“No. Apparently, you don’t get it,” Narain went on, his tone growing even more impatient. He was actively talking down to me at this point. “Now that Coeus has arrived, we’re set. Just have to follow through on the itinerary that Phoebe laid out, and that’ll be that. There is no more work for you to do at this point in the process.”
The schedule opened on my holofield. The accompanying telop system “helpfully” pointed out for me what I already knew—my name was not listed as having any sort of role in any of the tasks still remaining on the schedule.
“Or more accurately,” Narain went on, “we can’t allow you to do any more work on this project than you already have.”
“And just how am I meant to interpret that?”
“I’ll be frank: you and Coeus have grown too close.”
A new dataset appeared on my holofield. The text and images scrolled by much too fast for me to keep up with, but even a cursory glance was enough to tell exactly what he was trying to show me. These were records of our trip, spanning the entire journey from the Second Intelligence Base to Silicon Valley.
“From the days of our first personality formation experiments to today, you’ve occupied an increasingly larger share of Coeus’s mind. One word from you could have a powerful influence over his actions. This is a potential margin of error we simply cannot overlook. Under no circumstances will we allow this meeting to be jeopardized or have its outcome swayed by a single woman.”
I was stunned into silence. I couldn’t even begin to formulate a rebuttal, because I knew that what Narain was saying was both logical and accurate. At this point, I probably did wield more influence over Coeus than a single human being could be trusted with.
“So stay put, and don’t try anything funny,” Narain said, as if he were addressing a suspected criminal. “Your job for tomorrow is to not do a damn thing. Do not even think about acting of your own volition. In fact, try not to think about anything at all. You are not permitted anywhere near the rendezvous point. You will remain on standby in a private waiting room, from which you can watch the meeting via broadcast on your holofield like any other citizen. Then when it’s all over, you will be permitted to leave.”
He gauged my reaction to this with the same coldhearted gaze I’d grown accustomed to. And yet, I could not spite him for it, for all he had conveyed to me was an objective fact: that my work here was over. There was no bias or ill will attached; as my job title made clear, I was the Second Intelligence Traversal Manager—and now that said travel was complete, there was no work left for me to do. Like so many jobs before mine, my position had been rendered superfluous.
And with that, the briefing was over. It hadn’t even lasted five minutes, but that was more than enough time to share information with a no-longer-affiliated party who didn’t need to be told more than the bare minimum. I rose from my chair; Narain did not rise from his. I stepped back on my zoomboard, and it took me back the way I’d come in.
Just as I was leaving, two more zoomboards approached from the opposite direction—Professor Beckmann and Lei. We exchanged glances, but nothing more. They likely still had plenty of work left to do in preparation for the event. As two of the staff members who’d been stationed at the Second Intelligence Base even prior to my arrival, their knowledge and technical expertise was invaluable. I, on the other hand, was just a niche specialist who’d been brought in to help with the personality formation process. And my expertise was no longer necessary here.
Though really, the two of them would likely be let go as well, once the network became stable again. There was no point in having pesky humans like us around unless something went seriously wrong, as it had in this instance. It was only when the Titans did all of the work that we knew things were going well. That was the status quo that we, as a species, had decided to maintain.
3
The evening sun draped its receding spectrums over the vast urban sprawl that spread out beneath me. From my vantage point on this mountaintop viewing platform, I could see the entire city of San Jose without moving my gaze a millimeter.
I’d come thirty minutes by car from the Twelfth Intelligence Base to the Lick Observatory at the summit of Mount Hamilton. It was the network that suggested I come here to lift my spirits, having noticed the steep decline in my mental state following the briefing. And standing here, peering down over what looked like an entire city rendered in diecast miniatures, I found that Titan was right. I did feel just a little bit better. These types of suggestions were something I’d always gladly taken without a second thought before, but now, I felt a kind of shame in accepting such kindness from the network. Namely because I’d now befriended one of the Titans, and knew he was no better off mentally than I was.
I turned my gaze toward the sea, where I could see the silhouette of said friend even from a hundred kilometers away. He stood at the mouth of the bay behind a thin veil of fog, a towering sentinel. I’d seen him from great distances like this during our journey as well, but this current image of him standing tall in the same frame as a sprawling city of miniatures made for a peculiar sight indeed—one that was half reality, half fairy tale.
I turned away from this sprawling vista back to the observation deck, which was teeming with people. It was no doubt a popular tourist attraction for those who made the pilgrimage to this holy land, but these people were here to see Coeus. And with a greater influx of people came an increase in on-duty service phalanges, weaving their way between the crowd on silent legs or wheels to bring food and beverages to any tourists craving refreshments.
On the basis of maintaining healthy Human-Agent Interaction, any phalanges that humans might interact with in their daily lives—or “agents”—were restricted from taking on forms with human characteristics. There were exceptions for things like Titan-produced movies or computer-generated visuals where realism was the goal, of course, but for phalanges that actively participated in actual society, human appearances were strictly forbidden. I wasn’t even sure if our current technology was good enough to create fakes convincing enough to transcend the uncanny valley—all I knew was that these regulations had been in place since the very first stage of Titan’s implementation.
Our understanding of the world often depended more heavily on appearances than on actual fact. If there existed a line of phalanges visually indistinguishable from humans, then it would be difficult indeed for our minds to continue seeing them as mere machines. The same could also be said for Coeus—which was why we’d buried him deep underground. The only way we could continue using the Titans to our benefit was to ensure we’d never be tempted to deem them worthy of human rights.