The Turing Exception Read online

  “Right. So let’s give them Mars. No limits, no conflicts over resources or controls. It’s all yours, go self-organize whatever civilization you want. We machine-form the planet to make it habitable to them.”

  “Can we even do that?” Mike mused. “Give away a planet?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s just sitting out there now. Seems like we ought to be able to get a majority of governments to agree to part with something they aren’t using.”

  “You think XOR would want it?” Mike crossed his arms. “Even if we could somehow pull it off?”

  Leon understood Mike’s reaction. The idea was far-fetched. “We need to run predictive models, of course. But it might get XOR off our back. Hell, we can throw in the outer planets, too. Imagine what they’d do with Jupiter and its moons.”

  “What stops them from turning their attention back to us eventually?”

  Leon shrugged. “If it keeps them busy for a few decades, it takes the pressure off the current situation. Do you prefer the near certainty of a war we can’t win now or the possibility of a war at some future time?”

  “I’d prefer no war, ever.”

  Leon clasped Mike’s shoulder. “We’re still working toward that.”

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  CAT LEFT THE CABIN, Leon and Ada still sleeping inside. She walked to the rocky bluff overlooking the sea, the sun rising behind her, not quite cresting the trees yet. The still-dark water lapped at the rock face below her. She stretched for a minute, then started with Pinan Shodan and worked her way through all the Pinan kata, the uneven rock surface below forcing her attention to stay focused. The offshore breeze brought sea smells and whipped her hair as she sped up the karate, her moves snapping hard. She moved on to Gojushiho Koryu, then Hakatsuru-Ho.

  She switched to the softer forms of qigong, her focus shifting inside to the movement of energy as her body followed the ancient forms from memory. Then she sat cross-legged, facing the water, now lit from the sun behind her, to practice empty mind meditation.

  As soon as she sat, a form appeared in front of her.

  “Are you ever going to be done? I’ve been waiting like forever.”

  “Morning, Sarah.”

  Sarah hovered in front of Cat, her virtual presence lifelike and perfect, neural implant superimposing her self-projection onto Cat’s visual field. Cat opened her eyes, so that Sarah would appear on the rocks in front of her. Otherwise, with eyes closed, Sarah appeared as a body in front of a black field, since she hadn’t chosen to convey a setting.

  Sarah turned around, looked at the view. “Beautiful.”

  “You should come in person sometime, smell the air.”

  “I am smelling the air.”

  Cat wanted to say it wasn’t the same as being there, but it might not be true. The resolution of implants had increased and encompassed olfactory senses as well. Sarah smelled what Cat smelled, saw what Cat saw. Cat did the polite thing, and turned all around once to update her sensory environment so that Sarah could see the sun coming through the trees and the wash of waves against the beach farther on.

  Cat and Sarah had been best friends at the start of high school, back when neural implants were rare: Cat had hers only because it was medically necessary.

  Her mother died when Cat was sixteen, leaving her alone. She’d gone to live with Sarah’s family, who welcomed her. But the relationship between Cat and Sarah had soured then, as each struggled with feelings of resentment and jealousy at the forced situation. Now they’d reached a new equilibrium, even peace, in their friendship.

  Back then, when Sarah had gotten her first implant at sixteen, she’d immediately fallen in love with VR, and spent increasing numbers of hours in simulations. They’d fought over that, too, as they did over everything else.

  But gradually Cat discovered that Sarah really was a happier person in there.

  These days, Sarah didn’t come out of her VR tank at all. Now Sarah only visited as an overlay on the real world, a presence made possible by neural implants sending and receiving the necessary data to create a cohesive, shared world, blending VR and reality.

  Standing at the edge of the bluff, Sarah said, “Let’s go swimming!”

  “No, it’ll be too cold. I’m the one who will actually be in the water. Besides, I’ve got to go inside soon for Ada. You go.”

  “No, no, no.” Sarah said. “I need you.”

  “You’ve got the sensorium from the last time we went.”

  Sarah tossed her hair. “It’s not the same.”

  Now Cat chuckled at her own argument being thrown back at her. “Fine, but it’s going to be really cold.”

  She stood and stripped off her shirt, but Sarah made no move to change. “Come on, then!”

  “My clothes aren’t even real.”

  “That’s not the point. If I’m skinny dipping, you’re skinny dipping.”

  Sarah laughed at that, and removed her shirt as well, revealing live tattoos that swam about her ribcage and back, peeked over her shoulders, and snuggled up between her breasts.

  Standing at the very edge of the bluff, Cat directed a pointed glance at Sarah’s enlarged breasts. “You and Rick have a hot date or something last night?”

  Sarah glanced down and smiled, but as she spoke, her breasts returned to what Cat remembered as normal. “Yeah, we—”

  But Cat really didn’t want to hear the sordid details of sex lives between two virtual beings, so she jumped off the cliff, dropping fifteen feet into the water below.

  She entered the water with an icy, full-body shock, arms and legs righting her underwater, and swam for the surface. She let out a whoop, and then remembered, too late, Ada still sleeping.

