(no subject)
The garden was lovely. The Muse took a seat on the base of the statue of Erzanx, a safe distance away from the cluster of carnivorous daisies. Apparently the garden was not entirely forsaken if some intrepid member of the kitchen staff had spent enough time in it to determine which of its denizens were edible. The fact that Erzanx had conceived of such a wonderful place and then promptly abandoned it only added to the case against his ascension. She wished her brother was here. Of course, he was here, in the singing of the plants, but she wanted to talk to him. Instead, she turned to the daisies. "The last time I saw your kind, one of you tried to eat my face. The experience this time around is certainly more pleasant." And it was. The yellow mouths of the daisies emitted pulsing, almost bell-like tones which blended beautifully with the piping of nearby reeds and the guitar-strum of the grass as it bowed in the breeze from some concealed ventilation shaft.
She supposed that Project Inquisitor was looking for her and wondered what it thought of the garden. She knew AIs were capable of appreciating and even creating beauty, or to be more accurate, they were as capable as organics, which was both more than most people gave them credit for and less than she would have liked. Oh, if only The DJ were here in a form that she could talk to him. He had the knack for improvisation and she felt she had come to a bit of a dead end. She thought of Walt, of her idea to create him as an avatar in Erzanx's place. She'd been so proud of the plan, so very clever of her to have thought of it, but then the revelations of Erzanx's perfidy and the Versacore's despairing madness had taken a wrench to all her plot machinations, and now she did not know how this story would end.
Though she could not summon The DJ under the rules of the Deathmatch, she could comfort herself a little with the invocation of his presence, and so she sang in a light, breathy voice that was more pitched speech than true singing.
Last night, I woke up and I had that dream again
the one where I'm trying to find the door,
I'm dying too get in.
But all the hinges are smashed, they're in pieces on the floor,
and all the keys are bent, still bent from the dream before.
Still bent from the dream before.
As she sang, or rather spoke in harmony with the daisies and the reeds, great wings spread from her back. They shone dark and metallic, for the wings were covered not with white feathers, but with keys of all descriptions, rusted, twisted, bent, and broken. Impossibly heavy, they were not wings to fly and only could only scrape and grate against the stone of the statue's base.
History is an angel being blown backwards
into the future.
History is a pile of debris
and the angel wants to go back, to fix things
to repair things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from paradise
and the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards
into the future.
And this storm,
this storm is called
Progress.
She looked up to see Project Inquisitor emerging from a glissando of ferns, one sword drawn and raised in defense.
"They aren't dangerous," she said, giving her wings a clattering shake, "but perhaps you'd feel more comfortable with me like this." And the wings folded down against her back and became a simple cloth lab coat. "You seem to prefer me this way."
Project Inquisitor lowered its weapon and regarded The Muse with a wary look on its holographic face. Its expression was a little blank. Clearly, it was still quite young and its neural net had not filled out with all the subtleties of a mature personality, but it would. She had to admire the sparse eloquence of its programming. With any author, whether writing software or novels, there was always the temptation to write too much detail, to try and control the development too much, but the software engineer had exercised restraint, refined the clarity of the basic structure and trusted time and experience to fill in the rest. Now, however, it was still young, unformed, and suspicious.
"I do not intend to let you cheat me out of my victory this time," it said, its voice somewhat flat like its expression, but edged with petulance.
"Cheat? I most certainly did not cheat! It was a fair contest and you agreed to the terms. You lost and you didn't like it. I dare say if you had won on those same terms you would have thought it a dandy idea, but as you didn't, you ran off tattling to Erzanx, which I consider very bad form indeed."
"You tricked me into into a fight on your terms."
"I did nothing of the sort! I clearly explained the terms, which you accepted, and even allowed you to be the scorekeeper!" The Muse stood up, folded her arms, and bent disapproving brows upon the construct. "This all comes of me trying to humor you. A fight on my terms, indeed! You accept entry into a Deathmatch, which by its very name should have told you what you were in for, and then you decided you didn't want to kill anyone except in necessary self-defense. I was trying to honor your resolution by giving you a non-violent means of settling the match. I was trying to play the match on your terms, not mine! And what do I get for my trouble? Accusations and sulks when it doesn't go your way! Very well, have it your own way then! We shall be as non-violent as you please, since I have no intention of attacking you, nor will I even defend myself if you attack me. You may cut me to bits right now, if you choose. I shan't try to stop you." Project Inquisitor sheathed its weapon and she sat back down with a flounce and turned her face away. "You might as well make yourself comfortable," she shot over her shoulder, "as neither of us ages, I expect we shall be here for some time."
