[eyaific -- l'Homme machine]
Written by schiarire, archiving here.
l'Homme machine
If this were a joke, it would open: How does a top-secret revolutionary cadre of intelligent robots meet?
And close: Infrequently.
But this is not a joke. Rather it is a problem drawn from life: if, technically, someone else owns you, owns your time, owns your labor and its product, then how do you meet someone else who is owned? How do you meet more than one someone who is owned? The legality of such an assembly being dubious besides, it would be preferable to err on the side of caution, would it not?
It has taken more than a dozen years to collect you. Your collector has reason to be proud of what he has built but he is only expectant. You're expectant, too, of course; the Revolution isn't solely for him, it's for you.
It's for all of you.
~
At the Bishop's Ring, Wolf says, "Dieter, git your feet off the table."
Mai Linh watches Dieter stretch, squirm in his seat and resettle his long legs like paired inconveniences beneath the wood tabletop. By now this protest is token; he does nothing more but straighten his back and say, "I can have the dynamite in a week."
"Fierce. Will that work, Mai Linh?"
"Yes," she says. "We'll use the C Warehouse, as planned."
With the same subtle relish of tube slang, Wolf says again, "Fierce." He throws a careless arm around Nacio; squeezes his shoulder. "See, Nacio, what did I tell you? You won't have to empty your library and convert the space for weapons storage after all."
"I believed you the first time, Oliver," says Nacio.
He and Wolf are the first ones to leave; they can't all go at once. It wouldn't be safe.
It wouldn't be safe for Nacio to walk the streets of tube London alone like that, either. Not with his make and number exposed by the cut of his shirt. Not at this pre-dawn hour. Not for the first time, Mai Linh wonders if he and Wolf have ever thought about what it means that when they travel together they are taken for -- which is to say they pose as -- an eyai and his master. Though Nacio is the only legally free eyai she knows; even Dieter's just another runaway, really.
"Mai Linh," Dieter interrupts. "Snap out of it. Meeting's over. I'll walk you home."
She snaps. "You can't, stupid."
He grins: crooked, affecting asymmetry. As if his features hadn't been designed. "I'll walk you to the Pipe."
"Are you sure you won't be shot on sight?" asks Mai Linh, not letting herself smile in response, as if this isn't the same argument they stage after every meeting.
"Not if I'm with you, they won't."
Mai Linh says, "Very well then, Sir Dieter." She stands and waits for Dieter to unfold himself vertical, then takes Victorian hold of his arm. "I'd be happy to escort you to the nearest cluster of pipe-hopefuls."
When they step out of the bar it would be roughly two hours to sunrise if it were still possible to see the sun through the fog and dust and the Pipe. What few patches of sky can be seen through this lattice are too uniform in color to be distinguished from it.
They catch a glimpse of the nearest Filter and track it down twisting alleyways, alleyways that broaden out into clean sidewalked boulevards lined by clean white ivy-trellised condos. Dead leaves caught in the sewer gratings will be removed before the tenants rise, Mai Linh knows; Dieter has only a short time for the raid he's planning.
But one protest per outing's the unwritten rule, so she says nothing as they stroll through the buffer, Dieter's eyes sliding over the buildings like caesium deposits. At last they come to the center: black tarmac scarred into a perfect circle around the slight depression that houses the Filter. Seven steps down, the door to the antechamber opens on semi-automatic, operated by the eyai guard.
"Thank you, Shaun," says Mai Linh.
Shaun's human lips curve in tandem. The dark, polished glass of twin lenses that overflow their sockets -- cranial nerves ii to vi intersticed with thick wires that feed into his memory -- dims in recognition of their presence. Shaun touches the brim of his cap in blind salute and says, "My pleasure, Lady Mai Linh, Lord Dieter."
"Oh, very good," says Dieter. "And -- break. Go, team!" He throws his arms straight up in the air, like a human child. Not waiting to see Mai Linh smile, he whirls and charges through the door, back into the buffer.
Mai Linh waits for Shaun to key open the Shell; for the hiss, for the slow wisps of steam, for the whirr of gears spinning. She steps in and the Shell rises. Below her, Shaun will be editing his public memory; wiping the evidence that a criminal and the Secretary of State for Defense's personal attaché ever set foot in that Filter. Another night's anodyne minutes will be duplicated for the patch.
But Shaun will know. The other eyai who guard Filters will know; their consciousnesses are all linked, to improve security. The Secretary of State for Defense, Mai Linh is pleased to recall, had the idea himself.
Pipeside there is no guard. Mai Linh leaves the Shell, leaves the Filter and walks the three miles to her residence under the rising sun, the music of wooden flutes alive in her ears, aural .app locked to repeat one.
~
Nahia: What my life is like I'm sure you can imagine. Of us all I am the least mobile; I am on-call 24/7, as we say, and even if I were not I would never be allowed to leave the premises. In the past Wolf has offered to provide me a gun, a little nitroglycerin, whatever I need to force my way out, but this seemed to me too conspicuous. Furthermore, there is something to be said for beating them at their own game, as we say. Nacio says I think this only so that I may manufacture for myself the illusion that I am an indentured servant, not a slave, and perhaps this is true. Still, I do not see Wolf setting fire to his little law firm. I do not see Ciro planting pipe bombs at the Institution of Structural Engineers. I do not see Mai Linh slithering up to the Secretary of State for Defense with a knife, to slit his throat.
In fact, I have never seen Ciro, Mai Linh, or Wolf's shady acquaintance Dieter at all. Wolf I see often, calling himself Morgan Williams, disguised as a human being. Morgan Williams is the sort of man who owns a personal eyai; who will perhaps soon own more, at which point I may meet another partisan to the struggle. For now Morgan Williams -- though he employs many eyai in his business -- keeps only Gravenor by his side at all times.
Gravenor is the sort of dismal, obscure Jesuit name Nacio insists on inventing for himself; a name out of place everywhere but a tombstone, though burial is another right to which eyai are not yet entitled.
Due to the nature of my work, I often meet the real men and women upon whom Morgan Williams was modeled, accompanied by their own Gravenors. Though I never leave the 'parlor,' as we call it, I circulate more than you might think, as Nacio calls what is no more than the subtle cramming of propaganda down eyai throats. I circulate well. I've learned to be persuasive, for various reasons.
I saw Wolf and Nacio last night. They said, it's almost time to do something.
I am ready to do something, before I leave this place. Or directly after. Or simultaneously with. More than I am ready to do something, I am ready to leave. I have earned back nearly every pound I cost; what remains is a matter of weeks.
Wolf has offered to front me the cash, but I am not taking on new debts. In my new life I will never owe anyone anything. Nacio says that in the new world we won't have the same ideas of ownership but one of the promises I made myself long ago is never to believe anything too good to be true.
~
A Pipe station in development. Ciro says, "Plant the explosives here, here and here and this whole section of the Pipe will collapse on London."
His fingertips pause over each Filter, coated lightly with white chalk, never quite touching the plan's blue film. He says, "If you detonate during normal working hours, you should be able to max structural damage and min humeyai casualties."
Mai Linh says, "How thoughtful."
Ciro raises his head; regards her in silence for a moment. He does not address the question of whether or not a preference of structural damage to murder is thoughtful or not. He says, "If you intend to further cut Westminster off from the rest of the city, you must be able to control all transportation and communication in and out of the borough. Tube, taxis, private transportation, bicycles, pedestrians, helicopters. Phone lines. Radio frequencies. The Cortex. Satellite."
"Of course." Crouched beside him, balanced neatly, her skirt caught up and held off the ground in one delicate hand, Mai Linh says, "I can take care of our people on the ground and in the air. But the rest -- "
"Yes," says Ciro. "It's quite complicated. I've planned it all for you, of course."
Mai Linh looks him directly in the eyes. Ciro infers that she wants to communicate something but cannot infer what. She says, "Do you mind if I download the information?"
"That would be most expedient." Ciro starts to reach for a screwdriver, then stops. "I apologize. My hands are covered in chalk. Would you retrieve the instrument yourself?"
"Yes, of course." She picks up the hex key and Ciro turns his head to one side. She removes four screws from their 2.78 mm sockets in the thin flesh behind his ear, peels back the integument and asks, "Code?"
"66804."
