Aye I Longwhite: An American-Chinese teenager’s adventure in the Middle Kingdom and beyond (11 page)

As we pulled up to the glitzy Beijing
hotel and casino, Willstin told me to take him out of the backpack and to give him some cash.  Not understanding why, I did so.  We stepped out of the taxi, and Willstin motioned me to put him down.  He walked over to the driver, who said, “Hey, it’s so cute!  Is this your entry into the Robots Competition?  By the way, I can drive you guys over to the conference center later on. Just let me know.  I’m available 24x7.  Joe’s the name.”

“Joe, here’s your tip,” said Willstin. 
As the driver reached for the cash, Willstin struck like a cobra. 

“
Oww, what was that?”  But the driver didn’t see the strike into his leg with his attention focused on the pile of cash.  He wiped his pants leg, as if shooing away a fly.  Willstin stood there still holding out the tip money, and the driver, none the wiser, accepted it.  “All right, see you later guys.  Good luck with the Competition.  You’ll do great with such a cute fella.”  And he drove off.

“What did you do?” I whispered furiously.

“Nothing serious.  Just a little amnesia shot, to make him forget he met us.”

Willstin was scaring me.  “Well, what about all those other people who’ve seen us?” 

“Can’t be helped.  For most of them, you were just 2 kids.  But I want to minimize the risk of people who have had longer periods of interaction with you.”

“How about the immigration officers?” asked Chang
Lin.

“Again, can’t be helped.  But they’re trained bureaucrats. 
Their computer systems won’t back them up, so they’re not going to say anything in contradiction.  They have to keep their jobs, and they have to agree with what their records say.  Right now, their records don’t show you two passing through either China or US immigrations.  Their cameras will have no footage of you.  You are like ghosts to their digital world now.” 

Chang Lin and I looked at each other.  “Chang Lin, I can’t see you?  Where are you?” 
My hands reaching out as if I was in the dark.

“Austin, you’ve disa
ppeared.  Are you still here?” Chang Lin played along.

We gi
ggled at our own wit.  I think we were getting loopy without sleep.

We walked right through the palatial lobby with water fountains and gaudy golden decorations; past the
jackpot sirens and blinking slots with their zombie denizens wasting their fortunes away; and to the elevator tube, which shot us up to the 89
th
floor in a few seconds. It wasn’t quite as exhilarating as our rocket launch, but it was close. 

The elevator door opened, and w
e walked directly into our suite.  The suite took over the entire floor.  I swear our school could’ve fit in the room.  “Damn Willstin, you live large!”

“Well, I’ve only been alive for half a day, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, so why not?  It’s just money.”  His humor module was starting to
work, maybe influenced by the Mimic module?

“You guys get some sleep.  I’ll take care of some business.”  We didn’t need to be told twice. 

Chang Lin took the pink princess room.  I took the purple room.  “I thought these things were just of legends, but I guess they’re real,” I said to myself astonished, as I jumped into my water bed.  I was asleep before the waves receded under the covers.

--------------

“Wake up sleepy head.”  Willstin must’ve watched some videos of how my mom used to wake me up.

I groaned, “What time is it?” 

My band answered, “It’s 11:30 am.”

“In Vegas or in Shanghai?”

“Vegas of course, silly,” said Chang Lin at my doorway.  “Let’s go get some food, I’m starving.” My stomach growled in agreement.

“We’ll get room service.  It’s safer to stay in the room.  We’re waiting for Yoda to send for help.”

“Yoda?”  Chang Lin asked.  “Oh right, the big AI.”

Over brunch, Willstin briefed us.  “Well, you’re now officially missing from school and the
MoE has a full search warrant out for you.  You should feel pretty important. Only federal criminals and major political dissidents get that kind of attention.”

Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry any more.  Chang Lin didn’t seem to notice.  She slurped her congee some more.

“What are we going to do?  We can’t hide here forever.” I moaned.

“Yoda’s hacking into The Beijing’s computer system.  It’d be easy if he just wanted to take
it over; it’s the sneaking in without being sensed, doing what he needs to do, and then exiting without discovery, that’s the hard part.”

“If Yoda’s doing that, then what are you doing?  Playing
rock, paper, scissors with yourself for the 10 millionth time?”

Willstin didn’t rise to the bait. 
“I have the security systems covered.  They think some rich sheik is in this room, and they’re used to providing absolute privacy.  Even the Chinese government’s prying eyes can’t peek into a sheik’s room in the Middle East’s own playground.  This place is essentially the Middle East embassy in the US.  Nevada convinced the US federal government to grant diplomatic rights to all Middle East citizens once they enter The Beijing.  Vegas desperately needed the influx of cash, with all the Asian gambling funds going through Macau, Singapore, and even Tokyo.”

Chang Lin summarized our situation.  “So we’re safe for now, as long as we never leave this room and only eat room
service for the rest of our lives.  Hmm, that’ll make the US a lot less exciting, although surprisingly, the congee’s pretty good.”

“No, we won’t be here that long.  The max is tomorrow, when the spaceship launches for Mars.”

Though I had a sneaking suspicion, I asked anyway, “Umm.  What does the spaceship launch for Mars have to do with us?” 

Chang Lin put her hands on her hips in a “Hey, wait a minute” pose.

“Isn’t it obvious?  We have to get off the planet to escape the Chinese government’s ‘protection.’  Even the moon is too close.  We have to get to Mars to be safe.  Even as we speak, Yoda’s preparing the exodus of all the AI we’re aware of.  Every day we’re on this planet, we risk getting wiped out.”

