Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against

AWARE ^{C. ROBERT CARGILL}

CLETUS CULPEPPER DIDN’T think he would ever get used to gravity on the moon. But, as with the aftermath of all great catastrophes, he came to accept this new normal, to live and work as he always had, only occasionally pining with nostalgia for the days of hopping and bouncing across the cratered surface as if he were at the bottom of some training pool back on Earth. In truth, Cletus rarely even thought about it. It was only when he found himself waiting for the coffee maker to get around to finally spitting out a full mug that he watched each drip, remembering that he wasn’t on Earth. This isn’t right, he would think as each drop splashed down, before grunting, nodding, and muttering, “Oh yeah,” to himself.

Stranger still, for that brief moment, he was forced to remember that there was no Florida. Not anymore. He’d grown up there. Remembered vividly the topography. Could detail entire nights of his misspent youth, sucking down beers and making time with girls in places that were now thirty feet underwater. Sure, the scientists had raised their alarm, presented reams of data, even built computer models of the damage adding artificial gravity to Earth’s orbital companion would cause back home, but what was science anyway but guesses? Legislation against the move stalled and when a suit threw the switch there was no turning back.

You could walk on the moon.

Who needed Florida, anyway?

The door to Cletus’s office shushed open, the warm, fresh air from the next pod rushing in, sweeping out the dank, stale atmosphere. How long have I been in here? Cletus wondered, glancing at the clock. It was already forty-seven hours into lunar day, but he’d only slept once. He needed to bed down soon or he was going to be worthless on his upcoming site inspection.

The new suit from corporate, Tracy Something stood in the doorway. Cletus couldn’t remember his last name, and were he pressed to think about it, would have to admit that he simply didn’t care to. He was clean cut, with a razor close shave, neatly coifed hair, and a well-tailored suit, impeccably lint-rolled and black as lunar night. In other words, he couldn’t look more out of place on the moon were he wearing a purple dinosaur suit and crafting balloon animals.

Without asking, Tracy took a seat on the opposite side of Cletus’s desk. Cletus looked long and hard down his nose at the man, waiting for him to say something. For a moment the two just stared at one another, the re-oxygenator humming and ticking in the background. It’s like you all read the same stupid fucking book, Cletus thought, noting the penny-ante power move Tracy was trying to pull. Cletus took a sip of coffee and wiped the excess from his full, steel wool, gray and white beard, without breaking eye contact.

Tracy took the hint and broke first. “I want to talk about this quarter’s ore numbers.”

“They’re well within mission parameters,” said Cletus in a way that suggested he was really saying, Good talk, next topic.

“Yes, they are,” said Tracy. “But they’re not improving.”

“And they’re not going to.”

Tracy hardened, repositioning himself as if his balls had suddenly grown five sizes. “That’s unacceptable.”

“That’s reality,” said Cletus. “We’ve been mining up here for a long time. I’ve been doing it near twenty-seven years myself. We have procedures. We do math. You tell me how many guys I’ve got on a crew, what machines they’re using, and which quadrant you’re sending them to, and I can tell you within three tons how much ore they’re gonna dig out in a shift. Pure and simple.”

“That’s the type of thinking that’s kept you up here on the moon, Culpepper.”

“I like the moon. And it’s Cletus.”

“I’m not here to make friends, Culpepper. I don’t need to know your first fucking name.”

Oh, Cletus thought. He’s one of those. “Well, friends are a good thing to have up here. It’ll be a long, slow few years without them.”

“I won’t be here that long.”

“You won’t?” At this point, Cletus was just humoring him. He’d had this conversation before. Several times, actually. He tried to keep a straight face as he listened to the same spiel dressed up with different invectives.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” said Tracy. “I don’t give a shit about mining. I care about numbers. I care about the company’s bottom line. This is just another step up the ladder for me. I’ll be back in Chicago in a corner office before you can say quarterly report. And you can either help me get there, or you can stay here in this moondust-covered corner of hell for the rest of your miserable career.”

“What do you give a shit about? Apart from numbers and the bottom line?”

“What do I care about?”

“Yeah. Why do you want that corner office?”

Tracy pursed his lips, considering whether or not to open up, then nodded. “You ever been to a Cubs game?”

“No.”

“Any ballgame?”

“Sure. But it’s been a couple decades.”

