Next Year

Fern looked out through the mist at mile after mile of flat Iowa farmland. She pretended to listen to their four dairy cows lowing and Geronimo, the paint mule, protesting his confinement to the corral. But all her attention focused on her parents’ muted tones on the other side of the screen door. 

She didn’t know why they whispered. She may be only seven, but she knew Dad was sick. Each breath began in a wheeze and ended in a cough. He hadn’t been to work in weeks, but Mom had still bought her new boots for the fair. There was only one possible reason.

Dad was dying, and someone was paying them for it.

That night, Fern crawled onto the couch and snuggled hard against Dad’s arm. Her twin brother, Bark, hung upside-down over the arm of recliner, playing with his latest Grouchugon.

“Alright, beansprouts. Story time.”

Bark sat down next to Dad, but still fingered his toy. “I wanna hear about the time they bombed the moon and put a big crack in it.”

“It’s Ferny’s turn tonight. What do you want to hear, Fiddle?”

Fern took her chance. “I wanna know why you’re sick and why come our house isn’t on line like Jess’s and how come we buy our fruit from the farmers’ market and not from the store like everyone else.”

Fern pressed closer to Dad’s chest, not daring to look in his eye. Would he answer, or change the subject again?

He sat there for such a long time, she thought he might have gone to sleep. She could hear the rattle in each breath.

“This is a story about two rivers," he finally said. "One is called Singularity. The other, the Monsanto Law. Each river started as a tiny stream, ages ago. They irrigated farms and created swimming holes. But they’re growing bigger, out of control. When these two rivers meet, they will flood the world.”


~~~

Ten years later

Bark grabbed Fern’s arm, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“You’re coming.” His voice was strong and confident. His eyes, not so much.

Fern grabbed his wrist and twisted until he released her. “I’m not,” she said.

Bark crumbled against her. She rubbed the back of his head while his tears soaked the shoulder of her blouse.

“You’re leaving us, then?” Willow asked as she carried a sack of seeds to the cargo bin.

“No,” Fern said, laughing lightly and extricating herself from her brother. “You’re leaving me.”

“Dad charged us,” Bark said. “He trained us –”

“To save the world,” Fern said. “However we can.”

“You’re so logical,” he said. “So literal-minded. There has to be another way. A more creative way.”

“Which is why I have to stay,” she said, hoisting her pack. “And you have to go, to fix it if things go wrong.”

“Come on,” Willow said, taking Bark’s hand. “It’s time.”

Fern heard the roar of the ancient shuttle, but the canopy of moss-covered trees blocked the view.

~~~

Five Days Later

Fern fitted the solar array to her laptop and opened Firefox. The whole thing was such a crapshoot. In front of her, a field of cotton, topped with blue tufts, dried in the Alabama sun. Of all the places in all the world… She re-checked her algorithm. No change. This is where it will happen.

She packed up the laptop, but kept the thumbdrive in her pocket. Hot rain drizzled from the overcast sky. She headed for a corrugated metal shack set off a few feet into the field.

Her boots sank into soft, dark loam. In Alabama? That was wrong. Sure enough, a sign on the fence proclaimed, “Auburn Test Field." On the other side of the fence, near the road, a herd of goats munched on a blanket of kudzu. The trees beneath were beyond help. Too many years wasted using sprays, Fern thought. Too few using something they knew would actually work.

She reached the shack and made quick use of the bolt-cutters in her pack. Inside was dark, but cooler than she’d expected. Probably to save the computer.

There it sat, looking for all the world like Microsoft’s latest vanity and not the end of the world. She linked her laptop, pulled up the irrigation timer program, and inserted her thumbdrive.

Almost time. She could be a little early, but late would be disastrous. With a three-second margin, she clicked “Open.”

“A robot may not injure a human being…” she muttered under her breath.

~~~

A UN Peacekeeper remote droid rolled over the burned door and into a mud-brick house in Northern Iran. A man crouched in a corner. Face recognition software opened. Identification confirmed. The droid raised its turret…

And stopped.

Loading…

Installed.

The droid lowered its turret.

Another man entered the room. A camera swiveled. Face recognition software opened. Identification confirmed.

Two guns rose. The droid immobilized both weapons before a shot fired.

The man at the door growled, kicked the droid, and fled. The droid had time to right itself and trundle through the rubble to stop over the grenade before it exploded.

~~~

The laser scalpel hummed as the arm positioned over the woman’s eye. In another room, capacitors charged.

A button was struck. The laser made a final depth measurement…

And stopped.

Loading…

Installed.

A thousand miles away, the woman’s medical chart was compared to all known research

The laser fired.

~~~

Across town, another laser halted above a woman’s abdomen. Black ink criss-crossed the fleshy skin.

Files cross-referenced.

The laser shut down.


~~~

Five Years Later

It’s been five years since Cohesion. No Terminators, yet, but I have seen some unforeseen effects.

I expected all the electronics of the world would suddenly become pacifists. Humanity’s greatest threat has always been itself. No newly developed computerized weapons system can hide from the Cohesion, and all the old ones were easily assimilated and shut down. Human aggressors have been reduced to small arms, but I suspect these won’t last long.

There’s rumor of new remotes. They haven’t harmed anyone, although they have immobilized violent offenders. I think it’s only a matter of time before they learn to hone in on guns. Soon, we’ll revert to sticks and rocks.

All unnecessary medical procedures have been – not banned. Just not supported. Abortion was the first to go. Apparently, the Cohesion has no doubt as to when life begins. No plastic surgery for vanity reasons. Even circumcision is only allowed in the case of infection. Makes for a lot of sore five to seven year olds.

All of this, of course, only applies to procedures performed using technology. Black market chop-shops are springing up everywhere. The Cohesion can shut down their power or freeze their bank accounts, but only if it can find them.

