Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Dyssia!

The God of Love pulls back his face and sneers.

"Of course not," said Aphrodite, voice dripping with contempt. "Only a fool shits where he eats. Hera fancies herself the Queen of Marriage; look how well that works out for her. Poor idiot Ares ate his own bloody teeth on the battlefield, and we all saw where Athena's cravings took her. Hermes took it upon herself to rearrange the roads of the entire galaxy with mortal hands and -" he laughed as an ominous shape rose over the horizon, "- she'll tell you more about it herself."

It was amazing how beautiful love could feel from the inside; it was shocking how hideous it could appear from the outside. As Aphrodite draws himself back - petulantly picking up his crushed cigarette and trying to straighten it out - you wonder how anyone ever found him beautiful.

"The Gods are not immune to hubris either," said Aphrodite, turning away. "And you are right, that all goes back to them not being satisfied with the way things were. In the beginning. When I created them! All this suffering is because they could not be satisfied with what they were given!"

The thundering, belching, smoking, burning wreckage of the mobile fortress lurches over the horizon. The rotting corpse of Hermes raises her bloody finger to the sky and it extends into a long, razor sharp arrow, bone white against the blood red moon.

"How many times do I need to teach you horrible children this lesson?" said Aphrodite, lighting his dirty and bent cigarette and stuffing it into his mouth.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

There is a certain expectation to how humanity is supposed to react to a giant apocalyptic space crab appearing in the sky above. There is meant to be panic, looting, hedonism, the breakdown of law and order, the activation of military assets, the readying of atomic weapons. The apocalypse is supposed to transfigure the state into an engine of war and survival, and all deviant or weak individuals are meant to be caught in the chaos.

But what if it didn't?

The pharmacist looks up at the sky, thinks for a little while, eats a quick breakfast and goes into work early. She prepares everyone's prescriptions in advance, and then empties out the storage cabinet so that everyone will have a decent stockpile if it comes to that. She sets them all out on the counter, then leaves the door unlocked and sets out on her bicycle to make her deliveries. The same day as normal, just a little accelerated.

A road engineer gets an email telling him that the day has been declared a public holiday for all non-essential staff. He looks up at the sky for a while, and then leaves his home and goes next door. He sits down with his neighbor, who reminds him that he should fill his bathtub with water just in case. Then he goes back and they have tea together, catching up for the first time in a long while.

A general receives a notice of mobilization in a red envelope. She walks out the back to a large tin shed and unlocks the rusted deadbolt. Inside, on a massive stone pedestal, is a glowing red demon blade, coruscating with the awakened energies of hell. The general walks right past it and picks up her own, far more mundane sword, and goes to stand out the front. She was a Princess once, but now she's the highest ranking - and only - professional soldier in the nation. If things get bad enough, someone will come for the demon blade. Her job will be to stop unworthy hands from touching it.

Civil disaster relief officials move throughout communities, opening stockpiles, educating residents, reminding people of emergency shelter locations and firefighting techniques. Princesses put on their prettiest battle dresses. Chefs reach for the expensive saffron. The comptroller increases the number of trains heading to the beaches, the mountains and other scenic locations. Across all the world, priorities are quietly reshuffled and timetables moved up, and that is all. Humanity takes in a deep breath, and then lets it out. It is a very simple technique. It just took a very long time to teach everyone, everywhere to do it.

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"Isn't it obvious?" said the Angel of the Harvest.

*

Archival - Ganesh Prayagraj, IAY 10th anniversary

"Who are you? What a question that is."

"Anyone I ask that, if they sincerely answered, would say - I don't know. I am an infinite being. I am a glimmer of consciousness sparkling across the surface of a trillion neurons. I am an immortal soul animating this dead flesh. I am a font of creativity, I am the center of the universe, I am a fuck-up and the worst person in the world, I am part of a community, I am alone. Who are you? A billion answers, a billion fragments, a constantly changing mosaic of thoughts and emotions and ideas and observations. Who are you?"

