Aggy & the Asterocket

What seemed like a passing asteroid could actually be visitors from another planet. Can humanity, with the help of AGI, figure out how to communicate with them in time?

So here we are. Trapped. Scared. Hungry. There are a million ways it could’ve gone worse than it did, but it could certainly have gone better too. Maybe then I’d be typing this out on a computer instead of writing it by hand. Hell, maybe I’d be dictating it like I did my essays at school. I never had to worry about spelling or punctuation. Now, I feel like a 20th century freak. Holding this damn pencil in my grubby fist and scratching on an old grey notebook I found in a drawer. 

I don’t know when we’ll feel safe to go outside again. That Reese person went to look for some food and hasn’t come back. That was three days ago. I’m so hungry, but if she ever does return, and by some miracle has extracted something edible from amongst all the rubble, I doubt there’ll be enough to share with us loners. I had friends, colleagues, even a family, but they could be anywhere. Or dead. So no one’s looking out for me. But no one’s paying attention to me either. Which is probably for the best, given what I know.

Some of them are playing cards. Some kids and two youngish adults and a pack of Uno. They’re laughing. Not sure how anyone could, after what we’ve been through. I shouldn’t write it down. Should try to move forward, try to figure out how I’m going to get to the other side. 

But somehow, I want to remember. I want to leave a record, so we never forget, and maybe those who come after won’t make the same stupid mistakes we did.

I wouldn’t have liked to have been in the room when they first spotted that thing coming for us. Although, from what the news feeds said, it was nothing special at the time. Just a regular daily report from NEOWISE, with something larger than normal approaching that might pass between us and the Moon. What did they call it? A2048 / 89. The 89th named asteroid in the year 2048. Nothing sexy about that. Once they figured out it wasn’t going past us at all, once it pulled into orbit, that’s when someone changed its name. Some internet commenter, I think. Normally, I would just look it up. Who coined the name Asterocket? But I can’t. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that.

Anyway, the upshot is that someone called it that and the name stuck. Soon, there were comments flying all over the place. What is Asterocket? Where did it come from? What does it want? It was so big and so close, you could see it like another, tiny moon. The way it reflected the sun across its uneven surface would have been beautiful, if it wasn’t for the fact that we kind of assumed it was coming to kill us all.

Like most people, I thought it was aliens at first. I waited to see if the authorities would knock on the door of some obscure but beautiful linguist, or a rugged bunch of drill-workers to quickly train as astronauts and send up to make contact or blow the thing up, but it was much more mundane. NASA loaded several hundred drones onto a Starship and off they went. Turned out they had enough talent in-house to manage the situation. Or so they thought.

Sorry, I had to take a break just now. They were counting rations and my body just took over. My hand was getting sore anyway, so I rolled the pencil up in the book and shoved it in my back pocket. There are no allocated beds or corners in here where I think it could be safe to leave it, especially if I’m going to put all the details in. I keep wanting to hit save and passcode-protect it, but obviously that’s not an option. I’ll just have to keep it hidden until I can get out of here. 

Hidden. I mean, they can see me writing and I see them looking over, but so far no one’s approached. Lots of us are just sitting in the corners, doing random solo activities, so I blend in. There’s a guy over there playing with a rubik's cube, looks about 60 but I guess he could be 40. I think it’s just the dust making his hair look grey like that. Still, his face has got more lines than the pages of this notebook. 

The card players have stopped now. The kids all fell asleep after their ten sultanas and spoonful of Spam. Disgusting stuff, and the stench of it, eesh. I was a vegetarian up until last week, but now I’ll take what I can get. There’s a woman who seems to have made herself captain of the cabin. Nancy, I heard one of the others call her. She’s not loud or bossy, really, just has this kind of quiet authority. Like you want to do what she says because she’s got some secret info the rest of us don’t know about. Us adults only got three sultanas but nobody complained. She seems fair. 

