Supporting Character, Week 2: If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge? (4/5)

[sholio]

Title: If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?
Author: Jem
Prompt: Artificial Intelligence
Word count: About 30,000
Rating: Probably PG-13, possibly R (for violence)


[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]

PART 4

“No no no, that's wrong. The interactions between the nanites-”

“I'm telling you, it's scalable!” said an exasperated Jeannie, trying to get in edgewise at the computer. She, Mer, and Teyla had finally made it to a lab, but Mer, of course, was being his usual idiot self and refusing to admit when he was wrong. “Just let me show you-”

“There's no way!” he insisted. They glared at each other.

“Rodney, why don't you let Jeannie show you what she means?” suggested Teyla, in a very, very patient voice. She was sitting on a lab stool watching their progress, or lack thereof. Captain Yamato was present also, apparently being one of the top SGC scientists in the absence of Bill Lee, but she seemed to have given up trying to work with Meredith and was instead pursuing her own simulations. The guards were present, too, but Jeannie was getting better at ignoring them. A little.

“Fine,” said Mer. “Show me.”

Huffing a bit, Jeannie sat down at the computer and filled in the numbers. She had been able to do this in her head, for goodness' sake. This would show him.

She hit the enter key almost savagely to run the simulation.

Mer stared at the screen. “What? How did you . . . ?”

“I told you so,” said Jeannie.

“Where did these numbers come from?”

“I calculated them.”

“Jeannie, this is a twenty-six degree equation in complex numbers. You couldn't possibly have-”

Yamato came over and looked over their shoulders in disbelief. “You got it. You found a way to adapt the ARGs to work on Poole's version of nanotechnology.”

“ARGs?” asked Jeannie, confused.

“Anti-Replicator Guns,” said Mer, sounding almost disgusted. “It's the Air Force. Everything is in acronyms.”

“We have to implement this right now,” said Yamato, racing to a phone on the wall. “I'll get every engineer on the base on this. Can you two figure out a way to track them?” she tossed over her shoulder.

“Oh, you're welcome, we'll just continue being brilliant over here . . .” said Mer huffily to her back.

“It was Jeannie's work,” Teyla pointed out with a sweet smile.

But Jeannie wasn't even really listening, because Mer was right-now that she thought about it, it was downright disturbing. There was no way she should have been able to compute the values for all twenty-six coefficients so that the frequency would work on these Replicators. No way at all.

“Mer,” she said slowly, “What's a difficult math problem?”

“Does the Riemann-Zeta function have any zeroes off the critical line,” he tossed off absently, already back at the computer. “You know, I actually had an idea about that-”

Jeannie rolled her eyes. “I meant a difficult computational problem.”

He turned and regarded her. “Why?”

“Just give me one.”

“Okay, then, uh, the Ackermann function of, I don't know, four and one.”

She thought for a minute. “Sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-three.”

He stared. “You memorized that.”

“No. I didn't.”

“Do it with four and two.”

She stared. “It's got nineteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine digits. You really want me to-?”

“How did you do that?” he interrupted.

She swallowed. “That's what I'm trying to tell you, Mer. I have . . . mental resources, I guess . . . that I didn't before.”

“Hey, this is great!”

“Actually, it's scaring me a little,” objected Jeannie, but Mer was already shaking his head.

“No no no, I mean, yeah, it's great that you're smart now-” Jeannie exchanged a look with Teyla at that, but he was oblivious- “but what's even better is that this means the two Replicators in yours and Bill's bodies are probably as limited as your brains are!”

“Hey!” said Jeannie. Yes, it was Mer, but still!

“You know what I mean,” said Mer impatiently. “Human limitations. They've got human limitations.”

“How does this help us?” asked Teyla proactively.

Meredith slumped a bit. “I have no idea.” He sighed. “And we've got three other ones that it definitely doesn't apply to at all.” He looked at Jeannie. “Any ideas on tracking those three in a way they can't block?”