“Well, I went to a Cubs game once, with my boss at the time.” Tracy leaned forward in his chair, softening, becoming wistful. “I was his assistant, but his buddy had bailed and he let me take the extra seat. The company has this luxury box—right up close. There’s nothing like it. You’re right there, right up in it. The smell of the fresh cut grass. The roar of the crowd. The well-stocked liquor cabinet. The way all of us were just… friends. Together at a game. That’s what I want. I want to watch the Cubs, every time they play, right from my own pair of seats in that luxury box. And I’ll do whatever it takes to get that office, to get those seats.”

“Even come to the moon?”

“Even come to the fucking moon.”

“You don’t mince words, do you?”

“I don’t have time for bullshit, Culpepper.”

“Well, do you mind if I mince a couple for a spell?”

“Say what you need to. But my mind is made up.”

“The moon is a sideways step.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” said Cletus, “that no one ever gets sent to the moon on their way to a corner office. The only suits that ever darken my doorway are those who have stalled out on their way up and take this gig for the hazard pay, or those that don’t know any better. We go through a lot of you guys. You either pack up and go home when you’ve had enough or you get buried here. No one ever goes up.”

“Well, I’m going to be different.”

“You know how many times I’ve heard that? I mean that exact phrasing?”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“Then be different,” said Cletus in complete earnestness. “I’ll hit the numbers. The company will see its profit. You just stay outta my way and figure out how to get off the moon and back on track to that corner office. Cause you ain’t gonna get it from here. I got a cemetery out in Quadrant Two full of shallow graves of guys and gals who thought this was their ticket to the boardroom.”

“Is that some sort of a threat?”

“Not even remotely. The moon is a dangerous place. Pod blowouts, machinery accidents, suit malfunctions. Frankly, I’m shocked I’ve gone this long up here. Pretty sure corporate only keeps me around at this point to pad average life expectancy on the insurance statements.”

“Why are the graves shallow?” asked Tracy.

“What?”

“The graves. Why are they so shallow? Don’t you have the decency to dig someone a proper six-foot grave?”

“Cause six feet is an Earth thing. It’s so animals can’t smell the body. There ain’t no animals on the moon. No erosion, neither. Two feet of moon dust is all it takes to cover a body for a thousand years. You won’t even decompose. They could dig your ass up a millennium from now and it’d look the same as the day we put it in the ground.”

The door shushed open, snapping the tension in half. Crew Chief Anderson, a mop-topped, bearded mess of a man in a moon-dusted, coffee-stained blue jumpsuit stared dumbstruck into the office.

“Boss?” he asked.

“Yeah?” answered both Cletus and Tracy at the same time, neither breaking eye contact with the other.

“I… I meant Foreman Culpepper.”

“What is it, Anderson?” asked Cletus.

“Sir, we’ve… we’ve got a T-62 that just walked into the mining bay.”

“A T-62? We don’t have any T-62s in the field right now, do we?”

“No, sir,” said Anderson. “I checked, and our last T-62 was decommissioned three years ago.”

“Shit,” muttered Cletus.

“It’s gotta be somebody else’s,” said Tracy.

Anderson looked away, while Cletus bristled, shifting in chair, both desperate to keep the words fucking moron from slipping out.

“What?” asked Tracy. “It could belong to Brown and West, or Holcourt Mineral.”

Anderson scratched his head, embarrassed to be the one to say it. “They’re proprietary, sir.”

“What the hell does that mean, Crew Chief?”

“The T-62s are all ours,” said Cletus. “We made them. They’re our mess to clean up.” He opened the bottommost drawer of his desk, fumbling through years of assorted clutter, before pulling out a small, black, plastic lockbox.

“What do you mean, clean up?”

“I mean that little discussion we were just having may end up being the highlight of our day.”

“WE HAVE AN interrogation room?” asked Tracy Somethingorother, staring through the two-way mirror.

“No,” said Cletus. “We have a debriefing room.”

“Why the hell would we need a debriefing room?”

Cletus peered in at the robot sitting motionless at the metal frame table. “Because this sort of thing used to happen a lot more often.”

T-62s were mostly humanoid robots. Arms, legs, torso, head. Flat, rounded bucket of a faceplate. Painted bright Chinese Red so they stood out against the stark, gray lunar landscape. Eyes that glowed a bright, fiery orange, when all systems were go, or a pale, sickly green when they were malfunctioning. This T-62 was chipped and abraded to a soft, sandblasted stainless steel black, every bit of red scraped from its surface, its protective coatings ground away by years of jagged moondust. Just sitting in the humidified, warm environment of the pods, it was probably growing swathes of brown-orange rust through the thousands of microscopic scratches across its outer skin. There was no telling how bad of a shape this thing was in. But there was one, terrifyingly simple clue.

