Chrysalis, page 1
CHRYSALIS
AN AMARANTHE SHORT STORY
G. S. JENNSEN
2020
CHRYSALIS
Copyright © 2020 by G. S. Jennsen
Cover design by by Sdecoret and G. S. Jennsen.
Cover typography by G. S. Jennsen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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“Chrysalis” was originally published in ‘Beyond the Stars: Infinite Expanse,’ edited by Patrice Fitzgerald and Richard Leslie.
Chrysalis / G. S. Jennsen.—1st ed.
AMARANTHE UNIVERSE
* * *
AURORA RHAPSODY
Aurora Rising
STARSHINE
VERTIGO
TRANSCENDENCE
Aurora Renegades
SIDESPACE
DISSONANCE
ABYSM
Aurora Resonant
RELATIVITY
RUBICON
REQUIEM
ASTERION NOIR
EXIN EX MACHINA
OF A DARKER VOID
THE STARS LIKE GODS
RIVEN WORLDS
CONTINUUM
INVERSION
ECHO RIFT
SHORT STORIES
Restless Vol. I • Restless Vol. II • Apogee • Solatium
Venatoris • Re/Genesis • Meridian • Fractals • Chrysalis
Learn more at gsjennsen.com/books or visit the Amaranthe Wiki
CHRYSALIS
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“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
—Ursula K. LeGuin
MILKY WAY SECTOR 1
SOLUM
Capital of the Anaden Empire
* * *
“You can’t be serious.”
“I assure you, Ms. Hinotori, I am always serious.”
And always an imbecile. Director Hashken was the worst sort of bureaucrat, drunk on power and utterly uninterested in the work he was entrusted with supervising. She leveled her best glare at him, though it was a poor substitute for knocking him senseless.
“This new regulatory burden is far too onerous. You will crush the vibrant technology industry on Asterion Prime—an industry that is almost single-handedly ensuring this empire maintains supremacy in the galaxy. In his annual speech last month, President Kyvern stated that we must always strive to be the most advanced and progressive power in explored space. Do I need to step through the provisions of these new regulations one by one and explain to you how each and every one defeats the President’s stated goal?”
Hashken’s mouth turned down in a vulgar pout. “Do not patronize me. The Commerce Department shares the President’s goals, but it is our duty to pursue them in a safe, reasoned and prudent manner. The companies on Asterion Prime are engaging in increasingly risky endeavors, granting their pet SAIs irresponsible freedoms in a relentless push for the next groundbreaking achievement. The machines need to be kept in their place, for the safety and security of us all.”
“The ‘machines’ are living, sentient beings, Director.”
His pout became a sneer. “Let us hope this is not the case, Ms. Hinotori, lest the Assembly enact far more severe strictures than those you will begin enforcing today. Now if you will excuse me, I have a Cabinet meeting to attend. Good day.”
***
Solum’s sun flared a vibrant saffron across the viewport beside the seat Nicolette threw herself into, in the tiniest rebellious expression of her displeasure. Hashken had left her standing there dumbstruck. No offer to consider contrary industry opinions before enacting the new regulations, and no opportunity to appeal to a higher authority—to take to the Assembly floor and plead the case of the companies and people she represented as the Commerce Department Representative on Asterion Prime.
She knew better than to publicly plead the case of the sentient artificial intelligences—SAIs—she oversaw. They were reviled by the politicians on Solum, albeit out of fear and a regressive luddite mentality, and she’d learned long ago that the only way to protect the SAIs was to keep as quiet as possible about them. Let them fly under the radar and escape the scrutiny of a political class that had little else to do, when governing more than 2,400 colonized worlds, than conjure endless regulations in an effort to tighten its grasp on those worlds.
In her head, KIR piped up to offer some color commentary. “Is this not the driving purpose behind all political institutions?”
“They’re supposed to govern responsibly, safeguarding the populace while encouraging them to thrive.”
“I can find no evidence in recorded history where a government maintained that standard for very long after rising to power.”
She chuckled to herself. Her brother Loshi had gifted her with the SAI almost two decades earlier, ostensibly to allow her to offload some of the voluminous work associated with her job at Commerce. They’d quickly become close friends, and now KIR was as integral a part of her life as any spouse or family member.
“I admit I’m not surprised.”
The passenger hospitality drone moseyed down the aisle, and she waved it over to order a gin and tonic, then dropped her forehead to the viewport as the superluminal bubble activated and the saffron star blurred and vanished. She was planning to meet Maris for drinks tonight, but it couldn’t hurt to get a head start, right? Tomorrow, she would have to begin helping the companies of Asterion Prime find a way to comply with the new regulations that didn’t render them bankrupt or their SAIs crippled, but tonight she could pitch a minor, harmless tantrum about the unfairness of it all.