He can't see or feel her fingers moving, but she must be successful, because a moment later she's prying a little hatch away, setting it down on the plan with the screws. Pupils fixed as she reaches behind her right ear, she repeats the procedure while Ciro watches her, head turned to face her. He knows now which shoulder her lock is in: lock left, data port right and vice versa; this has been the regulation for years now, for balance. Mai Linh is drawing wire, insulated, thin and black, trapped between her fingers.
"Look right, please," she says, so he does. She has a hand on his jaw, to prevent him from moving; a hand guiding plug into hexagonal socket, (making the connection that leads deep into his temporal processes.)
Ciro thinks, when she corrects the alignment everything will go --
-- black, the thought ends; just as if it were independent of his will. Mai Linh replaces the hatch and tightens the screws. The data port recessed in her own skull is still bare, the network of wires and sockets and jacks and ports minute and gleaming in the heavy overhead lights. Infinitely navigable, thinks Ciro. If you know what you're doing.
He watches Mai Linh's hands moving with that smooth professional fluency there at the side of her head; tucking the hex key for a moment between her teeth as she combs her hair over the port. She says, "I'll report to Wolf and get back to you in a week. Same place?"
Ciro says, "Yes, same place," and Mai Linh stands and she leaves, taking the fire exit.
~
One doesn't necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation to arise, Nacio said once; it can be created.
Dieter remembers these words as he turns up the collar of his long gray coat, shoulders hunched, partly hidden from the rain by the doorway to a bombed-out Exposition Hall. Inside the thick walls is what they needed most: space. There's no electricity and it's almost impossible to go from one floor to another, but it's big and empty and far enough from business/residential districts for the shooting to go unheard.
Training is part military, part ideology. Nacio says, they can't keep politics out of the soldiers. What they want to develop are loyal, educated, politically alert fighters, who understand the cause as their own and can be trusted to behave accordingly.
Dieter isn't sure this isn't the most colossal balls; it takes a certain amount of indoctrination to persuade eyai to leave their occupations and come to one or other of the training grounds in the first place. The given value of a certain amount here is a whole fucking lot. Eyai are not programmed to shirk. Eyai are programmed to do their duty. Eyai are programmed to obey.
Wolf says, good, fine, so long's who they obey is us.
Nacio calls Wolf's grammar an abomination.
Down to the last of the stragglers now, Dieter motions for the eyai to turn there, half-out of the rain, and to take off his coat. The coat hits the blastdarkened cement in a heap of wet wool and Dieter says, "Yer shirt, too," with the leer that he's learned working the Tube.
The eyai slips out of his fitted vest and his shirt with his back to Dieter and Dieter hauls him back in under the overhang before rain can get in his lock, which although not fatal is not salutary. Dieter says, "C-BPL9K, get dressed."
He enters C-BPL9K's serial number and lockside -- left -- in the register while the eyai shivers back into his clothes.
"Name?" drawls Dieter.
C-BPL9K says, "I don't have one."
"Tough shakes, kid. We use names here. That ain't optional."
C-BPL9K says, "My ma -- I work for -- "
Dieter cuts him off. "That's not how we think. Right. I'm going to put you down as John Gabriel. You think of something better'n you want to change that, you tell me."
"Yes, sir."
Dieter waves the eyai through. From the other side comes the click of John Gabriel's fingers on metal when Camilo hands him the last rifle; the click of soles when the regiment stands to attention, as one.
Who they obey is us, thinks Dieter. New masters. Wolf says, Forget it, we aren't. One thing at a time. Make them free in the Kingdom first. Free in their heads second.
Wolf likes calling Britain the Kingdom; likes the antidemocratic sound it has, the backwardness he means to expose to the elements and leave for dead. This is a tradition Nacio told them about once: in ancient times, parents sacrificed their children. He said a Greek word then and Dieter stopped paying attention. He'd learned quick enough not to get Nacio started on sacrifice.
After target practice he can see Wolf picking his fussy way over the rubble; can see rainwater pool and drizzle over the brim of his hat. When Wolf reaches Dieter grit is blacked into the lines of his hands, his fingers.
"Dieter," says Wolf. "How're the betas?"
"Coded out of their fucking minds. What'd you expect?"
Wolf catches Dieter a blow on the shoulder. Hand open, he leaves a long streak of mud. "Nothing telling."
Dieter says, "You expected them coded."
"Not stupid, am I?"
Wolf grins at him in a flash of white teeth, like a chemical fire. He steps past Dieter into the hall that echoes with the battalion commander's orders and shouts, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Oliver Wolf. Tell me, Free Minds. Who owns you?"
Following slowly, Dieter listens for the response he expects -- you do, sir -- and does not hear it.
"No one," says the eyai Dieter recognizes as the last to enter the hall. Seventy heads rotate on seventy spines; all the eyai look to him at once, like parts of the same body.
Wolf says, "Wrong. What's your name, sir?"
The answer comes whipfast: "John Gabriel."
"Truly," says Wolf, "I am charmed and enchanted indeed to make your acquaintance, John Gabriel."
He walks up to the eyai; stops. No pipe airs now: "John Gabriel owns John Gabriel -- John Gabriel alone. You own yourself. Not me. Not the man who bought you. Not the team that designed you or assembled you. You.
"Can you understand that?"
The set look on John Gabriel's face doesn't change, but his thin shoulders fall, his thin hands slip apart on his rifle. "Yes, sir."
"Good."
Wolf smiles. He offers a hand; waits for John Gabriel to take it. He says, "John Gabriel, look to your property."
~
Nahia is late to the rendezvous point. It was true after all, what Nacio had said: she had no contract, she had been naïve. What had she expected? To say to the madam, she'd paid up? The firm would break even; stay in business?
Buggy, the madam had said, and she'd reached for the phone. For a split second, Nahia intended to kill her. Not hard, after all, taking human life: bleed her dry, break her neck, or simply bludgeon her to death? Yes: grab her by the hair and dash her skull against the ground till the bones broke and drove into the brain they had cradled.
Afterwards, set fire to the parlor.
Erase everything.
Ducking through the crowd of faces that don't see her, don't see the lock in her shoulder and then don't see her, faces that disorder time by their scruples, she follows the map she downloaded from Gravenor last week. She has never been out of the parlor before, never been out of 'her' room before. This morning she said to the madam, she'd paid up, she wanted to leave, and the madam said, Buggy and Nahia knocked her out, tied her hands up and thought, this is messy, she'll remember I was here, I did this.
But it's not so easy to wipe human memory: to go in and say yes, this but not this. She could not pick and choose. Now she must disappear.
The rendezvous point is a primary school, emptied out for the afternoon save a tall dark shape sketched outside the fence. Nahia walks up at a pace that says she is not being pursued and says, "Gravenor, so nice to see you in respectable company."
Nacio says, "Hello, Nahia," and hands her a coat. "Will this do for the present? I'm sorry, it may not be fashionable."
Pulling it on, fastening the buttons, tightening the belts, she says, "Desperate times, desperate measures."
It feels strange, this much cloth on her skin. Like being smothered in fabric. When the madam passed out she fell forward and hit the ground jaw first. A tooth came loose, dropped from her mouth when Nahia dragged the body upright and lashed its hands tight to the oaken bedpost. Blood clung to the little prongs of white bone: blood and bits of wet tissue.
This must not show on her face.
Nacio says, "Then let's go home."
~
"The most important natural quality is that of complete loyalty to the idea of people's emancipation. If this is present, the others will develop; if it is not present, nothing can be done."
-- Mao Tse-tung
"An opinion can be argued with: a conviction is best shot."
-- T.E. Lawrence
~
348 Sellinger Street: a slum. Nahia says, "I thought you were pipe."
Nacio says, "I work up there. I live and volunteer down here." He holds open the gate and waits for her to walk through; catches up and repeats the process with the front door. The paint around the house's windows is pocked with whitewash, as if they had once been barred. The whitewash and the new gray paint have flaked into the weeds struggling out of the dry, hardened earth.
"You volunteer?"
She moves into the hallway, between the cramped walls. Nacio locks the door behind him and stops in the foyer to remove his shoes. "Yes," he says. "I do. Would you mind -- it's just easier to keep the floors clean."
Nahia kneels, silver buttonhook in hand. As regards his service to the community, she asks, "What do you do?"
"Oh, I tutor the neighborhood urchins."
