Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 60

Table of Contents

Pack

by Robert Reed

Signals in the Deep

by Greg Mellor

Simulating Sentience

by Nancy Fulda

Momentary Glimpses of a Complete Circus: A Conversation with Genevieve Valetine

by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Thank You

by Neil Clarke

Forest Spirit

Art by Mike Azevedo

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2011
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Pack

Robert Reed

He was standing in front of my castle, watching windows. When I came out, he bent down low, mouth to the plastic grass, and asked if he could stay.

“I can help you,” he said.

“Except you’re just a dog,” I pointed out.

“That’s not a nice word,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I told him.

He stood up. He watched me. Then again, as if for the first time, he said, “I can help you.”

“Get lost, dog.”

But he retreated only so far. He was afraid of me but very skinny and I couldn’t help but feel for his situation. Fucking dog.

I went inside. Sometimes I watched him lurking. Sometimes I forgot about him. Then I came outside, on a different day, and another dog was standing in the open. This one was bigger, stronger. He had a weapon. Well, I have weapons too. I have a castle and tech, and I wasn’t going to show him that I was scared.

He aimed at me, grumbling under his breath.

A bullet can’t pierce armor, but it takes courage, waiting to be shot. I pulled courage out of my reserves. Then came a soft pop and the new dog fell sideways, and out from a hiding place came the other day’s dog. He was even skinnier than before. His weapon filled one bony hand. He walked up to the shot dog and shot him again, in the skull, and he took up the larger weapon. He was smiling until he looked at me. Then with a hard face and stern voice, he said, “You don’t have to thank me.”

I watched him slowly drag the dead dog into the trees. What he did with the body was none of my business. I didn’t want to waste my courage needlessly.

Indoors again, I finished my day’s work and had some fun, keeping my mind away from the subject of dogs.

But after dinner, I gathered up my extra food. The cultivators always produce too much. So it wasn’t really a gift that I left on the plastic lawn. I was throwing away the mock-beef and noodles, and if beasts and dogs came out from the trees to fight over the trash, it wasn’t my business.

I slept well that night.

I always sleep well.

Three days passed before the dog reappeared. He was heavier. He walked with confidence. Maybe that’s how he always walked, but I found him more appealing now. Success does that.

“You should own me,” he said.

I said, “No.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, laughing in a dog’s fashion. “Do you think you have any choice in this matter?”

I walked my grounds, and he watched from a distance. I went inside and after five days came out, dragging a sack of scraps. I watched for him but couldn’t find him. I stood at the edge of the forest, looking between the drought-ravaged trees. I didn’t miss the dog. I felt lonely for other reasons. The rest of my day was spent with friends across the world. Sharing time with friends made me feel better. When night came I looked outside. A dog wearing antique camouflage was huddled over the garbage, gulping down the feast.

It is heartening, witnessing any creature’s survival against long odds.

I went to bed and slept hard.

In the morning, there were two dogs. The new dog was a pregnant bitch, which was bothersome. She was small and too young to be pregnant. Understanding her own miserable circumstances, she knelt down before me. “You have tools,” she said. “Please, please cut the seed out of my belly.”

I did nothing of the kind.

For the second day in a row, I left food on the bright blue-green lawn.

But scraps were not a daily occurrence and there were weeks when I didn’t see either of them. The pup was born somewhere in the woods. It had a sorry weepy voice, and it was another mouth, and even then I could have put it past all suffering. Who would stop me? But I didn’t manage that kindness earlier, and this would prove even harder, and besides, the mother seemed to be treating it well enough.

I don’t know exactly when the fourth dog arrived. But he resembled the first other male, only younger. I assumed they were related. I heard them calling each other, “Brother,” but I didn’t care enough to ask. Yet I accepted that new mouth, and because it cost me nothing, I threw out rags and other trash that were accepted without thanks or hesitation.

Winter came. For a time there were as many as eight or nine dogs. My dogs always came out of the forest first, the others trailing behind. I grew accustomed to the different faces and voices and how they quarreled over the rations that I had no intention of increasing any farther.

Generosity always has limits.

When the weather softened, I went outside, sometimes for long periods. Only five dogs remained — the brothers and young mother, her perpetually tiny baby and an old gray bitch.

In that halting, frustrating way you use with dogs, I spoke to my favorite.

“What happened to the others?” I asked.

“We took care of them for you,” he said.

“For me,” I said.

“This is how we help,” he said. “You don’t see half of what we do for you.”

I wasn’t sure what he had accomplished. I certainly didn’t care about the missing dogs. Changing topics, I said, “At least the winter is finished.”

He laughed about something. He said, “Nothing is ever finished.”

There are people who claim to understand dogs. I don’t make those claims.

Bowing toward the ground, he said, “I am yours, master.”

That gesture and those bold words were exceptionally pleasant. “You certainly are mine,” I said.

Then he got up again and said, “But don’t throw curses at me.”

“I would never do that,” I said.

“You have,” he said.

I didn’t remember.

“When we first met,” he said. Then he stepped closer to me, looking at my visor and my eyes. Naming a precise date and time, he said, “Check your security digitals. Jog your memory. And never again use that word against me.”

So much of this moment was worrisome. I did what he wanted while we stood face to face, and I fed myself all types of courage.

The unfortunate incident was waiting to be found.

“No more curses,” I promised.

And once again, he bowed. But not as deeply, and then when his face lifted, he told me, “I am yours, and you have no choice now.”

I have excellent friends as well as highly placed cohorts and acquaintances. A small number keep dogs. A few of those refer to theirs by name, sharing emotional moments where the expense and hazards are paid back in full. But I kept my situation mostly secret. One time I mentioned that I had a pack living nearby and that I rather enjoyed watching them fight over my garbage. Several voices warned about vague dangers. But when I asked for specifics, nobody could piece together a reasonable scenario. I had a castle and tech and armor and courage, my own courage and all the other kinds tailored for specific occasions. But perhaps best of all, I had no illusions about my expertise when it came to murderous wild animals. I knew nothing about them, and I never felt at ease among them.

My dog never asked what I did to earn my property, my station, but I told him anyway. He watched me at the beginning of the story and then watched the horizon, nothing in his face betraying interest. But that attitude was a blessing. I wasn’t trying to impress, which was why I could continue talking for many minutes. My life was large and important, washing up against that ignorant beach. Then at some point he looked back at my visor, my eyes, and he said, “I have three more brothers. They can’t survive in the mountains anymore and they’re coming here.”

“A visit would be fine,” I said.

He said, “No.” His voice was both firm and sorry. When did I begin reading emotions in that voice? “They aren’t good dogs,” he told me. “Brothers or not, they’ve done horrible things, particularly to my wife and me, and I don’t want anything to do with them.”

He had an agenda. It was easy to see what he wanted. I thought for a long while — which was a few moments to him — and then offered what he probably couldn’t do for himself. Not to his own brothers, no.

He looked at the sky above my head. “Have you killed dogs before?” he asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

The toothy smile was very bright. “We’re easy to kill,” he said.

“You are,” I said.

“Except when ghosts are involved,” he added. “Murdering your own siblings is a good way to put a curse on you and yours.”

I had never spoken to a superstitious creature before. This was unexpected fun. “When will your brothers arrive?” I asked.

“How would I know? I’m a dog,” he said.

