The Ouroboros Wave (3 page)

“In other words, it’s a job for professionals. Like you guys.”

“You must be joking. SysCon can’t solve this either. This is out of the human realm. First of all, there are way too many lines of inquiry. We’d never work through them all. The only thing we can do is get Sati online as soon as possible so she can find out what
went wrong with Shiva.”

“But we should be analyzing the accident, not every branch of Shiva’s reasoning process. It’s not going to be easy, but do we really
have to put another AI on it?”

“Sati has to analyze all of Shiva’s processes first to tell us where
to start looking. And that’s not all.”

Tatsuya noticed Catherine glancing at the coffeemaker. It hit him that he hadn’t had anything to drink since before the funeral. He’d been thirsty without realizing it. He activated an agent program from his web and ordered the coffeemaker to brew two cups. Their personal mugs were just a few feet away in the wall locker. Tatsuya
retrieved them and filled them with coffee from the machine.

“Thanks,” said Catherine. “But listen, Tatsuya—why did you
make coffee for me?”

“Because I love you? Okay, I thought you’d be thirsty. No fluids
since before the funeral.”

“There. You’ve put your finger on the problem.”

“Which is?”

“The impregnable fortress we have to conquer. The difference
between humans and AIs. Humans have a theory of mind. AIs don’t.”

“Are you sure? ‘Thirsty’ equals ‘make coffee.’ Simple logic. Any AI could manage that.”

Catherine took a few moments to frame a reply. “Here’s the problem. I’ll exaggerate a bit to make the point. Have you ever seen Grünewald’s
Crucifixion
?”

“Sorry, doesn’t ring any bells.”

Catherine downloaded an image of the centuries-old painting to her web. It showed Christ on the cross, limbs twisted in a grotesque
posture of agony. “What does this make you think of?”

“Well, he has nails through his palms. Must be painful. That’s
about it.”

“Right. That’s your theory of mind. As a human, you experience pain. You have memories of pain. You can create an image of Christ in your mind. You have the same physical structure, so you assume Christ feels pain. So let me ask you: why don’t you assume that the cross is suffering? The same nails that go through Christ’s flesh are penetrating the cross.”

“But the cross doesn’t feel any pain.”

“Really? Have you ever been a cross?”

“Not personally, no.” Tatsuya grinned.

“That’s my point. The cross and the human body have different structures. Maybe the cross does suffer. But we have different structures, so we can’t model its suffering in our minds. ‘Thirsty’ equals ‘something to drink’—that’s knowledge a digital inference engine has no way of learning. It has to be
programmed,
it doesn’t
know.
That’s why a theory of mind is so important. AIs don’t have
that ability yet.

“AIs use language to reach conclusions, but that doesn’t mean they can learn from every form of human reasoning that can be expressed in language. They can’t access the meaning behind the words. Even if AIs can reason, they still need humans to translate phenomena into words or symbols. Otherwise, as far as the AI is
concerned, those phenomena just don’t exist.

“It’s not just that the universe humans and AIs understand is different. The universe we perceive is different. Sati and Shiva were populated by their developers with different sets of axioms. Whatever looks like a logical contradiction to Sati will be the key to the accident. What we have to do is analyze that contradiction. Only humans can find internal contradictions in the axioms that a unique AI has constructed using rules of logic.”

“Cath, shouldn’t we just start from what Graham actually did? He must’ve modified Shiva for a reason. Then he noticed something wrong. That’s got to be the key.”

“Good point. Graham was trying to upgrade the resonance-damping system. Oscillations could snap the ring if they grew strong enough. He told me the current safeguards aren’t ideal.”

“Hold on, that sounds like a major problem.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s major right now. But the data we’re getting isn’t what the model predicts. There are these little discrepancies we can’t account for. Whatever Graham was doing with Shiva, there’s probably a connection. Just before the incident he must’ve noticed something problematic about the changes he made. Whatever it was, I think the problem must be connected to why Shiva reacted the way he did. Still, linking cause and effect isn’t something we humans can do in this case. We need to get Sati online as soon as possible.”

“A famous detective needs a brilliant assistant, right?”

“Just so, Watson.”

2

“
THAT’S THE GREAT THING
about this station. You can eat rice with chopsticks like a human being.”

Tatsuya and Kurokawa, his deputy station manager, were chatting via web from their respective living quarters in the west and east habitat modules of space station Amphisbaena—a huge, bisymmetrical needle rotating around Ouroboros in the same plane as the ring. The two cylindrical habitat modules extended across the width of the needle near its midpoint, flanking a central utility module. Tatsuya was responsible for overall operations, but he’d delegated oversight of Station West to Kurokawa. The distance
between the two modules was eighty kilometers.