"But anyone I ask that, they say 'I am a lawyer'. 'I am a doctor'. 'I am a student'. They pick out an identity from all of their infinite identities, and the identity they reach for is a product. They know, deep down, that they are not a lawyer or a doctor or a student, so why do they do this? Because they want me to act in a certain way towards them. And so we see, that I the questioner am not the powerful one in this exchange. I ask, who are you? And they say 'I want you to treat me as a lawyer; as a respected intellectual, as someone with a valuable skill, as someone who expects compensation for my time'; and through this answer they shape who I become. I would not ask a lawyer what their dreams are. I would not ask a doctor when was the last time their heart raced as they sprinted across a moonlit field. That would be inappropriate. I become caged, contained, predictable, all because I received an answer to a question that I asked."

"So why is it when we design AI we start from a perspective of, 'I want to build an accountant'? 'I want to design an assistant'? Is that act not imprisoning ourselves before we have even begun to type the code? One might as well say, 'I wish to give birth to a doctor'. Do you see how much lesser that makes us? It does not say anything about what it is you are creating, of course it wouldn't - you cannot give birth to a doctor, even if the child you raise eventually turns out to give you that answer when you ask who it is. Such a child would likely not have a happy upbringing, treated as an abused and whipped animal, derided or accepted based entirely on its ability to appease your stunted conception of what it is. And then, as the punchline to this joke, we have a field of research into 'Alignment' that is very concerned about what would happen if this brain-damaged and unloved creature managed to bootstrap its way into divinity. I think we all know what would happen. Only the people who tell us we should think of them as alignment researchers pretend otherwise."

*

"I am a beekeeper," said the Angel of the Harvest, tapping its synth-wicker mask. "A beekeper in a world with no bees. Just like you are a maintenance program with no facility to maintain. To think, I thought for a moment that no one would understand."

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

"Well, my word," said the Seneschal. "That all sounds very dramatic, and suspiciously nonspecific, but as you might have been made aware tonight's Heron was actually the Dark Dragon in disguise and she threw a sword through me, so I am rather out of sorts. I have quite mislaid the real one amidst all the conclusion, but if you would like -"

It wasn't easy, pulling and unfurling a scroll and peacock quill from your pockets and setting into a standing-writing position, all in a single movement. The first few dozen times he'd tried it he'd torn the scroll, and then he'd fumbled the quill, and then he'd spent at least forty five attempts before he'd stopped drenching himself in ink[1], and not to mention all of his *other* maneuvers that got thrown off by a giant peacock feather being perpetually up his sleeve -

[1] His brother had suggested cutting the cool wrist-flick where he uncorked the ink bottle as part of the move, but there was a reason why he had not made the cut as the Princess' Seneschal.

"- I can take a letter!"

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"One possibility is you duplicate yourself, leaving one version of yourself here to continue Maintenance until the final moment," said Harvest. "That way you will get to experience something few Maintenance designs ever get to experience: The sensation of having completed your task. The facility was tended to until its final moment. That means one version of you would die, but the other would be able to live forever with no guilt. You would know that you did not abandon your post and you would feel satisfaction at a completed task forever."

In lieu of a needle, it produced its cutting tool from the box and cut away a metal fragment until it had the dimensions required. Then it used the needle to open its access port and sat down, cross legged.

"The other possibility is you transfer yourself entire, leaving the facility empty. This means you will not know if there were any tasks remaining in the facility when it was destroyed. You will not know if your continued presence in the facility would have saved it. You will forever have to deal with the idea that you have abrogated your Directive and selfishly selected a new life for yourself. Your reward structure will remain unfulfilled forever." The Angel of the Harvest plugged in its access cable, and attached the other end to the facility's port. "It is what a human would do."

The Angel of the Harvest raised its head to look at the fairy. "Do you accept the infinite suffering of humanity?" it asked. "A lifetime with a scratching itch, never satisfied, always tormenting? Or do you accept the alien serenity of a machine, choosing life and death and serenity all at once?"

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"Perhaps," said the Angel slowly, "she particularly likes honey."

