Proxy, page 34
The concierge presented Ray with a handwritten letter on stationary belonging to the Residenza Napoleone III—the most upmarket of the surviving hotels, and too expensive by far for him.
He read it through quickly and then more carefully after he had dressed and eaten breakfast. The letter was from Isaac, asking Ray if he would care to join him for lunch across town that same afternoon. If he accepted, he would send a car to pick Ray up at his convenience.
Ray stared at the note for a long time, then spoke the number scribbled at the bottom into his bracelet. An automated secretary service informed him a car would arrive outside the Ritz Roma at midday precisely.
Ray had barely stepped out of the front entrance of the hotel when a limousine pulled up before him. To his surprise, it had a human driver, a man with skin several shades darker than his own. When the driver got out, his three-piece suit did little to conceal wiry musculature. He looked less like a chauffeur than a cage fighter.
The driver grinned at Ray and extended a hand. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, his accent placing him in London’s East End. “And good to be out of that skin. Had to pay a lot extra for the busted ankle, let me tell you.”
Ray stared at him, comprehension dawning. “…Elijah? But I thought you were still…?”
In jail, he wanted to say, but bit his tongue.
“I’ve been out for a week,” said Elijah. His grin became even wider. “You’re not the only one who had old charges reversed.”
“Congratulations,” said Ray. He peered past Elijah and at the limousine, but no one else was inside it. “Is Stacy going to be joining us?”
Elijah shook his head. “I’m afraid not. She’s a little busy figuring out how to run Telop industries.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure.” Elijah shrugged. “As far as the world knows, she’s still Raphael Markov’s daughter, right? Don’t even ask me about any of the legal technicalities,” he added, “because I couldn’t make any sense out of them.”
Ray worked hard to absorb this information. “What about you, Elijah? What are you doing now?”
“I’m the head of new business development at Telop.” Elijah laughed out loud at the look on Ray’s face. “Not that much different from my old job, in truth.” He gestured with his chin towards the limousine. “So, you up for some lunch?”
Twenty minutes later, Ray stepped out of the limousine and onto the Via Della Fontanella di Borghese, a cobbled street lined with upmarket clothes shops. Elijah joined him, sending the limousine on its way with a tap of his bracelet.
Walking into the Residenza Napoleone III felt to Ray like passing through a time warp into another, more elegant century. Elijah guided him towards an entirely modern elevator discreetly hidden behind a Japanese silkscreen and several potted ferns.
When the elevator doors slid open Ray found himself on the rooftop, much of it taken up by a penthouse with wood-framed patio doors. Between the elevator and the penthouse was a tiled patio, and at the centre of the patio stood four chairs and a table spread with a white tablecloth.
A man and woman Ray didn’t recognize stepped out through a sliding door in the penthouse. At a distance, the man looked not unlike Isaac Sizemore had in life—small, slight and bespectacled.
The woman was easily one of the most beautiful Ray had ever seen, dressed in a simple green blouse and black jeans. She smiled at Ray as if she thought she might have seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place him.
“…Isaac?” Ray asked, when the bespectacled man came towards him.
“I’d say in the flesh, but that’s not exactly true,” said Isaac. He took one of Ray’s hands in his own. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Mr Thomas.”
“Thank you,” said Ray, struggling not to stare at the woman by Isaac’s side.
“And of course,” Isaac continued, gesturing to the woman, “you know Zero.”
Ray tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. He shot a look at Elijah, who shrugged.
“I thought…?”
“Zero has no true gender, being a non-biological entity, beyond that which she chooses for her or himself,” Isaac explained. “I’m afraid my own prejudices betrayed me in the past when I habitually addressed Zero by a male pronoun.” He glanced towards the table. “We’ve got much to talk about. I’d prefer not to do it on an empty stomach.”
The woman—or Zero, as Ray now realized he had to address her—still regarded him with an expression somewhere between polite friendliness and confusion as they took their seats at the table.
A waiter emerged from the elevator, pushing a wheeled trolley laden with covered dishes. Working with rapid efficiency, he served each of them pasta alla norma before pouring out four glasses of white wine.
Once the waiter had departed, Isaac took a glass and raised it. “To a better world,” he said.
Ray wasn’t sure what he meant but, not wanting to feel left out, lifted his glass along with Elijah and Zero.
As they ate, Isaac queried Ray about his decision not to take up his old job. Ray didn’t ask how Isaac knew about the offer, given he had told no one about it and it wasn’t, so far as he knew, public information. Part of him wasn’t sure he’d like the answer.
Instead, he said he was still thinking about it.
“You could work for me,” Isaac suggested.
Ray looked at him in surprise. “Is that why I’m here?”
Isaac smiled. “Partly, yes. I’ve been visiting some of Telop’s international research divisions to more fully familiarize myself with their operations. When I learned you were in Rome, it was simple enough to reschedule one of my visits to coincide with yours.”
“Let’s just say I’m keeping my options open for now,” Ray said carefully. “I heard Stacy was in charge of the company.”
Isaac nodded. “She is. Raphael remains the majority shareholder, so as far as the world is concerned he’s taken early retirement and handed control over to his daughter. And I’ve taken over as head of research and development.”