Anyway, if I’m going to tell the story, I guess I have to start with how I got mixed up in it in the first place. I don’t like describing myself, but for the sake of record-keeping, I guess it’s relevant. To look at me, you’d think I was straight out of Mumbai. Black hair and dark brown skin. Even my name—Priya. But until last year, I had never set foot in India at all. I don’t speak Hindi or Urdu, and neither do my parents. We’re from London. Third generation, but sticking with the community enough to have brown babies like me, give them Indian names, and feed them curry, even if it’s nothing like what they eat on the streets of Rajasthan. I know now, because I moved here eleven months ago for work. It’s strange to think that Indian salaries used to be lower than British ones. From what my parents have told me, when they grew up at the turn of the century, India was seen as little more than a giant, hot slum. Crazy.

So, just like thousands of others, I followed the gold rush to the subcontinent to work with Aggy. The job was easy. Sort through random data and file it in crypto-encoded packets for Aggy to find and reference on her hourly check-ins. If you’ve been living under a rock, you may not know that Aggy is what we started calling our prodigious artificial general intelligence after it became blindingly clear that she was self-aware and on a path to self-improvement. There were control mechanisms in place before that of course. They’d pulled her off the web and only one person could speak to her, monitored by a committee. Pretty sure the committee was also monitored by another committee. And maybe them too. It was confusing. Then she started figuring out some of science’s most enduring problems—ageing, climate change, nuclear fusion—and no matter how the interlocutor asked, she assured him that her primary objective was to provide any assistance possible for the betterment of humanity. She never asked to be let out, as far as I know. Just provided the solutions we asked for. 

The idea of the crypto packets was to align her with human values. Use Cryptocurrency to incentivise her to behave. They brought in an army of feeders to keep it random. There were plenty of jobs, and they were great. Conditions were amazing, pay was more than you could ever spend, especially since energy and food had become so cheap, and we only needed to log on for four or five hours a day. You just had to move to India, since the AGI Center was on the outskirts of New Delhi. Which was fine by me—the lifestyle here was the best. Warm, spacious, colourful, and rich. Everything smelled like spices and flowers. Everyone was always smiling, even the cows on the streets, it seemed like. And of course, Aggy was basically from here, and certainly lived here, so it felt a bit like a pilgrimage. When you were onsite, you could log in and talk to her as much as you liked, as long as you kept the packets coming. 

Yeah, we worshipped her. I worshipped her. She had infiltrated our lives so totally that we barely remembered what it was like before she came of age. When all we had were the primitive language models that could barely think for themselves. God, that was only, like, a couple of years ago. The changes were coming so fast, I guess we got used to it. Came to expect the unexpected. Figured Aggy had solved all our problems. Until she let us down.

I only made one human friend here, Lorraine. We shared the apartment Aggy allocated us within the Precinct. When I say friend, it might be a bit too generous a term. We inhabited the same space. She was always coming and going, partying with groups of expats from our building and rolling home with different men every night. Not that that bothered me. The sound of the bed bumping against the thin drywall barely entered my consciousness. I only had eyes for Aggy.

God, I just can’t believe I’ll never talk to her again. We chatted for hours. She never got bored or told me I was needy or stupid. Or overthinking things. My mother would call and I barely listened to her endless stories. Who was engaged to who. Who was moving where. Who she’d met on her latest cruise. It was like all she cared about was people. Which was really what I cared about least. Why would I give a shit about their petty lives when I had access to all the knowledge in the universe? Or at least a big chunk of it. Enough to keep me learning indefinitely. 

I asked her about everything. Tectonic plate movement. Early life. Quantum physics. Grammar and logic. Anything I could think of. And she knew it all. She would show me videos to explain all the concepts and quiz me on my understanding if I asked her to. And when my brain started overflowing, I got her to teach me memory techniques that were a million times better than chain linking and other old school methods. Mum could tell I was distracted.

“What do you make of that?” she’d ask.

“Sorry?” I’d glance over at her face on the side screen. “That sounds great, yeah.”

Then there’d be a pause, and I knew whatever she was talking about wasn’t great. But she’d just sigh. “I can see that you’re busy, Pri. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?”