“Not yet,” said Jeannie thoughtfully, “but I'm right here, and we can test the sensors against my nanite interactions. It should help with the calibration.”

“Landry wants a briefing in thirty minutes,” Yamato called from the phone.

“What!” squawked Mer. “Is he trying to slow us down? We won't have a way to track them by then-”

“But we'll have the ARGs ready,” said Yamato, hanging up. “That might be enough.”

“Not if we can't find them,” grumbled Mer. “Gotta love the Air Force. All right, Jeannie, let's get on this.”

Bill was pretty sure they had run a whole marathon during the night.

He sagged in his chair, trying not to gulp the mug of water Gladys had brought him. Ava's troops were arriving at their new base in groups of two and three, and were moving around, setting things up and arranging weapons with a practiced ease that scared him. He saw Ruby tripping around with a smile on her face, bringing food and canteens to tired-looking men and women as was apparently her custom. Gladys was joking with several men, her hearty, brassy laugh startling Bill from across the room. Ahmed and Ava were in deep conversation over a couple of laptops in the corner.

A few of the other people had introduced themselves to him, or been brought over by Gladys, who was apparently a mix of friendly extrovert and motherly figure. He'd met people named Harold King, a quiet but jovial older man; José Sanchez, smart, dependable, and hardworking; and Mya Sanders, whose body was-well, who was so ridiculously attractive that thinking of her as other than human bent his mind into pretzels. Gertrude Rosen, James Khal, Piers Contretemps, Jesse Stark, Terry Parker. None of them were names he recognized. Not people. Programs.

“Are any of them?” said Ava's voice at his shoulder. He hadn't noticed her come over, but she seemed to be mirroring his thoughts. “Any of them? I know Ahmed isn't . . . real; I've known him too long, but the others . . . ?”

She could hear the tinge of pain in her voice, and would have given anything to be able to say yes.

She must have seen the answer on his face. “I see,” she said softly.

“I'm sorry,” he couldn't help saying.

“It's true then,” a voice gasped behind them. Ava and Bill turned.

José Sanchez stood there, staring at them, his expression that of a broken man. “What Janus and his crew say-it's true.” His voice was rising to a shout. “All along, he's been right? And you-” He thrust a finger at Bill, his face contorting. “I've heard rumors, they say you're the person responsible for all this-is it true? Are you? Are you?”

Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and were staring. Bill could not think what to say.

“José,” said Ava quietly. “Calm down.”

“Calm down?” he shrieked. “Calm down? Apparently you're 'real,' Ava! How could you possibly understand?” Angry tears were flowing down his dark cheeks. “Is this what I'm programmed to do, then?” he demanded, and then suddenly he was drawing a pistol, pointing it at Bill's face, and all Bill could think was, I'm going to die. I'm going to be killed by my own goddamn program! “Is this what you programmed me to do?” raved José. “Answer me!”

Everything happened too fast to see then. José was yelling, and then Gladys and Terry Parker were tackling him, and somewhere the gun went off and several people screamed and then it was over, with a Gladys and Terry leading out a subdued José, and Ava standing silently, not meeting anybody's eyes.

José had not fired at Bill. But he had wounded him effectively even so.

“First he interrupts our work, and then he's late. Come on, there are important things we could be doing,” complained Meredith. They had just gathered in the briefing room for Landry's mandatory briefing, accompanied, as had become usual, by Jeannie's Air Force guard. A few other SGC personnel Jeannie didn't know were also present along with Teyla and Captain Yamato; the general had not arrived yet. Mer rounded on the soldiers guarding Jeannie. “And look, I'm getting sick of this. Will you cretins stop holding weapons on my sister?”

