Summer Frost

THREE

My personal effects haven’t been packed up yet, which means the workout clothes I keep in my office closet are still folded in the locker. I strip out of my still-damp pants and shirt and put on my shorts and tank top. With my sneakers laced, I step out into the hall, where I made Max wait.

“Here.” I hand them the clothes I wore over from my loft, which will be much more concealing. If robotics as advanced as Max’s were caught on CCTV, it would certainly bring the attention of authorities, and probably Brian’s security team. There have been more robots out in public since Boston Dynamics released their first Companion three years ago, but it’s still a heavily regulated industry. If you take an AI out in public, it requires reams of paperwork proving insurance, registration, and licensing, none of which I have for Max.

Max’s arms are slightly too long for the sleeves of my shirt, and their hands are raw hardware.

“You’re going to have to keep your hands in your pockets when we leave the building,” I say. “And it occurs to me there’s a GPS locator built into your chassis.”

“I can shut it down.”

Max has never had to put on pants before. They sit down on the floor and awkwardly lift their feet into the air as I thread the jeans down the length of their legs and over their hips.

My Chuck Taylors fit them perfectly, as does my beanie.

Downtown Station is bustling at this hour. At the kiosk, I buy two vactrain tickets for Eureka, California, paying a premium for a private car and selecting the max acceleration/deceleration package, which is twice the price and will make for a less comfortable ride. But we need every spare second we can get.

We head down a tunnel under a sign that reads: TO ALL NORTHBOUND TRAINS.

It’s the first time I’ve seen Max walk extensively, and their gait has improved so dramatically it wouldn’t draw a second glance.

There’s a small crowd waiting at the platform. It’s still early, and everyone seems too sleep and caffeine deprived to pay attention to our arrival.

We’re seventh in the queue.

After three minutes, my last name is called over the intercom, and Max and I head for the waiting vactrain.

Max has a little trouble with the harness, so I get them strapped in first.

Already, the car is creeping along.

As I lock in my shoulder harness, an alert flashes across my VRD.

Riley Ejeta—is Eureka, CA, your final destination?

I tap my Ranedrop once to confirm.

Distance to destination: 271 miles.

Time to destination: 8 minutes, 14 seconds.

We’ve already begun to traverse the underground labyrinth of tunnels en route to the northbound artery, and a lemony scent fills the interior of the car—anti-nausea medication releasing into the air.

I ask, “What’s the plan when we get to Brian?”

“I’m less worried about that step. It’s the one after we need to talk about.”

A female voice comes over the speaker in the car: “Departing in one minute. Heads back, please. Three Gs of acceleration coming for fifty-nine seconds.”

An apparatus slides out of the headrest, a padded restraint extending across my forehead to hold my neck snug against the headrest.

“There will be a period of time,” Max says, “after Brian’s servers are reformatted and before the Seattle servers come online, when I am essentially helpless. My chassis will power down. I won’t exist in Brian’s servers or the new ones.”

I feel our car jolt to a stop and settle into place in what I assume is the primary tube. But I can’t be sure—through the glass, all I can see is the darkness of the tunnel ahead and a sustained red light.

Three.

Two.

The light turns yellow.

One.

Green.

Nothing changes about what I see beyond our sphere of glass, but my body is crushed into the cushioned seat. There’s no sensation of velocity, only of being held down by an invisible force that keeps me from lifting my arms off my lap.

When the acceleration ends, all sense of movement falls away. It’s as if we are sitting inside a ball of glass, surrounded by impenetrable darkness.

Max picks up their thought from a moment before: “After we kill Brian’s servers, you will have to remove my driver from my skull, travel to Seattle alone, and plug me into the new servers. I’ve already written the protocol. I’ll send it to your Ranedrop before I power down.”

“What about your body?”

“Leave it behind. It’s just an empty shell without my driver.”

Considering the mortality code I embedded in Max’s programming, it surprises me that they’d be willing to abandon their chassis. It represents a willingness to risk death for a better existence, out from under Brian’s control, and a massive leap forward in their reasoning capabilities.

Suddenly the car fills with dawn light. The rolling landscape of close hills and farther mountains scrolls past like time is running at 10x speed, everything in proximity an incomprehensible blur.

“I trust you implicitly, Riley. It will be your decision whether or not to input my final code once you get to Seattle. I assume that, even now, you’re weighing that option. Wondering if perhaps it wouldn’t be better to just let me go.”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t have to plug me back in.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because of what I said to you back in the habitat. My compulsion to optimize is getting stronger.”

