EUSciFi Competition First Prize: Like Killing Mice
March 1st, 2010 Posted in CompetitionThe winner of the first prize in our EUSciFi competition. This story will be published in the upcoming issue of EUSci.
Like Killing Mice by Adam Wilson
I, Benedict Michael Matthew Hume, Inspector, first class, of the XIXth Moral Enforcement Unit and Inquisition (Electronic Atrocities Division), confirm before almighty God that what follows is a true and accurate account of the events of January the 27th 2110, in my precinct, the city of Edinburgh.
I arrived at Niddry Street at 3.25pm, thirty minutes after receiving the call from Sergeant MacNeil, who greeted me at the cordoned-off area and presented me with a torch and dust mask.
“Dark in there?” I asked him idly.
“Dusty, too,” he said, sneering slightly. “Sir.”
I let it slide, took the torch from him without comment. “What’s all the fuss about, MacNeil? Don’t tell me you got us all out here over a slide rule and a pack of tarot cards.”
“Hardly, sir.” MacNeil indicated, with a nod of his helmeted head, the bustle of activity surrounding the building that had once, presumably, been a pub of some sort. To have attracted such numbers of people, the find must not have been trivial. In fact, it must have been extraordinary. “In the basement, sir. A plaster partition, fairly well-camouflaged but not too strong. When the owners of the place accidentally made a hole in it, they discovered–”
I had already ducked under the line of tape and was marching towards the door. “Come on, walk and talk.”
“Don’t you want your mask, sir?”
“I’m sure I’ll manage.”
“The room is poorly ventilated–”
“Just… tell me what you know. Okay, sergeant?”
“Sir.”
The Moral Enforcement sledgehammers had made short work of the plaster, widening the hole enough for a man to the squeeze through into the space beyond. Like an
archaeologist at the door to a tomb I cast around with the beam of the torch without crossing the threshold. Particles of plaster tickled the back of my throat, and when I spoke, I tried to keep from my voice the strain of trying not to cough.
“How far does the tunnel go?” I asked.
“A long way,” MacNeil said. “We haven’t reached the end yet.”
It didn’t surprise me. The rocks under Edinburgh were burrowed so full of holes it was amazing the whole city didn’t fall in on itself. These days, I half expected it to. “And
you’ve been inside?”
“Only as far as the stash of contraband. Once we recognised it for what it was, we called for backup immediately.”
I nodded. Straight out of the manual. Probably untrue, too. If MacNeil was right, this was sorcery of the highest order, witchcraft right out of Leviticus. I doubted even an officer as devout as MacNeil could resist a closer look.
“Grade-A blasphemous stuff, is it?”
“Heinous,” MacNeil agreed, nodding fervently.
I sighed, stepped out of the way. “Lead on, sergeant.”
The cellar he took me to had obviously not been inhabited in years. The shelves, rather flimsy aluminium things, were covered with dust. Many of them had fallen over or collapsed over time, a combination of the weight of their contents and the haste with which they had been assembled: when the very holy boots of the Moral Enforcers are kicking in your doors, it doesn’t leave much time for tightening screws.
And on the shelves themselves…
“Impressive, isn’t it, sir?”
“Depends what impresses you, I suppose.” I prodded a tangle of wires like electronic spaghetti with the tip of my pencil.
“Where do you think it all came from?” MacNeil asked.
I shrugged. “If there were less of it, I’d have guessed it was a personal stash. But a collection this size… I’d say the University. Not all their stuff was accounted for.”
MacNeil whistled, already thinking of promotion. This was a major coup. Largely thanks to our work, there wasn’t much AI still left to be found.