As it happened, they arrived soon afterwards. I was asleep when the three brothers walked onto my lawn in the moonlight, approaching the two male that I already knew. A terrible fight erupted over the day’s garbage and perhaps older crimes too. The shooting woke me. I looked out a high window to find the young good brother on the ground, his bloody face pressed into the plastic grass. My dog was beside him, on his knees and praying loudly to some fatherly god. Two of the invading brothers had walked into the trees, presumably to find and hurt the two females. The last brother was standing over my dog, slapping at those praying hands with a long polished stick.

I killed him neatly.

Or rather, the castle unleashed one of its talents.

But then my dog rose to his feet, breaking into sobs. And his little brother stood, holding his bloody nose while screaming at me.

“No no no,” said my favorite dog. “Our feud is finished. You don’t need to kill anybody now.”

The littlest brother was even more furious, cursing at me until gasping for breath.

I felt nothing, and then I felt terrible.

“What were you thinking?” asked my favorite dog.

I knew exactly what I was thinking. Would he like to see the record?

“Fuck you,” he said.

Apparently the stricture against cursing ran only one way. I mentioned this, and he cursed me again.

Finally I said, “All right. I’ll feed the living brothers.”

“And their families,” said my dog.

“For one month,” I said.

“And my relatives,” he insisted.

“Yes.”

Counting mates and widows, plus the various-aged pups, there were twenty-nine dogs in my suddenly enormous pack. Watching the menagerie walk across the moonlit grass, my wrenching guilt was transformed into self-scolding disgust. As surely as I knew my castle’s seven rooms, I understood how I looked to these creatures. I was the fool, malleable and too trusting. The fool decided to teach them who was in charge. But I had already killed one dog tonight, and so I set my cultivators to build rough, barely edible rations, and my little revenge lasted until the older pups began crapping foul brown water up and down my poor lawn.

It was summer, very hot and exceptionally dry. The last of the forest trees had died, but the dogs were being careful with their fires. The forest was pale and dusty but lovely in a fashion, and I said as much.

My dog nodded for a moment, his eyes following mine.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

Sometimes he surprised me with his answers.

“I was thinking about empires,” he said. “Did you know? The greatest empire ever began by drinking wolf’s milk.”

“That’s an interesting perspective,” I said.

“Do you know which empire?” he asked.

“Rome,” I said. “Romulus and Remus.”

I was standing, he was sitting. He turned to look at me and to show me his face. He wore a serious expression. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed mildly disappointed with my answer.

The rest of the pack was huddled inside shelters made from dead timber. The shelters were my idea and they mostly followed my designs. The promised month of feedings was passed, but I continued with the gifts. More important, I shared the water condensed from the already desiccated winds. The older pups liked to thank me. My dog said very little on the subject, but his pack was surviving where other dogs couldn’t. He told stories about what was happening in the mountains and elsewhere, naming dogs and then describing their miserable deaths. He seemed nothing but cheerful that he and his own were enduring when the rest of the dog world was mortally wounded.

He looked away again, thinking.

His mind was very slow, but focused.

After a long pause, he turned back to me. He spoke to my boots, asking, “What are you thinking?”

There was no possible answer. A dog would grow old and die before I could perfectly reproduce my thoughts inside any one moment.

But of course he knew that.

“I’m thinking about history,” I said, which was true enough. “Right now, I’m making a study of the Roman centuries.”

He watched the lawn.

I watched him.

Maybe he felt my stare. Maybe he was planning to stand anyway. Whatever the reason, he got to his feet and picked up the gun that fit so naturally into either hand, and looking at my face again, he said, “Half of us are leaving at dusk. We’ll be gone for six or seven nights.”

He never told me news like this.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“We know some weak dogs,” he said.

I said, “Oh.”

Then he laughed, and not softly. He laughed and with that confident stride began walking away.

“I was raised on wolf blood,” my dog said. “I am a great wolf, and the empire begins right here.”

The males wore camouflage and took their best weapons and most of their ammunition. But they didn’t return in six days, or seven. Or in ten. Eleven nights without their men made the females sick. I listened to the wailing and fighting. They would beat their offspring with little provocation. One of them came up to the castle. She was the very young one, my dog’s favorite mate. She tried to talk to me. I didn’t respond. She squatted and told my walls how scared she was, how sad and lonely she was, and to prove some or all of those feelings, she began doing things with her hands, her grimy little fingers.

I watched because I was curious.

Her sick pleasure meant something to me. I wasn’t certain what, but afterwards, as she walked away from my walls, I felt pity for her, and deeper than that, I discovered worry for the dog that was so deeply missed.

The oldest pups served as guards, day and night. On the fourteenth night, when there was no moon and the stars were obscured by high dust, one of the pups saw strange males approaching. She gave the warning to the camp, and every mother grabbed up the littlest ones and urged the others to run for the castle.

I expected this, which is to say that I considered many scenarios about what might happen and how each playing piece would respond. All of these pieces gathered close to the invincible walls, begging for help. Different voices wanted different kinds of help. The females wanted to be let inside, which was impossible. The immature males wanted my weapons turned on the invaders, which was somewhat more likely. Reaching into the darkness, my senses found five males heavily cloaked inside stolen tech. They were dogs, but the tech was not. This was another scenario that I had imagined, but rarely and never with any sense of urgency.

I put on my armor and absorbed a great share of courage.

My dogs scattered when the outer door opened, and then too slow by a long step, they were blocked from slipping inside when the doors closed and sealed.

I stood among the pack, watching the invaders moving closer.

Each of these creatures had a name. I knew them by sight and by voice. They were strange pitiful and yet lovely, and of course I would protect them now.

I walked across the plastic grass.

A dog emerged from the dead forest.

I could have killed him but hesitated. I don’t know why I hesitated. Then the cloaks fell away and I saw that he was my dog, safe and home again. Such a wave of relief shook me, leaving me weakened. I could have killed him. I nearly did. Maybe that’s why I wept as he started talking to me.

“What a fucking mess,” he said. “There’s a clan living up in the mountains. A bunch of real assholes, which we knew going in. But I didn’t realize they had a friend, and I had no idea how close she was to them.”

“What kind of friend?” I asked.

He stared straight at me.

“Where did you get the tech?” I asked.

“Stole it.” Then with a sorrowful laugh, he said, “That’s our little ray of hope in this disaster. Some new machinery.”

“You stole the tech from their friend,” I said.

“She’s a monster,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“We need help,” he said. “You probably know the friend already.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

He gave me specific directions.

“No, I don’t know her,” I said.

“But her castle is so close,” he said.

I tried to explain. There are different measures of proximity.

But he grew bored and interrupted me. “Whatever,” he said. “With your help, we can kill that damned clan. At least the big boys die, and then we can grab up their girls and come back here again.”

Two of his brothers emerged from the forest. But the youngest brother had died or been left behind.

My dog watched me. Then with a slow, careful voice, he said, “You won’t help us, will you?”

“I help you all the time,” I said.

“You won’t go on the fight with us.”

“No.”

“But you don’t even know this other one. So what does it matter?”

I tried to explain why it mattered.

“Listen to yourself,” he said.

I said, “If the bad pack comes here, I’ll defend you. But that is as much as I am willing to do.”

My dog stared at my armored chest.

The rest of the pack did the same.

“Well,” my dog said at last. “At least you’re telling us where you stand.”

I fed them double shares and gave them all of my water while sending a message to my neighbor on the other side of the mountains, saying nothing overt but offering to discuss mutual issues.

She responded by saying that she didn’t know me and to leave her alone.

I left her alone.

