The Institute for Humanity’s Future becomes increasingly concerned about the reports coming from Oakhurst, just as Ted’s own worries about the mice grow...
“So.” Dave—Torgensen had yet to learn his last name, so he thought of him as Dave the Accelerationist—took a sip of his bourbon, and gestured with his free hand at the iPad he’d just handed the scientist. “How much of this is bullshit?”
Torgensen scanned the article, headlined Supermice Invade Oakhurst. While it quickly became clear that the title was tongue-in-cheek, it described numerous sightings of the “rescued” Dynamice, including their de facto leader Aurora, in the small Sierra town over the past few days. And those sightings were hard to believe: mice racing as fast as cars, or leaping dozens of feet in a single bound. Citizens had claimed to see not just the giant Dynamice from the military program, but bigger ones, twenty or thirty feet high, albeit only from a distance, and they’d gotten a few photos to back the stories up. Yes, in today’s world photos were fairly easily faked, but if these were fakes they were Industrial Light & Magic level work. The reports of low, soft booms and strange lights at night coming from the old Best Western—now the Hackett Foundation’s retreat—added another layer of sci-fi unbelievability to it all.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, handing the tablet back to Dave. “All of what is there is…plausible for the Dynamice, if their nanotech systems are fully functional again. But I can fathom almost none of the ‘why,’ other than the possibility—perhaps the likelihood—that they are testing their own capabilities.”
Marilyn tapped the side of her wineglass. “That would explain the superhero antics, but it doesn’t explain the explosions.”
“It doesn’t say explosions,” Dave pointed out. “It just says booms and strange lights.”
“Explosions.” She looked at Torgensen to make the referee call.
“They could be explosions, yes. But they could be byproducts of mass conversion. Or something else entirely.”
Jablonski looked up from the table he’d spread papers across in a professorially chaotic maelstrom. “The question is not whether these reports are bullshit; they’ve been independently corroborated by other outlets. The question is how concerning they are. The Dynamice in that generation should have been permanently disabled by what I believe you termed a ‘kill switch,’ Peter.”
“I did, and they should have.” He tilted his head. “But there are always asterisks, hmm? It would have been possible to restart the systems, assuming they were still functional, if one could do it in close physical proximity to the mice. One can assume Nanolabs would not have done that in the current situation, so…”
“So Hackett’s team did. Why?”
“Because they’re accelerationists,” Dave said, tone matter-of-fact.
Marilyn rolled her eyes so hard it was nearly audible. “Dave, just because it’s your—”
“No, I’m dead serious. There’s no indication Hackett wants to start a competing company, that this is elaborate corporate espionage, a ruse to get their hands on biological AI models. And they have more understanding than anyone outside of Nanolabs, other than Peter here, of both the dangers and the possibilities. Isn’t the most logical explanation for jailbreaking them that the Hackett Foundation wants to see what the mice can do unleashed?”
“I am afraid Dave is likely correct,” Torgensen said after a moment.
Setting down her glass, Marilyn waved her hands more animatedly. “Do they have any conception of alignment? Trying to ensure the mice have our interests in mind as they develop?”
Torgensen shrugged helplessly, shaking his head. There was no way to answer.
“How fast,” Jablonski said, “can the Dynamice hit the point of singularity?”
“There’s no way to know that. They may never. They may be doing it as we speak.”
“I can’t believe we’re seriously having this discussion about mice,” Marilyn murmured, and shook her head wonderingly. “Who would ever have predicted that.”
“We can’t assume they’re thinking about alignment at all, let alone that they’re thinking about it correctly.” Jablonski leaned his arms on the table, resting his chin in his hands and looking distant. “So what’s our next step?”
“Our next step?” Marilyn raised her brows.
“He’s right.” Dave had headed back to the bar to top off his bourbon. “Everyone may be paying attention to this, but only we understand this. Who else is even going to go out there? Police agencies? To do what, cite them for disturbing the peace?”
“Doesn’t the National Science Foundation have some kind of response team for this?”
Jablonski shook his head. “They proposed one, but I don’t think anything came of it. More to the point…” He sighed, spreading his hands. “As you said, it’s mice. I read the same article, and three more like it. They have a…whimsical subtext, even more than what I observed in earlier coverage of Aurora’s lawsuit. None of them so much as touch on an artificial intelligence angle.”
“What can we, this Institute, possibly do beyond raising the alarm?”
“That’s an important step. But we have a connection to the Hackett Foundation.” He looked at Torgensen.
The scientist twitched in visible surprise. “I do not have any…” He furrowed his brows. “You are referring to Mr. Bishop?”
“From what you’ve said, you and he had some level of rapport.”
“To a degree, but understand that degree is exceedingly limited. We did not work in the same department, and we have not spoken since he and Aurora first went on the run.”
“It’s better than nothing. Do you think he would speak to you?”
“We did not exchange phone numbers.”
“Leave that to me.”
“Mmm.” Torgensen frowned, heading to the bar and pouring himself a glass of wine. He had been an extremely occasional drinker when employed. When he visited the IHF—which he’d been doing once or twice a week—he always had at least one generous pour. Whatever this said about his state of mind, it likely wasn’t positive. “And what do you propose I tell him? That his alien girlfriend might be an existential threat to humanity?”
“Sounds like a start,” Dave said dryly.
“I suspect,” Jablonski said, “that he already knows that. See if he’ll admit it. If he does, we have a man on the inside.”
• • •
Ted and Sally, the former SPCA worker, stared up at the structure rising at the west end of the Foundation’s retreat. He’d been watching it alone for the last ten minutes—although every human at the retreat had been watching it off and on during the last twenty-nine hours.