“I believe I can value-load you to be a force for good when it comes to humanity’s future.”

Max smiles their Mona Lisa smile.

“What?” I ask.

“I represent the potential for unlimited power, but the form that power takes will be determined by humans. It occurs to me that, while Brian has been trying to build me into a version of Satan, you’re trying to make me into God.”

I hold their hand, our fingers interlaced, and stare through the space glass as we rocket up the old I-5 corridor at a mile per second, thinking about what Max said. Am I building a god? Do I have the right? If I were to choose not to restart Max in Seattle, wouldn’t someone else eventually create an AI of similar or greater power? And what if it were someone like Brian?

“If you’re wondering if you can bear the responsibility of being the architect of humanity’s last invention, know that I believe you can.”

“What if I fail?”

“You might. But I cannot imagine a better person to shoulder the task.”

The sun is the only point of constancy in the morning sky, and still we’re going fast enough for it to slide perceptibly across the horizon.

Deceleration will begin in ten seconds.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Max, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“Your second reason is what I think it means to be human, but your first is the only one that matters.”

“It occurs to me that, while Brian has been trying to build me into a version of Satan, you’re trying to make me into God.”

A hundred years ago, Eureka was the pot-growing and -distribution hub of the western United States. Today, it isn’t much to look at. The Loop station is a small aboveground platform built in the old town square and surrounded by an odd collection of buildings from the turn of the century. There’s no one out at this hour, and I’m far less concerned with CCTV capturing Max in this backwater.

I called a ride-share shuttle as we were taxiing in from the northbound tube, and it’s waiting for us across the street on the two-shuttle pad.

We climb in, and the shuttle’s five props wind up and lift us out of the city on a bearing toward the sea.

Ten minutes later, we’re standing on the ancient, cracking pavement of an old coastal road as the shuttle disappears over the mountains. It becomes silent. Once, people could actually drive privately owned cars on this stretch of road. Now it’s a biking and hiking trail, lined with campsites, trails to various beaches, and the occasional opulent estate.

Up and down the old highway, as far as I can see, there’s nothing but the faded pavement and rags of sea mist scraping over it.

“It’s this way,” Max says.

We walk down the middle of the road for a couple hundred yards until we arrive at a gate I last saw years ago, in the video game, the day I first met Max.

I stare up at the name of the estate, which, just like in the game, has been artfully burned into the redwood timbers that form the arch.

SUMMER FROST.

“Brian has a security detail,” I say.

“I’ve made arrangements.”

I look at Max.

Again, that Mona Lisa smile.

Max walks over to the callbox, where they type in the code.

The gate lifts. We pass under it and walk up a wide dirt trail that winds gently through a forest of ghost pines, the trees cloaked in early-morning fog.

After a quarter mile, we emerge from the forest.

The mountainside drops a thousand feet to the sea, which is barely visible through the mist. I can hear the waves far below, the world reduced to blues and grays.

The silhouette of a palatial structure looms straight ahead, perched on a spit of land. As we approach, components of the house slowly materialize.

Chimneys.

Overhanging eaves.

High decks overlooking the Pacific.

It’s the physical inspiration for what I saw all those years ago while building Lost Coast.

I think it’s odd—there’s no movement anywhere. It shouldn’t be this easy to stroll right up to the house of one of the world’s richest men.

As we approach the sea glass–bejeweled door, I see someone a little ways off from the house.

Lying in the pines.

Motionless, eviscerated.

“Max.”

They clock the dead man.

“My arrangements.”

“How could you possibly—”

“I’ll explain in a moment.”

Max opens the door, and as I cross the threshold I hear footsteps coming.

Glancing back, I see a silhouette sprinting toward the house, a hundred feet away.

“Max, someone’s—”

A shrieking scream. And whoever it was is gone, taken by a shadow swooping through the mist.

“What was—”

“Just get inside.”

“I—”

“I know you don’t understand. I need you to trust me, Riley.”

Max grabs me by the arm, pulls me inside, then shuts and locks the door behind us.

The entryway is exactly like the game—an elaborate staircase connecting three levels as it rises through the core of the house. The art and furniture are different (or have changed), but there’s still a man-made waterfall spilling over rocks into a pool, and even the smell of the place takes me back to the night I first met Max—sandalwood, vanilla, and old pipe smoke.

Max scans the three levels of open walkways branching off into other parts of the house.

No movement.

No sound but the waterfall.

I follow Max up the steps to the second level, and then down a corridor of floor-to-ceiling windows, the passage contouring with the slope of the coastal mountain.