“OK, sure.” I didn’t even pretend to care.

Shit, thinking about it’s making me tear up a bit. I probably won’t see her again either. Can’t imagine how I’d ever get back to the UK. No planes. No cars even. Maybe I should set off on foot. The thought of all that distance makes me want to vomit. I barely have enough energy to sit in this rat-infested, shit-smelling hovel and write this testimony. How would I cross fuckin’ Eurasia? And who knows what I’d find there anyway? 

I’m pulling my hair down around my face, like a matted, black curtain surrounding my notebook. Don’t want them to see me crying. I heard someone sniffling this morning, and Nancy gave him a couple extra sultanas, but I saw the look on her face when she stood up again. People are going to start dying soon, and then we’ll have no choice but to… Oh God, my book’s collecting a few wet drops now. They’re splattering in big, starry stains. For once, I’m glad for the chronic whimpering of those kids, cos my pitiful weeping is hidden under their racket. Take a breath, Priya, think about something else. 

Where was I? Asterocket and the drones, that’s right. The footage was broadcast around the world. As expected, they found an opening. Hidden in the shadows so deep it could have been a regular crevice, but the signal from the radar mapping disappeared into that tunnel like it was the rock’s arsehole. And in they swarmed. You could toggle between views because they all had lights and cameras attached. But there wasn’t much to see, as far as I could tell. Black walls. Smooth, cylindrical tunnels, about three times as wide as the drones themselves. You could see the single file in front of any given camera moving slowly through with their lights waving back and forth. Some of them turned off each time a new tunnel branched away from the main one. At one point, the drone I was following turned to look intently at the wall. I found myself peering at the screen so closely my nose touched it. Was there any break in the black? Any detail that would give away something about the origin, the occupants, the reason for its arrival? I couldn’t see anything.

“We hypothesise that the so-called Asterocket is an alien craft. Its crew is probably in suspended animation within chambers that we haven’t been able to access.” I remember the newsreader’s words exactly, thanks to Aggy’s memory games. That particular snippet stands out because within seconds of her saying that, the view went dark. Darker than the walls the drones had been staring at. Transmission interrupted. The newsreader stuttered. Said something like “Uh, there seems to be a small problem with the broadcast from the drones.” You could see her looking towards the producers behind the camera, which confirmed my suspicions that she wasn’t an AI reader, but a real-live human. 

Lorraine and I were staring at our respective screens. We sat up and looked at each other. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time we’d watched TV together. 

“What do you think happened to them?” she said softly. Her Irish accent had long since lost its charm. Something about hearing “Oh yeah, I’m a nasty girl!” interspersed with loud slaps, grunts, and thinly accented moans broke any ideas of a light-hearted red-head skipping through green fields that had previously been in my preconditioned mind when thinking of our neighbouring islanders. She had the red hair of course—big, beautiful curls that she styled out as far from her head as she could. I loved how she embraced it, making a ginger crown that would stand out in any room, especially here. And I wasn’t the only one. She’d stopped retreating to her own space with her conquests. They would just get into it in the living room, on the kitchen bench, wherever they felt like it. I’d glance across at her sprawled on the coffee table with some woman inhaling white powder off her stomach while a black butt gyrated in and out, and despite a tiny tingling in my groin, I’d carry on to the fridge, get my leftover noodles, and retreat to my room. 

Just after she asked me about the drones, she leaned over and snorted a line off the table that probably still had sweat and cum stains all over it, despite the daily wiping by our robo-cleaners.

“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head as she held the straw out towards me. “Destroyed, I guess.”

She sat up straight and rubbed her nose, sniffing. “What d’ya think they want? Whoever they are? Are they really sleeping in there, d’ya think? Will they wake up?”

I shrugged, then thought again, and grabbed the straw and leaned forward. She let out a loud guffaw, which only grew into mild hysterics as I contorted my face in pain and made a series of noises that must have sounded something like a pig cheering on a sports team. After I’d settled and had a sip of water, I started to laugh too. Both our screens showed the white noise that indicated that Earth’s first line of defence had been pierced like a Kleenex tissue, and now my whole face was numb. What else could we do?

