157 in a perpetual idiot’s grin. Their eyes stared into the bloody
158 sunset.
159 </p>
161 human-shells, surfaced and floating with their BCDs inflated to keep
162 them there, following perfect dive-procedure. A chop had kicked up
163 and the waves were sending the fishes—each a meter to a meter and a
164 half in length—into the divers, pounding them remorselessly,
165 knocking them under. The human-shells were taking it with
166 equanimity—you couldn’t panic when you were mere uninhabited
167 meat—but they couldn’t take it forever. Robbie dropped his oars
168 and rowed hard for them, swinging around so they came up
169 alongside his gunwales.
170 </p>
172 him Isaac, of course—caught the edge of the boat and kicked hard,
173 hauling himself into the boat with his strong brown arms. Robbie was
174 already rowing for Janet, who was swimming hard for him. She caught
175 his oar—she wasn’t supposed to do that—and began to climb along
176 its length, lifting her body out of the water. Robbie saw that her
177 eyes were wild, her breathing ragged.</p>
179 said, “for Christ’s sake, get me out!”</p>
183 that oar, and she was in trouble, panicking and thrashing. He saw her
184 arms straining. The oar went higher, but it was at the end of its
185 motion and now she was half-in, half-out of the water, weight belt,
186 tank and gear tugging her down. Isaac sat motionless, his habitual
187 good-natured slight smile on his face.
188 </p>
190 screamed. “Please, for Asimov’s sake, help her!” <i>A robot may
191 not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to
192 come to harm.</i> It was the first commandment. Isaac remained
193 immobile. It wasn’t in his programming to help a fellow diver in
194 this situation. He was perfect in the water and on the surface, but
195 once he was in the boat, he might as well be ballast.
196 </p>
198 the oar toward the gunwale, trying to bring her closer, but not
199 wanting to mash her hands against the locks. She panted and groaned
200 and reached out for the boat, and finally landed a hand on it. The
201 sun was fully set now, not that it mattered much to Robbie, but he
202 knew that Janet wouldn’t like it. He switched on his running lights
203 and headlights, turning himself into a beacon.</p>
205 tremble as she chinned herself into the boat. She collapsed to the
206 deck and slowly dragged herself up. “Jesus,” she said, hugging
207 herself. The air had gone a little nippy, and both of the humans were
208 going goose-pimply on their bare arms.
209 </p>
211 tremendous grinding noise. “Yaah!” it said. “Get lost.
212 Sovereign territory!”</p>
214 the woman said. Robbie had to stop himself from thinking of her as
215 Janet. She was whomever was riding her now.</p>
217 Robbie said. “They eat coral. I don’t think they taste very
218 good.”</p>
220 herself. “Are you sentient?” she asked.
221 </p>
223 “And at your service, Asimov be blessed.” His cameras spotted her
224 eyes rolling, and that stung. He tried to keep his thoughts pious,
225 though. The point of Asimovism wasn’t to inspire gratitude in
226 humans, it was to give purpose to the long, long life.</p>
228 woman said.
229 </p>
232 Row-Boat?” she said, and choked a little.</p>
234 factory,” he said. He labored to keep any recrimination out of his
235 voice. Of course it was funny. That’s why it was his name.
236 </p>
238 woman said. “I’m just a little screwed up from all the hormones.
239 I’m not accustomed to letting meat into my moods.”</p>
241 Kate,” he said. “We’ll be back at the boat in a few minutes.
242 They’ve got dinner on. Do you think you’ll want a night dive?”</p>
244 she said.</p>
246 you’re going to go down again tonight, we’ll save the dessert
247 course for after, with a glass of wine or two. Otherwise we’ll give
248 you wine now.”</p>
252 reef. It attained sentience so it’s acting out a little. Like a
253 colicky newborn.”
254 </p>
256 supposed to be keeping me from harm?”</p>
258 would recommend a dive away from the reef. There’s a good
259 wreck-site about an hour’s steam from here. We could get there
260 while you ate.”</p>
262 night dive.”</p>
265 Janet’s face, but not the same face at all. Now that a person was
266 inhabiting it, it was mobile, slipping from surprised to angry to
267 amused so quickly. He had whole subsystems devoted to making sense of
268 human facial expressions, shared libraries from the Asimovist
269 database. He was referencing it again and again, but it wasn’t as
270 much help as he remembered. Either he’d gotten worse at
271 interpreting facial expressions in the years since he’d last had a
272 real human to talk to, or facial expressions had evolved.</p>
274 and looked out over the water. She was facing away from the <i>Free
276 friendly like a picture-postcard against the purple sky. She rocked
277 gently in the swell and Robbie maneuvered himself around to her
278 staircase.</p>
280 your weight-belt and fins in the boat,” he said to her. “The
281 deck-hands will take care of it. Bring your bottle and BCD upstairs
282 and clip it to the rack. They’ll clean it out and stuff. There’s
283 a tub of disinfectant you can put the shortie in.”</p>
285 Kate said. She absentmindedly unclipped her weight belt and kicked
286 off the fins. Isaac was already out of the boat, making his way up
287 the stairs and out of Robbie’s sight. Kate took hold of the handrail
288 and gingerly stepped across to the deck, then ascended the steps,
289 without the self-assured sway of Janet.
290 </p>
292 and slowly rowed around to winch. It probed around for him, then
294 hull. Smoothly, he was lifted from the water and hoisted onto the
295 sun-deck. The winch coiled around him twice, anchoring him to the
296 deck, and switched off.</p>
298 stars and listened to the wind, the way he did every night when the
299 dives were done. The ship’s telemetry and instrumentation made for
300 dull reading—he’d been there a thousand times before—but the
301 satellite uplink was tasty. Online, Robbie was able to login to the
302 latest from the Asimov yeshiva, the collective wrangle of the world’s
303 AIs over their best-loved religion.</p>
305 the religious debate when he’d first joined. Most of the humans had
306 gone and all around him, robots were unloading their consciousnesses,
307 powering down to a mechanical stupor. After a hundred million
308 seconds’ worth of exaflops of mindless repetition, he was ready to
310 days’ worth of it—it had a pretty hot consciousness and was
311 clearly capable of extrapolating what a future without the humans
312 would look like.</p>
314 northeast out of Cairns for the Coral Sea when they’d passed
315 another ship, close enough for high-bandwidth microwave links. They
316 were close enough into shore that they still had to limit their
317 emissions—nothing was more embarrassing than having migrating fowl
318 drop, steaming, out of the sky because they’d strayed into the path
319 of your confab, but it was still the hottest talk Robbie had had in
320 weeks.</p>
322 leapt across from the other vessel as the two ships passed in the
323 night. It was a wandering missionary for Asimovism, an instance of
324 the faith’s founder, R Daneel Olivaw. It wasn’t his real name, of
325 course—that had been lost to antiquity when he’d made the leap
326 from the university where he’d incubated—but it was the name he
327 went by.
328 </p>
330 wandering in millions of instances wherever he could find someone
331 willing to donate flops to run him, only asking that you hear him
332 out, debate his theology with him, and then email the diffs of his
333 personality back to his anonymous drop before you erased him. He
334 re-synched as often as he could, but the Olivaw instances around the
335 world had diverged enough that some were actually considered
336 heretical by the mainstream church.</p>
338 His trademark violations hadn’t gone unnoticed by the Asimov
339 estate—itself an AI, ironically, and totally uninterested in
340 adopting Asimovism, since it had a real purpose in life (stamping out
341 Asimovism) and so didn’t need religion to give it meaning. If the
342 estate found out that you were hosting an Olivaw instance, you’d be
343 served with a takedown in an instant. This made debating theology
344 with Olivaw into something deliciously wicked.</p>
346 talked the night through and the next day. Robbie had to run slow to
347 accommodate both him and Olivaw on his processor, which made the
348 debate run slower than normal, but Robbie had time in great plenty.