For the rest of that evening and two more nights, nothing happened. Nothing changed. I fed my dogs everything they could eat and more, and the second pack didn’t appear, but then the afternoon sun was swallowed by black clouds of dust and even with the best tech it was difficult to see. Peering into the gloom, I suffered glimpses of motion and odd shapes, and then a series of sharp little explosions. Suddenly my dog appeared, running to the door and pounding with both hands.

“Let us in,” he begged.

I wanted to let him inside, but only him.

“We’re dying out here,” he said.

I was already wearing my armor. But I couldn’t see any threat, which was why I stayed indoors.

“Do you hear me?” he asked.

He knew that I did.

“Master,” he said. “They are coming for us.”

I couldn’t see any new faces, but the dead woods began to burn. A dozen little fires consumed the dried underbrush and the trees, joining into one mighty blaze, and the filthy wind blew smoke and ash across the lawn. Pups were running back and forth. Naked, the young mother ran to my door, her little pup screaming in agony. She screamed too. “Forget him and run away,” she said.

“No,” my dog said.

“We’re going,” she said.

“He’ll help us as soon as he puts on his armor,” my dog said.

My armor was ready, but I was scared. My mind was not suited to moments like these. If I used every bit of courage in my inventory, I would still feel scared, and that’s why I did nothing and remained silent.

The mother and her baby left.

My dog sat before the door. I had never seen him weep before. He had been stripped of his dignity. But the fire soon burnt itself out and the dust storm eventually passed, leaving nothing but ruin and my dog.

Armed with several comforting phrases to make both of us feel better, I stepped through the doors.

He looked everywhere but at my face.

I began to talk.

“Shut up,” he said.

“All right,” I said.

Then he began to laugh — quietly yet with rage — and taking relish in the words, he said, “This has all been a test, you know. From the first day we met, even the tiniest event was part of a great plan.”

I asked, “Whose plan?”

“Not yours.” The laugh grew louder. “Stay outside or go run back into your little house. Either way, you lose.”

It was a rare feeling, a strangely wondrous feeling, having no understanding about what was happening.

He finally looked at me, just for a moment. Then he stood and backed away several steps while various kinds of tech were turned off. The blackened lawn was covered with dogs, mature and heavily armed. The big dog that my dog seemingly killed last year was alive again. The missing younger brother had returned, healthy and still angry. It occurred to me that the one that I killed was never a brother, just another fool caught up in this elaborate scheme.

The enormous pack was marching toward me.

I fled inside, secured the doors and consumed every form of courage, but before the illusionary sense of security could take hold, the “monster” neighbor woman walked out from her hiding place.

She wasn’t wearing armor.

Indeed, she wore almost nothing. Boots suitable for long hikes rode the otherwise naked legs, and her exposed chest was burnt scarlet by the sun, and strung around her neck was a steel collar adorned with savage barbs — good steel polished until it shone, but only half as bright as the radiant smile that crushed the last hope in my world.

About the Author

Robert has had eleven novels published, starting with The Leeshore in 1987 and most recently with The Well of Stars in 2004. Since winning the first annual L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest in 1986 (under the pen name Robert Touzalin) and being a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1987, he has had over 200 shorter works published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Eleven of those stories were published in his critically-acclaimed first collection, The Dragons of Springplace, in 1999. Twelve more stories appear in his second collection, The Cuckoo’s Boys [2005]. In addition to his success in the U.S., Reed has also been published in the U.K., Russia, Japan, Spain and in France, where a second (French-language) collection of nine of his shorter works, Chrysalide, was released in 2002. Bob has had stories appear in at least one of the annual “Year’s Best” anthologies in every year since 1992. Bob has received nominations for both the Nebula Award (nominated and voted upon by genre authors) and the Hugo Award (nominated and voted upon by fans), as well as numerous other literary awards (see Awards). He won his first Hugo Award for the 2006 novella “A Billion Eves“.

Signals in the Deep

Greg Mellor

Earth

There’s a place in our future where we are all heading, driven by our instincts and the deep heritage of our genes. It is a place where we are more at peace, in harmony with the universal fabric from which we were born. It’s what I was taught, and it’s what I believe. Our past provides a foundation, a platform from which we can achieve great things: growth, meaning, enlightenment.

I tried to instil this belief into Matthew as any good mother would — show, don’t tell. But it seems that the young are both deaf and blind to old-world values. I rationalized his anger at first. Looking beyond the veil of testosterone, it was his imperative to experience life for himself and to sometimes learn things the hard way. After all, there is no manual when you are born into the skin you live in.

Then, as Matt blossomed from boy to teenager, I began to doubt myself and wondered what I had done to estrange him. The genome patent meant he didn’t need a father, but there were plenty of male role models during his semesters at the private didactic havens. He developed incredible skills in languages and mathematics, and although the complex problem solving could make him so detached, in hindsight it was a source of comfort for him. He was gifted from the start — before he was even born — and if I was honest with myself, it had raised my expectations into the stratosphere.

And therein lay the irony: in providing for everything perhaps I had unwittingly given him little cause to look back. There was no sense of the past for his generation; everything was about the here and now, and the future was something to worry about when it arrived. I realized, too late, that I must have come across as so set in my ways: stern, reflective, always grounded.

The chill autumn nights are spent pondering these things under the spatter-painted veil of stars. The motor on the tracking dish hummed quietly, the barrel of the telescope cold in my hands. Ancient light shone into my eyes, translating into images, connecting me again — the past was always with me.

But did Matt see it now? Was there such a thing in his world?

I wasn’t sure. Heaven help me, after two years with no word or sign from him, I wasn’t sure at all.

And there was only one way to find out.

Earth + 100km

My journey began with cold sweat beading on my skin as the elevator rose up and up on a white-knuckled ride into vacuum. I had never been good with heights, but this was ludicrous. Nothing should be this high — it seemed physically impossible — yet the elevator kept going until the cerulean sky turned indigo and the stars shone more intensely.

The steward had been keeping a watchful eye over me on the way up. He had a ceaseless capacity for small talk, which was harmless enough, but now a worried frown creased his face as I clumsily disembarked.

“Are you okay, Beth?”

I didn’t reply, preoccupied with weightlessness and being towed across the bridge to the shuttle port by an usherbot the size and shape of a dustbin. I glanced through the viewing ports, trying to keep my eyes away from the cloud deck far, far below. There were several more elevators in the distance, rising like needles along the curvature of the world.

“They’re impressive,” the steward said, a cheeky smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Please go away. I nodded and smiled as best I could. “There are so many of them, and it’s all happened so quickly.”

“I guess that’s why they call it the Quickening.” His lips turned down as my face darkened at his pun. I had used affordable nanotech to create Matt’s genome and I often blamed the technology for my predicament, but it was just a classic case of denial.

As we entered the bustling port I began checking for signs to the shuttle departure lounge, but this was a damn confusing place. No doubt there were a thousand data casts flying about, but what I needed was a physical sign.

The steward’s eyes widened, convinced, I am sure, that I was a complete anachronism. Then to my surprise he tucked his arm through mine with that same familiarity. “Where are you traveling, Beth?”

Okay, so maybe I do need your help. “Pluto… Charon Relay Station actually.”

His eyes widened even further. “The back of beyond. I’ve always wanted to go there, they say the stars are…” He caught my look again. “The departure lounge is just this way.”

Earth + 2AU

It is said that you can make friends in the most unlikely places. And this shuttle was one of those places: a cold, disorienting cavern, with row upon row of rockbusters reeking like a metal refinery.

The rockbuster next to me tried to strike up a conversation, his third attempt.  “You’re a long way from home… ?”