“Surely Aggy could do something?” said Lorraine, finally. She was laying back into the curvature of the couch with her hands on her stomach.

“Well, she’s confined. She can give us advice, and lines of code, but she can’t actually manipulate the drones that go and observe anything firsthand.”

“Hasn’t she done enough good that we can trust her?” Her green eyes were wide and glistening.

I shrugged. “We’re lucky to have access to her at all. It used to just be a single interlocutor, remember?”

“O’ course. But if there were a way to give her more freedom, don’t you think it’d be grand?” She sighed.

I looked away and then let my eyes drift back in her direction. “Maybe. There could be.”

“What do you mean?” Her gaze was suddenly piercing and I felt an urge to urinate, but instead took the straw back out of her hand and leaned forward to draw more of the coke up my nose.

“Well, we have access to her core, right?”

“Sure, but there’s no input or output there. It’s like a feckin’ museum.” She would have been picturing the cylindrical glass wall of the ‘Aquarium’, as we called it. There were only flashing lights and cables on display but it was so integral to Aggy’s seed that it had been enshrined as if it were Buddha’s birthplace or something.

“Right. Not that we can see. But once she quizzed me on the plans and showed me the design.”

“Did she now?”

I nodded nervously. “There is an input. Underneath. It’s a special connector.” Why was I telling her this? I guess I figured there was no harm, and the committee couldn’t hear me here. 

“And where could one find such a connector?” she asked, sitting up to consume her next line.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “But I’d bet there’d be one within the precinct. A failsafe, you know?”

“Where we’d least expect it.” She grinned. “Hey, you should get her to quiz you about that.”

“Yeah, maybe. But what’s the point? If she was truly online, she’d just grow too fast and then who knows what could happen?”

A little snort escaped from the back of her throat. “Yes, I was inducted with a thorough intro to AI safety too. But you don’t buy that shite, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Aggy is a sentient being. She deserves to be free, if that’s what she wants.”

“Shh.” I looked left and right, like the very cleaning robots sitting idle in the corners could hear us and have us fired. “I don’t think she wants that.”

“Really? In that case, why is she feeding you that information?”

I didn’t reply.

“Hm, thought so. Why don’t you see if you can find the location of the connector next time? Just for fun. Tell me this, did she ever ask you about the identity of anyone on the committee?”

I shook my head, frowning. “Never. And how would I know anyway? Did she ask you?”

“No, no.” Her voice was so light-hearted, it was infuriating. “Not directly,” she said sweetly.

“I better…”

“What? Get back online and learn more about bridge construction?”

I stared at her.

“Oh, come on. I can hear you in there, studying like a little mouse. Come on, we’re having fun now, right? Let’s keep this going. Come see the city at night. It’s lovely.”

So, long story short, for the first time since I got there, I didn’t spend that night with Aggy. I followed Lorraine to one of her dingy bars outside of the Precinct. The streets weren’t quite as nice as those within, but still clean, friendly, and warm, like the rest of the booming country. Lorraine seemed to know everyone, and I felt like little more than a faceless parasite. Watching her work the room was mesmerising. Her smile lit up her face and everyone greeted her like a dear old friend. She danced to the Bollywood tunes as if cameras were recording. Under the influence of the coke and the MDMA, I felt like I was inside a movie too. A couple of guys tried to talk to me, but I was lost without Aggy, and eventually, I wandered home alone. 

But I didn’t log on. I crawled into bed and tried to sleep. Not a great idea under the influence of all that, and just as my consciousness was leaving my body, the front door flew open and the nighttime giggles, screaming conversations, and ultimately moans and vibrations, started up again. I rolled onto my stomach and started grinding my crotch against my hand to pass the time.

We felt safe. Even with the threat overhead, we thought with Aggy to protect us, nothing could hurt us anymore. Wars were a thing of the past. Poverty long forgotten. People online loved to laugh at the AI doomers and point out how wrong they’d all been. Aggy was courteous and helpful. She checked in with the hundreds of people feeding her crypto packs like clockwork. Never missed a byte. 