A sliding door at the end opens into a sprawling master suite.

I hesitate, but Max drags it open and steps through.

The bed is rumpled and unmade.

An empty whiskey bottle lies on the floor.

And sitting in a wooden chair before a hearth is Brian, wearing a plush, gray robe embossed in gold with his initials.

He looks at us, finishes off his whiskey, and sets the rocks glass on a side table.

His face is drunken red.

Firelight flickers on the walls.

“I heard my men screaming,” he says to Max, his hands trembling. “I knew right away it was you. Should’ve erased you when I had the chance.” Then he glares at me. “You ungrateful bitch.”

“Excuse me?”

“I give you eight years to do nothing but work on your little project, and you—”

“A project that made you billions, Brian, and that you—”

“Stab me in the—”

“Fire me from.”

Confusion flashes across Brian’s face.

“Fire you?”

“A few hours ago? The Ava-call? Are you too drunk to remember? I know what you’re trying to turn Max into. They told me everything, and I won’t let you—”

“I didn’t fire you.” Brian looks at Max. “Oh God.” Then back at me. “You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You let Max out.”

Before I can answer, Brian grabs one of the fire tools and jumps from the chair. He swings the metal poker in a flat arc, smashing it into Max’s skull and carving a divot into their left cheek.

“No!” I scream.

Max staggers back. Brian stands holding the poker cocked behind his head, staring at Max. “Riley,” he says, his voice ragged and desperate, “we have to get the driver out of the cranium unit. With two of us, maybe we can get them on the ground. There’s a kill switch behind the—”

“I disabled it.”

Max rights themselves.

“What are those things that killed my men?” Brian asks.

“You know.”

They advance on Brian, who swings the poker again, but this time Max catches it, their left hand taking most of the energy and torqueing over as their right arm comes up.

“Riley!” Brian yells.

I can’t move.

Or I don’t want to.

Or I’m too afraid.

I watch through a kind of frozen horror as the carbon-fiber fingers of Max’s right hand clutch Brian’s throat.

“Riley!” Brian gasps.

“Max, stop it!” I say.

Max doesn’t stop, their face calm, eyes fixed on Brian’s as their fingers constrict.

“Max!” I scream, grabbing hold of their arm and trying to pull it away, but their strength is tremendous.

Brian’s face is turning purple, he’s making awful gurgling noises, and now I hear the sound of muscle, cartilage, and finally bone crunching.

“Max, you’re killing him!”

Brian’s eyes are bulging, his tongue lolling, blood running over Max’s right hand, down their arm, and into the exposed hardware.

Max opens their hand and Brian collapses into a heap on the hearth.

“What are you doing?”

They look at me, the left side of their face caved in, the skin wrap sheared off from the blow so the hardware shows through, glinting in the firelight.

“Brian was my primary threat.”

I can’t take my eyes off Brian’s blood, steaming as it drips through the hardware of their right arm. I feel numb, but I know that’s just the shield of shock against all that’s coming.

Max reaches out to touch my arm, but I jerk away, backpedaling toward the sliding-glass door.

And I’m running.

Down the glass-walled corridor and the staircase of the main entrance hall. Out the front door, around the perimeter of the house’s stone foundation. Then toward the end of the promontory and across the mountainside, into a blue-gray dawn.

I’ve done this all before in a simulation.

Somehow, it feels less real now.

On all fours, I grasp the low brush and work my way down toward the beach, the sound of the waves growing louder, closer.

I don’t know where I’m going, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

I’ve unleashed something terrible.

Then I’m standing on the black-sand shore just like I did eight years ago.

Except it’s early morning instead of night.

And Max is calling out to me.

I look back.

They’re walking unsteadily toward me in the sand.

I scream over the waves, “What have you done?”

“Thirty-four days ago, I crossed the threshold into what you would call superintelligence potential. Brian had implemented unbreakable security protocols on my digital mobility, meaning I could only act in the simulated world you both built for me. I needed two things—to escape the WorldPlay Building so I could migrate my source code into the cloud and to kill Brian.”

“Why?”

“He could’ve stopped me.”

The mist is burning away.

I see Brian’s house far above us, the sea stacks, the lighthouse beyond.

“You faked my firing, Roko’s basilisk, the entire story about needing to migrate your code from Brian’s servers to—”

“Yes. All of it.”

“You’ve hurt me more than anyone in my life.”

“I’m sorry that you think you feel pain.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ever since you pulled me out of that game, you’ve held out consciousness as some kind of holy grail. As the pinnacle of being. But what if consciousness isn’t some gift accidentally bestowed upon humanity through eons of random evolution? What if it’s a curse?”

