But Mia stayed on topic: “Tell me, Alex,” she said, “do you believe an AI has a soul?”
He tried to shrug the question off. “What's a soul? Other than a poetic description of who we are?”
“I'm serious. A soul. A spiritual component.”
“Do you, Mia? Have a soul?”
“I don't know. But in a study conducted last year seventy-seven percent of the people surveyed said no to that question. AIs do not have souls.”
“A substantial fraction of that number, Mia, don't believe anyone has a soul. If you're defining it as a supernatural entity.”
“So it's all in the way the question is phrased?”
Alex nodded. “I'd say so, yes.”
“Okay.” She signaled for a clip. “Here you are on the Peter McCovey Show a year ago.”
Alex and McCovey blinked on. They were seated at a table in the more formal setting of a studio. “Peter,” Alex was saying, “it's easy to understand why people want to argue that their AIs are alive. They have every quality of a living person, so we bond with them. Even to the extent of doing foolish things. There was a guy a week or two ago who got killed in a tornado because he went back to rescue his AI. I think 'Harry' was his name. Right? The AI's name?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I believe that's correct.”
“It's natural that we acquire an affection for something that is so good at mimicking us. That can seem to be one of us. But it's an illusion. And I think we need to keep that reality in mind.”
The display switched back to Mia. “Those comments seem to contradict what you're saying now, Alex.”
“I'm smarter now.”
“Really?”
“Mia, somebody said something once about consistency and little minds.”
“Then you think consistency is of no value?”
“I'm saying it's foolish to hold to a proposition simply because we held it at an earlier time in our lives. But let's put that aside. If we're going to talk about Villanueva, there's something else that we should consider.”
“And what's that?”
“That world is a piece of history frozen in time. We abandoned it seven thousand years ago. Because some people felt that the AIs were sentient, they left the power satellites in place. Even did occasional maintenance work on them. But forget the argument about sentience. The oldest functioning AIs in existence are there. Imagine what it would mean to a scholar to have access to the Villanueva network, to be able to research the issues of that age. Think what a terrestrial historian in the third millennium would have given to be able to talk Egyptian politics with someone who'd actually lived on the Nile during the era of Rameses III. But for us, they're available. All we have to do is go collect them.
“There's another consideration, Mia. The AIs from that age would make pretty decent collectors' items. Understand, I'm not encouraging anybody to go out there and try to salvage them for money. It's too dangerous. But they'd bring a substantial price on the open market.”
For two or three nights he was the big story again on the media landscape. Various political figures, who couldn't get close enough to him two years earlier when we'd come back from Salud Afar, went after him for encouraging people to risk their lives to retrieve “useless junk,” as one legislator put it.
And there were reports of more people getting ready to set out for the lost world, seeing a chance to make their fortunes. “I didn't mean for that to happen,” Alex told reporters.
Academics jumped in, as well. Alex became a tomb robber again, only this time he was endangering those foolish enough to take the bait. And there was extensive coverage of a lone-wolf pilot and his brother-in-law, headed for Villanueva. “How hard can it be?” the pilot said, responding to a reporter's question.
I tried to reassure Alex that there wouldn't be many who would make the effort. “People aren't that dumb,” I said.
He was slow to answer. “I wish I'd stopped to think before I mouthed off. But there's no going back now. Whatever happens, I'm going to have to live with it.”
I knew what was going to happen. We both did. I was trying to keep us separated from the responsibility, but there was no way to do that. I'd been worried before he went on Mia's show that he would get carried away and do something like that. Maybe I should have raised a red flag. Though I'm pretty sure if I'd done so, it wouldn't have mattered. He'd have gone ahead anyhow. But at least my conscience would have been clear.
The reality was that I didn't know why I hadn't said something. I still don't know. Maybe it was out of a sense of supporting him at a difficult time. Or maybe I believed he would do the right thing. Whatever it was, I wished then, as I do now, that I'd come forward.
The first Villanueva casualties showed up on the news at about the same time. Two guys had gone down into one of the cities and hadn't been heard from since. Their lander was still visible, on a riverbank, being disassembled by a small army of machines. The machines were pulling everything apart, cutting into the hull, and carting off the pieces. Then, gradually, the exposed interior simply went away. It took about a week before all traces of the vehicle were gone.
Everybody blamed Alex. Or almost everybody. Even his supporters somehow managed to deepen the wound. Harley Evans, identified as someone close to him, commented that if young people choose to risk their lives, they should do it for a just cause and not simply to make money. I knew what he meant, but it didn't come out as intended.
I don't think, in all the years I've known him, I've seen Alex more subdued. I avoided the subject, but the media were all over it, and I could see the effect it was having on him. Audree came by regularly, and he put on a good face for her, but she knew what he was going through, maybe even better than I did. “I'm sorry you guys ever got involved in this,” she told me when we were alone. “I can't see any benefit from it. And, to tell you the truth, I think you and Alex should just let it go.”
I told her about the black-hole tracks.
“That has nothing to do with the AIs. You could have stopped him, Chase. Why didn't you?”
“You know how he is, Audree. He wasn't going to listen to me. And, anyhow, I'm not sure I don't agree with him.”
“Come on, Chase, there was no way you couldn't see what was going to happen.”
“Audree, you weren't there when Charlie begged us to help him.”
“I wish I had been,” she said. “If I'd been there with you, I'd have shut this down.”
I tried to imagine Alex backing off because Audree, or anybody else, tried to warn him away from a project he'd set his mind to. It just wasn't going to happen.
We needed a lander. The missile on Villanueva had done too much damage to the old one. Ordinarily, shopping for something like that would have served as a diversion. This time, though, I expected him to tell me to take care of it, but he said no, he wanted to make sure I made the right choice. And, for a moment, his manner softened because we both understood he didn't know a damned thing about quality in a space vehicle.
The leading manufacturer at that time was Steele Industries. Their closest display center was in Pasqual County, which was about two hours away. We could have simply managed the purchase without leaving the country house. But he needed to get out, so I stressed the importance of actually sitting in the vehicle and taking it up.
We flew to Cantaka, in the heart of Pasqual County, and visited the Deep Sky Emporium. They'd have sold us one of their premier models if they could, but we had no need of cushioned seats and silver-plated controls. We took Gabe with us and installed him briefly in each of the models under consideration. In the end, his opinion counted more than anyone else's.
The salespeople still resist allowing customers to do that. They claim there's a danger to the onboard software, but once they realize that the sale hinges on their cooperation, they tend to go along with it.