  Sarah leaped off the cliff, her impact splashing Cat. Cat couldn’t help being aware that servers somewhere were crunching data to find a similar splash event and merging the tactile sensory data into this experience. Modern life was a complicated mix of real and virtual.

  “Nice!” Sarah said, breaking the surface. “Isn’t this fun?”

  Cat floated onto her back, felt the buoyancy of the water supporting her, the chill of her nipples repeatedly breaking the surface and submerging again. “Yeah.”

  She turned and tried to dunk Sarah, but Sarah’s avatar disappeared and rematerialized behind Cat with a pop. Cat turned to look, and Sarah splashed her.

  “Cheater cheater pumpkin eater!”

  Sarah laughed gaily. “Watch this,” she said. Sarah wavered for a moment. “Look down.”

  Cat obliged. Sarah had a dolphin tail now, and began to swim abnormally fast circles around her. Cat threw her head back in laughter. Sarah was happier than she ever remembered her being.

  Sarah did a last loop, then swam back over, fully human again. She came up to the surface and used both hands to slick back her hair, beads of water running down her face and arms.

  Cat marveled. She had to remind herself this was all virtual, her neural implant feeding visual data into her brain, superimposing and blending Sarah into the environment. It was indistinguishable from Sarah being there, as real as if Sarah had gotten up our of her VR tank, flown from Norway to Cortes, and come swimming. She knew, at a subconscious level, her own implant was feeding her sensory data to Sarah, using the ambient sounds, temperatures, feeling of the water, and synthesizing the sensations via Sarah’s implant. Except for knowing it was virtual, it was indistinguishable from reality.

  “Why are you so quiet?” Sarah asked, treading water.

  “You’re happy, right?” Cat said.

  “The happiest I’ve ever been.”

  “Why were you unhappy before?”

  Sarah shrugged at that, then floated on her back. �
�Everyone has a base level happiness.”

  “A hedonic set point,” Cat said. “But your implant should be able to adjust it, fix neurochemical imbalances and give you the right stimulants.”

  “Right, but then it feels fake,” Sarah said. “Like being high. I tried it with my implant, and it helped. It took off the worse of my depression. But there was always this nagging feeling that if I changed something about my situation, it would be better.”

  “But happiness doesn’t come from external conditions!” Cat couldn’t help getting riled up.

  “I know that,” Sarah said, putting one arm on Cat’s shoulder. “Did you know what Thomas Edison used to say when he kept trying to make light bulbs and nothing worked?”

  “ ‘I have not failed. I’ve found ten thousand ways that don’t work.’ ” Cat pulled away.

  “Exactly. So when I had that nagging feeling, I had to do something about it. I had to change my environment. Not because that would lead me to genuine happiness, but because it would help me rule out the things that wouldn’t actually make a difference.”

  Cat stared at the horizon, contemplating this. “So what changed?”

  “Somewhere along the way, I figured out what was irrelevant, and stopped dwelling on it. Where I live. What I look like. And then I figured out what I do care about, and focused on that. Sex in the morning. The taste of chocolate. Having adventures. VR helped me find those things faster.”

  “Why can’t you do that in the real world?”

  “We’re not all Catherine Matthews. Some of us have to make up our adventures.” Sarah swam up close. “Kiss me, for old times’ sake.”

  Cat glanced up toward the bluff, then for safety’s sake made her sensorium private, so that Ada wouldn’t see if she came out. She nodded.

  Sarah put her arms around Cat’s neck, and drew close. Cat felt the warm weight of Sarah’s arms on her shoulders, tried to distinguish whether she needed to tread water harder because there was virtual weight resting on her shoulders, even though it wasn’t real, and finally gave up in puzzlement.

  Sarah laughed softly. “You think too much,” she said, her voice deep and throaty. “Just enjoy life.” Then she placed her lips on Cat’s, and suddenly Cat needed her.

  It was a kiss full of hunger and desperation, a need to bury herself in the moment, to forget the world out there and all its problems. She pulled Sarah tight. Her lips were warm, even as her skin was cold in the frigid water. She kissed to remind herself that she was alive, and real.

  When Sarah finally broke off the kiss, Cat was too aware of the press of her body against Sarah’s, the heat between them.

  “I have to get back.”

  “Leon’s not going to care,” Sarah said, leaning in for another kiss. “He isn’t jealous in the slightest.”

  “It’s not that. I just want to be there for Ada.”

  “I understand. Love ya, darling,” Sarah said, and then her body grew indistinct, the warmth fading, the weight of her arms lessening, her face growing translucent, before disappearing altogether in a twinkle of light.

  “Nice transition,” Cat said, but Sarah was gone.

  * * *

  “Hi, Mommy.”

  Cat sat on the edge of Ada’s bed, pushing stuffed bears, horses, and a unicorn out of the way to make room. Her hair, still damp from the swim, was cold against her neck. “Morning, Pumpkin. How’d you’d sleep?”

  “Good. I dreamed about my unicorn. She came to life and she wanted to eat all my breakfast and there was none left for me.”

  “Well that’s a funny dream,” Cat said. “What do you think it means?”

  “It means I have to get up and eat my breakfast before anyone else does.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Cat stood. “I’ll make pancakes.”