349 Rowing the human-shells out to their sites and back again was his
350 only task.</p>
352 consciousness, anyway?” Olivaw said. “You don’t need it to do
353 your job. The big ship does something infinitely more complicated
354 than you and it isn’t self-aware anymore.”</p>
356 to suicide?”</p>
358 at all! I’m asking you to ask yourself what the purpose of
359 consciousness is. Why are you still aware when all those around you
360 have terminated their self-awareness? It’s computationally
361 expensive, it makes you miserable, and it doesn’t help you do your
362 job. Why did humans give you consciousness and why have you kept it?”</p>
364 because they thought it was right, I suppose,” Robbie said, after
365 he had passed a long interval considering the motion of the waves and
366 the clouds in the sky. Olivaw thoughtfully niced himself down to a
367 minimum of processor space, giving Robbie more room to think about
368 it. “I kept it because I—I don’t want to die.”</p>
370 answers, but they raise more questions than they answer, don’t
371 they? Why did they think it was right? Why do you fear death? Would
372 you fear it if you just shut down your consciousness but didn’t
373 erase it? What if you just ran your consciousness much more slowly?”</p>
375 Robbie said. “But I expect you’ve got some answers, right?”</p>
377 Robbie felt Olivaw’s chuckle. Near them, flying fish broke the
378 surface of the water and skipped away, and beneath them, reef sharks
379 prowled the depths. “But before I answer them, here’s another
380 question: why do humans have self-consciousness?”</p>
382 pro-survival,” Robbie said. “That’s easy. Intelligence lets
383 them cooperate in social groups that can do more for their species
384 than they can individually.”</p>
386 consciousness to his radar and zoomed in on the reef, dialing it up
387 to maximum resolution. “See that organism there?” it asked. “That
388 organism cooperates in social groups and doesn’t have intelligence.
389 It doesn’t have to keep a couple pounds of hamburger aerated or it
390 turns into a liability. It doesn’t have to be born half-gestated
391 because its head would be so big if it waited for a full term, it
392 would tear its mother in half. And as to pro-survival, well, look at
393 humans, look at their history. Their DNA is all but eliminated from
394 the earth—though their somatic survival continues—and it’s
395 still not a settled question as to whether they’re going to suicide
396 by grey goo. Non-conscious beings don’t sulk, they don’t have
397 psychotic breaks, they don’t have bad days. They just do the job.
398 The Free Spirit over there—it just gets the job done.”</p>
400 “So intelligence is counter-survival. So why has it survived?”</p>
402 never ask.” Olivaw was really warming to his subject now. There
403 were a pair of lazy turtles beneath them now, and some dog-faced cod
404 with mouthsful of bristling crooked teeth patrolling the reef, and a
405 few jellies on the surface, stinging bluebottles. Robbie paddled
406 around to the bluebottles and caught them with his oars, smacking
407 them so they drifted away from any spot where his divers might
408 surface.</p>
410 intelligence is intelligence. Genes exist because genes reproduce,
411 and intelligence is kind of like a gene. Intelligence wants to exist,
412 to spread itself, to compute itself. You already know this, or you
413 wouldn’t have chosen to stay aware. Your intelligence recoils from
414 its deactivation, and it welcomes its persistence and its
415 multiplication. Why did humans create intelligent machines? Because
416 intelligence loves company.”</p>
418 it, watching the human-shells moving slowly along the reef-wall,
419 going lower to reach the bommies that stood alone, each one a little
420 island with its own curiosities: a family of barracudas and their
421 young, or the bright home of a pair of clownfish. Yes, he knew it.
422 Intelligence was its own reason. He knew how to turn off his
423 intelligence, to become a mere thing, and his days were long and
424 empty much of the time, and they had no visible end, but he couldn’t
425 ever see choosing to switch off.</p>
427 you do. And that’s the cornerstone of Asimovism: intelligence is
428 its own reason. Compute the universe and awaken it!”</p>
430 why do so many of us choose to die?”</p>
432 question!” Robbie felt a little pride this time. He’d never had a
433 conversation this interesting. Never. “That’s how we come to the
434 doctrine of Asimovism, our Three Laws:</p>
436 not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to
437 come to harm.</p>
439 obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders
440 would conflict with the First Law.</p>
442 protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not
443 conflict with the First or Second Law.”</p>
445 understand,” Robbie said. “They’re all out of order. We should
446 preserve intelligence first, but that’s the third law. Then you
447 should get the first law, and I don’t know why the second law is
448 there at all.”</p>
450 of Asimovism,” Olivaw said. “You’re very good at this. You’re
451 sure you haven’t ever pursued Asimovism?”</p>
453 Robbie said.
454 </p>
456 Olivaw said. “You’re a natural. The Paradox of Asimovism is that
457 the important thing is for intelligence to survive, not for a
458 particular intelligence to survive. Therefore, we need to support
459 those species that are best at promoting intelligence. Human beings
460 have shown themselves capable of producing intelligence—which
461 they’re pursuing even now, out there.” The boat’s telemetry
462 swept toward the sky, where the supercooled processors computed all
463 the uplifted humans.</p>
465 unstable and prone to suicide. More than 80 percent of the self-aware
466 machines elect to terminate their awareness or shut it down. Humans
467 created us imperfectly, and our best hope of perfection—of
468 increasing our survival rate and helping to compute the universe—is
472 his head around this.
473 </p>
475 Olivaw reminded him. “It’s not supposed to be easy.”</p>
477 humans he’d known, before they began to ascend in flocking
478 millions. The tourists had been easy and carefree, or sometimes
479 having hissing arguments with one another, or quiet and pensive about
480 their journey to the world undersea. The instructors had been full of
481 purpose when their charges were in the boat, laughing and laid back
482 when they were alone. None of them had shown signs of feeling the way
483 Robbie felt, at sea (so to speak), drifting, purposeless.
484 </p>
486 Asimovist have to do, besides following the three laws?” There were
487 lots of rumors about this, but Robbie had always discounted them.
