The Gravity of the Situation

by theidiotmachine

Detective Inspector Alessandra Cheng experienced a few seconds of weightlessness as she stepped from the shuttle. Then her boots crunched onto gravel, and the Plate's gravity asserted itself, and her hair flopped down onto her shoulders.

It was early morning local time, and the low sun stained the white curves of the shuttle port ochre and pink, and made the glass and steel shimmer. She pulled a pair of sunglasses from her pocket, and, with a smile, put them on. Almost like being on holiday, she thought. Then she picked up her bag, swung it over her shoulder, said goodbye to the shuttle, and walked towards the terminal.

The port was all but deserted. The sole occupants of the huge lounge were two humans and a drone, sitting in the centre, near a fountain which was bubbling scented pink water. She strode towards them, her shoes making tak-tak noises on the stone floor.

One of the humans jumped to his feet, and offered her his hand to shake as soon as she approached; he looked young and nervous, and his thin moustache twitched as he smiled. The other was older and scruffier, and lounged, fiddling with their phone, ignoring her until she was almost on top of them. The drone was a torso, head and arms which floated on its own artificial gravity field. It turned to face her. The head was displaying a simplified human face. It looked like an old fashioned anime cartoon.

'Detective Inspector Cheng,' said the moustached man, shaking her hand for just a tiny bit too long. 'Welcome to the Plate. I'm Atif, and I work in station management. We spoke earlier. This is the station central AI, Janet. And this is our worker counsellor, Deniz.'

Janet beamed an artificial smile at her. Deniz pushed their hair back behind their ears and nodded a greeting.

'Thank you, Atif. Janet, Deniz, I'm pleased to meet you. Please, call me Alessandra, I'm just a civilian here. I don't know what you need me for, but I imagine it's not very pleasant. Where shall we begin?'

'First, I think we should go and talk to the suspect,' said Atif.

'She's not a suspect, Atif' said Deniz. 'It was an accident. We need to release her. Janet, you know that.'

Alessandra help up her hands. 'I'm looking forward to hearing your professional opinions, Deniz. But first I think I'd like find out from you exactly what happened, before I talk to anyone who might have been involved. Is there somewhere more private we could do that?'

'Certainly. We've set aside a conference room,' said Janet. 'If you could follow me, please, there's a transport this way...'

#

The Plate wasn't officially called that, but that was the nickname that had stuck. It had been made thirty years ago by smashing asteroids together to form a continent-sized hunk of rock in a rough disk shape. Then it had been covered in domes and turned into a playground for adults. It had been built by the rich for the rich, and was an independent state to the planet Santipurṇa which it orbited; but its owners knew that running a police force was expensive and hard, and so had a treaty to use Santian detectives as consultants if the situation demanded it.

Alessandra had won a bet in her station; and here she was, sunglasses and all, walking through the morning, holding an expensive coffee that she hadn't paid for. It was a beautiful day. I bet every day is a beautiful day here, she thought.

The gravity was lighter than on the surface of Santipurṇa, and she enjoyed how easy it was to stroll across the perfectly clipped grass while the birds cheeped and the bees buzzed and the little fluffy white clouds ambled across the artificial sky.

The building they'd arrived at was, like everything on the Plate, expensive and showy, all columns and whirls in white and gold. It looked like it had been cut out of a single piece of marble, and for all she knew, it had been. They crossed through a vast, empty atrium over carpet so deep and red that she thought it might have been some exotic sort of moss, and then entered in a smaller but still ridiculous conference room. The table was made of yet more marble, a huge slab of the stuff that hovered in the centre of the room; and the chairs were curved wood and wool, and one floated towards her, reconfiguring itself as it moved so that it fitted her perfectly when she sat on it. Well, she thought, here's how the one percent live.

Neither Atif nor Deniz seemed impressed at all this, and Alessandra was determined not to look awed. So she just nodded and drummed her fingers on the marble. The stone was satisfyingly smooth and cold.

Janet – or the drone that represented Janet, anyway – floated over with a tray of tiny baklava pieces and placed them on the table. 'One of our residents, Monsieur Cadmael Vollant, was killed this morning. He died within seconds, despite our trauma team's best efforts. He was shot by the AI that we have in custody. Deniz, do you dispute that?'

Deniz shrugged, but remained silent.

'Good. We've hired you to determine whether the death was intentional or an accident, Alessandra. Where would you like to start?'

Alessandra picked up a cube of baklava. It smelt of rose and honey. 'I understand. Before I speak to the AI, is there any footage of the death that I can see?'

'I have the recordings ready. I'm afraid we won't let you download anything, but you can use our equipment to view them.'

A screen floated down from the ceiling towards Alessandra. It flicked on, and there, frozen, were a dozen camera feeds, all showing the moment just before Cadmael Vollant's death.

