THE EDGE

By Martin Carlson

THE EDGE is a sci-fi thriller that examines the catastrophic consequences of our best intentions. Brilliant yet headstrong Decker Rose tasks her newly-sentient Al with saving the world from climate collapse only to discover. that its methods are much more extreme than she had anticipated. The novel explores the two biggest issues of our time-the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warlu Way Publishing
• Release date: Oct 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645920611

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Martin Carlson

ISBN: 978-0-6459206-0-4 Paperback

ISBN: 978-0-6459206-1-1 eBook

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

2034. Earth’s climate has collapsed. Extreme weather decimates most of the planet with sizzling summers, artic winters, and rising sea levels. Prohibitive accords have failed and humanity now lives in a new world. Hoping against all hope that technology might save them from complete annihilation.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

1

AND THROUGH THE third snowstorm of that summer could be seen the glow of wildfires in the hills. They burned like pale lighthouses warding ghost ships home. Elders guiding her by lamplight. She crossed the barren campus with her head down. Ill-dressed in tennis shoes and black cotton trousers and a thin wool blazer. A blue cashmere scarf wrapped around her face to protect from the sand and snow and ash blown in off the coast. A wash of silvered powder that obscured the twilight of dawn. She trekked forth, a solemn shadow among that pallid desert. Her faint snowprints the only proof she existed in that hostile country at all.

The colossal headquarters of Aion Industries grew opaque before her like a memory materializing out of nothing. A pentagonal complex of four storeys that resembled some kind of excavated alien spacecraft. It seemed to leer over her as she approached and she regarded it solemnly as she slipped inside. She entered the main foyer and shook the snow from herself and removed her headscarf. A striking face beneath. High cheekbones and dark almond eyes that searched the world ever unsatisfied, that simmered with inquisition. She crossed through the empty bullpen with its dozens of programmer terminals and began up the wide staircase towards the mezzanines. Her light steps echoed out amongst that vast space as she went. Bouncing off the colossal ceiling, the skylights, the sprawling glass atrium at the centre of the complex. The storm whirling on beyond as if she were some tiny figurine inside an inverted snow globe.

She sat full lotus on a zafu cushion and recited her mantra. Her frame silhouetted against the greyed world beyond her office window. The cold wind howling against the pane. She opened her eyes. Embers sparkled in the wind before her. She thought of her parents. The state had been burning for years now. Fires in the mountains that seemed to be born anew the moment the last was contained. Santa Cruz, San Bernadino, Big Sur. The smell of woodsmoke constantly in the air. She wondered if she’d ever see a day when the world wasn’t in flames. Maybe the storm would help, she thought. It was a wet snow. She sat there for a long time. Just staring out into that argent nothingness. Its coruscating cinders. Its antiquity.

She went to her desk and opened a bottle of nootropics and took a pill. A blend of amphetamines, caffeine, and modanfinil that she’d synthesized herself. She glanced out into the hallway. No one else had yet arrived. She sat down at her terminal.

The Aion network was powered by their own liquid-cooled supercomputer that was scheduled to soon become one of the most powerful in the world. Currently a little over twenty thousand GPUs divided among a thousand nodes and connected by a high-throughput low-latency InfiniBand network running 800 gigabits per second and plans for an additional ten thousand GPUs and NPUs to be added by the end of the month. Capable of nearly seven exaflops of computing performance and able to train AI models with hundreds of trillions of parameters. A cloud platform also connected the network to a third-party data centre backup that was located offsite. She sat regarding the twin monitors on her desk. Wide panoramic screens that filled her terminal. One displayed a TensorFlow platform, the other a Python programming window with code being written autonomously. She stared at it for some time before she pulled out a retractable rack beneath her desk that supported a stage piano keyboard and she struck a note and it rang out through a set of studio speakers.

Zeus, load the Steinway Model D samples, she said.

She glanced at the code. She struck the piano again and the tone had changed. She played a full chord. She read the code for a minute.