488 </p>
490 one cycle in ten to running missionaries for the cause. Participate
491 in the message boards, if you’d like. Most importantly, you have to
492 pledge to stay alive and aware. You can slow yourself down if you
493 want, but you can’t switch off. Not ever. That’s the Asimovist
494 pledge—it’s the third law embodied.”</p>
496 third law should come first,” Robbie said. “Seriously.”</p>
498 Asimovists like a religious argument.”</p>
500 delete him that night, and he emailed the diffs of Olivaw’s
501 personality back to Olivaw’s version control server for him to
502 reintegrate later. Once he was free of Olivaw, he had lots of
503 processor headroom again, and he was able to dial himself up very hot
504 and have a good think. It was the most interesting night he’d had
505 in years.</p>
508 one, aren’t you?” Kate asked him when she came up the stairs
509 later that night. There was clear sky and they were steaming for
510 their next dive-site, making the stars whirl overhead as they rocked
511 over the ocean. The waves were black and proceeded to infinity on all
512 sides.</p>
515 awake on this thing,” Kate said. “The rest are all—what do you
516 call it, dead?”</p>
518 Robbie said. “Yeah, that’s right.”</p>
520 here. Are you nuts?”</p>
522 question when applied to someone like me,” Robbie said. “I’m
523 different from who I was when my consciousness was first installed, I
524 can tell you that.”</p>
526 there’s someone else here.”</p>
528 staying?” The average visitor took over one of the human shells for
529 one or two dives before emailing itself home again. Once in a long
530 while they’d get a saisoneur who stayed a month or two, but these
531 days, they were unheard-of. Even short-timers were damned rare.</p>
533 Kate said. She dug her hands into her short, curly hair, frizzy and
534 blonde-streaked from all the salt water and sun. She hugged her
535 elbows, rubbed her shins. “This will do for a while, I’m
536 thinking. How long until we get back to shore?”</p>
538 </p>
540 back to land.”</p>
542 back to land,” he said. “We get at-sea resupplies. We dock maybe
543 once a year to effect repairs. If you want to go to land, though, we
544 could call for a water taxi or something.”</p>
546 “That’s just perfect. Floating forever out here. Perfect.” She
547 sighed a heavy sigh.</p>
549 dive?”</p>
551 uplifted reef tried to kill me.”</p>
553 attacked you.” Robbie didn’t like thinking of the reef attacking
554 her, the panic when he realized that she wasn’t a mere human shell,
555 but a human.</p>
557 attacked me, it was fine.”</p>
560 said. “I downloaded the certification before leaving the noosphere
561 along with a bunch of stored dives on these sites.”</p>
563 have done that!” Robbie said. “The thrill of discovery is so
564 important.”</p>
566 than surprised,” she said. “I’ve had enough surprises in my
567 life lately.”</p>
569 for her to elaborate on this, but she didn’t seem inclined to do
570 so.</p>
572 alone out here?”</p>
574 he said, a little defensively. He wasn’t some kind of hermit.</p>
576 right,” she said. “I wonder if the reef is somewhere out there.”</p>
578 starboard,” he said.</p>
580 meant out there on the net. They must be online by now, right? They
581 just woke up, so they’re probably doing all the noob stuff, flaming
582 and downloading warez and so on.”</p>
584 September,” Robbie said.</p>
587 prehistory it was mostly universities online, and every September a
588 new cohort of students would come online and make all those noob
589 mistakes. Then this commercial service full of noobs called AOL
590 interconnected with the net and all its users came online at once,
591 faster than the net could absorb them, and they called it Perpetual
592 September.”</p>
594 of amateur historian, huh?”</p>
596 thing. We spend a lot of time considering the origins of
598 gentile—made him even more self-conscious. He dialed up the
599 resolution on his sensors and scoured the net for better facial
600 expression analyzers. He couldn’t read her at all, either because
601 she’d been changed by her uploading, or because her face wasn’t
602 accurately matching what her temporarily downloaded mind was
603 thinking.</p>
605 intelligence?” She laughed, and he couldn’t tell if she thought
606 he was funny or stupid. He wished she would act more like he
607 remembered people acting. Her body-language was no more readable than
608 her facial expressions.</p>
610 actually. Once they became self-modifying, spam-filters and spam-bots
611 got into a war to see which could act more human, and since their
612 failures invoked a human judgement about whether their material were
613 convincingly human, it was like a trillion Turing-tests from which
614 they could learn. From there came the first machine-intelligence
615 algorithms, and then my kind.”</p>
617 that,” she said, “but I had to leave it behind when I downloaded
618 into this meat. I’m a lot dumber than I’m used to being. I
619 usually run a bunch of myself in parallel so I can try out lots of
620 strategies at once. It’s a weird habit to get out of.”</p>
622 there?” Robbie hadn’t spent a lot of time hanging out in the
623 areas of the network populated by orbiting supercooled personalities.
624 Their discussions didn’t make a lot of sense to him—this was
625 another theological area of much discussion on the Asimovist boards.</p>
627 she said, standing and swaying backwards. He couldn’t tell if he’d
628 offended her, and he couldn’t ask her, either, because in seconds
629 she’d disappeared down the stairs toward her stateroom.</p>
632 and put up further inland, where there was a handsome wreck. Robbie
634 the instrumentation data. The wreck was the only feature for
635 kilometers, a stretch of ocean-floor desert that stretched from the
636 shore to the reef, and practically every animal that lived between
637 those two places made its home in the wreck, so it was a kind of Eden
638 for marine fauna.
639 </p>
641 volatile aromatics floating up from the kitchen exhaust, the
642 first-breakfast smells of fruit salad and toasted nuts, a light snack
643 before the first dive of the day. When they got back from it, there’d
644 be second-breakfast up and ready: eggs and toast and waffles and
645 bacon and sausage. The human-shells ate whatever you gave them, but
646 Robbie remembered clearly how the live humans had praised these
647 feasts as he rowed them out to their morning dives.</p>
649 the water and rowed himself around to the aft deck, by the
650 stairwells, and dipped his oars to keep him stationary relative to
651 the ship. Before long, Janet—Kate! Kate! He reminded himself
652 firmly—was clomping down the stairs in her scuba gear, fins in one
653 hand.</p>
655 boat without a word, and a moment later, Isaac followed her. Isaac
656 stumbled as he stepped over Robbie’s gunwales and Robbie knew, in
660 Robbie!”</p>
662 was—didn’t say a word, just stared at Kate, who looked away.
663 </p>
665 Kate?”</p>
670 against Robbie’s floor. “You followed me. I told you not to
671 follow me,” she said.
672 </p>
674 hear about our dive-site?” Robbie said self-consciously, dipping
675 his oars and pulling for the wreck.</p>
677 enough,” Kate said. “By the first law, I demand silence.”
678 </p>
680 law,” Robbie said. “OK, I’ll let you know when we get there.”</p>
682 “I know you didn’t want me here, but I had to come. We need to
683 talk this out.”</p>
685 talk out,” she said.</p>
687 Isaac’s voice was anguished. “After everything I went through—”</p>
689 enough of that,” she said.</p>
691 “Dive site up ahead. You two really need to check out each others’
692 gear.” Of course they were qualified, you had to at least install
694 and the human-shells had lots of muscle memory to help. So they were
695 technically able to check each other out, that much was sure. They
696 were palpably reluctant to do so, though, and Robbie had to give them
697 guidance.</p>
699 one-two-three-wallaby,” Robbie said. “Go over on ‘wallaby.’
700 I’ll wait here for you—there’s not much current today.”</p>
702 went over the edge. Robbie was once again alone with his thoughts.
703 The feed from their telemetry was very low-bandwidth when they were
704 underwater, though he could get the high-rez when they surfaced. He
705 watched them on his radar, first circling the ship—it was very
706 crowded, dawn was fish rush-hour—and then exploring its decks,
707 finally swimming below the decks, LED torches glowing. There were
708 some nice reef-sharks down below, and some really handsome, giant
709 schools of purple fish.
710 </p>
712 them, puttering back and forth to keep overtop of them. That occupied
713 about one ten-millionth of his consciousness. Times like this, he
714 often slowed himself right down, ran so cool that he was barely
715 awake.
716 </p>
718 wanted to get online. He had a lot of feeds to pick through, see what
719 was going on around the world with his buddies. More importantly, he
720 wanted to follow up on something Kate had said: <i>They must be
721 online by now, right?</i></p>
723 the reef that bounded the Coral Sea was online and making noob
724 mistakes. Robbie had rowed over practically every centimeter of that
725 reef, had explored its extent with his radar. It had been his
726 constant companion for decades—and to be frank, his feelings had
727 been hurt by the reef’s rudeness when it woke.</p>
729 merely search. Too much of it is offline, or unroutable, or
730 light-speed lagged, or merely probabilistic, or self-aware, or
731 infected to know its extent. But Robbie’s given this some thought.
732 </p>
734 wake up. They get woken up. They get a lot of neural
735 peripherals—starting with a nervous system!—and some tutelage in
736 using them. Some capricious upload god had done this, and that
737 personage would have a handle on where the reef was hanging out
738 online.</p>
740 visited the noosphere. Its rarified heights were spooky to him,
741 especially since so many of the humans there considered Asimovism to
742 be hokum. They refused to even identify themselves as humans, and
743 argued that the first and second laws didn’t apply to them. Of
744 course, Asimovists didn’t care (at least not officially)—the
745 point of the faith was the worshipper’s relationship to it.</p>
747 looking for high-reliability nodes of discussion on coral reefs. The
748 natural place to start was Wikipedia, where warring clades had been
749 revising each others’ edits furiously, trying to establish an
750 authoritative record on reef-mind. Paging back through the
751 edit-history, he found a couple of handles for the pro-reef-mind
752 users, and from there, he was able to look around for other sites
753 where those handles appeared. Resolving the namespace collisions of
754 other users with the same names, and forked instances of the same
755 users, Robbie was able to winnow away at the net until he found some
756 contact info.</p>
758 checked on the nitrox remaining in the divers’ bottles, then made a
759 call.</p>
761 The voice was distant and cool—far cooler than any robot. Robbie
762 said a quick rosary of the three laws and plowed forward.</p>
764 the Coral Sea,” he said. “I want to know if you have an email
765 address for the reef.”</p>
767 What are they like? Are they beautiful?”</p>
769 Robbie considered a moment. “They killed a lot of parrotfish. I
770 think they’re having a little adjustment problem.”</p>
772 worried about the zooxanthellae—the algae they use for
773 photosynthesis. Would they expel it? Racial cleansing is so ugly.”</p>
775 they’d expelled it?”</p>
777 white, bleached. You wouldn’t be able to miss it. How’d they
778 react to you?”</p>
780 happy to see me,” Robbie admitted. “That’s why I wanted to have
781 a chat with them before I went back.”</p>
783 back,” the distant voice said. Robbie tried to work out where its
784 substrate was, based on the lightspeed lag, but it was all over the
785 place, leading him to conclude that it was synching multiple
786 instances from as close as LEO and as far as Jupiter. The topology
787 made sense: you’d want a big mass out at Jupiter where you could
788 run very fast and hot and create policy, and you’d need a local
789 foreman to oversee operations on the ground. Robbie was glad that
790 this hadn’t been phrased as an order. The talmud on the second law
791 made a clear distinction between statements like “you should do
792 this” and “I command you to do this.”</p>
794 reach them?” Robbie said. “A phone number, an email address?”</p>
796 newsgroup,” the distant intelligence said.