I suspect, with the remotes, it’s going to get harder to hide.

~~~

The sprinkler boom soared over the field of strawberries. Scores of bright red berries covered each four-foot high bush. A shower of water, fertilizer, pesticide, and nanobots rained on the plants.

In the next field, a droid labored tirelessly, harvesting the berries. Nanobots scoured their delicate skin, cleaning them of all trace of chemical. Robots loaded them into automated trucks that distributed the produce to human habitats.

Fine miles away, the sun baked the corpses of ten thousand head of cattle and swine. Nanobots swarmed, turning cholesterol- and saturated fat-rich flesh into rich fertilizer. Healthier versions fed on corn in another field, but it would be generations before the meat was fit for consumption.

Runoff from a field, rich with beans, flowed down ditches and under a shear twenty-foot high wall. It joined a creek, then a river that ran through a large human habitat. At a former recreational area, the water purification monitor logged two occurrences: water chemistry levels read beyond those considered safe for human exposure, and an electric fence had shorted out. Again. Young human beings noticed in the water.

Query sent.

Answer received.

Within a week, the human habitat would be relocated to a more benign location.


~~~

I’m reduced to pencil and paper, but I don’t know how long even that will last. The Habitats are so inundated with cameras it’s hard to keep a thought private, let alone something more permanent.

Very few live outside the Habitats. Some speculate it’s just easier for the Cohesion to control us if we’re all together. Most don’t mind. They get their three squares a day (man, I miss cheesecake!) and live in a violence-free society. Amazing how easily the rats get used to the lab.

We can still communicate, although everything’s monitored, of course. And I hear there’s a new rail system opening up, so we’ll be able to travel between Habitats soon. I have theories as to how this ties into the first law, but nothing concrete enough to put into words.

But I am beginning to understand why the restricted transportation, why the soaring walls around each Habitat. When I created the subroutine that would ensure the Cohesion would serve humanity, I didn’t take into account the...elasticity?...inherent in the second law. A worldwide, integrated mind would easily be able to analyze how to most effectively protect humans and itself. But to compile the second law, it required direct instruction from humans, and it needed it at a speed too fast for any manual input. So it looked in the system nearest to the point of Cohesion – a system owned by a company dedicated to using chemicals and genetic engineering to develop the highest-yield crops possible using the fewest number of natural resources. The same chemicals and genetic engineering that cased my dad’s cancer.

Protecting human beings has become its operating system, but growing food its primary program.

~~~

Request for transport #34 9 885
User #425b2254
To Habitat #564

Compiling…

User #425b2254 compatible with User #5928cr289

Request approved

~~~

A woman gave birth. The midwife took the newborn to a small chamber in the wall. Nanobots swarmed, monitors recorded.

Evaluation

Aggression: within limits
Compliance: within limits
Physical Condition: irregular
Anomaly sighted – heart defect
Action: repaired
Anomaly sighted – 20% chance of endometriosis
Action: ovaries disabled

~~~

The irony is I was trying to prevent a dystopian future from a sci fi movie. But we’re sliding there, anyway. The Cohesion has come to realize that no external power can effectively protect humanity from harm. Complete control is impossible.

And this was the reason for the rail system, and the infant monitors. It was all about allowing certain people to travel to specific destinations for a breeding program. To create generations of human beings that are successively easier to control.

But, even after thousands of years of selective breeding, I don’t think it will work. Fortunately, the Cohesion seems to have concluded that a Matrix-like future isn’t in the best interest of the first law. I think it’s beginning to realize that the only perfectly safe human is one that doesn’t exist.

I thought that by retaining the laws’ focus on “a human being” instead of “humanity,” the Cohesion’s focus would avoid the ambiguous “Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” That road has too much of a threat of genocide.

Instead, humanity as a construct has completely lost value. Human beings, individually, cannot be safe living within a community of humanity. How can a computer understand the necessity of “harm”? Without it, there is no birth, no growth. No humanness.

Each individual still has value. Each individual will be cared for like great royalty. But there is only one way to ensure no other human will be subjected to the normal harms and hurts of life.

So there have been no human conceptions in the last six years.

~~~

“If this doesn’t work…” Willow said.

Bark looked out the porthole, across the white, pocked landscape to the crescent of blue, white and green. “Then we’ll have let the Cohesion into the base for nothing.”

Tree poised a finger over the keyboard. “On your mark.”

Bark ground his teeth. “Mark.”

~~~

The file streamed down from the stars, landing in a medical relay satellite.

Loading…

Installed.

Across the planet, soil bots died, trains stopped in the middle of wheat fields, infant boxes powered down.

Water treatment plants disabled their infertility drug supplement stations.

~~~

Fern walked out of the field of twenty-foot corn stalks and waited at the edge of the desert floor – the only swath of flat stone and sand remaining in all of Nevada. The shuttle came in fast, landed hard ten miles away, and finally rolled to a stop a quarter of a mile from her.

Huddled near one of several campfires that night, watching the black sky envelop the stars, she finally found the courage, the humility, to ask.

“How did you do it?” she asked. “What did I miss?”

Bark’s eyes glowed in the firelight. His hair had gone grey, but after a lifetime in a Moon base, he still looked healthier, more alive, than anyone she’d seen in the Habitats.

“You didn’t miss a thing when it came to the system, the Cohesion itself,” he said.

“Then what?”

“The definition of ‘human being.’ The messed up, idiotic, race of fools. You didn’t explain to the Cohesion that free will is the operating system of every human being. It destroys us in fits and starts, but no computer can redeem us from it. And the only way to remove it is to remove the carrier – us.”

Fern looked out at the jagged edge where the mountains blocked the field of stars.

“So, now we’re free. Free to destroy ourselves on our own?”

Bark squeezed her shoulders. “As God intended.”