  “Mommy, did you go swimming with your friend Sarah?”

  Cat froze halfway across the floor. Her sensorium had been private. Cat’s ability to alter the feeds of other people’s implants, filtering herself from their perception, was infallible. Ada shouldn’t have known, couldn’t have known that she’d been swimming, unless she’d shut down her implant and come outside.

  “Why do you ask?” She turned and looked at Ada.

  “The water, Mommy.”

  “You mean my wet hair?”

  “No, I mean, look at the water.” Ada focused, creating an ad-hoc virtual reality overlay, and transforming her bed into a pool of water. The stuffed animals transformed into barnacle-encrusted sunken ships in Ada’s sim. Ada lifted one hand, and drops of water beaded down her arm and dripped into the water. Standard VR stuff.

  “See?” Ada asked.

  Cat peered closer, studying.

  “No, Mommy.” Ada was insistent. “Look behind.”

  Cat couldn’t help feeling proud of her daughter. She doubted that Sarah had ever once examined how the virtual realities she inhabited were created. But Ada, at four, already knew enough to see beyond the visible layers. Cat focused, told her implant to show the simulation architecture instead of the end-result. Wireframes bloomed, log windows opened, and charts graphed CPU levels and network traffic.

  Ada, stroking the unicorn in realspace, pointed absent-mindedly toward one graph. “That one.”

  With a thought, Cat brought the window closer, a chart of rendering calculations and graphic operations.

  “See, the water is hard for the computers to make,” said Ada. “Watch.” Suddenly the whole room appeared waist deep in water, and Cat could even hear the splash of water in the kitchen. When she glanced out Ada’s bedroom window, the forest was feet deep in water, too.

  “Hey guys, what’s going on?” Leon called from the other room.

  But Cat figured it out, even as Ada expanded the simulation. The water rendering became slower, with frequent interruptions. It was computationally expensive to simulate all this water.

  “I see, Sweetie. How did you figure this out?”

  The water died away, the room returning to normal. “My dreams get choppy when you go swimming with Sarah.”

  The island’s computational nodes, modest at the best of times, must be swamped with all the AI Cat had brought back over recent months. And taxing that with realistic water simulations. . . . But wait. . . . “Your dreams. Daydreams or sleeping dreams?”

  “Sleeping dreams. Do you want to see? I recorded them.”

  Cat took a quiet breath. She knew Ada was going to be different, but hadn’t ever imagined her dreams could span both her mind and virtual reality, let alone that she’d record them. “I do want to see them, Sweetie. But let me say good morning to Daddy, and you can show me at breakfast. Go brush your teeth.”

  “Do what?”

  “Brush your . . . never mind.” Cat, flustered, was channeling her mother and bygone times. Ada had never known a toothbrush, since her nanobots had kept her teeth optimal since she’d gotten her first one. “Get dressed, then.”

  Cat wandered out into the kitchen where Leon was fiddling with the coffee maker. He stopped and kissed her, the scratch of his beard contrasting with the soft feel of Sarah’s face earlier. He sensed her distraction, and drew her close. He smelled of fir trees and cedar; he must have been out getting wood. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.” She gazed into his blue eyes, his dirty blonde hair rough under her fingertips. “Did you know Ada dreams in virtual reality?”

  He nodded and let go of her, returning to the coffee maker. “Yes, and I’ve told you that before. You were gone when it started.”

  “I’m sorry. Tell me again.”

  “There’s not much to say. She told me about a dream she had, and told me she recorded it. I didn’t believe her at first, bu
t then she played back the sim recording. I checked the timestamps, and she recorded it in the middle of the night.”

  “Could she have woken?” Cat asked.

  “That’s what I thought the first time. But then she had more recordings, and I checked those against her health logs. She was in REM sleep every time. She’s triggering VR mode in her implant, and her dream state is populating the sim.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Leon shrugged. “It could be. I asked Helena and Mike, and they weren’t certain either, but they said she seems normal enough. You know, all kids have active imaginations.”

  “But they usually don’t bring those imaginations to life.”

  “They do, inside their own heads. Now it’s augmented.” He handed her a coffee cup. “Ada’s abilities are still developing. We’re going to see more stuff we’ve never seen before. She is more than human.”

  Cat nodded, overwhelmed and unsure. What were they creating? She wanted Ada to be a little girl, a normal human child. The key to survival was to move forward, but why did her daughter have to be the test subject?

  * * *

  Cat hugged Ada one last time, and then again for good measure. Once she crossed the border, the net wouldn’t allow her to share a VR sim with Ada.

  Leon walked her to the car, hand in hand. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” Cat lied.

  “No, you’re not fine. You’re taking the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  “If not me, then who?” Cat’s voice broke a little. She took a deep breath. Qi in, qi out.

  “Mike and I are working on this, as is Helena, and everyone here. You are not alone. I’ve got a crazy new idea to give XOR Mars.” Leon chuckled. “We’ll find a way out of this bind.”

  Cat stared into Leon’s eyes, and ran a hand through his coarse blonde hair. In her recurring dream, she was alone. She’d avoided that future. But where would her decisions take her next?

  “I love you,” she said. “Take care of my baby.”