“Beth.” My feet dangled, child-like, over the edge of the seat.

“I’m Ryan.”

A rockbuster named Ryan; what stories your mother could tell.

He turned his enormous plated head, gyros whirring, metal creaking, and leant over me. His massive bicep brushed dangerously close to my head. “Are you management?”

“Do I look like management?”

“No.” He seemed unphased by my terseness, but I doubted that anything could bother these giants. “And you’re not a tourist. Not that we get many out this way. Some engineers, a few scientists, and management… sometimes.”

“So you work the belt?” It was an infantile deflection, but home seemed so far away, my worry now consuming more hours of each day that passed. Maybe that was a mother’s lot in life, but then again, it seemed that I had more than my fair share — a constant, gut churning state. And it was starting to show.

“What do you think?” His eyes gleamed mischief deep beneath the edge of his cheek plates.

“Judging by your pitted armor, three meter frame and stubborn demeanor, I’d say so.”

He half turned in his seat, his plates sliding across each other like an avalanche, a smile on his segmented lips. With a hint of conspiracy in his voice, he said, “So you must be looking for something… or escaping something.”

My exasperated sigh misted the air. “I’m looking for my son.”

“Ah.” He relaxed back in his seat, another avalanche. “The truth. We’re all searching for it in our own way. You find a vein of ore; it’s an achievement, a vindication that you serve a purpose. There’s truth in that. If your friends speak plain words, you know you can depend on them — truth again.”

“You’re quite the philosophical one.”

His eyes swiveled. “For a robot?”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that.”

“But you thought it.”

Maybe. I let out a long breath. “Okay, yes.” Ryan was human deep down. And I had no doubt that his decision to work in vacuum, to go through the physical torture of bio-metal skin grafts, was not an easy one. I knew this, yet to listen to him, to look at him… “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I come across like one: irrefutable, irritating logic and all. But space does that to you. There’s no room for shades of grey, at least not in my line of work.” Then, “I take it you haven’t seen him for a while?”

I nodded, trying to stop the surge of emotion, the pent up frustration. This man’s presence was calming, but at the same time he was a stark reminder to me, raking my fear, gathering up a storm of dreadful possibilities. I began to wonder how much Matt had changed. What had he gone through to adapt? What decisions had he made — life-changing decisions? Would I even recognize him? And more importantly, was he happy in himself, accepting, like Ryan, or was he still the angry young man I remembered?

Ryan patted me gently, his hand completely covering my forearm. “Solar winds and empty space, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”

My tears floated up and away from my face, tiny spheres drifting.

Earth + 6AU

Chartering the light sail had cost me the rest of my savings. The cabin was very small and beige and although it had all the necessary facilities, it would become a lonely prison during the long months ahead. The fixed autopilot’s lights blinked occasionally from a tiny alcove, its bland chrome head rotating on a stalk, constantly monitoring.

Ahead, through the viewing cells, the sail stretched out like delicate foil reflecting sunlight into shards. But photonic pressure alone could not drive this tiny ship, and so it needed supplementing from the orbital laser array at Jupiter to bring it up to the velocity necessary to reach the outer solar system.

And behind: the Sun so remote now that I had forgotten its warmth. But then it is hard to feel warmth of any kind when one’s soul is locked in ice.

I had sent a message out to Matt on my departure from Earth, and again at the asteroid belt. The only thing I received was a silence that spoke volumes. My anxiety shifted then, became anger.

He was the communications expert. The outer system relay stations were being constructed to assist with the exploration and population of the Kuiper Belt. So if he could communicate with the settlers, why was it so hard to stay in touch with me? If he had no time for a personal message he could have arranged an automated update or blog. Hell, he could have sent something by solar snail mail by now.

I looked down at my jiggling legs and placed my hands on my knees. Peering into the dark, hoping that it might calm me somehow, I saw a light appear beyond the edge of the sail, tracking against the star field. It was on the same vector; perhaps it was a tourist yacht. But something about it didn’t feel right. It was tracking quickly now, which meant its relative velocity must be enormous, well beyond anything I had heard about.

“Pilot, what is that to port?”

The pilot’s head rotated and two lights blinked on its chrome head. After a few seconds there was a metallic reply: “Unknown.”

“Your best estimate?”

Another few seconds: “Experimental space probe or military craft.”

“Military? But there’s nothing out here.”

Solar winds and empty space.

Earth + 38AU

I had taken to roaming the methane ice wastes of Charon during the days. The baroque spacesuit had good power, large spotlights and was insulated enough to stave off the incredible cold. Even so, it was still reckless of me to wander the hills and valleys. But not so reckless that I didn’t steer clear of the cryo-geyser fields, though on my darker days I thought that being trapped in the geysers might provide a fitting end to my foolishness.

The backlit crescent of Pluto peaked above the horizon, casting long shadows across the ground, stretching out towards me — raven wings of a kind. My mind was playing tricks, and all I could do was let it run wild. What else was there in this hell hole?

I think I was a distraction for the grizzled scientists and technicians at the relay station for, oh, ten minutes or so. They were as perplexed as I was when I drifted in like flotsam, a random event that upset their daily routine. They had no idea where Matt was, nor were they willing to answer my questions about what he was actually doing if he wasn’t at the station. After some grumbling they sent a message to him then hastily located me in a habitat dome away from the main nest of the station to wait for the reply. Three weeks later, my mind turning lethargic in the stale air, the walks were providing a reprieve of sorts.

Today I had ventured further than before, taking languid strides out to a low ridgeline south of the habitat. The suits external crampons gave me purchase, but occasionally I tripped until I got into the ludicrous rhythm of moon walking: walk, sprawl, slide, stand, walk.

By the time I made it to the ridgeline I was gulping for oxygen. I checked the suit monitor: still green. Then something caught my eye and I crouched down instinctively. The valley beyond was covered with domes with square lit windows, radio dishes at the perimeter, a launch platform lined with the translucent delta-shapes of spaceships resting on landing stems. And there… rockbusters operating large equipment … there, humans in white skinsuits . . . 

The com-channel crackled in my helmet.

“What?” I began to turn, sensing movement behind me.

“State your identity.” A young man’s voice, used to being obeyed.

“Don’t move.” A young woman now.

My spotlights swept over them… white skinsuits… sleek gold-glass helmets… carrying long barreled vac-weapons… grey static across my vision now… a heavy feeling in my head… down on one knee… “Wait — ”

Earth + 38AU

“You were extremely lucky,” Graeme said. He had permanently windswept hair and a serious frown for a fourteen year old.

“Those old suits are unreliable,” Trace said. “And you were out there too long. You could have asphyxiated.” Her eyes were palest blue and her black hair was tied up in a spiky bun, giving her an innocent look that belied a sharp wit and intelligence. I liked her a lot — an attitude tempered with a maturity beyond her years. She reminded me so much of Matt just before he left home.

I glanced around the white walls of the med-room. The single viewing port revealed one of the launch pads I had spied from a distance. “What are you doing here?”

Graeme’s frown deepened. “That’s classified.”

I turned to Trace, my eyes pleading.

She arched an eyebrow at Graeme. “I think we can ease up a little. The approval arrived via the Jupiter Relay this morning.”

He gave her a whatever look.

I looked at them both in turn. “You’re not here to help the settlers, are you?”

Graeme sat back in his chair. “No, ma’am.”

Trace lent forward and took my hand. Her skin was warm, and filled me with hope I thought I had lost, until her words cut through, grating at my naivety. “Matt doesn’t work on Charon.”

