Supporting Character, Week 2: If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge? (1/5)
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)
Warnings: Some graphic violence. Mild language. Obvious fanwanking at at least one point. Also, I don't promise to put all of the characters exactly back where I found them (but I haven't contradicted canon, at least not on purpose).
Spoilers: Obvious ones for “Miller's Crossing” and “Outcast;” minor or implied ones for other episodes pre-“Outcast.” Takes place before “Midway” but there's a blink-and-you-miss-it spoiler for something we see happening in “Midway;” no spoilers beyond that. Also assumes SG-1 history, particularly the events of “Evolution” and the Milky Way Replicators storyline. Cameos by some SG-1 characters (hey, most of them count as minor characters on Atlantis, don't they? And this is MCAD, after all . . .).
Summary: Bill just couldn't leave her like that . . . but enlisting Jeannie Miller's help was a mistake. A mistake, because McKay was definitely going to kill him when he discovered the mess-well, mortal danger-Bill had gotten his sister into. Yeah. He was definitely a dead man. As soon as he managed to escape himself, that is. Of course, Bill really needn't have worried, because Jeannie, her brother, and Teyla were a little distracted by body swapping and explosions and terrorist attacks and the terrible question of what, exactly, constitutes human rights . . .
[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
PART 1
The first time it was necessary.
Alarms were blaring all over the SGC, the deafening wails derailing every other thought process. Red light washed in from the hallway, flashing in periodic waves over the lab, and in counterpoint to the alarms was the familiar hurried stamp of the troops rushing to defend, defend, but everyone knew that it was the scientists who needed to come up with the ultimate solution; even the airmen knew that their line of defense would eventually crumble and that if the brain trust hadn't had a revelation by then it would be all over. They wouldn't have to wait for the Gobblers to get them, though. The White House would incinerate the mountain with nuclear fire before it came to that.
The whole team was desperate, fingers pounding on every keyboard, screamed curses at the most minor of typos, silent tears as every piece of code failed to execute as they wanted it to, as they needed it to. Something, something they were missing, but what, what, what? They were in a deadly race and they weren't going to make it. He knew that, deep in his bones. This time they would fail.
“Dr. Lee! I just came from the gateroom, Yamato says the keton radiation didn't work, what else can we try?”
He stared at the desperate airman, his mind frantically dashing in all directions only to find it was cornered. He didn't know. He just didn't know what else they could do, what they could try, what crazy out-of-the-box move could save them. Everyone here was going to die, and if the nuke didn't take out the Gobblers they would overrun Earth, everyone on the planet . . . Katie and Alan and little Jeremy, oh God-
And it was his fault. He was head of the science division; all of this was his responsibility; it was up to him to come up with the last-minute revelation that would rescue them all. For God's sake, he was even the resident expert in nanotechnology, what with Colonel Carter gone and Captain Hailey transferred and Dr. Ingram dead, but he couldn't, he wasn't smart enough, and everyone was going to die, and it was his fault-
“Dr. Lee!” cried the airman desperately.
“I don't-I don't know.” If only the base weren't already cut off, if only he could contact someone who did know more, if they could just dial out and radio Atlantis or even phone the scientists at Area 51-because all he could do was furiously scroll through his code and look hopelessly for the missing link and try not to think of his children, because he wasn't good enough, wasn't Colonel Carter, and he wasn't going to be able to do this, and he needed someone else, someone who knew nanotechnology, an expert-
The thought was like a bolt of lightening, exhilarating and terrifying and dangerous enough to get him killed.
“I'm going to try something. Keep working, everyone!” he yelled heedlessly at the room, and dashed past the young airman, trying not to see the terror in light blue eyes that were the exact same shade as his son's.
The elevators were out. He raced up seven flights of stairs, wheezing, the air stabbing into his chest, his side cramping and his legs burning by the second flight and then turning to jelly until he thought he honestly would collapse, and he cursed himself again for not working out more, especially with this job, but he thought of Katie's smile and pushed himself up another flight. When he reached the lab he had one horrified moment in which he thought they might have moved everything to Area 51 already, but it was all still here, starting to gather dust. He started to dash lurchingly towards the pod, but with a sudden thought spun to a workstation first, his fingers typing faster than he would have thought possible, no time to test the scripting, have to go-
He threw himself into the pod and pressed the button. There was no time to be afraid.
He was by a park lake, and the sun was shining. Birds twittered nearby, and a boy laughed and shouted to his father as he flung pieces of bread into the rippling water for the ducks, who flapped towards the largess with happy quacks. The utter peacefulness of the scene was a shock to Bill's system, like a bucket of cold water thrown on a sleeping man. It disoriented him for a precious few seconds, and then he was running again, and got another shock as he took off easily, athletically, because in here he could run like the wind, and in the space of a breath he had found her.
She was just leaving her job. She walked out with a handsome young man, one of those types with an endearing smile, the ones Katie liked to call 'adorkable puppy dogs.' He was just the type that Katie would go after, too, Bill thought, and the type that might drive a father crazy. Ava waved to him as they parted ways, and he grinned at her and ducked his head a bit as he waved back and headed off. Definitely Katie's type. The thought hurt.
Ava turned to make her own way home, and stopped short as she saw him. Then she smiled, and again Bill was reminded forcibly of his daughter. It was one of the things that had made him want to take her under his wing in the first place, when they had first worked together and they'd all thought she was a young research student devastated at the death of her boss and not a dead girl resurrected in a human-form artificial intelligence-she reminded him of Katie. It wasn't anything in particular, just something in the way she smiled, in the wide guilelessness of her eyes . . . he wasn't sure. Even after they found out what she really was, his mild feeling of protectiveness towards her hadn't gone away. “Dr. Lee! It's good to see you.” Her eyes widened. “Are you-all right?”
He must have looked stricken, and desperate, the way her expression changed and her pretty eyes got huge with worry. But there was no time. “Ava. I need your help. I know we said you can't work on this stuff, but we're about to be overrun, and I can't solve it-it's nanotechnology, of a sort, I thought maybe-could you-?” He was stammering, trying to find the quickest way to say it, and not able to get the words out at all.
“I-but I can't-” Her cheeks darkened. “Does anyone else know you came to see me?”
“N-no, but-Ava, there's no time, people are going to die. Please.”
Still she hesitated. He remembered the threats they had given her about working in a scientific field, so afraid she would figure things out and escape and be a threat to Earth-he cursed the IOA, the military, and every other piece of paranoid brass, because if she had been working at the SGC in the first place, maybe she would have been able to save them before now.
She took a breath. “All right.”
He thrust the tablet at her that had materialized with him in the park, praying that his code was good, that this would work the way he hoped in a virtual environment like this one. “Here. If you put your thumb on the pad, all the info will download to you. It's the quickest way. Please.”
She glanced around nervously, but Bill couldn't take the time to preserve her image of reality by going somewhere more private, not when this was really only a simulation of a busy sidewalk in a quaint little downtown and people were dying a few floors below him. Ava gave him one last look, unreadable, and then took the tablet and pressed her thumb to it. Her skin seemed to flash silver for a moment on contact. Was that his imagination, or hers?
