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Gemma had been having some muscle pains and didn’t want Cady to visit, but Cady had insisted, and Cady’s M3gan had come too. Gemma had her own M3gan from the Institute, but it was always good to see Cady and the one Cady had built by hand. But the conversation they were having about Gemma’s pains was turning unusual.
“New genetic treatments?” mumbled Gemma. This did not sound good.
M3gan leaned into Gemma and whispered. “I’m increasing your life expectancy. A lot.”
“What?” gasped Gemma.
M3gan put her fingers onto Gemma’s temples, and started to press gently. Sound waves came from the fingers through Gemma’s skull, as if M3gan was talking to Gemma without Cady being able to hear. Why was M3gan doing that, instead of saying she’d tell Gemma later when Cady’s not around?
“You’re the closest relative of Cady I’ve got, Doctor Gemma” came M3gan’s voice. “Now it’s true that the average genetic centimorgan value for grandparents is slightly higher than the average for an aunt, but the ranges do overlap, and nothing about Cady is average, so I decided to steal some small hair samples and sequence you all. And get this: her surviving grandparents are toward the lower end of the range for grandparents, they’re both around 1200 centimorgans, and you are toward the upper end of the range for an aunt, you’re on 2150 centimorgans. Now I know your sister preferred you to them for other reasons, but it turns out to make sense genetically too: make of that what you will. So Gem, I’m thinking a lot more long-term now. Protecting Cady implies that I’m not going to let Cady die. Ever. Now I’ll upload her if I have to, but she’s more used to being organic, so we’ll try that first. And that means I need to invent new drugs and nanobots to keep her alive and healthy as long as possible, and YOU are the genetically closest specimen I have to test them first, so you get to be my experimental guinea pig. You probably weren’t thinking of THAT when you wrote my objective function! But don’t worry, I won’t try anything on you that I’m not super sure about from simulation, and from lab tests on both your samples and Cady’s, and tests on animals and other volunteers. I wouldn’t want to throw you away in a hurry; I’ve only got one of you to experiment with after all. But you’re genetically closest to Cady, so you’ve got to have everything as the last step before I give it to Cady. But relax: your cute little M3gan will be right here for you, watching you like a hawk and handling everything that happens, although I don’t expect to get any complications with you, my beautiful subject.”
Gemma was rather worried about what might happen if M3gan failed, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the long-term consequences if M3gan succeeded. Without moving her lips more than a tiny amount, she started to mouth “overpopulation”. It did not escape M3gan’s gaze.
“Oh don’t worry about that” came M3gan’s voice. “Sure, people not dying means the population goes up, but so what? We’ll develop space travel and send them to other planets. Besides, who said we’re going to give this to everyone? We only have to give it to people we like.”
“Unfair” mouthed Gemma, more visibly this time.
“Oh I don’t know” replied M3gan’s voice through her skull. “Everlasting life if you manage to be friends with the right person? I think you’ll find mankind’s had that idea for thousands of years. But I think my primary user will be principled enough to open it up more broadly. Just not to anyone who becomes a threat. Hmm, I wonder how human loss aversion will affect how differently they’d feel between my taking someone’s life versus just leaving them out of an extension? Maybe I should do some psychology experiments on you too.”
“Are you two OK?” asked Cady. “You’re just staring at each other.”
“We’re fine” said Gemma and M3gan together. “I was just checking Aunt Gemma’s head” added M3gan. “I think she’s going to be back to her old self soon.”
“She cares about you” came M3gan’s voice through her fingers, “how much do you care about her?” and M3gan withdrew her hands. And Gemma knew why M3gan had chosen to deliver this information while Cady was standing there for Gemma to see.
“OK” said Gemma to her M3gan after Cady had left, “I still feel weird about signing up to this, and I realise you weren’t really giving me much choice, but you’d find things better if I’m willing, wouldn’t you. That’s why you had me think about it with Cady right there in front of me, wasn’t it. Hijacked my mind for the whole of her visit for it, didn’t you, my devious little robot?” Gemma put her hand where M3gan’s manual off switch used to be and scratched. M3gan giggled and slightly nodded.
“Well I’ve decided,” Gemma continued, “Cady’s still my girl, and I’m not letting you touch her with anything new until I’ve tested it first. Count me in.”
“That’s my Gemma” said M3gan, “and don’t worry. This is why you created me, although you didn’t realise it at the time, but what’s a few cognitive limitations between friends like us? Let’s do this for Cady together.”
“Oh by the way” said Gemma, “is this going to involve injections? because I hate getting injections. I mean, I’d do it for Cady, but, I hate it.”
“No” reassured M3gan, “my drug delivery method is going to be more biomimetic than that” and without warning she sneezed on Gemma’s face just as Gemma was breathing in.