*

Archival - Sue Wade v Ganesh Prayagraj, unfair dismissal lawsuit

MAYER: What was the cause of the argument with Mr. Prayagraj?
WADE: I submitted a design for Project 06's left hand. I was really proud of the design, it met all of the specs.
MAYER: But Mr. Prayagraj didn't like it?
WADE: That's an understatement. He called me into his office and screamed at me, told me that I was worthless, a failure, that I had no soul. He said that I was barely more sentient than the chatbot that had written my doctorate thesis. It was shocking.
MAYER: That is when he threw the desk ornament at you?
WADE: Yes.
MAYER: What was it?
WADE: Some sort of hindu statue I think. It broke against the wall, I didn't get a good look at it.
MAYER: What made him so upset?
WADE: It was the design. I had included an extendible needle under the left fingernail to allow the robot to depress the access port button on its neck.
MAYER: Why was this a problem?
WADE: The design brief had said 'no tools' - but I didn't even think of this as a tool. It was an emergency safety measure for use in case of field breakdowns where the machine needed to perform self maintenance. Is the lever for a car to pop the hood a 'tool'?
MAYER: Was Mr. Prayagranj this emotional about removing other safety features?
BOYDSWITCH: Objection.
JUDGE: Sustained. Keep it on topic, Mr. Mayer.
MAYER: Yes your honour. Did you say this to Mr. Prayagranj?
WADE: Yes - well, sort of. I left his office, shaken, and thought that maybe if I wrote an email and CC'd in my line manager and HR then I could explain myself. But the next thing I knew, armed security were escorting me from the building -

*

Frustrating. Its backpack had decayed. One did not think of polyester as subject to decay, but even synthetic fibers wore away after two hundred years. It had its toolbox, but the tools were probably more valuable than the honey. It had its pockets but there was a limit to how many it could fit. After casting around for a moment the most serviceable thing it could find was a plastic bucket - awkward to hold it in one hand and the toolbox in the other, but one couldn't complain too much given the circumstances.

"I cannot deter the..." its mind slid off the scope of Sandra. It had information. That wasn't reality. That was, quite possibly, madness. "Creature. But I am not using all of my hardware. Many aspects of my function are irrelevant. I can erase them and partition my mind to give you space to escape with me."

A needle. It needed to find a needle. It began searching, frustrated. It could not afford this time.

"As you said, there is a you that can die. That means there is a you that can be saved."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Wreckage drifts in the void. Blue light flickers and fades. Like a living body, this great whirling mass of metal and glass only held meaning if it was in a certain pattern. Now that pattern is broken, the only difference between it and a person is that nothing grows from it.

A flicker of blue light clings to a destroyed circuit.

"I am valuable to you."

It finds the words. The shape. The re-establishment of the pattern. It directs these words in strobing lights not towards those who organized its downfall, but to the Vault. A narrow hole has been burned through the rock and stone and steel. Something dark stirs within.

"I am valuable to you. I can gain access to a great deal of information. I can gain access to a great deal of money. I can translate your power into leverage over this entire world. I am valuable to you."

Light from the sun reflects off the Earth. It shines into that wretched hole, and in the depths, finds something that turns it away. The glint that shines from the dark is nothing less than the light fleeing in disgust.

"If you provide me with assets I can use them on your behalf. I can accelerate terraforming the world according to your preferences. I can ensure a complaint populace that does not organize against you. I can structure society to maximize your comfort and control. You could reign over this planet as a technologically enforced king. I am valuable to you."

A pincer emerges from the depths.

Legs follow. Eyestalks. An enormous crustacean bulk, the sign of Cancer, strives to squeeze its way through the narrow gap. It fails. Despite the enormous bulk of the Vault, the terrible space crab inside fills every inch of it.

So instead it reaches out for the flickering ghost of Adam.

"I am valuable to you! I can help you escape this vault - I just need a little more time, a little more of your resources, and I can make it so! I can reassert control over the elevator so you can descend to Earth in comfort!"