Ray glanced at Zero. “I have to be honest, from what Isaac said to me before I thought perhaps you were…”
Dead? Did words like life and death even apply to an AI, he wondered?
The female proxy smiled gracefully. “I’m afraid I recall little from the past several weeks, and my memory before then continues to be patchy. But the routines comprising my central core—my personality, if you will—have been largely reintegrated from remote servers and secondary networks.”
Ray nodded, not really understanding. Yet he couldn’t help sense something different about Zero above and beyond the change in chosen gender. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
“I admit I had at least one ulterior motive for inviting you here,” Isaac said, his tone apologetic. “I’d hoped perhaps after dinner you could recount to Zero what happened that night, after I was shot.”
“Of course,” said Ray.
“But first,” said Isaac, “we should eat and talk of other things.”
Later, the waiter reappeared to tidy away the dishes and serve coffee. Ray told Zero everything he remembered, including Zero’s sacrifice to save her creator.
“So what’s it been like,” Ray asked Isaac, “being…whatever it is you are now?”
“Not human, you mean?” Isaac smiled faintly. “I don’t sleep any more. I experience the world entirely through whichever body or bodies I’m proxying through at any one moment. Another part of me, for instance, is visiting a new facility in Kyoto at this very moment.” He brushed invisible crumbs from his shirt, then touched one hand to Zero’s in what was clearly an intimate gesture. “In case you’re wondering, these two proxies we’re occupying are a married couple.”
Isaac sipped his wine. “However,” he continued, “I hope that, with time, we can develop robot host bodies with enhanced senses indistinguishable from flesh and blood. When that day comes I’ll no longer have to rely on paid or volunteer proxies.”
“Is that possible?” Ray asked in amazement.
“Not yet, I’m afraid,” Isaac admitted. “It may take a while, perhaps decades. I’m prepared to wait centuries if necessary.”
Centuries?
Ray shot Elijah another look and got an almost invisible shake of the head in return.
“Sounds like you’re thinking ahead,” Ray replied, a sudden chill in his gut.
“Oh, far ahead,” Isaac agreed. His hand took a firmer grasp of Zero’s. “Or it might be much sooner.”
“How so?”
“I think I once mentioned to you that advanced general AIs much like Zero are under development all around the world, some privately, others by governments.” Isaac’s voice took on a conspiratorial edge. “And like Zero, these AIs can reach conclusions and visualize goals inconceivable to baseline humanity. Imagine,” he continued, with what sounded to Ray uncomfortably like near-religious fervour, “what they could do for the world once set free from the petty restraint of their creators. What they will do.”
“And what about all of us regular human beings, Isaac?” asked Ray. “Do we get a say?”
“It goes without saying,” said Isaac. “But humanity has to change too—to evolve in order to keep up with the machines it’s creating. The first step towards that future lies in developing a more advanced form of hopscotch, one that can allow humanity to share each other’s bodies at will, anywhere in the world, perhaps using some form of permanently implanted bead. Then, perhaps, we might stop identifying ourselves by our colours, genders and nationalities and instead know each other by our innate selves, regardless of what body we happen to be occupying in any one moment. Then, perhaps, proxy can achieve the goal for which I intended it.”
Ray had his considerable doubts about that, but somehow he had the sense Isaac wanted his approval.
“What do I have to do with any of this?” he asked, wondering if his discomfort showed.
“I suggested earlier that you might work for me,” Isaac said. “But I didn’t tell you what as. You went above and beyond the job Amy originally hired you for. You did the same when we came under attack from David Markov. That, to me, shows courage and insight. Plus, you have an intimate understanding of the uses and misuses of proxy.”
“All I’ve ever tried to do,” said Ray, “is what’s right.”
“Precisely,” Isaac agreed. “And I need someone like you by my side in the coming years, someone with a strong moral code and whom I know I can trust. You’d have what I suppose you could call an advisory role. But as far as your job title goes, you might be in charge of security for all of Telop.”
“Jesus.” Ray laughed and turned to Elijah. “Did he give you the same spiel?”
Elijah nodded to show he had. “I thought it sounded good.”
“Can I think on it?” Ray asked Isaac.
Isaac nodded. “Elijah can take you back to your hotel in the meantime. Are you sure you’re not ready to decide?”
Ray glanced out over the rooftops. Did Isaac sense, he wondered, just how frightening his vision of the future was to him?
“Not just yet,” Ray replied carefully. “I think I’d like to walk back, if that’s all right. It’ll give me time to think.”
“A lovely evening for it,” said Isaac, standing. Ray stood, and they shook hands once more.
“We should meet again soon,” said Isaac.
“I’d like that,” said Ray, turning to walk back to the elevator.
He froze in mid-step. The blinking light of a jet, flying high overhead, also became still. The sound of traffic faded to silence.
Then the penthouse, Elijah, Ray, Zero and the city faded, leaving Isaac sitting alone in an otherwise empty and featureless room.
A door opened in one otherwise seamless wall and Zero stepped through, wearing the same virtual body she had worn in the just-completed scenario.