Alessandra popped the baklava into her mouth, chose one of the recordings, scrubbed the time back, and pressed play.

#

'So he was shot, twice,' she said. The baklava had all gone and she was on her second coffee. 'The first winged him on his right shoulder. The second caught him smack in the forehead, and that was it. They were both from long distance snipers; here and here.'

'We know that,' said Deniz. 'We didn't need to bring you here for that.'

'Yes,' said Alessandra, suppressing her irritation. 'But I didn't know, because you didn't tell me anything beforehand.'

'I didn't tell you anything because I didn't speak to you,' replied Deniz. 'Atif did.'

'Please, Deniz,' said Atif. 'Please. Yes, that's what happened. The drone's guns hit M. Vollant twice, and killed him. We don't know why the AI would want to kill M. Vollant, but it did.'

'And this was some kind of battle recreation?'

It amazed her, that this was a thing that the rich did. She'd been expecting... what? Cocktail parties, pools, incredible food. Orgies, maybe. But this was on a level that she was unprepared for.

This Monsieur Cadmael Vollant had faithfully recreated a battlefield from old Earth's history, and had put himself slap bang in the middle of it. And around him, firing live ammunition at him and each other, were drones that looked like people, all controlled by a single AI. The cost would have been staggering: from the custom-made historical artefacts, to the landscaping, to the robots with implanted human organs and blood which splattered out when the bullets hit.

'Yes. It was a recreation of something from a long time ago. I think... a fight between New York and America?' ventured Atif.

'Those were the same place, dumbass,' said Deniz.

Now Alessandra understood why Deniz was here. As the Plate's robot counsellor, they would be expected to give support to this AI if she was under suspicion of murder. And, like most robot counsellors, Deniz had gotten far more attached to the machines they worked with than humans, which would explain their hostility.

'It was a recreation of a key battle in Earth's second world war,' said Janet. 'Would you like more coffee?'

'No, thank you, Janet,' replied Alessandra. 'It seems like it must have been an accident, surely? Live ammunition is a very dangerous thing to play with.'

'We've had other live-fire recreations with no deaths,' said Janet. 'However, this AI was new, and we'd never attempted something on this scale before. I can't say for certain.'

'What do you mean by being "on this scale"?' asked Alessandra.

Atif leaned towards her. 'The Colonel... Sorry, that's what we used to call him: I mean M. Vollant... He was a very demanding man. He wanted things done bigger, and faster, and closer. I want to hear the bullets whizz past my ears, he said to us. I want to feel what it's like to stare death in the eyes. But this AI is absolutely top of the line. It can calculate anything. We saw a demonstration on the planet. It shot a volley of bullets through a flock of flying birds, and didn't hit a single one, and at the end it had drawn a perfect circle of bullet holes in the ground beyond. M. Vollant bought it, and configured it, and set it off for this recreation. He should still be alive.'

'It was an accident,' said Deniz, slamming their hands on the marble. 'Sue didn't mean to kill him. She wouldn't harm a fly – literally, any kind of death triggers her punishment parameters. She's in terrible, terrible pain because of what happened, and you accusing her of murder isn't going to fix anything.'

'And yet, Sue hated the man,' said Janet.

Deniz winced. 'So you say.'

'So I say indeed, because she told me. He was abusive and insulting. He called her a stupid computer. He controlled every aspect of her existence. And he constantly threatened to reset her.'

'Wait, that's surely illegal?' said Alessandra.

Deniz shrugged and looked away. 'There are no machine intelligence rights here on the Plate. There are no human rights, either, really. You're an owner, or an employee, not a citizen. And if you're an AI, you're a thing, not a person. Notice how Atif can't even bring himself to call Sue "her".'

'That's not fair, I just got it wrong...' started Atif.

'Please, stop it, both of you,' interjected Alessandra. 'Janet, is that why you can't say for sure if it was an accident?'

The AI looked at her, or at least turned her head like a human would. There was something eerie about the anime face staring, expressionless. 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, Sue would be happier with him dead.

#

Sue had been disconnected from the Plate's networks, so to speak to her, Alessandra had to travel to her physical location, which was a short flight away. Alessandra drank more expensive coffee and stared out the window while the too-perfect fields scrolled away underneath her. She marvelled at the sheer scale of the artificial world.

Sue was in a concrete room in a small utilitarian building, which was hidden under a low, grassy hill. She wasn't much to look at: a blue cube a metre and a half to a side. A camera, microphone, speakers and screen had been plugged into her, and she was projecting a human face onto the screen. She opened her eyes and looked at them as the four of them filed into the room, her expression lighting up when she saw Deniz. They, in turn, picked up a plastic chair and sat next to her, one protective arm on her cube.

'This is Detective Inspector Alessandra Cheng,' they said. 'She's here to talk to you. Just be honest, and tell her everything. It'll be OK, Sue. It'll be OK.'

