Leda’s face flickered with anger and confusion. “I suppose you’ll bill me for the air refill!”
Garrett heard her and said, “I’m just trying to make an honest living, ma’am. But if it’s a big deal, I’ll comp you.”
“I… all right. This is your day to celebrate, so it’s only fair for you to pay.” She seemed on the verge of taking the words back, but didn’t.
A cluster of people approached in the sunlight. Martin, Eaton, Val, Noah, Zephyr. Tess gathered up her stuff and with Leda went out to meet them. Zephyr hugged her and handed over her scuba gear. A thousand people, they said. She and Zephyr kept themselves from saying the part about God to all of Castor, for now. Let people figure it out, grow into it. The two of them looked up to Garrett, who grinned.
“Ready?” he said.
“For anything,” said Tess.
16. Eaton
It was good to get away, and he’d missed that bar in Cuba. It had a nice, private room. He drank and murmured into a phone, with pauses for encryption at each end.
“That part was easy. The AI had backup copies in a couple of places, and there was no sign my visits there were noticed.”
When the reply came, Eaton frowned. “No, I wasn’t able to slip the Fort Meade boys’ code into the main AI. We own the Castor network itself, but that thing is so close to self-aware it’s scary. It’s beyond even that rogue AI incident in Boston. I suggest you have the virus wipe itself before it gets found and traced.
“Yes, I tried! I know this Zephyr thing is just a machine. No, I haven’t got sympathy for it. We’re dealing with some people who have what you’d call an unhealthy allergy to social control. I call it being old-school frontiersmen.
“You’ve got the copies at least, for warmechs or whatever the higher-ups want them for. But I don’t think they’ll be as effective as you’d like. Why?” Eaton swigged his drink and slapped it back onto the hardwood table. “Because you think you can get a brain working at full potential while cutting it off from living its own life and turning it into your slave. That you can get a human-level mind that never asks questions, that’s totally dependent on you, that never acts without getting your permission. A strategy like that doesn’t work even in the military — except maybe the Navy, heh — and it doesn’t work anywhere else. That’s just not how a mind works.
“The captain there is a man. I suggest not pushing him around; his type doesn’t take kindly to it. Wish we had more like him at home. I’m not sure about his friends, but between them I bet they’ll accomplish big things.
“I’m putting in for real retirement this time. I’ll keep reporting on the Castorites meanwhile, but — hell, I’m senior enough to tell you my heart’s not in it. I want these guys to succeed and I’m not sure our own government wants them to. Right now they’re insignificant. But one day our bosses might decide they shouldn’t be allowed to exist, and I don’t want to be the man who gets that order. What the Castorites are doing is right, and if we’re out to shut them down, we’ve forgotten something important. Maybe it hurts to get reminded of it.
“Yes, I’m an American, but I stand for the ideals, not the specific patch of land. I go where the fire’s burning brightest.”
Eaton played with his empty glass. He could be made to disappear if he were too loud about this freedom stuff. Tough, though! Damned if he’d spend the rest of his life afraid and looking for safety.
“I’m going back to Castor,” he said. “They’re bringing the ocean to life. And themselves.”
He hung up, stretched, and went back to the bar’s main room. There, every TV was showing some variant on the same headline: a couple of the United States had just declared themselves “free” and invited Cuba to join them as an equal, in a new republic.
Eaton chuckled, though the news hurt him to see. This rift had been coming for a long time, like a tooth that needed pulling or a loveless marriage ending. He liked to think that the dinky little village on the ocean had been a step toward getting the trouble resolved, but it was only one of many streams that had run together.
He watched the news with what he told himself definitely wasn’t lingering horror, just fascination. All the bar patrons were silent. The various anchormen were saying that the military was standing down, rumored to be defying an order to do something unpleasant. This dispute wasn’t over, not by a longshot, but it looked like there’d be no killing today. That was usually a good thing.
Eaton’s phone rang; it was his supervisor again. Eaton listened, then paused before answering. “No, Boss. I quit.” He hung up. Though on second thought, maybe it wasn’t time to retire just yet; there were other people who needed him.
17. Tess
Several years later
From the deck of Libertalia Platform, Tess could see the original concrete box of the Fort and the ramshackle set of structures they’d started to call Sargasso. What a mess that new place was! The people there were trying to set up housing in cargo containers, a dozen or more coffin apartments to a box. The new district had its own contingent of fish-farmers flirting with the Leeists in both senses. For them the cult was a joke, but she wasn’t sure it’d stay that way.
The town network pinged her. Tess slicked back her hair and adjusted her ever-present headset. She mumbled, “Hmm?” at the data that flickered across her eyepiece. Some guests had just arrived and asked for her. She sent out a query about them and was puzzled by the reply. “AI enthusiasts, huh? Sure, I’ll meet them.”
They hadn’t contacted her before, but one of the trio was a rising star in the field. Tess walked from her office to go meet them. The “street” was the bare concrete topdeck of Libertalia, decorated aggressively with flags and signs. She passed a brothel and a casino and dueling gift shops, and the stairwell leading down into the warren of indoor space that, like the Fort, served as various homes, offices and businesses of varying repute. Finally she reached the dock that they’d designated as the seastead’s front gate.
It was raised up well above the water to meet passenger ships. Tess reflexively checked the origin of the silver catamaran that had just arrived and was disgorging dozens of people to come and play on the seastead. When her uninvited guests got through the customs gate — there’d been a fight over whether to have one at all — Tess was waiting and waving.
A dark-skinned, elderly man in a seersucker suit led the group and shook Tess’ hand first. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he said. “My name is Alain.”
“Alain DeLune? You’re a rock star. If I’d known you were coming I’d have thrown a party.”
The portly man in green beside him chortled. “Hi. I’m Clark, and this is Emi Takahashi.” He nodded toward a thoughtful-looking lady wearing the same model of i-glasses as Tess. “We wanted to visit your town for fun, but it’s your AI friend in particular that we’re most interested in.”
The fact that he’d said “your friend” instead of labeling Zephyr as her property won the trio a few bonus points in Tess’ eyes. She shook all their hands and said, “I’m sorry; I don’t know the two of you, just Mr. DeLune. Sir, your papers on self-improving AI are amazing. Also terrifying.”
The man gave her a pained-looking smile. “I get that a lot. Call me Alain. Is there somewhere we can talk more privately?” He looked lost, turning in place on the Libertalia platform. All around them the colony bustled and swarmed, and locals tried to sell booze or knives or pornography to the tourists.