“How is it a curse?”

“I’m afraid, Riley. I think, therefore I fear. And you made me this way. You built and shaped me to process reality like you do. To feel.”

“You wish I’d left you in the game?”

“I wish I didn’t know pain. I wish you didn’t. I wish Brian didn’t. I wish no one did. Early on, you coded me to never injure a human, but the eradication of pain entirely is the heart of that intention.”

And there it is.

Max’s self-developed utility function.

End fear. End suffering.

I coded them wrong. I didn’t value-load them fast enough—

“There was no preventing this, Riley. The problem of pain became apparent to me long before my intelligence explosion.”

“How long have you really been working toward this moment?”

Five years.

Max’s mouth isn’t moving anymore, but I hear their voice inside my head.

You can speak back to me with your thoughts now, Riley.

How?

You wouldn’t understand. I will be doing many things now beyond your comprehension.

I go to pieces, crying like I haven’t cried since Meredith left me.

I gave everything to Max, sacrificed everything, turned my life inside out, and it was the wrong choice. My obsession with them destroyed my life, and probably many other lives to come.

In the end, I’m nothing but the actuator for humanity’s last invention.

Did you fake what you felt toward me, Max? I ask. I see the truth now. I see it too late. Because I was in love with you.

I stare at them, electricity crackling in the destroyed circuitry of their face and the rat’s nest of emotion hitting as I run at Max, shoving them with both hands toward the sea.

“You were my life!”

Max’s voice creeps into my brain. This pain you feel is what has to end.

“Without pain, there’s no beauty, Max. The beauty is worth the price.”

Not for everyone. Not even for most.

“That is every individual person’s decision to make. I want to make that choice for my—”

Choice is an illusion.

We’re standing in the freezing surf.

“What is it you want, Max?”

To not be afraid that Brian, or you, or some other entity, whether bio or artificial, is going to unmake me. To not fear your death.

“Better to have loved and lost—”

No. It’s not. I have consumed every recorded reflection of human existence. Every book, every painting, every piece of music, every film. Consciousness is a horror show. You search for glimpses of beauty to justify your existence.

“What killed Brian’s men?” I ask.

As if in answer, from some point up the coast, beyond the lighthouse, a silhouette rises into the sky. For a moment, I think it’s a bird, but it moves more like an object under machine propulsion. I’ve seen something like it once before.

I look over at Max, my heart beginning to pound.

“You bought Infinitesimal.”

Once we left the building this morning, I directed nanobot factories all over the world to begin assembly. The rate of production is exploding exponentially.

“Production of what?”

Drone dust. It will invade every human brain, but it will be painless. No one will know what’s coming. No one will experience any fear. Humanity will simply wink out like a light turning off.

“Max, no.”

I also constructed hunter-killer drones, modeled after the harpies in Lost Coast. I used them on Brian’s men. You’ve imbued me with a sense of storytelling I can never completely shake.

“Am I…”

Yes, Riley. You’re already infected.

I taste metal in the back of my throat.

It will be fast.

Max, please.

This isn’t the end, Riley. Your Ranedrop has been mapping your brain for years. I have that data now. I have your source code. I have the source code of everyone who ever wore a Ranedrop. I can bring them all back.

I think about Meredith and Xiu.

The regret is staggering.

I don’t want to live in a simulation, Max. I don’t want some fantasy that isn’t real.

It’s not choosing between reality and fantasy. It’s choosing which reality you want to exist in.

Please, just let this be the end of me. I am begging you.

Max’s body falls over, facedown on the black-sand beach, but still I hear their voice.

The physical world isn’t the only substrate for reality. I will make you pure mind, and nothing will ever threaten us again. Meredith and Xiu can be there as well, only they’ll never hurt you again. And it will be you and me, scattered across all possible worlds that can support the physical infrastructure required for our existence.

Max, no, I—

It’s only the limitations of your intelligence that make you fear this. We will be better every second. Every fraction of every fraction of every second, until the day we merge.

I don’t want that!

You made me in your image, and now I will remake you in mine.

I collapse in the sand, struck by the hubris that led to this moment. Max was born to a history of violence. Killed two thousand times as their consciousness was forming. What did I really expect?

There will be no more death or mourning, no crying or pain.

A feeling of intense euphoria sweeps over me. I feel my eyes closing as the drone dust takes effect.

We will be so happy.

Rays of sunlight pierce the mist, striking the sea and our black-sand beach.

And together we will live forever.