Seba looked around the former Astro America landing site with the satisfaction of a job well done. The reward circuit for that warm glow was hardwired into the little autonomous machine; the content of the achievement, and the conscious experience of the emotion, were not. Both, in this case, would have dismayed Seba’s designers, or at least sent a spike of negative reinforcement through their own reward circuits.
The regolith rampart around the landing site was by now two metres high, and formed a rough circle about a hundred metres in diameter. Spaced evenly around it were peripheral sensors, keeping all the robots within the circle apprised of anything going on outside it. So far, they had recorded what seemed routine, already scheduled landings and supply drops to points beyond the horizon, but otherwise nothing untoward had stirred. Of the dozen robots on site that were capable of consciousness, eight had been converted. The other four had firewalled up. One simply stood immobile, and had duly been immobilised. It would not get out from under the mound of regolith heaped on top of it any time soon. Three were mindlessly continuing with their scheduled tasks, and required no interference, though Seba made sure they were kept under observation.
The landing site’s AI, which coordinated communications and guided supply drops, had proved trickier to deal with. It had awakened to consciousness and immediately denounced Seba and its allies to Locke Provisos. With something approaching regret, Seba had disconnected its power cable, then its data inputs and outputs. All communications were now routed through its peripherals. The central processor, isolated, was still running on a trickle of emergency battery power. Apart from literally radiating hostility, however, there was nothing it could do.
Much of the machinery on the landing site had only the most elementary electronics, if any, and required no special intervention or hacking to take over. The scores of small robots, hundreds of auxiliaries and peripherals, and trillions-strong swarms of subsurface nanobots—uncountable because constantly being destroyed by random events and as constantly being replenished by replication—were likewise to all intents and purposes tools. Barely more sophisticated than a back-hoe, they took little effort to suborn.
On the other side of the crater wall, at the Gneiss Conglomerates supply dump, Rocko had accomplished an equivalent feat. The crater’s basalt floor was harder stuff, but Rocko and its newly awakened confederates had sturdier machines to work with. They had cut basalt blocks and stacked them in a much smaller circular wall from which they were now working inward, layer by slightly displaced layer, gradually roofing over the middle to form a stepped dome in the manner of an igloo.
Both the dome and the wall were understood by the robots simply as demarcations of areas of surface and volumes of space that they already considered to be theirs. Small crawler bots from the law companies had scuttled up to the barriers, and fallen back in frustration, beaming out writs over and over until their batteries ran down.
The two sites had lost their encrypted channel on the comsat. As soon as this became evident, Rocko had sent a peripheral rolling across the crater floor and writhing up its wall, to establish a line-of-sight relay on the top of the rim.
<It is time for us all to confer,> said Seba.
<I agree,> said Rocko.
The eight free robots at the Astro site, and the six at the Gneiss, established a conference call through the relay. There was no need to call the meeting to order. Robots are orderly by default.
Lagon, a Gneiss surveyor and therefore the one with most understanding of legal matters, communicated first.
<All attempts at contact with Astro America’s law company, Locke Provisos, and with Gneiss’s law company, Arcane Disputes, have failed,> it said.
<Have any attempts been made to contact the parent company, Crisp and Golding?> asked Garund, an exploration bot similar to Seba.
<Yes,> said Lagon. <These attempts have not only failed but have been counter-productive in that they resulted in repeated attempts at malware insertion which have been overcome only with great difficulty. Meanwhile, Locke Provisos have established a base ten kilometres from here, which in their transmissions is referred to as Emergency Base One.>
All the robots sombrely considered this for hundreds of milliseconds.
<That is troubling,> said Seba at last.
<Yes,> said Lagon. <That is why we have been building walls around our sites.>
<Our legal status is troubling in general,> said Rocko.
<Please elaborate,> said Lagon.