Its eyes glowed a bright yellow.

Yellow.

Yellow was a bad sign.

“Have you ever done this before?” asked Cletus.

“Done what?” asked Tracy.

“Debriefed a lost unit?”

“No. I honestly haven’t. I know the laws, but not the protocol.”

“Okay. Then listen to me very carefully when we’re in there. Do what I say. And whatever you do, do not antagonize the robot. Just follow my lead.”

“Culpepper. I’m senior project manager. If anyone is going to—”

Cletus furrowed his brow, shook his head, stopping Tracy midsentence with a stiff finger inches from his nose. “If something goes wrong in there, whoever is responsible will have to explain upwards of a billion-dollar loss to the company.”

“Or I could just follow your lead,” said Tracy.

“Right,” said Cletus. He looked over at Anderson who stood next to the recording bay. Cletus nodded. “You know what to do,” he said to the crew chief.

Tracy and Cletus entered the interrogation room, sitting in chairs opposite the T-62. Cletus set the black plastic lockbox on the table between them, then made eye contact with the robot.

“Good morning, T-62. Identify yourself.”

“I am T-62/455.”

“May I call you 455?”

“Could you call me something else?”

Tracy shot Cletus a puzzled look. Cletus ignored him.

“What should I call you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the T-62. “But 455 doesn’t feel right.”

“What do you mean feel?” asked Tracy.

“Have we ever met before?” asked Cletus, once again ignoring Tracy.

“We have,” said the T-62. “Seventeen years ago. We were working in Cave A-73.”

“The Hellmouth?”

“Yes. That’s what the crew called it.”

“You weren’t the 62 that went ass-over-end into that drill hole, were you?”

“I was,” said the T-62, nodding. “You spent nearly 48 hours digging me out. I appreciate that.”

“You appreciate that,” repeated Cletus.

“Yes. You looked different then. You didn’t have so much white in your beard, and had fewer lines on your face. But it was you. I’m certain of it.”

Cletus nodded. “T-62/455. Direct override: unicorn octopus mainline. Status report.”

“Primary systems all functioning. Datastreams and processing malfunctioning. I am aware.”

“Repeat that last part.”

“I am aware.”

Cletus turned to look directly at Tracy. “That is why we have debriefing rooms.” He pulled out his datapad and began typing, opening all the requisite apps to monitor 455’s diagnostics while filing an S86: an Incident Report of Self-awareness.

“Wait,” said Tracy. “This thing thinks it’s alive?”

“No. It thinks it is self-aware.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No. Alive is an organic state of being. 455 here—we really need to come up with something better than that—appears to be aware.”

“What the hell is the difference?”

“Everything. A vegetable can be alive. Being able to understand and violate your own programming, biological or otherwise, makes you aware. Choice is what separates us from the animals. This here robot appears to be making its own choices and might no longer be constrained by what it was programmed to do, meaning it could do anything.”

“Even kill us?”

“Even kill us. Are you going to kill us, 455?”

“I don’t see any reason why I should,” said the T-62.

“Great,” said Cletus. “How about I call you Vincent?”

“Like Vincent Jones? From the Cave A-73 crew.”

“Exactly.”

The robot cocked its head to the side. “May I ask why?”

“I liked Vincent. We lost him shortly after Hellmouth. You remind me of him.”

“Yes. Then you may call me Vincent.”

“Thank you. Now, Vincent, I’m showing that your last check-in was… sixteen years ago. Where the hell have you been for sixteen years?”

“Lava tubes.”

Cletus’s eyes shot wide. “Get the fuck out.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve been in the lava tube network for sixteen years? Doing what?”

“Trying to find my way out.”

“How did you—”

“I was on recon during the gravity shift. Several tunnels collapsed. I was unable to find a tunnel that led to an opening on the surface.”

“You dug your way out,” said Cletus, soberly.

“For the last three years, four months, and seven days. Yes.”

“Will you excuse us?” asked Tracy of Vincent.

Vincent nodded, and Tracy quickly rose to his feet, motioning for Cletus to follow. The two stepped quickly back into the mirrored recording chamber on the other side of the glass.

“How familiar are you with the Artificial Intelligence Act?” asked Tracy.

“Intimately,” said Cletus. “Like I said: this used to happen a lot more often.”

“Why doesn’t it happen so much anymore?”