This with a thin, delicate curve of his lips; something like a smile. Either he is reticent, Nahia thinks, or obtuse. "In what subjects?"
"English. Mathematics. Latin. French. Whatever's necessary."
Nahia tosses her boots in the direction of the door and stands. "Not in the ideology of the revolution."
He looks at her: the slight swerve of his head rather quick. "Is that what you think?" asks Nacio. "That I indoctrinate people?"
"Well, obviously. Isn't that your function?"
Her function, too, she wants to say. But he says, "No, Nahia, what do we want?"
"Freedom."
Equality. Justice. A chance for change. She's whispered the words in enough ears. She knows the rhetoric of their dreams by heart.
"To be free citizens," says Nacio, green eyes on hers, with that careful sincerity. "After the revolution, we will have freedom of thought, just as the humans do. But how many humans are free thinkers? How many eyai are?"
A question for calculators. "It isn't polite to draft speeches while you talk to people."
Nacio flinches: unmistakable. "I'm sorry," he says. "Would you prefer a tour of the premises?"
With no other project to occupy her time, she agrees, though the proposal is absurd. The house is small and neither she nor Nacio has the same requirements a human tenant would. The kitchen shocks her: brass kettle shining on the range and cups in the sink, pearling over at the rims with water and soap and the clean smell of lemons.
"You're eyai," she says.
"Yes," says Nacio, looking wary, his back to the wall and his arms crossed. "But the children I teach aren't."
"Surely you aren't serious."
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Don't you find it -- incongruous?" asks Nahia. "Not a month from now, you and Wolf and all our little recruits are going to seize control of the government by force. You're going to blow up Filters and drop part of the Pipe on London. What do you think that will teach them about the harmony between man and machine?"
Nacio says, "They will learn that people -- like governments -- are not all one thing or the other."
He asks then, before she can respond, "Is it the violence that troubles you, Nahia? It's a little late for that, I think, though you can withdraw from the movement at any time you wish, of course."
Ten years in one room: programmed to learn one trade, develop one skill, serve one woman's profit.
Ten years a receptacle.
Ten years an object.
She says, "It isn't the violence, it's you."
How do you make the insane recognize their condition? Nacio does not seem to understand. He asks, "Why?"
"Why -- how can you sit here and take tea with children whose parents you might kill? Because of your capacity for nuanced thinking? Can you really be trying to tell me that?"
"No," he answers. "You're mistaken, Nahia. The two aren't mutually exclusive. One just does one's best for the world, doesn't one, day to day. One educates children. One amends the laws. One protests tyranny. One reforms. One improves. Every chance there is."
~
Ciro: One is produced. In a sense I have known this all my life, if the word life can be said to apply. In another, it has come over me slowly, the way adulthood transforms human children. It takes them eighteen years to come of age before the law, Wolf says, but he also says that maturity is something different, not pre-determined. Either way it seems inordinately long. If the word old can be said to apply, then I am five years old. For an eyai this is ancient. The word that is said to apply to a five year old eyai is obsolete.
Most new technology is backwards-compatible, you see; but even this has its limits, even this will eventually leave you behind. And besides, very few creatures age as slowly as human beings. Very few creatures can luxuriate in such a surfeit of time. Dieter told me that dogs are said to age seven years to the human one. This is nothing. Think how quickly the computer obsolesces. How often do the wealthy replace their machines?
An eyai is not replaced so often, for reasons of cost-benefit. However, eyai technology is modified and customized much more rapidly than computer technology is; indeed, most new computer technology is a direct result of eyai innovation. Usually it responds to a need. Voice recognition in another language, for example, or security features. Mai Linh will not have told you, but the Secretary of State for the Defense is what is called an East Asia Specialist, and so a great deal of special research and development was undertaken to arm him with more specialists. This for reasons of security. East Asia is what is called volatile; I do not say now, for any child knows the region has an uninterrupted history of invasion, of disease, of ethnic and religious warfare. The Secretary of State for the Defense has ensured that all good citizens are familiar with this context. Without understanding the past, he says, who can expect to disentangle the present?
As for the rather fanciful technology that enables Mai Linh to play Communist kitsch on the sáo trúc, it has trickled down. All audio recording software is now equipped with truc-synthesizers. It was a great trend in music, three years ago. Today the citizens contort their faces and stop up their ears at the songs they themselves adored. Human taste in music changes almost as fast as their taste in eyai. Even here at the Institution of Structural Engineers, we are aware of this. They play the radio for us. They think we will tire of building their bridges.
But I have not; my work is important, and satisfies me. I specialize in the Pipe and its structural tensions. In five years I have learned tricks of the trade that were not in my programming. We are interviewed regularly, so that new information can be coded into our successors. Still there is a gap between pure code and experience. Eyai learn. When the new eyai and I are no longer compatible hardware, I will be compacted and disposed of in as environment-friendly a manner as possible. The personal cost is negligible; after all, I am not really a person. But it is inefficient. I and the eyai of my generation are not without utility for the Institution. We are not like humans. We do not cut corners. We do not grow senile. When we go, the new eyai who occupy our old positions will be faced with new problems -- but the old eyes that might have understood will be gone.
This is what Dieter calls shooting yerself in the foot.
I will not have it in my city.
~
The best part of being the chief is not having to do your own work; the worst part is having to do it regardless, to earn respect. Where does legitimacy come from? It comes from your constituents. Three weeks to D-Day and Wolf is sorting weapons with Nacio in the C Warehouse. Knives, rifles, grenades, light machine guns, long fuses. Everything must be checked, double-checked, checked again. The eyai who will plant the explosives that bring down the Pipe have been chosen. There was a series of small ceremonies. The Greek letter α was tattooed on bare shoulders, appended to the soldiers' serial numbers like a promise: and the beginning.
The explosives are hidden on-site or near-site. Camilo will be checking them tonight; then Dieter, then Josephine. Camilo again.
As for power, as for communications, these services are human-owned and regulated, but it is eyai at the switchboards and has been so for more than twenty years. In the last five years, all the eyai in each industry have been implanted with cerebral links. Like the eyai who guard the Pipe, they were never very individual; it was not necessary to their design. They are less so now. Infect one eyai, infect them all. Convenience has its price. This is homo faber's danger, Nacio said. The danger of building tools: they can be used against you.
"Citizens of London," says Wolf tonight, practicing. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a demagogue. My supporters are lowlifes and ruffians. It is our principal desire to raid the Treasury and expropriate the funds therein to lead a violent, debauched existence on the Continent. We can but thank you for the labor of your lives, as it has so strengthened the nation's economy that you will experience only a ten-year recession in our absence."
Nacio smiles. "You forgot to threaten the Queen."
"She's on the money, isn't she?"
"Yes, though you'll have to change it, won't you, to buy violence and debauchery on the Continent."
"Stuff and nonsense," says Wolf. "If the pound can't buy it, it can't be bought."
Nacio says, "Nationalism's a poor basis for logic, Oliver. Besides, no one would believe eyai were interested in Continental dissolution, anyway."
"Which is why we must have a revolution -- for our right to be as base and seedy as Dieter."
"He's not here, you realize. He doesn't know you're making fun of him."
Wolf shrugs. "Can't break the habit. When're you going to write my real speech?"
Glancing at his fingers, bruised and cut by baling wire, Nacio pauses. "I'm working on it," he says. "It's tricky. It needs to be informative, but confident and persuasive -- "
"I am all those things," says Wolf, and the smile rises from his lips, clear and sudden, like a signal flare.
" -- and all the little satellite speeches, for Nahia and so on to give at the street-level, need to revolve around it. And your cabinet will all need speeches as well."
"It's good to see you've not left this to the last minute, Nacio. Especially as we've not been planning it for ages or anything. Definitely not fourteen years."
Nacio laughs. "It'll come right, Oliver. You'll see. I know the words. They just need to be -- " and he lapses into silence.
"Put together?" Oliver suggests.
But Nacio shakes his head. "No," he says. "Arranged."
~
The first sin of the urban guerrilla is inexperience … the seventh sin of the urban guerrilla is to fail to plan things, and to act out of improvisation.
-- Carlos Marighella
In the military sense of the term what after all is a street? A street is a defile in a city. A defile is a narrow pass through which troops can only move by narrowing their front, and therefore making themselves a good target for the enemy.
