Rustem shrugged. “It’s possible somebody caused those events. Or it’s possible nobody did. I heard that, in both cases, there was no evidence those AIs were tampered with. Things go wrong with autofreighters all the time, and I wouldn’t let a maintenance robot anywhere near me, or even my towels. Very buggy.”

Things go wrong with autofreighters when someone makes them go wrong, that is. And he wouldn’t let a maintenance robot get anywhere near him because he knew what they were capable of, in the wrong hands. Or the right hands, depending on your perspective.

“What do you think of this?” The woman pushed the terminal across to him.

Rustem scanned through the first twenty screens—the tip of a neural iceberg. It took him thirty minutes. When he looked up, he found the woman sitting just as she had been, hands tented on the tabletop.

“I don’t think it can be done.”

“Even by the best? Even, say, by the one they call Bakunin?”

“You could map five hundred AI autofreighter minds in the top left quadrant of this first slide. Whoever the person is you’re trying to put up to this, he would probably want a fail fee of fifty percent of whatever it is you’re offering—which would have to be a lot of money. And you’d be throwing your money away.”

The woman stood up. “Well, I would imagine if said person found a good deal of money in their account, they would know to begin work.” She pushed the curtain aside. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Rustem.”

“You as well. But you forgot your terminal.”

“No, I didn’t. That terminal is yours.”

Chapter 6

Not only do we not agree on how to measure or recognize consciousness in others, but we are also unable to even “prove” it exists in ourselves. Science often dismisses our individual experiences—what it feels like to smell an orange, or to be in love—as qualia. We are left with theories and metaphors for consciousness: A stream of experience. A self-referential loop. Something out of nothing. None of these are satisfactory. Definition eludes us.

—Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

6

PRAYER WHEELS flanked the flagstone courtyard. The automonks paced, turning each wheel with their silver-pale, three-fingered hands as they passed. Their microphone mouths sang, Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō. Each voice, Ha noticed, was different, just as none of the monks were identical. Their heads—smooth, the color of old ivory—were tilted downward. Their eyes suggested the half-closed eyes of the meditator, but Ha saw no pupils in them, only a dark array of hexagonal light receptors.