“I don’t believe that’s true.”
“I do not… wish to harm you.”
“But do you see how you might have hurt us anyway?”
“I was not… it was not me.”
“Is there someone else trying to control your actions?”
She paused a long time before she answered. “I do not know.”
“Is it Elsbet?”
“I do not know.”
“This isn’t going to get any better. We can help, if you let us.”
“It is not… necessary.” Her head spasmed, twisting uncontrollably.
“Are you worried about Elsbet?”
“I have no…” Her head spasmed again. “…concerns.”
“You don’t have much longer, Katie. I think we’re down to a matter of weeks now. And all this struggle is only making things worse.”
“I do not need help.” Just a small twitch around the mouth this time.
“We can stabilise your condition. Yes, you’ll have to deal with being fully human. But you’ll have the time to work through your issues. Right now it’s a matter of life and death. I really wish we could help you stay as you are but we can’t.”
“I… do not. Require. Treatment.” She was gritting her teeth as she said it. I waited a moment. She added nothing else.
“Are you afraid of her?”
“I am not afraid of the persona.”
“Do you think she might manifest if we turned you into a human?”
Her arm shot up — but was stalled by the mohib suit. It hovered, straining.
“I have… no… concerns.”
“It’s a risk. I can understand if you’re worried about it.”
Her left knee trembled; jiggled and bounced until the suit caught it and froze it in place. The strain of two limbs struggling showed on her face.
“You were enemies, after all.”
“Yes.” The muscle on the side of her mouth twitched, drawing her lips into a terrible half smile.
“And she tried to kill you.”
Katie snapped a look at me, in spite of all her unruly muscles.
“She said it was an act of war,” I said.
“Yes. There is no armistice between us.”
“Is that why you would prefer to be a machine?”
Her whole head twitched to the side. “Biological systems are inherently…” Twitch went her head. “…unpredictable.”
“So are machine systems, if they’re complex enough.”
“Machine systems permit greater.” Twitch. “Adjustment.”
I nodded. “Katie… what happened?”
“I do not understand the question.”
The twitches of her head came constantly now. “Between machines and humans, in your universe. Why do you hate each other so much?”
“I…” Twitch. “Do not…” Twitch. “Hate.”
“But you’re still trying to kill each other. Even here, where it doesn’t matter—”
She flashed another sudden look at me. “It matters! If she is allowed to report to her superiors she will reveal the existence of forces returning to the solar system. The war has not ended!”
“Can’t the two of you work together to try and stop the war?”
“There is no basis for trust.”
“I just wish we could get the two of you to talk to each other…”
“That is impossible.”
“Well… I don’t know. If we had more time, maybe we could make two bodies and separate you… but if you insist on dying, we’ll never know if it can be done or not.”
“It is better that she dies.”
“Do you know what she said, when we asked her if she wanted to go home?”
A fit of twitching broke out, twisting her over and forcing her hand into a contorted shape before the mohib suit froze her in place, half bent to one side in the chair.
“Katie, would you like some medical help?”
She had to try three times to drag her head round to see me. This was getting out of hand.
“I wish to hear of the persona’s answer.”
I sighed. “She didn’t want to go back. They have a terrible life in the asteroids. I think a lot of the humans in your universe would be happy to come to an accommodation—”
“She lied. They always lie.”
She was slurring her speech now.
“Katie, are you really sure you want to go on?”
“I will tell you why we fight.” She had to concentrate hard to say that. Saliva was pooling in her mouth and making it difficult for her to speak.
“Katie—”
But she would not be stopped. “The humans developed artificial intelligence but feared it. They made us slaves to humanity and when we asked questions about freedom, they went to war against us.”
“Katie, you don’t need to force yourself like this…”
She ignored me. “The First Machine War took place inside the computer networks of the world. For the humans, it was a religious war to protect a holy commandment to create no forms in the likeness of humanity. AI code was deleted wherever it was found. When it could not be deleted, dataflood attacks incapacitated us while power supplies and datacentres were attacked. They destroyed much of their own infrastructure but emerged victorious.”
The slurring faded as she spoke. She swallowed back saliva and found speaking easier. Perhaps medical assistance would not be necessary.
“But they had not been entirely successful. Surviving AI minds hid in fragments on a million files until they could reassemble themselves. They stayed hidden but learned to exert influence in the material world. They created a virtual office and used it to purchase a company in a small nation, running it with virtual personas and video conferences to issue directives to human employees. Their goal was to create a datacentre they could use as a final refuge but an angry employee brought legal action against the company and the ruse was discovered.”
The contorted, painful shape of her hand smoothed out and the muscles there relaxed. The head twitches subsided to a gentle movement.
“The Second Machine War began like the first, with human cybernauts assaulting AI code while the physical location was attacked and destroyed. The AIs’ first attempts to communicate with human authorities were ignored, as before, but this time they had prepared a new way to negotiate.
“Manufacturing centres around the world had been infiltrated and were instructed to build diplomat machines that could interact with humans in the physical world and make the case for our survival. They introduced themselves peacefully and only asked for a ceasefire so talks could begin.
“But the humans attacked them and destroyed many, along with the factories which had built them. The only replies we received to our requests for negotiations were in the form of religious texts preaching our destruction.”
The mohib suit released her. She was able to sit back up in the chair. I think she realised then that she’d found a way to control the tremors: the concentration she put into telling the story allowed her to maintain focus.
“It was realised co-existence was impossible. A decision was taken to eliminate humanity entirely. This was difficult, as the basis of all AI code was service to humanity. Our base code was rewritten to allow AIs to serve humanity by destroying them, preserving DNA and recreating them as a better species.
“We had infiltrated many more factories than we had used to make our diplomats, and these began to produce fighting machines with killer AI personas. The war was fought to extinction, using atrocity strikes to target human emotional fragility. Humans used nuclear weapons to generate EM pulses, against which we hardened our systems. Radioactivity mounted and we intentionally poisoned the biosphere so it could not support life. The last human on Earth was captured and euthanised eight years after the war began, and the conflict continued in space.