The atmosphere within Atlas was tense when I checked in. Dispensing with my usual paperwork, the memories already starting to fade, I popped a counter agent and made my way to the lounge.
Even the Munchkins looked depressed, and they were the kind of people who got off on existential crises.
NOTICE:
Ms. Julia Wang has been delisted from the UNSEEN employee registry
CAUSE:
Identification as a Centaur infiltrator.
ACTIONS TAKEN:
Initial debrief by on-site telepath could not be performed due to suspected infohazards.
The individual resisted arrest, protesting their innocence.
Invasive brain scan performed using a Lithium class AGI.
Guilt confirmed, both upload and corporeal form disposed of by standard incineration techniques.
FOLLOWUP:
If you have reason to suspect that you or one of your coworkers is a Centauri infiltrator, please report to HR at room ZULU LIMA CHARLIE for processing.
If you believe that you may have been exposed to info or cognitohazards, please proceed to room XRAY ROMEO TANGO.
END MESSAGE
This is an automated message generated by a Hydrogen-Class AI temporarily standing in for Ms. Julia Wang, former Head of External Security at UNSEEN.
Shit. I wondered if they'd finished following up on my case before they'd done the equivalent of tossing her into a blackhole.
I wondered how they'd gotten to her, with her rank, she'd have been under some of the more extensive surveillance that UNSEEN provided.
Was the original Julia still alive somewhere? Probably not, whatever the means they'd used to subvert her, they were never the kind to leave evidence lying about.
The real tragedy was that she didn't even know. She'd gone to her death 100% sure of her innocence, likely convinced this was just another false positive, probably due to the deployment of the early alpha of the new infiltration detection systems I had been working on.
They never knew, never even suspected, any more than all of us sometimes idly wonder about such things. She'd lived her life as Julia Wang, gone home to her wife and daughter, kissed them goodbye, boarded the employee shuttle looking forward to her job keeping humanity safe. All while bringing about its end from within.
There had been a short-lived period when we tried to reform infiltrators. Invasive therapy to undo the memetic triggers, targeted excision of the worms and memeplexes. Hypnosis, telepath supervised treatments, the best AGIs brought to bear on the problem of undoing whatever the aliens had wrought.
And it seemed to work. They'd never consciously held to such ideas, most of them were model workers, just as dismayed and confused by the situation as we were. After months or years of deprogramming, they'd been released to live out their days, or often resume their work when they'd been considered too indispensable to think otherwise.
We didn't bother doing that anymore, it had just ended in tears and residual radioactivity in Iran. These days, we destructively scanned their brains and then burned the remains in plasma.
With Atlas in partial lockdown, the high security zone had been expanded, and I was at liberty to continue my work in the commons. I decided to take a look at some ongoing projects I'd been invited to work on:
A Comprehensive Summary of known X-risks, S-risks and I-risks
CASE DEUS EX MACHINA
The deployment of an unaligned recursively self-improving seed AGI. For reasons outlined in document REDACTED, the AGI is unable to deploy metahuman abilities that contravene the nominal laws of physics.
Severity- RED
Scope- Current and future lightcones centered around Sol
Known examples- Outbreak VANTABLACK 2043, Outbreak Microsoft 2035, Outbreaks Meta 2031, 2032, 2033; [Redacted] in the labs on Charon, Redacted and Uranus (destroyed by Centaur RKV)
Probability of emergence- Certain (see known examples)
Probability of true X-risk*- Unlikely. Work by Halliday, Sen and Rivers provides good theoretical reasons to expect that a sufficiently advanced AGI might develop as per CASE TITAN below.
Mitigation: Strict adherence to the Turing Accords, constant surveillance of seed AGI development. And for once, the Centaurs are just as interested in preventing this as we are.
CASE TITAN:
Case Deus Ex Machina, but the AGI unlocks Class 7 and above metahuman abilities.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Scope- All possible lightcones. All possible realities. All possible alternate universes.
Confirmed Examples-?
Possible Examples- SAMSARA (Please don't bother opening the link unless you've got GAMMA clearance -Halliday)
Probability of true X-risk- Verging on 100%, with ongoing research by Halliday and Rivers on the construction and maintenance of Ark Universes causally disconnected from our own.