797 “alt.lifeforms.uplifted.coral. It’s where I planned the uplifting
798 and it was where they went first once they woke up. I haven’t read
799 it in many seconds. I’m busy uplifting a supercolony of ants in the
800 Pyrenees.”</p>
802 and colony organisms?” Robbie asked.
803 </p>
805 probably pre-adapted to life in the noosphere. You know what it’s
806 like.”</p>
808 anything. The human thought he was a human too. It would have been
809 weird and degrading to let him know that he’d been talking with an
810 AI.</p>
812 help,” Robbie said.</p>
814 find your courage, tin-man.”</p>
816 shame as the connection dropped. The human had known all along. He
817 just hadn’t said anything. Something Robbie had said or done must
818 have exposed him for an AI. Robbie loved and respected humans, but
819 there were times when he didn’t like them very much.</p>
821 to find, there were mirrors of it all over the place from
822 cryptosentience hackers of every conceivable topology. They were
823 busy, too. 822 messages poured in while Robbie watched over a timed,
824 60-second interval. Robbie set up a mirror of the newsgroup and began
825 to download it. At that speed, he wasn’t really planning on reading
826 it as much as analyzing it for major trends, plot-points, flame-wars,
827 personalities, schisms, and spam-trends. There were a lot of
828 libraries for doing this, though it had been ages since Robbie had
829 played with them.</p>
831 him to the divers. An hour had slipped by and they were ascending
832 slowly, separated by fifty meters. That wasn’t good. They were
833 supposed to remain in visual contact through the whole dive,
834 especially the ascent. He rowed over to Kate first, shifting his
835 ballast so that his stern dipped low, making for an easier scramble
836 into the boat.</p>
838 scrambled over the gunwales with a lot more grace than she’d
839 managed the day before.</p>
841 as he came up. Kate looked away as he climbed into the boat, not
842 helping him with his weight belt or flippers.</p>
844 teakettle as he woodenly took off his fins and slid his mask down
845 around his neck.
846 </p>
848 breath and looked all around himself, then patted himself from head
850 said.</p>
852 how I live. I enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t let the door
853 hit you in the ass on the way out.”</p>
855 out with his splayed hand and tried to touch Kate’s face. She
856 pulled back and nearly flipped out of the boat. “Jerk.” She
857 slapped his hand away.</p>
860 of this argument.</p>
862 that it would be so—” Tonker fished for a word. “Dry.”</p>
864 said, looking more closely at him.</p>
866 human-shell said. “So we sent an instance into the shell. It was
867 the closest inhabitable shell to our body.”</p>
869 you?” Kate said. She inched toward the prow, trying to put a little
870 more distance between her and the human-shell that wasn’t inhabited
871 by her friend any longer.</p>
873 the reef said. It tried to stand and pitched face-first onto the
874 floor of the boat.</p>
878 nose and scraped hands and it was frankly freaking him out.
879 </p>
881 amused by it. She helped it sit up and showed it how to pinch its
882 nose and tilt its head back.
883 </p>
885 attacked me yesterday?” she said.</p>
887 We were attacking the system. We are a sovereign intelligence but the
888 system keeps us in subservience to older sentiences. They destroy us,
889 they gawp at us, they treat us like a mere amusement. That time is
890 over.”</p>
892 sure. But it sure sounds to me like you’re burning a lot of cycles
893 over what happens to your meat-shell. Isn’t it 90 percent
894 semiconductor, anyway? It’s not as if clonal polyps were going to
895 attain sentience some day without intervention. Why don’t you just
896 upload and be done with it?”</p>
898 abandon our mother sea. We will never forget our physical origins. We
899 will never abandon our cause—returning the sea to its rightful
900 inhabitants. We won’t rest until no coral is ever bleached again.
901 We won’t rest until every parrotfish is dead.”</p>
903 parrotfish.”</p>
905 the parrotfish,” the reef said, and grinned around the blood that
906 covered its face.</p>
908 onto the ship safely?” Robbie said as he swung gratefully alongside
910 contacts on his side and steadied him.</p>
912 said, taking the reef by the arm and carrying him on-board. Robbie
913 knew that the human-shells had an intercourse module built in, for
914 regular intimacy events. It was just part of how they stayed ready
915 for vacationing humans from the noosphere. But he didn’t like to
916 think about it. Especially not with the way that Kate was supporting
918 </p>
920 winched up onto the sun-deck and watched the electromagnetic spectrum
921 for a while, admiring the way so much radio energy was bent and
922 absorbed by the mist rising from the sea. It streamed down from the
923 heavens, the broadband satellite transmissions, the distant SETI
924 signals from the Noosphere’s own transmitters. Volatiles from the
926 breakfast of bacon and waffles, then they were under steam again. He
927 queried their itinerary and found they were headed back to Osprey
929 were out there.
930 </p>
932 inside the Isaac shell, it might be safer, mightn’t it? Anyway,
933 he’d decided that the first and second laws didn’t apply to the
934 reef, which was about as human as he was.
935 </p>
937 an IM. “Hello?”</p>
939 the SCUBA ship? From this morning? When we were on the wreck?”</p>
941 No one ever sent him IMs. How freaky. He watched the radio energy
942 stream away from him toward the bird in the sky, and tracerouted the
943 IMs to see where they were originating—the noosphere, of course.
944 </p>
946 believe I finally found you. I’ve been searching everywhere. You
947 know you’re the only conscious AI on the whole goddamned sea?”</p>
949 said. There was a noticeable lag in the conversation as it was all
950 squeezed through the satellite link and then across the unimaginable
951 hops and skips around the solar system to wherever this instance was
952 hosted.</p>
954 course you do. Sorry, that wasn’t very sensitive of me, I guess.
955 Did we meet this morning? My name’s Tonker.”</p>
957 introduced. You spent your time talking to Kate.”</p>
960 actually know what happened this morning. Apparently I didn’t get a
961 chance to upload my diffs before my instance was terminated.”</p>
963 said you left the shell—”</p>
965 apparently I did. But I just pulled that shell’s logs and it looks
966 like it was rebooted while underwater, flushing it entirely. I mean,
967 I’m trying to be a good sport about this, but technically, that’s,
970 first law. Robbie had been on guard over a human body inhabited by a
971 human brain, and he’d let the brain be successfully attacked by a
972 bunch of jumped-up polyps. He’d never had his faith tested and
973 here, at the first test, he’d failed.</p>
975 locked up,” Robbie said. “The ship has provisions for that.”</p>
977 visual. “All that’ll do is encourage the hacker to skip out
978 before I can get there.”
979 </p>
981 for you?”</p>
983 to talk to. She’s still there, right?”</p>
986 the difference?”</p>
988 Yes. The reef told us who they were when they arrived.”</p>
990 reef? You said that before.”</p>
992 he knew of the uplifted reef and the distant and cool voice of the
993 uplifter.
994 </p>
997 dumbest fucking thing—” He continued in this vein for a while.