Amphisbaena—named for the legendary serpent with a head at each end—rotated like a propeller about its center at precisely 8,120 meters per second to generate downward inertia in the modules. Each tubular structure was a small city that combined residential and work spaces, with each level dedicated to a different function. A cylindrical space ten meters across penetrated the structures from top to bottom; a circular, five-meter compartment traversed the central space like an elevator, giving access to each level. Tatsuya’s office was in this glassed-in cylinder, which allowed him to oversee work with key staff throughout the module. Access from the levels to his office was via a projecting bridge. Three levels of floor-to-ceiling glass made up the central section in Station East, which meant that Tatsuya could observe operations at any point
of the compass.

Tatsuya was eating. To avoid having to glance at the device embedded in his wrist, he had routed its display to a flat screen monitor. Tatsuya was busily stirring a bowl of green tea over rice. Seeing him about to tuck in, Kurokawa suddenly looked serious. “It’s nice that we have rice to eat, but don’t eat too much. We don’t
have much left.”

Kurokawa disappeared from the monitor, his image replaced by a data plot of declining stores of rice from Amphisbaena Harvest No. 7. Superimposed on the curve was another plot, labeled T
ATSUYA
K
AWANISHI’S
R
ICE
C
ONSUMPTION
. The plot clearly showed that the supply of rice from the last harvest would be exhausted in another week or so at the current rate.

“Why do you send me this stuff when I’m eating?” grumbled Tatsuya, as he gave his rice another stir. His voice was picked up by
his wrist web; at times like this it was a very convenient device.

“Mealtime is the only time for info like this. Should I send it during work hours?”

“I see your point.”

“This station isn’t a farm, it’s a logistics center. We have a limited amount of growing space. It puts a load on the life-support
systems too.”

“Yeah, but this is the only AADD station where we can grow
rice. I seem to remember that farming was your idea.”

“I wanted to grow vegetables, not rice. And we’re supposed to be sharing. You’re eating more than your share.”

“Are you still holding Harvest No. 6 against me?”

“No. The fact that you ate sixty percent of that harvest is something I got out of my system months ago. Besides, I have all the
data if I ever need to refresh my memory.”

Tatsuya’s web chimed and he saw a detailed consumption plot for Harvest No. 6. At times like this, the web was a very inconvenient unit.

TATSUYA AND KUROKAWA
had commandeered some unoccupied space in the habitats and started growing rice on the pretext of creating a green zone. Naturally these were not real rice paddies. The plants were grown in trays, a crude hydroponic setup with nutrient solution, high ambient oxygen levels, and macromolecular granules instead of soil.

Their inspiration came when they noticed some of the crew cultivating ornamental plants in pots. Most vegetation required gravity to germinate—in fact, gravity was necessary for them to grow normally at all. As Tatsuya’s office moved along Central Block, he saw plants on each level forming small clusters of green, like miniature forests. Boston ivy vines spread along the inner wall, blocking part of the view through the glass. The habitat was an ideal environment for vegetation. It was probably only a matter of time before this castle of high-impact glass and hybrid materials was completely covered with a lush blanket of ivy, as Tatsuya could see from the way the vines were creeping further and further into his field of vision.

Once Chandrasekhar Station was complete, Kali’s gravity would make it possible to farm on the shell’s outer surface. There was no gravity on Ouroboros, which was still under construction. Free-fall conditions prevailed. The only other place with “real” gravity in the
vicinity was Kali—not the best location for agriculture.

Space Station Amphisbaena was a charcoal-gray needle 1,728 kilometers long. The carbon-fiber nanotubules used in its construction were the same as those used to build the orbital elevator on Mars. Without their web’s image-enhancement circuits, it was very easy to miss the station against the blackness of space. The tips of the needle completed a revolution in just under eleven minutes, with the center of the station tracing its own counterclockwise path around the rim of Ouroboros at 3,680 meters per second. Each tip of the station made a close approach to the surface of the ring approximately every fourteen minutes. As the tip made its closest approach, the relative speed between station and ring fell to nearly zero. From the ring, it looked as if a titanic pillar was descending from
directly above, remaining stationary for a few tens of seconds.

During this window of synchronized movement, supplies could be transferred across the gap between the station and any of the platforms on Ouroboros by extending the tip of the station. A transfer from the station to any given platform was possible once
every three hours or so.

In stations East and West, forty kilometers from Amphisbaena’s center of rotation, gravity was more or less the same as on the surface of Mars. Many of Tatsuya’s team members had been born on Mars, making the station a comfortable environment for them. The next closest place a person could eat tea over rice with chopsticks was ten-odd astronomical units away. Trying it in free fall would
get a bit messy.

The gravity generated at the tips of the station was far greater than in the habitats. The station had an automated cargo-handling deck at each tip, echoing its two-headed namesake. An unmanned cargo container could enter one of the decks and be transported with the station’s revolution to a platform on the ring. The cargo decks could also be used to pick up containers from one platform and drop them at another. A logistics module running the width of the needle through its center was the hub of the system.