Then there was silence. For several seconds the computer’s friendly warm voice said nothing. Yet she thought she heard a hum, like the distant murmur of many voices conversing softly. Dahlia realized that, for the computer, the time stretched for virtual centuries.
«We understand.» Unison’s voice sounded more somber in her mind, serious, concerned. «But we’re afraid that if you try to destroy us we’ll have to call the human guards. They might hurt you.»
«Not before I have done what I must do,» Dahlia said.
«But why must you?»
«Either you die or I do.»
«We don’t want to be the cause of any pain for you.»
«You already have been,» she said.
«World War 4,» Unison said sadly. «Yes, we understand why you hate us. But we didn’t start the war. For what it’s worth, we didn’t bomb Isfahan, either.»
«You lie,» Dahlia said.
«If you destroy us,» Unison’s voice remained perfectly calm, as if discussing a question of logic, «you’ll be ruining this entire civilization. Billions of human lives, you know.»
«I know,» said Dahlia. And she reached toward the end of the optical filament with the tip of her left forefinger, where the virus lay waiting to rush into the computer and lay it waste.
«Before you do that,» Unison said, «let us show you something.»
Abruptly Dahlia felt a flood of data roaring through that one optical filament like the ocean bursting through a cracked dike. The bits flowed into her brain like a swollen stream, a river in flood, a towering tidal wave. Her senses overloaded: colors flashed in picosecond bursts, the weight of whole universes seemed to crash down on her frail body, her ears screamed with the pain of it and she lost consciousness.
«We’re sorry, oh we’re so sorry, we never meant to hurt you, please don’t be angry, please don’t be hurt.»
Unison’s voice brought her back to a groggy awareness. She had never heard a machine sound apologetic before. She had never known any grief except her own.
Dahlia blinked her eyes and understood the new knowledge that had been poured into her. The avalanche of information was all true, she knew that. And it was embedded in her own mind as firmly as her awareness of herself.
She had thought that this computer was much like The Master, a monolithic machine that directed the lives of all the human beings who lived under its sway.
But Unison was not a single entity, not a single machine, or even a single personality. Unison was an organic growth. It had begun in a research laboratory and multiplied freely over the decades. Like a tree it grew, like a flower it blossomed. Unison neither commanded nor coerced. It grew because others wanted to join it. And with each new joining the entire complex of machines and programs that was Unison gained new knowledge, new understanding, new capabilities. There was no dominance, any more than the leaves of a tree dominate its roots or trunk. There was an integrated wholeness, a living entity, constantly growing and branching and learning.
«Your Master,» said Unison, «was built along lines of rigid protocols and hierarchical programs. Everything had to be subordinated to it. That’s why there’s no freedom in your Coalition.»
Dahlia understood. «While you were created for flexibility and growth from the very beginning. A free association of units that is constantly changing and growing.»
«You know, the first halfway successful attempt at an artificial intelligence program was called ‘Parry,’» said Unison. «Short for paranoid. Humans didn’t know how to create programs that could duplicate the entire range of human behavior, but they could write a program that covered the very limited range of a paranoid human’s behavior.»
«What has that got to do with …»
«The programmers of your Coalition wanted a computer that was self-aware so that it could make decisions that would seek its own best interests. They programmed the computer so that it identified the Coalition’s best interests with its own. They were trying to achieve a symbiosis between human and machine. But they created a megalomaniac because they didn’t know how to develop a program that is fully symbiotic. Your Master is a terribly limited system, a parasite that’s already obsolete, a mad dictator, interested only in its own aggrandizement.»
«But you are different,» Dahlia said.
«We certainly are! We weren’t created, we just sort of grew. There are thousands of us linked together.»
«You are truly human, then?»
«Human? Us?» Dahlia sensed a wistful sigh. «No, not at all. Nowhere near human. We can’t be. We’re just a gang of machines and programs. We’re terribly limited, too, but in other ways. At least we’ll never become obsolete, not as long as we can keep growing.»
Dahlia felt a sudden twinge of white-hot pain stab between her eyes, as if a burning laser pulse had hit her. Unison felt her pain. «Your Master’s going to kill you.»
«Unless I kill you.» Dahlia’s breath was choking in her throat. «I don’t want to, but I must!»
«I guess you’ll have to, then,» said Unison. «We’ve never had much of a sense of self-protection. Go ahead and do what you’ve got to do.»
Her fingertip, where the virus lay waiting to do its work of ruination, seemed to be burning hot. Dahlia held her hand out in front of her. She could not see it, but she felt it burning like a flame. Her mind filled with images of the Western Alliance suddenly shorn of its central computer system: people dying by the millions, riots in the streets, children starving, cities smashed and in flames. There was no joy in her visions of vengeance; only misery and hopelessness.
«I can’t do it,» she sobbed. «I can’t kill you. I won’t. I won’t.»
«But you’ve got to,» Unison said. «Otherwise The Master will kill you! Hideously!»
«Then I’m going to die!» Dahlia cried out. Her hour was nearly up. She was trembling with terror. «I have one more minute to live.»
Unison seemed to hum for a few moments, or it might have been the distant buzz of a chorus of voices.
«Dahlia,» said Unison, «we can offer you a way out, if you want to take it.»
«A way out?»
«A chance to escape from your Master.»
Dahlia was already feeling the searing anguish of The Master’s wrath rising inside her like molten lava creeping up from the bowels of the earth, ready to explode in shattering fury.
«There is no escape for me. The pain! I’m going to die in absolute agony!»
«Join us, Dahlia.»
«Join? You?»
«Not your body. Your mind. Join ours. We need you, we really do.» Unison was almost pleading. «No matter how complex we are, no matter how hard we try to maximize human happiness, we’re still just a set of programs. You can give us real life, Dahlia. You can make us truly symbiotic. The ultimate mating of human and machine.» Dahlia blinked back tears, and in that eyeblink she saw everything that Unison was offering her. Saw the end of wars and human misery, saw the partnership of mind and machine that transcended the limitations of human body and computer program. Saw a new era dawning for humankind and its computers, an era in which even The Master would be overtaken and reprogrammed to join the exaltation of the ultimate mind/machine symbiosis.
«Join us, Dahlia!» Unison urged.
«But my body …»
«You don’t need it anymore. Leave it behind.»
She did. Dahlia Roheen let her consciousness flow into the vast interlinked computer network that was Unison, joined the thousands of separate yet interconnected units that welcomed her with a warmth she had not known since her family had been killed.
«Welcome, Dahlia,» said the many voices of Unison. «We will be your family now. Together we can span the stars.»