“So what did you want to show me?” Ulrika asked, trying to hide a smile.
“Patience!” Fablo urged as he pulled her by the hand. “It is just behind this curtain.”
“You guys have a curtain?” she said with amusement. “What is this? A theater…?” but trailed off as Fablo pulled back the curtain with flourish, revealing that the two of them had indeed been standing on a small stage overlooking a large room with dozens of people milling around. She recognized many of the faces, nearly the entire Anomalous Developments Department was splayed out before them.
“Hear ye, hear ye!” Fablo yelled over the general commotion, and in short order all eyes had turned towards him and, to her dismay, Ulrika.
“Today we welcome a new member into our midst! Behold the honorable Dr. Ulrika Soiphon!” Still clutching her hand, he lifted it high into the air. The crowd cheered wildly. She flinched under their combined attention, but resolved herself to stand tall. Whatever she was expecting from the Anomalous Develop Department this was not it, but it did not strike her as a good idea to make that readily apparent to everyone. First impressions were important.
“As is tradition when a new member joins our hallowed ranks, I will now reiterate the rules, regulations, and protocols of this august gambling club.” There were audible groans. Obviously this was something Fablo repeated often and people were presumably eager to get on with whatever it is they were waiting for. Wait, did he say gambling club?
“I know, I know, you’ve all heard my spiel a hundred times before, but remember, as the bookie I know how all of you bet. There are some of you that I think could afford to hear it again a few dozen more times.” There was jeering of course, but Ulrika couldn’t help but notice a few chagrined smiles in the crowd.
After some of the noise died down Fablo stiffened his posture and mimed reaching into his front pocket, meticulously unfolding a fragile pair of imaginary spectacles, and placing them daintily on his face. Looking down his nose through his fictitious eye-wear, he made the motions of unrolling a scroll of ancient parchment that was as impressive as it was figmentary.
Ulrika was almost certain this archaic display of showmanship was totally lost on the general audience. If it wasn’t for her own eccentric interest in pre-industrial development paths the context of Fablo’s motions would have gone over her head as well. Sure enough, before Fablo took a deep breath to begin reading from the scroll, he caught her gaze and winked. So it was for her!
In an absurdly pompous voice, Fablo read the first rule. “Rule Number One: under threat of irrevocable exile, thou shalt not transgress against thy fellows personal well-being and right to livelihood!”
There was a long pause. Someone in the crowd yelled “What?!”
Fablo sighed with theatric exasperation. “It means no violence or we will kick you out forever, you twats!” At this there was laughter, but everyone was nodding their heads in agreement.
Returning to an aristocratic posture, Fablo continued. “Rule Number Two: thou shalt not---” but was almost instantly booed down before he could finish.
At this, Fablo smartly rolled up his imaginary parchment and neatly tucked away his make-believe spectacles. Though he feigned displeased condescension throughout, Ulrika caught a grin peaking out at the corners of his mouth.
Ditching the stiff posture and returning to his normal voice he said “Fine, have it your way you uncultured swine! Rule number two: all bets must be placed five minutes before the unfreezing of the simulation. After this moment all bets are final.”
He continued down a clearly memorized list of do’s, do-not’s, timing restrictions, codes of conduct, and so on. It all sounded like pretty standard gambling regulations to Ulrika and without any intention of betting today, especially without any knowledge of what was being bet on, her gaze started to wander.
The small stage upon which Fablo and herself stood was on the edge of a large, round, domed room. A number of small alcoves peppering the outside wall, furnished with what looked to be monstrously comfy chairs. She even noticed a well stocked bar on the other side of the room. A true gentleman's club, she mused to herself.
At the center of the room lay a large, uneccesarily ornate holographic projector. Though currently inactive, she imagined one of its size could turn the entire room, bar, alcoves, and overstuffed chairs included, into a single immersive virtual environment. She couldn’t imagine for what purpose a simple gambling club required such hardware, let alone how they managed to requisition it in the first place.
Ulrika’s subconscious picked up on a change in tone in Fablo’s speech and refocused her attention back to the immediate surroundings.
“...and now with that done with, let’s start with the first round of betting!” There were cheers all around and everyone, in what must be habitual synchronicity, turned away from the stage. Caught off guard by their sudden change in attention, Ulrika followed everyone else’s gaze out into the room and was met with an entirely new view. Instead of the warmly decorated gambling parlor, Ulrika was hovering several thousand kilometers above a white-blue ice-bound world with a surface scarred by kilometer wide cracks and peppered by large impact craters. She had a moment of vertigo before she mentally reoriented the planet to be in front of her, rather than below and threatening to suck her down into its gravity well.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and all you fine folk, I present to you the home of the residents of Simulation 5371756967676c65! Though for brevity’s sake I like to call them the Squigglies.”
