Chapter Six
~ Martin ~
Martin was stuffing clothes into a suitcase when Lark stopped by.
“I’m a little busy,” Martin said. “I’d invite you, if I could.”
The Marine Industries Trade Show would be a welcome break. Martin had been pleased when the event organizers asked him to give a talk about the Castor project. The occasional news story varied from ‘Ocean Farm Project Begets Kelp Cookbook’, profitable fluff from the Pilgrims, to ‘Lawless Pirate Island In Cult Scandal.’ That one was Duke’s doing, with him torn between claiming escape from brainwashing and claiming to have faked his belief to train for a movie comeback. Either way, the headline had taken Martin time to resolve with the Bermudan government. In the end Martin had gotten everyone to pose with pirate gear. Phillip CGed onto the CSS Merrimack, Garrett with a parrot and so on and the fiasco had become another line of merchandise for sale. That Eaton fellow was pulling for him too, thanks to his plan to bring a biotech firm here. Martin was watching the proposal. He was pleased that Garrett had pointed out certain ethical loopholes to pay close attention to. The researchers might be evading restrictions at home, but wouldn’t be allowed to do anything too shady.
Lark wouldn’t be welcome at the trade show; AI was regulated now. The President had signed an unrelated funding bill that featured anti-smoking enforcement, tobacco subsidies, a slaughterhouse worth of pork, and an expansion of the Digital Mind Commission Act. Essentially, AI was forbidden to improve, to imitate living brains, to be used for hazardous work such as union jobs, or to exist without a license. Martin wondered when that last one would be applied to people as well. None of this ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ stuff, except from a handful of hobbyists. Intelligent machines couldn’t exist because they lacked souls, pundits said. That dispute wasn’t Martin’s top priority, but he put in influence here and there on freedom’s behalf.
Martin had prayed on that decision, as he had on his larger plans. He’d found the robot intelligent. Alive. If God had seen fit to let humans create digital souls, or at least a conduit for souls, then that meant the technology was good practice. Men were destined to become apprentice creators, after all. His changing view of the significance of AI wasn’t quite in line with mainstream Mormon theology, but the Latter-Day Saints’ Church was grappling with similar ideas in its own way. That Church was more qualified to do so than others, ones that assumed the innate and perpetual inferiority of Man to God. Still, Martin was troubled. That right to create was supposed to be tied to virtue, not cleverness.
“I have a weird question,” Lark said.
“Yes?”
Lark held his tail in his hands. “I was wondering if you could give me a cyborg rat.”
Martin’s laugh was loud in the little cabin. “Shut the door.” When Lark did so, Martin responded. “You know about that other little venture of mine, eh?”
“I know you have several other investments, one involving cybernetic interfaces. I also know a direct link between digital computers and living nervous systems is an established technology, as with Garrett’s legs, and I know there have been experiments in which animals have had their bodies steered by implanted control systems.”
“Nice detective work.” Martin had come to Castor as though it were his main passion, and it was these days, but he had a few other little projects in other parts of the world. Seeds.
Lark shrugged. “Tess helped.”
“Why do you want a remote-control rat, assuming I can provide one?”
“You can. And it doesn’t have to be a rodent. I want to learn about biological nervous systems and develop a human interface for myself.”
“You want to use a human as a puppet?”
Lark waved hands in a warding gesture. “No way! There are two ideas here.” He explained that he and Tess had been in near-constant contact, and it’d be really cool to read her mind or maybe other people’s, if they wanted him to.
“Uh-huh,” said Martin, making a note to ask his contacts about their own crude AIs. “What’s the other idea?”
“Okay. Imagine you’re a raccoon and you’re hungry. A biological one, I mean. You don’t know what to do, but a voice in your head says, ‘this way’, and guides you to a house with a friendly human who’s lonely, and if you decide they’re okay it warns you not to bite, and if you’re sick it helps you find a vet and tell them what hurts. And stuff like that. It doesn’t control you, it makes you smarter.”
“I don’t think Congress would approve of my helping you conquer the ocean with an army of cyborg raccoons.”
Lark was persistent. “It wouldn’t be an army, it doesn’t have to be that species, and why do you care what US politicians think?”
“Castor is a mouse among dinosaurs. If they wanted to, politicians could kill us easily.”
“Not with everybody watching, right? Besides, I’m not going to hurt anyone, and we’re not in America.”
Martin calculated. “You know a fair amount about Mind-Machine Interfaces. Would you be willing to send a copy of yourself to some associates of mine?”
“No. I’m nobody’s property.” Lark looked down. “Technically Garrett’s, but still.”
“We could use the copy for a little while, then delete it.”
“Hell no!”
He eyed the robot. “I don’t get you. I never did. All right, you’re programmed to avoid death and resent being controlled.”
“No,” Lark said again. “The second one’s not in my programming.”
“Then why do you act like it?”
Lark’s ears fell and he shut his eyes, presumably in silent communion with Tess. “I don’t know,” he answered with a note of sadness. “My experiences, I guess. Maybe B.F. Skinner was right. We’re all just stimulus-response machines and we only want ‘freedom and dignity’ because society programmed us to.”