She blinked. He'd downloaded all the information to the virtual environment already; she should have activated his script to transfer it to her individual consciousness-it wouldn't have worked with a human in the VE, he was pretty sure, but her consciousness was programmed, and was a program they vaguely understood at the surface level. Enough so that he was able to upload their whole situation to her brain in a split second. He hoped.
“They're not Replicators,” she said slowly.
“No, no. Something different. Different, but still nanotechnology. We call them Gobblers, from Ben Bova, you know. Or, well, you wouldn't know, but-”
“Actually I quite enjoy Ben Bova,” she said absently, but she wasn't looking at him, just staring abstractly into the distance, and he thought-or maybe hoped-that he could see her mind already working a mile a minute, a mind that was so like what they were trying to destroy, yet so utterly different.
She snapped back to look at him. “I have an idea. Their directive is to consume, but I think I see how to give them a priority of what material to consume.” She was already dragging the stylus across the tablet, tapping on the screen.
“But if they can't find their first priority, they'll just move to something else,” Bill pointed out hopelessly, dismayed. “We thought of that.”
“Except that I also think I see how to subvert their self-preservation matrix, which means we can instruct them to attack-”
“Each other!” he finished, hope flooding back. “Yes! But-but the self-preservation, we tried to figure out a way to disable it, but how-?”
“I'm not disabling it, I'm subverting it. If we can make it so that each nanite puts its own self-preservation over that of the Horde-or rather, reprogram them so that they each think they're a Horde of one-”
“Yes! Yes, yes, I think that would work, but do you see how-”
“There. I just did it.” Ava handed the tablet back to him with a sad smile. “Upload it, see if that works. And Dr. Lee?” He wanted to race away, but her wide, worry-filled eyes arrested him. “Can you give me a call tonight? Let me know everything's okay?”
“Uh-I can't promise,” he got out, and felt like dirt. “I gotta go.” He spun away from her, fingers already working the virtual tablet to upload its information into the VE memory, and ducked into a nearby alleyway. A moment of concentration later he was waking up in the disengaging pod, and then he had no time to think of Ava and her imaginary life as he was frantically uploading her code and broadcasting it to the Gobblers, and then followed five exhausting hours of cleanup as the tiny machines finished each other off and the science team figured out how to trap the few voracious survivors in a magnetic field.
Whenever anybody congratulated him on the last minute idea, though, he thought of Ava, and how worried she had looked about the very people who had trapped her in a fake existence without her knowledge, and he had to force a deceitful “thanks” and “just doing my job” out of a dry mouth.
Jeannie frowned when she saw the unfamiliar SGC e-mail at the top of her inbox. The only people she corresponded with regularly were Mer and Teyla, and Mer had been irritatingly quiet of late. Usually he sent her a regular bombardment of technical ramblings, but ever since that Wallace guy had abducted her, he seemed reluctant to ping her about anything scientific, no matter how trivial. Though she suspected Kaleb was secretly a little relieved, she herself was starting to get seriously upset about it. She hadn't realized how much she had enjoyed collaborating with him . . . until he wasn't asking anymore.
She sighed and clicked, assuming that the new e-mail was about something administrative-her security clearance or the like. She was wrong.
From: leeb@csb.sgc.gov
To: jeanmiller1729@shaw.ca
Subject: request for a meeting
Dear Mrs. Miller,
My name is Bill Lee, and I'm a scientist working at Cheyenne. On, well, you know. I've worked with your brother. I'm currently working on a project that I could use some help with, to be perfectly frank. To be honest, I need someone who is better versed in nanotech than I am, and I thought-well, I was wondering if I could meet with you and bounce some ideas or something. Strictly unofficially.
You can reach me at this e-mail or through the SGC switchboard, ext. 155.
Bill
p.s. Please don't tell Rodney I contacted you as I doubt he would like it.
She couldn't remember where she'd heard the name Bill Lee until she looked back at one of Mer's latest e-mails. So I was stuck working on the midway station with Bill Lee and Kavanaugh for almost FIVE HOURS thanks to that conniving Czech, and MY GOD I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO STAB MYSELF. Or maybe them. Bill has the saving grace of being minorly competent, but Kavanaugh has NO REDEEMING QUALITIES. THEY SHOULD FIRE HIM. OR STAB HIM. I'M NOT PARTICULAR.
Well, “minorly competent” from Mer meant this Bill Lee guy was pretty brilliant and definitely good at his job, but she couldn't figure out the odd tone of his e-mail.
“He's either embarrassed he needs help, or is hoping to have an affair with you,” said Kaleb jokingly, when his puzzled wife showed it to him. Jeannie caught the strain in his voice, though, and she knew he was thinking about what her involvement in the Stargate program had gotten them: a midnight abduction from which she had finally been rescued to come home with still-healing fractures in both legs. She hadn't been able to bring herself to tell him that it was her brother who had broken her legs in order to save her from something far worse. She didn't like keeping secrets from him, but she already couldn't bear the worry that had crept permanently into his eyes, and couldn't bring herself to add to it, not when it was already tearing her up inside.
Not when she was already feeling so guilty about how much she loved being consulted about science that was so fantastic it was literally out of this world. The fact that her recent kidnapping and near-death experience hadn't dimmed that enthusiasm scared her just a little, but she wasn't going to stop, and she didn't want Kaleb to ask her to, because . . . because she already knew what her answer would have to be. Again she found herself desperately hoping Mer would quit being stupid and start e-mailing her science questions again. He could be so dumb sometimes.
Clearly, though, he wasn't the only one who wanted her help . . .
“I think I'm going to go,” she told Kaleb decisively.
He didn't look happy about it, and a little part of Jeannie died at the sight. All he said, however, was, “Just be careful.”
The second time had been out of guilt.
He didn't have any trouble sleeping-one of the perks of working at the SGC; no matter how many terrible things you saw, you were always so tired that it didn't keep you awake-but once he finally made it home at seven in the morning and fell into bed, not even bothering to undress, he dreamt of Ava. Except in his dream she was somehow Katie, too. Nothing really happened in the dream, he just saw her, and she was worried, and lonely, and forgotten.
The next day, as his science team was dealing with the aftermath of the attack, he snuck back up to the Level 21 lab and reentered the virtual environment.
The VE clock was set differently from Cheyenne Mountain time, and the clock over the Corinthian-pilastered courthouse proclaimed it around lunchtime even though it was evening outside. He hung around the entrance to the the building he could only assume was her workplace-at least, the computer said she was in there, and it was the same building he'd found her exiting the day before. While he waited he looked around, studying the world-he had, after all, been responsible for overseeing its programming. He'd been inside before, of course, back when they'd first built it, but still, he found himself impressed. Impressed, and mildly creeped out. It looked so real. He found himself reaching out to touch the yellow brick of the building; it was rough and grainy against his fingers. People moved through the streets; cars honked at each other; a dog barked somewhere. It was sunny again today, but cool, and a brisk wind rolled clouds across the sun in tumbling waves, mottling the ground below in light then shadow then light.