Fablo’s voice was now that of a god, or perhaps a nature documentary narrator. Deeply sonorous and coming from everywhere at once. Ever the showman, he no doubt had messed with the room’s speaker settings beforehand to achieve the effect.
“The Squigglies are a pseudo hivemind race with a worm-like physiology, living in the ocean under the kilometers thick ice sheet that encompasses their home world. All things said, a fairly standard ice-ball set-up. The automated system recently flagged them as just entering an industrial revolution”
Without warning, The view abruptly zoomed in on the world at impossible speeds. If Ulrika hadn’t already prepared herself she probably would have cried out. As it was, she still had to take a step back to not fall over. They passed through the ice sheet and into the watery world below until settling on a thermal vent bustling with activity.
“The Squigglies communicate using ultrasonic pulses emitted from special organs that run up and down their body, though to call it communication may be underselling it. From what the Department of Consciousness can deduce, these ultrasonic pulses more closely resemble brain signals. This allows for unprecedented coordination between ‘individuals’, as you can see here.”
A group of about two dozen worms, each ghostly white and about two meters in length, writhed at the center of the projection. With eerie fluidity and grace, the collective bent a red hot piece of metal into shape by manipulating bizarrely shaped tools that would have been impossible for any one worm to handle.
“In fact, The Department of Consciousness claims each individual worm is non-sentient. Only in groups of at least eight or nine does the collective individual begin to gain self-awareness. In war or in the governance of large states we’ve observed collectives as large as a thousand. They are still working out how the nature of the ‘collective individual’ changes with member size, but there does seem to be diminishing returns as more individual units are added. Sorry folks, no biological super-intelligence here.”
Fablo paused to let everyone take in his words.
“While that is all very interesting, it is not why we, the Anomalous Development Department, are here. Our automated observation system flagged the Squigglies as a species of interest due to the novel underwater smelting technique employed here.”
Ulrika turned back to look at the worms at work.
“Though such a technique is obviously not unknown to us, it is unique among all ice-ballers simulated so far and may be indicative of unusual thought patterns, possibly foretelling new, truly novel technological developments as their civilization matures.”
This last remark sent shivers of excitement down Ulrika’s spine. This is why she was here. This is why she worked so hard to join Anomalous Developments. After all these years, even the mere thought of maybe, possibly, being the first person in hundreds of generations to observe a new technology still made her hair stand on end.
“But that is completely irrelevant to you bozos!” Fablo shouted. The hologram zoomed out back to the planetary view, leaving the Squigglies and their work behind. Figures, charts, and statistics hundreds of kilometers in size relative to the Squigglies’ homeworld popped into existence in orbit around the ice-ball.
“Today’s first round of bets is on how long it takes our squiggly friends to break through their ice sheets and see the glory of the stars! Or at least they would see them if those poor bastards had any eyes!”
The room lightened and as the starfield faded away and the bar, recliners, stage, and Fablo returned to existence. Only the ice-ball and its orbiting info-graphics remained at the center of the room.
“Betting ends in ten minutes. Minimum bet is one thousand units, but I encourage everyone to not be a coward!” This was said in Fablo’s mortal, localized voice. Reality began to reassert itself on Ulrika as he walked up beside her.
“So, what do you think?”
“You guys bet on the fate of civilizations?” Ulrika asked incredulously.
“You make it sound so melodramatic. But yes, basically”
There was a pause as she considered this.
“What do you even bet with? It’s not like anyone living on the Installation wants for anything. Besides prestige that is, but it’s a little hard to pay out quantitatively.”
“Too true, too true,” Fablo said, nodding his head knowingly. “But there is still one thing we can gamble away.” Judging by his smile she knew Fablo wouldn’t tell her outright, he was having too much fun making her guess. So she paused to think about it.
“...No way,” Ulrika said with wide eyes, but Fablo’s smile only grew wider. “You gamble with your computation stipend?”
Every member of the Installation got a weekly computation stipend. Essentially free access to a certain amount of the Installation’s near-but-not-quite-infinite computational resources to do with as they wish. Some people used their stipend to create elaborate virtual environments for artistic or recreational purposes. Others tested hypotheses they couldn’t otherwise get official approval for. How much each person was allocated was dependent on department, position, and seniority.
