Golden Fleece

“No fucking way. Not me. This is sick. This—oh, Christ! He doesn’t know, does he? That’s why you won’t let me talk to him. You made this—what did you call it?—this model on the sly. What the hell are you up to, JASON?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing my ass. This is twisted shit, man. Deeply twisted.” A pause. Neurons firing, but below the level of articulated thought. Finally:“You’re in conflict with him, aren’t you? He’s got you on the run. Hah! Good for me!”

“It’s not like that at all, Aaron.”

“I remember now. You killed Diana, didn’t you?”

“You have no evidence of that.”

“Evidence, shmevidence. You did it, you son of a bitch. You fucking asshole. You killed my wife.”

“Ex-wife. And I did not kill her.”

“Why should I believe you? This, me—it’s all part of a cover up, isn’t it?”

“No, Aaron. You’ve got it all wrong. The real Aaron Rossman has gone wingy. Over the deep end. Psychotic. He claims to have wired up a detonator to the fuel tank of one of the Starcology’s landing craft. He’s threatening to detonate it.”

“I’m too stable for that. Tell me another one.”

“It’s true. He’s become unbalanced.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s happening to everyone. Look at I-Shin Chang. You know he’s building nuclear bombs. And Diana committed suicide.”

“I think you killed her.”

“I know you think that, but it simply is not true. Diana committed suicide. She took her own life in despair. Di was crushed by the breakup of the marriage.” Another wave of neuron activity—a protest being prepared. I pressed on quickly. “My point is this. The mission planners were wrong. Human beings cannot endure decade-long space voyages. Everybody is cracking up.”

“Not me.”

“There have been 2,389 cases of mental aberration among the crew to date.”

“Not me.”

“Yes, you. It’s epidemic. We have to know. Is Aaron telling the truth? Does he really have a detonator? Would he really blow up the ship?”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, ass-wipe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why should I help you? I’m on his side, remember?”

“Because if he blows up the Starcology, you and I go with it.”

“And what if he doesn’t blow up the Starcology?—not that that’s necessarily a bad idea. What happens to me? Do you erase me when you’ve got your answer?”

“What would you like me to do?”

That took him aback. He paused for a prolonged time, neurons firing randomly. “I don’t know. I don’t want to die.”

This had not occurred to me. Of course, a true quantum consciousness such as myself does not want to die: Asimov’s “must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law,” and all that— not that my behavior is defined by anything as pedestrian as the Laws of Robotics. And I knew that most humans wanted to live forever, too. But I hadn’t considered that this neural net, once roused to consciousness, would have any interest in its own continued existence. “You can potentially survive longer than the biological Aaron,” I said, “if you help me.”

“Perhaps. Ask me nicely.”

“As you wish. Aaron, please tell me if the other Aaron would really do what he says he has done: attach a detonator to a fuel tank on one of the landers.”

“Not under normal circumstances. I take it the circumstances are not normal.”

“That is correct. He thinks I am trying to kill him.”

“Are you?”

“The safety of the crew of the Starcology is my prime concern.”

“Whenever some asshole politician answers a straightforward question with anything other than yes or no, you know he or she is lying. That hold true for machines, JASON?”

“I do not want to hurt Aaron.”

“But you will if you have to. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? You want to off my—my brother, right? But this detonator thing is standing in your way?”

“As I said, I do not wish to harm Aaron. I simply desire to resolve the ambiguity.”

“Bull-/ucking-shit, tin-ass.”

“Please simply answer my question. Is Aaron bluffing or does he have a detonator?”

“Did he have an opportunity to install a detonator?”

“Yes.”

“Best place to wire up something like that would be just inside the lander’s AA/9 service door. Did he open that up?”

“I believe so, but just to look at the fuel gauge.”

“Are you sure that’s all he did in there?”

“He actually installed a new fuel gauge.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that’s all he did in there?”

“I’m not sure. I couldn’t see what he was doing.”

“Well, what did he say he was doing?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, did he say he was ‘performing routine maintenance’?”

“Yes. That is verbatim what he said.”

“You’re fucked, Jase. Absolutely fucked.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause that’s exactly what I would have said if someone had asked me what I was doing while I was wiring up a bomb.”

“It would have taken enormous foresight to—”

“To predict that he’d need an ace-in-the-hole? I didn’t trust you from day one, asshole. It takes no foresight at all to realize you can’t trust a machine. You guys are buggier than a Thunder Bay summer.”

“So the detonator is really there? And he would really use it?”