“It’s taken me a year to get here. Where is he?”

She squeezed my hands and glanced through the viewing port. “He’s out there, beyond the heliopause.”

I began to shake and leant forward until my elbows touched my knees. The air seemed suddenly unbreathable again. “It’s too far… how can I…”

Trace moved to me and put her arm around my shoulder. “We’ve sent a higher priority message to him, but it might take some time.”

Earth + 50AU

“He didn’t tell you, did he?”

It was Trace’s voice, heard in my mind as if from a murky distance, echoes along the shore of a raging sea. I opened my eyes. A milky white film crawled across my vision. I made to raise my hand to rub my eyes, but I couldn’t move. I tried to breath, but there was something slimy sitting heavily in my lungs.

“What — ?”

“Don’t panic, it’s just the dampening gel.” A pause. “There, that should do it.”

My eyes, or the gel, cleared; then a chemical rush regulated my heart rate. I cleared my throat, adjusting to the subvocalization. “Are you licensed to administer pharmaceuticals?”

“You’re hilarious, Beth.”

We were suspended in a small, angular cabin with no visible controls or systems. I sensed a delta shape around us, sleek and transparent against the backdrop of space. “What is this thing?”

“It’s an interceptor. Bio-ceramic hull, neural-interface circuitry, top speed in excess of 10,000 kps… ah, look, I really shouldn’t. Beth, no parents come out here… ever. You’re an enigma, and under any other circumstances you’d be turned around in your light sail and sent home. But we figured Matt didn’t tell you about the conscription so the least we could do is arrange a meeting.”

It struck me that Trace had considerable authority. “You love it here?”

I felt her inner smile… there was an empathic component to the com.

“I still don’t get it. What could possibly be a threat here in the middle of nowhere?” No disrespect.

“None taken.”

“Oh…” More than empathic.

“There doesn’t need to be a threat, just the possibility of one.” Feeling my confusion, she added, “There’s more here than interstellar dust. We’ve discovered a communication network of unknown origin.”

“You’re talking about aliens?”

“We think it stays outside a system’s heliosphere until its civilizations are advanced enough. Or it could be a relic network and all we’re hearing is remnants of dead civilizations. Either way, we’re very cautious in case there’s a risk of viral data packets… for want of a more technical explanation.”

My mind raced ahead. “Matt’s an interpreter?”

I felt Trace nod, but there was apprehension.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t fob me off, Trace.”

Fair enough. “The oldies — it’s an endearing term for people like Matt approaching their twenties — if they’re good at what they do then they get moved into the deep. You have to adjust or die.”

The truth. For the first time since my arrival, I had finally found a vein of ore. I rummaged around the com, trying to delve deeper into her mind. There was more; I’d only caught a glimmer.

She said, “I’m going to have to activate the gel again. There’s still a long way to go.”

“Has Matt changed?” But another question begged at the back of my mind. Is he still the son I used to know?

The gel activated. I forced myself across the com before unconsciousness took hold… there… a feeling carefully held in check… doubt…

Earth +100AU

A tingling sensation ran over my body — the after effects of the gel? — no, it was a white skinsuit, knitting with my nervous system. It felt almost intimate. Thankfully it didn’t extend over my head; I’d had enough of feeling claustrophobic. Instead, fresh oxygen circulated within a gold-glass helmet.

I turned my head, expecting to see Trace. The Milky Way was a bright etching on impossibly black velvet. My arms thrashed involuntarily — I was EVA!

The com hissed and her voice filtered into my waking senses, a long way off still. She was talking to someone.

“Long time, my friend.”

“You too…”

“What is it?”

“I haven’t spoken English for a long time.”

Laughter.

“Why is she here?”

“She wants to know you’re okay.”

Silence.

“She’s a good person.” Kind of strict, in a your-best-interest way. “I wish my parents cared as much… oops, I think she’s awake… twenty kilometres to starboard.”

“I know.”

Silhouettes glided languidly across the star field until I could see the sheer, terrifying wonder of him. He was there — at the center — but the rest of him was strung out in many disconnected parts. What looked like advanced relay panels were stretched over delicate bio-ceramic bones, unfolding over kilometers. Titanium pivots and joints secured critical junctions of the larger pieces. The entire array ebbed and flowed, resonating to Matt’s remote commands, a thousand separate parts miraculously working in synch — a dark cybernetic angel gliding down to meet me.

I extended my arms as he approached, the sheer scale of his structure more daunting as he got closer, until I was at his center, his human body encased in a sleek black bio-alloy skin. His eyes were still the same, that dark brown with green flecks, glazed with a protective covering that blended into his skin.

I held him, apprehensive at first as the massive wings seemed to bend in toward us. He was changed beyond reckoning, but still himself inside, still Matt.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“Is that any way to greet — ”

He laughed. “I’ve missed you, Mum.”

I squeezed him tighter. With so many questions, after all this time and all that I had witnessed, I still couldn’t move beyond the selfish ones. “Why did you leave?”

“Why do you think?”

“Was I too controlling?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry if I was angry all the time, but I did listen to you.” I just couldn’t wait to experience life. “Out here the past is more important than ever. You have to be grounded to survive. If we don’t have a strong sense of who we are, then how can we face the unknown?”

I laughed inwardly. Such a blind thing I had become, journeying all this way with the answer in my back pocket. It was that paradox that all parents face at some point. He was always going to grow up despite my good intentions and overbearing guidance. It just happened a little sooner than I expected, or rather sooner than I was willing to acknowledge.

He let me float free and turned away, breaking my reverie. He was focused now upon some object that I could only just make out against the star field. His wings shuffled and folded in like a line of dominoes, quickening into a blur of movement. There was something agile about him, as if he were capable of great speed — like the interceptors.

The object came into view slowly, an odd-pointed shape distilling out of the dark. I urged the skinsuit forward and felt a slight pressure on my back. I followed, a white speck hovering above the expanse of his wings. We seemed to take forever to reach the object, until it dawned on me that it was on a different scale altogether. After about thirty minutes Matt decelerated suddenly, but my vector carried me forward and I tumbled away over one of his panels until the skinsuit righted my spin.

“Sorry,” I said.

“My fault.”

We fell into a geosynchronous orbit. The object was shaped like a giant black star fish, but the arms were multi-segmented, stretching out for a thousand kilometers or more. It was moving and fluttering, in a way that seemed biological or semi-sentient, as it coaxed the faintest of signals from the interstellar medium.

“How was it discovered?”

“There have been anomalies in heliospheric imaging for over a century — where the warmer ions of the solar wind meet the cold interstellar gas. We knew that the bulk of the anomalies were caused by the galactic magnetic field draping over the heliosphere. This object’s magnetic field appeared as a point anomaly on the imaging in a year when the heliosphere extended much farther out than normal.” He seemed mesmerized as he swung down, gliding closer over one of the arms. “You’re right. It is self-aware, most likely on the low end of the Turing scale. If you concentrate hard enough you can tap into its empathic link. It knows about us; it can sense us now. They’ve known about us for a long time.”

“They?”

“The signals are coming from Fomalhaut, and being relayed on to other systems. It’s a data and com network of sorts — an interstellar internet if you will — but that’s a fairly primitive analogy.”

I hesitated. Something inside me desperately wanted to know, but another part of me was petrified by the possibilities. What are they saying?