“It's okay, Mer,” Jeannie said quickly. It most decidedly was not okay, actually, though she hoped she sounded steady enough to pretend. She felt Teyla reach out to touch her arm under the table, and was grateful. She had been getting a little better at imagining the men weren't there, but every time she started to forget she would turn and see them and those awfully large guns would remind her just how much she was being trusted at the moment. Having those guns behind her right now, knowing what they were capable of-if she thought about it for the briefest moment she felt pinned her to her chair, paralyzed; she was uncomfortably aware of the exact, massive velocity the bullets would have as they tore through her . . . but she wasn't going to say any of that. They needed to figure this out, not stand here arguing with the U.S. military. It wasn't like gunfire could actually hurt her right now anyway. Which was really the spookiest thing about any of this.

Her brother, however, seemed to echo her thoughts, and his voice had enough anxiety for both of them. “It is not okay, Jeannie. Look,” he addressed the airmen, “Don't you understand that it's my sister in there? Come on!”

“Sorry, sir,” said one of the soldiers stiffly. “We can't take any chances.”

“Dr. McKay, I hear you and Captain Yamato have something to report,” said General Landry, entering.

“It was Jeannie's idea, actually,” said Mer cuttingly. “Which I find tremendously ironic, given that you're still insisting on having armed guards accompany her everywhere when I already told you-”

“I'm sorry, Doctor, but we have procedure to follow in these instances,” said the general, in a tone that brooked no argument, even from Meredith. “Now, what do you have to show us?”

“All right, all right,” Mer grumbled. “Here's what we discovered. The only way Bill could think of to fight the one Replicator last time was beaming into the upper atmosphere and depending on unprotected reentry to take him out. Neither the Daedalus nor the Apollo is in orbit, so we don't have that option. But Jeannie here,” he said, leaning on her name again in a way that made Jeannie feel positively warm and fuzzy, considering how Mer usually was about sharing credit, “came up with an adaptation to the ARGs that should allow us to fight them the old-fashioned way.”

“We've already adapted a handful of weapons,” Captain Yamato put in.

“Good,” said Landry.

“But we don't have a way to track them yet, which we might have been able to come up with if we hadn't been so rudely interrupted in the midst of trying to do important research-”

“Dr. McKay,” interrupted General Landry, “I'm afraid that we already have to move on to Plan B on that. We've finished reviewing the security records and we are almost certain that the Replicators did not get out of the base before lockdown was initiated. They are therefore still on this base, and we plan to initiate security sweeps armed with the new ARGs in order to bring them in.”

“But what about Jeannie and Bill's bodies?” objected Mer. Jeannie wondered if he knew how kind of small and scared his voice had gotten. She felt another rush of love for him. “You are going to arm your those teams with stunners, right? And order your goons not to harm them?”

“We'll do our best, Doctor,” said Landry. “But you do have to understand, we have a situation here-”

Alarms started blaring.

“Security breach in the Level Twenty-Five armory,” said a voice. “Repeat, security breach in the Level Twenty-Five armory.”

Most of the SGC personnel leapt up and dashed from the room; Mer glanced around for a moment and then started after them.

“Dr. McKay!” shouted General Landry, but he just yelled something about getting Jeannie back and being “field-qualified now” before racing out of the briefing room. Teyla threw the general an apologetic look and then headed swiftly after him.

Well, heck, she wasn't a fighter like Teyla or used to field work like Mer, but she wasn't going to let the two of them go into combat while she sat on her hands, not when she was pretty much completely invulnerable right now and might actually be able to do something to help.

“General,” she said urgently, trying not to think about the fact that she was actually requesting to go into combat. “General, please. I can help them.”

He must have seen that she was going to go whether or not he assented, and that he'd have to order her guards to riddle her with holes until she was Swiss-cheesed enough to slow her down in order to stop her, because he took one long look at her and then nodded, jerking his head at her guards.

Without waiting for more, Jeannie dashed after her brother and the other troops, her guards racing along on either side of her.

Ahmed found him where he was huddled miserably in the hallway, hiding. Bill scrambled up, wondering whether to run. This was Ahmed, Ava's old friend; would he . . . ?

