– You’ve got to hand it to Gillian, said Red.-Look how she’s holding her composure. I can hear her toe tapping inside her shoe. That’s about it for the nerves. Jay’s right. She is good.
Jay continued. “You think this company is all about machines and VNMs and money. That may be true, but it’s the people inside it who pump those things around. They’re the bloodstream. And who moves through that bloodstream, checking that everything is healthy and looking out for infections?” Jay nodded toward Constantine. “Him.”
Gillian looked from one to the other, then folded her hands gently in her lap. Bangles jingled on the white material of her shift. “You may be right, Jay. Maybe I have spent too long in the Oort cloud. However, my conscience is clear. My time there has been spent working to the good of the company and for all humanity. I’m not worried about spies.”
“I’m not a spy,” said Constantine simply.
Gillian flashed him an angry look. “I don’t care what you are. I came here for advice. You say I don’t spend enough time worrying about other people,” she turned her angry look toward Jay, “but that’s because I think we have far more urgent things to worry about. We have it in our power to unleash something we do not understand upon the universe. AIs! Admittedly more intelligent than ourselves and with the power to replicate themselves. For all we know, we may have already let the genie out of the bottle. I think that at times like this, personal advancement counts for little.”
Marion tapped a glass on the table. The dull thudding gradually captured their attention. “Thank you. Gillian. No one is questioning your integrity. I think it’s fair to say that we all understand the problem as well as you do.”
“What about him?” Gillian pointed her finger accusingly at Constantine. “He claimed to know nothing about working hyperdrives or AIs when this meeting started. Was that a lie, too?”
Constantine bowed his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Gillian. I deliberately misled you. I was trying to get a handle on what you believed was happening out there.”
“Why? Because you don’t trust me?”
“No. Well, not exactly. What if the AIs had manipulated you in some way? What if you were acting for them, even unwittingly?”
There was frosty silence from Gillian. When she spoke, it was with hurt dignity. “And? Do I pass your test?”
Constantine quickly polled his intelligences.
– I think so, said Red.-Except…
Constantine paused.
– Nothing, said Red.-Leave it.
– No opinion, said White.
– I’m pretty sure she’s clean, said Blue.
Grey remained silent.
“We think that you do,” said Constantine “Although, how can we ever be sure?” he added hurriedly.
“We always return to this same argument,” interrupted Masaharu. “The AIs are admittedly more intelligent than we are. If they are really that much more intelligent, then we cannot hope to outwit them. If we are to achieve anything, we have no choice but to hope that they’re not.”
Constantine nodded. “He’s right. I’ve lived the last two years of my life believing that.”
Gillian looked from Constantine to Masaharu and back again. She appeared to relax, leaning back in her chair. She spoke softly. “Okay. I understand that. So if you already know everything that I’ve told you, why am I here?”
Marion spoke. “Because we need your knowledge. You won’t be able to return to the Oort cloud, you know. We can’t take the risk of those AIs finding out anything that you hear at this meeting.”
“But what about my work?”
“Your work here is far more important now.” Marion turned to Constantine. “Would you like to explain?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, Gillian. It’s true. The reason that I am here…”
He paused as a strange lightheadedness washed over him. For a moment, the table had seemed to flicker. Looking up he saw two Gillians…No, that wasn’t right, he saw one Gillian sitting inside another. One Gillian seemed frozen in place, her hand paused in the motion of scratching herself behind the ear. The second Gillian seemed to sit inside her and overlap the first, a normal young woman; she looked at Constantine with an expression of interest, shifting in her chair as she did so.
Constantine blinked hard. He reached out and placed a hand on the table’s surface. Cool and solid, it seemed reassuringly real.
“Are you feeling okay, Constantine?” asked Jay.
“Fine.” Constantine rubbed his hand back and forth for a moment, and then picked up his glass and took a sip of water. When he blinked again, the second Gillian had gone.
“Okay,” he continued. “I’m here to set in motion a train of events I have been leading toward for the past two years. We are here to safeguard against a possible future that has been increasingly apparent to humankind for at least two centuries. It seems to me that everything is finally in place. It is our duty to decide if we are right to take the course of action that is before us.”
There was a slight pause at this announcement.
– Look at Jay smiling, said Red.-She’s taken a shine to you. She likes a man with spirit.
Constantine coughed, then continued. “Okay. So, the order of events is as follows. First, we need to decide if we believe the AIs are working for or against us. Second, and this may or may not be relevant to the first point, do we go ahead with the plan?”
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Jay-Jay who sat motionless, a frozen expression on her face, while a second Jay leaned forward to pour herself a glass of water.
Damn, he thought. Not now. I’m going mad. Right here at the end, I’m finally going mad. All the effort, all the drive suddenly just left him. Weak and exhausted, he slumped in his chair.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore,” he mumbled. Jay and the rest stared at him with expressions that ranged from shock to concern to faint scorn.
He didn’t care. Something seemed to be stirring in his mind, a little tickle, a tiny little feeling so small that it could barely be grasped. He thought about hugging a tree and rubbing a matchstick between his fingers at the same time. It made him feel uncomfortable. What was all that about?
“Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t feel…”
The tickling increased.
“Red, what is it?” he mumbled.
– I don’t know. It’s like one of the other personae…
“Red? Are you there? Blue? What’s happening?”
He held the glass of water close to his lips, hiding their movement. He was fooling nobody: the rest of the group looked on in concern.
He could feel something inside him waking up, something beginning to speak. Dizzily, he put the glass down. He heard a voice deep inside him, old and dry and incredibly strange. It was Grey, he realized. The grey pill was having an effect at last.
– Act normally, you fool. Don’t let them know you’ve noticed anything wrong.
“But…What…Can’t you see…?”
The others watched him mumbling to himself.
Grey spoke again, and his voice was petulant.-What’s up with Red? Why hasn’t he noticed? Gillian just got off a shuttle this morning that came from the edge of the solar system. Where did she get the white dress and the bangles? That’s this month’s fashion.
“Oh…I don’t know…It’s all too…” Constantine was still reeling. Punch-drunk…
– That’s it. I’m taking over, said Grey.
Suddenly Constantine began to speak: it was his voice, but the words weren’t his.
“I’m sorry, but I think I need a drink. It must have been hotter out there than I thought. I’m feeling a little dehydrated.”
His hand reached out for the glass of water of its own accord, adding supporting evidence to the words he was now being forced to speak.
It was Grey; Grey was controlling him. But that was impossible.