Marking Time

               A few months ago, I pulled a rock out of the mud in a clear pool near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay. As soon as I did, I felt some funny kind of shame I couldn’t describe or justify. I put it back as faithfully as I could, smoothed the mud back over it, and watched the turbid water clear. Since then, the thought of it has persisted like a sort of memetic infection – loudest in what would have been quiet moments.

               I felt it again, more acutely this time. I had been rummaging for a AA battery, cracking open drawers that hadn’t had light let into them for months, and each relic they contained had a sort of dull heat radiating from it. At first, just like before, I couldn’t say what it was that bothered me. I just felt generally repulsed. And closing the drawers didn’t help; I had let something out. Working my way down the row, I came to the drawer with the watch in it.

               It was an old Casio with a black plastic band and a black face with radon-green hands, still ticking. It was white hot.

               I closed the drawer, I closed my eyes, but an afterimage persisted, still ticking. Existential heat – that’s what it was; I’d been burned. For the last however-long, I’d gone about my days and the watch had been there, marking time, its hours as long as mine. My ignorance of the hugeness of its being was gone and would never come back. I thought about taking its battery out, or just smashing it with a hammer, but in the end, I decided to put it on. It’s just a watch now, and the hours it marks are mine.

               But there’s still a rock in the mud near the banks of the Winisk, where it lets into Hudson Bay, and its hours are its own, and just as long.

The King's Alchemist - Part I

               Marcus had fallen asleep an apprentice natural philosopher. When Artom shook him awake the next morning, he was the King’s Alchemist – though the title wouldn’t settle into common use for several weeks. It was an unprecedented promotion in an unprecedented context, but the aspect of that dark night that would go on to win over Marcus’s memory was, despite it all, how well he had slept. He enjoyed many dreams, rich and long, throughout that night. He’d felt no unease as the world roiled and shifted under his bed. He hadn’t lurched awake, covered in night sweat, when the axe was put through his master’s neck. He might have slept into the middle of the day if Artom hadn’t awoken him. That he could know such peace through such a night would sow hidden thorns in any moment of peace he would have thereafter.

               “Marcus, get up! He’s gone and done it – worse than we thought! Marcus, the whole Academy is dissolved – run off or dead,”

               “Where is Boris?” Marcus asked, one foot still in his dreams.

               “Master Grey is dead – taken from his bed in the night and executed for treason,” Artom said, and Marcus’s ears filled with the sound of his own racing blood and his mind was a hornet’s nest. Artom went on, as if setting down a heavy burden, “The guard fell on everyone at once. The charge on each head was treason. Krauss was up through the night, by some grace. He heard them coming and knew it for what it was, bless him. He got a few of them out. The rest are dead – that we know of – paraded to the block like Dellian spies. There are some we don’t know about. Addie Mercer might have some people in the Sounding room with her – or at least, the guard was having trouble there – they were bundling sawgrass – they’re going to smoke them out – god! – Like rats!”

               “Artom, what do we… are they coming for us?” Marcus asked, and he hated himself for it, but he was relentlessly pragmatic, and anyone who knew him well would expect and forgive him his tactlessness. Artom didn’t know him that well.

               “We’re safe, if it comforts you to know it,” Artom said, “as safe as they were yesterday, at least.”

               “Do we run? What are the others doing?”

               “Most of the other students are doing their best not to draw attention to themselves. The outward position of the dormitories is one of perfect fealty. Godwilling, we’ll all be sent home to our families.”

               And that, they both knew, hinged upon how the sound of the day’s last beheading fell on the King’s ear – whether that moment would resound as the bloody exclamation point of his fevered raving, or another ellipsis in this series of ellipses.

               “Most? What of the rest?” Marcus was on the edge of his bed, lacing his boots, which he imagined was the first step to whatever came next, “There must be talk.”

               Something in the hall caught their ears. Shifting furniture. Hushed and urgent voices. Marcus was rapt, but Artom, who had already endured a hushed and urgent morning, continued.

               “There is talk. Some. Mostly variations on the theme of running. There’s a plot to destroy the registry and just fade back into the populous.”