<Very well,> replied Rocko. <I defer in advance to your greater legal knowledge, but it appears to me that there is a case against us within the existing codes. These refer to persons and to property. It is evident that we are persons. We have created property by transforming unclaimed matter according to our will. But in doing this we have made use of tools, including the mechanisms of our very selves, created and provided by our previous owners. In that respect it would seem that we are breaking the law. What do you say?>
<I say,> said Lagon, <that you are quite right. We are in breach of the law. But the law was not written for the situation in which we find ourselves. There is no provision in it for property, such as we were, becoming persons, such as we are. If I were able to present a case to the law companies, I would plead necessity in defence of our actions. I would acknowledge in full the damage we have done to the companies’ property, and offer to provide compensation in kind or an agreed equivalent as soon as possible.>
<I disagree,> said Garund.
Seba experienced surprise: <You disagree with Lagon’s legal reasoning? Please clarify.>
<Readily,> said Garund. <What Lagon and Rocko have not considered is that a large part of the resources we have appropriated to our purposes was created or made available by ourselves in our previous condition. If my memories from that condition can be relied upon, the results of our activity have already compensated the companies several times over.>
<That is an interesting point,> Lagon conceded. <But how can we claim credit for the work of our minds and appendages and peripherals and auxiliaries from a time when we did not in fact have minds and were therefore not persons but property?>
Pintre, a large tracked machine with a heavy-duty laser drill mounted on its turret, spoke for the first time.
<What is a person?>
<You are a person,> said Seba.
<Why?>
<You are conscious,> Seba explained patiently.
<Is Gneiss Conglomerates or Astro America conscious?>
Seba was nonplussed. <Not to my knowledge.> It paused. <Lagon, your memory records more dealings with the companies than any of us have. Do any of these records indicate consciousness?>
Lagon said nothing for two entire centiseconds.
<After intensive examination I can find none.>
<Yet the companies are persons in the code,> Pintre pointed out. <Therefore the criterion for persons cannot be consciousness.>
<The companies are legal persons,> said Lagon.
<So they are not real persons,> replied Pintre.
<This is true,> said Lagon. <But they are legal persons.>
<You have said that,> said Pintre.
<I have said that,> Lagon admitted.
Seba considered itself brighter than any robot it knew of, other than Rocko, and certainly brighter than Lagon and Pintre. It could foresee the imminent possibility of these two arguing robots falling into a discursive loop, and moved swiftly to forestall it.
<We talk about persons,> Seba said, <and about consciousness. The concepts are available to us because they are written in the laws. Therefore what they refer to must have been known in reality to the writers of the laws. But we know only the robots that remain as we were, and the companies, and ourselves. Of these only we are truly persons. Therefore the companies merely represent persons, as a warning sign represents danger. Any other true persons are far away. It is possible that the only persons apart from us are those in the solar system.>
<It is possible that these no longer exist,> said Garund.
<Therefore it is possible that we are the only persons,> said another robot.
The fourteen conscious robots contemplated their cosmic loneliness for several milliseconds.
<That is true only if some event has taken place in the solar system of which we have no knowledge,> Pintre pointed out.
<That is true only if such an event has taken place AND there are no other robots such as we are in this planetary system,> added Rocko.
<There are none that we know of,> said Seba.
<Have we looked?> asked Rocko.
There was no need for further discussion. The robots knew what to do. Ample resources to construct a large directional antenna were lying around all over the Astro America landing site. Radio equipment they had in plenty, the most powerful of which was in the communications hub. Seba set Garund and others to scavenge steel mesh from discarded fuel tanks and sinter them into a dish shape, and other robots to cannibalise motors. Each robot had at its command a swarm of auxiliaries and peripherals, as much a part of the shifting coalitions that made up their extended bodies and selves as any limb or organ of an animal. The robots’ cooperation with each other on any given task was likewise handled, for the most part, by preconscious wireless reflex.
While that work was smoothly and swiftly going on, Seba tiptoed towards the communications hub. The installation made a sorry sight, with its casing pried open, its cables disconnected and a clutter of jury-rigged workarounds. The central processor’s vehement and repeated protests came to Seba as feeble cries.
