Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

The Quantum Thief

Hannu Rajaniemi

... there comes a time when you cease to know yourself amidall these changes, and that is very sad. I feel at present as the man must havefelt who lost his shadow

Maurice Leblanc, The Escape of Arsne Lupin

THE THIEF AND THEPRISONERS DILEMMA

As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try tomake small talk.

Prisons are always the same, dont you think?

I dont even know if it can hear me. It has no visible auditoryorgans, just eyes, human eyes, hundreds of them, in the ends of stalks thatradiate from its body like some exotic fruit. It hovers on the other side ofthe glowing line that separates our cells. The huge silver Colt would lookridiculous in the grip of its twiglike manipulator limbs if it hadnt alreadyshot me with it fourteen thousand times.

Prisons are like airports used to be on Earth. No one wants tobe here. No one really lives here. Werejust passing through.

Today, the Prisons walls are glass. There is a sun far above,almost like the real one but not quite right, paler. Millions of glass-walled,glass-floored cells stretch to infinity around me. The light filters throughthe transparent surfaces and makes rainbow colours on the floor. Apart fromthem, my cell is bare, and so am I: birth-naked, except for the gun. Sometimes,when you win, they let you change the little things. The warmind has beensuccessful. It has zero-g flowers floating in its cell, red and purple andgreen bulbs growing out of bubbles of water, like cartoon versions of itself.Narcissistic bastard.

If we had toilets, the doors would open inwards. Nothing everchanges.

All right, so I am starting to run out of material.

The warmind raises its weapon slowly. A ripple passes throughits eyestalks. I wish it had a face: the stare of its moist forest of orbs isunnerving. Never mind. Its going to work this time . I tilt the gun upwards slightly, my body language and wristmovement suggesting the motion I would make if I was going to put up my gun. Myevery muscle screams cooperation. Come on. Fall for it. Honest. Thistime, we are going to be friends

A fiery wink: the black pupil of its gun, flashing. My triggerfinger jerks. There are two thunderclaps. And a bullet in my head.

You never get used to the feeling of hot metal,entering your skull and exiting through the back of your head. Its simulatedin glorious detail. A burning train through your forehead, a warm spray of bloodand brain on your shoulders and back, the sudden chill and finally, theblack, when things stop . The Archons ofthe Dilemma Prison want you to feel it. Its educational.

The Prison is all about education. And game theory: themathematics of rational decision-making. When you are an immortal mind like theArchons, you have time to be obsessed with such things. And it is just like theSobornost the upload collective that rules the Inner Solar System to putthem in charge of their prisons.

We play the same game over and over again, in different forms.An archetypal game beloved by economists and mathematicians. Sometimes itschicken: we are racers on an endless highway, driving at each other at highspeeds, deciding whether or not to turn away at the last minute. Sometimes weare soldiers trapped in trench warfare, facing each other across no-mans-land.And sometimes they go back to basics and make us prisoners old-fashionedprisoners, questioned by hard-eyed men who have to choose between betrayaland the code of silence. Guns are the flavour of today. Im not looking forwardto tomorrow.

I snap back to life like a rubber band, blinking. There is adiscontinuity in my mind, a rough edge. The Archons change your neural makeup alittle bit every time you come back. They claim that eventually Darwinswhetstone will hone any prisoner into a rehabilitated cooperator.

If they shoot and I dont, Im screwed. If we both shoot, ithurts a little. If we cooperate, its Christmas for both of us. Except thatthere is always an incentive to pull the trigger. The theory is that as we meetagain and again, cooperative behaviour will emerge.

A few million rounds more and Ill be a Boy Scout.

Right.

My score after the last game is an ache in my bones. The warmindand I both defected. Two games to go, in this round. Not enough.Damn it .

You capture territory by playing against your neighbours. If,at the end of each round, your score is higher than that of your neighbours,you win, and are rewarded with duplicates of yourself that replace and erase the losers around you. Im not doing very well today two double defectionsso far, both with the warmind and if I dont turn this around, its oblivionfor real.

I weigh my options. Two of the squares around mine left andback contain copies of the warmind. The one on the right has a woman in it:when I turn to face it, the wall between us vanishes, replaced by the blue lineof death.

Her cell is as bare as mine. She is sitting in the middle,hugging her knees, wrapped in a black toga-like garment. I look at hercuriously: I havent seen her before. She has a deeply tanned skin that makesme think of Oort, an almond Asian face and a compact, powerful body. I smile ather and wave. She ignores me. Apparently, the Prison thinks that counts asmutual cooperation: I feel my point score go up a little, warm like a shot ofwhisky. The glass wall is back between us. Well, that was easy . But still not enough against the warmind.

Hey, loser, someone says. Shes not interested. Betteroptions around.

There is another me in the remaining cell. He is wearing awhite tennis shirt, shorts and oversized mirrorshades, lounging in a deck chairby a swimming pool. He has a book in his lap: Le Bouchon de cristal . One of my favorites, too.

It got you again, he says, not bothering to look up. Again.What is that, three times in a row now? You should know by now that it alwaysgoes for tit-for-tat.

I almost got it thistime.

That whole false memory of cooperation thing is a good idea,he says. Except, you know, it will never work. The warminds have non-standardoccipital lobes, non-sequential dorsal stream. You cant fool it with visualillusions. Too bad the Archons dont give points for effort.

I blink.

Wait a minute. How do you know that, but I dont?

Did you think you are the only le Flambeur in here? Ive been around. Anyway, you need tenmore points to beat it, so get over here and let me help you out.

Rub it in, smartass. I walk to the blue line, taking my firstrelieved breath of this round. He gets up as well, pulling his sleek automaticfrom beneath the book.

I point a forefinger at him. Boom boom, I say. I cooperate.

Very funny, he says and raises his gun, grinning.

My double reflection in his shades looks small and naked.

Hey. Hey. Were in this together, right? And thisis me thinking I had a sense of humor .

Gamblers and high rollers, isnt that who we are?

Something clicks. Compelling smile, elaborate cell, putting meat ease, reminding me of myself but somehow not quite right

Oh fuck.

Every prison has its rumours and monsters and this place is nodifferent. I heard this one from a zoku renegade I cooperated with for a while:the legend of the anomaly. The All-Defector. The thing that never cooperatesand gets away with it. It found a glitch in the system so that it alwaysappears as you . And if you cant trustyourself, who can you trust?

Oh yes, says the All-Defector, and pulls the trigger.

Atleast its not the warmind , I think when the brightthunder comes.

And then things stop making sense.

In the dream, Mieli is eating a peach, on Venus.The flesh is sweet and juicy, slightly bitter. It mingles with Sydns taste ina delicious way.