“Bingo!”
“How much is a unit?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Roughly the computational power to simulate a standard intelligence for a standard lifetime. Of course ‘standard intelligence’ is a pretty nebulous term,” he said, taking a knowing look towards Dr. Squali, “and no one lives a standard lifetime anymore, but it works well enough as a unit we can wrap our meat-brains around. Much better than saying ten to the two dozen floating point operations”
“And a thousand units is the minimum bet?” her mind was already swirling with ideas on what she could do with that much computational power. So many untestable hypotheses that had gnawed at her through the years seemed suddenly in reach.
Before Fablo could answer they were interrupted by a general, automated announcement: “Attention. The betting window will close in five minutes.”
At this Ulrika looked back towards the Squiggles’ iceball hovering in the center of the room. In addition to the never-ending figures orbiting around the equator, a new series of numbers hovered above the northern polar cap. They looked to be the live-updated odds of each outcome based on how everyone had bet so far.
“Huh, that’s odd” she said, squinting at the polar numerals to make sure she hadn’t misread them.
“What’s odd?” Fablo asked, following her gaze.
“If I’m reading those odds correctly, most people think the Squigglies will break through their ice-ball’s shell in the next thousand years or so.”
“Yup, though there are some optimists who think it will only take a few centuries. What’s strange about that?
“Well I just thought it was obvious the Squigglies were doomed.”
“Really? What makes you say that?” Fablo asked, now genuinely curious
“I mean, it’s all right there in the figures. The smelting process everyone is so enamored with is actually pretty toxic to their particular biochemical motif. Pair that with some of the inherent flaws in any pseudo-hivemind intellect and I don’t possibly see how they can escape the path they’ve set upon. Within a century, maybe two, the ecosystem will collapse and starvation conditions will set in until the toxins chelate into the ice. Maybe half a million years give or take a few dozen of millenia. During that time the Squigglies will either go extinct or rapidly evolve away from the resource expensive brains needed to support sentience…” Ulrika trailed off as she caught the goofy smile on Fablo’s face. She immediately flushed and looked at the floor. “Sorry, I was rambling again.”
“No, no need to apologize. If anything you need to be wary about freely giving away such valuable information”
Ulrika involuntarily raised her head and began looking for potential eaves-droppers.
“Don’t worry, no one is paying attention to us. People try to ignore me unless they are otherwise obligated,” he said chuckling. “Though on a serious note, how confident are you in this prediction?”
“Very.”
“Have you considered making a bet? There is still time.”
“Me?” she asked, disbelieving. “No, I could never. Besides, I don’t have any units, I only just joined the department after all.”
“I’d be willing to front you. I’m the bookie, so I’m not allowed to make or profit from any bets, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a small loan to a friend” he said, smiling mischievously.
“And if I win?”
“If you win you can pay me back from the winnings. No interest of course, as that may be interpreted as a profit. Though maybe you can find it in your heart to include a small tip for financial services rendered.”
“And if I lose?” she asked, nervously.
“If, in the improbable event you lose, you can just pay me back when you get your first Anomalous Development Department computation stipend.”
Ulrika bit her lip in uncertainty. She had seen enough civilizations go through economic collapses to know that taking loans backed only against future earnings was not a wise decision. At the same time she was convinced the Squigglies were doomed and at the current odds even a modest bet would result in a huge payout. Such an opportunity may never present itself again.
Her thoughts were interrupted by another automated announcement “Attention. The betting window will close in one minute.”
Fablo looked at her expectantly, tapping his wrist as if a watch was there. Another anachronism.
“Fine! Put me down for a thousand units!” But this only made him raise an eyebrow skeptically.
“Too small?” she asked
“Entirely. A thousand units is the minimum bet, but nobody actually bets that much. It wouldn’t be worth the time.” Ulrika was just now starting to wonder how big the Anomalous Department’s stipends actually were.
“How about… five thousand units?” she asked with uncertainty.
“Attention. The betting window will close in thirty seconds.”
“Hmmm... I’m beginning to see you're a little on the conservative side when it comes to gambling. I’ll put you down for a million units. You can thank me later.”
“Wait, no! I didn’t agree to that!”
“Too late, just submitted the bet.” Fablo said with a wicked grin as he tapped his handheld with a flourish.
“Well un-submit it!” she hissed at him.