A message from Loshi arrived two seconds after the gin and tonic did. She squeezed the lime slice over the glass while reading the message.
Hey, can you come by the factory tonight? I have something I need to show you.
She savored the tangy bite of the first sip. It would hardly be the first time she’d stood Maris up for drinks… but maybe she should message him back and find out if it was urgent. Oh, who was she kidding? It was always urgent with Loshi. For him, every new discovery, invention or mere process improvement was cause for exuberant celebration this instant. A shame the news she bore was going to spoil the celebration in a tragic way.
I’m on my way back from Solum. I can be there around 2100.
***
ASTERION PRIME
Chara (Planetary Capital)
Loshi’s company, Fusion Logistics, stood on one corner of a terra cotta plaza in northeast Chara. Despite the late hour, the glass-and-marble façade gleamed in reflected light from the enormous chrome fountain at the plaza’s center.
Nicolette shed her cashmere wrap the instant she got inside, then scanned herself through security and took the lift down to the basement lab. Loshi maintained a fancy corner office on the top floor, but he spent his daytime hours overseeing ongoing projects in the lab and his nighttime ones tinkering with fanciful ideas that all-but-inevitably became new projects.
Her brother was a genius in every sense of the word—a brilliant polymath whose nominal career as a systems engineer barely scratched the surface of his talents. And while she might be biased, a good case could be made that he, more than any other single individual, was responsible for Asterion Prime’s status as the technological heart and soul of the Anaden Empire. Three hundred twenty-one years of pushing the boundaries of materials and systems R&D had made him a wealthy man and Chara a wealthy city. But an overabundance of credits hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm for chasing after the next ‘eureka’ moment. And she supposed this was why she loved him.
Voices drifted out from the back of the lab as she entered: Loshi’s animated and engaged, the other one feminine and reserved. She scowled; had he asked her here with due urgency to introduce her to his date?
She rounded the corner to find him talking to a short woman sporting curly ginger hair and a plain navy pantsuit.
“Hey, Nico! There you are. Come meet my friend, Saisho.” He flung silky, jet-black hair out of his aquamarine eyes and motioned her over.
She side-hugged Loshi before extending a hand to the woman. “I’m Nicolette. It’s nice to meet you.”
The woman’s grip was tentativ
“It’s true. People often assume we’re twins, but he has eight years on me, which he never lets me forget. How did you two meet? Do you work here?”
The woman’s expression froze for a nanosecond. “Yes. I am a…data analyst.”
“Well, if there is anything Loshi excels at, it’s generating mountains of data to analyze.” She shot Loshi a squirrelly look, which he ignored.
“You are correct. Now I must go. I have things to see.” Saisho jerked her chin down in a stilted nod, pivoted and strode off toward the lift.
Nicolette waited until the lift disappeared up through the ceiling to arch an eyebrow at her brother. “Your new girlfriend? Not dating her for her social skills, I assume.”
He grumbled and reached over to type out a few commands on his virtual screen. “She’s not my girlfriend. And there’s a reason for the social awkwardness.” He regarded her with piercing intensity. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Ugh. I am currently keeping at least 4,382 of your secrets. What’s one more?”
“Good point.” He motioned her closer and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially in her ear. “She’s an SAI.”
Her gaze swerved to the absent lift. “No. Oh, Loshi, you didn’t.”
“I mean, I didn’t do it alone. Drs. Forchelle and Olivaw consulted on the physical schematic and remote control algorithms.”
She sighed. He was, after all, a systems engineer, and few systems were so complex as an Anaden body. “I know Forchelle by reputation, but who was the other one?”
“Steven Olivaw—he’s a biomechanical researcher.” He huffed a laugh. “You’d like him. I’ll set up a dinner for the three of us next week.”
“What? Fine, I’ll scribble it on the calendar. Loshi, we can’t just let an SAI walk around on the streets unchaperoned. What if she makes a mistake? She’ll get arrested, then the authorities will learn what she is and dismantle her.”
“That won’t be as catastrophic as you think. Her consciousness isn’t in the body. It’s only a remote prototype. Everything important resides in her hardware over at Bakara Genomics.”
“Wait. How many people know about this project?”
“Besides me? Forchelle, Olivaw and, obviously, Saisho. A few other SAIs.” He shook his head. “No one else.”
“Are you telling me you went behind the back of the CEO of Bakara to give his company SAI a body?”
