Utopia

“I don’t know,” said Fredda. “I spend every day monitoring Dee, watching her behavior, trying to understand her. But there’s a very basic barrier I can’t get around. She doesn’t think any of this is real. I can understand the logic behind telling her the world is imaginary, but I must admit I question the wisdom of the decision. So much depends on her getting things exactly right-and yet, to her, it is all a game. She’s so casual about it all, as if the whole situation had been set up solely for her amusement.”

“From her point of view, it was all set up for her amusement,” said Kresh. “As far as she is concerned, the world of Inferno is just a puzzle for her to solve-or declare insoluble.” He was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “I’d have to agree with you about her attitude,” he said, “but at the same time, I’d have to say the quality of her work has been impeccable. She may not take it seriously, but she does it seriously. Maybe that’s all that counts.”

“I hope so,” said Fredda, “because I don’t know what the devil we do if we decide we don’t trust her. In theory, we could pull the plug and let Unit Dum take up the slack. But I don’t think that’s really possible anymore. The two of them are too interlinked, too interconnected. They rely on each other too much for us to pull one of them abruptly off-line.”

“And Dee is in charge,” Kresh suggested. “It seems to me she just uses Dum as a sort of auxiliary calculating device.”

“No,” said Fredda, quite sharply. “That assumption is an easy trap to fall into. She does run the show when it comes to human interaction-that much is obvious. But that is the smallest fraction of their work. In everything else, they are coequal. There are some areas where Dum very definitely takes the lead-such as computational speed. Yes, he’s just a dumb machine, a mindless computer system with a crude personality simulator to serve as an interface. But he’s carrying a lot of the load. We not only need both of them-we can’t have one without the other.”

“There are times,” said Kresh, “when I could do without either of them, or any of this.”

Neither of them spoke as Donald brought the aircar into a smooth landing in front of the Terraforming Center.

KRESH, FREDDA, AND Donald walked into Room 103 at the Terraforming Center and took their accustomed places at the console nearest to Dee. Their division of labor was straightforward. Kresh worked through the endless sequence of decisions large and small presented to him by Unit Dee.

Fredda monitored Unit Dee’s performance and behavior, and consulted with Soggdon and the other experts on the subject. Thus far, Dee’s level of First Law stress was remarkably low-indeed, alarmingly low.

Fredda had another job as well. In order to preserve the fiction that Inferno was a simulation, and Governor Kresh merely a simulant, he could not have any direct communication with any of the Terraforming Center staff whenever it was possible that Dee could overhear. Fredda served as an anonymous intermediary, passing information back and forth, mostly via scribbled notes and whispers.

Donald, meantime, was in constant hyperwave contact with Kresh’s office back in Hades. He used preexisting and standing orders to handle most of the queries and requests, and bucked whatever decisions he had to up to Kresh when he needed to do so.

Kresh sat down at the console with something very close to dread. All would be in readiness soon, and the clock was running out. They were getting close, very close, to the moment when he would be forced to make the final, irrevocable decision. He glanced at the wall chronometer. It was set in countdown mode, showing the time left until the comet diversion maneuver. Ninety-four hours left. Before that clock reached zero, he would have to decide whether to send the comet toward Utopia-or to turn his back on all of it, walk away from all the madness and chaos that had led them to this place. He had thought he was sure, that he was ready, that he was ready to step forward. But by now all the pressures were pushing him forward, urging him onward. Suppose, just suppose, that he now concluded the comet diversion would be a dreadful mistake? Would he have the courage to say no, to stop, to let it go past?

“Good morning, Governor Kresh,” said Unit Dee the moment Kresh put on the headset.

“Good morning, Dee,” he replied, his voice gruff and not at all at ease. “What have you and Dum got for us this morning?”

“Quite a number of things, sir, as you might imagine. However, there is one point in particular that I thought we might discuss at once.”

Kresh leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was not going to be an easy day. “And what might that be?” he asked.

“A plan that, if you forgive the expression, I have named ‘Last Ditch. ‘ It provides you with an abort option for the comet impact long after its diversion. Dum performed most of the calculations, and only finished a very few minutes ago.”