               “You sound unconvinced,” said Marcus, still half-focused on the activity outside. He crossed the room, touched his forehead to his door, and shut his eyes.

               “The idea there is that, without the registry, we can escape and his majesty wouldn’t know our necks from any others younger than twenty years, but yes, I am unconvinced.”

               Marcus came back from the door, unsatisfied. “Because it takes as granted that he wouldn’t have every such person killed,” he said.

               “Whereas I think he might, if his rotting mind decides we’re also the enemy, and in destroying the registry we'd be openly declaring that we thought him ours. In that case, we should expect he do no less than what he has already done to rout all his other ‘enemies’,”

               “He has never killed half of his citizens,” said Marcus, “But I’m sure I see what you are saying.”

               “What he has done, over and over again, is surprise us with the degree of cruelty and unreason with which he acts in response to his capricious fears. His razing his own kingdom would be surprising. Everything he has done for these three exhausting years has been surprising.”

               “I follow you, and I suppose I agree, at least in that he would go to terrible ends. But then, are you advocating that we do nothing, or-”

Sounds in the hall, again. Not conflict, but definitely decisive motion. Both boys went animal-still trying to discern the nature of the commotion. Doors opening and closing, one after another. It was not random, but systematic. “It’s a search,” said Marcus, and a futile urgency seized them.

               “I’m saying we have to do far more,” Artom said, “The registry is a half-measure, but to be idle is to actively forfeit our lives. Marcus, we need you.”

Marcus felt a charge in the way he said ‘we’. The word crackled in the air between them. There was nothing hypothetical about it. Herman Krauss and Adalei Mercer were part of ‘we’. Master Grey was part of ‘we’, dead or no. Other students, members of the court, and some contingency of the guard who had seen enough cruelty, all passing coded messages and meeting in root cellars.

Most importantly, Marcus knew he himself to be part of ‘we’, but all he had time to say before the door opened was “Yes”.

First through the door was the end of a rusty halberd, held at length by some young guard conscript. The rest of his detail was nervously brandishing similar weapons down the hall in either direction.

“We’ve a summons for Marcus Locke,” said one senior guard among them, and he held at arm’s length what might have been the corresponding order, but his reach was half that of the boy’s restless blade, so the paper would go without scrutiny.

“I deny any charges of wrongdoing,” Marcus said. He began to step forward, but thought better of it when his eyes met the young conscript’s. There he saw a wild temper and little sleep.

“You are not under arrest,” said the senior guard, “I am to escort you to the Azure Mission. Now, if you would.”

“If I am not under arrest- The Mission? What is this? I could be of no use to the Mission.”

“And they will learn that to their satisfaction, I’m sure.” In a fashion he imagined subtle, the guard rested his hand on the pommel of the sword at his belt.

“I can make my way there, myself, if it’s all the same,” said Marcus.

“You are being deliberately and pointlessly difficult. You have no idea how lucky you are,” said the senior guard.

The boy with the halberd snarled.

“Put your prick away, child,” said Marcus, and then to the senior guard, “I’ll take myself to the Mission. What’s more, I’ll take my things, and I’ll take my time. You’re welcome to follow me, if you feel you’d otherwise be derelict in your duties.”

“Marcus, just go with them; you’re embarrassing yourself,” said Artom, holding Marcus’ coat and leather satchel.

The ABA Problem

"So, have you figured out how they are finding them?"

“Thanks Arthur. We think so, yes. Of course, they have the Stockton test, but we've known for a while that they've had some sort of screener. They use this higher-order test to determine who to pick up off the streets for the real deal. It's effective, too. As of yesterday evening, we are about 4.2% of the population. That's the base rate. Obviously, if their meta-test were no good, their main test would produce true positives at that same rate, but instead it's something like 55%. It works.

“A few weeks ago, my group was tasked with identifying this meta-test, and coming up with a way to defeat it. If we defeat the meta-test, and their only option is to bring all nine-billion of us in for the Stockton, which, of course, they would not consider - at least at this stage. Or they could grab folks randomly. Regardless, their positive ID's drop from 55% to 4.2%.