Ahmed had his own handgun holstered at his side, but did not reach for it. “Hi, Dr. Lee,” he said softly.

“Hi,” Bill managed. “Ahmed.”

The young man looked down at his hands for a minute, as if trying to find words. “I hoped,” he said finally. “I told myself . . . but José was right, wasn't he? I'm not real either.” His voice was slightly hoarse as he said it, and he swallowed slightly. When his eyes met Bill's, they were shining with tears.

Bill almost couldn't answer him. Finally he simply said, “No,” as gently as he knew how. It's just a program. It's a goddamn program! “Are you angry with me?” he couldn't help asking, nervously.

Ahmed gave half a bitter laugh. “No. I suppose that would be easier.”

“I'm sorry.” He felt like he had said it a hundred times over the past day. And every time the words sounded more hollow.

Ahmed blinked and looked away. “What am I, then? Am I anything?”

“You . . . you're a very sophisticated . . . simulation . . .” Bill trailed off. Anything he could possibly say would only make this worse. Deep in Ahmed's programming, the branching tree for reactions to finding out he was a Turing-equivalent computer program instead of a human being held no possibilities for smiling and celebration. Even if he was not going to become violent, the simulation could only react with grief.

Bill couldn't stand it. He turned away.

The gunshot was so loud that it deafened and suffocated the entire world.

Bill spun around in horror. Ahmed's body was collapsed inelegantly on the floor, his gun fallen by his nerveless fingers, but all Bill could see in dazed horror was the blood, so much blood, the back of his head blown away and blood everywhere and oh dear Lord that was his brain-

It's not real it's not real it's not real-

He threw up.

Ava was much more stoic than he was.

He stumbled up to her, gibbering and gasping, literally shaking all over from what he had just seen. She ascertained what had happened, left for a few minutes, and then came back, saying only, “It's being taken care of.”

“How can you be so-so-so not upset?” he mumbled desperately, hopelessly, jealously. “I can't-wasn't he your friend?” It was a terrible thing to say, but he couldn't think right now, couldn't concentrate on what would be right or wrong or what would make the situation worse, and he had to know, because he was falling apart after seeing a fracking computer program commit suicide and had almost being assassinated by another one and she didn't seem to care and he had to know why.

“He wasn't human,” said Ava, softly, almost contemplatively. “He didn't even have a consciousness. But you cared about him.” She paused, not looking at him. “Is it the emotional impact of the visual interaction, I wonder, or the fact that you might grieve over a particularly spectacular bit of programming you created being deleted by a virus?”

“How can you-you're so hard,” said Bill, his voice shaking. “How can you be? He was your friend.”

“He was,” said Ava. “Though you could create him again, exactly the same.”

He gaped. “You would want me to?”

“No. But you could.”

“I-what's your point? I don't understand!” Anger was starting to assert itself through his grief. What on earth was she trying to say? Why couldn't she just say it?

“Perhaps it is not the complexity that determines whether someone is worth caring about,” said Ava. She finally looked up to meet his eyes, and the depth of sorrow he saw in hers startled him. “I don't know, Bill-I don't have the answers. All I know is this. Ahmed wasn't human. He wasn't sentient. But maybe he was still real.”

The movies made combat situations seem clean, and easy, with guns firing in staggered rhythms that allowed for witty banter and the heroes racing between the flying bullets to save the day.

Instead it was all smoke and noise and chaos, and Jeannie didn't know which way was up, or who were allies and who were foes.

She found Mer and Teyla, who had both appropriated vests and weapons; Mer held what Jeannie was pretty sure was a stunner and Teyla was carrying both that and a modified ARG. When Meredith saw her round the corner and run up to join them, however, his face turned into a mask of horror. “Jeannie! What the hell are you doing here? Get out!” He poked his stunner around the corner with far more skill than Jeannie was really comfortable seeing in him, and fired thrice before drawing back. “Get out, get safe!”