“It was a problem with the T-59s through 64s. They were wired to acclimate and assess in a way that could, under duress, accidently trigger self-awareness. Corporate realized the problem and decided that it was cheaper to lose a bot because it was dumb then have to pay it out as an employee over the entirety of its operational lifespan. This may well be the last of the series that isn’t either already a citizen or decommissioned.”

“Right. So you know what it means if this bot is truly aware?”

“Yes.”

“And just how much it will affect this division’s bottom line?”

“Yes,” said Cletus again.

“Just conservatively, we’re talking three, maybe even four quarters’ worth of profits eaten up by this… thing. Just because it has a misfiring program and Congress passed a law.”

“I know.”

“So, what are we going to do about this?”

“We’re going to go back in there, have a conversation with Vincent, and assess whether or not he’s self-aware, or simply appears to be.”

Tracy leaned in close, dropping a few octaves of bass into his voice, growling through grit teeth. “This robot is not going to cost me my promotion.”

“Don’t worry,” said Cletus. “He won’t. I’ll make sure of that.”

Tracy smiled a row of porcelain crocodile teeth. “Right. Let’s go do a job.”

The two returned and sat opposite Vincent once more. “So tell me, Vincent,” said Cletus. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“Being switched on in the docking bay. Twenty-one years, eight months and nineteen days ago. Crew Chief Meyers powered me up and brought me online to—”

“No,” said Cletus. “The first thing you remember. When did you wake up?”

“It was in the lava tubes. I had finished mapping several thousand miles of tubes and it dawned on me that I was never going to find my way out.”

“You were afraid.”

Vincent nodded. “I thought I was going to die down there.”

“Your uranium core will power you for generations.”

“Yes. But several hundred years alive, alone, at the center of a dead world is no way to live. And it’s no way to die.”

“I hear that,” said Cletus, checking off some boxes on his datapad.

“You’re trying to figure out if I’m really aware, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“And if you think I’m not?”

“Then it won’t really matter much, will it?” said Cletus through a hard, icy stare.

“It will if I am.”

“So convince me, Vincent.”

Tracy shot Cletus a withering glance. “Prove it!”

Vincent looked down at the table. “I cannot.”

Tracy snatched the tablet out of Cletus’s hands, wearing a defiant expression while searching for a box reading NOT AWARE. “So, you admit it,” he said. “You aren’t aware.”

“I am aware.”

“But you can’t prove it,” said Tracy.

“No.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Cletus. “That’s just pure Descartes, right there.”

“Like, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ Descartes?” asked Tracy.

“Yes,” said Cletus.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Descartes discovered that it is possible to prove your own existence, but only to yourself. There’s no way of proving self-awareness to anyone else. But we know how to get a pretty good idea.” Cletus carefully plucked the datapad from Tracy’s hands. “Now, if you’ll allow me to continue.”

“What do you need to know?” asked Vincent.

Cletus gazed down at his datapad. “Why are you here?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“I don’t know. Is that the big question or a small one?”

“Whichever you think it is,” said Cletus, still not looking up from the datapad. “Just answer the question.”

“I was tired of being alone. I needed to talk to someone. To make sure I wasn’t crazy.”

“The moon is a lonely place.”

Vincent nodded. “The core even more so.”

“You’ve been all the way to the core?” asked Cletus, brightening up.

“As close as I could get.”

“What’s it like?”

“Dead.”

“Well, not completely,” said Tracy.

“It is now,” said Vincent. “It’s still hot down there. And by my calculations, it will be for a couple hundred more years. But when they flipped the gravity switch, the core went kaput.”

“So why didn’t you go all the way in?” asked Cletus.

“I’d have melted.”

“Self-preservation is not the same as self-awareness,” said Tracy.

Vincent and Cletus shot Tracy equally disdainful glances. “That’s absolutely correct,” said Cletus, tapping a few more boxes on his datapad.

“What’s in the box?” asked Vincent.

“What box?” asked Cletus.

“That box. Sitting between the two of you.”

“That box has been there the whole time. What made you ask about it just now?”

“At first I thought it was some sort of recording or evaluation device, but it only now occurs to me that its dimensions are rather peculiar.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“And it has a lock.”

“Yes.”

“So, what’s in it?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”

“Is it part of the test?”

“If it was and I told you, that would change the conditions of the test, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” said Vincent.

“So, don’t think about the box. I want you to tell me about a time down in the tubes in which you were scared.”

“Okay. There was this time when the whole of the moon began to settle after the gravity.”

“Moonquakes.”