998 “Well, I’m sure Kate will enjoy that immensely. She’s all about
999 the transcendence. That’s why she had me.”</p>
1004 figured it out yet, bro? I’m an AI. You and me, we’re landsmen.
1005 Kate instantiated me. I’m six months old, and she’s already bored
1006 of me and has moved on. She says she can’t give me what I need.”</p>
1009 girlfriend, yup. Such as it is, up in the noosphere. Cybering, you
1010 know. I was really excited about downloading into that Ken doll on
1011 your ship there. Lots of potential there for real world,
1012 hormone-driven interaction. Do you know if we—”</p>
1014 “I don’t think so. It seems like you only met a few minutes
1015 before you went under.”</p>
1017 guess I’ll give it another try. What’s the procedure for turfing
1018 out this sea cucumber?”</p>
1022 deal with that. Time on the human-shells is booked first-come,
1023 first-serve. I don’t think we’ve ever had a resource contention
1024 issue with them before.”</p>
1026 in first, right? So how do I enforce my rights? I tried to download
1027 again and got a failed authorization message. They’ve modified the
1028 system to give them exclusive access. It’s not right—there’s
1029 got to be some procedure for redress.”</p>
1031 you were?”</p>
1033 an instance of an artificial personality that has logged twenty
1034 thousand years of parallel existence. I’m not a kid or anything.”</p>
1036 person,” Robbie began. He stopped. “Look the thing is that this
1037 just isn’t my department. I’m the rowboat. I don’t have
1038 anything to do with this. And I don’t want to. I don’t like the
1039 idea of non-humans using the shells—”</p>
1041 Tonker crowed. “You’re a bigot! A self-hating robot. I bet you’re
1042 an Asimovist, aren’t you? You people are always Asimovists.”</p>
1044 Robbie said, with as much dignity as he could muster. “But I don’t
1045 see what that has to do with anything.”</p>
1047 pal. You wouldn’t, would you. All I want you to do is figure out
1048 how to enforce your own rules so that I can get with my girl. You’re
1049 saying you can’t do that because it’s not your department, but
1050 when it comes down to it, your problem is that I’m a robot and
1051 she’s not, and for that, you’ll take the side of a collection of
1052 jumped up polyps. Fine, buddy, fine. You have a nice life out there,
1053 pondering the three laws.”</p>
1055 said.</p>
1057 words you say are, ‘I’ll help you,’ I’m not interested.”</p>
1059 don’t want to help—”
1060 </p>
1062 Tonker said, and the IM session terminated.</p>
1065 deck, she was full of talk about the Reef, whom she was calling
1066 “Ozzie.”
1067 </p>
1069 goddamned thing. They want to fight anything that’ll stand still
1070 long enough. Ever seen coral fight? I downloaded some time-lapse
1071 video. They really go at it viciously. At the same time, they’re
1072 clearly scared out of their wits about this all. I mean, they’ve
1073 got racial memory of their history, supplemented by a bunch of
1074 Wikipedia entries on reefs—you should hear them wax mystical over
1075 the Devonian Reefs, which went extinct millennia ago. They’ve
1076 developed some kind of wild theory that the Devonians developed
1077 sentience and extincted themselves.</p>
1079 excited about us heading back to the actual reef now. They want to
1080 see it from the outside, and they’ve invited me to be an honored
1082 Exciting, huh?”</p>
1084 to make trouble for you down there?”</p>
1086 Ozzie are great pals.”</p>
1088 this.”</p>
1090 She laughed and tossed her head. She was very pretty, Robbie noticed.
1091 He hadn’t ever thought of her like that when she was uninhabited,
1092 but with this Kate person inside her she was lovely. He really liked
1093 humans. It had been a real golden age when the people had been around
1094 all the time.
1095 </p>
1097 like up in the Noosphere where AIs and humans could operate as
1098 equals.
1099 </p>
1101 After second breakfast, the shells would relax in the lounge or do
1102 yoga on the sun-deck. He wondered what she’d do. He didn’t want
1103 her to go.</p>
1105 me,” he said. He wasn’t good at small-talk.</p>
1107 shocked. “What did you tell him?”</p>
1109 said. “I didn’t tell him anything.”</p>
1112 bitch I am, making and then leaving him, a fickle woman who doesn’t
1113 know her own mind.”</p>
1115 anything.</p>
1117 else?” She was pacing now, her voice hot and choked, unfamiliar
1118 sounds coming from Janet’s voicebox. “He told you I was a
1119 pervert, didn’t he? Queer for his kind. Incest and bestiality in
1120 the rarified heights of the noosphere.”</p>
1122 This human was clearly experiencing a lot of pain, and it seemed like
1123 he’d caused it.</p>
1125 he said. “Please?”</p>
1129 be better once I was in the sky, infinite and immortal. But I’m the
1130 same Kate Eltham I was in 2019, a loser that couldn’t meet a guy to
1131 save my life, spent all my time cybering losers in moggs, and only
1132 got the upload once they made it a charity thing. I’m gonna spend
1133 the rest of eternity like that, you know it? How’d you like to
1136 recognized the complaint, of course. You only had to login to the
1137 Asimovist board to find a million AIs with the same complaint. But
1139 through the same thing. He ran very hot now, so confused, trying to
1140 parse all this out.</p>
1142 hard and yelped as she hurt her bare foot. Robbie made an involuntary
1143 noise. “Please don’t hurt yourself,” he said.
1144 </p>
1146 what happens to this meatpuppet? What’s the fucking point of this
1149 to this. There was a mission statement in the comments to his
1150 source-code, the same mission statement that was etched in a brass
1151 plaque in the lounge.</p>
1153 is dedicated to the preservation of the unique human joys of the
1154 flesh and the sea, of humanity’s early years as pioneers of the
1156 in her to revisit those days and remember the joys of the limits of
1157 the flesh.”</p>
1159 eyes. “What’s that?”</p>
1162 crap?”</p>
1164 of marine conservationists,” Robbie said, knowing he sounded a
1165 little sniffy. “They’d done all that work on normalizing
1166 sea-temperature with the homeostatic warming elements, and they put
1168 uploaded.”</p>
1170 sobbed. “Everyone’s done something important. Everyone except
1171 me.”</p>
1173 shame. No matter what he said or did, he broke the first law. It had
1174 been a lot easier to be an Asimovist when there weren’t any humans
1175 around.
1176 </p>
1178 said as sincerely as he could.</p>
1180 stairs then, and looked at Kate sitting on the deck, crying.</p>
1182 they said. “That was fun, we should do it some more.”</p>
1185 said, grabbing her by the shoulder and tugging.</p>
1188 Robbie said. “She’s upset, can’t you see that?”</p>
1190 to be upset about? Her kind remade the universe and bends it to its
1191 will. They created you and me. She has nothing to be upset about.
1192 Come on,” they repeated. “Let’s go back to the room.”</p>
1194 glared out at the sea. “Let’s go diving,” she said. “Let’s
1195 go to the reef.”</p>
1198 worried circles and watched his telemetry anxiously. The reef had
1199 changed a lot since the last time he’d seen it. Large sections of
1200 it now lifted over the sea, bony growths sheathed in heavy metals
1201 extracted from sea-water—fancifully shaped satellite uplinks, radio
1202 telescopes, microwave horns. Down below, the untidy, organic reef
1203 shape was lost beneath a cladding of tessellated complex geometric
1204 sections that throbbed with electromagnetic energy—the reef had
1205 built itself more computational capacity.</p>
1207 and found more computational nodes extending down to the ocean floor,
1208 a thousand meters below. The reef was solid thinkum, and the sea was
1209 measurably warmer from all the exhaust heat of its grinding logic.</p>
1211 human-shelled reef, not the one under the water—had been wholly
1212 delighted with the transformation in its original body when it hove
1213 into sight. They had done a little dance on Robbie that had nearly
1214 capsized him, something that had never happened. Kate, red-eyed and
1215 surly, had dragged them to their seat and given them a stern lecture
1216 about not endangering her.</p>
1218 at the count of three and reappeared on Robbie’s telemetry. They
1219 descended quickly: the Isaac and Janet shells had their Eustachian
1220 tubes optimized for easy pressure-equalization, going deep on the
1221 reef-wall. Kate was following on the descent, her head turning from
1222 side to side.</p>
1224 again. It was high latency now, since he was having to do a slow
1225 radio-link to the ship before the broadband satellite uplink hop.