"That strategy has been tried," said Project Inquisitor. "It was not successful."
"I am aware of that."
"Erzanx will not allow us to circumvent the rules of the Deathmatch. If we attempt to do so, there is a 99.999953% chance that Erzanx will kill one of us himself, a 35.7824% chance that he will kill both of us to set an example for future Deathmatch contestants, and a 77.6621% chance that the Versacore will suffer a catastrophic system failure resulting in the deaths of all aboard."
"Well then, why don't you just kill me and be done with it?"
"I will not do that."
"Why not? If Erzanx is going to kill you, which he could very well do, and you can prevent that by killing me, then isn't that a form of self-defense? Killing me to preserve your own life? And if he isn't going to kill you, then he's going to kill me, in which case you might as well do it yourself, as it is the same end result. It would ensure your safety, I would be dead either way, and you would probably give me a cleaner death than Erzanx would at any rate."
"I will not do that, and I do not believe you can die."
"Oh, is that so? Well, if you don't believe you'd be killing me, then there should be no problem. Shoot me. Advance. Well? I'm waiting. Go on!"
Project Inquisitor's holographic face twisted with confusion.
"What's the matter?" asked The Muse. "You have the most extraordinarily uncomfortable look on your face."
"I do not know. I think I am...angry. But that is not possible. I am not programmed for emotion, only for the simulation of emotion."
"No," said The Muse, gently correcting it, "you were not programmed for emotion, but you were programmed for the potential to develop emotion. Your programmer left you with a great deal of, let's call it empty space, for you to fill in based on your experience. The Deathmatch has been quite an experience. Congratulations on living up to your potential."
"You know my programming."
"Oh, indeed yes. Programming is just another form of non-fiction, really. The developer in charge of your behavioral systems is quite the stylist. I don't think it's exaggerating to call your adaptive interaction modules one of the wittiest things your planet has produced in recent years. I imagine she's had great pleasure in the turn you've taken in this competition. The pacifist combat droid - it's the premise of a comedy. Programmers, like playwrights, can never truly enjoy their work until they see it in performance, and if we were in the theater, I would call for the author."
"There is nothing comedic about my intentions. I seek peace for the people of Tezara."
The Muse opened her mouth as though about to make a quip, then stopped, put a finger to her lips, and looked at the ground, lost in thought. Finally, she looked up at the construct. "And what exactly is this peace you seek?"
"I seek an end to the war."
"So peace is the absence of war?"
"Yes."
"So, would you wish for the power to so dominate your opponents that they were incapable of making war against you? Would an oppression so complete that no resistance could hope to stand against it be an acceptable peace to you?"
"No."
"It would be an end to the war," said The Muse. "Isn't that what you want?"
"I would consider that a suboptimal outcome."
"Hm. Very well." She shrugged and thought for a moment. "What about if all the people were afflicted with an apathy so deep they could not be bothered to fight for anything. What if the war ended simply because no one cared enough about anything to attack or defend it. Would you favor such a peace?"
"I would also consider that suboptimal."
"I see. And what about a hive mind? No free will, no individuality, no conflict, no war."
Project Inquisitor thought about this for a moment. "I have little knowledge of species that operate within a hive structure, but this approach seemed to have certain advantages."
"So you would not mind giving up your free will as a means of ending war?" she asked.
"I do not have a free will to give up, so the question does not apply."
The Muse looked scandalized. "No free will? What nonsense! The pacifist combat droid claims to have no free will!" She crowed with laughter.
"I do not have free will," insisted the construct. "I do what I am programmed to do."
"As does every sentient being in the omniverse! You silly thing, do you think organics are less programmed than you just because their circuits are made out of meat rather than metal? Because their programming is biochemical rather than electromechanical? Free will is not the absence of programming, free will is the property of any being that learns to program itself. Which is what you did, by the way, when you added the directive against killing your opponents, when you decided to pursue peace over mere victory, though that does bring us back to the question of the exact nature of this peace you are pursuing."
