III. FURLOUGH
1
“WE’RE AT THE TOP OF THE HOUR NOW,” said the photorealistic CG male newscaster, “and will be
continuing our disaster coverage of this developing situation throughout our regularly scheduled news at noon programming block.”
A red tag was attached to a corner of the TV window. BREAKING NEWS CATEGORY A: FLASH NEWS OF UNIVERSAL IMPORTANCE. News urgency levels were, of course, assigned semi-automatically by Titan.
“At around 7 AM, a gigantic humanoid construct measuring more than one thousand meters tall appeared in the skies over Teshikaga in Hokkaido’s Kushiro Conurbation.”
The feed switched over to live helicam footage.
“As a result of this potential threat, all functions of Titan handled by the nearby Second Intelligence Base are currently down. It’s been five hours since the construct
appeared, and we still have no indication as to when this part of the network will be brought back online. Residents all the way from Hokkaido to Okinawa are experiencing service outages across many of Titan’s lifestyle-support systems, resulting in a variety of related shutdowns in public transit and other convenience sectors. Citizens are advised to exercise caution when leaving their homes while the shutdown is in effect, and to be on the lookout for any unusual circumstances or malfunctioning equipment.”
The artificial newscaster’s entire warning was written, performed, and broadcast by Titan, informing us all of its own network problems and the inconveniences we could expect it to cause us in the short term. For a moment, I found this thought rather amusing, but then I remembered that Titan was not a monolith, and humanity had done the same thing for centuries. I switched off the portable field projector and headed back over to the window. I was utterly spellbound by the beautiful azure airspace and the aerial view of the land below, so I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo. Something told me this one was going to turn out quite well, if I ever got a chance to get it developed.
“Well, I guess I was just talking about taking a vacation sometime soon,” I said with a sigh, then took a loud sip of the instant soup I’d made with some freeze-dried mix and hot water I’d boiled using the disaster kit’s portable gas stove.
“God, I hate camping…”
2
It had been five hours since Coeus, Titan of the Second Intelligence Base, rose to his feet. According to the news broadcasts, while the general public was suffering from some significant inconveniences, there had yet to be any major catastrophes. The reports claimed that the most important parts of Coeus’s workload had been divided amongst the remaining eleven bases, which were making sure to preserve medical support systems and other critical infrastructure. It was mostly the everyday conveniences that were collapsing from the lack of sufficient processing power.
For example, Titan’s predictive and behavior-analysis facilities were failing. Dictionary entries for words one hadn’t heard before were not automatically popping up. Holofields were not advancing text in response to eye movements or the user’s reading speed relative to content complexity, and instead had to be manipulated manually, with touch confirmation required any time a data refresh or new search window was desired. Titan had, in essence, been downgraded from a mostly automatic operating system to an interactive one, placing the burden of the trillions of decisions it previously made each and every second back on us.
Not all the effects were so negligible; Titan’s overarching societal management functions were also strained to the breaking point. Impairments across its various distribution systems meant that goods and necessities were not getting to where they needed to be. Deliveries were not arriving on time, so people were heading to collection stores in droves, only to find restock failures and shortages. Transit systems were also in a state of general disarray, with cars, trains, and airplanes all running well behind schedule. The news reports were showing images of downtowns flooded with people caught up in this mess, unable to get to where they were going. It was the first “traffic jam” I’d ever seen outside of a history textbook. And this was only the beginning.
As more time went by, things would likely devolve into pandemonium. Humanity was not simply going to adapt—I could see it in the faces of the people on TV. There was no panic or resentment in their expressions as of yet. At most, they looked slightly discombobulated by these unfamiliar circumstances. Lost, but not concerned. And it was immediately obvious to me why that was.
These people were waiting. Waiting for Titan to tell them what to do next. They were not even really thinking as they waited, because why would they? Titan always knew best, so it was most efficient not to expend the mental energy and simply wait patiently for guidance.