“Dr. Lee!”
It was Ava, apparently coming out on her lunch break. She smiled when she saw him. “I trust this means my code worked?”
“Yes. Yes, thank you. Uh, yeah. Everything's all right now.”
They stood awkwardly for a moment. Finally Ava said, “Dr. Lee, I was just going to grab some lunch. Would you like to join me?”
“Oh. Ah, I should really get back to work . . .”
“Hey, Ava.”
It was the same dark-skinned boy from last night, the puppy-dog one. He smiled at Ava, his teeth brilliantly bright. “Just heading out to lunch?”
“Ahmed, hi. Uh, Dr. Lee, this is a friend of mine, Ahmed. Ahmed, Dr. Lee.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Ahmed. His handshake was firm.
Bill mumbled some pleasantry in reply.
“I'll see you this afternoon, Ava,” Ahmed said with another smile for her, as he headed into the building. Ava looked after him, and he could tell just by the look on her face, that silly slightly glowy look that Katie got whenever she started to like a boy.
He stared, feeling stricken.
Ava looked at him and raised her eyebrows in the I'm-not-quite-sure-this-is-any-of-your-business-is-it? type of way.
“Oh, uh-it's just-you remind me of my daughter,” he tried to explain. “She's sixteen, just started going out with boys and all that, and I just, uh-hey, why don't we get that lunch you were talking about?”
She smiled, amused at his babbling. “Sure,” she said. “There's a great little diner just down the road from here; how does that sound?”
“Lead the way.”
He had trouble concentrating on work the next few days. He kept thinking of Ava, of her life that didn't exist, of the boy she was falling for who was just a variety of a personality matrix they had written based on real human interactions, a simulation of a human being.
She's happy, he tried to tell himself. It doesn't matter that it's all fake. She's happy.
It didn't change the fact that none of it was real.
Human beings are all just machines anyway; Ahmed and all the rest are just . . . simpler machines, he rationalized. The trouble was, he knew too much, was too good of a scientist, to buy that. Ahmed and the rest of the personalities in the VE were complicated, yes, but in the end were all just nondeterministic Turing machines, their decisions based on random variables with probabilities determined by assigned personality type. They had no depth, no actual empathy. If Ahmed acted like he was falling in love, the reason would be a metaphorical coin flip within the VE that came up heads; if he decided to break her heart later on, it only meant that the flip had eventually landed tails. He had no actual emotions, no free will, no sentience.
Ava, on the other hand-she was a level of technology so far beyond them, one they barely understood even at the surface. Even with all the alien boosts to their technology, most Earth AI was still based in machine learning algorithms, nothing that could reach consciousness of any degree. Sure, Ava had been programmed, her predispositions set for empathy and social interaction, but she did have an awareness, a will-at least, he thought she did. Bill wasn't certain where the line should be drawn for sapience, but his instinct was that even if they could pass the Turing test and fool a person, the simulated townsfolk of the VE did not qualify, whereas Ava . . .
He wasn't sure, but he would say she did.
“It's like Star Trek,” he muttered to himself. “'What if she exhibits consciousness, even in the smallest degree? What is she then?'” he quoted, adding softly, “And what have we done to her?”
He came to Vancouver to see Jeannie. Kaleb took Madison to the aquarium for the day. “We'll just hang out in Stanley Park until you call,” he told her. “That way you can have the house. You know, instead of discussing all this ultra-secret stuff in a coffee shop or something.” The attempt at levity was poor; his eyes were more anxious than ever.
Dr. Lee arrived about fifteen minutes late. She opened the door to find an overweight, scruffy man on her doorstep, smiling nervously behind square glasses.
“Dr. Lee?”
“Bill, please,” he offered. He had a little bit of an overeager way of speaking, as if he were constantly seeking approbation and was worried he wouldn't get it. “You're Rodney's sister, huh?”
“Guilty,” answered Jeannie cheerfully. “Come on in.” She stepped back and ushered him into their bright, cluttered home. She could see him looking around at the Madison's displayed masterpieces of fingerpaint, at the train set sprawled across the living room floor, at the Barbies towering like blonde Godzillas over the Lego town in the corner. “I have a five-year-old,” she explained.
“Oh, yeah, I understand.” He smiled at her apologetically. “I've got three, myself. My youngest is eight.”
“Wow, three. I have trouble handling one,” Jeannie joked politely, thinking of the other reality she'd glimpsed, the one in which she'd had boys named Bradley and Robbie. She still couldn't help but wonder about that. “Would you like some coffee or anything? Juice?”
“Oh-coffee would be great, thanks. It was a long flight.”
They made small talk about kids while she fetched the coffee and they ensconced themselves at the kitchen table; Jeannie got a mug of soy milk for herself. “So, you said you work with Meredith?”
He looked confused. “Who?”
She dearly loved doing this to poor Mer; it was delicious. “My brother. Meredith.”
“Wha-wait, you mean Dr. McKay? Dr. Rodney McKay? His name is Meredith?” He gaped at her. “Is that, like, some nickname or something, or . . . ?”
“Nope, it's his name.”
“Ah-wow, that is-you know, I am going to be the king of gossip at the SGC, you have given me the best-”
“Oh, I have better,” she couldn't resist adding. “But maybe later. What's all this about?”
“Oh.” He seemed to draw into himself a little then, as if he didn't know quite where to begin. “Um. Well. Do you mind if we keep this all off the record, by the way? I, uh, it might cause me some trouble at work if they knew I was consulting you, I mean, I know you've got security clearance and all of that, but . . .”
“Well, if you're building a superweapon, I can't promise anything,” she pointed out pleasantly.
“What? Oh! No! Of course, nothing like that, it's just . . . I'm trying to help someone,” he finished miserably. “And I think . . . I think people would be upset that I want to help her.”
Okay, that rang some alarm bells. “Why?” asked Jeannie warily.
“Oh, uh-it's a long story.”
Jeannie studied him for a moment, then said finally, “Well, you're going to have to tell it if you want my help.”
The third time he just hadn't been able to say no.
He'd had lunch with her that day after the attack, and he found her surprisingly easy to talk to. She asked about his daughter; he found himself telling her about all his children, about his problems with his ex-wife. “I don't blame her,” he said out loud for the first time. “Not really. I mean . . . it was this job that finally did it. She blames World of Warcraft too-that's a computer game,” he clarified at her puzzled look, “But really, it was the job. I was always getting called out for emergencies in the middle of the night, every week it seemed like, and then working long hours, and she never knew if I was going to come home or not-you know, we're supposed to say we're in Deep Space Radar Telemetry, but after you end up in the hospital from being tortured by Honduran guerrillas, there goes that cover story. She never knew what I really did, of course, but-you know, I think that was the worst. That I couldn't tell her, that she couldn't know, that there was this huge, overwhelming part of my life that I couldn't let her into, and-well, it hurt her.” He swallowed. “I don't blame her for that. I don't.”
“I'm sorry,” she said sincerely, and her eyes were full of sympathy.