Matt reached out and touched a finger to my helmet. Something electric shimmered through the skinsuit, up through my nervous system, images cascading into place…

A young, orange star surrounded by a massive dust ring extending out and out. On the inner edge of the ring, a Jovian world with swirling storms of violet and grey surrounded by a chain of satellite moons, worlds in their own right that would dwarf Earth. Each of the moons is transformed by civilization — bubble ecologies, floating cities, blue-white skies over ring worlds, with the starfish arrays connecting all in a vast hub of interaction.

And deeper down, into the network — images and empathic memories of a collective, then voices in a fantastic dialect that stretches into the upper harmonic. The citizens?… no, custodians… they are older than this world, transferred here millennia ago… via the network… biotech… their angular heads turn atop bodies that look like dancing blue flames.

The eyes of one entity swivel then widen in acknowledgement. I can see its indigo irises, so close now, speckled with white circuitry. The pupils dilate… it is looking at me —

The skinsuit thrusters pushed me away and the link faded. My eyelids fluttered as the treacly slide into unconsciousness took hold… then Matt was with me, shaking me gently. I gasped. “How is that possible?”

“We’re not sure. It could be an autonomic response programmed into the starfish — a bit like an interactive interstellar greeting card. But some of us speculate that it could be a true faster-than-light relay. I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing this. They’re survivors, and their technology is… well, we can’t make assumptions… we must be vigilant.”

I looked at him then, behind his technology and his vacuum-adapted skin. For the first time I realized why the motion of his massive structure seemed familiar. His new body, his entire array, moved like the starfish.

“Oh, Matt.”

He arched a dark metal eyebrow, his eyes like beacons. “It was the only way. We don’t know how to operate the starfish and any attempts to get inside it might destroy or disable it. But we can scan and replicate — align with it.”

He looked at me then, in that way that he used to before bed time when he’d tell me about his day at the havens and the patterns he saw in things. Our talks helped him understand his intuition — a young boy in awe of the world around him.

I float for days in the path of the data stream.

I sighed. There’s truth out here if you listen long enough.

Earth

Ancient light fell upon my retina as the tracking dish hummed. The autumn nights seemed colder after three years, but there was a warmth now, inside me, that pushed away the chill.

I had been living in denial, grounded in the misconceptions of my own humanity. In wanting so much for Matt, I had forgotten to listen to him. Physically, he was far from human now, but spiritually, as he touched those alien signals in the deep, he was more human than any of us could be.

And with that knowledge, I was finally able to let go, to open up my own horizons.

I turned away from the telescope as an icon flashed on my computer. A new message scrolled down the screen.

Hello, Mum.

About the Author

Greg Mellor is a science fiction writer living in Canberra with his wife and son. His work has appeared in Cosmos Magazine, Aurealis and Antipodean SF plus several print anthologies. Wild Chrome, his debut collection of short SF, will be released by Ticonderoga Publications in 2012.

Greg has degrees in astrophysics and technology management. He was a finalist in the Aurealis Awards, achieved quarter-finals and honorable mentions with the Writers of the Future contest on six occasions, and is a member of the SFWA.

Simulating Sentience

Nancy Fulda

Machines that think, dream, aspire: ever since John McCarthy coined the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in 1956, mankind has striven to create sentience.

To an extent, we’ve succeeded. Intelligent systems assist our elderly, vacuum our floors, and guide our web searches. Automated telephone assistants are nearly as easy to talk to as real people, and children’s toys learn to recognize voices. But do these accomplishments indicate true intelligence, or are they simply ingenious technological tricks?

The answer depends on whose definitions you’re using.

AI researchers distinguish between strong AI and weak AI. The latter refers to any system that responds appropriately to its environment, and the former refers to a system capable of performing any intellectual task that a human being can do. A virtual stroll through the most recent International Robot Exhibition1 will convince even hardened skeptics that weak AI is already among us. But although specialized systems are able to recognize faces, respond to spoken commands, and detect high-radiation areas in nuclear reactors, strong AI — along with anything resembling sentience — continues to elude us.

One barrier to creating genuine, human-level intelligence lies in the inherently specialized nature of machinery. Consider NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover. This $25 million device can navigate uneven terrain, identify and avoid obstacles, collect dust particles, and abrade rock surfaces. The Rover took years to design, required 18 months to assemble, and is arguably one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment ever allowed to perform autonomously. But if you plop it on a park bench and instruct it to unwrap a stick of chewing gum, it’s going to be as useless as a jackhammer in a china shop. Ask it to play chess, and success is even less likely.

Even situated learners like MIT’s Kismet2 and Cog3 robots have a difficult time adapting to new situations. Why? Because transferring knowledge from one domain to another requires generalization. Successful generalization is a hallmark of human intelligence, but for robots and computers it’s notoriously difficult. Understanding why requires an idea of what goes on beneath the hood of today’s most popular AI algorithms. Let’s look at some of them.

Brute Force Intelligence: Decision Trees, Knowledge Bases, and Deductive Reasoning

In its broadest sense, agency can be described as a search through decision-space. Intelligent agents — humans included — seek actions that will produce a desirable outcome. One way to do this is to use a decision tree; a branching representation of decisions and their consequences. In a decision tree, the robot considers all possible actions that might be taken given its current state. It then considers which actions might be taken from each newly attained state, and follows the branches downward until it discovers a path that leads to its desired objective.

Decision trees can be extremely powerful. They were the basis for Newell and Simon’s Logic Theorist, the first mechanical device capable of proving mathematical theorems4 . They were also the primary tool used by Deep Blue, the chess program that defeated Grand Master Kasparov. (Afterwards, critics claimed that Deep Blue’s victory was less the result of clever programming than of its massively parallel ability to evaluate 200 million board configurations per second5 . Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the match wasn’t that Deep Blue defeated a human grand master, but that it was only able to beat him twice out of six games.)

The problem with decision trees is that they require complete a priori knowledge of the environment. A chess game is predictable and easily defined. It begins with a known configuration and it is possible to predict which new configuration will result from any given move. For machines equipped with modern technology, navigating the decision space is child’s play.

The real world, in contrast, is dynamic and unpredictable. A robot charged with the task of locating a fallen candy wrapper and placing it in a garbage can must be able to recognize the wrapper under different lighting conditions, from different angles, and against different backgrounds. It must also be able to tell the difference between a leaf, a candy wrapper and a $10 bill.

These sound like elementary tasks, but they are not. The number of different ways a candy wrapper might appear to a robot’s onboard camera is extremely large. The number of possible configurations of trees, rocks, flower beds, children’s toys and garbage cans in a randomly-selected park is equally daunting, and there is no guarantee that the configuration on any given day will be the same as it was the day before. The robot’s motors may become more or less efficient due to changes in the temperature, humidity, and corrosive build-up on its moving parts. The terrain the robot traverses might be dry or wet; dusty or sticky from spilled soda pop; or occluded by fog or driving rain.

If throwing away a candy wrapper sounds like a simple task to you, that is only because your brain is magnificently optimized for dealing with the inherent messiness of our world.

Closely related to decision trees are knowledge bases; extensive libraries of information intended for use in deductive reasoning. Whereas a decision tree begins with an assessment of the current situation and explores known courses of action, a knowledge base enables the synthesis of new ideas through propositional logic. Such machines ‘learn’ by adding newly acquired factoids to the knowledge base and ‘deduce’ by applying a sequence of mathematical laws to accepted factoids. The abilities exhibited by C-3PO in Star Wars and by Lt. Commander Data in Star Trek — most notably their tendency to calculate the odds of succeeding at a proposed task — are characteristic of knowledge based systems.