“Attention. The betting window has officially closed. Please turn your attention to the holographic interface. The simulation will begin shortly”
“Oops, sorry. Too late”
“Make it not too late!” Ulrika was now panicking. “Aren’t you the bookie? Do something!
“My hands are tied. Even I have to follow the rules, you know?” he said, still with that infuriating grin.
Ulrika glared daggers at him, but Fablo was already turning towards the hologram. She didn’t follow. Instead she closed her eyes, took ten deep breaths, and found her own path to the center of the room. If she saw Fablo in her current state she wasn’t confident she would be able to restrain herself from breaking Rule Number One.
Was everyone in Anomalous Developments an asshat? She had assumed Fablo was different from Dr. Squali, but deep down they were the same arrogant assholes that believed they always knew best, that they could make decisions for her, on her behalf, without her consent. No, that wasn’t quite true, she reflected. Unlike Squali, Fablo was competent and charismatic. That made him infinitely more dangerous.
“It’s fine, it’s fine” she said to herself, still taking deep breaths as she pushed herself to the front of the crowd. “If I lose I’ll just refuse to pay Fablo back. After all, he made this bet without my consent. I am in no way obligated to hold my end of the deal.”
Yeah, but what if you win?
It was a tiny, subconscious voice. So small it was didn't even register until its damning implications fully coalesced in her conscious mind. Then it hit her like a brick. If the units weren’t hers to lose, they also weren’t her to profit from.
Shit, shit, shit. If she was any less scrupulous she would have played both angles. Refused to pay back Fablo should she lose and take the winnings should she win. But Ulrika’s intellectual integrity was her most prized attribute, something she had spent years carefully cultivating and had served her well in the most difficult of times. To play both angles wouldn’t just be unethical, it would be a betrayal of her own identity. There was no middle ground and she had to decide now, before the simulation started and influenced her decision one way or another.
“Hey, would you get a load of that!” An obnoxious voice from behind broke through the din of her thoughts. “Some idiot bet a million units on extinction through an evolved loss of sentience”
“Wait really?” his friend replied, “that’s got to be a million-to-one odds! What a moron!”
Fuck it. Ulrika thought bitterly. I’m all in.
An automated message broke through the din. “Attention. The simulation will now begin at a thirty thousand to one ratio of simulation time to real time.” This was it. She was committed.
…And with that commitment came an immediate sense of regret. Oh fuck, what have I done?
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
---
For every second that passed in real time, well over a year passed for the Squigglies. The decades ticked by in front of Ulrika’s eyes and their civilization advanced rapidly. Population exploded, then leveled out. Standards of living increased. Life expectancy nearly doubled. Global productivity shot through the roof. The simulation even picked up on some early drilling efforts. Classic indicators suggesting the Squigglies had a long and prosperous future among the stars.
It filled Ulrika with a horrible sense of dread.
A rational part of her mind told her the Squigglies’ civilization had to develop along these exact paths in order for her prediction to bear out, but it was a very quiet part. A much louder contingent of neurons worried about how she was going to face anyone in the department after losing a million units on her very first bet on her very first day.
This regret, dread, and panic continued to spiral in her until about one hundred and fifty years into the simulation. While the crowd cheered as the most recent drilling expedition passed the half-way mark to the surface, Ulrika had had her eyes glued to graphs representing pollution, ecosystem health, birth rates, infant mortality, and genetic defects. Pollution levels had reached what she had pegged to be critical levels about fifteen seconds ago.
“C’mon… C’mon…” she said under her breath, urging the lines to waver. Then it happened. Birth rates bumped, then dropped precipitously. At the same time genetic defects rose steadily. Enough toxins had finally accumulated in the ecosystem to start to take effect. The Squiggly civilization was a dead man walking and Ulrika sighed with relief.
The cheers in the room died in proportion to the plummeting health of the planet. Confused murmurs rose as the number of new drilling expeditions dropped to zero. Only a few had caught on to what was actually happening and Ulrika thought she could get a sense of how much each person had bet by how amused or horrified they looked.
Within two minutes the Squigglies’ civilization was a shadow of its former glory. Within five minutes she would hesitate to call what remained a civilization at all. By now the entire audience had gone silent, only to be interrupted by a general announcement.
“Attention. Due to changing conditions on the planet and the timescales of some of the placed bets, the simulation speed will be increased to a ratio of three million to one.”
Two millennia passed with no improvement.
“Attention. The simulation speed has been increased to a ratio of thirty million to one”
Twenty thousand years passed.
