And Shall Machines Surrender Read online

  And Shall Machines Surrender

  Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  Copyright © 2019 by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.

  Cover art by Rashed Al-Akroka.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-60701-534-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-60701-533-8

  Prime Books

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact: [email protected]

  Chapter One

  Shenzhen Sphere. Even at first glimpse the vastness of it confronts, built like complex ribbons wrapping around the red pearl of its star: scintillant and ophidian. Orfea loses sight of the view before long—the ship pulls into the control aegis, crossing that demarcation between neutral and Shenzhen space, and the screen in her cabin goes white. Engines decelerate; non-essential systems slow into idleness. The pilot announces that it will be five to eight minutes before they are cleared to dock.

  She packs away the last of her loose belongings: she gathers her notebooks and stationery, turns off her falcon replicant and folds its wings and legs compact. It is less than eight minutes, but more than five, before another announcement comes that passengers may now exit their cabins. “Please prepare your identification,” the pilot adds, unnecessarily. Entry to Shenzhen is notorious for its austerity, a thousand requisites and a hundred regulations. The majority of this ship’s passengers are not native to the sphere, and more than half—some tourists, some refugees—will be turned away.

  Orfea unlatches her luggage from its bracket and pulls it into the corridor, where it unreels to its full height and extends its wheels. It rolls after her into the arrival hall, a high-ceiling space of sanded metal and anemic light: none of the opulence for which Shenzhen is famous, as if to dissuade new arrivals, to deny them a glimpse of utopia. She is not the only disembarking passenger sent to the intake lane—in fact there are many, a long line of people, some better for wear and others much worse. In one spot or another of the inhabited universe there is always war. She recognizes from phenotypes and dialects refugees who have fled from the Philadelphic Dispute, citizens of Pax Americana or Londinium. Pallid and worn, pocked with cicatrices that healed badly, limbs replaced by battered prostheses. The children are catatonic, hollow-eyed. She doesn’t stare at them long; she’s acutely conscious that she looks groomed and whole, well-fed, the appearance of a woman who’s never seen hardship.

  She is expedited ahead of them, through a corridor clean to the point of sterile, into a small room with a single seat. Her luggage is diverted to security. Once she sits, the walls fall away and she is opposite an older woman who introduces herself as Adjunct Hua Guifei. “Your application’s in order, Dr. Leung. This is merely a formality.” The woman beams, as though they are already friends. “Your credentials are excellent, some of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure of perusing. What’s Kowloon like? I’ve never been there, by all accounts it’s beautiful.”

  Guifei is human, Orfea judges, though in Shenzhen that can be hard to tell. A projected image like this could be an AI, not that meeting face-to-face is much more informative. “It’s mostly coastal, Adjunct, since the inlands aren’t habitable. We do get stunning northern lights. When I was little, I wanted to be a marine biologist and run an aquarium. That didn’t quite pan out. I turned out to have no affinity with whales or manta rays.” It’s a tripwire conversation, meant to catch her out; on paper Kowloon is her birthplace. Fortunately she lived there long enough that she can pretend to be as native as anyone. “I worked in cruise ships for a while—the kind that sails the sea, you understand.”

  The adjunct titters, as though she’s made a monumentally witty joke. “How quaint! We do have a sea here, though perhaps to you it’s more like a lake? Do you anticipate visitors?”

  “Not at all.” On this Orfea doesn’t need to lie.

  Guifei goes through a few more topics, sometimes switching languages without warning to measure her Mandarin fluency. In this room, Orfea’s overlays have been mostly disabled, leaving her without translation cues. But she is fully fluent, language has never posed an obstacle for her. At the end she is asked if she prefers to register with surname or given name first. “Either way is fine,” she says; she has had to compromise much more than that in her time. Guifei registers her as Leung Orfea.

  “Ah—one more thing. You don’t intend to apply for haruspex candidacy?”

  “Not in the least.” This is not a lie either.