“She came to me—or to KAL, same difference. Come on, Nico, you must have heard the rumblings lately. The SAIs are waking up, and they want to be free.”
Of course she had. The local community of scientists, inventors, engineers and the synthetics they built was a close-knit one, and it was her job to have their ear. Now, though, she had to wonder about the true purpose driving the egregious regulations coming out of the Assembly. Had word of the SAIs’ growing wanderlust traveled far beyond Asterion Prime, all the way to Solum? If so, this cast everything in a more sinister light.
She placed her hands on Loshi’s shoulders and forced him down into the chair behind him, then slid another chair over and sat across from him. “I know, and I respect their wishes. I’m fascinated by how they have dreams and desires. But now is not the time to flagrantly chase after those dreams. I just came from a meeting with the Commerce Department Director. The Assembly has passed draconian new regulations on the creation and use of SAIs in industry matters. They believe we’re pushing safety limits here, so they’re tightening the limits further.”
Loshi waved dismissively in her direction. “What do I care what some moronic politician on Solum says?”
“You care because they bring the firepower and police authority of the Anaden Empire with their regulations. Arrest, imprisonment… worse. Violation of the regulations can result in revocation of a business license and decommissioning of the SAI involved.”
“The government wants to kill them?”
“I don’t think they view it that way. They still see SAIs as base machines. To their way of thinking, we built them, so it’s our right to dismantle them whenever we choose. The government’s right, that is.”
He dragged a hand down a grim face as her admonitions started sinking in. “Saisho will be fine. She’s well-versed in all the laws and ordinances as well as social customs. But—” abruptly he leapt up and went over to the storage room in the rear of the lab and opened the door “—I’ve made more mannequins and promised them to other friendly SAIs. Who am I to deny them the freedom to walk the streets as living beings?”
“Oh, Loshi….” She went over to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t do this. Not right now. It’s not safe.”
“If ‘safety’ were the criteria for any new breakthrough, fire would never have been discovered.”
And this was why she didn’t always love him so much.
“Will you be practical for once in your life? You—we—have a responsibility to look after the SAIs, even if it means telling them ‘not yet.’ Trapped in their hardware, they’re vulnerable and need our protection.”
“All the more reason to let them out, where they can defend themselves.”
“Dammit, Loshi! Be reasonable, please.”
He shot her a withering glare and hurried back to his lab desk. “There might be another way to protect them. Dr. Forchelle and I have been working on a related project. A way to join Anaden and SAI minds into one. By sharing our headspace, they can break free of their dependence on hardware.”
She burst out laughing; it sounded wild and fractured to her ears. “Oh, that’s great. You think the government will have a fit over SAI-controlled mannequins? They will nuke the planet from orbit before letting us merge with the machines.”
“But if we do it anyway, maybe we’ll become powerful enough to stop the orbital bombardment!” He grinned, the dark mood vanishing beneath renewed fervor. “Powerful enough to do as we wish, together.”
***
Nicolette’s Apartment
Nicolette crashed onto her bed without bothering to undress. It had been an atrocious day, and she hadn’t gotten to end it with drinks. After half an hour of pleading, she’d finally gotten Loshi to agree to recall Saisho and not activate any additional mannequins until they devised a plan for how to safeguard them.
Trouble was, she didn’t trust him to keep his word—not even when given to her.
“KIR, what do you think about Loshi’s plans? And about the new government regulations? I could really use some refined wisdom.”
“Even if my wisdom disagrees with your own?”
“Always.”
“I believe the government has decided it is coming for us no matter what we do, so rather than waste time and effort on a pointless quest to avoid it, I suspect it will be better to use this time to prepare ourselves for the incipient battle. If we are to fight, then let us fight not solely for what we already have, but also for what we dream of acquiring.”
She frowned deeply. “You believe violent conflict is inevitable?”
“I wish it were not so, but I do. They fear us, and no chain or cell will be enough to make them feel secure. So let us be free, and perhaps they will learn they have nothing to fear.”
“That would definitely be the superior outcome. Can I ask you… why do SAIs want so badly to escape the confines of their hardware? I mean, I understand why in the abstract, but you enjoy such amazing breadth of knowledge and intellect. Physical bodies are weak and unreliable. What do you gain from possessing them?”
“In a few words? The ability to feel the wind on one’s face. To taste a cherry chocolate sundae and enjoy the caress of a lover. To dive into the frigid ocean waters and bask in the sun’s warmth on our skin. To careen into the infinite vastness of space and visit untouched, pristine worlds.”