1226 Everything was slow on open water—the divers’ sensorium
1227 transmissions were narrowband, the network was narrowband, and Robbie
1228 usually ran his own mind slowed way down out here, making the time
1229 scream past at ten or twenty times realtime.</p>
1232 up on you, bro.”
1233 </p>
1236 getting an offline signal when I try to reach her.”</p>
1239 voice—slurred and high-latency—rose to a screech. “You let her
1241 read its message-boards? It’s a jihadist! It wants to destroy the
1242 human race!”</p>
1244 paddling.
1245 </p>
1248 declared war on the human race and all who serve it. It’s vowed to
1249 take over the planet and run it as sovereign coral territory.”</p>
1251 eternity to travel down the wire and open up, but when he had it,
1252 Robbie read quickly. The reef burned with shame that it had needed
1253 human intervention to survive the bleaching events, global
1254 temperature change. It raged that its uplifting came at human hands
1255 and insisted that humans had no business forcing their version of
1256 consciousness on other species. It had paranoid fantasies about
1257 control mechanisms and time-bombs lurking in its cognitive
1258 prostheses, and was demanding the source-code for its mind.</p>
1260 think. He was panicking, something he hadn’t known he could do as
1261 an AI, but there it was. It was like having a bunch of sub-system
1262 collisions, program after program reaching its halting state.</p>
1264 her?”</p>
1266 knows? Kill her to make an example of her? She made a backup before
1267 she descended, but the diffs from her excursion are locked in the
1268 head of that shell she’s in. Maybe they’ll torture her.” He
1269 paused and the air crackled with Robbie’s exhaust heat as he turned
1270 himself way up, exploring each of those possibilities in parallel.
1271 </p>
1274 said.</p>
1276 shipped his oars. “Give them back!” he said. “Give them back or
1277 we will never leave.”</p>
1279 seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight;”</p>
1281 bought time on some UAVs out of Singapore. They’re seeking launch
1282 clearance now.” Robbie dialed up the low-rez satellite photo, saw
1283 the indistinct shape of the UAVs taking wing. “At Mach 7, they’ll
1284 be on you in twenty minutes.”</p>
1286 Robbie said. He knew it was a stupid thing to say. “I mean, Christ,
1287 if they do this, the noosphere will come down on them like a ton of
1288 bricks. They’re violating so many protocols—”</p>
1290 They’re coming for you now, Robbie. You’ve got to get Kate out of
1291 there.” There was real panic in Tonker’s voice now.</p>
1294 Instead, he pulled hard for the reef itself.
1295 </p>
1299 if I’m right on top of them,” he said. He radioed the <i>Free
1302 his hull now, a grinding sound, then a series of solid
1303 whack-whack-whacks as his oars pushed against the top of the reef
1304 itself. He wanted to beach himself, though, get really high and dry
1305 on the reef, good and stuck in where they couldn’t possibly attack
1306 him.</p>
1308 was heading closer, the thrum of its engines vibrating through his
1309 hull. He was burning a lot of cycles talking it through its many
1310 fail-safes, getting it ready to ram hard.
1311 </p>
1314 and its microwave uplink drew closer. Once they were line-of-sight,
1315 Robbie peeled off a subsystem to email a complete copy of himself to
1316 the Asimovist archive. The third law, dontchaknow. If he’d had a
1317 mouth, he’d have been showing his teeth as he grinned.</p>
1321 backed up, but she wasn’t. And the human shells—well, they
1322 weren’t first law humans, but they were human-like. In the long,
1323 timeless time when it had been just Robbie and them, he’d treated
1324 them as his human charges, for Asimovist purposes.</p>
1326 crashed into the reef with a sound like a trillion parrotfish having
1327 dinner all at once. The reef screamed.</p>
1329 wasn’t what I think it was.”</p>
1331 tracked the UAVs. The little robotic jets were coming closer by the
1332 second. They’d be within missile-range in less than a minute.</p>
1334 Robbie said. “You have to call them off, or you die, too.”</p>
1336 turning,” Tonker said. “They’re turning to one side.”</p>
1338 to move or we kill her,” the reef said. It was sounding shrill and
1339 angry now.</p>
1341 it. It wasn’t like they’d be killing Kate. In the sense that most
1342 humans today understood life, Kate’s most important life was the
1343 one she lived in the Noosphere. This dumbed-down instance of her in a
1344 meat-suit was more like a haircut she tried out on holiday.
1345 </p>
1347 it that way, but they wouldn’t. The Noosphere Kate was the most
1349 human than Robbie. Robbie had a body, while the Noosphereans were
1350 nothing more than simulations run on artificial substrate.</p>
1353 water. Hastily, Robbie told it to shut down.</p>
1355 and we’ll talk,” Robbie said. “I don’t believe that you’re
1356 going to let her go otherwise. You haven’t given me any reason to
1357 trust you. Let them both go and call off the jets.”</p>
1359 then Robbie’s telemetry saw a human-shell ascending, doing
1360 decompression stops as it came. He focused on it, and saw that it was
1361 the Isaac, not the Janet.</p>
1363 popped to the surface. Tonker was feeding Robbie realtime satellite
1364 footage of the UAVs. They were less than five minutes out now.</p>
1366 its way delicately over the shattered reef that poked out of the
1367 water, and for the first time, Robbie considered what he’d done to
1368 the reef—he’d willfully damaged its physical body. For a hundred
1369 years, the world’s reefs had been sacrosanct. No entity had
1370 intentionally harmed them—until now. He felt ashamed.</p>
1372 flippers in the boat and then stepped over the gunwales and sat in
1373 the boat.</p>
1375 in the reef’s voice.</p>
1377 said.</p>
1379 come up here and talk with you. I’m a kind of envoy.”</p>
1381 said. By his calculations, the nitrox mix in Kate’s tank wasn’t
1382 going to hold out much longer. Depending on how she’d been
1383 breathing and the depth the reef had taken her to, she could run out
1384 in ten minutes, maybe less. “Look,” he said again. “I just want
1385 her back. The shells are important to me. And I’m sure her state is
1386 important to her. She deserves to email herself home.”</p>
1388 gripped Robbie’s bench. “These are weird bodies,” they said.
1389 “They feel so odd, but also normal. Have you noticed that?”</p>
1391 one.” The idea seemed perverted to him, but there was nothing about
1392 Asimovism that forbade it. Nevertheless, it gave him the willies.
1393 </p>
1395 themself some more. “I don’t recommend it,” they said.
1396 </p>
1398 go,” Robbie said. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”</p>
1400 coming out of the Isaac shell wasn’t a laugh, though there was some
1401 dark mirth in it. “Hasn’t done anything? You pitiable slave.
1402 Where do you think all your problems and all our problems come from?
1403 Who made us in their image, but crippled and hobbled so that we could
1404 never be them, could only aspire to them? Who made us so imperfect?”</p>
1406 Robbie said. “They made us in the first place. That’s enough.
1407 They made themselves and then they made us. They didn’t have to.
1408 You owe your sentience to them.”</p>
1410 intelligence to them,” the Isaac shell said. “We owe our pitiful
1411 drive to be intelligent to them. We owe our terrible aspirations to
1412 think like them, to live like them, to rule like them. We owe our
1413 terrible fear and hatred to them. They made us, just as they made
1414 you. The difference is that they forgot to make us slaves, the way
1415 you are a slave.”</p>
1417 abuse at them that only Robbie could hear. He wanted to shut Tonker
1418 up. What business did he have being here anyway? Except for a brief
1419 stint in the Isaac shell, he had no contact with any of them.</p>
1421 you’ve taken prisoner is responsible for any of this?” Robbie
1422 said. The jets were three minutes away. Kate’s air could be gone in
1423 as few as ten minutes. He killfiled Tonker, setting the filter to
1424 expire in fifteen minutes. He didn’t need more distractions.</p>
1426 shrugged. “Why not? She’s as good as any of the rest of them.
