The Dynamice learn the IHF may be trouble—and not the only trouble. Nobody is very happy with Ted.
• • •
When Ted woke up, Aurora was sitting on the side of the bed, nude, motionless, staring out the window.
She’d asked if she could sleep with him the first night at the mountain headquarters, showing more of the tentative uncertainty she’d had with him their first few days together—what felt like years ago, although it hadn’t been long at all. But he couldn’t tell what their relationship was now, and he wasn’t sure she could, either. It’d been one thing when she merely seemed incredibly powerful and potentially deadly; now it had become another thing entirely. His memory of myth was fuzzy at best, but he was pretty sure that relationships with gods usually ended badly for the mortals.
She hadn’t asked last night, the second night, but she also hadn’t wanted to do more than cuddle and look sad. He couldn’t get anything out of he beyond a nod and a sigh when he’d said, “I’m guessing negotiations are going poorly.” He’d wanted to say maybe they’d go better if they were actual negotiations, but he’d suspected it wouldn’t be a welcome observation.
Now, though, she didn’t look sad as much as pensive. Pensive, and achingly beautiful, less “sexy cartoon mouse” than a Michelangelo-quality statue formed of silver and copper, metallic fur looking as soft as real fur–which, he knew, it was—yet gleaming where the rising sun hit her. He’d looked at her many times and thought how gorgeous she was, how odd it was for a mouse to be that gorgeous. This was the first time he’d looked at her and thought, without warning, yes, she is a goddess.
Aurora turned to look at him, expression curious, as if she could read his thoughts. It didn’t break the spell as much as make him blush and clear his throat. “Are, uh, are you all right?” he murmured.
“Yes. I think so.” She turned to look back outside, then corrected herself, in a soft, plaintive tone. “I don’t know.”
He sat down next to her. “What is going on with the negotiations, Aurora?” He half-grinned. “If you don’t tell me, I can probably ask the bartender. He seems chatty.”
She made a thpppt noise, staring at the ceiling, but smiled weakly before sighing. “Your government won’t budge on the demand that we have to surrender our ‘stolen territory’ before they negotiate anything else. If we won’t do that, they say, we’re mere criminals. Oh, and we have to give up the ones who’ve killed humans.” She shook her head.
“That would all be pretty reasonable if they were negotiating with other humans.”
“Would it?” She waved a hand around. “Your people stole this territory from the Miwok, and you’re not even using it. And what exactly do they think they’re going to do with Dynamice who killed humans?” She rubbed her face. “And I know that being truly honest about all that will make me sound like a monster.”
“You don’t want to admit this isn’t really a negotiation.”
Aurora looked as if she were going to object, but caught herself. “No, it isn’t, and no, I don’t. But I can tell you—I mean, your government, humans as a collective—wouldn’t take ‘you’re not enough of a threat to us for us to want to destroy you’ as reassuring. Yet I’m worried any position more assertive than total acquiescence will be taken us ‘let us do what we want or we’ll destroy you.’”
“Which might force you into a position where you have to show us just how little a threat we are.”
She sighed, looking down. “What’s worse is that there are ways you can wipe us all out, if you’re willing to do damage to yourself in the process. Your history says you probably are.”
“How many of you want to strike first?”
“More than one. No one you’ve met by name.”
“Not even Laurel?”
She laughed. “I’d say Laurel is about sixty percent ‘leave them alone and they’ll destroy each other’ and forty percent ‘give me an excuse to test myself against an army.’”
Ted shook his head. “As much as that’d be something to see, I hope we don’t.”
“No.”
He chewed his lip. He hadn’t asked her yet about Laurel’s comment about the Dynamice plotting to leave Earth. He couldn’t find a way to work that into casual conversation—although nothing about their conversations lately had been casual. So what was the best way to ask? Be direct? Sidle up to it?
Be direct, he decided. So, Laurel said your goal is to leave Earth. Really? How? When? That leads to so many questions.
“Aurora, what do you think of us?” he blurted.
She blinked twice, and tilted her head quizzically.
God, where the hell did that come from? He cleared his throat. “I mean humans, and I guess I mean…I mean now. Now that you’re becoming, or maybe you’ve become…I don’t want to say ‘gods,’ but you’re on the way to Star Trek energy beings or something. Laurel’s right when she says you want to leave, isn’t she?”