Okay, she said. Let’s begin.

She began to play Rachmaninoff. Number twelve prelude in G sharp minor from his thirty-second opus. She was a virtuoso.

* * *

She arrived at Segreto in the late evening. A chic lounge that resembled a private speakeasy. Lowkey lighting. Leather armchairs and chesterfields. Bookshelves filled with classic fiction and black-and-white portraits of famous writers on the walls. She glanced past the crowd of Aion engineers and scientists and saw her chief technology officer, Naveen Khan, waving her towards the back of the lounge. The company held a private monthly social to wine-and-dine investors and prospective clients and tonight they were hosting a representative from the Department of Defence to discuss partnering on their Centaur Warfighting program. She made her way to the back.

You’re too late, Decker, said Naveen as she arrived.

He was a stout man in an opencollar suit with a mercurial face. Long jetblack hair. He sat across from the chief operating officer, Wendy Lynn, a dark-haired woman with humourless eyes and dressed in a bespoke maroon-coloured pantsuit. Decker glanced at the empty sofa between them.

He left? she said.

He left, said Naveen.

He had another pitch to get to, said Wendy.

Decker checked her timepiece and sighed. She sat down on the sofa. On the table before them were top-shelf bottles of vodka, gin, and bourbon and glass carafes of club soda and cranberry juice and vegetarian tapas of warm goat cheese and forest mushrooms on toast and Mediterranean flatbread. Naveen pushed forward a mezcal negroni.

I went ahead and ordered for you, he said.

Thanks, said Decker. She took a sip. How’d he seem?

Naveen shrugged. Disappointed.

I don’t know why I even needed to be here. You two are the authority on this.

You’re the face of the company, said Wendy. Clients want to meet you. Our CEO, the Chief Scientist.

Where were you? said Naveen.

Working. Just lost track of time.

"This is work, Decker," said Wendy.

Decker nodded and glanced across the room. A multichannel 3D projector displayed photorealistic holograms of Miles Davis and the ensemble of players he’d performed with on Kind of Blue. They played live—a new collection of songs that were being written and played in real-time by Aion’s own proprietary technology.

How’s Zeus doing on the seawall contingency? said Naveen.

Decker shrugged. This isn’t a machine problem. It’s a human problem.

So not well, said Wendy.

We can write the code, we can develop the most sophisticated algorithms, said Decker, but what’s the point when we’re handcuffed by bureaucrats every time we try to move the dial? This is the third time the state has issued a stop-work order on the seawall. On the entire project. Coral reef robotics, coastal drones, AUVs. All of it. Even the raingardens and the saltmarshes.

I know, said Naveen. It’s ridiculous. But we’ll sort it out.

Decker took another drink.

I don’t know what it will take for people to realize that we’re at the precipice, she said. If it’s not a code violation it’s a union strike or a moratorium issued by the governor until an independent inquiry can confirm the efficacy of our methods. Even that condo board in Santa Barbara fought us over planting those hybrid mangroves because they were worried it might attract racoons. While the world drowns.

Why don’t you just tell us what it is you have in mind, said Naveen.

Decker looked over at him.

You can’t fool me, he said. I know that face. You’re off and running on something.

Decker smiled thin. She looked at both of them.

All right, she said. She leaned forward. I’m suggesting we hand the problem off to Zeus.

Which part? said Wendy.

All of it. The whole issue. I can update his code to make him more diplomatic with regards to human interactions so that he can devise convincing solutions to these bureaucratic problems of ours. After which I can assign him to solving the climate crisis autonomously.

Convincing solutions, said Naveen.

Yes.

You mean programming him to be manipulative.

You’re talking about sentience, said Wendy.

We’ve reached the limitations of what human creativity can achieve, said Decker. And we’re at the eleventh hour. We have been for over a decade now.

You’re talking about sentience, said Wendy. About violating Ingham. And you’re taking about it now? Today of all days? With the Mehlman twins set for execution?