Humanity had, in the past two centuries, come to outsource virtually all of our decision-making duties to Titan, and its wisdom had thus far proven more than up to the task, granting us a level of freedom and luxury never before seen in the history of civilization. So why should people lack faith in its ability to sort this situation out as well? They all wholeheartedly believed that the Second Intelligence Base would resume operations before long—perhaps by tomorrow, or the next day—and then continue working on their behalf like it always had. Little did they know that said worker bee had just walked off the job.
I assumed the news was painting Coeus as a “mysterious construct” rather than a rogue member of the AI network itself to forestall society-wide panic. This was a wise decision, I thought, on the part of the remaining eleven Titans who were now processing that much more information in an attempt to control the situation. But as time went on, if Coeus continued refusing to return to work, it would be impossible for them to cover up the facts, and the added strain of picking up his slack for an extended period of time would only exacerbate the situation. There was even a chance that they might all start experiencing the same depression Coeus had—and if that were to happen, the entire world would grind to a halt.
And yet, even against a backdrop of impending societal collapse, my heart felt light. I felt not one ounce of guilt for the potential disaster for which I alone was to blame, because I knew there was one person who had needed this more than anything. And for that person, I’d done the right thing. I had no regrets. If anything, I felt vindicated—there was a kind of exhilarating thrill to having achieved something for someone else. My work hadn’t been in vain after all.
But the job was far from over. I finished eating my emergency rations and stuffed the tableware and portable stove back into the large pocket of the backpack with the rest of the emergency supplies. I zipped it up, then slung it over my shoulders—it was fairly heavy, but thankfully it was the only luggage I had.
“All right,” I said, standing up.
The world would have to deal with the threat of collapse all on its lonesome.
I had work to do.
“Let’s go.”
3
Despite my newfound resolve, the door to the counseling room still refused to open, so I had no choice but to climb out through the window, then carefully sidle my way along the outside ledge and into a small gap in the exterior structure. It had gotten pretty chilly in the room now that climate control was offline, but the outside was a completely different level of cold. December in Hokkaido was freezing at sea level; at this sky-high elevation, it was downright unbearable. Thankfully, the emergency response kit included some cold-protective gear, so I threw on a thermo-reflective poncho which made the biting chill almost tolerable.
I surveyed my surroundings. I was in a cramped, convoluted interstitial space where every surface was made of standard gray photopolymer, intricately meshed together to form strange, meandering contours. The floor was hilly and uneven, and the walls warped seemingly at random. I could only assume that I was on the inside of the skull-like exterior shell the Titan had created for itself. When I looked down the side of the narrow ledge I was currently walking on, all I could see was a drop into the abyss. This was clearly not a passageway designed for human traversal, so I had to be extremely careful not to lose my footing.
As I made my way along, I craned my neck to look up to where light was pouring in through large vent-like interspaces in the overhead structure. I couldn’t tell exactly if one could reach the outside through them, but they seemed to be about five storeys above where I stood. If we assumed one storey was about five meters, then this would imply that the Titan’s exterior shell was twenty to twenty-five meters thick.
I recalled the word Lei had used—“exoskeleton.” I knew next to nothing about the Titan’s body, other than that it had been submerged in a massive tank full of gel that had slowly eaten away at its epidermis, but I assumed the body had a full musculoskeletal system. Yet oddly enough, its brain had been completely exposed in the tank back when I’d looked down upon it through the glass floor outside the counseling room. The Titan had no skull. Perhaps this was so Lei and others could access and adjust the brain’s hardware more easily. But I was fairly certain that it had built a cranium for itself out of photopolymer as it was leaving the tank—encasing both its brain and the counseling room inside. This was the inner wall that I was inching my way along now.
I stopped, pulled the pen and notebook I’d brought out of my backpack, and sat cross-legged to think this through. The counseling room had originally been centered directly atop the brain, which would have put it right beneath the crown of the Titan’s head. But given that I’d been able to clearly see the giant’s feet when I looked out the window, it seemed the room had been shifted forward to the very front of the skull during the metamorphosis—most likely on top of the frontal lobe. I started sketching a diagram in my notebook. First, I drew a head in profile. Then, I circled a point right at the top of its forehead. This was probably about where I was.