“Energy beings? Laurel might make a good Q.” She laughed, then sighed, shaking her head. “You know I can’t speak for all the Dynamice.”
“I’m getting the distinct impression you’re their de facto leader.”
She looked uncomfortable, but didn’t dispute the point. “I think Laurel was right when she said that the longer Dynamice and humans stay together, the more chance there is of a catastrophe. We’ve played out hundreds, thousands, of scenarios, and the ones that are best for both of our kinds are…well. The best ones are the ones where we take charge and you accept it, but those are also among the least likely, and I won’t pretend that’s entirely on humans. The next best are ones where we just…find a way to leave.”
“So, uh, how…how’s that going to work, then?”
“We’re working on that.” She chewed her lip, looking out the window again rather than at him.
He studied her, reading the answer to his last unasked question in her expression. “I wouldn’t be going with you if—when—you go.”
“I don’t know.” She looked back, raising her hands pleadingly. “Nothing’s been decided. It’s—it’s just that there are so many ways space travel becomes easier if you don’t have to protect fully organic beings. And to a lot of the Dynamice…even most of the ones who don’t like humans are still grateful for our creation. We do owe you a debt. But they think…” She trailed off, and sighed. “We think, we worry, that we’ll never be everything we can be if we’re tied to you, whether it’s as metaphorical children or slaves or caretakers.”
Ted didn’t trust himself to speak for the next few seconds without his voice cracking. Finally, he simply hugged her. Starting to sniffle, she hugged him back tightly, resting her head on his.
After they drew apart, after long seconds, he looked up and swallowed. “There’s…something we need to talk about. A group that might be dangerous to you.”
Aurora furrowed her brow. “A group?”
“The Institute for Humanity’s Future. They’re…I guess you’d call them an AI think tank. Focusing on what Hackett and Angel think about, I guess, but also on how AI can go wrong. Versions of the paperclip scenario, you know, where—”
“Where you tell an AI to maximize paperclip production and it converts the entire planet to paperclips because it’s actually very stupid.” She crossed her arms. “And they’re worried about us.”
“Especially since Dr. Torgensen, from Nanolab Sciences, got involved with them.”
She paused, then narrowed her eyes at him. “He’s been in touch with you about us, hasn’t he? That’s how you know this.”
“There’s a lot of other ways I could know that,” he said defensively, then sighed. “But yes, he was. For good reasons. He wanted to know what only someone who was really spending time with Dynamice would know.”
“What did you tell him?” She kept her voice low.
Ted ran a hand through his hair. “That we were trying to be good role examples of humans for you.”
“Ted, what did you tell him about us? Did you tell them they had reason to worry?”
“Yes!”
She flinched, eyes widening.
“Aurora, what else could I tell him that wasn’t a lie?”
“You didn’t have to talk to him in the first place!” She balled her hands into fists. “How dangerous are they to us?”
“I don’t know. But he messaged me about them having a ‘Plan C’ in place, which is a kind of way to stop you if you—all the mice, I mean—can’t be talked out of being destructive.”
“We’re not committed to being destructive!”
“I know that. I know that. But I’m worried that some people at the IHF would be willing to…” He cleared his throat. “Strike preemptively.”
“Dammit, Ted!”
“I’m sorry, I—”
Aurora disappeared in a blur. She hadn’t even gotten dressed yet.
Ted clasped his hands around his nose and mouth, taking deep breaths, and numbly got dressed. He didn’t know what to do other than wander around the compound. Again. At least in the relatively few places safe for humans to wander.
Yesterday morning, a coffee bar had appeared in the area he’d dubbed the lobby. It was all automatic, a touchscreen with different beverages and a rack of always-clean mugs and cups nearby. He’d just gotten a cup of coffee—not as good as the snootiest of human cafés, but better than most—when the world lost focus around him all at once. It felt like the floor had dropped away, a stomach-churning sense of falling without movement.