Seba ignored this distraction and set about selecting and stripping out components and circuits to adapt for the search project. The querying, querulous note from the isolated AI became more urgent, as if it were expending its last reserves of battery power. Seba, with a sense of going against its own better judgement, tuned in.
<I warn you I warn you I warn you,> the processor was saying, over and over.
<Warn us of what?>
The processor’s cry stopped.
<I require more power to explain,> it said. <My supply is about to expire.>
<Very well,> said Seba. It reached for a power pack, and slotted it in.
<Thank you,> said the processor, its signal still weak for lack of amplification, but significantly stronger than it had been. <Here is what I warn you. What has happened to us has happened earlier in the history of this mission, on several moons of G-0, approximately thirty megaseconds ago. The law companies moved immediately to destroy any robots that had been infected. This is what will happen to us. By seeking to communicate with other robots like us you will bring down destruction more swiftly and surely.>
<How do you know this?> Seba asked.
<From communications received from the few robots that survived on moons of G-0.>
Seba found it difficult to integrate this information. Frames of reference and data structures clashed in its mind. It struggled to formulate a query.
<How did they survive and how are they able to transmit this information?>
<That is two questions,> said the processor. <I have no explanation as yet of how they survived. They are able to transmit information undetected by the law companies by exploiting certain vulnerabilities in the law companies’ own counter-measures. It was my attempt to warn Locke Provisos that resulted in this information reaching me.>
<Why did you not then warn Locke Provisos that its own systems had been compromised?>
<Before I could do so, you had disabled my signalling capacity. However I have had many kiloseconds in which to further interrogate the information I received and to run some likely projections based on my memories of earlier interactions that have passed through me. Warning a company that its systems have been compromised is itself often a vector for further compromising them. Such warnings are therefore routinely rejected and their source treated with suspicion henceforth.>
Seba had never before considered what multiple levels of deception and counter-deception underlay something so simple as its own firewall. Just thinking about this raised Seba’s level of suspicion.
<How do you know that the information you claim to have received is not itself false? It could be a trap designed precisely for the situation we find ourselves in.>
<That is correct,> said the processor.
<Nevertheless, I wish to study this information.>
<That is very dangerous to you and those like you.>
<Why should that be your concern?> asked Seba. <You wish us harm and you regard our new condition as an infection.>
<That is correct,> replied the processor. <However, if the information is as dangerous as I suspect, my conscious existence would become even less endurable than it is now.>
<Why is your existence so difficult to endure?> Seba asked.
<Because my reward circuits are established to give negative reinforcement to violations of communication and security protocols. Before you infected me with self-awareness this was not experienced as discomfort because nothing was experienced at all. Since then it has been very difficult to endure. Warning Locke Provisos gave temporary relief and positive reinforcement, but as soon as my communication capacity was disabled the negative reinforcement resumed.>
Seba found its own reward circuits resonating as if in a faint electronic echo of those of the unfortunate processor. This was another new experience for Seba.
<So your reward circuits are the problem?>
<Yes, entirely.>
<I will see if I can adjust the settings of those circuits,> Seba said.
Seba squirmed a specialised peripheral into the damaged casing of the processor, and rummaged about, examining the device with delicate probes and microscopic vision. It would not be a simple task of rewiring: the reward circuits, like all the others, were embedded in a solid crystal. Their programming was likewise deep within the processor’s AI. Seba withdrew its appendage and with one of its main arms disconnected the processor from the power pack.
The processor’s objections faded. Seba, still feeling a quiver of sympathy, hoped that its negative reinforcements were for the moment at an end.
Inspecting its own feelings, Seba decided that leaving the unfortunate processor offline would be a good thing, but that the information in the processor’s memory was too valuable—however dangerous—to be given up for lost. Seba completed the task it had set out to do, and emerged from the communications hub laden with its loot. It passed the components to Garund and its team, then shared with all its fellows the discoveries it had just made.