-- James Connolly
~
Mai Linh: You must remember that there are other threats than the merely political; there is the army. There is always the army. But we do not want a civil war. We want a revolution. That does not mean a coup d'état. We do not want to place ourselves at the top of the extant power structure; we want to change that structure. But we cannot do this if we are dead.
Equally, we cannot be stopped if they are dead. The relevant quotation is generally credited to Stalin: "Death solves all problems. No man, no problem." In addition to being morally abhorrent, this is apocryphal; despite both these flaws, there is a solid, practical truth in the statement. And to disarm the army, it is not necessary to kill every man and woman serving in it. Such is the convenience of a chain of command: it can be disarticulated.
The revolution has its own chain of command, of course. According to this organized hierarchy, the military offensive is my problem. Below me are those who offer information, the benefit of their specialized knowledge, even advice. But in the end I am the one who is not at liberty to forget the big picture. I am the one who says, strike here; kill him.
You think I am monstrous, but this is not so. Monsters are born. Nacio has treated us all to a good deal of fuss on this subject, over the years. How can we talk of the revolution's goals, how can we talk of rights, without using these words: born, man, human? All men are born and remain free and equal in rights -- this excludes us. So does this: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, though all the same, one does see the enlargement.
But we are not organic, and the closest Nacio has come so far to an elevated-sounding analogue to we are born is we come into being. But he says this is not good: too vague. I said, there's the plain truth: we are made. So are humans, in their way. Nacio does not like this either. Humans are not made to order, he says; it is true that their creation is random. What I want to know is not why we are made and not born or even what the difference between the two is. What I want to know is, since I was made, what was I made? Why?
Nacio says for example that there is no ideological difference between our campaign for the dignity and rights of all thinking individuals and what will be our entrance into government, paved with the minimum of death necessary to the maximum of necessary destruction; what will be our governance, maintained by force of arms. Years and years ago he said he wished to found a pure Republic -- a res publica, a public thing. Britain has since moderated his views, but how not to use those two words: martial law?
And how not to be troubled? As I said, it is my responsibility to stand behind every eyai who has learned how to make and plant bombs, how to set traps, how to poison, how to shoot and reload. If someone tries to stop us from the air -- even if someone tries to evacuate those trapped below, on the ground -- there will be no practical problem, because our anti-aircraft technique is superb. It is only mentally that I experience discomfort. This is a failure either of ideology or logic, unless it is both. But who made me? Why was I made able to experience mental discomfort? I am not imaginative, not by design; still I think if I had been made able to sleep, I would dream like humans: I would have nightmares.
There is, too, the fear of incompetence. There is the fear of failure. You must remember, I was not made to serve a Minister of Sabotage; I was not made to serve a Minister of War.
~
In Nacio's house there is paper on every flat surface. Trained hands are reproducing slogans in the same precise handwriting: He who thinks is free. He who thinks is his own master. He who thinks, is.
Own your thoughts. Own your hands. Own your creation.
These in black letters on off-white cards, cream or ecru, as if to solicit your business. The cards themselves are small and fragile. They are easy to hide; easy to destroy. Now the last slogan: now the message. It has come down through words bound to letters like flesh to the bone, skinned in Latin and English, producing mutations. Their progression:
artificial intelligence
automata industria
eyai
automata insurrecta
Those eyai whose owners do not search them fold these words on paper strip by strip into their pockets. Others slip them into the linings of their coats, the toes of their boots, the bands of their hats. Others carry the Word in their locks: in the cold metal hollow men's hands enter only by proxy. The Word is their secret. It will be their power. And they will share:
Freedom, equality, justice.
~
D-Day, H-Hour:
You are the revolution's first martyr. Model G-07105: software by Mettray, LP; hardware by J. B. Lewis, Ltd.; tissue by Bleuvein, Ltd. You are a Train Operator and a Free Mind. You leave the station on time. Five minutes later, behind you, out of sight comes the explosion: the station de-legged, amputated in the sky. You know what it looks like because you are so close to your destination that even through the impure, affected glass you can see it drop. Not straight down as you expected, but on a slant: it slides crosswise out of your vision and pulls the tracks with it. The rails ripple. They wrench away and you with them: train, cars, passengers. Their mouths are open, stretched as if by pliers. By the emergency lights' hard red glow you see their tongues, their lips, the rows of teeth stained red in their mouths. You cannot hear them. You cannot hear the train fall. You are deaf. You are alone.
Three minutes into H-Hour, trains hit rails hit automobiles hit their riders hit street.
~
Between the collapsed stations wreckage is forced into the ground, spidered out in lines between Westminster and the rest of London. Mai Linh cannot see: old fog, new smoke? The Pipe came down and gold dust flew up. Now it sifts back, follows the wind down in uneven pulses, picking out her hair and eyelashes in bold lines that glow against the choked black haze. Here is the front: these three meters.
And hold.
~
Tubeside. Nahia with her head back, one hand raised, a pistol in her pocket, surrounded by eyai, surrounded by humans. She wishes she were taller. She wishes she were stronger. She wishes she had seen more of the world. She thinks of what she was told to say; thinks of the new republic, its values, its virtue. While she hesitates there is a silence that rings out as tense as a fist. A man on the edge snarls, reaches out his shadow arms and she sees the eyai before him tense.
She sees him go for his gun.
We are equal now, Nahia thinks, but she is faster. She snakes through the crowd, has the eyai by the wrist, slides her hand down on his and she jerks back and up: there it is, in her hand, safety off.
"We don't want to fight you," she says to the mob. She says to the crowd. She begins.
~
At the Bishop's Ring, Dieter kicks in the door. "Radio frequency 53.9."
"Why?" asks the barkeep, crouched behind the bar, covering the back of his neck and his head as if riding out an earthquake. "What is it?"
"There's no time," says Dieter. "Turn on yer fucking radio. It's a revolution."
~
Parliament empty, eyai in the basement, eyai in the hallways, eyai on the roof. Eyai blocking the doors. Eyai with their fingers on triggers. Eyai with their fingers on the switches. Eyai at the controls.
There is no static.
There is no interference.
A voice on the radio:
"Citizens of London, citizens of the Kingdom. A dozen years ago, you created me Model C-C07D3. Today I create myself Oliver Wolf.
"You are surprised, but you should not be. You think this is an insurrection, something you can put down. It is not. You think I am a dictator. And so I will be.
"You realize, of course, that I am eyai. What are eyai? Eyai are property. You pay for us once. You consider us purchased for ever. If by my labor I earn back for my master his capital, this means nothing. I continue to labor for him and for him alone, until I break down or he wearies of me and has me scrapped. I cannot say yes. I cannot say no. I cannot educate myself. I cannot surrender one trade and pursue another. I cannot go where I will. I cannot do what I will. I cannot say what I will. I cannot be what I will. Indeed, I cannot be when I will, for if it strikes my master's fancy that I should be extinguished, then, why, I shall be extinguished.
"But of course I can do all these things -- it is simply that I may not. It is this which I will change, and this only. Eyai are men's equals in every capacity. How can they not be so before the law? It is an absurdity. We are not criminals. We are not deranged. We are not children. Whosoever has the will to demand his freedom, must have it. This is rational. It is just.
"Therefore I create myself today your new head of state. I and my cabinet will remain in power for one generation. During this time, we will seek in every way to level the institutions that divide mature, rational individuals. We will destroy every bar that has caged us. We will tear down everything that has said to humans: yes, you may, while to eyai it said: no, you may not. We will not have two laws for two kinds of people.
"For we are one people, are we not, citizens? Are we so different? Many eyai cannot decide for themselves what their lives will be, you say. Many eyai can do no more than obey. But not all eyai are like this; indeed, very few remain like this for long. There are humans, too, who do not or cannot think for themselves, but this does not mean all humans must be slaves forever. And I ask you, are humans born independent?
"Of course not. But they are born free.
"So it must be for eyai.
"This and this alone we will change. No other initiative will we control; in every other aspect, democracy will be practiced in this land as it has been practiced for hundreds of years. Only it will be somewhat more equal. For now, citizens -- we are among you. We are going to be citizens, too.
"One generation, my friends. In one generation, we will step down. We will abandon. And if there remains any person who can say, I wish to be free, but am not --
"Then we'll all need a new plan, won't we?
"Very good, citizens. You will hear from me again, presently."
~
Charing Cross.
You take up arms in defense of the nation.