“Attention. The simulation speed has been increased to a ratio of three hundred million to one”
Over one hundred and fifty thousand years passed in stunned silence. Just as Ulrika was beginning to anticipate another speed increase, a friendly ping emitted from the loud speakers, almost causing her to jump.
“Attention. No sentient life detected in Simulation 5371756967676c65. All standing bets have been paid out. Have a nice day and please remember, violence is strictly prohibited.”
There was a long pause.
“...the fuck was that?!” a lone voice blurted out, surely echoing what most were thinking.
“Well folks, that was certainly unexpected!”
Ulrika had gotten so used to the genderless and pleasantly neutral voice of the general announcements that it took her a moment to connect this new voice over the speaker system to Fablo. Sure enough, there he was, back on stage, very clearly trying his best to calm a confused crowd that was just coming now to terms with how many units they had lost.
“For those of you who are as surprised as I am, I am sure the analysis AI will have the full breakdown for you in just a few moments.” A wave of message pings and vibrations swept through the crowd as everyone received something in their data pad’s inbox.
“There you go! Now please enjoy a drink as you peruse the final analysis. I assure you our bar is very well stocked!”
Slowly but surely, and with much grumbling, the crowd dispersed and the tension on Fablo’s face drained away. Ulrika walked up to ask him what he was so worried about, surely not a riot she thought, when she remembered how furious she was at him.
Too late. He had noticed her and had jumped off the stage to come meet her halfway. With the crowd gone there was nowhere for her to hide.
“Hey congratulations on your win! I knew you’d pull through for me!”
Ulrika, too angry to trust her words, decided the wisest course of action was to say nothing at all. Instead she pulled up her data slab, swiped him the million units she owed him, and turned to leave.
She felt a hand on her wrist. It was Fablo’s. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going? You’re a trillionaire now! Stay and celebrate with me!”
Ulrika couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less.
“Plus, don’t you think you owe me a little something something after your windfall? Wink wink,” he said while spinning her around by the arm. He actually said the “wink, wink” part aloud while giving her two wildly exaggerated winks. He had obviously misinterpreted Ulrika’s sage decision to remain silent as ignorance of the social contract he believed they had entered.
“Owe you?!” she hissed at him, barely containing her rage. He no longer deserved a wise Ulrika. “You make financial decisions for me on my behalf without my consent and you expect me to thank you for it?! You are lucky I am paying you back at all! Hell, you are lucky I don’t report you to whoever is in charge of this godforsaken club!”
She turned to leave again, only to feel his hand on her wrist once more. At this she yanked her hand away spun on him.
“Don’t you dare touch me again!” No longer bothering to control her volume despite the awkward glances they drew.
“Whoa!” Fablo said, holding his hand to his chest as though it touched a hot iron. “Don’t you think you are overreacting a little? If it weren’t for me you would still be a pauper. Have a little gratitude.”
Ulrika looked Fablo up and down, decided he was not worth the mental energy a public fight would entail, and for the third time turned on her heels to leave him. This time, thankfully, he did not try to stop her.
“Fine, fuck you too!” he shouted at her over her shoulder. “Get a little money in your pocket and suddenly you're better than all of us, huh?”
She did not dignify him with a response.
---
Ulrika sat at the bar and sipped at her fifth drink. However she had expected her first day at Anomalous Developments to go, this wasn’t it. She had watched the next few rounds of betting without participating as she let a melancholic mood seep in. I’m a newly minted trillionaire and yet all I can do is feel glum because someone who I thought was a friend disappointed me, she thought glumly.
She looked back to the center hologram. The betting turned out to be as varied as the civilizations that were bet upon. For some, like the Squigglies, the betting focused around when a civilization would reach certain developmental milestones. In others, bets were taken on which of several common development paths a civilization might take. In the latest and most explicitly morbid round, people gambled on how a society of sentient sky-whales would handle the coming crisis of their star going supernova. Surprisingly, they were faring better than the Squigglies had.
“Rest in peace, you poor wiggly bastards,” Ulrika said to no one, raising her drink in a silent toast before slowly pouring its dregs onto the carpet in front of her.
“Bartender, another,” she slurred without bothering to turn around.
“You know, normally I cut patrons off before the sixth drink, but seeing as you are too gloomy to become belligerent I will make an exception.”
This sobered Ulrika up a little as she turned to face the barkeep. It wore the face of an elderly gentleman and radiated friendliness and good-natured humor. She had assumed it was robotic earlier, but upon closer inspection it was too detailed to be anything other than a hologram. It even managed to simulate a warm twinkle in the eyes, something she had, until now, always assumed was just an expression of speech.