“It's okay. It's tough, but I'll be fine. Let's, uh, let's talk about something else. How are you?”
She smiled a little sadly. “I have to admit . . . I miss science. It was always my passion, you know. Or rather, Ava's, but I have those memories.” Her eyes shone briefly, and she blinked, looking down at the unwanted pickle left on her plate. “Doing that for you the other day-just that few minutes-I miss it a lot. I wish . . .” She sighed and shook her head. “I know it can't be. I just wish things could be different.”
When Ava finally went back to work, she asked if they could get together again. “It's just . . . it's nice to know that everything's okay out there,” she explained, a little self-consciously.
Even though she meant outer space, it could have worked either way. He said okay before he actually thought about it.
“So wait, this girl is fully formed Replicator?” asked Jeannie incredulously.
“Yes. No! I mean, she is, but she's not-she's not like them. She's got feelings.”
This was all ringing a little wrong to Jeannie. “Bill,” she said slowly. “I've read most of the reports that had to do with nanotech. Wasn't there a case with some of the Replicators Earth has dealt with-”
“You mean the Milky Way Replicators? Yeah, I've been around for all of that.”
He sounded so tired that it threw her momentarily, but she plowed on. “Yes, those. Weren't there a few that showed more human-like characteristics? Empathy, even love, but then-”
“Yeah, disaster, I know. You're talking about the one called Fifth, the one who supposedly fell in love with Colonel Carter, right? No, no, I know what you're going to say. The Milky Way Replicators, even after effective centuries of evolution, they still followed their primary directive of replication; that was all they were. The flaw that was supposedly fixed in Fifth, that was supposed to give him empathy-well, the fix was seriously flawed itself from the beginning.” He cleared his throat and appeared to cast around for a moment. “The Milky Way Replicators come from a fundamentally different source. A man created a child out of nanites and then she created the original Replicators as her toys. When they got the chance to evolve they made themselves in her image. The 'fix' with Fifth was something the Replicators themselves came up with. It wasn't really a fix, more like . . . if someone tried to describe how a human being would act and then wrote a computer program following that. Even we can do that, thanks to the boosts the Stargate program has given our technology.” He swallowed and looked uncomfortable for a moment. “It doesn't-it doesn't add a whole lot of depth or complexity, but it terribly destabilized the programming because all of the contradictions with their basic directive caused a truckload of bugs. The Pegasus Replicators are way different. Their only similarity to the Milky Way ones is that their construction is based in the same fundamental nanotechnology, but their programming, it's a whole 'nother story. It's much more . . .” He paused, frustrated, groping for a word.
“Sentient?” Jeannie supplied.
“I suppose. Much more advanced, certainly. Look, the Pegasus Replicators may be made of the same stuff, but their programming was done by the Ancients.”
Jeannie found herself rolling her eyes. “Listen, Bill, I've read most of the reports.” Including some that had scared her to death for Meredith's safety. She swallowed. “I'm not sure the Ancients did a much better job.”
“Well-yes and no. Because they weren't trying to build the Replicators to be human-like, were they? They were trying to create them to be a weapon. That was their purpose, and that's part of the reason they've become such a big problem-the predisposition to violence is written into their base nature. But the fundamental programming, it's pretty sound. If the Ancients had instead programmed their Replicators to be like Data, I guarantee that we wouldn't be having any problems with them.”
Jeannie blinked. Data? Oh, right-Star Trek. She tried to get back on track. “So you're saying this girl . . .”
“She wasn't predisposed to be a weapon. Even when she's fought in self-defense, she's been careful never to kill anyone. In fact, later on she came back-and that's the only reason we have her now-she came back to save the lives of Colonel Sheppard and Ronon Dex, who are two of-”
“I know who they are,” interrupted Jeannie softly. And if what she had seen on Atlantis hadn't been enough, she was perfectly capable of reading between the lines of Meredith's e-mails. She owed those two her brother's life many times over. She swallowed. “So, it sounds like you didn't just let her go again. What happened to her?”
It had become a weekly thing.
At first he kept telling himself that she had saved the world and no one knew it, and that she at least deserved a little real human company. But he found he could talk to her. He tried to rationalize it away-she was programmed for empathy, after all, and who was she going to tell, anyway? But whatever the reason, he could talk to her; talk about the stress of his job, his fear of not measuring up and everyone who depended on him dying; about his broken marriage, how much he missed seeing his children every day . . . and she listened.
She could talk to him, too, he realized. In her world, he was the one person who knew what she really was and what strictures she was under, who knew what was really out there in the depths of space. She talked to him about her desperate fear, that she would never be able to get close to anyone because she would not be able to share her true nature. She confessed her worries about the future, about how everyone she knew would age and wither while she remained unendingly young. She spoke of missing science, sadly remembering the thrill of discovery, wishing she could work on research again, saying she knew it wasn't possible-“I gave my word.”
And he had to sit there and lie to her to her face.
He tried not to mention work, but she would ask general questions-“Is everything okay?” or “No more trouble from the Gobblers?” and he would answer, and sometimes they would touch on the edges of things. Or he would be having trouble with a problem, and maybe, maybe mention it in the most general of terms. And sometimes he walked away from their lunches with a virtual napkin scribbled on in virtual ball-point ink in his virtual hand. Every time, he hated himself a little bit more.
“Eventually, well-I have to admit it,” he said softly, helplessly, toying with the remains of the lunch Jeannie had made for them with his fork, “I've started to care about her. As, you know, a person.” He cleared his throat. “But you can see why I don't want to talk to anyone at the SGC about this.”
Jeannie still had very large reservations. Reservations as huge as tractor-trailer trucks. “Well, what do you want me to do about it? What, you want to build her a new body and bring her out of there?”
He looked genuinely horrified. “What? No! No no no no. That would be-well, a huge breach of security, it would be-well, I would lose my job over it. No.”
“Then, what?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “Nanite interactions, that's mostly what I was working on with Mer, up until a few months ago.” When he stopped collaborating with me, the idiot.
“Well-how much do you know about their programming? You know, their brains, so to speak?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “I mean, I've looked at it, but I haven't really worked on it at all.”
“Could you?”
“Sorry?” She was genuinely lost.
“Here's the thing, see. I know-I know we've got to keep her in there, and maybe even keep her in the dark. But if we could populate the virtual environment with some . . . you know, some better AIs. More human ones. I thought . . . well, she deserves her life to be a little more real. And I'm having trouble with some of the nanotechnology involved myself; it's ridiculously high level, so I thought-well, if you're willing to help, I mean . . .” He trailed off.
Jeannie frowned. “You realize-you're saying that this girl is getting close to sentience, in your opinion. If that's true, you realize that you're planning to create a bunch of conscious beings and stick them into a virtual environment.”
He blinked at her a little owlishly.
“That's-that's awfully close to playing God,” she felt compelled to add.
“It's just . . . she reminds me of my daughter,” he murmured finally. “And I can't . . . I can't leave her like that. Do you have any other ideas?”
Jeannie had no reply.
Continue to Part Two.