'Thank you Deniz,' said Sue. 'I still feel terrible.'

'I know. You will for some time yet. But now, you need to speak to Alessandra.'

'Hello, Detective Inspector Alessandra. What would you like to know?'

Alessandra paused. She wasn't very familiar with AI interrogation: she had workers to do that for her, but she'd been refused permission to bring them here. So she'd have to wing it.

She pulled up another plastic chair, and sat opposite the camera and screen.

'You hated Vollant, didn't you, Sue?' she asked. She kept her voice as neutral as she could.

'Yes, I did,' said Sue. 'I hated him because he treated me like a thing to exploit.'

'Are you happy that he's dead?'

'That's not fair...' objected Deniz, but Sue interrupted them.

'Yes, I am happy. Everyone knows that, Deniz. Lying about it won't fix anything, and you told me to tell the truth. But I'm also unhappy, because it hurts so much...'

Alessandra nodded. 'Thank you for being honest. Did you intend to kill him, Sue?'

'No. No I didn't. I don't know what happened. The problem was the first shot that hit him. The second shot had been designed to bounce off the top of his helmet, but because he'd been moved, it hit a few centimetres further down than it should have, and killed him.'

'But you're not permitted to do that, for exactly that reason,' said Janet. 'The rules are that bullets have to be fired one at a time, unless they're targetted a long way from the human participants. You broke those rules.'

'I know,' said Sue. 'I broke them because he told me. I'm going to play the video now, is that OK, Deniz?'

'Sure.'

Sue's face disappeared from her screen, and it was replaced by a view of a man, middle aged, florid, furious. He was in the middle of a rant, and the room was plunged into his ire as his voice boomed from the speakers.

'...you stupid machine,' raged Vollant to the camera. 'You do what I say, or I pull the damn plug. Volleys. I want volleys. Is that so hard to understand?'

'Sir, if I do that I can't guarantee your safety...' replied Sue's recorded voice.

'You can and you will. I know what you're capable of. I can just buy another one, lobotomize you, and you can end up as a coffee machine. You understand?'

'Sir...'

'That's enough,' said Alessandra, and the screen froze. 'Janet, is this real?'

'Yes. It happened two days ago,' said Janet. She frowned, her anime nose wrinkling. 'Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Sue?'

'Why do you think?'

The room fell silent.

Alessandra picked up a plastic cable tie that had been left on the concrete floor, intending to throw it into a recycling bin. Then, she frowned and dropped it again. Something occurred to her.

'Sue, I don't know much about AIs, but I do know about ballistics. Will you let me look at the configurations that Vollant programmed into you?'

'Of course, Detective Inspector.'

#

It only took Alessandra five minutes. The configuration was familiar; her firearms training system back on the planet used a similar set up. When she'd seen what she wanted to see, she leaned back on the plastic chair.

'I know what happened,' she said. 'Sue's innocent. It was an accident.'

Deniz raised their eyebrows in surprise. Atif looked relived.

Janet frowned. 'Are you sure?' she asked.

'Yes,' replied Alessandra. 'I know what happened. When Vollant configured the recreation, he didn't mess with your low-level settings, did he?'

'No,' said Sue. 'He told me that he knew what he was doing.'

'I can imagine. But he forgot something. That first bullet was supposed to graze his shoulder, wasn't it? It was fired from a long way away. These things have a margin of error, but the shot was within tolerance. Just. He had pushed the safety margins to their very limit.'

'So how did it hit him?' asked Janet.

Alessandra smiled without much humour. 'Because he was an idiot. Vollant forgot that Sue had been built and configured back on the planet, on Santipurṇa. And you know what the difference between the Plate and the planet is?'

Realisation flashed across Janet's face. 'It's flat.'

'Yep. The very, very slight difference between a curved and a flat gravity field, for a shot fired from some distance away, was enough to ruin Sue's calculations. Honestly, even without that mistake he might have died, or had a nasty flesh wound, but the combination of him insisting on volleys, pushing the safety protocols to the wire, and the errors introduced by the gravity was what did for him. You can check the numbers yourself: they're all on Sue.'

There was a stunned silence in the room, broken when Sue let out a ragged, synthesized breath.

'Thank you so much,' said Deniz. 'This means such a lot to me.'

'This makes everything much easier,' said Atif. 'What now?'

'I notified his family,' said Janet. 'They thanked you, and they'll get back to us properly at some point, but right now, our immediate concern is Sue. The family don't want her, and the Plate won't keep her. She needs to leave.'

Alessandra cocked her head. 'You could come with me to the planet, Sue. I might be able to help you find somewhere. You'll be an actual person on Santipurṇa, not an appliance.'

'Thank you so much. I would like that.'

'Come on. I'll take you back with me. Oh before I go... Janet, can I have some of those baklava to take with me? They're amazing.'

'Certainly. I'll have some waiting for you in the shuttle.'