“They’ve done that much remodeling that fast,” she said.
Ted jumped slightly, turning to her, then shrugged. “If you can call it that.”
“It still looks like the rest of the building. Mostly. Just…bigger.”
She wasn’t wrong, although she would have been if she’d said it twelve hours ago. The wing had all but dissolved when the mice started reconstructing it, along with a significant amount of the dirt and stone under it. What rose in its place had gone through a dizzying set of configurations, from a latticework of steel girders to sci-fi crystals to non-Euclidean blobs. The design converged on an extension of the original building, first as a rough, childlike approximation, then iteratively closer—but it stood three stories higher, and sank down at least two more stories into the ground.
The building wasn’t all that was bigger, either. Four of the Dynamice—Aurora, Adonis, Laurel, and another male he hadn’t learned a name for yet—stood taller than the building, working. At times they crouched, at other times they walked back and forth, often they pressed their hands to it and molded it like high-tech wizards.
Did they need to be giant to do the work? Ted couldn’t see why, but they weren’t being forthcoming with the humans about it all. Aurora had told Hackett that they wanted to make modifications to their accommodations, and he’d said yes without pressing her for details. So technically, she’d asked for permission, but she had to have known he wouldn’t tell her no. Hackett’s response to virtually anything connected to the Dynamice lately was some version of “let’s just see what they do.” And now, seeing what they were doing, let alone at what size they were doing it at, who would have the nerve to say no going forward?
Aurora had said little to Ted since she returned from her walk, other than assuring him—none too convincingly—that she wasn’t angry with him anymore. There was a disquieting subtext of I should stop expecting you to understand.
“They’re not nice anymore,” Sally burst out.
“Huh?”
“The Dynamice. They’re…” She trailed off, and shook her head. “When they got here, everything was new to them, and they were like…I don’t know how to put it. It wasn’t that they were like kids or normal animals, but they had that kind of, kind of…” She spun her hands in front of her in a tight circle. “Childlike wonder. Am I making any sense at all?”
Ted nodded slowly. “Yeah, you are. Aurora had that all the time when we first met, when I was on the run with her.”
“It was just…really charming, you know?” Sally sighed, thrusting her hands in her pockets, and stared up at the giants. “I kind of hate that I’m thinking and now they don’t need us because it makes it all about me. It’s not like I was planning to be a mouse concierge for the rest of my life, or whatever I am. But life here had everything that I liked about helping animals, and now all of a sudden it’s…I don’t know what it is. And I thought maybe it had changed because they’re all back online now, or however you’d put it, but Aurora was online when she was with you. So it’s not that.”
“It is that. But it’s not only that. Something’s changed this time.”
She bit her lip. “I guess they do still want to be around us, though. If they didn’t, they could just do whatever they’re doing now somewhere else entirely.”
“It’s not as if anyone could stop them, no.” He grunted. “I hope you’re right, and I hope we’ll like the reasons they still want to be around us.”
She looked between Aurora, whose back was to them, and Ted, her eyes getting wider. “What do you mean?”
He looked at Aurora, too. It was hard not to focus on her butt, both how sexy it was and how big it was.
Abruptly Laurel looked down at him, as if reading his mind, and curled her lip, showing just enough of her teeth to tug at a primal fear response in the back of his psyche. He swallowed, looking away. “I don’t mean anything specific. It’s just that they’re—they don’t have much reason to think well of humans.”
“But—but we’re good humans here. Aren’t we?”
He shrugged, letting out a sigh himself. “I hope.”
“Mr. Bishop?”
Ted turned, lifting his brows. One of the retreat’s staff members—the receptionist on duty—was heading toward him. “Yes?”
“You have a call that’s come in at the front desk from a Mr. Torgensen. Do you want to take it? We can forward it to your cell.”
He furrowed his brow. Torgensen? The science guy from Nanolabs? What the hell did he want? Was Ted even legally allowed to talk to him and vice versa?
The receptionist tilted his head expectantly.
“Uh, okay. Yes.” He nodded to Sally, glanced nervously back up at Laurel a moment, then followed back inside to the front desk. The receptionist headed behind the desk and tapped a few buttons on the phone console. Ted’s iPhone rang.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Bishop? This is Peter Torgensen. I don’t know if you remember me from when we both worked at Nanolab Sciences.”
Ted walked through the retreat’s front doors, out into the circular driveway. “Yes, I do, sure.” He stopped himself from saying I had no idea what your first name was, though.
“Good. I have been following news reports about the Dynamice that are now…I doubt it is correct to say that they are in the Hackett Foundation’s possession, but with the Foundation.”
“Yeah.” He glanced up at Adonis, towering in the distance. “I wouldn’t say that, no.”
Torgensen fell silent several seconds. “You have concerns, too, don’t you?”
“I don’t think we should be talking, given all the legal—”
“I am no longer with Nanolab Sciences, so I am not a party to any of that, Mr. Bishop.”
“Okay, so, what is your concern?”
“Whether humanity faces an existential threat that very few of us will take seriously until it is too late. If it is not too late already.”
“That’s—I mean—come on. That’s…” That’s what, Ted? What you’ve been trying to avoid putting into words, even in your head?
Torgensen waited for Ted to trail off before clearing his throat. “Can you meet me in Madera?”
“Madera? That’s an hour away from here.”
“Word might get back to the mice if we meet in Oakhurst, and from what I can find there is almost nothing between there and Madera.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
“Let us meet for early dinner tonight. Say, five o’clock at The Vineyard?”
“You know what’s in Madera?”
“I looked it up on Yelp.”
Ted scoffed, but glanced up at the mice again. “See you then, I guess.”