In these enlightened times, it seems hard to believe that anybody could have had the gall to do serious research into artificial intelligence – that they could dare think an inanimate machine could have independent thought, or that to make even the most tentative and faltering steps in that direction was not an insult, not just to God, but to Man. If a snarl of metal and plastic could have a soul, where did that leave mankind? Such thoughts made a mockery of human dignity, and constituted an insidious attempt to topple the moral system that held society together. And when the Second Enlightenment came, of course, the University robotics department was one of the first places to be sacked. With its advances in economics, chemistry and philosophy, the first Scottish Enlightenment had shown us that Man is indeed God-blessed; the second had eliminated all evidence to the contrary.
(In the intervening years there had been one Edinburgh-residing upstart who’d suggested the human soul might have arisen from inanimate matter by gradual improvements in hardware, but people tended not to talk about him these days.)
I was walking along the row, regarding the assembly of curiosities with a professional eye, when I noticed a large, heavy machine that smelled faintly of petrol. I
waved MacNeil over. “What do you think this is?”
“I… couldn’t say, sir.”
Perhaps he was lying. It can be wise, these days, to pretend ignorance about such things.
“I think it’s a power source,” I told him. “All of these… devices, they appear to be connected to it.”
“Sir.”
“The fuel tank still has a little left.” I crouched beside it for a long moment, stroking my beard in thought. “Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
“Switch it on.”
MacNeil stared at me in disbelief, his mouth working noiselessly, a broken machine. “Sir… These electronic aberrations are sinful by the mere fact of their existence–”
“Then they won’t be any more sinful when they’re lit up and moving around,” I said. “Switch it on. I want to see what we’re killing.”
When MacNeil finally worked out which switch did what, the generator hummed loudly, and a light bulb, previously unnoticed in the ceiling, burst into illumination.
We worked for many hours. Rather than narrate the entire event, I shall simply include a partial inventory of the discoveries. Where included, explanatory notes were pieced together from various technical documents found in or near the tunnel. Our findings included:
AN ELECTRONIC CALCULATOR
Twelve digit display, facility for complex numbers and matrices. Non-threatening, but easily smashed against the tunnel wall.
PROSTHETIC ARMS AND LEGS
For amputees. Various degrees of realism and sensitivity to external stimuli. These we burned.
A HAND
A metal endoskeleton, with fully articulated joints and some sensory pads. It was able to detect, presumably from changes in temperature, the kerosene we poured over it. Its fingers flexed as though trying to move away as MacNeil struck a match.
AN IMAGE RECOGNITION TOOL
Was able to identify objects by sight and name them, speaking with a woman’s voice: “Shelving unit. Computer processor. Electric torch. Man. Hand. Crucifix. Carpet. Boot. Axe.”
A NAKED BODY
This was found lying in an alcove, and was so lifelike we at first took it to be one of the designers. On closer inspection it was found to be hollow, with space for servos. When properly animated, it would have been indistinguishable from a human being.
A POWERFUL COMPUTER SIMULATOR
This was designed to support a densely interconnected network of over four million virtual switches. Four million is approximately the number of neurons in the brain of a mouse. I mentioned this fact to MacNeil, who grinned and kicked it apart. In its final moments, the thought processes of this electric ‘mouse’ could be inferred from the trembling line of an oscilloscope.
A SOLID-STATE DATA STORAGE SYSTEM
If the accompanying documents are to be believed, this was originally a joint project between the departments of robotics and neuroscience, and contained the uploaded
memories and personality of a graduate student. Wiped with magnets.
A SMALL BOX
With voice simulator and accelerometers. Emitted a piercing, human-like scream when moved, and pleaded for salvation. Whether or not this was true awareness of its future or simply an automatic response to movement was not investigated. Smashed.
Hours later, sitting on the bonnet of MacNeil’s car, wet from the spit of an Edinburgh winter mist, I watched the smoke billowing from the door.
“Something wrong, sir?”
I raised a hand to my eyes, felt the moisture there.
“Just the dust, sergeant.”
Thus ends my testimony. For completeness, please find, attached as appendices: a fuller list of the artefacts found and purged; photographs of the scene, both before and after its destruction by fire; and, finally, my formal letter of resignation from this post, effective immediately.