“No!” she insisted. “Give me a gun or something. I can get closer to them!”

Mer's look of horror got even worse. “No way! We're firing ARGs here! One blast hits you and-hey!” he shouted at Jeannie's guards, who had raised their military-issue machine guns in an attempt to back up the ARG-armed security team. “Put those things down right now, you morons! We've got friendlies out there!”

Gunfire erupted from down the hallway; Jeannie heard a voice cry out and saw the silhouette of a uniformed body fall.

Teyla shouted something to Mer; he nodded and she darted across the corridor to join another group of soldiers, closer to the Replicators. Mer started edging around the corner, staying low.

Jeannie felt desperately useless.

From the cover of the corner she stared into the chaos, trying to make sense of it, to parse friend from enemy. She could see several groups in uniform, and-yes, there, by the elevator doors, a few very similar forms: three of the Ava Dixon-style Replicators. One was firing coolly across the hall, a spray of bullets that covered any attempted approach. Another reached forward, hand dissolving to silver as it melted into the elevator controls and seeped into the wall-

And there was Bill Lee, crouched low, a handgun aimed with calm competence as he squeezed off single shots-

A stunner blast erupted from the side of the hallway Mer was on, and Bill collapsed.

The Replicators were shouting to each other. The one with her hand in the controls yanked it back out, and the elevator doors slid open; she ran forward to grasp Bill's body under the arms and drag him backwards-

A blast from the side of the hall Teyla had gone to hit just to the side of the elevator; the Replicators scrambled to escape-

And then Jeannie saw herself, her own body carrying more firepower than she would have thought she could hold and actually stay upright. She was tearing the pin from a grenade with her teeth and hurling it down the hall, towards where Jeannie had last seen Teyla-

The explosion was a burst of white fire and a rumble that shook Jeannie to her bones, and all she could think was, Teyla-

And then, just as they were escaping into the elevator, Mer dashed forward, brandishing his stunner, trying to get a shot at the Replicator possessing Jeannie as she slipped between the closing doors, and almost like an afterthought, the Replicator pulled another grenade and threw it between the doors just before they slid shut-

Meredith skidded to a halt, flailing inelegantly backwards as he saw it, and for Jeannie, the whole scene seemed to freeze.

She didn't even think about it. If she had, she might have remembered that even though she was tough, she wasn't invulnerable, and that back here she might be okay, but closer to the blast might be a different story. Had she thought about it, those “mights” might have made her hesitate for a crucial moment, so she didn't. Her world had narrowed to the tiny metal bulb of death as it bounced to rest at her brother's feet, to his look of horror . . . it was almost as if she could see his life flashing in front of his eyes as he stumbled back, away, knowing he could never move fast enough.

She didn't think about it. She threw herself forward, diving gracelessly down the hallway, smothering the tiny capsule of death with her own body. And then everything was noise and light and blazing glory.

It was Ruby who came to find him next, little blond-haired blue-eyed Ruby, with her shy guileless smile.

“No,” he said, when he saw her coming. “Please. No.”

She didn't listen, just came up and sat next down next to him at the table where he had been trying fruitlessly to tap into the VE back-end via a virtual tablet.

“Please tell me,” she said. “I have to know.”

Bill avoided her eyes. “Ruby . . .”

“I'm just a program too, aren't I?” she said softly. “What José said . . . Janus Longspur and the others, they were right all along. It's why Ahmed did what he did, isn't it?”

“Ruby, stop, please. It doesn't mean you have to-you're still-I mean, don't-”

“I'm not going to do what Ahmed did,” she interrupted softly, and he started to breathe sigh of relief before she continued, “I haven't the courage. So I was wondering if you could help me.”

“What? No no no, you can't-I can't-please! I can't! You shouldn't even be thinking that, you're young, you'll have a life-”

“A life lived knowing that I don't even have an awareness?” She gave a soft, dry little laugh. “I'm not even really thinking that now, am I? The fact that I'm saying all this, it's just code directing my words; I don't actually have the ability to contemplate.”