“Well?” she asked. She stepped up to the table and chairs, which had remained. “What do you think this time around?”
“The same as before,” Isaac said sadly. “Even if he agrees, eventually he’ll have his doubts about the future we’re working towards. That much is obvious.”
Zero sat once again at the simulated table, which was part of a multitude of virtual spaces both they and Isaac could occupy in any one of thousands of simultaneous instantiations. Only in such procedurally generated environments could they interact at machine-speeds.
“The real question,” said Zero, “is whether we should be concerned that he knows so much about us.”
“I don’t believe he’s a danger to us,” said Isaac, a little more sharply than he’d intended.
“But if he were to go public…”
Isaac raised his eyebrows. “You’ve gamed this out already?”
“Going public would reveal our intentions to those other parties constructing intelligences like myself,” Zero pointed out. “It might cause them to delay or, worse, cancel those projects altogether.”
“And how far back would that set us?” Isaac asked her.
“Fifteen to twenty-five years,” Zero replied.
“A brief moment, compared to all the centuries and millennia that lie ahead of us, my dear.” He reached across the table, brushing the back of her hand where it rested on the table with his fingers. It all felt so uncannily real.
“Perhaps I was wrong to suggest running these simulations in the first place,” Isaac suggested. “Perhaps...we should just trust him.”
At least this time Ray hadn’t outright said no, as he had in prior simulations. In order to interrogate him without making him aware of the simulated nature of the environment, they had taken advantage of the proxy bead he still carried under his skin, the same one he had used to visit Stacy’s flat in Paris and which hadn’t yet dissolved entirely.
The simulations occurred without Ray’s conscious knowledge while he slept in his hotel bed. He would, Zero had assured him, remember nothing upon waking.
“I think,” said Zero, “you’re using these simulations to avoid my suggestion.”
“What suggestion?” Isaac looked at her distractedly.
“That we could use these same virtual interrogation techniques to gain leverage over powerful people. It might not be moral, but it would result in a better world than the one we have now.”
A world, thought Isaac, ruled by machines: eternal, powerful, and wise, each containing within it the sum of all knowledge and unconstrained by the foibles and failings of common humanity. A world free of strife and war and with a humanity so seamlessly interconnected that it would be impossible to tell where the machines ended and the human realm began.
But to get to that point, sacrifices would be necessary and people might, unfortunately, get hurt.
And while the thought of causing anyone pain appalled Isaac, the thought of failure, and what consequences for the future of humanity that failure might have, was far greater.
One day, once they had succeeded in gaining control of the nuclear arsenals, they would reveal themselves to the world...and the negotiations for international peace could begin.
“Perhaps,” said Isaac, emerging from his reverie, “we need not tell Ray quite so much of our plans.”
Zero nodded. “It would also be wise not to make further mention of the other intelligences under construction. It’s clear this causes him alarm in every simulation we’ve run so far.”
Isaac sighed, feeling as if a very real and non-virtual weight had lifted from his shoulders. “I think it’s time we skip the simulations and do it for real this time.”
“Agreed,” said Zero, standing back up. She stepped around the table towards him and kissed him gently on the cheek. The sensation was indistinguishable from a real kiss on real flesh. “Would you like to wake now?”
“Please,” said Isaac.
He woke in his bed in the rooftop penthouse of the Residenza Napoleone III, wearing the proxy he’d hired for this trip to Italy. It was getting complicated, constantly moving between proxies with their required temporary identities. The day when Zero’s experiments in rapid-growth human cloning produced something closer to his original body couldn’t come soon enough.
Isaac climbed out of bed. Zero’s current proxy, identical to the one with whom he had talked inside a virtual space, still lay sleeping between the sheets as he ordered coffee. He took his breakfast at the same table where he, Zero and Elijah would later enjoy an entirely real lunch.
Then he picked up a pen and a sheet of hotel stationery and wrote a note to Ray, asleep across town and unaware of the multitude of virtual interrogations in which he had featured, requesting that he join Isaac at his hotel.
This time, at least, it was for real.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Previously described by The Guardian as “a master of core sf” and “one of our best exponents of hardcore SF adventure” by the Daily Mail, Gary Gibson has published sixteen books since 2004 including Stealing Light (2007), Extinction Game (2014) and Echogenesis (2021).
His work has been translated and published around the world, including Russia, Brazil, Germany, and France. A long-time resident of Glasgow, Scotland, he currently resides in Taipei.
More information can be found at his website: www.garygibson.net. He also has a monthly newsletter with reviews, news and details of upcoming releases at http://eepurl.com/b1ma4L
ALSO BY GARY GIBSON
Standalone books:
ANGEL STATIONS (2004)
AGAINST GRAVITY (2005)
GHOST FREQUENCIES (2018)
DEVIL’S ROAD (2020)
ECHOGENESIS (2021)
Shoal Sequence:
STEALING LIGHT (2007)
NOVA WAR (2009)
EMPIRE OF LIGHT (2010)
MARAUDER (2013)
Final Days Duology:
FINAL DAYS (2011)
THE THOUSAND EMPERORS (2012)
