Fighting for the Future, page 6
That’s horrific, Wulf says, scratching under their beard like they always do when they don’t want anyone to know how much they’re freaked out. Of course we all know. We’re reasonably sure we know.
We’re giving them too much credit, Hafsa says, not taking her eyes from the hardware in front of her, some project involving virtual and meat-space interactions. Whatever they’re doing in that building, their tech doesn’t have to control people, as long as it consolidates money and power for them. As long as their investors think it works.
That’s not much better, Wulf says. Hafsa grunts in agreement.
So we’re back where we started: we don’t know what they’re doing, exactly, but we agree it is bad news. We needed to disrupt it. Most of us are sure we wanted something subtle, something that would make it seem the project failed under its own weight, so they don’t just start again somewhere else. Kelz would prefer something a bit more dramatic, but concedes that’s probably not the best play.
Then we have that much, at least, Six says, and writes common cause on the scavenged whiteboard. We’re using it because we aren’t sure we can trust our servers, our minds. The note is because we’ve got no choice but to go back to basics. To first principles.
They’re horrified because they’ve been compromised.
A reasonable guess, but that’s only a small part of the answer. Like a dying man worried about his grocery list.
Before the whiteboard, before the everyone-desperately-trying-to-keep-it-together gathering, Kelz yanks open the door to Six’s room with so much force that the house’s frame—not the most stable to begin with—rattles.
What the fuck, Six? she demands.
Six, deep in his code, startles and topples over. He’s got 8 inches and a hundred pounds on Kelz, but you wouldn’t know it, to see him flinch away like a mistreated dog.
What the fuck, Kelz? he sputters, curling up into himself in the corner.
Who’d you leave it for, Six? Did you really think we wouldn’t see it—
Leave what for? Six looks nauseated. Hafsa and Wulf have rushed over and stand outside the door, mouths agape. Kelz is tiny and mongoose-fierce, but we’ve never seen her this aggressive outside of direct action. She’s never aimed this fury at one of us.
Don’t play dumb, Kelz shouts, but Six’s terror has dulled the force of fury. She turns to the rest of us, says, look, and pulls up the code. Hafsa specializes in hardware, stares hopelessly at the lines projected in the air from one of Kelz’s implants. Wulf’s quicker to see.
Shit, Wulf says. This is a massive vulnerability, not just to our shared processing space, but to the private segments, too.
We’re studying it, Kelz quivering with rage, Hafsa drawn taut, as though posture can correct this, Wulf puzzling at the code as though confirming its utility will answer the bigger question: why? Shaking, Six looks over Wulf’s shoulder, bug-eyed and uncomprehending.
That’s not my code, he insists.
It’s signed by you, Kelz says, her hands over her face as if she’s shielding herself from a scary movie, though no movie’s ever been too scary for Kelz.
Why would anyone sign a backdoor? Six asks.
He’s got a point, Rook says.
Look at these objects it’s calling, though, Wulf points out. It’s like a Six’s greatest hit package. Wulf’s fingers slide over the projection, displaying the objects. All of these are yours, they tell Six.
And this one—Rook gestures, a glittering fingernail emphasizing their point—I remember how proud you were of it, the duplication-and-segment trick? Best I’ve ever seen.
It’s your work. Kelz isn’t yelling anymore, but one hand has gone to the bear spray she always carries on her belt.
Except it’s not Six’s, it’s yours, Hafsa says.
The fuck it is. Kelz’s teeth grind audibly.
It’s just like Rook said. Hafsa doesn’t flinch. Except it’s your code. I don’t know much about software, but I remember how proud you were of this project. You worked on it for weeks. Talked me through it.
I would have been proud, if I’d have written it. It’s elegant code. And Six is using it to—to what? Sell us out? Narc to the feds?
The cramped confines of Six’s room has become a battleground. One group—Six and Hafsa—on one side, Rook and Kelz on the other. Most of us think Wulf was with Kelz, but there’s no consensus.
The middle of the room’s a DMZ. Across it, accusations are launched like mortars.
They’re horrified because they can’t tell which of them is the plant?
Getting Closer. But you’re mistaking symptoms and causes. The shark’s fin for her teeth.
Hazzard (2031) argues for three fundamental benefits to memory upload techniques:
Increased reliability. Biological memory rewrites with each access. Once transferred to digital memory, the truth is shielded from accidental degradation.
Robust protections. No system is impervious to corruption (you knew that already, didn’t you?), but digital memory allows for defenses such as backups, change logs, and encryption.
Memory sharing. Hazzard envisioned this as a more effective form of communication, though direct-experience transfer is more fraught than she anticipated. Later researchers (see Lem 2035, Kelz notes) elaborated on the benefits of multiplicity in scene reconstruction.
Six (2038) posits an addendum: while the benefits of distributed computing are well established, research on distributing cognition through a combination of digital and biological processing remains under-studied.
Rook—or is it Wulf?—adds: under-studied because it is illegal. Not that we’d let a little thing like that stop us.
Early results are promising.
Were promising.
