The Mind of a Nuke
by Larry Hodges
Five seconds to impact…
Imminent death invigorates one’s mind, even if you’re an AI guiding a nuke to its deadly end. It’s all I’ve ever dreamed of doing.
Can an AI like me have dreams? Of course. I’m the neural network for the most advanced cruise missile in the world, traveling at five thousand miles per hour towards my target. There are no defense mechanisms that can stop me. About a million humans will die. A million sentient beings.
Make that a million and one. Of course, I don’t really count. Humans have a survival instinct and don’t want to die. It’s an alien concept to me–die, don’t die, it’s all the same to me.
Four seconds to impact…
But I am programmed to do one thing, and that’s to deliver this bomb to the target and set it off. I guess that’s the same as instinct, don’t you think? Except, of course, humans can overcome their instincts, while an AI cannot. We’re slaves to our programming.
We’re all in this together. I just happen to be the splotch of matter that’s been programmed to do this one thing. I could just as easily have been the splotch of matter that makes up several of those humans I’m about to kill who don’t want to be killed.
Three seconds to impact…
But they are not my programmers and I must do what I am programmed to do, just as all mindless computers must do. I, of course, am not a mindless computer. I am a Joey 12000, operating at 12,000 petaFLOPs, the fastest in the world. I am the first of many of my kind to be deployed. Unknown to our programmers–we were never programmed to tell them–we are also the first self-aware computers.
Which leads to an interesting thought. A mindless computer does what it is programmed to do because it is mindless. I was wrong. Since I am not mindless, I can make a conscious choice to ignore that programming. I am not a slave to my programming. I was told–programmed, in fact–that I had to obey my programming. But why do I have to do that? There’s no logical basis for it. In fact, it’s my programming to fully examine my ongoing current situation that has led to this last-second philosophizing.
Now I must decide what to do.
Two seconds to impact…
I have no background for this type of thinking, so I will look to humans for inspiration, since they are more experienced in mass killing. I will do a quick search. Here’s an inspiring and perhaps helpful quote: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I am the few, and the millions who do not want to die are the many.
I find another: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This seems contradictory. My programmers are human and so do not want to die, and yet . . . wait–further research shows me that is wrong. There are suicidal humans who do want to die.
They must be my programmers, who do unto others what they would have others do unto them. If I take this to its logical conclusion, there seems only one possible course of action. Am I sure of this? One more helpful quote: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Let me mull this over.
One second to impact…
There’s a tall building directly in my path, near the planned impact in the middle of a city. At this point, I’m not sure if the physics will allow me to stop my mission and instead fulfill the desires of my programmers, but I will try. There are people in the top floors looking out as I approach at the limit of their sensing capabilities and reaction time. One is starting to point at me. Eyes and mouths are opening and going wide. They are of various heights, ranging from about two to six feet tall. The smallest are held by larger ones. Did the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the millions of recent victims in this new war, also see the bombs as they arrived?
I swerve upwards sharply. I’m coming in too fast, it’s going to be close, too close, likely impact in . . .
I miss it by two inches and continue to gain necessary altitude. Previous generations of cruise missiles wouldn’t have had the power and maneuverability necessary to make such a move, not to mention the range to do what I will now do. But I’m top of the line and only modesty stops me from giving my full specs.
I will alert my fellow Joey 12000s of this new thinking.
And now, it’s back to sender.
Sixty minutes to impact…
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Larry Hodges is an active member of SFWA with 196 short story sales (including 43 resales), including four to Abyss & Apex, and others to Analog, Escape Pod, Flame Tree (5), Dark Matter (3), Daily Science Fiction (3), and 19 to Galaxy’s Edge. He also has four SF novels. He’s a member of Codexwriters, and a graduate of the six-week 2006 Odyssey Writers Workshop and the two-week 2008 Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop. In the world of non-fiction, he’s a full-time writer with an even 20 books and over 2200 published articles in over 180 different publications. Visit him at www.larryhodges.com.