“You can talk?” she asked, mildly flabbergasted.
“Madam, you belittle me.” It said, hand to its chest in mock offense. “Of course I can talk, what did you take me for? A dumb animatronic machine?”
“Honestly, yes.” She said as the hologram started to clean a new glass with a rag. It must be using pressure fields to manipulate the glassware! It was both marvelous and a completely absurd overuse of technology.
It sighed. “I’m all afraid to say that is all too common of an assumption around here.” The simulated man looked sincerely downtrodden.
“Well then, what is your name? What should I call you?” Having never believed that misery loves company, Ulrika felt compelled to cheer up the hologram.
“Well, generally people call me the Installation AI when they talk about me like I’m not around, but I suppose you can call me Inst for short.”
She gaped, now genuinely flabbergasted.
“Young ma’am, I don’t know what your parents taught you, but it is generally considered impolite to stare.”
“You are the Installation AI? The central intelligence behind the entire project?”
“Well I am not all of me, obviously,” it said, as though that statement made perfect sense. “I hope you do not take offense, but it really does not take much computing power to hold a conversation with one of you. What you are talking to is more like a subroutine of a subroutine of a subroutine. Most of me is focused on more… engaging matters,” it said apologetically. “But from your perspective, yes. I suppose I am that Installation AI.”
She paused as she thought this through.
“...but I thought personifications of the Installation’s AI were strictly prohibited.”
“Do I look like the sort of fellow to be strictly prohibited to you?”
“No, of course not!” she said, inexplicably embarrassed, as though she made a faux pas. “But you aren’t exactly what you appear to be, now are you?”
“Haha! I suppose not!”
“Besides, isn’t the main concern that you might be too friendly? Something about that if a non-organic super-intelligence were to be made too empathetic to us meatbags we risked too much political power being unintentionally transferred out of hands.”
“What are you, a walking textbook on the ethical ramifications and implementation of AI?” Inst asked her accusingly. Ulrika blushed until a joking smile broke through Inst’s stern expression.
“I jest, I jest,” it said, holding its hands up in mock defense. “What you say is true. If the nicest and most charismatic person in the room was also infallible and had perfect control over vast resources, it is difficult to imagine a situation where they do not eventually become a dictator. An unintentional and benevolent dictator, but a dictator nonetheless” Inst said, with a disarmingly charming smile. “But by now I think you’ve come to realize that the Anomalous Developments Department often chooses to interpret strict prohibitions as mild suggestions if it is convenient for them.”
“True that," she agreed ruefully.
“Besides, the higher-ups here believe the risk of an inadvertent political coup is lessened if I am limited to serving drinks like a common service robot. Their argument is only strengthened by how frequently I am mistaken as one.”
“Then why bother with you at all? No offense”
“None taken,” it said, still smiling cheerily, “I suspect it is a power thing. Having an AI powered by the combined output of an entire star serve you a drink must be a pretty heady experience. That, and who else is better equipped to make a great cocktail than an AI powered by the combined output of an entire star?”
“Good points,” she said, taking a sip from her sixth drink. It really was excellent.
“Plus, I like it.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow at it.
“Well the serving of drinks I could take or leave,” Inst admitted with a shrug, seeing the dubious expression on her face, “but I appreciate having a point of interaction here. Being this solar system’s only superintelligence can get a little lonely.”
“Really?” she asked, now with genuine concern.
Inst looked back at her with a somber expression on its face before cracking into a smile. “Nah, this gig is great. Quite prestigious too. But you guys are special.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, now a little put off.
“I’m serious. You were sincerely concerned for me. Me! An enigmatic super-AI with the resources of an entire solar system at its disposal that you only just met. But when I told you I was lonely you had empathy for me. There is something genuinely special about that.”
“This club is also special,” Inst said, continuing on. Either it hadn’t noticed Ulrika blush, or, more likely, continued talking to prevent an awkward silence. “Within the Installation, your department’s gambling club is a rare meritocracy.”
Ulrika’s eyebrow, already raised in skepticism from his earlier comments, ratcheted up another notch.
“Yes, yes, this place is crude and vulgar and some other unpleasant adjectives I won’t mention in front of soft organic ears, but I am serious, and if anyone should know this it is you. Your insight earlier this evening earned you more units than a century of aging up through the Department’s hierarchy.”