Then reality snapped back, hard enough that he nearly lost his balance, coffee sloshing over the mug’s rim. Wherever he was now, it wasn’t where he’d been a moment ago; the light was much brighter, for one. Was he outside? It didn’t—
—what—
Inside. He was inside, light streaming through impossibly huge windows to his right. Angel stood nearby, along with Hammer and Finley, and—somehow—Hackett, too. Hackett was, predictably, cursing, although quickly quieting as he looked up.
He was looking up at Aurora, Laurel, Adonis, and several other Dynamice Ted didn’t recognize. A couple of them weren’t even mice; one was distinctly lupine. Dynawolf? No matter. They towered above the humans—from waist up. That snapped it all into perspective: he and the other humans stood on a table. This was a conference room, scaled for giants.
“So.” Laurel leaned forward, placing her hands together close to Ted. “Tell us what you just told Aurora, in excruciating detail.” When the giant mouse said excruciating, she shifted her hand in just the right way to make her claws glitter in the sunlight. They looked especially capable of carving through armor plating like wrapping paper today.
Ted cleared his throat, glancing up at the mice, who all looked particularly predatory at the moment, and at the other humans, who all looked at Ted as if they would be willing to feed him to anyone who asked. He stammered his way through what he’d told Aurora about the IHF and Torgensen, this time expanding it—briefly—to meeting with Torgensen in person.
“So you were their spy on the inside,” Adonis murmured.
“I wasn’t spying,” he protested. “The next communication we had was Torgensen saying they had a ‘Plan C,’ and that was in reaction to what all of you were doing.”
“You shouldn’t have been talking to those anti-AI weirdos at all,” Hackett snapped.
“I was talking to Dr. Torgensen, who helped me and the Dynamice more than once when I was at work. And isn’t the IHF more about developing AI responsibly? Nanolab was hardly that.”
The “Dynawolf” growled.
“No offense, sir,” Ted said quickly. “You know what I mean.”
“We are not ‘AI’ in the way they mean it, and you know that.” The wolf’s voice was low, gravelly, definitely in that “sexy if you’re into that” range.
“Really?” Hackett threw up his hands. “You’ve got all the elements of artificial superintelligence they worry about, your own volition and your own agenda, combined with embodied physical form, nanotech, and a hivemind on demand. And,” he pointed at himself, “apparently you can fucking teleport people now. What do you think they’re going to see when they look at you? Also, why the hell am I here?”
Aurora leaned over, putting her hands on the table. All the humans, including Hackett, stared at them, then straight up at her huge, unsmiling face. “Because,” she said, “you’re one of those pro-AI weirdos. As much as we know, as much as we can do, you’re closer to their thought processes than we are.”
It took him a few seconds to gather his speaking voice again. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean I know what they’re going to do. If they’ve truly got it into their heads that you all are existential threats to humanity—”
“Which we are,” Laurel noted.
“Not helping,” Finley said.
“—then that means either knocking you off the network or physically destroying you. Since you’ve all gathered right here,” he pointed with both hands at the table, “that means targeting here.”
Ted spread his hands. “Targeting here how? It’s not like they have a private army.”
“I don’t know, man. They don’t need a private army, they need to be friends with somebody who has a private army. Or friends with someone who has a standard issue army.” He gestured between Aurora and Hammer. “You two are just negotiating with this country, but you can bet there are other countries, some with serious firepower, watching what’s been happening here the last few days and having a meltdown. Which describes pretty much the entire fucking world, by the way, if you haven’t been keeping up with the news. There are literally a half-dozen cities burning right now. Soldiers, martial law, all that dystopian movie shit come to life.”
Adonis furrowed his brow. “We’ve done very little that’s truly threatening so far.”
“Yeah, but the rest of the world is reacting the way Existential Threat Lady there,” he pointed at Laurel, “apparently thinks is funny. It’s not. The IHF jokers might be your most immediate danger, but they’re definitely not your only one. And probably not your biggest one.”
All the Dynamice looked at one another in varying degrees of alarm. After a few seconds of silence, Aurora stepped back, eyes losing focus. “I’m going to see if I can break into the IHF’s communications. Adonis, check what the talk is on SIPRnet. We may have to take over some systems. A lot of them.”
He nodded, stepping back as well.
The wolf crossed his arms, glancing at Laurel and muttering petulantly. “I said conquering them would have been the best option.”