"Do you know how an intelligence engine works?"
"Yeah, sort of. It's like a computer with a 'do‑what‑I‑mean' button. You tell it what you want. It tells you how to make it happen."
"Right. That's close enough. Well, if invisible Luna had a lethetic intelligence engine, it could tell them six ways how to get the electricity they need and a dozen more ways to get the political power. Intelligence engines are great equalizers. That's why some people think they're destabilizing influences and others think they should be mass‑produced."
Now Douglas jumped into the discussion. "Some people think that the latest generation of lethetic engines have demonstrated true self‑awareness. And that raises a whole bunch of questions about everything–what's the nature of sentience? Can machines have souls? Do they come from God? Or some other source of soulness?And if they are truly self‑aware, then you can't buy and sell them, can you? And you can't mass‑produce them either, because that's … I don't know, what? Do they get to vote? Will they outthink us? Outvote us? If they're smarter than us, are they going to steal our world out from under us? Or what?"
"Yep," agreed Mickey, "And that complicates the issue even more. If they are self‑aware, what do the intelligence engines think about this? Where do they want to be?"
There was something about the way he said it. I looked up, and he was looking straight at me. Did he know? Did he suspect? How could he not?
"Hey!" shouted Stinky suddenly. "Where's my monkey?! I can't find my monkey! I left it sitting right here on this bench, waiting for me when we got into the showers, and now it's gone!"
"Are you sure you left it there?" Douglas asked. "Maybe you left it on your bed?"
"No, I left it right there–I remember! I told it to wait for me."
"Alexei!" Mickey called. "Are you still here? Alexei?" Still naked, he padded over to a nearby console and punched some buttons. "No, he's gone. He and Mr. Beagle left thirty minutes ago."
"Are you saying he took the monkey–?" Douglas whispered to Mickey.
But not soft enough. Stinky heard it anyway. "He stole my monkey! Alexei stole my monkey! I want it back!" He started shrieking and crying. It wasn't fair. He'd already lost everything else–his home, his mom, his dad. Now he'd lost the only toy he had left. I felt like shit.
FIRE AND ICE
When Douglas tried to comfort Stinky, I watched Mickey. He was ashen‑faced. He was taking this more serious than anyone.
Still naked, he climbed up to Alexei's office and began making phone calls. In private. That was interesting. At least he didn't scream and shout like Alexei did. I wondered if Alexei was monitoring everything we did here. Sure, why not? Privacy had died a long time ago. We'd learned that in school. The only defense anyone had against snoopers was not to care–live every moment as if everyone is watching. The only privacy left is inside your head.
While Mickey was upstairs on the phone, Douglas tucked Stinky into bed, promising we'd find his monkey no matter what. Then I gave Stinky a hug and told him his monkey was safe and not to worry. And then Douglas pulled me out of there and told me not to get Stinky's hopes up. If Alexei had stolen the monkey, and it sure looked like he had, then we'd probably never see it again, and we had a bigger problem anyway. If Alexei had the monkey now, he didn't need us anymore, and if he was too big a coward to terminate us himself, then he was probably sending someone else to do it. And then I told him that the monkey wasn't the problem, it was Mickey. Didn't it strike him as very oddthat Mickey was taking the disappearance of the monkey so hard? And why was Mickey making so many emergency phone calls now?And I'm really sorry to have to say this, Douglas, especially because I think he's nice too, I really do, but I think that Mickey knows a lot more than he's saying.
And then Douglas started to tell me that my imagination and my paranoia were dancing a dangerous duet, and he put on the Daddy voice and got all serious and comforting, and told me how we'd been through a lot and it was normal to worry about all kinds of impossible stuff, but I should really leave this to the grown‑ups to handle–and that's when I stopped him again and reminded him of the promise he'd made to me back on the cargo pod, that he'd never do this again, never again shut me out of a decision, no matter how silly I might sound at the time. And he got it and shut up and gulped an apology, and said, "You're right, I was acting like Dad, wasn't I?" Which was so insightful that I actually complimented him. I gave him a little punch on the arm and said, "That's good, my weird older brother. We might make you into a human being yet." And then we both laughed a little, even though we were in a serious mess. At least, we were going to handle it like brothers.
So we talked about it for a bit, and I told him everything I knew–well, almost everything; there was one piece of information I left out–but I told him everything else I'd seen and thought about.
And then I added one more thing, which hurt me to say more than anything else I'd ever said in my life–even more than asking for a divorce from Mom and Dad. "I don't want to say this, Douglas, because I don't ever want to hurt you. And I've never seen you so happy in your life as you've been since you met Mickey. But I have to say it and you have to think about it. You only met Mickey what?–a week ago? Didn't you ever stop to ask, who is he really? And what does he see in you? I mean, I love you, you're my brother, I don't have a choice. But he's not your brother, he does have a choice, so you have to ask, why?I can see why you like him. He's good‑looking and he's nice and he's smart–but whydoes he like you? I don't mean to say you're ugly, Douglas, you're not–but we're not going to see your picture on the cover of PrettyBoyeither. And it's not that you're not nice, you are in a geeky sort of way, but you're not nice in that way that makes people want to hang out with you. And you're smarter than anybody else I've ever met in the whole world, but it's not street smarts like Mickey has; it's book smarts, which is exciting only to other people who are book‑smart and absolutely boring to everybody else. The same way I am with my music. Remember the time I tried to explain to you that the blues were called that because of the blue note, the flatted fifth that gave them their special sound? And you thought that was the most boring thing you'd ever heard? Well, that's what you're like when you start talking economic bonding among the polycorporates and crap like like that. So you gotta ask yourself, Douglas, just why is Mickey hanging out with us? What does he want?"
And Douglas didn't answer right away, he just sat down on theedge of the inflatable bed and hung his head down and stared at his bare feet, and as bad as I'd felt when Stinky started crying for his missing monkey, I felt a thousand times worse now. The tears were silently rolling down Douglas's cheeks and falling lazily to the floor. He didn't sob. He just let the water flow.
He didn't get angry, he didn't hit me–I wish he would have taken a swing, I certainly deserved it–but he didn't even argue. That's what hurt the most–that he saw the truth in what I was saying here. And finally, after a long moment, he said, "I've been asking myself that question from the very beginning, Charles. Why am I so lucky? What did I do right? And then after we found out what was going on–or at least, what we thought was going on–yeah, I started thinking the same things you did. And it always comes back to the same question. What does he see in me? And I can't see anything he could see in me except the monkey–so yeah, Charles, maybe you're right and maybe he's using us, just like Alexei. Only I thought we'd be smart and use him to get off the planet and off to a colony, and at least we'd get that far. Only we're playing with the big kids here, aren't we–?"