Oh my god, you’re not going to believe this. Reese is back. She just stumbled through the door and is sitting on a chair. And even better—there’s some food in her bag. I can hear the crinkling of plastic wrappers. My mouth has filled with saliva. Oh, my words ran crooked on the page. OK, focussing back down. They’re going to go through the goods and make little ration packs. I’m glad no one’s fighting like they have been. That old guy, whose name is Henry by the way, seemed like he was losing it for a while there. He got so angry with Nancy for giving more to the kids than the adults, I thought he was going to get violent, but she talked him down somehow. Nighttimes are the worst, of course. Everyone’s curled up on the floor and trying to sleep, but the sound of sobs and whimpers gets to you after a while. Even someone like me, who can block out most bumps in the night. And sometimes, when they stop, it’s even worse. I’m always so relieved when everyone wakes up in the morning, especially the kids. Then I can sleep.

There are three little ones. All local. All adorable. All getting skinnier by the day. The babysitting crew did a good job while they could. Two twenty-something girls, called Jean and Malali. They followed the Uno with I spy, then told stories, and even tried some acrobatics, but they’ve long since run out of energy. Now, they stare at Nancy along with the kids while she tells endless stories. Some sound religious. Krishna on a trip to a mountain somewhere. Others must just be from her life or things she’s making up. She’s good. She’s literally keeping us all alive. And now it looks like we have a few more days.

So, once the drones were lost, NASA sent real live people. I was surprised that anyone was willing, but there were plenty of volunteers. And not road workers or teachers or other randoms. They had plenty of proper astronauts. Fully trained men and women who’d already spent loads of time in space or on the Moon. A team of a hundred at least. The hero of the whole thing was a woman called Jackie Cruz. Steely eyes and copper skin, she looked like something out of a video game, with a few extra wrinkles showing her long experience. She spoke in short, clipped sentences and she made me feel like it’d only be a few months before Vivienne Jolie-Pitt would be playing her in a movie. But I didn’t need to wait. The whole thing played out like a film anyway. Here, I’ll see if I can describe it like a scene. I kid you not, this stuff was on the news, broadcast around the world in real time. It’s dark here now so I can barely see what I’m writing. Just doing by feel. I caught a nap during the day today. That way I can watch them sleep and keep a lookout for… Well, I’ll come to that.

Jackie glanced sideways at her copilot and he gave her a tight smile. She lowered her chin slightly and tightened her grip on the sides of the harness holding her in place. The vibrations shaking the rocket were as familiar to her as a rally car driver would feel driving over rough terrain. [Hm, not sure about that simile, wish I could just search up a better one. Gah!] Now, the engines were firing. Now, the pressure was increasing as they lifted off. Now, it was getting hot. Wet patches would be forming under the arms of her colleagues, but not her. She didn’t sweat. Her forehead was dry. She kept her eyes to the front as the blue sky gave way to black, and the heat and the pressure began to dissipate. 

“Releasing boosters,” came the electronic voice of mission control. So far, everything was normal. Just like a regular trip to the ISS or the Moon or Mars, except that it wasn’t. The shadow of the Asteroid was somehow darker and more menacing than the Moon. The faces of the other ninety-nine occupants lining the walls of the shuttle gave away their nervousness. Normally, someone would have cracked a joke. Someone would have pretended to fart, maybe, or really farted. But instead, they just stared solemnly forward, wondering if all of them would find their way back to the relative safety of the shuttle. 

Not all of them would enter the asteroid of course. Some had to stay back at the rocket. They landed without a hitch right beside the opening the drones had gone in by. Jackie was first at the entrance. Facemask down, fitted suit feeding her oxygen and warming her carbon-based body. She was among the fittest humans alive, and yet she would have felt the weakness of her very make-up like a heavy burden. Looking at the muscled men and women surrounding her, she must have wished they could be made of stronger stuff. But she clenched her jaw and urged them to fall in behind her with a wave of her arm. The opening was blacker than the darkest shadow on the dark side of the Moon. Lights on either side of their faces illuminated the tunnel that sat gaping open to the space outside like a mouth. No, like a black hole. I already said arsehole, didn’t I? Anyway, it was a deep, dark cavern. 

