The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 34 - ROGER

The world fell away, and a new one took its place. Roger found himself standing in the middle of a massive room constructed entirely of gray stone. Sydney stood next to him, and her strange twin sat on a high throne in front of them.

"The court will hear your petition," the twin intoned in an aristocratic voice.

Roger turned and examined the room. Murky daylight filtered in from large skylights overhead and through high, open windows along every wall. Large black birds flew in and out of the windows. They flew in and perched on every available surface, including the many mirrors scattered about the space. The mirrors were of every conceivable size, some hanging on walls, others mounted on stands. Some had ornate frames, others were plain. Most reflected the room, as a proper mirror should, but others seemed to reflect other worlds entirely. They contained visions of the night sky, or collections of geometric shapes, or lists of symbols pouring down like a waterfall.

"It's your control room," Sydney exclaimed. She was drinking in the details of the place just as he was.

"You are trying the court's patience," other Sydney shouted from her throne, "and I'm the only one who gets to try anything around here. Hah. Get it? It's a pun. I'm the one trying your case."

"A joke is less funny if you explain it," Sydney observed.

"But you weren't laughing. I should hold you in contempt for that." She folded her arms and smirked. "That was another pun."

Roger walked over to one of the giant crows perched on a short mirror. It tilted it's head and looked at him with one eye. Something about it bothered him. "Good heavens. It has your eyes." He walked and examined several more. "They all do."

"Of course they do," Dark Sydney answered, "they're fragments."

Sydney ran up to one of the birds and stared at it. It cocked its head and stared back, then cawed and flew away. "Oh god I think I understand now."

"Do you? A fragment that understands fragments. That might qualify as self awareness. You pass your Turing test with top marks."

"I keep telling you I'm not a fragment."

Roger walked up to Sydney. "Would one of you please explain what you are on about? What's all this talk of fragments?"

"They're all fragments of me," The Queen of Crows explained. "The aliens were experimenting, trying to make a useful artificial intelligence. But rather than start from nothing and build one up from scratch, they go the other way around. They start with a full mind, then carve away at it until they've whittled it down to just what they need."

"It's horrible," Sydney whispered.

"From our perspective, yes. From theirs... they probably see it as immensely practical. Maybe even beautiful."

"But why... why did you keep them? Why did you turn them into crows? They should be people."

"But then they couldn't fly." Her twin said it with such conviction, such innocence, that Sydney didn't know what to feel.

"I... I don't know how to process all this." Sydney sat down on the steps leading up to the throne.

"Most of them were pilots, so much a part of their ships that they literally swam through space. They flew. Taking that away from them would have been cruel."

"You could have deleted them, or stored them in inactive memory."

The Queen of Crows gave her an angry look. "Don't be obscene. They're alive. They may have far fewer neurons than you or I, but they are alive. And they're happy like this." She jumped from the throne and spun around, pointing as she turned. "See how happy they all are?"