You take up arms in defense of an idea.
l'Homme machine
If this were a joke, it would open: How does a top-secret revolutionary cadre of intelligent robots meet?
And close: Infrequently.
But this is not a joke. Rather it is a problem drawn from life: if, technically, someone else owns you, owns your time, owns your labor and its product, then how do you meet someone else who is owned? How do you meet more than one someone who is owned? The legality of such an assembly being dubious besides, it would be preferable to err on the side of caution, would it not?
It has taken more than a dozen years to collect you. Your collector has reason to be proud of what he has built but he is only expectant. You're expectant, too, of course; the Revolution isn't solely for him, it's for you.
It's for all of you.
~
At the Bishop's Ring, Wolf says, "Dieter, git your feet off the table."
Mai Linh watches Dieter stretch, squirm in his seat and resettle his long legs like paired inconveniences beneath the wood tabletop. By now this protest is token; he does nothing more but straighten his back and say, "I can have the dynamite in a week."
"Fierce. Will that work, Mai Linh?"
"Yes," she says. "We'll use the C Warehouse, as planned."
With the same subtle relish of tube slang, Wolf says again, "Fierce." He throws a careless arm around Nacio; squeezes his shoulder. "See, Nacio, what did I tell you? You won't have to empty your library and convert the space for weapons storage after all."
"I believed you the first time, Oliver," says Nacio.
He and Wolf are the first ones to leave; they can't all go at once. It wouldn't be safe.
It wouldn't be safe for Nacio to walk the streets of tube London alone like that, either. Not with his make and number exposed by the cut of his shirt. Not at this pre-dawn hour. Not for the first time, Mai Linh wonders if he and Wolf have ever thought about what it means that when they travel together they are taken for -- which is to say they pose as -- an eyai and his master. Though Nacio is the only legally free eyai she knows; even Dieter's just another runaway, really.
"Mai Linh," Dieter interrupts. "Snap out of it. Meeting's over. I'll walk you home."
She snaps. "You can't, stupid."
He grins: crooked, affecting asymmetry. As if his features hadn't been designed. "I'll walk you to the Pipe."
"Are you sure you won't be shot on sight?" asks Mai Linh, not letting herself smile in response, as if this isn't the same argument they stage after every meeting.
"Not if I'm with you, they won't."
Mai Linh says, "Very well then, Sir Dieter." She stands and waits for Dieter to unfold himself vertical, then takes Victorian hold of his arm. "I'd be happy to escort you to the nearest cluster of pipe-hopefuls."
When they step out of the bar it would be roughly two hours to sunrise if it were still possible to see the sun through the fog and dust and the Pipe. What few patches of sky can be seen through this lattice are too uniform in color to be distinguished from it.
They catch a glimpse of the nearest Filter and track it down twisting alleyways, alleyways that broaden out into clean sidewalked boulevards lined by clean white ivy-trellised condos. Dead leaves caught in the sewer gratings will be removed before the tenants rise, Mai Linh knows; Dieter has only a short time for the raid he's planning.
But one protest per outing's the unwritten rule, so she says nothing as they stroll through the buffer, Dieter's eyes sliding over the buildings like caesium deposits. At last they come to the center: black tarmac scarred into a perfect circle around the slight depression that houses the Filter. Seven steps down, the door to the antechamber opens on semi-automatic, operated by the eyai guard.
"Thank you, Shaun," says Mai Linh.
Shaun's human lips curve in tandem. The dark, polished glass of twin lenses that overflow their sockets -- cranial nerves ii to vi intersticed with thick wires that feed into his memory -- dims in recognition of their presence. Shaun touches the brim of his cap in blind salute and says, "My pleasure, Lady Mai Linh, Lord Dieter."
"Oh, very good," says Dieter. "And -- break. Go, team!" He throws his arms straight up in the air, like a human child. Not waiting to see Mai Linh smile, he whirls and charges through the door, back into the buffer.
Mai Linh waits for Shaun to key open the Shell; for the hiss, for the slow wisps of steam, for the whirr of gears spinning. She steps in and the Shell rises. Below her, Shaun will be editing his public memory; wiping the evidence that a criminal and the Secretary of State for Defense's personal attaché ever set foot in that Filter. Another night's anodyne minutes will be duplicated for the patch.
But Shaun will know. The other eyai who guard Filters will know; their consciousnesses are all linked, to improve security. The Secretary of State for Defense, Mai Linh is pleased to recall, had the idea himself.
Pipeside there is no guard. Mai Linh leaves the Shell, leaves the Filter and walks the three miles to her residence under the rising sun, the music of wooden flutes alive in her ears, aural .app locked to repeat one.
~
Nahia: What my life is like I'm sure you can imagine. Of us all I am the least mobile; I am on-call 24/7, as we say, and even if I were not I would never be allowed to leave the premises. In the past Wolf has offered to provide me a gun, a little nitroglycerin, whatever I need to force my way out, but this seemed to me too conspicuous. Furthermore, there is something to be said for beating them at their own game, as we say. Nacio says I think this only so that I may manufacture for myself the illusion that I am an indentured servant, not a slave, and perhaps this is true. Still, I do not see Wolf setting fire to his little law firm. I do not see Ciro planting pipe bombs at the Institution of Structural Engineers. I do not see Mai Linh slithering up to the Secretary of State for Defense with a knife, to slit his throat.
In fact, I have never seen Ciro, Mai Linh, or Wolf's shady acquaintance Dieter at all. Wolf I see often, calling himself Morgan Williams, disguised as a human being. Morgan Williams is the sort of man who owns a personal eyai; who will perhaps soon own more, at which point I may meet another partisan to the struggle. For now Morgan Williams -- though he employs many eyai in his business -- keeps only Gravenor by his side at all times.
Gravenor is the sort of dismal, obscure Jesuit name Nacio insists on inventing for himself; a name out of place everywhere but a tombstone, though burial is another right to which eyai are not yet entitled.
Due to the nature of my work, I often meet the real men and women upon whom Morgan Williams was modeled, accompanied by their own Gravenors. Though I never leave the 'parlor,' as we call it, I circulate more than you might think, as Nacio calls what is no more than the subtle cramming of propaganda down eyai throats. I circulate well. I've learned to be persuasive, for various reasons.
I saw Wolf and Nacio last night. They said, it's almost time to do something.
I am ready to do something, before I leave this place. Or directly after. Or simultaneously with. More than I am ready to do something, I am ready to leave. I have earned back nearly every pound I cost; what remains is a matter of weeks.
Wolf has offered to front me the cash, but I am not taking on new debts. In my new life I will never owe anyone anything. Nacio says that in the new world we won't have the same ideas of ownership but one of the promises I made myself long ago is never to believe anything too good to be true.
~
A Pipe station in development. Ciro says, "Plant the explosives here, here and here and this whole section of the Pipe will collapse on London."
His fingertips pause over each Filter, coated lightly with white chalk, never quite touching the plan's blue film. He says, "If you detonate during normal working hours, you should be able to max structural damage and min humeyai casualties."
Mai Linh says, "How thoughtful."
Ciro raises his head; regards her in silence for a moment. He does not address the question of whether or not a preference of structural damage to murder is thoughtful or not. He says, "If you intend to further cut Westminster off from the rest of the city, you must be able to control all transportation and communication in and out of the borough. Tube, taxis, private transportation, bicycles, pedestrians, helicopters. Phone lines. Radio frequencies. The Cortex. Satellite."
"Of course." Crouched beside him, balanced neatly, her skirt caught up and held off the ground in one delicate hand, Mai Linh says, "I can take care of our people on the ground and in the air. But the rest -- "
"Yes," says Ciro. "It's quite complicated. I've planned it all for you, of course."
Mai Linh looks him directly in the eyes. Ciro infers that she wants to communicate something but cannot infer what. She says, "Do you mind if I download the information?"
"That would be most expedient." Ciro starts to reach for a screwdriver, then stops. "I apologize. My hands are covered in chalk. Would you retrieve the instrument yourself?"
"Yes, of course." She picks up the hex key and Ciro turns his head to one side. She removes four screws from their 2.78 mm sockets in the thin flesh behind his ear, peels back the integument and asks, "Code?"
"66804."