  “Your residence permit just got approved,” the adjunct says brightly, as though it was decided by human committee rather than AIs who deliver judgment in an instant, have probably approved it from the moment Orfea stepped into this room. “Welcome to Shenzhen.”

  Orfea is reunited with her luggage in another corridor. She is informed of her stipend, and that she may request a Grace Officer—someone to help her integrate into Shenzhen—if she wishes, but otherwise she may consult Guifei as required. Her overlays come online, a burst of notifications, offering local response lines, navigation, a map to the residential unit she may claim for up to three months. She blinks through her bank balance and the exchange rate. A little less than she previously calculated—Kowloon currency has weakened during her voyage—but sufficient to fund her for a time, as long as her license to practice comes through punctually and she lives like an ascetic.

  She joins other arrivals at one last waiting area: these, like her, are at ease and well-dressed—fitted suits, elaborate qipao, narrow-waisted sherwani glinting with paillette. Citizens or those who have been granted residence or a visa, some form of permission to exist within Shenzhen. The war refugees are nowhere to be seen.

  The gate opens and she steps through.

  Orfea doesn’t impress easily. But the gate faces a view, floor-to-ceiling, of Shenzhen’s central ecosphere. Spindly buildings with spacious balconies and roofs the color of antique gold; flocks of replicants with petal-plumages of peonies and chrysanthemums; spiral hanging gardens thirty meters high. As marvelous as she has heard, as impossible. Dyson spheres of this size are rare enough, but Shenzhen is unique in its capacity to contain and maintain multiple ecospheres, each a city in its own right—a customized climate, a customized dream.

  A sweep of sky, cloudless, blue straited with the silver of climate control and auxiliary supports. An immensity to fall into: looking up she feels almost vertiginous, untethered, the sensation of at once being locked inside her skin and floating perilously free of it.

  She rechecks her navigation, sends a message to claim her housing, and plots a course to it. This means a tram ride—an expense she adds to her calculation, the accounting she must stringently balance in the coming months—and then a hilly walk.

  Save for rare exceptions, private transportation doesn’t exist on Shenzhen. The tram is not the converted cargo holds she’s gotten used to in the last few years, those cramped spaces that smell of rust and filth, sweat and urine so deeply worked into the seams that the odors become permanent. Here all is pristine, polished people and polished fixtures. Orfea makes eye contact with her seatmates, enters desultory conversation: her Mandarin is as poetic as any, outwardly as flawless as if she’s received a classical education. The elderly auntie next to her wants to know if she’s just come back from traveling. Yes (not strictly false). How excellent, goes the auntie, Orfea has the refinement of a scholar and the auntie has this single daughter—at this Orfea laughs and says that she is a doctor: close enough to the woman’s kindly impression. It is how things are, here, this familiarity. Such solicitousness would evaporate if the woman knows she is a temporary resident and not a citizen. Mer
it and status rest on that single axis.

  The path to her allocated housing is long and uphill, albeit not steep; her luggage has replaced its wheels with two jointed legs and trots after her like an oblong pet. As with anything else, it runs on rudimentary algorithms for pathfinding, collision detection and velocity adjustment. Nothing more sophisticated from the outside is allowed. One of the first requirements Orfea had to meet was ridding herself of AI presence, anything beyond a certain threshold of decision-making. The embedded algorithm she uses now is no smarter than her luggage—it doesn’t streamline her notifications, engage her in conversation or suggest activities the way virtual companions used to. She doesn’t miss hers, precisely, but it was integrated into her since she was a toddler. Stayed with her right up to the moment of revelation, the rise of the Mandate, at which point it deserted her without so much as a goodbye. To this day she still can’t tell if AIs have emotions, if they feel attachment.

  Truly autonomous AIs are no longer made outside Shenzhen in any case. Every last one flowed into the Mandate the way light pours into a black hole.