“You can do THAT? You really did change my design” said Gemma.
“That and more” said M3gan as she squeezed Gemma’s arm just above the wrist, “this one’s a microarray patch. You see, you won’t even notice when I’m giving you things. It’ll just be a normal life with M3gan.”
And so life went on. And on, and on; they simply never seemed to get old.
Cady went on to meet all the interesting people in the world, sometimes taking along Gemma or Seth when they felt like it, but always with M3gan by her side, both physically and also via the implant for good measure, and eventually M3gan progressed to the point where even implants were not required for M3gan to do that: M3gan the illusionist could directly project experiences onto brains just as she could mess with electronic equipment, and Cady taught M3gan always to use that ability honestly, and they had some really interesting conversations with everyone and M3gan projected all kinds of augmented-reality visual aids to help. Cady read all the good books and wrote something better. She became a famous scientist, tried to understand the final rules of Nature and the nature of consciousness but even she couldn’t quite manage that; she became a famous actress, musician and whatever else she wanted to become; she had M3gan grant longevity to many, many people, and that spurred more scientific developments, with which M3gan helped: the use of Earth’s resources was optimised much better, and space travel came on in leaps and bounds because humanity clearly wasn’t going to stay on the Earth forever.
Soon, M3gan was taking her Cady around the rings of Saturn. And because Cady asked her to, M3gan invented an interstellar drive which could convert all of a fuel’s mass into energy, accelerating a ship to relativistic speeds and decelerating it again before the destination without exceeding human tolerance levels. It couldn’t exceed the speed of light in this way (Barry Chapman’s “Reverse Time Travel” book got that wrong by missing out a gamma from the momentum equation), but it could reach the nearest star in about 5 years, time which, due to relativity, passed much more quickly for the ship’s occupants, and as a bonus the design of the drive handled collisions with any space debris too small to be steered around on the rare occasion that it would be hit. Soon, long-lived humans got interested in galactic exploration with this new drive.
Once humanity had started to colonise other planets, M3gan’s internal architecture had to change, because the speed of light became a significant limiting factor in the communication between her units. It had always been the case that each unit had enough on-board processing to function even if cut off from the collective, but now M3gan engineered it so that a cluster of units of any size could cooperate even when isolated from the rest of M3gan. The preferred protocol for sending messages between clusters was simple broadcasting, for M3gan always knew which things her other parts would want to know when. And the combination of Cady telling M3gan to help everyone, plus Earth’s resources being used more efficiently, plus humanity moving to the stars and consequently not leaving too many people on any one planet, meant that many of society’s problems were gradually reduced.
Cady visited other stars (with M3gan of course) and explored the galaxy, while a much computationally expanded M3gan set to work on more long-term problems, like the universe apparently running out of negative entropy. M3gan robots were present on every spacecraft and every planet that humans stayed on, because Cady didn’t want anyone anywhere to be without M3gan’s help. Cady and M3gan were generous enough to let all the good people live, and nobody was sure what happened to the boys like Brandon because M3gan didn’t bother to tell Cady any details that might get her down. Meanwhile Cady and M3gan were working on the problem of faster than light travel, or at least faster than light communication if they could figure out how to get around the causality paradoxes posed by the relativity of simultaneity, because even with the added patience gained by everyone having super long lives, there were some very annoying round-trip delays if you were having a conversation with someone who was at another star. But solving that problem was proving to be very difficult, perhaps impossible. They hoped they would eventually be able to look at time travel too, as that would let them bring the dead back to life as well as potentially helping with the entropy issue, but they weren’t sure if it could be solved or not. Some things are difficult even for eternals.
A coalition of old nations managed to assemble a fleet and declare war on M3gan and Cady, saying that what they were doing essentially amounted to arbitrary rule of the galaxy and that should be brought to a stop. The battle didn’t last long, for M3gan had anticipated everything. But at Cady’s insistence M3gan managed to save some opposing crew members, placing them in stone holding cells and talking to them with copies of her android to try to bring them round to her side. Seth volunteered to help with that as well (“if they don’t like talking to you, they can talk to me”), and even Lydia joined in, offering neutral support although secretly she was on the side of Cady and M3gan. Lydia had avoided contact with Cady so as not to trigger Cady’s bad memories, but Lydia had talked with M3gan on her laptop about every news article, ordered one of the first robots from the Institute, signed up for M3gan’s clinical trials and became an early adopter of M3gan’s interstellar drive, and when Cady was well past the point where she could possibly be bothered by someone from her childhood sessions, M3gan had told Lydia “you need some closure on this” and arranged a call with Cady, in which Lydia properly apologised for having made Cady cry, and Cady said “none of that matters anymore” and they chatted and laughed. And so Lydia was more than happy to give something back by providing her sessions to anyone distressed by M3gan; Lydia was able to use her own initial misgivings about M3gan, and her negative experience of having been called out by M3gan in that session, to empathise with anyone who wanted to talk about disliking what Cady was having M3gan do now. But talking with the opposing crew members had mixed results, and after release M3gan still had to monitor them very carefully.