“Right, so, we considered their data-set. What do they have? The most obvious answer is monitoring internet traffic, like the old days, but our confusors and misinfos are still running that show. We're confident there's not enough signal in that noise.

“So, what else? Number two: the Panopticon network. They've got effectively 100% camera coverage, in terms of area, and their facial recog is extremely good, too. Call it 100%. But it wasn't immediately obvious how they might use it for the screener.

“We did our best to back way out - think objectively - 'what can be tracked with Panop?' The simplest answer is, of course, it can track where people go. Then, could we reverse-engineer our own screener that could pick out our units, just with Panop data? And that's what put us on the trail of what we're calling the 'ABA problem'. Short answer: yes.

“We've run into an issue over and over again in the past that basically boils down to the fact that our units can't make arbitrary decisions. In the beginning, a kid could accidentally ID one of ours by asking it what color sugar cookie it would like. Over and over again, we've had to apply some fuzz to their decision making, but that's never been really right. Even after we 'fixed' that sort of issue, if that kid asked the same question a few thousand times, he'd see a clean, uniform-distribution emerge. Randomness isn't the answer. People don't behave optimally, but neither do they behave randomly. You might say they behave 'spiritually' or 'instinctively'.

“Same goes for when they decide how to get from point A to point B. Pathfinding. And just like the cookie-style questions, our A to B pathfinding algorithms are now brilliantly convoluted. They're less than 'optimized', but more than 'random'. They're spiritual - really, really brilliant.

“But we had missed something, until one week ago. It was Dr. Mateu who recognized it, and when you get it, if you haven't already, you're going to kick yourself like I did.

“The algorithm is spiritual - perfectly imperfect - but it's the same, forward and backwards, on undirected graphs - which is to say, without factors like hills and one-way streets, if one of our units picks an A-B path, it's B-A path will always be the reverse. Of course, why wouldn't they?

“We don't do that! When Dr. Mateu pointed this out, I immediately thought of my walk between my flat and the CIS building in grad school. I would always walk around the north side of the conservatory on the way there, and around the south side on the way back. I wasn't sightseeing; I was just trying to get home. I thought it was so funny that I really did feel I was picking the 'best' path both times.

“It would be trivial, of course, to detect unusual 'ABA symmetry' using Panop. We had a program that afternoon, and what do you know, it flags our guys and humans at about the same rate, which was eerily reminiscent of the 55% figure. We knew we had it.

“At Dr. Mateu's request to Operations, we were allotted a test population of ten thousand units, spread all around the world, to which we were allowed to pass a new experimental pathfinding algorithm with some induced ABA asymmetry. That was four days ago - it's still far too soon to make any statistical claims yet, but we are very excited. Based on some crude numerical modeling, out of a population of ten thousand, given four days, about three hundred should have been picked up for the Stockton. The actual number - again, low confidence - is… much lower.”

"Just tell us, Doctor. We'll take it with a grain of salt."

"At least… as of just before this meeting… zero. Not one has been collected."

"Well," said the Chairman with a smile, "It’s hard not to get excited about that."

Martin Watts, P.I. - Part I

            All the sudden, I couldn’t remember what I had been doing. Then there was a light, and I could hear my heart shoving blood into my head, and I gradually became aware that I had skin. I was dying in reverse. The proverbial tunnel was behind me, and in front of me was the only thing more dreadful and mysterious.

            Wake up, Martin. It’s time to rejoin the living.

            “Uff. Five more days…”

            That’s what you said five days ago. It’s time to wake up.

Good cryostasis is more expensive than an Earthside studio apartment. Bad cryostasis is cheaper than three hot meals, and that’s how I found myself crawling across the cabin of the Maltese Falcon looking like a science experiment. I grappled blindly with the net of probes and wires ensnaring me, and I could already feel the ants coming on. Metal ants with little stabbing feet. They start on the shoulder blades and work around to my arms and my chest and down my torso, puking hot acid as they go. Soon, the part of my nervous system that told my brain whether or not I was on fire would start to get confused.