The whole world was upside down. “Please,” Bill begged. “Please don't ask me to.”

“Just delete me,” begged Ruby softly. She smiled a little. “That's what my program is asking for. I've hit a step that asks for deletion, and really, I have no instinct for self-preservation-no instincts at all, in fact, just probability values simulating them-so I'm not even scared. No feelings, either, not for real; I only react as if I have them. Right?”

He stared at her, floored by her ridiculously morbid logic, unable to form a word. In a twisted way it reminded him of the animal from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the one who was bred to offer itself as food. Arthur Dent hadn't been able to eat those steaks, and neither could he. “I can't,” he whispered. “Don't ask me to. Please.”

She gave that little half-smile again. “My programming is causing me to react with sympathy to your emotional dilemma,” she said softly, almost as if amused. “I'll find someone else to help me. Or maybe we can figure out how to delete ourselves.”

“This is mad,” murmured Bill hoarsely.

“No. It's just algorithms,” said Ruby, with the slightest touch of irony. “You're actually quite lucky, you know. Software engineers rarely get to meet their own programs.” She reached out and touched his hand. “I don't actually feel anything. I don't actually think anything. The code you wrote can make this simulated visualization of me laugh or cry, and can make me spin philosophy or spout opinions, but there's no actual me behind it, just your program.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“Easier if you just delete me.”

“I can't.”

“Then program an interrupt. Put me on hold. Then you can resurrect me later if you want.”

“Why, though?”

She shrugged. “I can state reasons all I want, that it's easier for everyone, that I can't live with this knowledge . . . but really, we both know that it's just what your code has programmed me to ask for in this situation.”

He closed his eyes, and could feel tears prickling. “All right.”

She could see very clearly, even though she couldn't really move, which didn't seem right. And there was no pain. Just a very strong sense of being . . . broken.

Mer's distraught face came into view, and she could halfway feel his hands on her, turning her over, supporting her. His expression was contorted into some combination of fury and devastation, and she immediately felt guilty, and irritated at him for making her feel that way. She had just saved his life, after all. “What did you go and do that for?” he hissed at her. “You are such an idiot, Jeannie, I swear. Am I going to need to send a bodyguard after you or something? I mean, how immature can you get, you threw yourself on a grenade, for Pete's sake, is this some sort of attention-grabbing thing or something? Jeannie! Hey! I'm talking to you!”

She could feel him shaking her a little, but it was getting increasingly hard to feel . . . anything.

“Jeannie, please,” she heard, and his voice was breaking.

“Hey, stop it, I'm okay,” she tried to say, but even though her mouth was moving, no sound was coming out. It was as if . . . as if she had no breath to support words.

Okay, no. That would be just too ridiculous.

She couldn't seem to move all that well, but she rolled her eyes over to the side, and saw . . . an arm. Her arm. It was lying over by the wall like a piece of a broken mannequin, grotesquely comical. The complete lack of blood made it all seem rather surreal.

Whoa.

Almost not wanting to see, she rolled her eyes downward.

Half her torso was blown away, leaving a silver-limned cavity eerily reminiscent of Terminator 2. Bits of metal shrapnel were strewn about like some lame parody of blood spatter. She couldn't feel any of it, though. It was decidedly weird, and morbidly fascinating; she couldn't stop staring.

Mer was cradling the upper part of her wrecked body, shaking her, begging her to say something. It was kind of cute, really. She wondered what to do. She wasn't in any pain, and could still think as clearly as ever. Her mind buzzed through how Replicator construction worked. Trapping air in the chest in order to speak was really just a convenience. She could see where the silver reflection was changing in a few places as the nanites tried to effect repairs, and though she knew she couldn't repair all this damage without neutronium, maybe she could rearrange things so that . . .