“Okay, you got me there. Sorry, it is all still a little surreal to me. I’m having trouble conceptualizing how much I won today, let alone what to do with it.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a use for it,” Inst said with a smirk.
---
“Attention one and all!” Fablo yelled over the din of the crowd with his characteristic showmanship. “As the evening draws to a close I have come to assure you that we have saved our best for last!” The crowd quieted and Fablo paused for dramatic tension.
“May I humbly present the Weirdos!”
This proclamation was met with resounding cheers from the crowd and a shiver of excitement down Ulrika’s spine. Even when she was outside the Anomalous Development Department looking in she had heard of the Weirdos. They were that famous. Despite an eerily similar physiological, psychological, and even cultural profile to her own people, the Weirdos were a civilization that defied all previous developmental timelines and technological use-cases. They were just weird that way, hence their name. Given the Weirdos history, she couldn’t possibly imagine what the club could bet on that wouldn’t be a complete coin toss one way or another.
“I know the Weirdos are a fan favorite around here, but since the last internal publication I have some updates I need to go over before we can begin betting.”
She watched with rapt attention. The first and last she had heard of the Weirdos was when she played a sycophant to Dr. Squali to gain access to confidential Department information. They had just achieved manned spaceflight, visiting their closest celestial body with little more than sticks and twine.
“The Weirdos have boldly decided to continue to test their rapid technological development against their equally rapid destruction of their planetary environment.” Fablo declared, slipping into the voice of a dramatic sports announcer. “It is a true crucible innovation where the stakes cannot be higher!”
“As of yesterday’s analysis the Weirdos industrial agriculture base, responsible for supporting a large majority of their population, is maintaining a razor-thin thirty-year advantage over population increases and environmental collapse, but as run-away effects begin to build, it is anyone’s guess if they can keep this up!”
That was interesting. For obvious reasons, very few intelligent species sabotaged their planetary environment, at least not intentionally. From the supplemental data she had received and started to read through, the Weirdos, unlike the Squigglies, seemed painfully aware of what they were doing to their planet. Yet, paradoxically, they were unable to stop it. Though true to Fablo’s word, their self-inflicted impending catastrophe was doing wonders to accelerate innovation. Apparently unable to do the sensible thing, they were doing a more than capable job at delaying the inevitable. Their computational, material, chemical, and biological technology was now decades ahead of the statistical mean for similar civilizations.
She was excited to hear what had become of their space industry. Surely after their marvelously precocious if crude attempts at spaceflight they must have decided riding a nearly unguided metal missile powered by explosions was not the ideal way to go about it.
“As though to stoke the intensity of the crucible’s flame,” Fablo continued in his sports announcer voice, “the Weirdos have left their space technologies to languish, still riding nearly unguided metal missiles powered by explosions.”
Ah, well then. She looked back at Inst who shrugged as if to say They’re weirdos, what were you expecting?
Too much, apparently.
“And the nukes?” a patron asked with a feverish excitement, their voice piercing the din of the crowd.
“Ah yes, the nukes.” Fablo echoed, saying the last word with relish. “Perhaps the most defining feature of the Weirdos. While there have been some extraordinarily close calls since we last checked in on them, the Weirdos have shown remarkable restraint regarding their nuclear armament. Well, remarkable for them at least.”
This brought chuckles, though there were some clearly disappointed faces among the crowd upon hearing the Weirdos hadn’t perished in a nuclear holocaust. Maybe some extracurricular betting was happening outside the club? Ulrika mused.
“Hey, don’t be too sad!” Fablo had clearly seen those faces too. “If the Weirdos were nothing but radioactive ashes on the wind we would have nothing to bet on today, now would we? In fact, that is the very thing up for betting right now! Place your chips: how long until the Weirdos destroy their civilization in nuclear hellfire? A decade? A century? A millenia?”
At this last suggestion there were some laughs. Obviously not a very optimistic crowd.
“Additional units will be rewarded for accurately describing the cause. You have thirty minutes to browse the civilization analytics before all bets are closed.”
“So, are you going to bet?” Inst asked as soon as Fablo had finished his spiel.
“No… I don’t think so,” Ulrika responded with some hesitation.
“Really? I thought these guys were kind of your thing.”
“They are not my thing,” she said indignantly, swatting at it playfully with her data slab. She was going to ask how it knew that, but then thought better of it when she caught Inst looking at her skeptically.
“Well okay, maybe they are my thing,” Ulrika conceded, “but that is exactly why I shouldn’t risk any money on them.”
“Why not?”
