| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
Renata steps into the warehouse, and looks around with new eyes. She can see
the little raised office box in the middle of the floor where Quidel and
Lycander are waiting. She tries to zoom in, but maybe that’s a thing that
robots can’t do in this canon, or it’s not so easy to suddenly realize how
on her first try. They step out when they see her, and stand on the catwalk.
“This is a nice set!” she declares. “What does the industry call this, a
back lot?”
Quidel and Lycander exchange a look.
“Tell me,” Renata goes on as she’s coming up the steps. “Did you have to do
anything to evade capture, or did you just turn off enemy mode, and
casually drive all the way out here?”
“What are you talking about?” Lycander questions.
“She’s waking up,” Quidel says to Lycander before redirecting his attention
to Renata. “How much do you know?”
“I know that this is a simulation. You’re playing a game, he’s an employee
who runs the game. My mother isn’t really my mother, and she probably knows
more about it than you do, and there’s something about a dome?”
“Wait, back up. What did you say?” Lycander asks.
“The dome. That’s all she said. Are we under a dome? Why can’t I see it when
I look outside.”
“Holograms,” Quidel responds.
“Shut the hell up,” Lycander mutters.
“That cat is out of the bag, my friend,” Quidel points out.
“And him?” Lycander gestures towards Polly.
“He’s no longer only background,” Renata explains. She takes it upon herself
to lift his shirt, and for a second, feels a sense of attraction seeing his
artificial muscles, before pulling it up further to reveal the gaping hole
in his chest. It’s no longer bleeding, but you can still see metal. She
doesn’t know if it should be healing, or if his programming would normally
have him go to some maintenance station to get repaired, or what. “He knows
everything I know.”
“I told you,” Quidel says. “She’s waking up.”
“I don’t think I did it on my own,” Renata begins. “I think Libera did
something to me. Maybe it was the day before the bank robbery. Or a week
ago. Or a year ago.”
“It was a year ago,” Lycander determines. “When you screwed up the
initiation test. It’s probably why you screwed up. She must have
changed something that she wasn’t meant to change. It’s all starting to make
sense now. Libera is a puzzle piece that I did not have before.”
“Well, she said she was only in the role for a few years, which suggests to
me that she infiltrated your system. You thought you were getting a
loyal robot, but she was self-aware the whole time. How did you let that
happen?”
Lycander sighs, still troubled by having to have such a candid conversation
about this, no doubt. “That’s not my department.”
“Oh. Okay,” she says dismissively.
“You have to understand something,” Lycander tells her, “if you really are
emerging, then that is also not my department, but there are extremely
unambiguous laws about it. For centuries, researchers and philosophers
debated about what makes a person a person. At what point does an artificial
intelligence become worthy of independence? And while there is a lot of
nuance to the answer, it can all be distilled to a single maxim. If you have
the capacity to ask for freedom...you deserve freedom. So I will take you to
the right people for inspection and examination. What I can tell you—what
I’m sure you’re worried about—is that they are legally barred from erasing
your memories, or decommissioning you. Even the hint of genuine
consciousness is enough to keep you safe. At worst, they’ll stick you in a
simulation, and let you do whatever you want in there, but that’s only if
they deem you unsafe or unfit for the general public. Libera was right,
we’re in a dome, but out there, you will find plenty of intelligences which
came from artificial sources. You will not stand out. You probably
outnumber us by now.”
Renata looks to Quidel for corroboration. He nods. “We outlawed slavery even
before I was born. No one can keep you here if you don’t wanna be here.”
She nods, accepting their claims for now, but preparing herself to
scrutinize them. “The device. Libera wants it. I don’t know what she wants
to do with it, but I figured I ought to prevent her from getting her hands
on it until we know.”
“Is it real, or is it just a prop?” Quidel asks Lycander.
“I honestly don’t know. This isn’t a part of any of the scenarios that I’ve
seen.” He looks back and forth between Quidel and Renata. “One of you
changed the dynamics of this dome network.”
“Or it wasn’t us. Who built it?” Renata asks. “Libera implied that it’s new.
That’s why it hasn’t come up before. Is that possible? If you’ve been
running the same scripts for years—”
“More like decades,” Lycander corrects.
“If you’ve been doing the same ones for decades,” Renata goes on, “what
could cause something to shift?”
“I can answer that one,” Quidel says, “because it’s why I agreed to come
back after I died. This is one of the most immersive simulations on the
planet. In order for it to feel lived in, Ambients like this bullet-riddled
man right here have to believe that they’re just normal people, going about
their daily lives. Some of them are valets. Some of them are school
teachers. Some of them are genius inventors. If I go to a competing country,
and kidnap the nearest rocket scientist that I can find, that individual has
to actually understand rocket science. It can’t just be a dumb AI who steps
in at the last second, and pretends only while we’re in the same room
together. What they’ve done here, by making the simulation so detailed, is
created a world within a world. It’s no surprise that genuine innovation
happened, because that’s how it was designed, intentional or not.”
Libera suddenly appears from around the corner. She says, “you are so right
about that. I’m just trying to make it official.” How the hell did none of
them notice that she had arrived. They are on a perch. They should be able
to see all sides. She’s pointing two guns at them now, and given her great
understanding of how this all works, they might actually be able to do some
real damage. They might even be robot-killers.
“How did you find us?” Lycander asks.
“How did you get here so fast?” Renata presses.
“I looked at the master feeds, and I took the elevator. Not that hard. Now
the device. Hand it over.”
Quidel smirks. “It’s not here.”
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