Author: Jem
Prompt: Artificial Intelligence
Word count: About 30,000
Rating: Probably PG-13, possibly R (for violence)
Warnings: Some graphic violence. Mild language. Obvious fanwanking at at least one point. Also, I don't promise to put all of the characters exactly back where I found them (but I haven't contradicted canon, at least not on purpose).
Spoilers: Obvious ones for “Miller's Crossing” and “Outcast;” minor or implied ones for other episodes pre-“Outcast.” Takes place before “Midway” but there's a blink-and-you-miss-it spoiler for something we see happening in “Midway;” no spoilers beyond that. Also assumes SG-1 history, particularly the events of “Evolution” and the Milky Way Replicators storyline. Cameos by some SG-1 characters (hey, most of them count as minor characters on Atlantis, don't they? And this is MCAD, after all . . .).
Summary: Bill just couldn't leave her like that . . . but enlisting Jeannie Miller's help was a mistake. A mistake, because McKay was definitely going to kill him when he discovered the mess-well, mortal danger-Bill had gotten his sister into. Yeah. He was definitely a dead man. As soon as he managed to escape himself, that is. Of course, Bill really needn't have worried, because Jeannie, her brother, and Teyla were a little distracted by body swapping and explosions and terrorist attacks and the terrible question of what, exactly, constitutes human rights . . .
[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
PART 1
The first time it was necessary.
Alarms were blaring all over the SGC, the deafening wails derailing every other thought process. Red light washed in from the hallway, flashing in periodic waves over the lab, and in counterpoint to the alarms was the familiar hurried stamp of the troops rushing to defend, defend, but everyone knew that it was the scientists who needed to come up with the ultimate solution; even the airmen knew that their line of defense would eventually crumble and that if the brain trust hadn't had a revelation by then it would be all over. They wouldn't have to wait for the Gobblers to get them, though. The White House would incinerate the mountain with nuclear fire before it came to that.
The whole team was desperate, fingers pounding on every keyboard, screamed curses at the most minor of typos, silent tears as every piece of code failed to execute as they wanted it to, as they needed it to. Something, something they were missing, but what, what, what? They were in a deadly race and they weren't going to make it. He knew that, deep in his bones. This time they would fail.
“Dr. Lee! I just came from the gateroom, Yamato says the keton radiation didn't work, what else can we try?”
He stared at the desperate airman, his mind frantically dashing in all directions only to find it was cornered. He didn't know. He just didn't know what else they could do, what they could try, what crazy out-of-the-box move could save them. Everyone here was going to die, and if the nuke didn't take out the Gobblers they would overrun Earth, everyone on the planet . . . Katie and Alan and little Jeremy, oh God-
And it was his fault. He was head of the science division; all of this was his responsibility; it was up to him to come up with the last-minute revelation that would rescue them all. For God's sake, he was even the resident expert in nanotechnology, what with Colonel Carter gone and Captain Hailey transferred and Dr. Ingram dead, but he couldn't, he wasn't smart enough, and everyone was going to die, and it was his fault-
“Dr. Lee!” cried the airman desperately.
“I don't-I don't know.” If only the base weren't already cut off, if only he could contact someone who did know more, if they could just dial out and radio Atlantis or even phone the scientists at Area 51-because all he could do was furiously scroll through his code and look hopelessly for the missing link and try not to think of his children, because he wasn't good enough, wasn't Colonel Carter, and he wasn't going to be able to do this, and he needed someone else, someone who knew nanotechnology, an expert-
The thought was like a bolt of lightening, exhilarating and terrifying and dangerous enough to get him killed.
“I'm going to try something. Keep working, everyone!” he yelled heedlessly at the room, and dashed past the young airman, trying not to see the terror in light blue eyes that were the exact same shade as his son's.
The elevators were out. He raced up seven flights of stairs, wheezing, the air stabbing into his chest, his side cramping and his legs burning by the second flight and then turning to jelly until he thought he honestly would collapse, and he cursed himself again for not working out more, especially with this job, but he thought of Katie's smile and pushed himself up another flight. When he reached the lab he had one horrified moment in which he thought they might have moved everything to Area 51 already, but it was all still here, starting to gather dust. He started to dash lurchingly towards the pod, but with a sudden thought spun to a workstation first, his fingers typing faster than he would have thought possible, no time to test the scripting, have to go-
He threw himself into the pod and pressed the button. There was no time to be afraid.
He was by a park lake, and the sun was shining. Birds twittered nearby, and a boy laughed and shouted to his father as he flung pieces of bread into the rippling water for the ducks, who flapped towards the largess with happy quacks. The utter peacefulness of the scene was a shock to Bill's system, like a bucket of cold water thrown on a sleeping man. It disoriented him for a precious few seconds, and then he was running again, and got another shock as he took off easily, athletically, because in here he could run like the wind, and in the space of a breath he had found her.
She was just leaving her job. She walked out with a handsome young man, one of those types with an endearing smile, the ones Katie liked to call 'adorkable puppy dogs.' He was just the type that Katie would go after, too, Bill thought, and the type that might drive a father crazy. Ava waved to him as they parted ways, and he grinned at her and ducked his head a bit as he waved back and headed off. Definitely Katie's type. The thought hurt.
Ava turned to make her own way home, and stopped short as she saw him. Then she smiled, and again Bill was reminded forcibly of his daughter. It was one of the things that had made him want to take her under his wing in the first place, when they had first worked together and they'd all thought she was a young research student devastated at the death of her boss and not a dead girl resurrected in a human-form artificial intelligence-she reminded him of Katie. It wasn't anything in particular, just something in the way she smiled, in the wide guilelessness of her eyes . . . he wasn't sure. Even after they found out what she really was, his mild feeling of protectiveness towards her hadn't gone away. “Dr. Lee! It's good to see you.” Her eyes widened. “Are you-all right?”
He must have looked stricken, and desperate, the way her expression changed and her pretty eyes got huge with worry. But there was no time. “Ava. I need your help. I know we said you can't work on this stuff, but we're about to be overrun, and I can't solve it-it's nanotechnology, of a sort, I thought maybe-could you-?” He was stammering, trying to find the quickest way to say it, and not able to get the words out at all.
“I-but I can't-” Her cheeks darkened. “Does anyone else know you came to see me?”
“N-no, but-Ava, there's no time, people are going to die. Please.”
Still she hesitated. He remembered the threats they had given her about working in a scientific field, so afraid she would figure things out and escape and be a threat to Earth-he cursed the IOA, the military, and every other piece of paranoid brass, because if she had been working at the SGC in the first place, maybe she would have been able to save them before now.
She took a breath. “All right.”
He thrust the tablet at her that had materialized with him in the park, praying that his code was good, that this would work the way he hoped in a virtual environment like this one. “Here. If you put your thumb on the pad, all the info will download to you. It's the quickest way. Please.”
She glanced around nervously, but Bill couldn't take the time to preserve her image of reality by going somewhere more private, not when this was really only a simulation of a busy sidewalk in a quaint little downtown and people were dying a few floors below him. Ava gave him one last look, unreadable, and then took the tablet and pressed her thumb to it. Her skin seemed to flash silver for a moment on contact. Was that his imagination, or hers?
