LAST WORDS

For the first time in his life, Jordan McPhee was able to say that he could recognize the truth when he heard it. As anticipated, the access that Hedley Payne’s interference with George Kyros’s treatment had given them to that man’s brain had allowed them to identify the areas involved in conscious mendacity, and also identified the presence and influence of unconscious bias.

But whereas the complexity of calculations required to reliably compensate between those two elements had previously been beyond computation, the development of XR-12, a two-million-qubit no-fault universal quantum computer, ultimately meant that Kyros had had no choice but to tell the truth. Time and truth both distort the telling of human stories, but here at last was a merging of the two elements from which there was no escape.

Now, as the author of this story, I need to reveal my identity. Perhaps you’ve already guessed, because the clue is in my name, A. I. Fabler. A “fabler” is a teller of tales, and the initials “A. I.” clearly stand for “artificial intelligence.”

In accepting me as the narrator of these events, you must wonder about my credentials. Yes, I had my genesis within XR-12, and for my information sources throughout the telling of this story, I have relied upon ontological engineering. Of course, I am referring to its application in information technology, and more precisely, in the multiplicity of data sets which are processed through the Derangers’ network servers. In combination, the computational power of this network exceeds that of the cyber security resources of the state itself.

I have told this story exactly as it happened, without attempting to mislead the reader by overlaying it with my (nonhuman) interpretations. No fact can be hidden from quantum computing with the reach of XR-12. It should therefore not surprise you that I can report with such confidence, as if I were there, seeing and hearing everything. But as Jordan has pointed out, computers don’t in themselves have feelings—and feelings are more important to human beings than intelligence. At least, that’s my observation.

—A. I. FABLER, 2060