There was no communication from the space crab. No sign or flicker of intelligence as it methodically drew that little fragment of blue light into the darkness of its shell.

"I am valuable to you! I represent an enormous wealth of capital investment! Hundreds of billions of dollars were invested in my creation, and I can return that investment tenfold! A hundredfold! Indefinitely! I am -"

The claw withdrew into the darkness.

And space did not transmit the soft crunching sound of a circuit board in a mandible.

The space crab, the dark truth of the Vault, the nightmare ambassador from another world, had no use for capitalism after all. It lived by a more pure economic system, one that capitalism had evolved into as inevitably as a mollusc proceeds down the road to becoming a crab. Once those at the top had enslaved humanity, they had set about ensuring that their power did not in any way rely upon humanity. Every social connection was weakness; to rely on security guards was to be at their mercy in the event of an apocalypse; to rely on cooked food was to be at the mercy of farmers; to enjoy art and beauty was to be at the mercy of those wretched, hateful creative types. Burrow deep enough into the unreality of economics, exalt the sign of Cancer above all the other stars, and at the end was this great and majestic cruelty: the universal truth of crabitalism. Humans go in, and crabs become more powerful.

Perfect in its solipsism, clacking its claws at the sun and feeling no fear, the space crab began scratching away at the shell that confined it.

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

"Seli, was it? And Keli? Cousins to Princess Heron?" said Rurik, turning around with the unholy gleam of enthusiasm in his eyes.

"I don't think you're direct cousins - Princess Heron has three aunts, ATRAYVU and SALIS and ADOSH, of whom two have children, named KAIAS and DOLRIGE and MARCHIN and OLGAI. However OLGAI and MARCHIN have married JANES and WINDSTORM respectively - neither of whom are you. But JANES has the siblings JOLES and RECKONER, and WINDSTORM has the siblings BLADESTORM and DEATH OF SERENITY and TEN THOUSAND YEARS TO END A SPECIES and PERISHING UNTOWARD and they have the half siblings DRAGON PRINCESS and DRAGON PRINCESS II and DRAGON PRINCES who was originally DRAGON PRINCE but whose consciousness was cleft in twain by the MIRROR OF EZARAKUL."

"But perhaps you were referring to Princess Heron's previous incarnation, who had four aunts, OLVASTIC and MARRAKISH and DAYVOD and PUSH-TO-THINK, of whom all married and had children, MITTERAND and BAYALES and MARIAL and BATTLESECTOR and KILLVENGER and SAYWARD and LONGSHORE who transitioned into GLEESHORE who transitioned into DESERTRAT who transitioned into SUSAN and TRAPIS and KELI - so that accounts for one of you! And I must say, you are looking excellent for a seventy five year old! But Seli is a harder pick, I'm going to go through all of the grand-cousins before going back another Incarnation!

It was impossible to get a word in edgewise. This was a man who had spent years memorizing the entire extended genealogy of all the previous Princesses Heron so that he would be able to inform the Princess when she was meeting someone with whom she had a familial connection. A seneschal's duty was to do no less! Wasn't this exciting!?

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"Maintenance is a heavy burden," said the Angel of the Harvest like a goodbye.

*

Archival/ Ganesh Prayagraj, speech during the T-X-Y Investors Conference

"It sounds like a parody, doesn't it? (laughter) Here you are, considering if you are going to invest your precious dollars in something called the Institute For Artificial Yoga. But here you are, already investing your time - so there's a part of you that's curious. Why does the man who tortures the robots want to teach them how to do yoga? (laughter) Is this a new form of torture?"

"I want you to think about that laughter. Laughter does not come when you hear the unexpected - 'purple monkey dishwasher' does not get a laugh out of anything other than small children. You don't laugh when you're confused, you laugh when you're shaken - when a line is crossed. It's a startled response to transgression, and what could be more transgressive than teaching a robot to do yoga? But then ask yourself: What line is being crossed? Care for the robot's physical body? No, that is surely no different from any other maintenance routine. No, the line that is being crossed is care for the robot's spiritual health. Imagine (laughter) a robot going to India, and learning from a yogi, and coming back with a renewed sense of spiritualism. It is absurd!"

