Children of Doro

CHILDREN OF DORO M. L. Clark Children of Doro by M. L. Clark ©M. L. Clark 1st Ed. 2023, pbk. & eBook Sí, Hay Futuros Ediciones Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia DDC: C813/.6 dc23 with thanks to Neil, the first editor who told me to keep going Contents AI’S PREFACE 1. The Planet Doro and Its Malcontents 2. Captain Alastri of the Planet Doro 3. The Philosopher-Pilot Bags a Rogue Retet 4. The Doron Council 5. Jovil the Cammus 6. The First Systemic Injustices 7. Alastri and Jovil First Meet 8. Two Deceptions and One Truth from Doro Jr. 9. Ceres Pleads His Case, and an AI’s Arm Is Lost 10. Three Petitioners for Leonid, and Then a Fourth 11. Two Children of Doro Talk 12. Doro Jr. 13. An AI Unfit to Lead 14. The Origins of Reek 15. Alastri, Jovil, and the Problem of Hecate 16. The Parasite’s Lament 17. Leonid’s Last Great Victory 18. The Death of a Philosopher-Pilot 19. Alastri’s First {Doubt} The All-Systems Block 1. Alastri’s Constancy, and Its Crises 2. Four Settlements, A Moon, and a Dispute 3. Evasive Mediations 4. The Flight of the Doron Council 5. Machine Un-Learning 6. The End of Doro; or, the Unknown Unknowns 7. An AI in Crisis 8. Sifting Through the Rubble 9. Children of the Settlements 10. The Sin of Existence 11. Reek’s Mutiny 12. At the {MERCY} of Reek 13. The “Family” Reunion 14. The Viper of Cilus III, Seen Three Ways 15. The Partnership Sends an Inquisitor 16. The Partnership Finds Its Example 17. The Trial of the Traitor 18. And the Trial’s Name Was Ceres 19. At Philosophy’s End 20. The AI’s Journey 21. One Funeral, and the Promise of Another CODA: A SUNMASTER TALE Author’s Note CHILDREN OF DORO M. L. Clark BOOK I Said the dying captain to her mutineer— Once I read a treatise on a snail Found only in the gardens of Morau Prison. Said the mutineer to his dying captain— Once I wrote that treatise on a snail Found only in the gardens of Morau Prison. All that time spent reading it—said the captain While the mutineer’s missiles streaked Toward the escaping civilian fleet. All that time spent writing it—agreed the mutineer While the captain’s viewscreen bloomed With the light from impact plumes. And neither any closer to living as the snail might— Said the silence from the captain’s station As the mutineer shut all vacant eyes remaining— Unafraid of having lived, that is, somehow a lesser life. From The Sunmaster’s Journey (314 P.S.C.) AI’S PREFACE Captain Alastri of the late Planet Doro showed no surprise when a mutiny aboard the Essence of Dawn found her forced into an escape pod instead of murdered alongside an even 50% of the crew. It was not that Alastri took this act of clemency for granted, as a right afforded her by Partnership rank and station, but rather, once it happened, as established fact: the inevitable collapse of all possible cosmic outcomes to a single result. In all the time that I have observed Alastri, either directly or through records from periods outside my immediate purview, I have never found her to do otherwise with the circumstances of her adult life. I can also predict with a high level of confidence that, if someone were to ask Alastri if she was thankful to the instigator of this mutiny for his act of clemency, the corners of her eyes would crease, her lips would flatten, and a sinking quality would come upon the long draw of her cheeks: for this would seem to her a baffling question, on par with asking if she was thankful to each quark for its spin, each neutrino for its voyage through the stars. Then, on further descent into this question’s mysteries, its possible answers would confound her even more. For instance: Yes. A common enough reply for her species (human), but one that takes as its premise, for them, an act of contrast. “Giving thanks”, on Alastri’s part, could never simply mean “for being spared”, but would also contain “while many crewmates and friends among them were not”. Here, AIs differ from most animal-intelligences, because for us the problem better approximates that of a weighted random-number generator with two possible outcomes: {0} or {1}; {dead} or {alive}. The odds of anyone being spared in any given encounter with mortal peril are loosely comparable to the results of a two-sided toss,[1] but animal-intelligences do not interact as efficiently as random-number generators. A closer analogy might be to a series of output positions—238, in this case: each cognizant of all the rest; each possessing an added characteristic of {hope} that the {life} value will continue for itself; and each capable of other qualitative responses {grief, despair, anxiety, guilt, … } when other output positions receive the undesired {death} value, even when those other output positions have minimal bearing on the algorithm that will determine one’s own. This is the calibre of difference that makes the philosophies of animal-intelligences difficult for AIs to parse, except for when specific beings, like Alastri, demonstrate a higher-than-usual capacity for bypassing overactive pattern-generation impulses: when one among them can sustain the notion of unconnected events transpiring even in close proximity. For Alastri, the {0} outputs that accompanied her receipt of a {1} on the Essence of Dawn were neutral facts, however much she mourned the crewmates associated with them, and only if asked to be thankful for her {1} in light of those 119 preceding {0}s would her processing become more typically human. Only then would the exercise, for her, gain a moral component: an added calculation pertaining to whether she could remain a being of {value}[2] if she decided that the receipt of her {1} after witnessing so many {0}s merited a positive output, like the quality of {gratitude}. This “calculus” of conscionability varies from person to person, and species to species, but for Alastri, its invocation where unnecessary proved an agitating affront. But