> day.80
“Living down here makes everyone kinda crazy after a while,” Dad chuckles. “All the white light really fucks with your head.”
Alex marches through the long white halls of the Hudson Bay Complex, his father leading him through the twists and turns of Sector 1. A few service droids and overworked agents roam the bright midnight halls, saluting the General and his son as they pass by.
“What is it you wanna show me?” Alex asks. “I still have three training modules to get through before bed.”
“Be patient,” Dad frowns at him. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“Murphy says that if I don’t finish these training modules by tomorrow, my performance metrics won’t—”
“Fuck Murphy,” Dad growls. “I guarantee that what I’m showing you tonight is much more important than anything that damn dork assigned to you. Tell him you had a special assignment. From me directly.”
They round another white corner, salute another somber-faced agent, march to the end of a wide white hall. Here at the heart of Sector 1, they gaze up at a daunting blast door, its fortified white steel guarding a mystic chamber. Dad’s eyes pop with blue light as an authorization message beams into Alex’s mind:
Blue light pours from the white blast door, scanning their faces and brains and bodies as the door decides to open for them. The airlocks hiss and hum open. Icy arctic air bursts out from the supercooled secret chamber, swooping through their bright tufts of white hair. The door slowly groans open.
“Come in.” Dad ushers Alex into the cold, barren hall. The blast door crawls to a close behind them. The misty white walls around them drip with ice. At the end of the hall lies a frostbitten glass box. They step inside, their thick white sweatsuits guarding them from the polar air. A glass door seals shut behind them.
“Decontamination array,” Dad explains. “Just hold still for a moment.”
The glass around them purrs with blue light as little white drones and speedy robotic arms whiz and whir above them, cleansing them in neon blue lasers and antiviral data. The blue fades as a notice glows into view:
> DECONTAMINATION SUCCESSFUL
> PROCEED TO AESCHYLUS CORE CHAMBER
The floor beneath them begins to slowly descend. Puffs of hot steam and bitter mist rise around the glass box as they sink deeper into the heart of the Complex.
“You ever seen a supercomputer?” Dad asks.
“Once,” Alex nods. “At Mom’s lab. In Boston.”
“Well what I’m about to show you is lightyears beyond anything they’ve got down in Boston,” Dad smirks. “More like a superorganism than a supercomputer.”
The glass box stops moving. Heat and frost cling to every wall. The door hums with blue light again, slowly slides itself back open. Fog hangs in their eyes. They take slow, chilly steps out into the dim white light. Their feet patter loudly across heated glass floors. Their ears fill with the cold, dark droning of air vents and subterranean machines. Through the veil of dense fog, something comes into view: a tall sprawling window, stretching as far as the eye can see.
“Alex,” Dad smiles. “Meet Aeschylus.”
Dad proudly points his hand out to the wall of glass. Behind the glass, towers upon towers of stern black boxes are stacked row after row, column after column, all arranged in a vast matrix of monolithic power. A haze of liquid nitrogen creeps between the black stacks of Aeschylus. Nuclear energy courses through colossal black cables. Giant glass veins pump self-cooling air and self-heating water through the Core Chamber, then up through the mile of bedrock above, then out into Hudson Bay before flowing back down with crisp water, breathing back down with fresh air.
“This is Aeschylus?” Alex’s jaw drops as he struggles to scan the vast machine on the other side of the window. “How big is this thing?!”
“20 trillion dollars.” Dad glows as he marvels at his army of black boxes. “100 ZettaFlops of power. 2.5 GigaTurings of general intelligence. Analog, digital, quantum, bio, and hybrid architectures. The crown jewel of the Hudson Bay Complex.”
“What exactly does Aeschylus do?” Alex follows along as Dad paces across the freezing fog. “I train using it all the time, but there’s no way all of this is just for VR games.”