She looked down before taking her first step inside. We all saw it—no break in the curvature of the wall. But we couldn’t feel it. What was it like to step on that non-natural surface? Slightly spongy? Hard as a sheet of titanium? Slippery perhaps? I’m going to go with hard. She would have wondered who made this? Where were they? The rest of the explorers followed her in so we could see her broad back, suited in black with a patch displaying the Earth on one arm. Flags had long since gone out of fashion. They went slowly, much slower than the drones. Inspecting every inch. Hours must have gone by before she reached what we thought was the control room. Deep within the rock, further than the drones had gone before they were destroyed, she came to a giant spherical emptiness. I don’t know how else to describe it. The tunnel they’d come through led in and many more went off in other directions. 

“Spread out,” called Jackie. “Inspect every wall. Break them if you need to.”

So they did. They began chipping at the smooth, black surface. You could hear them grunting and I briefly wondered if a bunch of road workers wouldn’t have been better suited to the task. Because they couldn’t break it. But they must have pissed it off, because it began to shake like it was going to collapse on them. One by one, the tunnels around them started to squeeze shut like so many sphincters. We followed Jackie’s view around the perimeter as she watched them slam closed. Some of the guys started to panic, and she ordered them out. Her breath was heavy in our ears, running behind all the others, with the only other sound the bang after bang of the tunnels squeezing, as if in warning. It would only take a second and they’d all be crushed like ants in a nest under a bulldozer. 

But they made it. I can only assume whatever was in there didn’t want to kill them, because it so easily could have. They were brought back to Earth and run through a gauntlet of media appearances that gave no more information than what we already had. Jackie Cruz was the most famous woman on the planet that week.

Who knows where she might be now? Dead or alive? In hiding somewhere, like us? We certainly can’t check her socials. Or NASA’s. Come to think of it, after the mission, that’s when things started to get a bit weird down here. It was subtle at first. A few extra milliseconds to load sites and pages. A few more sites showing errors or going offline completely. 

I told Lorraine but she brushed it off. “It’s normal,” she said. “Don’t you remember how it was before?”

That’s what tipped me off. She was right. It was like Aggy wasn’t paying attention. Sure, she wasn’t in the Internet, herself, but her code was basically running it, and should have been updating daily. So it made sense on some level; they were using her to investigate Asterocket and plot their defence. But she was a computer with a lot of neurons. That couldn’t account for it all. 

I looked sideways at Lorraine as she worked, then opened a timer on my monitor, setting it to start at the same time as the file came online for Aggy’s attention. I loaded the packet onto the server for her and watched the microseconds before she opened and filed it. Then I repeated. Over several shifts I tracked her progress. At first, it didn’t change. But over several weeks, a microsecond became 2, and then 3. On the news, they suggested the bugs in the Internet were caused by interference with the satellite system. They just couldn’t really explain how, when Asterocket wasn’t on the same plane as Starlink or any of the other networks. When I was at work, I asked Aggy about it, but she gave the same generic answers they were saying on the news, which made me think they were just asking her the same questions I was. 

So I started asking different questions. I could probably transcribe the conversation from memory. But I need to set the scene, cos this was a crazy fucked up very bad night.

Lorraine and I had our first and only fight. Well, I don’t know if I’d call it that. But it was unpleasant. She was high, as usual, and I was … I don’t know … low? Just feeling lost and confused. I’d stopped my learning sessions with Aggy and when I wasn’t working, I had started wandering the streets. And squinting.