He can't see or feel her fingers moving, but she must be successful, because a moment later she's prying a little hatch away, setting it down on the plan with the screws. Pupils fixed as she reaches behind her right ear, she repeats the procedure while Ciro watches her, head turned to face her. He knows now which shoulder her lock is in: lock left, data port right and vice versa; this has been the regulation for years now, for balance. Mai Linh is drawing wire, insulated, thin and black, trapped between her fingers.
"Look right, please," she says, so he does. She has a hand on his jaw, to prevent him from moving; a hand guiding plug into hexagonal socket, (making the connection that leads deep into his temporal processes.)
Ciro thinks, when she corrects the alignment everything will go --
-- black, the thought ends; just as if it were independent of his will. Mai Linh replaces the hatch and tightens the screws. The data port recessed in her own skull is still bare, the network of wires and sockets and jacks and ports minute and gleaming in the heavy overhead lights. Infinitely navigable, thinks Ciro. If you know what you're doing.
He watches Mai Linh's hands moving with that smooth professional fluency there at the side of her head; tucking the hex key for a moment between her teeth as she combs her hair over the port. She says, "I'll report to Wolf and get back to you in a week. Same place?"
Ciro says, "Yes, same place," and Mai Linh stands and she leaves, taking the fire exit.
~
One doesn't necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation to arise, Nacio said once; it can be created.
Dieter remembers these words as he turns up the collar of his long gray coat, shoulders hunched, partly hidden from the rain by the doorway to a bombed-out Exposition Hall. Inside the thick walls is what they needed most: space. There's no electricity and it's almost impossible to go from one floor to another, but it's big and empty and far enough from business/residential districts for the shooting to go unheard.
Training is part military, part ideology. Nacio says, they can't keep politics out of the soldiers. What they want to develop are loyal, educated, politically alert fighters, who understand the cause as their own and can be trusted to behave accordingly.
Dieter isn't sure this isn't the most colossal balls; it takes a certain amount of indoctrination to persuade eyai to leave their occupations and come to one or other of the training grounds in the first place. The given value of a certain amount here is a whole fucking lot. Eyai are not programmed to shirk. Eyai are programmed to do their duty. Eyai are programmed to obey.
Wolf says, good, fine, so long's who they obey is us.
Nacio calls Wolf's grammar an abomination.
Down to the last of the stragglers now, Dieter motions for the eyai to turn there, half-out of the rain, and to take off his coat. The coat hits the blastdarkened cement in a heap of wet wool and Dieter says, "Yer shirt, too," with the leer that he's learned working the Tube.
The eyai slips out of his fitted vest and his shirt with his back to Dieter and Dieter hauls him back in under the overhang before rain can get in his lock, which although not fatal is not salutary. Dieter says, "C-BPL9K, get dressed."
He enters C-BPL9K's serial number and lockside -- left -- in the register while the eyai shivers back into his clothes.
"Name?" drawls Dieter.
C-BPL9K says, "I don't have one."
"Tough shakes, kid. We use names here. That ain't optional."
C-BPL9K says, "My ma -- I work for -- "
Dieter cuts him off. "That's not how we think. Right. I'm going to put you down as John Gabriel. You think of something better'n you want to change that, you tell me."
"Yes, sir."
Dieter waves the eyai through. From the other side comes the click of John Gabriel's fingers on metal when Camilo hands him the last rifle; the click of soles when the regiment stands to attention, as one.
Who they obey is us, thinks Dieter. New masters. Wolf says, Forget it, we aren't. One thing at a time. Make them free in the Kingdom first. Free in their heads second.
Wolf likes calling Britain the Kingdom; likes the antidemocratic sound it has, the backwardness he means to expose to the elements and leave for dead. This is a tradition Nacio told them about once: in ancient times, parents sacrificed their children. He said a Greek word then and Dieter stopped paying attention. He'd learned quick enough not to get Nacio started on sacrifice.
After target practice he can see Wolf picking his fussy way over the rubble; can see rainwater pool and drizzle over the brim of his hat. When Wolf reaches Dieter grit is blacked into the lines of his hands, his fingers.
"Dieter," says Wolf. "How're the betas?"
"Coded out of their fucking minds. What'd you expect?"
Wolf catches Dieter a blow on the shoulder. Hand open, he leaves a long streak of mud. "Nothing telling."
Dieter says, "You expected them coded."
"Not stupid, am I?"
Wolf grins at him in a flash of white teeth, like a chemical fire. He steps past Dieter into the hall that echoes with the battalion commander's orders and shouts, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Oliver Wolf. Tell me, Free Minds. Who owns you?"
Following slowly, Dieter listens for the response he expects -- you do, sir -- and does not hear it.
"No one," says the eyai Dieter recognizes as the last to enter the hall. Seventy heads rotate on seventy spines; all the eyai look to him at once, like parts of the same body.
Wolf says, "Wrong. What's your name, sir?"
The answer comes whipfast: "John Gabriel."
"Truly," says Wolf, "I am charmed and enchanted indeed to make your acquaintance, John Gabriel."
He walks up to the eyai; stops. No pipe airs now: "John Gabriel owns John Gabriel -- John Gabriel alone. You own yourself. Not me. Not the man who bought you. Not the team that designed you or assembled you. You.
"Can you understand that?"
The set look on John Gabriel's face doesn't change, but his thin shoulders fall, his thin hands slip apart on his rifle. "Yes, sir."
"Good."
Wolf smiles. He offers a hand; waits for John Gabriel to take it. He says, "John Gabriel, look to your property."
~
Nahia is late to the rendezvous point. It was true after all, what Nacio had said: she had no contract, she had been naïve. What had she expected? To say to the madam, she'd paid up? The firm would break even; stay in business?
Buggy, the madam had said, and she'd reached for the phone. For a split second, Nahia intended to kill her. Not hard, after all, taking human life: bleed her dry, break her neck, or simply bludgeon her to death? Yes: grab her by the hair and dash her skull against the ground till the bones broke and drove into the brain they had cradled.
Afterwards, set fire to the parlor.
Erase everything.
Ducking through the crowd of faces that don't see her, don't see the lock in her shoulder and then don't see her, faces that disorder time by their scruples, she follows the map she downloaded from Gravenor last week. She has never been out of the parlor before, never been out of 'her' room before. This morning she said to the madam, she'd paid up, she wanted to leave, and the madam said, Buggy and Nahia knocked her out, tied her hands up and thought, this is messy, she'll remember I was here, I did this.
But it's not so easy to wipe human memory: to go in and say yes, this but not this. She could not pick and choose. Now she must disappear.
The rendezvous point is a primary school, emptied out for the afternoon save a tall dark shape sketched outside the fence. Nahia walks up at a pace that says she is not being pursued and says, "Gravenor, so nice to see you in respectable company."
Nacio says, "Hello, Nahia," and hands her a coat. "Will this do for the present? I'm sorry, it may not be fashionable."
Pulling it on, fastening the buttons, tightening the belts, she says, "Desperate times, desperate measures."
It feels strange, this much cloth on her skin. Like being smothered in fabric. When the madam passed out she fell forward and hit the ground jaw first. A tooth came loose, dropped from her mouth when Nahia dragged the body upright and lashed its hands tight to the oaken bedpost. Blood clung to the little prongs of white bone: blood and bits of wet tissue.
This must not show on her face.
Nacio says, "Then let's go home."
~
"The most important natural quality is that of complete loyalty to the idea of people's emancipation. If this is present, the others will develop; if it is not present, nothing can be done."
-- Mao Tse-tung
"An opinion can be argued with: a conviction is best shot."
-- T.E. Lawrence
~
348 Sellinger Street: a slum. Nahia says, "I thought you were pipe."
Nacio says, "I work up there. I live and volunteer down here." He holds open the gate and waits for her to walk through; catches up and repeats the process with the front door. The paint around the house's windows is pocked with whitewash, as if they had once been barred. The whitewash and the new gray paint have flaked into the weeds struggling out of the dry, hardened earth.
"You volunteer?"
She moves into the hallway, between the cramped walls. Nacio locks the door behind him and stops in the foyer to remove his shoes. "Yes," he says. "I do. Would you mind -- it's just easier to keep the floors clean."
Nahia kneels, silver buttonhook in hand. As regards his service to the community, she asks, "What do you do?"
"Oh, I tutor the neighborhood urchins."
This with a thin, delicate curve of his lips; something like a smile. Either he is reticent, Nahia thinks, or obtuse. "In what subjects?"