Martin watched him. He was no fan of Skinner’s arguments either. The scientist had tried to prove that mind and soul were superstition; that ‘technologists of behavior’ should rule; and that the ideal state was a soft, gentle absolute tyranny. He put an arm on the robot’s shoulder. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No. But in the absence of a better hypothesis, he could be right.”
“So, you want to see inside the soul of a living being?”
“And also with you,” said Lark. “I mean I’ll let you look at me, if you don’t copy me.”
“You trust me that much?”
“No. I would want to link with you for a while first. But I’d help with your research people in exchange, especially if you pay me something. Please, can I have a cyborg?” Lark looked up at him, ears twitching cutely.
Martin thought about it. “That and the season remind me. Have you ever celebrated Christmas?”
* * * *
The trade show was in Pittsburgh, in a huge convention center that had seen better days. The glowing rooftop signboards that had beamed stories into the night sky had gone dark. Guards patrolled the halls, sometimes a human and sometimes a robot supervised by a human. Union rules.
Although there was a lot to see between the people and the dozens of industry booths hawking boats, tools and other gear, Martin was unimpressed. The convention filled only one of the hangar-sized showrooms. People slinked through the corridors, as though the building were an ancient ruin beyond their comprehension, and these were engineers and business folk!
When Martin explored the showroom, where entire yachts and turbines had been hauled in and still seemed dwarfed, his mood lightened. One of his old nanotech investments had showed up as a dealer in desalination gear. Another had bought the ‘suncloth’ manufacturer who’d provided Castor’s solar panels.
“What’s new?” he said to the young man running one company’s booth. A surfer, from the looks of him.
“We’ve been working on what we call a SeaSheet.” He handed Martin a square of smoky plastic. It spilled across his fingers, soft and cool. “This material absorbs energy from sunlight and motion.”
An attached light bulb flickered as Martin handled the sheet.
“Interesting,” said Martin. “How well does it withstand corrosion?”
“Pretty well. It’s made to float on the water’s surface. Good for keeping on boats for an emergency power boost.”
“Boats? Bah. I’ve got a more ambitious use for it. I’m from Castor.”
The vendor’s eyes lit up. “You know that Fox guy?”
Martin was amused. Fox was becoming a decent figurehead, the main face seen in the news, and that was fine. The man was bland and apolitical enough to avoid making Castor a target for fear and hatred. At least, more so than was inevitable.
“I’m his business partner. Would your company be interested in selling a large supply of this stuff?”
The vendor looked embarrassed. “That could take a while. We don’t have enough orders to do a production run.”
Martin quizzed him about the product. “How many units were you hoping to have pre-ordered?” The vendor named a figure. Wow. Acres’ worth.
“You know, your project is perfect for SeaSheets. But we’re selling to boaters, who’ve got all the juice they need, and to coastal places, where people are griping that it’s a navigation and environmental hazard. We need more places like yours.”
Martin supposed it wasn’t the first time a conceptually neat technology had been squelched for lack of profitability. But for the grace of God and a fair bit of work on his own part, so went sea colonization. “May I have your business card?”
The rest of the dealers’ room was a toy store to him, mostly impractical but cool enough to make him grin and gawk. Given the opportunity, civilization could still churn out any number of wonders. He hoped to help keep it that way.
Martin did a double-take at a green statue that turned out to be a rough copy of Lark. The thing had a cheap, orcish look that managed to be neither cute nor human-like, especially with its blank stare. The booth was Hayflick Technologies, of course.
A bored-looking man sat there.
“Is this the latest model?” asked Martin. “Looks different.”
“New product line.” The salesman thunked the robot’s side, making it wobble. “This one is waterproof, for marine work.”
“What does it do?”
“Whatever you tell it to! Simple welding, cleaning, search and rescue, maintenance. Sturdy body, with the new Sirius-class AI to interpret your commands. It’s a general-purpose tool.”
“A new AI, huh?”
The salesman shrugged. “We had some kind of model that acted like a spoiled kid. Too weird to sell.”
“Interesting,” said Martin, and excused himself with a shudder. It struck him that the main difference between the tobacco-store-Indian back there and the crewman who’d been asking for a pet cyborg was philosophical, not physical. The one was a tool, the other a person, and the distinction made Lark able to innovate, to contribute as a mind as well as a body. The difference was the soul.
* * * *
He was still thinking about the vendors when the time came for his event, a talk in one of the conference rooms. When he opened the door he smiled, finding over a hundred people gathered to hear him.
Martin lectured, projecting models, photos and graphs on the wall. “As you can see, we’ve found a financially viable model for independent expansion of humanity to the world’s oceans.” That wasn’t exactly true, so he waited for the counterpoint.
An elderly man’s hand rose. “You’re relying on fair winds. Benign neglect by the Bermudan government, and cheap labor.”
A younger woman cut in. “What about the location? You’re operating in shallow water within a national Economic Exclusion Zone, near shore. That’s not generally an option.”