She blinked. He'd downloaded all the information to the virtual environment already; she should have activated his script to transfer it to her individual consciousness-it wouldn't have worked with a human in the VE, he was pretty sure, but her consciousness was programmed, and was a program they vaguely understood at the surface level. Enough so that he was able to upload their whole situation to her brain in a split second. He hoped.
“They're not Replicators,” she said slowly.
“No, no. Something different. Different, but still nanotechnology. We call them Gobblers, from Ben Bova, you know. Or, well, you wouldn't know, but-”
“Actually I quite enjoy Ben Bova,” she said absently, but she wasn't looking at him, just staring abstractly into the distance, and he thought-or maybe hoped-that he could see her mind already working a mile a minute, a mind that was so like what they were trying to destroy, yet so utterly different.
She snapped back to look at him. “I have an idea. Their directive is to consume, but I think I see how to give them a priority of what material to consume.” She was already dragging the stylus across the tablet, tapping on the screen.
“But if they can't find their first priority, they'll just move to something else,” Bill pointed out hopelessly, dismayed. “We thought of that.”
“Except that I also think I see how to subvert their self-preservation matrix, which means we can instruct them to attack-”
“Each other!” he finished, hope flooding back. “Yes! But-but the self-preservation, we tried to figure out a way to disable it, but how-?”
“I'm not disabling it, I'm subverting it. If we can make it so that each nanite puts its own self-preservation over that of the Horde-or rather, reprogram them so that they each think they're a Horde of one-”
“Yes! Yes, yes, I think that would work, but do you see how-”
“There. I just did it.” Ava handed the tablet back to him with a sad smile. “Upload it, see if that works. And Dr. Lee?” He wanted to race away, but her wide, worry-filled eyes arrested him. “Can you give me a call tonight? Let me know everything's okay?”
“Uh-I can't promise,” he got out, and felt like dirt. “I gotta go.” He spun away from her, fingers already working the virtual tablet to upload its information into the VE memory, and ducked into a nearby alleyway. A moment of concentration later he was waking up in the disengaging pod, and then he had no time to think of Ava and her imaginary life as he was frantically uploading her code and broadcasting it to the Gobblers, and then followed five exhausting hours of cleanup as the tiny machines finished each other off and the science team figured out how to trap the few voracious survivors in a magnetic field.
Whenever anybody congratulated him on the last minute idea, though, he thought of Ava, and how worried she had looked about the very people who had trapped her in a fake existence without her knowledge, and he had to force a deceitful “thanks” and “just doing my job” out of a dry mouth.
Jeannie frowned when she saw the unfamiliar SGC e-mail at the top of her inbox. The only people she corresponded with regularly were Mer and Teyla, and Mer had been irritatingly quiet of late. Usually he sent her a regular bombardment of technical ramblings, but ever since that Wallace guy had abducted her, he seemed reluctant to ping her about anything scientific, no matter how trivial. Though she suspected Kaleb was secretly a little relieved, she herself was starting to get seriously upset about it. She hadn't realized how much she had enjoyed collaborating with him . . . until he wasn't asking anymore.
She sighed and clicked, assuming that the new e-mail was about something administrative-her security clearance or the like. She was wrong.
From: leeb@csb.sgc.gov
To: jeanmiller1729@shaw.ca
Subject: request for a meeting
Dear Mrs. Miller,
My name is Bill Lee, and I'm a scientist working at Cheyenne. On, well, you know. I've worked with your brother. I'm currently working on a project that I could use some help with, to be perfectly frank. To be honest, I need someone who is better versed in nanotech than I am, and I thought-well, I was wondering if I could meet with you and bounce some ideas or something. Strictly unofficially.
You can reach me at this e-mail or through the SGC switchboard, ext. 155.
Bill
p.s. Please don't tell Rodney I contacted you as I doubt he would like it.
She couldn't remember where she'd heard the name Bill Lee until she looked back at one of Mer's latest e-mails. So I was stuck working on the midway station with Bill Lee and Kavanaugh for almost FIVE HOURS thanks to that conniving Czech, and MY GOD I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO STAB MYSELF. Or maybe them. Bill has the saving grace of being minorly competent, but Kavanaugh has NO REDEEMING QUALITIES. THEY SHOULD FIRE HIM. OR STAB HIM. I'M NOT PARTICULAR.
Well, “minorly competent” from Mer meant this Bill Lee guy was pretty brilliant and definitely good at his job, but she couldn't figure out the odd tone of his e-mail.
“He's either embarrassed he needs help, or is hoping to have an affair with you,” said Kaleb jokingly, when his puzzled wife showed it to him. Jeannie caught the strain in his voice, though, and she knew he was thinking about what her involvement in the Stargate program had gotten them: a midnight abduction from which she had finally been rescued to come home with still-healing fractures in both legs. She hadn't been able to bring herself to tell him that it was her brother who had broken her legs in order to save her from something far worse. She didn't like keeping secrets from him, but she already couldn't bear the worry that had crept permanently into his eyes, and couldn't bring herself to add to it, not when it was already tearing her up inside.
Not when she was already feeling so guilty about how much she loved being consulted about science that was so fantastic it was literally out of this world. The fact that her recent kidnapping and near-death experience hadn't dimmed that enthusiasm scared her just a little, but she wasn't going to stop, and she didn't want Kaleb to ask her to, because . . . because she already knew what her answer would have to be. Again she found herself desperately hoping Mer would quit being stupid and start e-mailing her science questions again. He could be so dumb sometimes.
Clearly, though, he wasn't the only one who wanted her help . . .
“I think I'm going to go,” she told Kaleb decisively.
He didn't look happy about it, and a little part of Jeannie died at the sight. All he said, however, was, “Just be careful.”
The second time had been out of guilt.
He didn't have any trouble sleeping-one of the perks of working at the SGC; no matter how many terrible things you saw, you were always so tired that it didn't keep you awake-but once he finally made it home at seven in the morning and fell into bed, not even bothering to undress, he dreamt of Ava. Except in his dream she was somehow Katie, too. Nothing really happened in the dream, he just saw her, and she was worried, and lonely, and forgotten.
The next day, as his science team was dealing with the aftermath of the attack, he snuck back up to the Level 21 lab and reentered the virtual environment.
The VE clock was set differently from Cheyenne Mountain time, and the clock over the Corinthian-pilastered courthouse proclaimed it around lunchtime even though it was evening outside. He hung around the entrance to the the building he could only assume was her workplace-at least, the computer said she was in there, and it was the same building he'd found her exiting the day before. While he waited he looked around, studying the world-he had, after all, been responsible for overseeing its programming. He'd been inside before, of course, back when they'd first built it, but still, he found himself impressed. Impressed, and mildly creeped out. It looked so real. He found himself reaching out to touch the yellow brick of the building; it was rough and grainy against his fingers. People moved through the streets; cars honked at each other; a dog barked somewhere. It was sunny again today, but cool, and a brisk wind rolled clouds across the sun in tumbling waves, mottling the ground below in light then shadow then light.