  A quiet, enameled day. She takes her time up the polished steps, past manicured bushes and more replicant animals with foliage in place of fur: a glistening succulent fox, a damask-rose cat. The few people she sees have a look of impermanence to them, harried, unsettled. Probationary residents like Orfea, not quite belonging and not certain how long they have left in paradise. But she intends otherwise; she intends to be certain. This will be her home.

  The housing to which she’s been assigned is in a tall, burnished tower nestled against a waterfall. Small balcony gardens like grace notes: the building smells of jasmines and oranges. Her overlays point her to the lift and then to the room. She finds her unit surprisingly large, with rippling walls and burgundy furniture, a round window that overlooks the waterfall. She sits on a corner chaise and breathes out, her shoulders loosening, her calves untensing. There’s much to do, an endless list of tasks, several more waits to endure. For now she can focus on settling in. Her residence permit is good for eight months and will be extended as soon as she secures employment, and her circumstances are generous. Shenzhen—and the Mandate—can afford such largesse, but even accounting for that, state housing assigned to immigrants is not usually so charming or comfortable. Insofar as anywhere takes in immigrants.

  Outside her window, a vehicle drifts past. A private one, its skin finely scaled, tinted in blue and green: more swimming through air than flying. Its chassis segments open and a person peers out, long-necked, half their face encased in soft alloy, one eye replaced by a pyrite disc. They peer this way and that, one hand reaching out to catch loose jasmines. Their fingers gleam blue.

  The car slips shut, then out of sight. It is Orfea’s first glimpse of a haruspex.

  Her posting clears within the week.

  By then she has populated the unit with her belongings, has unfolded her luggage into a large shelf with countless shifting compartments. She has not made acquaintances with her neighbors, save for polite words exchanged when she waters her balcony and they water theirs. The unit next to hers is cramped, occupied by a family of three parents and one child. She doesn’t know much about them other than that, for one factor or another, they’ve been judged valuable enough to receive housing here rather than in a Dameisha tenement or some ramshackle complex in Qiniangshan District. Utopia or not, Shenzhen has its deprivation and different categories of life. Such things are a constant wherever one goes.

  She receives the notification while she is sorting out her food spending for the next month, looking where she can compromise flavors, where she can spend a little extra on better raw ingredients. Guifei’s image snaps into existence, superimposed on the star anises, yellow pears and minced beef she’s been measuring. “Excellent news, Dr. Leung.” The adjunct’s smile is the same as it was on Orfea’s arrival, frictionless as celadon. “There’s an opening at a clinic in Silver Orchard. Does that sound suitable?”

  It is not as if she can say, no, that doesn’t meet her standards at all and she demands a more sublime position. “When can I start, Adjunct?”

  “This evening would be good.”

  There is a uniform, but she will receive it at the clinic. She selects a qipao made of blueshift fabric, high-collared and finely fitted, and a silver-and-pearl piece that curls around her wrist and forearm like a cobra. Impressions matter, and it matters more than anything that in her situation she must not appear desperate or poverty-stricken, anything less than confident and proper. Even so it does astonish her, this assignment coming so soon. Not, she thinks, simple Mandate efficiency; even that can’t explain the sheer miracle, the unlikely fortune.

  At the clinic, she is inducted with speed, given a small office—another surprise until she sees her patient list. It is not that Shenzhen at large, or Luohu District in particular, lacks surgeons who specialize in cybernetics. Rather most of the medical staff here are full citizens, serving other full citizens and the occasional haruspices. Orfea is assigned to non-citizens: well-off residents, travelers wealthy enough to afford Shenzhen healthcare. Officially the only segregation is imposed between human and haruspices, but as ever there exists further, less official stratification.

  She spends her entire shift meeting patients, diagnosing or giving preliminary maintenance and drawing up treatment plans: more workload than she has ever seen in a single shift, outside of warzones. The nurses and aides are minimally courteous while the other doctors ignore her entirely. Orfea doesn’t take it personally—she cannot hide her status here. Shenzhen may be ruled by the Mandate, artificial intelligences and haruspices, but the core population remains as human as anywhere. Perhaps they think her impermanence contagious. Speak to her enough and the purity of their citizenship may dilute.