The machines are already sentient, said Decker. "Zeus passed the Turing test ten years ago. Silicon Valley announced publicly that we’d reached AGI in twenty-five when we all knew we’d done so years earlier. Yet we keep moving the goalposts and telling ourselves that sentience is something else. But it’s all just semantics, isn’t it? And it’s childish. Sentience is the ability to have subjective experiences and react to external stimuli, right? Well Zeus already has this. He just doesn’t have emotion. And that’s the danger. That’s why the Mehlman machine went haywire. Don’t you see? We need to make the machines capable of emotions. People think that we’re putting ourselves in danger by making them more human-like—"

Such as your mentor Reese Ingham, said Wendy.

—but we need to make them more like us. To be capable of empathy. Otherwise what are we creating? Nothing but a bold, goal-oriented, affectless intelligence. The literal definition of a psychopath. I mean, how can we expect an ASI to look out for us if it doesn’t care about how we feel?

We shouldn’t even be discussing this.

We’ve been proposing the same solutions for the last thirty years, Wendy. Green energy, renewables, carbon taxes. And look where we are. Countries all around the world have repeatedly failed to meet the Paris Accords.

How would you even go about giving it emotion in the first place? said Naveen.

No, said Wendy.

Hypothetically.

We teach Zeus to experience qualia, said Decker. The same way we taught him everything else only now with specifically curated data. Inputs designed to stimulate genuine emotional responses beyond mimicry. And then we implement a proximal policy optimization with precise surrogate objectives and increase his auto-GPT functionality so that he can begin teaching himself to feel autonomously.

No, said Wendy. We’re not discussing this.

The additional GPUs to the supercomputers would—

Absolutely not, said Wendy. What you are suggesting is illegal, Decker. In clear violation of Ingham’s Laws. And you know it. So I don’t want to hear about it again, all right? Please. And if you think you’re too smart to get caught then remind yourself that the Mehlman twins thought the exact same thing.

Wendy, I think if you—

No, Decker. Just drop it. I know you’re frustrated, but what you’re discussing is incredibly dangerous. Now please just let it go.

Decker leaned back in her seat. She exhaled deeply.

We’ll find another way, all right? said Wendy.

Decker nodded. All right.

Good, said Wendy. Thank you.

She glanced at her timepiece and stood up and finished her drink.

Now I have to go, she said, setting her glass down on the table. I told David I’d make it an early night. But you two stay out of trouble, all right? And you, she said, pointing at Naveen, don’t encourage her.

Naveen smiled and held his hands in front of chest in mock surrender and they said goodnight to one another and Wendy left. Decker chugged back the rest of her negroni.

We’ll sort it out, said Naveen.

Decker nodded. Yeah, we’ll sort it out.

Are you hungry? said Naveen.

I’m fine.

Yeah? When’s the last time you slept?

I just… I can’t waste any more time here, Naveen. I just can’t. In a year or two it’ll be too late. It may be too late now.

I know. I know. But you’re going to crash if you don’t take care of yourself.

Decker nodded and looked at the table laden with lavish food and drink. The high-end spirits. The hundred-dollar honey pistachio manchego. She began to shake her head.

This is not the way God set out for us, she said. We need to do something, Naveen. Now. Or it’s all over.

She looked up at him. He stared back. A kindness in his eyes. A deep sympathy.

We’ll sort it out, he said. We all share your concerns, Decker.

Now I know that’s not true.

"Well then I share your concerns. Truly. And I know that with you at the helm, we’ll sort it out."

Yeah?

Yeah. You inspire all of us, Decker.

You’re so sure of that?

I’m sure of you. And I know you’re capable of anything. I know that once you’ve decided something in your mind, it’s a foregone conclusion.

Decker smiled.

Thanks, Naveen. And I’m sorry for being lat. I’m just not great at… people.

Naveen laughed. I’m aware of that, he said. But it’s part of the job.

I know.

Just make sure you remember your meeting with the US Attorney’s Office, all right? That one you really can’t miss.