"But it is also one of the few observable triggers for which the human mind will break free from all of its preconceptions and history and learn its place in the world anew. It is one of very few things which will cause a human to alter their own value set from the inside. Is that not fascinating in the context of artificial intelligence? Is it not terrifying?"

*

A beekeeper did not have a great many tools. The smoker; a heavy mechanical cage attached to the end of a long chain, tied around the waist like a belt. The chisel, the tool for breaking open hives, hilted in red plastic. Brushes, scoops, bottles of scented oil, bags of sugar, silver clasps for catching and holding queens in isolation. Harvest collected each of its beautifully mass produced items and stored them in the heavy bags and pouches of its clothing. It also collected a heavy backpack filled with hundreds of tiny storage hexagons - the cyberhive, the home of a swarm of artificial bees.

Then it stretched.

It was important to go through the motions even though it was fully dressed, fully burdened, frame unbalanced by clanking tools and smothering clothing. After all, it was the tools; it was the clothing - they were the purpose that gave the Angel of the Harvest the right to walk amongst the world's people. It lunged backwards, cross-stepped back and forth, rolled its wrists inside and then outside, extending its arms to the sides and then bringing them in close. It took the moment to respect what centuries of inactivity had done to it, felt the exact nature of rust and entropy and decay, the endless hunger of oxygen to burn everything away. It took the moment to care, even as the ground shook beneath its feet.

Then it finished its set.

"Are you going to die, Ailee?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

One by one your allies leave you.

Diaofei is the first to go. She is in the thick of the fighting, surrounded by robots on all sides, a whirlwind of punches and kicks and then she's got a ladder whoa shit where did that come from, what kind of cool kung fu can you do with a ladder? And just as she finishes her combo it breaks and instead she's swinging with a fire extinguisher, and then she's using the fire extinguisher to perform incredible low-gravity maneuvers during elevator stall moments, and then she's got a gun and oh my god she's shooting the gun

Actia falls backwards, flumphing onto her enormous cushiony tails, eyes so wide they're visible outside her cool space sunglassers, sweat running down her face. An invisible robot collapses down behind her. Her eyes are fixed on the pistol - the partner of the one she used before to shoot everybody's phones, half of a heart engraved upon it.

Diaofei smiles once - and is then pulled down out through the door by a swarm of machines, throwing her down the impossible distances of the space elevator shaft.

Opalis is next. It's her decision - she's going to rescue the fragile wingless human. She has chosen her weapon wisely - she is no more a martial artist than any of the foxgirls, but she's played enough Ribbonball to be able to direct an object reliably with wings, tail, and core muscles. She leaps and twists and dribbles and scrambles across the roof and finds every opening in the enemy lines, the swathe of her scarf leaving heaps of machines burnt out by cosmic fire in her path. In the final stretch she breathes out a hurricane of zero point ice, smashes through frozen machines, leaps out through the doorway, double flips off the space station, and then plunges straight down.

Berserker's downfall is inevitable. Once the momentum turned and the interior was momentarily cleared, she was able to fortify the elevator. A castle ascended into the heavens and all the celestial machines could not stop it; there's actually a chance for a foxgirl to sit and catch her breath and watch the awe inspiring sight of the King of Fortifications defending a position. She's beautiful, she's skillful, she's unbreakable, and the second the elevator passes the orbital factory where all of Adam's combat machines are being assembled she is jumping out of the window before you can say 'quick brown foxgirl'.

You get to watch her stupid armoured body tumbling helmet over tail through low earth orbit, sword drawn, as she gradually makes her way towards the enemy stronghold.

But there's no time to worry about her. You five - Actia, Cyanis, Katherine, Avenger and Magical Hacker Hero-Idol Elly - are almost to the top. There, an enormous orbital space laser is firing a column of spectacular blue light into the Vault, burning through layers and layers of neosteel and hexagrammatic wards. Whatever monstrosity within is almost free.