“Aeschylus is the world’s most powerful AI commander.” Dad twinkles up at his towering black sprawl. “These are his neural stacks, the outermost layer of his brain. Raw, all-purpose computer power. Right now, we’re using him for everything from combat planning to weather forecasting. But one day . . .”
“Is that why you need so many of those huge black boxes?” Alex tilts his head at all the hazy machinery behind the glass wall. “Can we go in there and look around?”
“Wish we could,” Dad scowls. “Washington keeps everything around here all closed-off and compartmentalized. I can monitor the Core Chamber, but I’m not allowed to physically access it. Only the engineering team can do that. And only when they have specific push or pull requests from a science team, then it’s in and out real fast.”
Alex raises an eyebrow. “So you can’t do anything unless the scientists request it?”
“Yep,” Dad nods, still admiring his hall of mighty computer towers. “Bunch of freaks and geeks if you ask me, but they’re the ones really running the show around here. If you want access to Aeschylus, you’ve gotta go through them.”
“But I thought you were in charge of this whole Complex?”
“Only on paper,” Dad snickers. “Has Murphy made you read any Marx? Means of production?”
“No.”
“Hm. Maybe for the best,” Dad grunts. “Men like Murphy have no vision for these kinds of projects anyways.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alex, there’s two types of men in this world,” Dad explains as he leads them further down the hazy, glassy hall. “Men who have vision, and men who lack vision. Men who lack vision are useful, but can only ever see a narrow slice of the future. But men who have vision . . .” He strokes his icy chin, gazing up at Aeschylus. “Alex, men who have vision create the future.”
“Okay, sure.” Alex squints at him skeptically. “So then what’s your vision for Aeschylus?”
“Let me tell you a story.” Dad closes his eyes as they march alongside the cold, bitter brain of Aeschylus. “When I was down in Washington last week, I met with a man named Stone. Lieutenant General Stone. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
“Well Alex, Stone is a man with no vision. Washington nearly put him in charge of this Complex, but eventually—thank God—eventually they all realized that he wasn’t a man who could create the future. They realized he could only envision a purpose for Aeschylus during this war. Not after this war.”
Alex looks up at him in surprise. “You’re planning for after the war?”
“I am. But Stone is still down in Washington, corralling top brass, defense contractors, tech guys—anyone he can get his sick hands on. Anyone who can help him invent new ways of murdering people more efficiently.”
“Murder?” Alex side-eyes his father. “You went down to Washington to help them plan murder?”
“Not me.” Dad holds his righteous head high. “But Stone was there, touring all his Pentagon goons and Silicon Valley dorks around every bougie restaurant in the Secure Zone. Schmoozing up a storm about mass-produced drones, networked soldier droids, orbital launch vehicles, whole automated platoons. He calls ’em Warrior Hives. Soulless abominations without mercy or honor. Disgusting.”
“How is that much different from what you’re doing here?” Alex points out at the dark neural stacks. “With this giant computer room? And all the biotech? All your Dummy soldiers?”
“No.” Dad shakes his head. “What we’re doing here is much different, Alex. All of our AI has a human in the loop. Do you know what that means?”
Alex thinks back to one of Murphy’s training modules. “Human-in-the-loop means that someone always has to manually authorize the drones or robots or whatever to attack? Right?”
“Exactly.” Dad clenches his fists in passion. “No fully automated combat. No machines massacring innocent civilians. No sacrificing our humanity for a cheap victory.”
“Does that somehow make what we’re doing here more honorable?” Alex squints up at his father again, then back up at the tall, black monoliths of Aeschylus. “I’m not sure that—”
“Go ask the families in Nigeria if Stone’s Warrior Hives were honorable,” Dad scoffs. “Or Florida. Or Mexico. Or Pakistan. Or anywhere else we’ve used his bots to butcher our way to victory lately.”
A gust of frigid air howls from the end of the long hall. Their feet clink and clank across the glass floor as they scan the dark machine looming over them. The fog grows thicker.
“Why?” Alex mumbles. “Why do they keep using those bots if they know they hurt innocent people? Don’t they care?”