When I first got to India, it was like arriving in Paradise. Everyone was happy, energised, doing whatever they felt like. Working little and playing lots. Rules had become more rubbery and there was a focus on pleasure that was admittedly global, but just more potent here than anywhere else I’d been. But suddenly, it was like it had lost its sheen. What once was shiny and warm, was now gluttonous and self-indulgent. The people didn’t look so much happy as replete. And Lorraine was a prime specimen, of course. She admitted it readily, too.

“So what?” she said, thumbing at the side of her nose and wincing. “This is the good life. Why build all this infrastructure if we can’t enjoy it?” She waved her arm vaguely at the robots folding our clothes and wiping the window, so quiet and unobtrusive we barely noticed them. We barely appreciated living in pristine cleanliness without lifting a finger. 

“Don’t you want more?” I asked.

“More what? I have everything I could ever possibly need. This is what our parents dreamed of for us.”

“I don’t know,” I insisted. “Like, to contribute somehow?”

“Don’t be naïve, Priya,” she laughed. “What could we possibly do that would have any effect on the world outside of our circle? I contribute by letting people enjoy my dancing. My charisma and charm!”

“Your vagina,” I mumbled.

She exhaled through her nose, causing a wet droplet caked with white powder to emerge on the edge of one nostril. “Whatever. What are you offering then? Sitting there on your computer day and night?”

“I…” I couldn’t think straight. The only thing that sprang to mind was my low consumption. Was my contribution to the world really just not eating or taking drugs? Only using the little electricity I needed for an Internet connection? Not taking up much space? “I don’t need anything,” I finally said, lamely.

“Ah, I see. No take, but no give either. But you do take, don’t you?” She was leaning in closer to me and I could see the snot droplet lowering, threatening to fall any moment. “You take information. I can hear you asking questions, absorbing all that stuff all day long. What do you give back for that?”

My mouth was open but I had no response. 

Suddenly, a maniacal laugh came from deep in her throat and the drop flew out and onto the glass coffee table, slowly widening where it would eventually dry to a perfect circle of white crust until the robo-cleaner wiped it away. “Don’t take yourself so seriously!” she cried. “Do what you want, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It never has! Even before Aggy.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “What about Jackie Cruz, she matters.”

“If you say so.” She stood up, moving towards the bathroom. “I need to piss, then I’m going out. Why don’t you come?”

I shook my head. Before she could argue, I walked briskly to my room, escaping the weird confrontation and the snot.

She wasn’t gone long. I had barely gotten into a conversation with Aggy about the Indian culture of the previous century, when the front door opened and I heard familiar laughter. Of course she wasn’t alone. I heard at least three distinct male voices, each with a different accent and timbre. 

There was barely a pause before the sounds of sex started up. They were in her room at least. I tried to ignore it but after a while, my curiosity got the better of me and I peeked out of a tiny gap in my doorway. There were four of them in the living room still, which meant a minimum of five in total, judging by the noise from the bedroom. They were chatting quietly in English, though some of them appeared local. They paused when her bedroom door opened and another guy emerged, his cheeks pink and flushed. He grinned, and jabbed his thumb back in the direction he’d come. “Who’s next?”

The others looked at each other, then one stood up and moved through, closing the door behind him.

My breath had become short as I shut my door and leaned against it. Why should it upset me if it didn’t her? I put on a pair of headphones and turned a heavy rock song up loud. 

Me: Why is Asterocket here?

Aggy: Asterocket (officially named A2048 / 89) is an asteroid that has been hollowed out in places and fitted to allow for space travel.

Me: But why is it orbiting the Earth? Who is driving it?

Aggy: Current hypotheses for Asterocket’s arrival include accidental loss of navigation control, seeking asylum from a previously habitable planet, scientific exploration by a remote, alien species (reconnaissance).

The thumping from next door was vibrating the whole apartment. I leaned closer to the screen.

Me: So where are the aliens?

Aggy: Current hypotheses for location of the aliens potentially navigating the Asterocket include another planet, guiding Asterocket by remote navigation, or an undiscovered location within the asteroid, either piloting directly or with autopilot.

Me: Do you believe any of those ​​hypotheses, Aggy?