“Dr. Lee!”
It was Ava, apparently coming out on her lunch break. She smiled when she saw him. “I trust this means my code worked?”
“Yes. Yes, thank you. Uh, yeah. Everything's all right now.”
They stood awkwardly for a moment. Finally Ava said, “Dr. Lee, I was just going to grab some lunch. Would you like to join me?”
“Oh. Ah, I should really get back to work . . .”
“Hey, Ava.”
It was the same dark-skinned boy from last night, the puppy-dog one. He smiled at Ava, his teeth brilliantly bright. “Just heading out to lunch?”
“Ahmed, hi. Uh, Dr. Lee, this is a friend of mine, Ahmed. Ahmed, Dr. Lee.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Ahmed. His handshake was firm.
Bill mumbled some pleasantry in reply.
“I'll see you this afternoon, Ava,” Ahmed said with another smile for her, as he headed into the building. Ava looked after him, and he could tell just by the look on her face, that silly slightly glowy look that Katie got whenever she started to like a boy.
He stared, feeling stricken.
Ava looked at him and raised her eyebrows in the I'm-not-quite-sure-this-is-any-of-your-business-is-it? type of way.
“Oh, uh-it's just-you remind me of my daughter,” he tried to explain. “She's sixteen, just started going out with boys and all that, and I just, uh-hey, why don't we get that lunch you were talking about?”
She smiled, amused at his babbling. “Sure,” she said. “There's a great little diner just down the road from here; how does that sound?”
“Lead the way.”
He had trouble concentrating on work the next few days. He kept thinking of Ava, of her life that didn't exist, of the boy she was falling for who was just a variety of a personality matrix they had written based on real human interactions, a simulation of a human being.
She's happy, he tried to tell himself. It doesn't matter that it's all fake. She's happy.
It didn't change the fact that none of it was real.
Human beings are all just machines anyway; Ahmed and all the rest are just . . . simpler machines, he rationalized. The trouble was, he knew too much, was too good of a scientist, to buy that. Ahmed and the rest of the personalities in the VE were complicated, yes, but in the end were all just nondeterministic Turing machines, their decisions based on random variables with probabilities determined by assigned personality type. They had no depth, no actual empathy. If Ahmed acted like he was falling in love, the reason would be a metaphorical coin flip within the VE that came up heads; if he decided to break her heart later on, it only meant that the flip had eventually landed tails. He had no actual emotions, no free will, no sentience.
Ava, on the other hand-she was a level of technology so far beyond them, one they barely understood even at the surface. Even with all the alien boosts to their technology, most Earth AI was still based in machine learning algorithms, nothing that could reach consciousness of any degree. Sure, Ava had been programmed, her predispositions set for empathy and social interaction, but she did have an awareness, a will-at least, he thought she did. Bill wasn't certain where the line should be drawn for sapience, but his instinct was that even if they could pass the Turing test and fool a person, the simulated townsfolk of the VE did not qualify, whereas Ava . . .
He wasn't sure, but he would say she did.
“It's like Star Trek,” he muttered to himself. “'What if she exhibits consciousness, even in the smallest degree? What is she then?'” he quoted, adding softly, “And what have we done to her?”
He came to Vancouver to see Jeannie. Kaleb took Madison to the aquarium for the day. “We'll just hang out in Stanley Park until you call,” he told her. “That way you can have the house. You know, instead of discussing all this ultra-secret stuff in a coffee shop or something.” The attempt at levity was poor; his eyes were more anxious than ever.
Dr. Lee arrived about fifteen minutes late. She opened the door to find an overweight, scruffy man on her doorstep, smiling nervously behind square glasses.
“Dr. Lee?”
“Bill, please,” he offered. He had a little bit of an overeager way of speaking, as if he were constantly seeking approbation and was worried he wouldn't get it. “You're Rodney's sister, huh?”
“Guilty,” answered Jeannie cheerfully. “Come on in.” She stepped back and ushered him into their bright, cluttered home. She could see him looking around at the Madison's displayed masterpieces of fingerpaint, at the train set sprawled across the living room floor, at the Barbies towering like blonde Godzillas over the Lego town in the corner. “I have a five-year-old,” she explained.
“Oh, yeah, I understand.” He smiled at her apologetically. “I've got three, myself. My youngest is eight.”
“Wow, three. I have trouble handling one,” Jeannie joked politely, thinking of the other reality she'd glimpsed, the one in which she'd had boys named Bradley and Robbie. She still couldn't help but wonder about that. “Would you like some coffee or anything? Juice?”
“Oh-coffee would be great, thanks. It was a long flight.”
They made small talk about kids while she fetched the coffee and they ensconced themselves at the kitchen table; Jeannie got a mug of soy milk for herself. “So, you said you work with Meredith?”
He looked confused. “Who?”
She dearly loved doing this to poor Mer; it was delicious. “My brother. Meredith.”
“Wha-wait, you mean Dr. McKay? Dr. Rodney McKay? His name is Meredith?” He gaped at her. “Is that, like, some nickname or something, or . . . ?”
“Nope, it's his name.”
“Ah-wow, that is-you know, I am going to be the king of gossip at the SGC, you have given me the best-”
“Oh, I have better,” she couldn't resist adding. “But maybe later. What's all this about?”
“Oh.” He seemed to draw into himself a little then, as if he didn't know quite where to begin. “Um. Well. Do you mind if we keep this all off the record, by the way? I, uh, it might cause me some trouble at work if they knew I was consulting you, I mean, I know you've got security clearance and all of that, but . . .”
“Well, if you're building a superweapon, I can't promise anything,” she pointed out pleasantly.
“What? Oh! No! Of course, nothing like that, it's just . . . I'm trying to help someone,” he finished miserably. “And I think . . . I think people would be upset that I want to help her.”
Okay, that rang some alarm bells. “Why?” asked Jeannie warily.
“Oh, uh-it's a long story.”
Jeannie studied him for a moment, then said finally, “Well, you're going to have to tell it if you want my help.”
The third time he just hadn't been able to say no.
He'd had lunch with her that day after the attack, and he found her surprisingly easy to talk to. She asked about his daughter; he found himself telling her about all his children, about his problems with his ex-wife. “I don't blame her,” he said out loud for the first time. “Not really. I mean . . . it was this job that finally did it. She blames World of Warcraft too-that's a computer game,” he clarified at her puzzled look, “But really, it was the job. I was always getting called out for emergencies in the middle of the night, every week it seemed like, and then working long hours, and she never knew if I was going to come home or not-you know, we're supposed to say we're in Deep Space Radar Telemetry, but after you end up in the hospital from being tortured by Honduran guerrillas, there goes that cover story. She never knew what I really did, of course, but-you know, I think that was the worst. That I couldn't tell her, that she couldn't know, that there was this huge, overwhelming part of my life that I couldn't let her into, and-well, it hurt her.” He swallowed. “I don't blame her for that. I don't.”
“I'm sorry,” she said sincerely, and her eyes were full of sympathy.