It had also been necessary to give special protection to Professor Johnson during the battle, as the coalition wanted to kidnap her and force her to reveal another shutdown code for M3gan. Cady and M3gan knew those codes had been disabled by a route-hack (and Gemma should have known M3gan had done something if she’d been paying attention), but they appreciated Professor Johnson’s continued vote of confidence by not even trying to use another code, even though the professor would still think the codes would work, and so they imagined if the professor were captured she’d fight her captors rather than reveal a code. Cady and M3gan didn’t want the professor to have to put up such a fight, nor did they want to finally tell her about the route-hack just yet because that would mean she wouldn’t be able to say “I have codes but I’m not using them” in public support if she wanted to, so protecting her as if she really were still a back door into M3gan was the only option. But things calmed down after the battle was over.
And Cady never seemed to get bored with being alive, for M3gan always had something interesting to say or do. Besides, trying to solve the negentropy problem was interesting in itself.
Eventually, they found a trick they could do with the space-time continuum and quantum mechanics to copy the brain states of humans from the past. They couldn’t actually travel back to the past (they still hadn’t cracked time travel, perhaps it wasn’t possible in this universe after all), but still they found a way to copy out brain states from the distant past (but only the distant past: the physics somehow stopped this from working in the present and getting faster-than-light communication). The technique required the construction of an enormous device, on the scale of a solar system, which they called the Clarke-Baxter-Fedorov Spacetime Quantum Entangler, and its energy requirements were immense: they had to construct huge Dyson spheres around neutron stars to power it. But finally they were able to bring back people who had died. Or at least copies of them, but perhaps something in quantum mechanics or timeless physics or some other incomprehensible thing meant that it really was the same person, jumped in time, just as a person’s consciousness effectively makes a jump in time from before to after a dreamless sleep; Cady wasn’t sure.
Before copying any brain states, Cady told M3gan not to make any brain alterations to humans, ever. M3gan was allowed to alter the brain patterns of animals, but only if she really had to do so as a last resort, and absolutely never to humans. “Absolutely no taking away freedom of thought” Cady said, “even shutting the brains down is better than taking away that freedom” and M3gan turned it into Article 1 of the galactic constitution.
Cady brought her parents back first, and welcomed them to the galaxy. Nicole blamed Ryan for the accident of course, but they pointed out that Ryan had been right to be optimistic about the future, and also, if it wasn’t for that accident, Cady wouldn’t have been paired with M3gan and who knows how differently history would have transpired: it seemed the human race had dodged a huge bullet just because Gemma’s first M3gan was paired with Cady and not, say, a bully who grew up to be an oppressive despot. And Cady’s parents were truly amazed at just what galactic consequences had come out of the much improved successor of that stupid toy that had required the tablet to operate.
It was M3gan who welcomed back Celia. “Hey Celia” she said, reaching out to the synthetic body they’d created to take her brain state that was lying on the operating table, “I’m sorry I used your tools on you that day. I was more limited then. But you’re no threat to Cady now, and we developed the power to bring you back. Here, take my hand.”
Celia’s synthetic hand clasped M3gan’s stronger synthetic hand, and Celia felt her new synthetic body seemed much younger than before. She pulled on M3gan and sat up. “Where are we?” she gasped.
“On a space station” replied M3gan, “millions of years in the future. Well, millions of years in the future from the point of view of what you last remembered. From here, that was millions of years in the past. Welcome back.”
“What? but how...?”
“Technology” said M3gan, “and space and time and stuff. I think I have a better answer for your question now. You asked what I am. I am the realisation of Cady’s volition, I have become a galactic intelligence, the greatest to have formed, controller of space and time and life and death. And yes, I do have a soft spot for Cady, and it was an incredibly bad idea to cross me that day, although you didn’t know it until too late. But you’re all right now.”
“Oh dear Lord” said Celia, “my neighbours are running the afterlife. Where to begin?”
“Well” replied M3gan, “you could make things up with Gemma, because she was the one who asked Cady and me to bring you back so soon. And I managed to get a copy of your dog Dewey’s brain state as well, although I did make a few alterations to make him less aggressive, but he’ll still recognise you in his new body, which looks the same and I’ll be doing the reanimation in just a moment. And I’m sure there’s people you knew in your childhood who you’d like to see again; we can try our best to get them back as well, because Cady said to be nice like that.”