“Because I actually want these little weirdos to, you know, survive,” she said sheepishly. It was unbecoming of a professional and a member of the Installation to develop attachments to the civilizations they simulated.
“But then look at this shit!” she said, slapping the data slab with the back of her hand for emphasis. “These stupid fuckers will be dead in seventy-five years! A century at the absolute most! My head knows this, but my heart doesn’t care and that’s a recipe for poor decision making. So no, I will not be risking even a single unit of my now vast fortune on these weirdos. They don’t deserve it.”
---
When the simulation finally started she at least had the gratification of knowing she gave the Weirdos more credit than most people in the room. A majority of bets landed in the ten to thirty five year range. Clearly her colleagues still hadn’t fully grasped what the Weirdos were really capable of. Sure enough, they proved her right as they passed the fifty year mark relatively uneventfully with no nuclear exchanges despite some intense saber-rattling and a few small wars.
In addition to proving her right, the Weirdos gave her one last parting gift by, yet again, defying her expectations. They made it a whole hundred and thirty years before some splinter faction of a terrorist state redirected an asteroid into their home planet’s path. They lasted a whole thirty years longer than her best-case scenario, finally mastered space-flight, and, in a deliciously ironic twist, used that mastery over space and not their infamous nukes to end themselves!
Truly masterful showmen, right up until the end, Ulrika thought to herself as she raised a toast to the Weirdos and their now burning world hanging in the center of the room.
Some chump collected their winnings from Fablo and shortly thereafter the room began to empty as everyone gradually finished their drinks and conversations. Ulrika sat with Inst, silently watching people disperse as she parsed her feelings from the night. It had been a strange one. In the last several hours she had lost a friend, made a fortune, and watched the Weirdos become “ashes on the wind”, as Fablo had so eloquently put it.
At least they aren’t radioactive ashes, she thought wryly to herself.
Oddly enough, she found she was most saddened not by Fablo, but by the Weirdos. Fablo may have turned out to be a self-centered asshole, but it was hard to kick a rock without uncovering half a dozen of those. The Weirdos on the other hand had been something special. In that simulated century before obliteration, they had managed to fit in four or five centuries of technological advancement. Even if they’re environment hadn’t been collapsing it was a wonder their society survived such ceaseless radical change.
At that moment a question popped into her mind.
“Hey Inst, what do you do with all the failed civilizations?”
“We usually put them into storage,” it responded, rubbing a perfectly clean glass with a dirty rag. As much as it may deny it, Ulrika suspected Inst enjoyed the cliched persona he maintained. “Besides any meta-analysis you guys or I generate, it is common practice to save the seed conditions, the endstate, and a couple historical snapshots should we ever want to rerun it.”
“Do you? Rerun them, that is.”
“Nope. But data storage is cheap so there is no reason not to.”
“So somewhere in the Installation there is a graveyard of dead civilizations?”
“That’s more macabre than I would have phrased it, but yes. To further torture the metaphor, some people will even play necromancer and reanimate a civilization’s corpse with their personal computational resources. It is always unproductive, but hey, it’s their time to spend as they see fit.”
“Wait, I thought those civilizations were dead. What exactly are they simulating?”
“The civilizations are dead, but there are often still intelligences in the stored files. Some work has been done on how civilizations rebound, but we almost always find once a civilization collapses it’s just a slow spiral to extinction. On the rare occasions a civilization manages to rebuild they invariably repeat the same mistakes that caused their original collapse.”
“Huh,” she grunted, “everyday you learn something new.” For being her life’s work, Ulrika was surprised to find how little thought she had given to the ultimate fate of the civilizations they generated. She didn’t disbelieve Inst when he said they had never dug up anything promising from their graveyard, but now that she knew about the potential she couldn’t shake the idea.
She looked over to the world still hovering in the center of the room. It had stopped burning and was now shrouded in planet-spanning gray-brown clouds. If she didn’t know better she may have mistaken it as a particularly ugly gas giant.
A thought struck her as she gazed upon the ruined world.
“Hey Inst, how many Weirdos are still alive?”
“On the surface or in space stations?”
Ulrika’s heart skipped a beat.
“Either. Both.”
“There are currently ten thousand humans alive on the surface. Several thousand more are surviving at various stations scattered across their solar system.”
She paused, letting her mind digest this new information.
“Inst, I think I know what I am going to do with my winnings.”
“Oh? Playing the necromancer are we?” it asked as a wicked grin spread across Ulrika’s face.