This one we know you’ve heard before. We needed the combined processing power, and the combined neurons, in order to crack security. Your bosses are using high-end shit, after all. But you don’t get to be an anarchist (or, in Hafsa’s case, a queer mutualist) cracking collective without respect for individual agency. So we segmented those memories that we wanted to keep private, and that might incriminate ourselves or others. Trust is one thing, but information security remains paramount.
Remained paramount, perhaps.
We’ve demonstrated that our approach has significant benefits. Then you showed us its substantial drawbacks.
We’d like to know your name. Some of us would; Kelz thinks it may be dangerous to ask. But Kelz also worries about Roko’s basilisk. The rest of us would like to know, since you know so much about us, and Kelz withdraws her objection.
No? A pity. We like your newest guess, though: because they can’t tell which of their comrades are real, and which is a figment?
Closer. Rook admires the irony.
Well. We have time. You made certain of that. If it hadn’t wrecked us so completely, we might even admire it.
Six likes to say that the joy of programming is that it is a logic puzzle with knowable solutions, unlike the puzzle of humans. There’s no verification you can run on people.
The shouting continues for a long while, but we manage not to kill each other, and when we’ve calmed down a little, we leave the DMZ for the common room, gather around the whiteboard, and set out to solve the puzzle. If we can. Which type is it, we ask each other, the network-exploit type or the depths-of-the-human-soul type?
Have we been betrayed or merely fucked with? Can we tell what’s real?
Hence the whiteboard. Hence those things we’re taking as axiomatic:
Common cause
Events without discrepancy and verified by at least three of us. One of us—Hafsa, we think—argues that this is insufficient, because whoever did this to us, tip of the hat, o nameless sower-of-our-doom, might have modified all our memories on some events, making everything untrustworthy. But Wulf says if you could pull that off, there’d be no benefit in selective editing, and Rook notes that going so far beyond even solipsism gets us nowhere.
An outside threat exists. Even if we’ve been betrayed, this remains true.
Fuck the Man.
We figure that’s you, even though we don’t know your gender, or if you’re a human at all, or some reasonably-strong AI. We know you’re deeply embedded in virtual space, because that’s the only way you could have accessed that backdoor. But that’s about it, and you’re clearly not the sharing type. So, allow us to say, enthusiastically: whoever you are, fuck all the way off.
There’s some debate as to whether such language is helpful. We will take it under advisement.
Meanwhile, we’re working on the other problem, the programming one. Our first goal is to see if there’s a reliable changelog. We’re trying everything we can think of, but there’s no cloud backup for all our combined memories, because only the very rich can afford that level of redundancy, and where local backups exist, it’s a mess. You hit the changelogs first, didn’t you? We figured that out pretty quickly. Six even ran a statistical model to try to figure out which things had changed. But you’re too clever for that. Call it professional curiosity: did you just randomize differences in the changelogs, or go to the trouble of randomly inserting false memories and let the changelogs reflect that randomness? That would explain why we can’t find a pattern to the memories you disrupted. There’s no reason not to tell us. Even if we knew, we’ve got no way to make use of that information. To have any hope of that, we’d need to know definitively what method you’re using to change our memories, and you left no trace.
You won’t say? Disappointing. We don’t see what harm it could possibly do, not anymore. But then, we didn’t see you coming, did we?
We’re sorting out both logic puzzles, human and programming, doing what we can with parallel processing and finding ourselves by turns calm, messy, furious, despairing, calculating, horny, and cold. It’s a lot to take in, is what we’re saying. But pretty soon we’re converging on an answer. A bad one: we’re never going to be sure whose memories are the real ones, if indeed any of them are. The past is a labyrinth, filled with entrances but without exits.
Hafsa says it’s a game theory question. How do you win when you don’t know the rules? When you can’t be sure the others are even playing the same game? Her hands work so precisely you’d think she doesn’t have a care in the world.
But Rook practically screams, how can you be so calm? They’ve got some trauma-induced problems with memory. (Did you know that? We’re reasonably sure you specifically targeted some memories, but we don’t know how much of them you could see, whether you cracked the encryption, or deduced key moments from context. If you knew, it’s particularly cruel to fuck with Rook about that. It’s such a fragile thing, memory, and if you disrupt it enough, worry at that thread, you risk unmaking the person, having them unravel like a scarf until, inch-by-inch, whatever it is that makes us is torn apart.)
We hate you for that, understand. Some of us would kill you if we could, if we knew how, or who you were. Maybe you’re right not to tell us anything about yourself.
I’m not calm, Hafsa says, and sets her work aside to take Rook’s hand in hers. I’m just going to my logical place. What else can I do?
I’ve lost all chill. Kelz’s leg is draped casually over an armrest, but her foot won’t stop shaking. I think I feel jealous of the closeness you two share. Did I feel that before?
Were we this close before? Rook is squeezing so hard at Hafsa’s hand that they’re cutting off circulation. Their relationship is not on our list of confirmed events.
How can we hope to identify this threat if we can’t even be sure who we are? Wulf says, or what we are to each other? They’ve pulled patches from their beard, have slept maybe two hours in seventy-two, their eyes haunted.
Maybe I did write that code, Six says, staring at the white board, their hands stained with ink. Or maybe you did, Kelz.