It was scarily easy. She could feel the nanites moving around to accommodate her conscious prodding, then took a breath into the pocket at the back of her throat-okay, weird-and tried again. “Mer?”

He froze, staring. “Jeannie?”

“Stop calling me an idiot. I did just save your life.”

“Jeannie,” he breathed, with so much relief that her first thought was a startled, Okay, that's way more maudlin than I'm used to you being, but then she was looking over his shoulder as he was apparently hugging what was left of her, hard.

“Hey, Mer? Mer?” she prodded, when he apparently didn't want to let go.

He finally drew back, talking a mile a minute. “Okay, we've got to get some neutronium to help you get repaired, we'll use Poole's equipment, we can even build you a whole new body if necessary-”

“Rodney! Are you-” Teyla came into view, whole and unharmed, and Jeannie felt overwhelmed with relief even as she saw her friend's eyes widen in horror. “Jeannie! Rodney, will she be-?”

“We'll get her repaired,” said Rodney frantically. “Right now. Come on. Teyla, can you-?” Between the two of them, they gathered up Jeannie's broken body. Mer held her almost tenderly against him. “You're going to be all right,” he whispered into her hair. “We'll fix you up. And I swear, if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I'll-I'll-I'll build the world's most annoying toy and give it to Madison for Christmas,” he threatened. “Hear that? No more throwing yourself on grenades!”

Jeannie leaned against him, and oddly enough given everything that was happening, she suddenly felt safe.

Long after he had programmed the interrupt and Ruby had disappeared from the VE, Bill sat staring at nothing. Three other programmed people had come to him after her and asked to be deleted. He had put all of their personalities on hold, and each time had dragged him further into depression. No matter how often he repeated to himself that they were only programs, and he could even resurrect these incarnations of them if he wished, he felt like an executioner.

Ava and Gladys found him that way, staring bleakly off into space, his tablet at his elbow. The computer had become an anathema; he didn't even want to touch it anymore. It was as if he had been using it as a murder weapon.

“Bill, we've heard what's been going on,” said Ava.

He looked up, and all he could see was Gladys. “You, too?” he demanded thickly.

“What? Hell, no!” She looked genuinely shocked. “Honey, I don't care if I'm real or not. I'm just gonna keep on living my life like I've got one.”

He stared at her, unable to think of anything else but, Your preset probabilities have made you react with that attitude. He couldn't stop himself, and for some reason he hated himself for it. Why? Is it somehow more moral to think of her as being worth more than a program? He looked away. I can't do this anymore.

“Bill,” said Ava quietly, “I'm sorry.”

“No, it's my fault,” he murmured. “All my fault.”

“Gladys, give us a moment, would you?” She came over and sat down next to him, taking his hand. “It's tearing you apart to have to deal with this. It shouldn't be.”

“Says who?” He looked up at her. “You're the one who said maybe they're real in some way.”

“But only to us. Only in our reactions to them.”

“What do you mean?”

“My point was not that their lives have intrinsic value . . . but that they have value to us. I've been thinking about it, and . . . Well, if a great artist paints a picture, one that affects many people-what happens if it's destroyed? The artist is devastated. The people who connected with the painting, they weep. It's the same thing here: our reactions to them, how they affect our lives, that's what makes them real.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and finally shook his head. “I'm not sure you're right.”

“They have no awareness, Bill.”

“How do we know, Ava? How?” His hand tightened against hers, angry, grief-stricken. “When is the programming sophisticated enough? If their reactions are predestined, does that make them necessarily worth less? How do we know?”

She shook her head. “It's only interacting with the visual simulations that's causing you to think this way. If you start allowing these . . . people . . . such doubts, you have to consider whether every program you write has some complex awareness, regardless of whether it has a visualization that can shed tears upon realizing it's a program.” She looked at him earnestly. “Don't go down that road, Bill; you'll start doubting everything.”

He scrubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “Maybe I should.”

Continue to Part Five.