“It's okay. It's tough, but I'll be fine. Let's, uh, let's talk about something else. How are you?”
She smiled a little sadly. “I have to admit . . . I miss science. It was always my passion, you know. Or rather, Ava's, but I have those memories.” Her eyes shone briefly, and she blinked, looking down at the unwanted pickle left on her plate. “Doing that for you the other day-just that few minutes-I miss it a lot. I wish . . .” She sighed and shook her head. “I know it can't be. I just wish things could be different.”
When Ava finally went back to work, she asked if they could get together again. “It's just . . . it's nice to know that everything's okay out there,” she explained, a little self-consciously.
Even though she meant outer space, it could have worked either way. He said okay before he actually thought about it.
“So wait, this girl is fully formed Replicator?” asked Jeannie incredulously.
“Yes. No! I mean, she is, but she's not-she's not like them. She's got feelings.”
This was all ringing a little wrong to Jeannie. “Bill,” she said slowly. “I've read most of the reports that had to do with nanotech. Wasn't there a case with some of the Replicators Earth has dealt with-”
“You mean the Milky Way Replicators? Yeah, I've been around for all of that.”
He sounded so tired that it threw her momentarily, but she plowed on. “Yes, those. Weren't there a few that showed more human-like characteristics? Empathy, even love, but then-”
“Yeah, disaster, I know. You're talking about the one called Fifth, the one who supposedly fell in love with Colonel Carter, right? No, no, I know what you're going to say. The Milky Way Replicators, even after effective centuries of evolution, they still followed their primary directive of replication; that was all they were. The flaw that was supposedly fixed in Fifth, that was supposed to give him empathy-well, the fix was seriously flawed itself from the beginning.” He cleared his throat and appeared to cast around for a moment. “The Milky Way Replicators come from a fundamentally different source. A man created a child out of nanites and then she created the original Replicators as her toys. When they got the chance to evolve they made themselves in her image. The 'fix' with Fifth was something the Replicators themselves came up with. It wasn't really a fix, more like . . . if someone tried to describe how a human being would act and then wrote a computer program following that. Even we can do that, thanks to the boosts the Stargate program has given our technology.” He swallowed and looked uncomfortable for a moment. “It doesn't-it doesn't add a whole lot of depth or complexity, but it terribly destabilized the programming because all of the contradictions with their basic directive caused a truckload of bugs. The Pegasus Replicators are way different. Their only similarity to the Milky Way ones is that their construction is based in the same fundamental nanotechnology, but their programming, it's a whole 'nother story. It's much more . . .” He paused, frustrated, groping for a word.
“Sentient?” Jeannie supplied.
“I suppose. Much more advanced, certainly. Look, the Pegasus Replicators may be made of the same stuff, but their programming was done by the Ancients.”
Jeannie found herself rolling her eyes. “Listen, Bill, I've read most of the reports.” Including some that had scared her to death for Meredith's safety. She swallowed. “I'm not sure the Ancients did a much better job.”
“Well-yes and no. Because they weren't trying to build the Replicators to be human-like, were they? They were trying to create them to be a weapon. That was their purpose, and that's part of the reason they've become such a big problem-the predisposition to violence is written into their base nature. But the fundamental programming, it's pretty sound. If the Ancients had instead programmed their Replicators to be like Data, I guarantee that we wouldn't be having any problems with them.”
Jeannie blinked. Data? Oh, right-Star Trek. She tried to get back on track. “So you're saying this girl . . .”
“She wasn't predisposed to be a weapon. Even when she's fought in self-defense, she's been careful never to kill anyone. In fact, later on she came back-and that's the only reason we have her now-she came back to save the lives of Colonel Sheppard and Ronon Dex, who are two of-”
“I know who they are,” interrupted Jeannie softly. And if what she had seen on Atlantis hadn't been enough, she was perfectly capable of reading between the lines of Meredith's e-mails. She owed those two her brother's life many times over. She swallowed. “So, it sounds like you didn't just let her go again. What happened to her?”
It had become a weekly thing.
At first he kept telling himself that she had saved the world and no one knew it, and that she at least deserved a little real human company. But he found he could talk to her. He tried to rationalize it away-she was programmed for empathy, after all, and who was she going to tell, anyway? But whatever the reason, he could talk to her; talk about the stress of his job, his fear of not measuring up and everyone who depended on him dying; about his broken marriage, how much he missed seeing his children every day . . . and she listened.
She could talk to him, too, he realized. In her world, he was the one person who knew what she really was and what strictures she was under, who knew what was really out there in the depths of space. She talked to him about her desperate fear, that she would never be able to get close to anyone because she would not be able to share her true nature. She confessed her worries about the future, about how everyone she knew would age and wither while she remained unendingly young. She spoke of missing science, sadly remembering the thrill of discovery, wishing she could work on research again, saying she knew it wasn't possible-“I gave my word.”
And he had to sit there and lie to her to her face.
He tried not to mention work, but she would ask general questions-“Is everything okay?” or “No more trouble from the Gobblers?” and he would answer, and sometimes they would touch on the edges of things. Or he would be having trouble with a problem, and maybe, maybe mention it in the most general of terms. And sometimes he walked away from their lunches with a virtual napkin scribbled on in virtual ball-point ink in his virtual hand. Every time, he hated himself a little bit more.
“Eventually, well-I have to admit it,” he said softly, helplessly, toying with the remains of the lunch Jeannie had made for them with his fork, “I've started to care about her. As, you know, a person.” He cleared his throat. “But you can see why I don't want to talk to anyone at the SGC about this.”
Jeannie still had very large reservations. Reservations as huge as tractor-trailer trucks. “Well, what do you want me to do about it? What, you want to build her a new body and bring her out of there?”
He looked genuinely horrified. “What? No! No no no no. That would be-well, a huge breach of security, it would be-well, I would lose my job over it. No.”
“Then, what?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “Nanite interactions, that's mostly what I was working on with Mer, up until a few months ago.” When he stopped collaborating with me, the idiot.
“Well-how much do you know about their programming? You know, their brains, so to speak?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “I mean, I've looked at it, but I haven't really worked on it at all.”
“Could you?”
“Sorry?” She was genuinely lost.
“Here's the thing, see. I know-I know we've got to keep her in there, and maybe even keep her in the dark. But if we could populate the virtual environment with some . . . you know, some better AIs. More human ones. I thought . . . well, she deserves her life to be a little more real. And I'm having trouble with some of the nanotechnology involved myself; it's ridiculously high level, so I thought-well, if you're willing to help, I mean . . .” He trailed off.
Jeannie frowned. “You realize-you're saying that this girl is getting close to sentience, in your opinion. If that's true, you realize that you're planning to create a bunch of conscious beings and stick them into a virtual environment.”
He blinked at her a little owlishly.
“That's-that's awfully close to playing God,” she felt compelled to add.
“It's just . . . she reminds me of my daughter,” he murmured finally. “And I can't . . . I can't leave her like that. Do you have any other ideas?”
Jeannie had no reply.
Continue to Part Two.