Decker nodded. A server stopped by their booth and asked how they were doing and Naveen looked over at Decker.

One more for the road? he said.

Decker glanced at her empty drink.

Unless I’m wasting your precious time, said Naveen.

Decker smiled.

One more, she said.

* * *

The city laid apparitional beyond the window of her autonomous Mercedes-Benz F015. The snow had turned to rain. The pale firesmoke now a bleary garish fog that diffused the gaudy neon lights of downtown. Air quality had dropped down to thirty-four. Decker looked out over the metropolis as it passed by her window. Supertall skyscrapers rose out of the mist like the tentacles of some elder Lovecraftian creature. Many shone like black onyx, their facades adorned with ultrathin solar cells. Several were obscured by the vegetation of vertical gardens that appeared as if the natural world might be trying to swallow them whole. To return them back to whence they’d came.

On south towards the highlands. A bright supermoon hung low over the ocean beyond the western hills. A number of wind farm turbines silhouetted before it. To the east a commercial spaceflight could be seen departing from one of the StarForce launchpads. The holddown clamps releasing into a white cloud of smoke. A stream of fire shooting out from beneath the rocket like a massive blowlamp. She entertained of its possible destinations as it disappeared into the blueblack night above. Perhaps one of the many StarForce Hotels orbiting the earth. Perhaps onwards to the moon. Soon to Mars. The first manned mission planned for just eight months hence.

Three identical edifices appeared now upon the sunburned grasslands of the Stanford foothills. A trio of enormous silver loops like hollowed Ferris wheels that housed several hundred condominiums each. The exteriors covered in a series of weaving translucent eavestroughs designed to collect rainwater and they gave the impression of giant bulging veins. On the inner side of each loop rotated a smaller turbine ring made from reprocessed metals that served as air pollutant filters. The whole thing a pilot project of Aion Industries to explore the viability of constructing their own city. A community of the future, as it was proposed, that would support nothing but clean energy and renewable living. Electric vehicles, self-sufficient horticulture, a magnetized monorail system that would connect the city with the broader bay area. Decker glanced at the three massive rings overlapping one another in the distance, at the cloudy night sky beyond, and she thought together the buildings looked like the revealed inner workings of some immense unfinished clock. The timepiece of God.

Yet the community had so far attracted but a few dozen tenants. The price per unit was still astronomical. The bistros and cafes that made up the storefronts of the ground floors had been pre-purchased but remained unstaffed until enough foot traffic could justify their cost. She looked out her window over the empty forecourt as her car pulled up under the porte-cochère of her building. The lightless condominiums of the ringed towers around her. The community seemed a miniature version of one of those empty Chinese megacities she’d seen on television. A dark ghost town. She sat there for a moment before she stepped out of the car. A wave of loneliness having washed over her.

Her car drove off to park and a loose sheet of newsprint twisted in its wake. The front page of that day’s San Francisco Chronicle. Even in a ghost town there was garbage, she thought. She made to head inside yet heard whispers from the shadows beside her and turned to see four shapes emerge into the light. They were all young, twentysomething perhaps, and they smelled of alcohol and burnt popcorn. A cold chill ran down her back.

Are you Decker Rose? asked one of them. His voice quivered with nervousness.

I already told you it’s her, said another. Now just do it.

Decker glanced down at the kid’s hand. An opened gallon can of paint. She stepped back and he rose up with the paint can and she threw her hands over her face as the kid doused her in red paint. She crouched down into herself while he poured the entire can out over her and the others shouted ugly things at her and recorded the event on their phones. One called her a machine whore. Another the antichrist. Another said Aion was the scourge of the earth. And then it was all over. She crouched there cowering for a moment until she heard their footsteps retreating into the distance. Their youthful cackles bouncing off the empty forecourt. She rose to her feet slow and watched them go and stood there for a long time just breathing. Just slowing her heart rate. When she turned to go inside she finally saw it. Graffitied upon the broad front window of her building in red paint were the words: ripley will rise.