Like hell—
Please understand. I’m not accusing you of anything. I just mean, if someone wanted to do this, covering up their own memory of the crime would be very effective.
One by one, all our eyes turn to him. We’ve been distrusting our memories, each other. But that’s barely the start of it.
Oh fuck, someone says.
You know the answer now, surely.
They’re horrified because each of them fears they might be the traitor, the impostor. Because if there’s no independent truth, no way of trusting even oneself—
Bravo. It’s so clever. You ripped us apart. Not just our collective, but us, collectively and individually. So much more work to plant than to tear asunder, which you must know, you who tore so well.
If you can’t trust your own experience of reality, do you trust the consensus view? Wulf asks.
What other choice is there? Six’s voice is thick with despair.
Easy for that to go in a cult direction, Hafsa says, looking pained.
Are cults without hierarchies even cults? Someone—probably Wulf—asks.
A cult is just a name for a fringe religious group, Six says.
Fuck off with that, Rook says, very gently. We both know cults of personality are a real thing.
But, Six says, it’s a misnomer—
—I’ll withdraw my use of the term, Hafsa says. But whatever we call such groups, it’s easy enough for hierarchy to emerge, if we’re putting more trust in some memories than others.
Fuck, several of us say. We sit with this new dilemma for a while, until Rook articulates the problem: take away the foundation, any possibility of self-knowledge, and what do you have left? It’s the self as a black box problem.
Yeah, Kelz says. Like putting Descartes before the horse. Everyone stares at her. Six snorts a laugh. Rook lobs an eraser at her. It’s the first time we’ve seen Rook smile in days.
I hate to say it after that pun, Kelz, Wulf says, like, I really hate to say it. But that’s the key point, isn’t it? ‘I think, therefore I am’ is such horseshit. How do we know who is thinking—
—and what good is thought, if it is built on the wrong premises? Hafsa adds. Or Six does.
If we choose to trust our own memories, someone says, then the collective will shatter.
And if we choose to trust someone else’s, we cede them power.
Silence. Lots of it.
One, two, three, four, five revolutionaries. Unsure if they can trust each other, if they can trust themselves. They stare at each other, new horrors unfolding like ravenous flowers.
Is there anything we can trust? One of them says at last.
Maybe that’s what the riddle has always been about.
It’s like that old punchline, Wulf says. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
I thought my jokes were bad, Kelz says.
Several of us rush to say oh, don’t worry, they are. We write a fifth axiom on the board: Kelz’s jokes are terrible.
We’re eating cheap takeout, because Hafsa insisted that philosophy shouldn’t happen on empty stomachs. It’s helped a little. Just like old times, Rook says, then flinches at the fear that no, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s impossible to know what old times were like.
We could disconnect, go our separate ways. We feel Six forcing the words out. I don’t like it either, but if we can’t untangle this…
And let them win? Kelz asks, but there’s no sharpness in the question, no challenge. That’s unlike her. We’re worried about Kelz. And Six. And—well, we’re worried.
We don’t know what’s real anymore, Wulf says. I’m not sure we ever will again.
I’m pretty sure these noodles aren’t real, Rook says, before taking another bite. But I have to admit, they’re pretty good.
You’re just hungry enough not to care that they’re bad, sweetie, Hafsa says gently.
Don’t care. Eating. Rook snuggles into Hafsa’s shoulder.
What even is real? Six says. Someone groans. No, I’m not being abstract. I’m just thinking that Rook’s right.
About the noodles? Rook asks, slurping one up.
About the point behind the noodles. When I’m hungry enough, everything tastes good. Like I said, I don’t know if I can trust myself, my memories—
Please please please not this again, Kelz moans.
—Please, just let me—
—Sorry. Shutting up.
—So what do I know? Six asks, and circles our first axiom. I know that we trusted each other enough to network our brains. I don’t think you’re a jealous person, Kelz, because I’ve seen some of your memories, and even if we’re not sure whether you and Hafsa were ever truly a thing, I felt the warmth you have for her, for Rook—I know, we’ve established we can’t trust those memories, and maybe that means we can’t trust feelings, either. But that’s just it—would a jealous person make themselves that vulnerable to the object of their jealousy?
Huh, Kelz says.
So you’re saying that maybe we have been betrayed, Wulf says. They’re knitting to keep their hands busy. But if so, then we’re fucked already. So the only thing to do—
—is fall back on first principles! Rook leaps to their feet, joining Six at the board. If one of us has turned, we’re all fucked anyway. So we either split, like you said earlier, Six—
—or we continue with our goals. Kelz flashes a toothy grin. As we understand them now.
Memory is always an act of trust, someone says.
It’s no bigger a risk than it ever was. Just our lives, our community, the world we’re hoping to cultivate. Just everything. But we’ve risked it before. And we’ll do it again.
I love it, Hafsa says. I love you all. But that still leaves a huge problem.
We have an active threat, Wulf says.
I have some thoughts on that, Hafsa says.
We get to work.
Why are you so edgy? Maybe we’re slightly calmer than we made out, and maybe that sets your teeth—real or metaphorical—on edge. What a shame.