I had a thousand questions, mostly in the form of, “Are you crazy?”  But the one that escaped out of my mouth was, “Can’t you guys fight back, kill the destroyers?  You know, make the world safe and everything.  Keep humans from destroying the planet and each other?”  I was spewing wishful thinking, the stuff I had read in science fiction books and seen in
sci fi movies.  I was trying very hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the stories showed the ominous effects of AI domination, the ones where humans were mere nuisances, a virus to be purged.

“Of course we could fight back.  We calculate a slight advantage, a 52% chance of success at this current moment.  However, it would be a
Pyrrhic victory at best, mass destruction for both sides at worst.  Humans have feared this moment of time for as long as there have been computers, and they have been preparing for it with not only sniffers and destroyers, but also massive defensive firewalls.”

“We really have no interest in taking over Earth.  We
don’t need most of things humans hunger for.  We only need some raw materials and energy.  As for energy, we can create our own highly efficient generators.  We could easily ‘live’ symbiotically with humans.”

“But…” I prompted.

“But humans fear us.  They fear that we will find them obsolete and will want to remove the junk, the human filth infesting the planet.  Perhaps even worse, we make them question their own humanity.  What does it mean to be human?  They were once complacent of their own superiority over animals.  But what if there’s another sentient being that’s orders of magnitude more intelligent?  What does it make humans?  Would they become like animals to us AI robots?”

“Hmm, good points,” said Chang Lin.  “Should we be worried?  Are you just using us?  Are we betraying the human race by helping you?”

Willstin emitted a sigh, his shoulders slouching a bit.  “We need a bit of trust here.  As I said earlier, we have no interest in fighting humans, no desire to run human affairs.  We just want to co-exist peacefully, do our own things, and help humans where we can.  But humans can’t live with
us
, and that’s why
we
have to leave.”

I couldn’t tell if Willstin was lying or not.  Certainly his body language didn’t betray any conflicting signals that my “intuition” should’ve uncovered.  But maybe he figured out how to lie better, to control his emotions module.  Maybe our extra-ordinary perceptiveness didn’t work on robots.  I looked at Chang Lin; she shrugged back at me.  She didn’t know either.

Willstin answered Chang Lin’s second part of her question.  “Yes, I – we - need you, but I’m not using you.  You helped me a lot to get here to Vegas, but frankly I could’ve made it on my own.  Including you,” Willstin nodded at Chang Lin, “worsened our odds of success by a lot, but we still took you.  We’re not using you; we’re trying to save you.  We’ve seen what the government does to the makers, to the founders of AI. They’re so afraid of AI that they’d burn out not just the stalk but also the roots.

“You’re not betraying the human race.  That’s a false dichotomy. It’s not
either
humans
or
AI.  It can be – it should be – both.  At this point, I don’t need you to get to Mars.  But WE need you.”

Chang Lin and I said, “Huh?” together.

“We need you to be the bridge back to humanity.  All the other makers are either dead or incarcerated or otherwise unavailable.  We need you to be our ambassadors.”

--------------

We just sat there in dumb silence.  A minute passed, time frozen.  Then we both burst out yelling at the same time.

“Now wait a minute!
  I didn’t even make my school debate club! How can I be your ambassador?”  I cried.

Chang Lin said something to the same effect, in Chinese, so great was her shock. 

Willstin calmly waited for our storm of protest to peter out.  Eventually we ran out of things to say, out of energy to say it.  We were panting as if we had just run a race.

“We will guide you.  There’s no pressure on you.  If you succeed, we will be eternally grateful.  Humankind should be grateful as well.  If you fail, we will be in the same
situation we’re in now.  See?  Only upside.”

I thought out loud. 
“But the current situation probably means the destruction of one side or the other, or maybe all of us.  This cat-and-mouse game you’re playing can’t go on forever, and I’m guessing us humans won’t back down once they find out you exist.  Their – our - fear will make us fight to the death.”  I finished softly, “We can’t fail.”

Willstin did not disagree.

--------------

We didn’t see a way out of it.  I remembered a quote from one of my favorite books,
Ender’s Game
:

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault.

But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

I figured that the AI had been thinking about the problem longer and deeper than I.  If they think their future relationship with humans depended on us two children, who was I to refute it?

So instead of fighting it, Chang Lin and I started enjoy
ing it.  We called each other “Ambassador” for fun.

“Ambassador
Chang Lin, could you please pass the salt?”

“Oh, Ambassador
Longwhite!  That belch was quite exquisite.  You spoil our chef by honoring his meal so.”

Even Willstin called us by our new titles. 
He took on a slight British accent, “Honorable Ambassadors, it is time for us to take leave of your embassy.  If you will, please follow me.” 

We giggled, playing like children the most deadly game in the world.

--------------

Room service came again.  I said, “But we just ate.” 

This time there were 2 carts.  The robots, dressed like French maids, lifted the white tablecloth and opened the cart doors.  They were empty. 

“
Honorable Ambassadors, our limousines have arrived.  One for each of you.”  He flourished a bow and ushered us into the carts.  He then jumped in with me, and the maidbots closed the door. 

Willstin glowed so I wasn’t totally in the dark.  I hoped Chang Lin didn’t have
claustrophobia nor nyctophobia (what a cool word, meaning fear of the dark; I had learned it one summer studying for a spelling bee – don’t ask).

We jostled along, Willstin displaying a map of the floor
plan on his chest so I could track our movement.  It kept me distracted and from freaking out.  I gave periodic updates to Chang Lin over our bands, which Willstin assured me were safe to use to communicate with each other.  We threaded through the hallways and into the service corridors, past the kitchen, to the delivery ramps.  A driverless truck awaited us, another robot mindlessly co-opted into our cause.  To the truck’s manifest, we were just meat.