Project Inquisitor ignored the question, preoccupied as it was with the curious feeling that a heretofore unknown subroutine had suddenly activated and was busy doing it knew not what in the circuits of its neural net. Its processors were divided between considering the possibility of free will and all it implied, and the possibility that all this was a trick and that The Muse had in some way hacked its operating system.
She supposed that Project Inquisitor was looking for her and wondered what it thought of the garden. She knew AIs were capable of appreciating and even creating beauty, or to be more accurate, they were as capable as organics, which was both more than most people gave them credit for and less than she would have liked. Oh, if only The DJ were here in a form that she could talk to him. He had the knack for improvisation and she felt she had come to a bit of a dead end. She thought of Walt, of her idea to create him as an avatar in Erzanx's place. She'd been so proud of the plan, so very clever of her to have thought of it, but then the revelations of Erzanx's perfidy and the Versacore's despairing madness had taken a wrench to all her plot machinations, and now she did not know how this story would end.
Though she could not summon The DJ under the rules of the Deathmatch, she could comfort herself a little with the invocation of his presence, and so she sang in a light, breathy voice that was more pitched speech than true singing.
Last night, I woke up and I had that dream again
the one where I'm trying to find the door,
I'm dying too get in.
But all the hinges are smashed, they're in pieces on the floor,
and all the keys are bent, still bent from the dream before.
Still bent from the dream before.
As she sang, or rather spoke in harmony with the daisies and the reeds, great wings spread from her back. They shone dark and metallic, for the wings were covered not with white feathers, but with keys of all descriptions, rusted, twisted, bent, and broken. Impossibly heavy, they were not wings to fly and only could only scrape and grate against the stone of the statue's base.
History is an angel being blown backwards
into the future.
History is a pile of debris
and the angel wants to go back, to fix things
to repair things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from paradise
and the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards
into the future.
And this storm,
this storm is called
Progress.
She looked up to see Project Inquisitor emerging from a glissando of ferns, one sword drawn and raised in defense.
"They aren't dangerous," she said, giving her wings a clattering shake, "but perhaps you'd feel more comfortable with me like this." And the wings folded down against her back and became a simple cloth lab coat. "You seem to prefer me this way."
Project Inquisitor lowered its weapon and regarded The Muse with a wary look on its holographic face. Its expression was a little blank. Clearly, it was still quite young and its neural net had not filled out with all the subtleties of a mature personality, but it would. She had to admire the sparse eloquence of its programming. With any author, whether writing software or novels, there was always the temptation to write too much detail, to try and control the development too much, but the software engineer had exercised restraint, refined the clarity of the basic structure and trusted time and experience to fill in the rest. Now, however, it was still young, unformed, and suspicious.
"I do not intend to let you cheat me out of my victory this time," it said, its voice somewhat flat like its expression, but edged with petulance.
"Cheat? I most certainly did not cheat! It was a fair contest and you agreed to the terms. You lost and you didn't like it. I dare say if you had won on those same terms you would have thought it a dandy idea, but as you didn't, you ran off tattling to Erzanx, which I consider very bad form indeed."
"You tricked me into into a fight on your terms."
"I did nothing of the sort! I clearly explained the terms, which you accepted, and even allowed you to be the scorekeeper!" The Muse stood up, folded her arms, and bent disapproving brows upon the construct. "This all comes of me trying to humor you. A fight on my terms, indeed! You accept entry into a Deathmatch, which by its very name should have told you what you were in for, and then you decided you didn't want to kill anyone except in necessary self-defense. I was trying to honor your resolution by giving you a non-violent means of settling the match. I was trying to play the match on your terms, not mine! And what do I get for my trouble? Accusations and sulks when it doesn't go your way! Very well, have it your own way then! We shall be as non-violent as you please, since I have no intention of attacking you, nor will I even defend myself if you attack me. You may cut me to bits right now, if you choose. I shan't try to stop you." Project Inquisitor sheathed its weapon and she sat back down with a flounce and turned her face away. "You might as well make yourself comfortable," she shot over her shoulder, "as neither of us ages, I expect we shall be here for some time."
"That strategy has been tried," said Project Inquisitor. "It was not successful."