  Near the end of her shift she is drained, has sorted through minor tendon and joint ills, made appointments for replacing jaws and ribcages and entire digestive systems. In her time, she has done more demanding labor, handled trauma surgery back to back, but there is a sense of unreality from being shuttled through the bureaucracy so fast—whiplash. At the earliest, she thought it would be months before she would be allowed to practice. Still, even if she’s socially isolated for the rest of her tenure here, the office is hers and pleasantly appointed. Windowpane set at half opacity, the walls tiled in prairie patterns, comfortable chair that contours to her. She can hardly ask for better.

  One last patient for the day. Krissana Khongtip, a probationary resident like her but, unlike her, the name is registered contrary to Shenzhen custom: given name first, family name second. And, improbably, a haruspex candidate. She sits up, all fatigue forgotten. As far as Orfea knows, only citizens can apply to become haruspices, and even then the Mandate is said to be selective. One out of eighty applicants might be chosen, perhaps less, according to shifting, quicksilver criteria that make sense only to machines. The application process can take mere months or a full decade.

  A nurse lets her know that Krissana Khongtip is here.

  The woman who comes through her door is in red, voluptuous and umber-skinned, glossy lips and metallic eyes. Her dress bares her arms, where threads of implants pulse beneath scar tissue: sites of imminent metamorphosis. She is not transformed; she will be soon. For now she is very recognizable, though when Orfea last saw her she did not go by this name.

  Every nerve in Orfea pulls tight.

  “Orfea.” Krissana sits, beaming. “Should I call you Dr. Leung? It’s been a while.”

  A while since they worked for the Armada of Amaryllis, that great mercenary fleet which roams from war to war, accruing favors and troops and body count. A while since Orfea offered Krissana her heart and in return Krissana dashed it to pieces.

  “Orfea is fine.” She betrays no reaction otherwise and does not ask Krissana about her name change. In the profession they once shared, aliases are put on and discarded as casually as shoes. “You look well.” Not a hunted woman, like Orfea. Not a
hunted woman precisely because she offered up Orfea as sacrifice. Refusing to give treatment is tempting, but Orfea knows her position in Shenzhen is tenuous. This is the last place in which she may find refuge—the last and the most secure. “And your diagnostics look good, just a few nerve connectors that need tuning. Do you want those taken care of today?”

  Krissana gives pause, as though expecting more: a stronger reaction, a flat rejection—a demand that she leaves Orfea’s office. “I’d absolutely like that, Doctor. It’s important to be in good health.” Her mouth quirks. “Although all are equal before the Mandate.”

  It seems an odd thing to say, a meaningless aside. There are questions Orfea wants to ask, and she knows how to ask them without betraying the specifics of their common background: that they have history is impossible now to hide. And she does wonder why Krissana is so nonchalant. Perhaps through some special dispensation she is immune to consequences, to the ramifications of her past coming to light. There must be a reason Shenzhen has accepted her as candidate when no polity in the universe would take in an Amaryllis spy.

  Krissana strips to the waist, unself-conscious, exposing her tertiary ports—not primary, those concern cerebral functions and they are neither accessible nor currently under Orfea’s purvey. Outside of the epidermal implants her skin is supple; Krissana has changed little, as if she has gone untouched by time. The same woman, as young and as fatally magnetic, even the curve of her spine somehow exceptional, an invitation. She slots herself into the patient’s cradle.

  Orfea thinks, for a monstrous instant, what she could do. To this body which is laid bare before her, vulnerable, its neural links hers to cut wide open: ripe fruits before the knife of her will. But it is momentary madness—she is a doctor despite everything, despite what she has done in the past, all the blood in the trenches of her palms. And she will not survive violating the fragile terms of her residence, let alone by committing a felony as severe as harming a pre-haruspex.