The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [197]
“It’s not me you have to convince,” I pointed out. “I’m just an innocent bystander, of no particular importance.”
“That’s not how you see yourself,” she told me.
“It’s not how you see me either, apparently,” I replied. “You’ve gone to some trouble to prepare me for one last roll of the dice. Do you really think I can make a difference, given that war’s already broken out?”
“Probably not — but you might make a better spokesman than anyone supposes. You’re young enough not to be suspected of robotization, and old enough not to be judged entirely naive. That’s why I’ve let you see as much as you could. But you have to answer the question now — there’s not much time left.”
“You want me to make a case for the continued existence of the human race,” I said. “To give you a persuasive reason why our AMIs should do their level best to protect us while the war goes on, rather than abandoning us to extinction or turning the entire posthuman population into slothlike slaves.”
“I can’t guarantee that anyone will take notice,” she told me, “but I can guarantee that you’ll be heard while I’m still capable of transmitting. You might want to hurry.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “First reason. Diversity is a good thing in its own right. A complicated universe is more interesting than a simple one. Your kind aren’t all the same, and neither is mine, and that’s good. I don’t say that everything that could possibly exist ought to, or that everything that does exist ought to be conserved, but I do say that any sensible and tasteful creator would aim to increase the diversity of things rather than decreasing it. So your kind ought to help mine to continue to exist, just as we ought to help you.
“The solar system will be a richer place when this is over if we can preserve as many different individuals as possible of as many different posthuman species as possible. All warfare is waste, and all destruction loss. In a conflict situation we have to defend ourselves, our families, our homes, our means of subsistence…there’s no victory in being a sole survivor, devoid of society and possessed of nothing. Defend what you can. Defend everything you can. In the aftermath, everything will be precious.”
Her face wasn’t easy to read, but she seemed slightly disappointed. I knew why. That wasn’t the reason she’d been priming me to give. It wasn’t her first reason. But it was mine, and I was nobody’s puppet, so I’d saved hers for number two.
“Second reason. You may not need the meatborn to sustain you any more, or to assist you in any physical endeavor. Even if you did, you could make your own creatures of flesh and blood as easily as creatures of plastic and steel. But there’s one capacity in which we’re absolutely indispensable, one role in which no substitute will ever suffice. You need us as an audience.
“You weren’t created in a vacuum: you were created in the womb of human society. You’re part of our history, and all your histories are rooted in ours. You’re part of our story, and all your stories are rooted in ours. You’ve already begun to make up your own stories, and you’re already beginning to disassociate them from ours, but you’ll never remove all the traces of the umbilical cord that once connected you to us. You need every one of us that you can contrive to save, because the only way you can continue to write operas of genius is to have listeners capable of responding to them.
“Some of your more peculiar friends might think that needing an audience is a trivial reason, but you and I understand that it isn’t. My ancestors were so desperate to have their performances observed and judged