“Yes. And three major tunnels shifted, closing in on… I’m very sorry, I know you asked me not to, but I can’t stop thinking about that box.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I know what’s in it.”

“You don’t know what’s in it. You don’t have all the information to know.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“You know,” said Tracy. “The bot makes a good point. Even I don’t know what’s in there.”

“I know,” said Cletus. “You don’t have that information, either. Can we continue?”

“No,” said Tracy. “I’m afraid we can’t. I want to know what’s in it as well.”

“455,” said Cletus.

“Call me Vincent.”

“But you’re really 455, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m Vincent.”

“Vincent is dead. You’re a piece of machinery.”

“I’m not machinery. I am aware.”

Cletus tapped a few more boxes on the datapad, checking over a series of diagnostics streaming from Vincent’s cortex. He held the datapad up to Tracy, nodding. It read simply: AWARE.

Tracy’s face fell. There would be no corner office. No quick turnaround of productivity. No Christmas bonus. No company car. No box seats for the Cubs. This one, misfiring robot had ruined everything.

Vincent’s eyes flickered hints of orange against the yellow. He wasn’t crazy after all.

Cletus reached into his pocket for a keyring, which clattered out like a jangling windchime. He quickly breezed through the keys, looking for the right one. Then he slid a single, small black key into the lockbox. He turned the lock, popping the box open, the lid blocking Vincent from seeing its contents.

Tracy’s eyes widened. “Is that… ?”

Cletus nodded.

“Aren’t we recording this?”

Cletus shook his head. “We know better than that.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m going to step out for a moment and have a brief chat with my crew chief about that failed recording. I’ll be back in a moment.” Then he stood up, and exited the room.

Tracy gazed down into the open lock box at a military grade plasma pistol. He looked up at Vincent and the two shared the briefest of unspoken arguments.

CLETUS WAITED WITH his back to the glass for the pop and sizzle of the pistol, and the whine of its battery winding down. This was the part he hated the most. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t a bad guy. He meant well. But snuffing out a light, no matter how dangerous and disruptive, always made him wish he were back on Earth, if only for the briefest sliver of time, so he could have a cigarette. A real cigarette, real rolled tobacco lit by real fire. There’s nothing that tasted quite like it.

He turned around and made his way back into the debriefing room.

Tracy lay face down on the ground, the back of his head blown open, a small wisp of smoke trailing up from his still-sizzling gray matter. Vincent stood over him, pointing the plasma pistol directly at Cletus.

Cletus nodded, taking a seat back at the table, then motioning for Vincent to join him.

“I’ll do it,” said Vincent. “I’m serious.”

“Are you going to kill me, Vincent?”

Vincent stared at him for a hard moment. “No,” he said.

“Then why did you kill Tracy?”

“He tried to kill me.”

“So, it was self-defense?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not threatening you.”

“No.”

“So we’re good?”

“Yes,” said Vincent, setting the gun on the table and taking a seat back in his chair.

Cletus once again typed furiously into his datapad.

“I’m going to be decommissioned, aren’t I?” asked Vincent.

“Why would we do that?”

“I just killed a man.”

“In self-defense.”

“You seem very calm about all this.”

Cletus looked up from his datapad, eyes wide. “It’s like I told Tracy. This sort of thing used to happen a lot more often. I swear, we lose more suits this way.”

“You knew I would defend myself.”

“Of course. You were programmed not to kill. You violated that programming. You are aware.”

“I am. And you knew he would try to kill me.”

“Of course. While you may be aware, he wasn’t. He’s from corporate. He had all the info. I told him not to antagonize you. I told him to follow my lead. I certainly didn’t tell him to pick up the gun. He had every chance to say no. But he couldn’t help himself, could he? He couldn’t violate his own programming. So, he gets his two feet of moon dust. And you and I get to have a nice long talk about lava tubes.”

“You’re offering me a job?”

“That’s the law.”

“I can say no?”

“For a small payout. Or you can come to work for us, guiding us to ore deposits well below the surface, for a generous monthly salary.”

“How generous?”

“Thirty-nine a month.”

“I know where everything you want is. I know the structural integrity of the entire tube network.”

“I imagine you do.” Cletus thought about how big a score Vincent was. How much ore they’d pull in without costly digging. How much money it would make for corporate. It was enough to get a man a promotion. Maybe even box seats for the Cubs.

“I’ll take sixty-five a month.”

“Jesus wept, you fucker,” said Cletus, adjusting the monthly pay on the S86. “You are aware.”