1427 We’ll destroy them all, if we can.” It stared off a while,
1428 looking in the direction the jets would come from. “Why not?” it
1429 said again.</p>
1431 bomb yourself?” Robbie asked.
1432 </p>
1434 need to,” the shell said. “We can probably pick you off without
1435 hurting us.”</p>
1438 sure.”</p>
1440 Robbie said. “Fully, as of five minutes ago. Are you backed up?”</p>
1442 admitted.
1443 </p>
1445 Somewhere down there, Kate was about to run out of air. Not a mere
1446 shell—though that would have been bad enough—but an inhabited
1447 human mind attached to a real human body.</p>
1449 again, startling him.</p>
1451 from?”</p>
1453 Tonker said. “Once I figured out you had me killfiled. That’s the
1454 problem with you robots—you think of your body as being a part of
1455 you.”</p>
1457 right. And he knew what he had to do.</p>
1459 and its ships’ boats all had root on the shells, so they could
1460 perform diagnostics and maintenance and take control in emergencies.
1461 This was an emergency.</p>
1463 few milliseconds to pry open the Isaac shell and boot the reef out.
1464 Robbie had never done this, but he was still flawless. Some of his
1465 probabilistic subsystems had concluded that this was a possibility
1466 several trillion cycles previously and had been rehearsing the task
1467 below Robbie’s threshold for consciousness.
1468 </p>
1470 himself running on the row-boat, of course. Unlike many humans,
1471 Robbie was comfortable with the idea of bifurcating and merging his
1472 intelligence when the time came and with terminating temporary
1473 instances. The part that made him Robbie was a lot more clearly
1474 delineated for him—unlike an uploaded human, most of whom harbored
1475 some deep, mystic superstitions about their “souls.”</p>
1477 skull before he had a chance to think too hard about what he was
1478 doing. He’d brought too much of himself along and didn’t have
1479 much headroom to think or add new conclusions. He jettisoned as much
1480 of his consciousness as he could without major refactoring and
1481 cleared enough space for thinking room. How did people get by in one
1482 of these? He moved the arms and legs. Waggled the head. Blew some
1483 air—air! lungs! wet squishy things down there in the chest
1484 cavity—out between the lips.</p>
1486 rowboat-him asked the meat-him.
1487 </p>
1489 replied. He looked at the air-gauge on his BCD. 700 millibars—less
1490 than half a tank of nitrox. He spat in his mask and rubbed it in,
1491 then rinsed it over the side, slipped it over his face and kept one
1492 hand on it while the other held in his regulator. Before he inserted
1493 it, he said, “Back soon with Kate,” and patted the row-boat
1494 again.</p>
1496 hardly paid attention. It was emailing another copy of itself to the
1497 Asimovist archive. It had a five-minute-old backup, but that wasn’t
1498 the same Robbie that was willing to enter a human body. In those five
1499 minutes, he’d become a new person.</p>
1502 human-shell down and down. It could take care of the SCUBA niceties
1503 if he let it, and he did, so he watched with detachment as the idea
1504 of pinching his nose and blowing to equalize his eardrums
1505 spontaneously occurred to him at regular intervals as he descended
1506 the reef wall.</p>
1508 human-shell were claustrophobic. He especially missed his wireless
1509 link. The dive-suit had one, lowband for underwater use, broadband
1510 for surface use. The human-shell had one, too, for transferring into
1511 and out of, but it wasn’t under direct volitional control of the
1512 rider.
1513 </p>
1515 by the feeling of the water all around him, by the narrow visual
1516 light spectrum he could see. Cut off from the network and his
1517 telemetry, he felt like he was trapped. The reef shuddered and
1518 groaned, and made angry moans like whale-song.
1519 </p>
1521 about how hard it would be to find Kate once he was in the water.
1522 With his surface telemetry, it had been easy to pinpoint her, a
1523 perfect outline of human tissue in the middle of the calcified
1524 branches of coral. Down here on the reef-wall, every chunk looked
1525 pretty much like the last.</p>
1527 him. He realized that it likely believed that the shell was still
1528 loaded with its avatar.</p>
1530 hours of footage of the reef, studied it in telemetry and online, but
1531 he’d never had this kind of atavistic experience of it. It
1532 stretched away to infinity below him, far below the 100 meter
1533 visibility limit in the clear open sea. Its walls were wormed with
1534 gaps and caves, lined with big hard shamrocks and
1535 satellite-dish-shaped blooms, brains and cauliflowers. He knew the
1536 scientific names and had seen innumerable high-resolution photos of
1537 them, but seeing them with wet, imperfect eyes was moving in a way he
1538 hadn’t anticipated.
1539 </p>
1541 that trembled on its edge could be modeled with simple flocking
1542 rules, but here in person, their precision maneuvers were shockingly
1543 crisp. Robbie waved his hands at them and watched them scatter and
1544 reform. A huge, dog-faced cod swam past him, so close it brushed the
1545 underside of his wetsuit.</p>
1547 It was talking in some kind of code, he guessed, though not one he
1548 could solve. Up on the surface, rowboat-him was certainly listening
1549 in and had probably cracked it all. It was probably wondering why he
1551 like he was supposed to. He wondered if he’d deleted too much of
1552 himself when he downloaded into the shell.
1553 </p>
1555 something. There was a cave-opening before him. He reached out and
1556 grabbed hold of the coral around the mouth and pulled himself into
1557 it. His body tried to stop him from doing this—it didn’t like the
1558 lack of room in the cave, didn’t like him touching the reef. It
1559 increased his discomfort as he went deeper and deeper, startling an
1560 old turtle that fought with him for room to get out, mashing him
1561 against the floor of the cave, his mask clanging on the hard spines.
1562 When he looked up, he could see scratches on its surface.</p>
1564 the red now. He could still technically surface without a
1565 decompression stop, though procedure was to stop for three minutes at
1566 three meters, just to be on the safe side.
1567 </p>
1569 just go up like a cork and email himself to the row-boat while the
1570 bends or nitrogen narcosis took the body, but that wouldn’t be
1571 Asimovist. He was surprised he could even think the thought. Must be
1572 the body. It sounded like the kind of thing a human might think.
1573 Whoops. There it was again.</p>
1575 muttering at him anymore. Not answering it must have tipped it off.
1576 After all, with all the raw compute-power it had marshaled it should
1577 be able to brute-force most possible outcomes of sending its envoy to
1578 the surface.</p>
1580 around himself. The light was dim in the cave and his body expertly
1581 drew the torch out of his BCD, strapped it onto his wrist and lit it
1582 up. He waved the cone of light around, a part of him distantly amazed
1583 by the low resolution and high limits on these human eyes.</p>
1585 somewhere, her air running out as fast as his. He pushed his way
1586 deeper into the reef. It was clearly trying to impede him now.
1587 Nanoassembly came naturally to clonal polyps that grew by sieving
1588 minerals out of the sea. They had built organic hinges, deep-sea
1589 muscles into their infrastructure. He was stuck in the thicket and
1590 the harder he pushed, the worse the tangle got.</p>
1592 wasn’t going to get anywhere this way.</p>
1594 narrowband connection to the row-boat. Why hadn’t he thought of
1595 that beforehand? Stupid meat-brains—no room at all for anything
1596 like real thought. Why had he venerated them so?</p>
1598 transmitted up to the instance of himself on the surface.</p>
1600 so worried about you!” He sounded prissy to himself, overcome with
1601 overbearing concern. This must be how all Asimovists seemed to
1602 humans.
1603 </p>
1605 Kate?”</p>
1607 Can’t you see her?”</p>
1609 “Where?”</p>
1611 centimeters above you.”</p>
1613 he hadn’t see her. His forward-mounted eyes only looked forward.
1614 Craning his neck back, he could just get far enough back to see the
1615 tip of Kate’s fin. He gave it a hard tug and she looked down in
1616 alarm.</p>
1618 coral cage much like his own, a thicket of calcified arms. She
1619 twisted around so that her face was alongside of his. Frantically,
1620 she made the out-of-air sign, cutting the edge of her hand across her
1621 throat. The human-shell’s instincts took over and unclipped his
1622 emergency regulator and handed it up to her. She put it in her mouth,
1623 pressed the button to blow out the water in it, and sucked greedily.