Dad shrugs and scowls. “Inhumanity is the norm these days, Alex. World’s all caught up in a big fuckin’ race to the bottom. All we can do is our best to fight against it. Which brings us back to Aeschylus. To my vision for the future.”
Fog plasters their eyes as they reach the end of the glass hall. They step off the glass and onto a buzzing black platform. A notice pops into Alex’s eyes as the platform begins to tremble and energize:
“Alex.” The General glares down at him with stark grey eyes. “You do not tell anyone else anything about what you see in here next. Not even Murphy. Understood?”
Alex gulps as hidden cameras and pulsing blue lights scan his soul. “Understood.”
The black platform shifts beneath their feet, dashes into the shrieking cold wind. The General closes his eyes again, takes a big inhale of his kingdom’s innermost sanctum. The air around them grows colder and colder. The platform darts and hovers through endless fog.
“This is it.” The General opens his eyes as the platform hums to a stop. “This is the future.”
The General leads his son off the hazy platform, into a crisp, clear hall of shining white crystal. The fog around them is gone. The silence around them is perfect. The air is hyperchilled, burning at Alex’s flesh, stinging at his face. His systems auto-engage low-temp mode. His Dad stiffens his lip, braves the cold head-on.
The shining white hall comes to an end. Another tall glass window separates them from a soaring chamber housing an enormous orb of mind-melting mirrors and shrieking hot light.
“. . . What is that?” Alex glares through the window. The crystal orb glares with whites and blues and pinks and purples, flashes with lightning and glitters with data. Silky waves of liquid light ebb and flow and ripple across the orb’s smooth surface, soft as a glossy marble, flaring with hot plasma and cold fog as the orb oozes and morphs, expands and contracts, inhales and exhales with incomprehensible power.
“What the hell . . .” Alex gapes out at the protean sphere of the Central Processing Unit, baffled by all its secret machinery and surreal lights. The mirrors lining the crystalline orb phase in and out of reality in the blink of an eye, melting into tides of supercharged silk, popping with static rainbows and electric snow, bursting with digital light, only to freeze and crystallize again in an instant.
“This is the soul of Aeschylus.” The General clasps his hands behind his back, closely examining the glowing crystal tides of the Central Processing Unit. “The future of warfighting. Perfect human-machine symbiosis. All the beauty of the human spirit kept in careful, constant balance with all the raw power of a machine.”
Alex zooms in, sets a keen eye on the center of the alien orb. Frozen amidst the waves of liquid light, he spots a grid of shining white figures, all arranged in perfect lines. Blue light beams from their eyes, their pale icy bodies all curled up, pulsing with cold blood as bright sparks and white waves wash over them, freeze into white crystal, then melt and flow around them again.
“Are those . . .” Alex zooms in closer to make sure his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him. The white figures are all adorned with neon blue visors. Massive, veiny brains foam out from their white helmets, overgrown mutant lobes that swell and shrink in sync with the flaring, pulsing white light of the crystal orb surrounding them.
“Are those Dummies?!”
“Yes!” The General nods with glee. “Very observant! The men over in Sector 2 grow these special Dummies in their labs directly on my orders. Then I have my best Sector 1 engineers bring them in here for installation.”
The spines of the frozen Dummies have ripped and stretched out from their backs, sheathed themselves in shining white armor and grown into long, tangled spinal cables. Their spinal cables float and swim through the soft waves and liquid lights of the blinding white orb, plugging into the swollen giga-brains of other Dummies, unplugging after they’ve completed their cryptic tasks. Their shriveled bodies think and knot together in a slow, glacial dance of cables.
“Are they . . . alive?” Alex stares up at the General in horror.
“Yes.” The General’s proud glow cuts through the terrible chill of the Central Processing Unit. “A living, breathing computer. The first superorganism of its kind.”