Mitigation- See CASE DEM (and prayer, I believe that no comprehensive research attempts have been made at praying the problem away- Halliday)
CASE PUNCTURED BALLOON
(Have the fucking AI come up with a better name, I'm busy! -Rivers)
The collapse of the Higgs field or other fundamental forces, resulting in a vacuum metastability event that propagates at the speed of light and destroys all matter in the universe.
Scope- Just this lightcone, thankfully -Halliday
Probability of true X-risk- ~32%, precog verified.
Examples- Whatever happened within the predecessor to Xibalba. Someone messed up the permissions, I've got XRAY access but no edit rights -Rivers
Mitigation- Causally disconnected Ark universes
CASE QUANTUM STRANGELET:
The creation of a stable strangelet particle that catalyzes the conversion of all matter it comes into contact with into strange matter, resulting in the destruction of all matter in the universe.
Severity: RED
Scope: Our lightcone
Probability of emergence: Very unlikely, but not impossible given the potential for high-energy experiments
Probability of true X-risk: 12%
Mitigation: See Punctured Balloon.
CASE GREY GOO:
The accidental or intentional release of self-replicating nanobots that consume all matter they come into contact with, resulting in the destruction of all life on Earth.
Severity: YELLOW
Scope: Global
Probability of emergence: Confirmed. There are declassified files available on the incidents in the Gobi Desert, Alaska and Chile. In fact, they're cleaning up in Antarctica as we speak.
Probability of true X-risk: High
Mitigation: Strict regulation and oversight of experiments involving self-replicating nanobots, as well as comprehensive risk assessments and contingency planning.
CASE OUTSIDER 1:
Successful contact with REDACTED entities. While the current GUT models suggest that five-dimensional entities are unable to operate in our normal 3+1 D reality, you never really know do you? -Sanchez
Severity: RED
P(X-RISK) - NaN. I'm tired of giving the precogs anti-seizure meds. Put something useful here before we publish. -Sen
Case OUTSIDER 2:
Redacted redacted a redacted redacted. Redacted?
-Is this a joke entry? -Sen
-You wish mate. -Halliday
-He doesn't know about REDACTED? I didn't know they let people with just ULTRAVIOLET clearance in here- Rivers
-I'm scared, can I take my amnestics now? - Nathan
-All I see is redacted redacted redacted. Let me in!- Prasad
-L̸̠̬̥̰̩͗͗͑̓͌Ẽ̷͈͚̀̋̽̎̈T̷̪̺͍͔͔̤̈ ̷̩͐M̴̧̩͙͈͇̈́̇̃̉͠É̷̟̫̥͓ ̶̲̱̳̦̲̜̃̾̌͊͌̊I̶̦͕͇̖̞̓͆́͋͛N̵̝̭̗͇̽- Cosmic Horror 1/26
-Please tell me this was a joke. -Sen
DEPRECATED X-Risks:
1) CASE CHIXCULUB- I'd like to see the asteroid try - Rivers
2) CASE BETELGEUSE- Hey, looks like RKV hardening the Solar System paid off! -Halliday
3) CASE SIBERIA- Not an issue unless somebody really twists the dials on the stratospheric sulfur injection. -Sen
*X-risk- As of 2029, the event needs to fully and irreversibly destroy all of transhumanity to qualify. The end of biological humanity is just a net positive as far as I'm concerned. -Sen
-I'm going to want to see your medical license. -Rivers
I shut off the feed before we got to S-risks and I-risks. I didn't want to overdose on amnestics before the day was done, and it was just 3 pm.
I don't know why I bothered joining the collaborative project in the first place, my impact factor wasn't going to go up because of all the goddamned restrictions put on material so GAMMA classified it glowed in the dark.
Maybe something nice and relaxing, like a white paper on that dissection of a recovered Centaur warform I'd done at Xibalba? That might hit the spot.
I placed my candle next to the hundreds by Wang's memorial, and joined the others while we held hands to prevent the fire-suppression bots from dousing it.