I agree with all evidence that self-aware, intelligent AI is impossible. The human mind will not be exceeded by technology, but it may be exceeded with technology.
Arnon D’Bvaym
THE LADY SPIDERED along the mountain path, metal legs stabbing into the earth and leaving deep divots as she did so. Sitting cross-legged on her lid, Zed glanced back and noted the long trail they left behind them, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about it—the people he was pursuing were pursuing yet something else. If another something were pursuing him, what of it? Unless, of course, his theoretical pursuers caught up, which meant competition, and, inevitably, fresh blood . . .
Zed closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking, before his thoughts became irreparably hungry. He tried to feel the centipedal rhythm of the Lady’s movement, let it fill the cavernous dark within him. One leg on the right side tended to stab just a bit harder than the rest—its rhythm, standing out among the other legs, nearly matched the throb of pain that rang out at the center of his being. The beat of the Lady’s off-leg helped to take his mind off itself.
Zed always felt a sense of slight unease traveling through these mountains. Id’s eyes were watching, he assumed, always ready to snap up more rozies for her collection. Zed had committed too many atrocities to give up his rare sort of freedom now . . .
Freedom. Zed almost laughed. Were freedom and discomfort so inextricably intertwined? Although discomfort was a rather gentle way of describing it . . .
The Lady glided past some torn-up road spikes, stabbing one in half as she went by, then pausing to allow Zed to move to her face before shortening the journey along the mountain trail by skittering up a mountain side and meeting back with the trail farther on. She just as patiently waited for Zed to move to her back when she reached the top of her climb.
Zed knew this path, that it went only one direction—he wasn’t concerned about losing track of his prey. If he lost them it would be because Id found them first, or because they fell off a cliff and died. At least then Zed might have a morsel to enjoy. The vivid thought of devouring a corpse pre-softened from its fall down a mountain activated a program in Zed’s shell that simulated normalcy—Zed felt as though his mouth was salivating, though no actual liquid came out.
Zed shuddered in anticipation, disgust, pleasure, and frustration. He could still taste the young technomancer’s finger on his tongue—biting that boy’s hand had been a mistake, but Zed couldn’t help himself. The finger had come off so easily, slid down Zed’s throat like it was just begging to be eaten . . .
Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . Almost as if she could sense his mental agony, the Lady began stomping her one leg even harder with every step, giving Zed something to focus on that pulled him up and out of the dark spiral he had begun. He slowly sighed in relief.
He couldn’t yet speak to the boy technomancer. That’s what he needed—a conversation. A real conversation. The boy—in the same way that Zed knew his madness let him understand the Lady, Zed knew the boy had Zed’s medicine, or else knew how to prepare it. Eating the boy prematurely would be worse than accomplishing nothing—it may destroy Zed’s last, slim chance of redemption. Zed needed to wait until he was prepared to control himself.
Zed had time. For fifty years he’d had nothing but time. He could wait hours, days, or weeks more.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 