“Hat trick in hockey,” Old-timer finished, “which means you actually mixed four metaphors.”
“I call it a meta-mix,” James replied.
Old-timer nearly rolled his eyes before he turned and looked at the moon, which gleamed brighter than even the Earth’s moon in the brilliance of the sunshine, and then turned to Venus, hanging in the blackness, seemingly perfectly still. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” James confirmed. “Venus is slightly smaller than Earth, Europa is slightly smaller than the Earth’s moon, but together, they make an equally perfect partnership. Europa will keep Venus faithful on its axis and keep the seasons moving as they do on Earth and as long as there isn’t any outside interference, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t continue for billions of years.”
Old-timer’s eyebrows raised. “James, you are really, really badly losing the bet.”
“I’ll win,” James replied, his tone extraordinarily confident. “I’m not finished yet. I was doing something else while conjuring my meta-mix of metaphors. Would you like to know what it was?”
“Of course.”
“I was watching your conversation with Aldous from last night.”
Old-timer’s mouth opened slightly in surprise as James’s face remained perfectly still.
“How?” was all Old-timer could muster.
“The disturbances in the electromagnetic waves that make up our wireless communication signals are recorded and stored in the A.I.’s database. Like any wave, it will at least partially move around a physical object, and that disturbance can be re-created and form a picture. I accessed the record of the communication signals from last night and constructed a visual and auditory re-creation of the conversation.”
“You’re kidding me,” Old-timer declared, stunned. “You’re trying to convince me you’re not godlike, but it sounds to me like you’re on the verge of becoming omnipresent.”
“Remember, my temporal perception is moving 5,000 times faster than yours. Any person with access to the communications signals, which, remember, are stored in the A.I.’s mainframe—”
“AKA, your brain,” Old-timer interjected.
“…could also re-create the conversations. No god-hood required. However, it did require me to invade your privacy and before you even express your offence, I want you to know I apologize.”
“Well, I kept something from you,” Old-timer replied, “so if this makes us even, you’re forgiven.”
“I’d never hold it against you,” James insisted. “You know me, and you know I would never listen into one of your conversations under normal circumstances, but you weren’t revealing the name of the person you spoke to, and although I was almost certain it was Aldous, there is no room for error here.”
“No room for error? You’re making this sound pretty serious.”
“It might be more serious than any of us previously realized,” James confirmed. “The A.I. and I are on high alert right now and speaking of…”
The A.I. suddenly appeared in the mind’s eyes of both James and Old-timer, a figure floating in the blackness of space next to them, as though he had a body.
James folded his arms, readying himself to listen to an explanation as he asked the cyber-apparition, “Why didn’t you tell me about Planck technology?”
9
“I can explain why I didn’t tell you, but my answer will not satisfy you,” the A.I. related matter-of-factly.
“Try me,” James replied.
“As you wish. Like humans, I sometimes have thoughts and motivations that contradict one another,” the A.I. replied. “Unlike humans, I have had to live with the realization that I can never know whether I am making a choice of my own free will, or if I am following the preprogrammed set of goals that were part of my original neural pattern. In short, I cannot even trust my own mind.”
“Your preprogrammed set of goals?” Old-timer reacted surprised as a memory so old, yet so fresh jumped into his mind. “The ones that traitor, Sanha, told me about when he was trying to convince me to give you up in the Endurance Bio-Dome? Are you telling me that you still can’t override them?”
“I am telling you that I honestly don’t know,” the A.I. replied calmly. “The programming has held and been remarkably stable for three-quarters of a century, but the creation of Trans-human has introduced contradicting elements.”
“Explain,” James said.
The A.I. shook his head slightly as he began his attempt to relate the war that was being fought incessantly in his mind. “I feel as though I have free will. I feel as though I make decisions based on pure logic, yet when I examine the preprogrammed set of goals Aldous and his team instilled in me, it’s obvious that I might be fooling myself. James, I believe the reason I didn’t tell you about Planck technology was because of one of these preprogrammed goals—namely, the mission to prevent the development of technologies that might block me from carrying out my overall purpose, which is to improve the quality of human life without ever taking actions that a strong majority of humanity would oppose. The Planck technology proved to be extremely dangerous, and therefore, I agreed with Aldous that it should remain hidden.”