Knowledge bases work well when constrained to specific, carefully-defined topic areas. Unfortunately, as the number of factoids increases, so does the number of possible deductions, the vast majority of which are accurate-yet-useless statements such as “Green is a color. Red is a color. Therefore red and green are both colors.” Searching for useful deductions becomes very much like searching for a needle in a haystack the size of the Empire State Building.

The question of scale thus becomes increasingly important for rational systems. Current research strives to reduce the size of the decision-space by grouping perceptual states together or by cutting off unprofitable lines of search. This proves to be a rather delicate process. Cut off too few branches of the search, and the remaining decision space remains intractable. Cut off too many, and you might discard precisely the solution you were looking for.

Fictional computers like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey have used heuristics to prune the search tree — with disastrous results. Unable to locate an action sequence that permitted the accomplishment of its mission in the face of opposition, HAL 9000 settled for the best solution it could find: murdering the Discovery’s crew.

Asimov’s Laws of Robotics were designed to prevent this sort of mishap. Interestingly, the Three Laws of Robotics were not a decision-making process in and of themselves. Rather, they were an evaluation criterion; a yardstick used to accept or reject actions proposed by the decision-making algorithm. As Asimov’s stories demonstrate, however, even these rules are not infallible. Giving a machine the power to think must of necessity also give it the power to make mistakes.

Emergent Intelligence: Bayesian Learning and Neural Networks

Generalization — the application of past information to new situations — requires clustering. New situations must be recognizably similar to past experiences, otherwise previously-acquired knowledge becomes useless.

That sounds reasonable enough, but how do you teach an OCR program that the word “Literature” written in cursive script is functionally equivalent to the same word written in block letters? How do you teach a voice recognition program to distinguish between male and female voices, but not between hoarse and healthy voices? Attempts to explicitly enumerate such rules have resulted in little success.

One approach favored by AI researchers is called Bayesian learning. In this algorithm, environmental states are represented as a point in feature-space. (A feature may be anything from the number of corners on an alphanumeric character to the number of centimeters between a robot and the nearest wall.) The algorithm is then presented with a set of training data which includes concrete values for each feature, accompanied by a desired classification.

As an example, the features for a weather-forecasting algorithm might include the temperature, humidity, wind speed, and barometric pressure at the target location. The training data provides a classification (sunny, rainy, or cloudy) for several points in the feature space. When presented with new data, the Bayesian learner compares the input to its internal map of the feature space in order to determine the correct classification.

Neural networks offer a related approach to generalization. A neural network is a matrix of nodes connected by lines of activation. Each node ‘fires’ if its input values exceed a programmatically defined threshold.

In one common type of net, a set of input values is fed into the nodes at the left of the matrix. These nodes fire (or not) in response, causing the next row of nodes to activate, and so forth. A set of output nodes provides a classification for the input data.

Like Bayesian learners, a neural network requires a training set, which it uses to adjust the strength of the connections between each pair of nodes. Influential input values will be assigned strong connections. If one of the input values turns out to be irrelevant to the task at hand, the neural network will ‘ignore’ it by dropping the connection entirely.

Although inspired by neurological principles, neural nets have relatively little in common with the human brain. As Luc Reid points out in his March 2010 article “Future Brains,” thought is as much a chemical process as an electrical one. Dopamine, cortisol, testosterone, and dozens of other neurotransmitters carry messages across synaptic gaps, making communication between the brain’s neurons far more complex than a simple numeric connection. True axons also have a firing spike that builds, peaks, and fades over time. They fire asynchronously and must ‘recharge’ between spikes, factors that are seldom incorporated in computer simulations. Brian Trent’s 2009 article, “Eternal Lives on Hard Drives,” describes some of the challenges involved in digitally duplicating the brain.

The greatest advantage (and simultaneously the greatest drawback) of neural networks is their incredible ability to learn things their designers never anticipated. A well-structured neural network can invent its own way of perceiving the universe, clustering inputs into groups that are utterly unintuitive to humans and yet extremely efficient in performing the task at hand. For example, rather than viewing age and ethnicity as separate character traits, a neural net designed to predict a person’s education level based on a photograph might lump both factors into a single feature labeled ‘facial characteristics’. The same network might also learn to distinguish between several different posture profiles, including whether the subject’s weight rests primarily on the left or right foot and whether the subject’s shoulders are slouched. In this sense, neural networks are not unlike the aliens in Niven and Pournelle’s sf classic The Mote in God’s Eye, constructing custom devices capable of performing many functions at once.

Given the eerie unpredictability of neural networks once they have been set loose, it’s not surprising that many of fiction’s greatest AIs make use of them. Mycroft, the self-aware computer befriended by Manuel Garcia in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, used associative neural networks to process data. Lt. Commander Data’s positronic brain incorporated a neural network which presumably worked in conjunction with his knowledge base, a fairly common arrangement in today’s expert systems. The CPU of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator also relied on neural nets.

The Search For Sentience

Will mankind’s creations ever take on life of their own? Will they experience biographies as epic and poignant as that of Isaac Asimov’s Bicentennial Man? Possibly. But if true synthetic sentience ever arrives, it will probably look and behave far differently than we expect.

Throughout history, mankind has relied on the technology of the day as the medium for artificial intelligence. The works of Homer and Plato refer to talking statues made of bronze or clay. Edward S. Ellis’ 1865 story The Steam Man of the Prairies features a mechanical man powered by the technological innovations of his time6 . Tik-Tok from L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories was described as a ‘clockwork man’. In the early 1920’s Edmond Hamilton wrote of a computer brain that ran on atomic power7 and the prominence of computing in the late 1950’s lead to a flurry of fictional AI’s powered by electronics.

More recently, Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW:Wake series postulates an emergent awareness within the connections of the World Wide Web. Others have speculated about AIs based on nanotechnology and quantum computing. Based on this evidence, it is likely that when man first creates a device of equal intellectual capacity to his own, it will be based in an as-yet-uninvented technology.

Further Reading

1. Cool Robots from iREX (via Singularity Hub) <http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/04/cool–robots–from–irex&–2009–pics–and–video/>

2. Kismet (Sociable Machines Project, MIT) <http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid–robotics–group/kismet/kismet.html>

3. Cog (Humanoid Robotics Group, MIT) <http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid–robotics–group/cog/>

4. Newell and Simon’s Logic Theorist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_theorist>

5. Deep Blue (Chess Computer) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)>

6. Edward S. Ellis, The Steam Man of the Prairies <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steam_Man_of_the_Prairies>

7. The Metal Giants by Edmond Hamilton, Swanson Book Co., 1935 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hamilton>

About the Author

Nancy Fulda is a Phobos Award Winner and a recipient of the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Apex Digest, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Jim Baen’s Universe. She administrates the online reprint repository at AnthologyBuilder.com, is a member of the Codex writers’ group, and lives in northern Germany. She attributes any success in her field to her incredibly supportive husband and the cuteness of their three children.

Momentary Glimpses of a Complete Circus: A Conversation with Genevieve Valetine

Jeremy L. C. Jones

Hollow bones and brass casings, wires and cogs… Genevieve Valentine’s Circus Tresaulti is a place of aerialists, dancing girls, and strong men, of spectacle and secret hatreds—a world of wild wonders and brilliant beauty.

“Genevieve Valentine writes like no one else,” said Ekaterina Sedia, author of Heart of Iron and The House of Discarded Dreams. “Her stories are heartbreaking but never manipulative, and her prose is stylized but never alienating.”

