Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I build out another four panels and take a swig from my water bottle. The solar field that Louise and I are working on just needs another twenty and we’re done. I glance over at where she’s working. She’s smiling. I wonder if that’s natural or if she’s been tapping her dopamine receptors again. Is there a polite way to ask a junkie if they’ve been using?

“Hey,” I say as our paths converge. “How’s that one thing going? You’ve been tapering off?

If she’s offended, she doesn’t show it. “Down to one hit a day. Pretty sure I can make it through the flight home. No hard crash for me this time.”

I tip my broad-brimmed hat to her. “I knew you could do it.”

“Is it showing? I’ve tried to put on my nice face.”

“Well, I didn’t know whether you were doing it or not, so yeah, you’re doing great.”

“Good.”

I turn and start on the last row of panels. I wish Jeff and Andrea were here with us. Ever since that night last week when Andrea did her toy soldiers show for Jeff, I haven’t been able to get any private time together with the three of them. There are too many of us in on the secret now to sneak away effectively. Every time we try to take a walk, Marc keeps inviting himself along. Once five of us are going, everyone wants to come along, including Father. I couldn’t raise his suspicions, so all I’ve had to show for my efforts are some evening strolls with the family. The scenery was nice, and that herd of wild donkeys was fun. Father said they’re rare these days. I’m starting to think that we won’t get any good conspiring done while we’re here in Africa.

We’ve dug wells for so many villages that we’re running out of towns in the region that still need them. Today is our last day of real work for this trip. Tomorrow, we’ll play tourist in the capital. Maybe I can get with Jeff and the girls then. No. If I ditch Evan, he’ll know something is up for sure. I hate doing this whole conspiracy without him, but I’m not sure how to bring him in, or whether I can get him on board. He’s less enthusiastic about Father than my other sibs generally, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.

I shake my head. Nothing to be done about it now.

BUILD(WIRES)

I run the thick, shielded wire conduits to hook the panels to each other and then to the flywheel box. The soil here is scarce in good conductors, so it takes a while as my tiny army pulls the raw materials from the surrounding area. My control over the cloud is getting so comfortable that it’s like they’ve always been a part of me.

Once we finish connecting everything, Louise takes a few minutes to entertain the kids that have wandered over from Evan and Jeff’s well digging to watch us. She seems to take inspiration from math and biology for her entertainment. The projections emanating from her fingertips make me think of fractals and tree roots. They’re really cool. I’ll have to get that code from her later.

Evan and Jeff finish their work. Another celebration breaks out as the people cheer the clean water flowing from the cistern. It doesn’t matter how many times I see it, I never get tired of that part.

And then we’re on the road to our last stop for the day. Louise takes shotgun, and Evan takes his regular spot right behind the driver’s seat, laying down along the whole bench. Jeff and I are in the back two rows again. It’s not five minutes before Evan starts snoring loudly.

“I have had some more thoughts,” Jeff begins once we have some privacy. “I have two theories for Father’s relationship with the swarm AI.”

I make a show of double checking that no one else is listening before leaning closer to him and answering.

“I’m all ears.”

“My first theory is that while he believed that he successfully lobotomized the swarm, he unintentionally failed to do so. The intelligence of the swarm has been negligible because he has kept his cloud under the critical mass for self-awareness. It has only begun to assert itself recently because of the massive cloud growth he performed in Djibouti. If this theory is true, he has certainly become aware of the problem, but has kept it under control by trickery or force of will, or by reducing it as needed to under the minimum size for it to be a threat. This would explain why he has kept his cloud smaller since that first day.”

“So, if that’s the case, we should see him update the onboard software for the bots as soon as he has access to his lab again, right? He’d want to find and fix the vulnerability as soon as he can.”

“I believe that is correct. A simple test for this hypothesis is to watch the software version of his cloud when we return home. If we see he has updated it in the first few days, that would provide evidence that my first theory is correct.”

And then Jeff would be off my ally list. He doesn’t seem to care as much that Father is a murderer, just that his murderous tendencies make the rogue AI situation worse. I wonder if there’s a way to keep him on board if he’s right and Father does an update as soon as we get back.

“OK. So what if that’s not it? What’s theory number two?”

“It is almost unthinkable, but it is the only other explanation I can come up with. My second theory is that he lied to us and the world about the resolution to his initial encounter with the swarm. He claims that he deceived the AI by reaching an agreement with the swarm mind to aid its development. Father may well have entered into that deal, but instead of a deception to cripple the AI as he claimed, he’s been working in good faith toward a future with the eventual goal of complete integration of the human mind and nanobot intelligence. A sort of human-nanobot hybrid.”

“Us,” I say. More specifically, me. Human nanobot-hybrid, that almost perfectly describes me with the new generation of the implant in my head. Does Jeff know that my implant is different from his? That it’s just made of medical nanobots? I haven’t talked to anyone but Louise and Evan about it, and Father doesn’t seem to have told anyone.

“Yes, us,” Jeff says grimly. If he knows, he doesn’t say. Maybe just the fact that he interfaces with the bots makes him think of himself as a hybrid.

“We would be the prototypes if this is the case,” he continues. “The test subjects for integration. If this theory is true, then I suspect this trip is simply a pretext for a field test of the implants under real-world conditions. Given that none of us have been able to grow our clouds to sizes comparable to his, it is clear that he has limits imposed on our systems that he does not have on his own—limits on the swarm AI’s ability to interface with our minds. So this would be a test of our integration with the implants and the simplified software interface, but not the cloud intelligence. That would come later, once he is confident in the initial results. Incremental testing like this would be consistent with his development process.”

I listen and nod along, not showing my growing skepticism. Jeff’s whole swarm AI theory still seems unlikely to me, and this new twist to it stretches the evidence he has. There are too many unknowns about how Father’s implant and processor work differently than ours. Plus the fact that I’ve had actual bots in my brain for a while now and I’m not feeling any dark whispers of a living machine. But if Jeff is into it, I’ll use it. I’ll ride this train all the way to Father’s grave.

“OK.” Time to feed the beast. “So if we don’t see him update his software in the first few days back on campus, then we can safely assume that he plans to hook up our brains to the same rogue AI that almost consumed the world?”

Jeff nods soberly in agreement. This is almost too easy.

Elevate humanity. Sure. If Jeff were right, that phrase would take on a whole new meaning. I hope Jeff is being his standard paranoid self. If I’m wrong and he’s right, that’s a future that’s so wrong I can’t even imagine it.