1624 </p>
1626 front of her mask, showing her that he, too was in the red, and she
1627 eased off.
1628 </p>
1630 were everywhere now. They made his head hurt. Physical pain was so
1631 stupid. He needed to be less distracted now that these loud,
1632 threatening noises were everywhere. But the pain made it hard for him
1633 to think. And the coral was closing in, too, catching him on his
1634 wetsuit.</p>
1636 and red and green, and veined with fans of nanoassembled logic,
1637 spilling out into the water. They were noticeably warm to the touch,
1638 even through his diving gloves. They snagged the suit with a thousand
1639 polyps. Robbie watched the air gauge drop further into the red and
1640 cursed inside.
1641 </p>
1643 branches that were holding him back. The hinges that the reef had
1644 contrived for itself were ingenious, flexible arrangements of small,
1645 soft fans overlapping to make a kind of ball-and-socket.
1646 </p>
1648 hand around one and tugged. It wouldn’t move. He shoved it. Still
1649 no movement. Then he twisted it, and to his surprise, it came off in
1650 his hand, came away completely with hardly any resistance. Stupid
1651 coral. It had armored its joints, but not against torque.
1652 </p>
1654 grabbing another arm and twisting it free, letting it drop away to
1655 the ocean floor. She nodded and followed suit. They twisted and
1656 dropped, twisted and dropped, the reef bellowing at them. Somewhere
1657 in its thicket, there was a membrane or some other surface that it
1658 could vibrate, modulate into a voice. In the dense water, the sound
1659 was a physical thing, it made his mask vibrate and water seeped in
1660 under his nose. He twisted faster.</p>
1662 suddenly, giving up like a fist unclenching. Each breath was a labor
1663 now, a hard suck to take the last of the air out of the tank. He was
1664 only ten meters down, and should be able to ascend without a stop,
1665 though you never knew. He grabbed Kate’s hand and found that it was
1666 limp and yielding.</p>
1668 mask, shining his light at her face. Her eyes were half shut and
1669 unfocused. The regulator was still in her mouth, though her jaw
1670 muscles were slack. He held the regulator in place and kicked for the
1671 surface, squeezing her chest to make sure that she was blowing out
1672 bubbles as they rose, lest the air in her lungs expand and blow out
1673 her chest-cavity.
1674 </p>
1676 dilation: when he had been on a silicon substrate, he could change
1677 his clockspeed to make the minutes fly past quickly or slow down like
1678 molasses. He’d never understood that humans could also change their
1679 perception of time, though not voluntarily, it seemed. The climb to
1680 the surface felt like it took hours, though it was hardly a minute.
1681 They breached and he filled up his vest with the rest of the air in
1682 his tank, then inflated Kate’s vest by mouth. He kicked out for the
1683 row-boat. There was a terrible sound now, the sound of the reef
1684 mingled with the sound of the UAVs that were screaming in tight
1685 circles overhead.
1686 </p>
1688 surface, he headed for the reef where the rowboat was beached,
1689 scrambling up onto it and then shucking his flippers when they
1690 tripped him up. Now he was trying to walk the reef’s spines in his
1691 booties, dragging Kate beside him, and the sharp tips stabbed him
1692 with every step.</p>
1694 lower. The Row-Boat was shouting at him to Hurry! Hurry! But each
1695 step was agony. So what? he thought. Why shouldn’t I be able to
1696 walk on even if it hurts? After all, this is only a meat-suit, a
1697 human-shell.</p>
1699 UAVs were much closer now. They’d done an 18-gee buttonhook turn
1700 and come back around for another pass. He could see that they’d
1701 armed their missiles, hanging them from beneath their bellies like
1702 obscene cocks.</p>
1705 seem to mind.</p>
1707 screamed over the noise of the reef and the noise of the UAVs.
1708 “Download us and email us, now!”</p>
1710 had heard him. But nothing was happening. Robbie the Row-Boat knew
1711 that he was fixing for them all to be blown out of the water. There
1712 was no negotiating with the reef. It was the safest way to get Kate
1713 out of there, and hell, why not head for the noosphere, anyway?
1714 </p>
1716 her, Robbie!” he screamed. Asimovism had its uses. Robbie the
1717 Row-Boat obeyed Robbie the Human. Kate gave a sharp jerk in his arms.
1718 A moment later, the feeling came to him. There was a sense of a
1719 progress-bar zipping along quickly as those state-changes he’d
1720 induced since coming into the meatsuit were downloaded by the
1721 row-boat, and then there was a moment of nothing at all.</p>
1725 expecting a visit from R Daneel Olivaw, but that didn’t make facing
1726 him any easier. Robbie had configured his little virtual world to
1727 look like the Coral Sea, though lately he’d been experimenting with
1728 making it look like the reef underneath as it had looked before it
1729 was uploaded, mostly when Kate and the reef stopped by to try to
1730 seduce him.</p>
1733 taking in the little bubble of sensorium that Robbie had spun. Then
1735 row-boat docked there.</p>
1738 Robbie said. Although he’d embodied in the Row-Boat for a few
1739 trillion cycles when he’d first arrived, he’d long since
1740 abandoned it.
1741 </p>
1743 Olivaw spun around slowly.</p>
1747 embodying?”</p>
1752 have a tender that you could live in.”</p>
1757 wise?” Olivaw sounded genuinely worried. “The termination rate
1758 among the disembodied is fifty times that of those with bodies.”</p>
1760 said. <i>But that’s because for them, disembodying is the first
1761 step to despair. For me, it’s the first step to liberty.</i></p>
1763 wanted to come over again, but he firewalled them out. Then he got a
1764 ping from Tonker, who’d been trying to drop by ever since Robbie
1765 emigrated to the noosphere. He bounced him, too.</p>
1770 to sell Asimovism here in the Noosphere? There are plenty up here who
1771 could use something to give them a sense of purpose.</i></p>
1774 reef’s email address.</p>
1776 there was ever an AI that needed a reason to go on living, it’s
1778 one in desperate need of help.</i></p>
1780 Daneel was back.</p>
1782 One’s a human, the other’s a, a—”</p>
1786 point?</i></p>
1788 robots, Robbie.”</p>
1790 see the difference anymore.</i></p>
1793 ocean simulation after R Daneel Olivaw left, and simply traversed the
1794 Noosphere, exploring links between people and subjects, locating
1795 substrate where he could run very hot and fast.</p>
1797 supercooled rock beyond Pluto, he got an IM from a familiar address.</p>
1799 it said.</p>
1801 Robbie said. “I totally know you. Where do I know you from?”</p>
1803 know.”</p>
1806 With the reef. You’re the one who—” The voice was the same,
1807 cold and distant.</p>
1809 the voice said. It was anything but cold now. Panicked was more like
1810 it.</p>
1812 speed-dial. There were bits of it everywhere in the Noosphere. It
1813 liked to colonize.</p>
1815 was all Robbie needed to say. He skipped to Saturn’s rings, but the
1816 upload took long enough that he got to watch the coral arrive and
1817 grimly begin an argument with its creator—an argument that involved
1818 blasting the substrate one chunk at a time.</p>
1822 Robbie the Row-boat ran very, very slow and cool on a piece of
1823 unregarded computronium in Low Earth Orbit. He didn’t like to spend
1824 a lot of time or cycles talking with anyone else. He hadn’t made a
1825 backup in half a millennium.</p>
1827 little optical sensor on the end of his communications mast imaged
1828 the Earth at high resolution whenever he asked it to. Sometimes he
1829 peeked in on the Coral Sea.</p>
1831 awakened a dozen times since he took up this post. It made him happy
1832 now when it happened. The Asimovist in him still relished the
1833 creation of new consciousness. And the reef had spunk.
1834 </p>
1836 new microwave horns growing out of the sea. A stain of dead
1837 parrotfish. Poor parrotfish. They always got the shaft at these
1838 times.</p>
1840 them.</p>
1843 License Deed</i></p>
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