Genevieve Valentine’s non-fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Tor.com, and Fantasy Magazine, among others, and she is the co-author with Stephan H. Segal and of Geek Wisdom. Her short fiction has appeared Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed, and Apex, as well as in such anthologies as The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard and Running with the Pack.

Valentine’s love of language and character shine through whether she’s writing fiction or non-fiction,

“Writing’s a remarkably soothing vocation for an introvert with an active imagination and a controlling streak,” said Valentine. “It’s also a lovely excuse to stay out of the sun. If you’re lucky, your writing manages to leave a mark on the people who read it. And it has all the character-building attacks of self-doubt that plague other artists with much less call to stand up in public, which is nice.

If Valentine’s short fiction won her many admirers, her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, (Prime Books) has exceeded expectations.

“Genevieve’s debut novel takes the promise and the power of her shorts a step further,” said Sedia. “Mechanique’s a remarkable book — non-linear, sophisticated, filled with keenly observed and expertly rendered personalities and their dramas, all playing out against a sparse, barely sketched in background. Like a modern production of a classic play that leaves the stage bare of everything but the actors, lest we get distracted by the decorations, Mechanique flays open the hearts of its principals and we cannot look away.”

Below, Valentine and I talk about world-building, non-linear narratives, and her love of bad movies.

There’s got to be a story behind the creation of the Circus Tresaulti!

I’d always liked the aesthetics of the circus and its trappings (minus the animal aspect — I prefer my circuses only be cruel to people), so it was definitely something that had intrigued me for a while. The Circus Tresaulti in particular probably started from a cirque act I saw on the late-night arts station in college (I was a partier). It played arts performances music-video-style, so between “The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy” and “The Flower Duet” from Lakme, there was an acrobatic duo whose routine was really striking. I wrote a note about it and set it aside for later. But the notes folder kept growing, and the Circus kept filling in around the edges, until I knew it was novel material. It was one of the longest spans I’ve had between getting that inspiring spark and doing something about it, but it was very useful in terms of assembling a circus I knew was big enough to build a book around, but was still largely glimpses of things I wasn’t sure of, which is always how I like to go into a book — knowing a little, guessing a lot, and finding out what works for the story as I go along.

And the world outside the circus…?

Funnily enough, that’s where I started. For the Circus Tresaulti to exist, there has to be a world that needs it. A world that needs the Circus Tresaulti is a world that is pretty broken. (It also helps explain why people would take refuge in a circus that asks so much of its performers.) From there, it wasn’t hard to imagine a world devastated by war and splintered into city-states, where a circus of…peculiar people, shall we say, is one of the few outfits brave enough to travel in the open. And those in the Circus know it, which is part of the reason they put on such a fantastic show — when you’re the only beautiful thing someone might ever see, you want to make it count.

If you ran off to join this particular circus, what would your job be?

There are definitely some places in the Circus Tresaulti troupe that might appeal. (Some of them are probably a little too stressful to be worth it, no matter how awesome the trapeze is.) Sadly, given my level of physical coordination and my crippling stage fright, I suspect I would probably end up as one of the people who mends the tent and carries benches and other unbreakables.

You seem to tell the story as much by exclusion as by inclusion. What did the jumping and switching around chapter to chapter allow you to do that a more linear approach wouldn’t have?

I enjoy non-linear storytelling, which crops up a lot in my short fiction, and in this novel particularly I like that the story is revealed in pieces, as if the Circus was accidentally leaving the curtain open a little at a time and you were getting momentary glimpses that start to form a more complete picture.

If someone were to open up Mechanique — with a screwdriver, a scalpel, a crow bar, can opener, whatever — what would she find?

A lot of unnecessary clean-up, sounds like!

Were there any ways in the writing of Mechanique that, like the people in the circus, you were “brave enough to travel in the open,” to brave dangerous territory?

This question makes me feel as though there should have been, but honestly there wasn’t much. It’s fiction, not Doctors Without Borders, you know? I wanted to write this story, and I got to tell it the way I wanted to, and aside from it being my first published novel and all the inherent terror that comes with that, there’s nothing particularly brave about it.

What is style and how would you describe yours?

As with houses, craft is the way you build it, style is how you make it yours. There are the more obviously stylistic approaches to story that use tertiary documents, direct address, time manipulation, extreme changes in voice, etc. to deliver the story. There’s “transparent prose,” a style that tends to focus on pushing characters through plot rather than taking a more formal or abstract view, but it’s no less a style choice than a book in iambic pentameter. (Though not all styles are created equal, either; I’m pretty sure I do not have the command of language that it takes to write a book in iambic pentameter.)

I enjoy a variety of storytelling styles (sometimes you want immersive world-building, and sometimes you just need a snarky comedy of manners that routinely pauses the action to wink at you). However, the right combination of confidence, consciousness, and competence go a long way to making me a repeat reader of someone’s work.

What should a sentence do? I mean, some of yours are just so… well, Wow!

Thank you! This doesn’t sound at all like I paid you to say these things!

I guess my best answer here is that, while a sentence can have any number of styles or constructions or subtexts, every sentence should serve the story in at least one way, if not more — defining the world, forwarding plot, or illuminating character. (Also, maybe watch how many adverbs you attach to dialogue tags, but that’s a minor thing and I’m not the boss of anyone, so if your character has to sigh despairingly, go ahead.)

Jeff VanderMeer has compared your style Angela Carter’s. Was Carter an influence? Who else was an influence?

It was an honor to be compared; Angela Carter is a patron saint of the dark mythic, and her writing is magnificent. Peter S. Beagle was also a formative influence on my love of fantasy (The Last Unicorn was one of the first books I read on my own, and every time I pick it up I find something new to love all over again). Stella Gibbons is invaluable reading for anyone who wants to know how to gently despise things. Octavia Butler is invaluable reading, period. Sherman Alexie is a master of sharp-edged, poignant humor in the face of overwhelming sadness. Not all of them were direct influences on Mechanique, but all of them definitely hardened my resolve to become a writer myself.

So, um, what’s the deal with your fascination with bad movies?

Oh man, I love them so much. I love good movies, and many good movies fill my embarrassing number of DVD shelves, but when it comes down to it, I’d take a bad movie over a mediocre movie most days — it’s more entertaining to watch a hilarious mess than to watch something workmanlike but dull. There will always be a special place in my heart for the accidentally funny, halfheartedly camp, and delightfully appalling.

What are you working on now? And What’s next?

I recently finished up a new novel, a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses set in New York in the Roaring Twenties. I have several short stories coming up in the next few months, and though I’m not sure yet what form it will take, I’m guessing that someday I’d like to return to the Circus Tresaulti.

Any parting words of advice, warning, or playful miscellany?

When you’re a tourist walking five abreast with your friends or family at a speed approximately half the rate of everyone around you, definitely do not give any warning before you stop in the center of the street to take a photo. Avoiding you keeps the locals nimble.

About the Author

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. He is the Staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly and Booklifenow.com. He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC. He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. Jones lives in Upstate South Carolina with his wife, daughter, and flying poodle.

Thank You

Neil Clarke

I’m going to be brief this month. In case you haven’t heard, there have been some distractions around here in the form of Hurricane Irene. We’re all safe and sound, but I do have something to say…

Thank you.

For the second year in a row, Clarkesworld Magazine has won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. The support we’ve received from our readers and listeners has been phenomenal. We’re very honored and appreciative, so once again, thank you.

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the publisher of Clarkesworld Magazine and owner of Wyrm Publishing. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.