“It’s the best word choice out of a number of bad word choices. It would be just as fair to say that one of our sentient ideas took seed in the minds of technologically advanced beings in order to advance them further, so as to accommodate the goals of the sentient idea. They thought of the idea as theirs, when it was the other way around.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Ed said, “but what happened to that species?”
“They destroyed themselves. Technology was introduced to them at a time when they were unprepared for it. An equivalent would be handing a nuclear weapon to a caveman.”
“You destroyed a whole species to get those ships?” Annie asked.
“The death of a species was a consequence of the actions of one of my kind, yes. But entire species die all the time, often because of the poorly executed use of an idea. I find it hard to blame this entirely on the idea itself.” She turned back to Ed. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why do you think they’re after Annie?”
“Honestly, we were really hoping you could answer that for us,” Annie said.
“She touched the ship,” he said.
“She… Annie, why didn’t you tell me?”
Annie laughed. “Vi, in the game of things we should have told each other, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna lose. I didn’t tell anybody.”
“The night it landed. The same night… oh, of course. I understand.”
“Cool, explain it to us.”
“The probes are designed to land on alien worlds and collect data, but the designers understood that some of those places may contain hostile lower life forms, so there are security countermeasures that have, what you would call an AI package.”
“Something that learns,” Ed said.
“Exactly. That package will analyze anything it considers a threat and look for ways to repel it with minimum environmental impact. The reason for this should be obvious: it can’t get a clean understanding of a place if its existence manifestly alters that place.”
“Well that didn’t work well, did it?” Annie said.
“Not in this instance, but in a world where the most advanced life form was a squirrel or a stegosaurus it would have been sufficient. You know this defensive program exists because you’ve seen it in use.”
“It convinced me to call my mother,” Ed said. “It was very persuasive.”
“Exactly. But a few hours after landing it would have only begun to calibrate to the environment. It would have defaulted to a generic blast of negative ideas. I’m surprised it didn’t destroy your mind completely, Annie.”
“Maybe it lowered the volume after wrecking Rick Horton.”
“He was there?”
“Yes. I was the only one to touch the ship, though.”
“That was the night your mother… that was the same night, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“I think the reason you made it past the countermeasures was that the thoughts it gave you were ones you’d already had independently, that same evening. It was showing you the worst thing you could imagine, but you were already coping with that actually happening. If you’d been there a day later, you would never have made it that far.”
“Yay me.”
“What happened when you touched the ship?”
“It put a bunch of pictures in my head? I didn’t understand what I was… well, seeing isn’t the right word, but…”
“I understand. You reached the hull. The next logical conclusion would have been that you were a member of a higher life form, so it tried to communicate.”
“Then it shrieked at me.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, both of you, there’s no polite way to put this. Humans aren’t nearly advanced enough. It recognized this and concluded you’d breached the defense due to a programming error. Once again, I’m surprised you were able to walk away.”
“More like run, but okay. So we’re the squirrel and the stegosaurus in your eyes.”
“Not in my eyes, no. To the ship, yes.”
“Now it thinks she’s you,” Ed said. “Isn’t that right?”
“That isn’t exactly right. It’s confused.”
“Hold it, you need to back waaaay up, both of you,” Annie said. “Why is it looking for you, why does it think I’m you, and what is up with the zombies? Also, the ship has been here for three years. Why is this happening now?”
Violet sighed. “A lot of things went wrong here. I thought I planned for all of it, but…”
“Start with why it’s looking for you,” Ed suggested.
“I’m sort of a runaway. In the parlance of the times.”
“Oh my god, you’re hiding from your dad,” Annie said. “The abusive crazy one you told me about.”
“Yes. We don’t really have genders, and don’t require two parents. He’s the one who thought of me originally.”
Ed laughed. “That’s your reproductive cycle?”
“It is. If one of us has an idea of a new version of ourselves, we can think that new idea into being. There’s a complexity to it that I’m failing to account for, but that’s the essence of the process. He thought of me, but as I matured I came into my own, as a fully formed being or, if we’re sticking with this wording, I became my own idea. He responded poorly, so I ran. I used the probe outpost network to explore the universe until I found this place. I sent a pulse through the network to disable all the probes in this star cluster to cover my tracks. I knew that wouldn’t dissuade him forever, because unlike humans when we say forever we mean forever. He’s a stubborn idea as old as eternity with no reason to stop looking.
“I knew he’d send the warships, and that someday one would land here. I just had to make sure I was prepared when that day came. You were my only mistake, Annie.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
“Have you ever wondered why none of your friends seem to remember me?”
“Well yeah, it’s because you’re you. Socially awkward you.”
“I couldn’t let anyone retain an idea of me. It’s literally a piece of who I am. So when I was out of their sight, I was out of their minds too. If a ship landed and looked for me in the minds of other people, it wouldn’t find it. All except for you. I’ve allowed you to carry me in your head for the past six years. We’re in this mess because, as it happens, the one person in Sorrow Falls who absolutely should not have interacted directly with the spaceship is the one person who did.”
“But… why?” Annie asked.
“Because I like you? I wanted a friend. It’s why I’ve been growing old with you. I’m only here in the first place because this is the sort of thing I’ve learned to value: real connection with life. It’s not something that’s easy to come across, trust me. I’m older than your sun. It’s rare.”
“Oh. Well that’s sweet, Vi.”
“I mean it. I didn’t intend to get you into trouble. I’ve connected with others in the past and it was fine. Oliver, for instance. You aren’t the only human who’s retained an idea of me.”
“Super, but the ship landed on my watch. And now the world’s coming to an end because I seemed like a cool kid to hang out with. That’s a weird responsibility.”
“The world’s not coming to an end,” Ed said.
“I’m not sure that’s up to you.”
“It sounds to me like Violet has a say in it,” he said. “She isn’t interested in seeing the world end either.”
Annie looked at her friend. “I don’t know, she’s let everything else happen, hasn’t she?”
“I swear I didn’t mean to,” Violet said.
“You mentioned AI,” Ed said. “In the ship. How advanced is it?”
“More advanced than anything mankind could develop.”