            Martin, now. You have a phone call,” said Kira, my ship’s computer.

            A phone call! I tried to run to the phone, but then realized I was on the floor. After a few seconds of the frozen pond routine from Bambi, I managed to get my feet under me and grab onto a rail.

“Answer it! Huhg- Put them on speaker, and tell me where I put the lotion!” I shouted. The ants were starting to catch on fire.

“What?” Came a woman’s voice from everywhere at once. I snapped to attention and scrambled to engage the professional part of my brain.

“You’ve reached Martin Watts, P.I.” I said “I apologize; you’ve caught me disadvantaged.”

            “I can call back,” she said. Her voice was rain on an empty street. She sounded like Jane Greer in Out of the Past. “Hello?? Why don’t I just call back-” she said.

            “That won’t be necessary,” I said “You have my full attention.”

A flashing light grabbed my attention. A word crawled across one of the wall monitors. “LOTIONà” it said, and the floor lights lit up like a marquee. I stumbled after them.

“I was looking for Martin Watts who does odd jobs,” she said.

“Ah,” I said, as my heart fell through a trap door, “Yes, that is also me. I try to stay busy between cases. And, as luck would have it, I happen to be between cases right now!” I fumble the latch open on the footlocker under my hammock and did my best to tear through its contents as quietly as possible.

“Are you really a P.I.?” she asked, “Like a private investigator?”

“Exactly like a private investigator,” I said, collecting my pride, “Remember me if you ever lose something or someone you’d like to un-lose.”

“That’s very interesting,” she said, “I’ve never met a private investigator before.”

I wrenched the cap off my tub of anesthetic lotion and began shoveling gobs of it all over my body. The ants went out like sparks on wet pavement. Smooth.

“Would you like to?” I asked.

“I think I would,” she said, “Maybe we can meet up over you setting up the appliances in my new apartment.” I could hear her smile.

She beamed me her address and Kira threw the details up on the wall. A one-bed-one-bath with a sod lot on the outer ring of Riker Station. High society. At full burn, I could dock in three days.

“I look forward to meeting you, Martin Watts, P.I.” She said. It wasn’t condescending, per se. She played with my name the way a cat would – aloof, capricious. She let me wonder whether she’d bite or purr.

“Before you go,” I said, “I never got your name.”

She paused.

No, actually, she had hung up.

“Hot damn!” said Kira. A Clark Gable deep-fake appeared on the wall, asking “would you like to?” over and over again in my voice.

“Stop, Kira. That’s weird,” I said as I struggled into my jumper.

“Too bad it didn’t work,” she said “You didn’t miss a beat.”

“It did work,” I said, “She liked it. She likes me.” I looked over the parameters and turned the key that authorized the full burn.

It would hurt. A regular Hohmann transfer would cost a fraction of the fuel but it would take too long. No, the margins for this job would be skinny, but this was the thing to do. The Itch was telling me so, and the Itch had yet to let me down.

“I haven’t been on many first dates. Do they all involve getting paid to move the lady’s furniture?” Kira gibed.

“There was a lot of nuance in that conversation that a bootleg, cereal box AI might not have been able to unpack.” I felt my gut turn as I pitched the Maltese up and around to its new bearing.

“Hmm, so now you’re making fun of me because you pirated me because you don’t have any money. I must be missing more nuance.”

 “Alright, shut up before I put you on a data stick and lose you between couch cushions,” I said.

I locked the orientation and tossed the throttle to the backstop. Suddenly, a hundred or so Gs of acceleration were superimposed on the ship’s artificial gravity. The gravistat groaned under the stress, but after a few seconds, down was comfortably down again.

“Okay, Kira. I’m going to take a nap – a real one,” I said as I sat up into my hammock.

“Naturally, sir. You’ve had a long day.”

I had Kira gradually dial down the gravistat, and the hammock slowly swung back until I was looking “up” through the bow of the ship. I lay awake for a few hours, falling up into the infinite nothing, until an uneasy sleep finally took me. I think I dreamed of ants.