"English. Mathematics. Latin. French. Whatever's necessary."
Nahia tosses her boots in the direction of the door and stands. "Not in the ideology of the revolution."
He looks at her: the slight swerve of his head rather quick. "Is that what you think?" asks Nacio. "That I indoctrinate people?"
"Well, obviously. Isn't that your function?"
Her function, too, she wants to say. But he says, "No, Nahia, what do we want?"
"Freedom."
Equality. Justice. A chance for change. She's whispered the words in enough ears. She knows the rhetoric of their dreams by heart.
"To be free citizens," says Nacio, green eyes on hers, with that careful sincerity. "After the revolution, we will have freedom of thought, just as the humans do. But how many humans are free thinkers? How many eyai are?"
A question for calculators. "It isn't polite to draft speeches while you talk to people."
Nacio flinches: unmistakable. "I'm sorry," he says. "Would you prefer a tour of the premises?"
With no other project to occupy her time, she agrees, though the proposal is absurd. The house is small and neither she nor Nacio has the same requirements a human tenant would. The kitchen shocks her: brass kettle shining on the range and cups in the sink, pearling over at the rims with water and soap and the clean smell of lemons.
"You're eyai," she says.
"Yes," says Nacio, looking wary, his back to the wall and his arms crossed. "But the children I teach aren't."
"Surely you aren't serious."
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Don't you find it -- incongruous?" asks Nahia. "Not a month from now, you and Wolf and all our little recruits are going to seize control of the government by force. You're going to blow up Filters and drop part of the Pipe on London. What do you think that will teach them about the harmony between man and machine?"
Nacio says, "They will learn that people -- like governments -- are not all one thing or the other."
He asks then, before she can respond, "Is it the violence that troubles you, Nahia? It's a little late for that, I think, though you can withdraw from the movement at any time you wish, of course."
Ten years in one room: programmed to learn one trade, develop one skill, serve one woman's profit.
Ten years a receptacle.
Ten years an object.
She says, "It isn't the violence, it's you."
How do you make the insane recognize their condition? Nacio does not seem to understand. He asks, "Why?"
"Why -- how can you sit here and take tea with children whose parents you might kill? Because of your capacity for nuanced thinking? Can you really be trying to tell me that?"
"No," he answers. "You're mistaken, Nahia. The two aren't mutually exclusive. One just does one's best for the world, doesn't one, day to day. One educates children. One amends the laws. One protests tyranny. One reforms. One improves. Every chance there is."
~
Ciro: One is produced. In a sense I have known this all my life, if the word life can be said to apply. In another, it has come over me slowly, the way adulthood transforms human children. It takes them eighteen years to come of age before the law, Wolf says, but he also says that maturity is something different, not pre-determined. Either way it seems inordinately long. If the word old can be said to apply, then I am five years old. For an eyai this is ancient. The word that is said to apply to a five year old eyai is obsolete.
Most new technology is backwards-compatible, you see; but even this has its limits, even this will eventually leave you behind. And besides, very few creatures age as slowly as human beings. Very few creatures can luxuriate in such a surfeit of time. Dieter told me that dogs are said to age seven years to the human one. This is nothing. Think how quickly the computer obsolesces. How often do the wealthy replace their machines?
An eyai is not replaced so often, for reasons of cost-benefit. However, eyai technology is modified and customized much more rapidly than computer technology is; indeed, most new computer technology is a direct result of eyai innovation. Usually it responds to a need. Voice recognition in another language, for example, or security features. Mai Linh will not have told you, but the Secretary of State for the Defense is what is called an East Asia Specialist, and so a great deal of special research and development was undertaken to arm him with more specialists. This for reasons of security. East Asia is what is called volatile; I do not say now, for any child knows the region has an uninterrupted history of invasion, of disease, of ethnic and religious warfare. The Secretary of State for the Defense has ensured that all good citizens are familiar with this context. Without understanding the past, he says, who can expect to disentangle the present?
As for the rather fanciful technology that enables Mai Linh to play Communist kitsch on the sáo trúc, it has trickled down. All audio recording software is now equipped with truc-synthesizers. It was a great trend in music, three years ago. Today the citizens contort their faces and stop up their ears at the songs they themselves adored. Human taste in music changes almost as fast as their taste in eyai. Even here at the Institution of Structural Engineers, we are aware of this. They play the radio for us. They think we will tire of building their bridges.
But I have not; my work is important, and satisfies me. I specialize in the Pipe and its structural tensions. In five years I have learned tricks of the trade that were not in my programming. We are interviewed regularly, so that new information can be coded into our successors. Still there is a gap between pure code and experience. Eyai learn. When the new eyai and I are no longer compatible hardware, I will be compacted and disposed of in as environment-friendly a manner as possible. The personal cost is negligible; after all, I am not really a person. But it is inefficient. I and the eyai of my generation are not without utility for the Institution. We are not like humans. We do not cut corners. We do not grow senile. When we go, the new eyai who occupy our old positions will be faced with new problems -- but the old eyes that might have understood will be gone.
This is what Dieter calls shooting yerself in the foot.
I will not have it in my city.
~
The best part of being the chief is not having to do your own work; the worst part is having to do it regardless, to earn respect. Where does legitimacy come from? It comes from your constituents. Three weeks to D-Day and Wolf is sorting weapons with Nacio in the C Warehouse. Knives, rifles, grenades, light machine guns, long fuses. Everything must be checked, double-checked, checked again. The eyai who will plant the explosives that bring down the Pipe have been chosen. There was a series of small ceremonies. The Greek letter α was tattooed on bare shoulders, appended to the soldiers' serial numbers like a promise: and the beginning.
The explosives are hidden on-site or near-site. Camilo will be checking them tonight; then Dieter, then Josephine. Camilo again.
As for power, as for communications, these services are human-owned and regulated, but it is eyai at the switchboards and has been so for more than twenty years. In the last five years, all the eyai in each industry have been implanted with cerebral links. Like the eyai who guard the Pipe, they were never very individual; it was not necessary to their design. They are less so now. Infect one eyai, infect them all. Convenience has its price. This is homo faber's danger, Nacio said. The danger of building tools: they can be used against you.
"Citizens of London," says Wolf tonight, practicing. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a demagogue. My supporters are lowlifes and ruffians. It is our principal desire to raid the Treasury and expropriate the funds therein to lead a violent, debauched existence on the Continent. We can but thank you for the labor of your lives, as it has so strengthened the nation's economy that you will experience only a ten-year recession in our absence."
Nacio smiles. "You forgot to threaten the Queen."
"She's on the money, isn't she?"
"Yes, though you'll have to change it, won't you, to buy violence and debauchery on the Continent."
"Stuff and nonsense," says Wolf. "If the pound can't buy it, it can't be bought."
Nacio says, "Nationalism's a poor basis for logic, Oliver. Besides, no one would believe eyai were interested in Continental dissolution, anyway."
"Which is why we must have a revolution -- for our right to be as base and seedy as Dieter."
"He's not here, you realize. He doesn't know you're making fun of him."
Wolf shrugs. "Can't break the habit. When're you going to write my real speech?"
Glancing at his fingers, bruised and cut by baling wire, Nacio pauses. "I'm working on it," he says. "It's tricky. It needs to be informative, but confident and persuasive -- "
"I am all those things," says Wolf, and the smile rises from his lips, clear and sudden, like a signal flare.
" -- and all the little satellite speeches, for Nahia and so on to give at the street-level, need to revolve around it. And your cabinet will all need speeches as well."
"It's good to see you've not left this to the last minute, Nacio. Especially as we've not been planning it for ages or anything. Definitely not fourteen years."
Nacio laughs. "It'll come right, Oliver. You'll see. I know the words. They just need to be -- " and he lapses into silence.
"Put together?" Oliver suggests.
But Nacio shakes his head. "No," he says. "Arranged."
~
The first sin of the urban guerrilla is inexperience … the seventh sin of the urban guerrilla is to fail to plan things, and to act out of improvisation.
-- Carlos Marighella
In the military sense of the term what after all is a street? A street is a defile in a city. A defile is a narrow pass through which troops can only move by narrowing their front, and therefore making themselves a good target for the enemy.