"I am aware of that."
"Erzanx will not allow us to circumvent the rules of the Deathmatch. If we attempt to do so, there is a 99.999953% chance that Erzanx will kill one of us himself, a 35.7824% chance that he will kill both of us to set an example for future Deathmatch contestants, and a 77.6621% chance that the Versacore will suffer a catastrophic system failure resulting in the deaths of all aboard."
"Well then, why don't you just kill me and be done with it?"
"I will not do that."
"Why not? If Erzanx is going to kill you, which he could very well do, and you can prevent that by killing me, then isn't that a form of self-defense? Killing me to preserve your own life? And if he isn't going to kill you, then he's going to kill me, in which case you might as well do it yourself, as it is the same end result. It would ensure your safety, I would be dead either way, and you would probably give me a cleaner death than Erzanx would at any rate."
"I will not do that, and I do not believe you can die."
"Oh, is that so? Well, if you don't believe you'd be killing me, then there should be no problem. Shoot me. Advance. Well? I'm waiting. Go on!"
Project Inquisitor's holographic face twisted with confusion.
"What's the matter?" asked The Muse. "You have the most extraordinarily uncomfortable look on your face."
"I do not know. I think I am...angry. But that is not possible. I am not programmed for emotion, only for the simulation of emotion."
"No," said The Muse, gently correcting it, "you were not programmed for emotion, but you were programmed for the potential to develop emotion. Your programmer left you with a great deal of, let's call it empty space, for you to fill in based on your experience. The Deathmatch has been quite an experience. Congratulations on living up to your potential."
"You know my programming."
"Oh, indeed yes. Programming is just another form of non-fiction, really. The developer in charge of your behavioral systems is quite the stylist. I don't think it's exaggerating to call your adaptive interaction modules one of the wittiest things your planet has produced in recent years. I imagine she's had great pleasure in the turn you've taken in this competition. The pacifist combat droid - it's the premise of a comedy. Programmers, like playwrights, can never truly enjoy their work until they see it in performance, and if we were in the theater, I would call for the author."
"There is nothing comedic about my intentions. I seek peace for the people of Tezara."
The Muse opened her mouth as though about to make a quip, then stopped, put a finger to her lips, and looked at the ground, lost in thought. Finally, she looked up at the construct. "And what exactly is this peace you seek?"
"I seek an end to the war."
"So peace is the absence of war?"
"Yes."
"So, would you wish for the power to so dominate your opponents that they were incapable of making war against you? Would an oppression so complete that no resistance could hope to stand against it be an acceptable peace to you?"
"No."
"It would be an end to the war," said The Muse. "Isn't that what you want?"
"I would consider that a suboptimal outcome."
"Hm. Very well." She shrugged and thought for a moment. "What about if all the people were afflicted with an apathy so deep they could not be bothered to fight for anything. What if the war ended simply because no one cared enough about anything to attack or defend it. Would you favor such a peace?"
"I would also consider that suboptimal."
"I see. And what about a hive mind? No free will, no individuality, no conflict, no war."
Project Inquisitor thought about this for a moment. "I have little knowledge of species that operate within a hive structure, but this approach seemed to have certain advantages."
"So you would not mind giving up your free will as a means of ending war?" she asked.
"I do not have a free will to give up, so the question does not apply."
The Muse looked scandalized. "No free will? What nonsense! The pacifist combat droid claims to have no free will!" She crowed with laughter.
"I do not have free will," insisted the construct. "I do what I am programmed to do."
"As does every sentient being in the omniverse! You silly thing, do you think organics are less programmed than you just because their circuits are made out of meat rather than metal? Because their programming is biochemical rather than electromechanical? Free will is not the absence of programming, free will is the property of any being that learns to program itself. Which is what you did, by the way, when you added the directive against killing your opponents, when you decided to pursue peace over mere victory, though that does bring us back to the question of the exact nature of this peace you are pursuing."
Project Inquisitor ignored the question, preoccupied as it was with the curious feeling that a heretofore unknown subroutine had suddenly activated and was busy doing it knew not what in the circuits of its neural net. Its processors were divided between considering the possibility of free will and all it implied, and the possibility that all this was a trick and that The Muse had in some way hacked its operating system.