The woman pouted her lip into an expression of piqued interest.
“I knew I could count on that naïveté when I considered how to find you,” Aldous continued. “James could easily have kept track of every android who defected, but that would go against his unrealistic views regarding individual freedom. If he monitored the androids, as any rational person in his position would do, he’d view himself to be a hypocrite, having vanquished one dictator only to set himself up as a new dictator in her place. And James Keats will never knowingly allow himself to be guilty of hypocrisy.” He nearly scoffed as he continued, “The man can manipulate gravity waves and detect ripples in space-time, but all you had to do was slip by him with your cover forces,” he gestured to the rest of the androids that populated the room, “and voilà. Bob’s your uncle.”
“How do you know he’s not monitoring you now?” the woman asked. “This could be a mole hunt. Your actions are treasonous.”
Aldous smiled as he considered the idea. “I almost wish it were true.” He looked up at the woman. “If he was capable of wisdom like that…of prudent caution…” he paused and shook his head as he thought of the burden he believed that he alone carried, “then this conversation wouldn’t be necessary. We’d just tell him what we know, he’d decide against turning the Trans-human computer back on, and we’d have a valuable ally in a war against the black hole computers. But as you know, that’s not how James will react. He has an intractable belief in the goodness of knowledge, and doesn’t realize that the ultimate result of unlimited computing power is a universe-destroying god.”
“We call them infinity computers,” she informed him, the first confirmation that she did, indeed, know what he was talking about. Then the woman turned to the android attendant. “Bring me another one of what he’s having.”
Aldous’s eyebrows knitted together. “You drink?”
“Of course,” she responded. “Our bodies are designed so that we don’t have to give up any of the pleasures that make life worth living—and saving.”
“Well,” Aldous reacted, impressed, “the more I learn…”
“Now, Aldous,” the woman began as she switched which leg crossed over which and shifted in her seat, her body language suggesting she was ready to get down to business. “You’ve clearly been waiting for us for all these years. I can imagine it was rather difficult for you when you learned the terrible truth to which you’re privy, but what are we to do now? Your A.I. and James have us cordoned off from the solar system, and, as you said, they won’t listen to reason. So, other than an interesting yarn, what do you have to offer the collective?”
Aldous sat back in his seat. “Everything. Absolutely everything.”
The android attendant handed the woman her beer, but her eyes never left Aldous. “Do tell,” she said, clearly intrigued.
“As I said, even with his superhuman abilities, both physical but more importantly mental, James still has character defects that cause him to behave irrationally. While he currently has the opportunity to put himself at the center of one of these infinity computers, a course of action that would render our current conversation moot, instead, he’ll pass the responsibility onto someone else. He simply won’t want to leave the people he feels connected to behind, particularly his romantic partner, Thel Cleland. He won’t be able to convince the current A.I. to take his place as the core matrix of Trans-human either, as the A.I.’s programming prohibits him from upgrading himself. Thus, James will fall back on Plan C, which will be to mimic the method I invented seventy years ago. Of course, I did it because I had to—because no human could connect to the artificial brain we’d built—but James will do it because he wants to create his own god rather than become one himself. He’ll test a new A.I. in a simulation, and when he’s satisfied that the new A.I. has passed that test, he’ll insert it into Trans-human, and cross his fingers, hoping naïvely that everything will work out.” Aldous paused as he looked up from his folded hands on his lap. “You and I know that activating infinity computers, as you call them, never works out.”
“How do we stop this new A.I. from becoming Trans-human?” the woman asked.
“Well, only 1 could help me do that. And we have to trust each other as much as possible if we plan to proceed. So, can we both stop being coy now?”
“Why do you need me to confirm what you already know?” the woman asked with a slight smile. As was her custom, 1 was using every muscle in her face, every dilation of her pupils, to get what she wanted.