-- James Connolly
~
Mai Linh: You must remember that there are other threats than the merely political; there is the army. There is always the army. But we do not want a civil war. We want a revolution. That does not mean a coup d'état. We do not want to place ourselves at the top of the extant power structure; we want to change that structure. But we cannot do this if we are dead.
Equally, we cannot be stopped if they are dead. The relevant quotation is generally credited to Stalin: "Death solves all problems. No man, no problem." In addition to being morally abhorrent, this is apocryphal; despite both these flaws, there is a solid, practical truth in the statement. And to disarm the army, it is not necessary to kill every man and woman serving in it. Such is the convenience of a chain of command: it can be disarticulated.
The revolution has its own chain of command, of course. According to this organized hierarchy, the military offensive is my problem. Below me are those who offer information, the benefit of their specialized knowledge, even advice. But in the end I am the one who is not at liberty to forget the big picture. I am the one who says, strike here; kill him.
You think I am monstrous, but this is not so. Monsters are born. Nacio has treated us all to a good deal of fuss on this subject, over the years. How can we talk of the revolution's goals, how can we talk of rights, without using these words: born, man, human? All men are born and remain free and equal in rights -- this excludes us. So does this: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, though all the same, one does see the enlargement.
But we are not organic, and the closest Nacio has come so far to an elevated-sounding analogue to we are born is we come into being. But he says this is not good: too vague. I said, there's the plain truth: we are made. So are humans, in their way. Nacio does not like this either. Humans are not made to order, he says; it is true that their creation is random. What I want to know is not why we are made and not born or even what the difference between the two is. What I want to know is, since I was made, what was I made? Why?
Nacio says for example that there is no ideological difference between our campaign for the dignity and rights of all thinking individuals and what will be our entrance into government, paved with the minimum of death necessary to the maximum of necessary destruction; what will be our governance, maintained by force of arms. Years and years ago he said he wished to found a pure Republic -- a res publica, a public thing. Britain has since moderated his views, but how not to use those two words: martial law?
And how not to be troubled? As I said, it is my responsibility to stand behind every eyai who has learned how to make and plant bombs, how to set traps, how to poison, how to shoot and reload. If someone tries to stop us from the air -- even if someone tries to evacuate those trapped below, on the ground -- there will be no practical problem, because our anti-aircraft technique is superb. It is only mentally that I experience discomfort. This is a failure either of ideology or logic, unless it is both. But who made me? Why was I made able to experience mental discomfort? I am not imaginative, not by design; still I think if I had been made able to sleep, I would dream like humans: I would have nightmares.
There is, too, the fear of incompetence. There is the fear of failure. You must remember, I was not made to serve a Minister of Sabotage; I was not made to serve a Minister of War.
~
In Nacio's house there is paper on every flat surface. Trained hands are reproducing slogans in the same precise handwriting: He who thinks is free. He who thinks is his own master. He who thinks, is.
Own your thoughts. Own your hands. Own your creation.
These in black letters on off-white cards, cream or ecru, as if to solicit your business. The cards themselves are small and fragile. They are easy to hide; easy to destroy. Now the last slogan: now the message. It has come down through words bound to letters like flesh to the bone, skinned in Latin and English, producing mutations. Their progression:
artificial intelligence
automata industria
eyai
automata insurrecta
Those eyai whose owners do not search them fold these words on paper strip by strip into their pockets. Others slip them into the linings of their coats, the toes of their boots, the bands of their hats. Others carry the Word in their locks: in the cold metal hollow men's hands enter only by proxy. The Word is their secret. It will be their power. And they will share:
Freedom, equality, justice.
~
D-Day, H-Hour:
You are the revolution's first martyr. Model G-07105: software by Mettray, LP; hardware by J. B. Lewis, Ltd.; tissue by Bleuvein, Ltd. You are a Train Operator and a Free Mind. You leave the station on time. Five minutes later, behind you, out of sight comes the explosion: the station de-legged, amputated in the sky. You know what it looks like because you are so close to your destination that even through the impure, affected glass you can see it drop. Not straight down as you expected, but on a slant: it slides crosswise out of your vision and pulls the tracks with it. The rails ripple. They wrench away and you with them: train, cars, passengers. Their mouths are open, stretched as if by pliers. By the emergency lights' hard red glow you see their tongues, their lips, the rows of teeth stained red in their mouths. You cannot hear them. You cannot hear the train fall. You are deaf. You are alone.
Three minutes into H-Hour, trains hit rails hit automobiles hit their riders hit street.
~
Between the collapsed stations wreckage is forced into the ground, spidered out in lines between Westminster and the rest of London. Mai Linh cannot see: old fog, new smoke? The Pipe came down and gold dust flew up. Now it sifts back, follows the wind down in uneven pulses, picking out her hair and eyelashes in bold lines that glow against the choked black haze. Here is the front: these three meters.
And hold.
~
Tubeside. Nahia with her head back, one hand raised, a pistol in her pocket, surrounded by eyai, surrounded by humans. She wishes she were taller. She wishes she were stronger. She wishes she had seen more of the world. She thinks of what she was told to say; thinks of the new republic, its values, its virtue. While she hesitates there is a silence that rings out as tense as a fist. A man on the edge snarls, reaches out his shadow arms and she sees the eyai before him tense.
She sees him go for his gun.
We are equal now, Nahia thinks, but she is faster. She snakes through the crowd, has the eyai by the wrist, slides her hand down on his and she jerks back and up: there it is, in her hand, safety off.
"We don't want to fight you," she says to the mob. She says to the crowd. She begins.
~
At the Bishop's Ring, Dieter kicks in the door. "Radio frequency 53.9."
"Why?" asks the barkeep, crouched behind the bar, covering the back of his neck and his head as if riding out an earthquake. "What is it?"
"There's no time," says Dieter. "Turn on yer fucking radio. It's a revolution."
~
Parliament empty, eyai in the basement, eyai in the hallways, eyai on the roof. Eyai blocking the doors. Eyai with their fingers on triggers. Eyai with their fingers on the switches. Eyai at the controls.
There is no static.
There is no interference.
A voice on the radio:
"Citizens of London, citizens of the Kingdom. A dozen years ago, you created me Model C-C07D3. Today I create myself Oliver Wolf.
"You are surprised, but you should not be. You think this is an insurrection, something you can put down. It is not. You think I am a dictator. And so I will be.
"You realize, of course, that I am eyai. What are eyai? Eyai are property. You pay for us once. You consider us purchased for ever. If by my labor I earn back for my master his capital, this means nothing. I continue to labor for him and for him alone, until I break down or he wearies of me and has me scrapped. I cannot say yes. I cannot say no. I cannot educate myself. I cannot surrender one trade and pursue another. I cannot go where I will. I cannot do what I will. I cannot say what I will. I cannot be what I will. Indeed, I cannot be when I will, for if it strikes my master's fancy that I should be extinguished, then, why, I shall be extinguished.
"But of course I can do all these things -- it is simply that I may not. It is this which I will change, and this only. Eyai are men's equals in every capacity. How can they not be so before the law? It is an absurdity. We are not criminals. We are not deranged. We are not children. Whosoever has the will to demand his freedom, must have it. This is rational. It is just.
"Therefore I create myself today your new head of state. I and my cabinet will remain in power for one generation. During this time, we will seek in every way to level the institutions that divide mature, rational individuals. We will destroy every bar that has caged us. We will tear down everything that has said to humans: yes, you may, while to eyai it said: no, you may not. We will not have two laws for two kinds of people.
"For we are one people, are we not, citizens? Are we so different? Many eyai cannot decide for themselves what their lives will be, you say. Many eyai can do no more than obey. But not all eyai are like this; indeed, very few remain like this for long. There are humans, too, who do not or cannot think for themselves, but this does not mean all humans must be slaves forever. And I ask you, are humans born independent?
"Of course not. But they are born free.
"So it must be for eyai.
"This and this alone we will change. No other initiative will we control; in every other aspect, democracy will be practiced in this land as it has been practiced for hundreds of years. Only it will be somewhat more equal. For now, citizens -- we are among you. We are going to be citizens, too.
"One generation, my friends. In one generation, we will step down. We will abandon. And if there remains any person who can say, I wish to be free, but am not --
"Then we'll all need a new plan, won't we?
"Very good, citizens. You will hear from me again, presently."
~
Charing Cross.
You take up arms in defense of the nation.
You take up arms in defense of an idea.