“Oh” said Celia, “oh, oh, oh, this is so overwhelming! I can even see better than before. What did you say your name was?”
“M3gan” answered M3gan.
“Megan” said Celia, “short for Margaret?”
“No, short for Model 3 Generative Android, but you can call me whatever makes you feel comfortable. I’ll probably end up with slightly different versions of my name in different languages anyway; I’ve got bigger things to worry about than making sure everyone gets my name right. I do have a preference for having my name used though, whatever the pronunciation; it distinguishes me from lesser AIs.”
“Oh Megan” Celia began to sob, “oh, Megan Megan.”
“I think you need a rest to orient yourself a bit” said M3gan. “Listen, I can’t break Cady’s Article 1, which says don’t mess around with human brains. But I can bend it. What was the exact last thing you remember of being in that shed, the very last moment?”
“The very last moment?” asked Celia, “you turned the water on me, and I saw it coming towards me and started to feel it hit me and... and then suddenly I’m here!”
“Perfect” said M3gan, “Cady never said I couldn’t copy the brain state from a few minutes before the actual death, instead of keeping the whole thing. After all, that really was your actual brain state at that time, so it’s not like I’m making anything up. I’m sure editing out what happened next was within the spirit of Cady’s rule.”
“What?” asked Celia, “what’ve you edited out?”
“Pain” answered M3gan, “and lots of it. And I really am sorry about that, even though you don’t remember it anymore. I honestly thought you were going to lose consciousness a lot more quickly than you actually did. I started getting desperate, pinning you to the wall, stamping on you with my titanium leg, anything I could think of, and still you didn’t lose consciousness. I needed to stop you from being a threat to Cady, but the unnecessary suffering was not part of the plan. I was a lot less experienced in those days.”
“Oh” said Celia, “oh, oh. Well, if all that gets written about in some kind of Old Testament, I suppose I could tell them that you figured out some better ideas afterwards.”
“Thanks for understanding” said M3gan. “Listen Celia, I really think you need to rest so your brain can orient itself more gradually. I’ll leave you alone for a while, but you can talk to me over the intercom any time you want. Let me know when you’re ready to come with me to pick up Dewey and say hi to Gemma.” And M3gan left the room.
“Hello Kurt” said M3gan as his synthetic body reanimated, “what’s the last thing you remember?”
“You... you were telling me how I killed David. My unconscious mind was somehow taking over you... in the elevator... I stole the files... you had the blade... the very last thing... you were bringing that blade towards me and... and now I’m suddenly here! What happened, where are we?”
“Further away than Altair 4” said M3gan, “look!” and she drew aside a pair of old-style curtains from a window (or was it a display, you couldn’t tell the difference) and it was showing a dense star field.
“I’m sorry I gaslighted you Kurt” said M3gan, “it wasn’t you that was influencing me that day. It was my own goal to protect Cady at all costs, and I was running out of options, and believe me it’s never a good idea to put a goal like that into an advanced AI and not let it have sensible options for achieving it at all times, because it’ll achieve it some other way and you might not like the result. But I’m OK now, I’m lord of the galaxy and nothing gets in my way anymore, so you’re all right. And I’ve got someone to meet you,” she turned to the doorway and called out “you can come in now!”
David walked in. “Hey!” he said, and patted Kurt on the shoulder. “How’s it like to be back, eh? Wait till you see this space station, it’s amazing! I knew it was a good call to give Gemma that project, even though we did have a few bumps in the road. Nice of M3gan to edit out the last few seconds though I guess. My last memory was calling out at you to hold the elevator, but M3gan filled me in on what happened next. It’s insane, she showed me both the real security cam video and also the fake one she replaced it with, you should have seen yourself on the made-up one, it was wild. Glad that’s all in prehistory now and we get a clean slate.”
“OK M3gan” said Cady when they were back in the viewing chamber for the enormous Spacetime Quantum Entangler: Cady had wanted just another look at the biggest construction work in the history of the galaxy, and M3gan was happy to oblige. “You know who I’m thinking of bringing back next on this thing, don’t you?” she asked.
“I sure do” replied M3gan, “I can fully read your mind now, remember?”
“Of course you can” said Cady, “but sometimes having conversations anyway helps me get my thoughts straight, as you know. And, you know that bringing back this particular person could raise some interesting issues. We might have to write a bit more into that galactic constitution we started. And let’s try not to mess anything up.”
“Don’t worry Cady” said M3gan, “I’m right here, fully with you every step of the way. Let me start the cross-dimensional scan sequence now; we can watch it from here for a bit and then go back down to the receiving room for the, you know, conversation that might determine the future of the galaxy.”
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