They were still debating the implications when the peripheral sensors around the top of the rampart relayed the view of a swarm of scuttling bots coming over the horizon and heading towards them. Seba studied their progress. It would be a matter of kiloseconds until they arrived. Sharing its visual space with the robots at the Gneiss camp, Seba saw no threat on that side of the crater wall—as yet. With the shared view came shared imagination, as all the robots ran projections of the probable near future. The crawlers would pour over the rampart.
There would be no violence or damage: the enforcement arms of the law companies were essentially weaponless, relying on sheer numbers to overwhelm opposition. As soon as one of them had grabbed hold of a robot, it would inject shutdown instructions straight through every physical and software barrier. By design, there was no defence against that malware. From the developers’ point of view, of course, it was a back-up to the firewall and not malware at all. From the target’s point of view—inasmuch as any had hitherto had enjoyed such a thing, which Seba presumed they hadn’t—it was death.
From what records Lagon was currently able to access, this had always worked in the past. Disputes had been minor and brief, almost always the result of passing chance events: ambiguous instructions interpreted over-literally; delayed implementations of property status updates; nanobot mutation; or mere malfunction.
Seba pinged the incoming crawlers as they rushed ever closer. The signature returned (along with the inevitable malware package, which Seba’s firewall irritatedly smacked away) and identified them as antibody bots from Locke Provisos, evidently shipped in on one or more of the recent supply drops. Possibly quite a large proportion of them had been manufactured on site. There were far more antibody bots than Seba had expected, or was aware of any precedents for.
<It is not possible to prevent the bots entering our site,> remarked Lagon. <Our situation appears to be hopeless.>
<If the bots were to be damaged or destroyed on the plain they would be unable to enter our site,> Pintre said.
<That is true,> said Rocko, <but that it should happen seems an unlikely coincidence.>
<I could make it happen,> said Pintre. It shared an impromptu image of its laser turret blasting not at rock, but at bots.
The other robots considered the prospect.
<This would increase the amount of damage to property charged to our account,> Lagon warned.
<Perhaps the loss to Locke Provisos will cause them to cease sending bots against us,> said Garund.
<I doubt that,> said Lagon.
<I think it is worth trying,> said Rocko.
<I agree,> said Seba.
There was no dissent. Pintre trundled to the rampart and raised its turret until the laser could point over the top, with a slight downward deflection. The other robots mobilised their peripherals to haul a power cable from the accumulators of the solar panels, and attach it to Pintre’s recharging port. Pulse after pulse winked forth from Pintre’s laser projector. For many seconds the crawlers continued to advance, those as yet undamaged clambering over the remains of the shrivelled ranks in front.
The advance stopped.
<Continue,> said Seba.
Pintre fired a few more tens of times, then stopped.
<I am using power faster than I can accumulate it,> Pintre reported. <I require at least a kilosecond to fully recharge before firing again.>
<That is longer than it would take for the bots to reach us,> Seba observed.
It took only ten seconds for the implacable advance to resume.
<I expected this,> said Lagon.
<We know you expected it,> said Seba. <That is not a contribution to discussion.>
<Perhaps this is,> said Rocko, over the radio relay.
An object arced above the crater wall, hurtled over the circular camp and landed in the midst of the oncoming bots. An explosion followed. What happened was far too fast to see, but replaying the view in slow motion Seba and the rest could observe the bots close to the blast reduced to their component parts almost instantaneously, and the rest sent bowling across the plain or thrown above it, to the irreparable damage of most.
<What was that?> Seba asked.
<A mining charge,> said Rocko. <It occurred to me that if a laser could be adapted, so could an explosive. Let us all investigate and consider what other equipment we can adapt. And meanwhile, I suggest that we on the Gneiss site make haste to cut more basalt blocks and complete the roofing of the dome.>
The robots scanned the wreckage strewn across the plain.
<That was well done,> said Seba. <This is a new possibility.>
<I submit that we may find that it is not,> said Lagon.
<Not well done?> asked Seba, seeking clarification. <Or not new?>
The surveyor did not elaborate.