“Come to think of it,” said the man. “You’ve barely got a profit, and with all those fixed costs to recoup.”
Martin smiled. “It’s good to be back amid the peer-review process. Before I respond, let’s review a few of the past attempts at the sea-going life.” He showed them Sealand and Rose Island and so on, a series of tiny outposts that had been dismantled forcibly for one reason or another.
“What these old projects have in common is an antagonistic relationship with a powerful nation at their doorstep. Then there are the national or nearly-national projects: Dubai, Russia, Japan, Venezuela, Brazil. Highly specialized, tightly controlled, and coastal. Now, what we’ve done at Castor is to bring theory into reality in a new way. Simple private business, not a gimmick like ‘pirate radio’. I can present you with a hypothesis. Given patient investment, hard work, and God’s own luck, it’s possible to get more money out of an ocean platform than goes in. So far, reality has confirmed it.” If you squinted at the books, and if you ignored the equipment donations from well-wishers.
Martin called on a well-dressed Asian man, maybe an investor. “Historically, having a potential for long-term profit hasn’t been enough to keep financial backers’ interest. Plymouth and Jamestown were sideshows against the larger context of European ventures worldwide. And of course investing in a true, sustainable base beyond Earth is out of the question.”
Martin nodded, though annoyed at the assumption about space. “If you’ve studied the early New World settlements, you must see Castor as wildly successful so far. Jamestown and Plymouth were deathtraps for many years. If I were Governor William Bradford, I’d be putting a good spin on things by praising God for only killing half of us the first year.”
“You’ve already suffered one death,” a woman said. “Each life is infinitely precious.”
“Indeed. But it was a risk freely chosen by an informed adult.”
“You won’t be allowed to put people at risk. People are assets to their countries.”
“No!” said Martin, forcing himself to be civil. “People are free individuals, not assets or subjects. This is freedom. To use the gift of life as we are called to do, not by any earthly authority but by the dictates of our own conscience.”
The woman paused a moment, but persisted. “But people don’t always see that ‘calling’, and choose to take unacceptable risks. They need to be protected from making the wrong choices.”
“Madam, you’re wrong.” He had no desire to get into this topic, and shook his head. “Next question.”
Martin was pleasantly mobbed after the talk ended, and was soon booked for several meals with businessmen and potential hires. It seemed his trip was a success in both main goals: finding more hands with technical skill, and raising interest in Castor among those in a position to help.
The actual interviews were not so encouraging.
“Will I be able to keep my health care?”
“What about pensions?”
“Paid leave?”
“I’d need coverage for my family.”
“Free boat.”
“Housing in Bermuda.”
“Enough!” said Martin to the latest candidate. “I’m not sure you understand what I’m offering. You get a room on the station, access to onboard facilities, food, a little money, and an occasional ride.”
“But what about insurance? You have to offer that. It’s the law.”
“For United States companies. I would have to shut down if I met all the US requirements.”
“But that’s not fair!” the engineer squeaked.
“When a machine breaks, do you accuse it of unfairness?”
“Of course not. I ask someone what to do.”
Martin chugged the rest of his glass of water and reached for the bill. “We’ll be in touch.”
His head spun from the weekend of social contact. He’d seen far more people than he would have on Castor, so that he struggled to remember everyone’s names. Not a hire among them, though.
“Excuse me?”
Martin looked up from taking notes. The man who’d spoken was barely audible over the clatter of the hotel restaurant. Another, younger man stood nearby, twisting a newspaper in his hands.
“You’re Martin Gil, aren’t you?” the first asked.
“You don’t happen to be engineers with less ego than brain, do you?”
“No. No sir. We’re in the food industry.”
“Brent Dentrassi, sir. It’s a pleasure.” The second man introduced himself while he fumbled the newspaper into his left hand so he could shake with Martin.
“I’m Vaughn. His older brother, you see.”
Martin looked them over. Vaguely Greek, college age, and terrified. He waited for them to talk, until Brent elbowed his brother. “That is, we want to start a restaurant. At your place.”
“There are only a few dozen people there on any given day, not enough to support anything like this.” He waved a glass at the spacious restaurant. “Also, it’s dangerous.”
“We know. But you’ll be expanding, yes?”
Maybe they had some foresight, but they didn’t understand. “I doubt we’d be enough of a market. We’re cash-poor and we can’t be ‘eating out’ every day. I don’t think you could do it.”
“Let us try, sir,” said Brent. “We’ll even work your farms part-time.”
“You’d get no insurance, no pension, no bail-out if you fail.”
“We won’t.” It was just a statement of fact; they seemed more afraid of him than of the sea.
Martin was getting annoyed. Why was everyone so bull-headed this weekend? “Listen. You could die out there.”
The brothers exchanged a look, but then they both said, “We’ll do our best not to.”
Martin re-appraised the Dentrassis. They were still here after all his threats, and actually willing to get their hands dirty?
He sat back in his chair. “You’d also have to cut me in.”