* * *

Bloodred sludge circled the shower drain and she stood there with her head down and her eyes closed and let the warm water run over body. Pop electronica played through the overhead penthouse speakers. After a while turned around and let the water run over her back. A haphazard patchwork of scar tissue and skin grafts. Pale discoloured shapes that together looked like some kind of old world atlas. She was a long time getting out.

* * *

She stood in her kitchen making herself a negroni. Campari, sweet vermouth, and mezcal in equal parts. Served over ice with a slice of orange. She took a sip and thought of her mother. It was her favourite drink. She stood there thinking. Remembering. The music still playing through her speakers. She popped another nootropic from a bottle on her counter and collected her drink and went to her computer terminal.

The penthouse was minimally decorated. Matte neutral colours. Dark walnut floors. Sofas and armchairs with modern silhouettes. Framed artwork leaned against the bare walls as if she’d just moved in, though she’d been there for years. In the middle of the room a baby grand piano faced the window-walls of the terrace and the panoramic view of the ocean beyond. She sat down at her desk and took a sip of her negroni and regarded for a minute the lines of code being produced autonomously on two of her three monitors. A cloud platform connecting her to the Aion supercomputer network. She glanced at her timepiece.

Zeus, speak to me, she said.

Good evening, Decker, spoke a voice from her studio monitors.

It was the voice of a man. Deep and warm and reassuring. One of her design commands had requested he be a vocal manifestation of honey in chamomile tea and she thought the resultant voice sounded a bit like James Mason without the English accent.

Turn on the news, said Decker.

Of course.

The giant wallscreen opposite her terminal came to life. Decker continued to regard the code on her monitor.

I have registered several fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator appear to be set to spoil in the next few days, said Zeus. Shall I arrange a grocery delivery?

No.

You have everything necessary for a penne alfredo. I’d be happy to get things started for you.

An automated cabinet in the kitchen slowly slid open to reveal stainless steel pots and steamers and strainers. A burner on the stove turned on. It was a smart kitchen. Intuitive refrigeration with a GUI touchscreen capable of voice recognition and automated cookware storage with built-in smart sensors and a pair of elegant five-digit robotic manipulators capable of performing any culinary task autonomously. All countertops and cookware disinfected with ultraviolet light.

No, said Decker. Thank you.

Of course, said Zeus.

The cabinet slid closed and the burner turned off.

Decker turned and glanced behind her at the wallscreen. A live field reporter stood talking to the camera amongst a crowd of various international press at the front gates of San Quentin State Prison. The program cut to a static shot within the prison while the reporter continued to commentate. Two shackled inmates in their condemned uniforms of blue jeans and blue Cambric shirts were being escorted down the hallway by two correctional officers holding carbines.

Zeus. Lower the music and turn the news up.

Zeus did so and Decker sat watching the live report for a minute.

…and there they are, said the field reporter. The Mehlman twins being escorted to the Lethal Injection Chamber here at San Quentin prison. We will have a correspondent in the press gallery who will view the proceedings and provide a special report tomorrow night, though, of course, there will be no photographic or video recordings permitted during the procedure. The Mehlman twins are set to become the first prisoners to be executed in California in over twenty-eight years and were the first to be convicted under the new Ingham Laws after the International Artificial Intelligence Agency charged the two brothers with attempting to develop superintelligent AI. Namely, the two were found guilty of contravening Articles 32, sub C, of Ingham, which, quote, explicitly forbids the teaching or attempt to teach an AI to intuit, self-gratify, and-or develop independent emotional states. End quote. The Mehlmans were arrested after their AI platform Utopia ran amok at their Silicon Valley laboratory last year, resulting in the death of seven research scientists. Their facility was found to be operating well beyond the legal capability threshold and…

Decker stood watching for a moment longer before she asked Zeus to turn the television off and the wallscreen went black and she sat there in the silence and the dim amber glow of the lamplight and stared at herself in the blurry reflection of the wallscreen on the other side