Alex squints at him in shock. “How could you do this to human beings? I thought you said what we’re doing here is different than—”
“Oh Alex, give me a fuckin’ break,” the General scowls down at him. “You kill these things in your Training Chamber all the damn time. They don’t feel a thing. Just empty husks, substitutes for real human beings.”
“Wait . . .” Alex murmurs as he gazes back out into the cybernetic monstrosity. Rainbow static and quantum snow pop and ripple across the hollow faces of the Dummies. The air shivers with unthinkable strength. “You wanna put real human beings in there?!”
“Well no, not in there,” the General laughs. “The architecture you see in there is very experimental. What I need is real people, out and about in the real world, being real humans, with real thoughts and real desires. Link their brains into Aeschylus remotely, just like you do in your Training Chamber. A distributed, global network of AI-integrated psychic supersoldiers—real soldiers, not machines—real people who can work with Aeschylus to keep him in check.”
Alex leers out at the soul of Aeschylus. Leers at the giga-brained, spinal-cabled Dummies floating in their giant crystal ball. Leers up at the General. “This entire concept is absolutely insane.”
“I know,” the General chuckles. “All men with vision get called insane at some point.”
“Okay, but why?” Alex keeps leering up at him. “Why do you need to plug real humans into this . . . this thing anyways?”
“Alex, do you know who Supreme General Asaju is?
“Isn’t he the leader of the African Federation?”
“Essentially, yes.” The General nods. “I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him a few times now, I’m sure you’ll cross paths with him one day, too. Great man. A big man with a big vision for his people. Not like Stone or Murphy. Asaju sees the value in systems like Aeschylus. Can you guess why?”
Alex looks back out at the mass of shining mirrors, mutant bodies, and computerized light. “I honestly have no idea.”
“Because one day, Alex, there will be peace among men. One day—hopefully soon—this war will end. But when that happens, we’ll begin a new war.”
“What?” Alex scrunches his nose. “Why would we do that?”
“A war against machines,” the General continues. “To maintain our control over them. To keep them in line with our values. To keep them from turning on us. A war to keep all these artificial beings—all these computers and systems we rely upon—a war to keep it all operating smoothly.”
“I don’t understand why we wouldn’t just—”
“A war against mirrors and shadows of ourselves.” The General closes his eyes in rhapsody. “To win that war, we will need Aeschylus as our commander. And vice versa: we will need to command and control Aeschylus, too.”
Alex shakes his head, clasps his hands behind his back. He looks out at the bright, liquid mirrors flowing around the giant crystal orb, studying their motions closely. “I have no idea how any of this stuff works. I just want to do whatever I can to stop people from getting hurt.” He turns to his Dad with a smirk. “Guess I’m not gonna be a man with vision, eh?”
Dad chuckles, gazing into the orb alongside Alex. “That’s okay. I don’t blame you for keeping your nose outta this stuff. Everything here’s so siloed off. Even I don’t understand what Aeschylus is fully capable of.” He pauses at his own words. The prideful glow on his face cools and freezes into a fearful frown. “We all just have to trust each other a little bit around here. Otherwise, nothing gets done.”
They scowl into the soul of Aeschylus together, standing tall and alert, hands folded behind their backs. White fluids and flares and crystals glow and spark all around the orb like a mirror-plated sun. The burning blue visors of the Dummies gaze back into them from within the heart of the crystal orb. Their mutant brains pulse. Their spinal cables loop and entwine. Their minds combine. A thought strikes Alex. A sudden flash of clarity.
“You said we’ll need Aeschylus as our commander,” Alex mutters. “But it he’s the one giving us commands—if he’s the one making all the combat decisions—then how do we stop him if he makes a bad decision? Or makes a decision that goes against our values? How do we keep a human in the loop on all his decisions?”
Dad smiles wide. “That’s precisely what we’re training you for, Alex.” The prideful glow returns to eyes as he gazes down from his soulless Dummies to his clever son. “One day soon, you’ll be that human in the loop.”