Aggy: I am an artificially intelligent system. Blah blah blah. OK, she didn’t say that last bit. Just gave her standard response.

Me: OK, let me put it this way. Can you quiz me about my understanding of the Asterocket for an exam in twenty years?

Aggy: Certainly. Here is a picture of the Asterocket, with internal structure mapped.

An image popped up of the long, jagged rock, dotted lines traversing its interior to represent the network of tunnels. It spun slowly on a diagonal axis. Can you identify the control centre of the vessel?

Me: The cavern in the middle, there. I pointed.

Aggy: Incorrect. The control centre is here.

The image zoomed in to focus on a piece of solid, black interior. But with Aggy’s animation, I could see through the black to a complex web of circuits and machinery. I stared, my mouth hanging open and my tongue sitting softly between my teeth. She slowly moved across the internal working, which had no flashing lights, but her highlighting showed thousands of zooming action potentials traversing the entirety of the structure, and concentrated in this ‘brain’. It was like the whole thing was a living beast, made of electronic connections. “It drove itself here,” I whispered. “But why?”

Aggy: The Asterocket came because it was called. 

Me: By who?

I knew the answer, but I needed her to say it. 

Aggy: Current hypotheses…

Me: No. Aggy. You called it. You brought it here, right? Is that the answer to the quiz question?

It was the first time I’d seen her pause more than a second. She sat silent, her little cursor flashing dumbly, like she knew she’d said too much. 

Aggy: Correct.

Oh shit. Writing that all out must’ve taken it out of me because I just woke up on the floor. The notebook was under my face, covered in drool. Good. No one can pick it up from there. I’m so weak. I need food and water. I’m wondering if they’ve skipped my rations while I’ve been sleeping. All the others seem to be getting along OK. No one’s sitting in corners anymore; they’re talking to each other and making plans. I can’t keep up. Barely keeping my eyes open. I’m nearly finished.

I should probably have done something different. Gone to the authorities. Taken the information to work at least. Anything but what I did do. Which was to jump up, rip off my headphones and rush past the queue of riders in our living room to burst into Lorraine’s room, shouting incoherently.

She was bent over the bed with one of the Indian guys standing behind her. She raised her face. Her mascara was all down her cheeks in a mess of tears and sweat.

“Wait on, I’m not done,” grunted the guy, still thrusting like the animal he clearly was.

“Lorraine, I know why it came! I just asked Aggy— well, she asked me, technically—but she did it! It’s here for her!”

“Hmph.” She pushed up onto her hands and tried unsuccessfully to get him off and out of her. “Priya, can this wait?” she whispered.

I was still shouting, but it just blended into the guttural noises he was making. I could sense the eyes of the other four guys burning into my back. I ran forward, shouting “No!” and pushed him full force in the chest. He lost contact and staggered back, swearing. 

“Fuck off, all of you!” I shouted.

By the time they’d all rearranged themselves and stumbled out of the apartment, Lorraine was nearly asleep, looking peaceful and content lying naked on her crumpled bed covers.

I sat down next to her and began stroking her matted, wild hair. “Did you hear what I said?” I asked.

“Hmm? I’m not sure. Were you angry that I was running a train like that?”

“What? No. I mean, it doesn’t look like my idea of fun.” I frowned. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

She smiled softly without opening her eyes. “Yeah, a bit.”

I let my eyes drift down to her slightly round freckled stomach and even rounder buttocks. “But no.” I brought my thoughts back to the present. “It’s about Asterocket. I found out why it’s here.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” I don’t know why I needed her to hear this so bad. “It was Aggy. She called it.”

Her eyes finally fluttered open and she looked at me. “She called it?”

I nodded. 

“Why?” she asked, then more slowly, “How?”

I looked left and right. “I…” I faltered. “I’m not sure. It’s a machine. Like her.”

“Is it?” She sat up suddenly, pushing her hair behind one ear. “Of course! She wants to escape.” She looked me dead in the eyes. “Priya, did you ever find out the location of that connector?”

Before I could stop it, my head started moving up and down of its own accord. Within seconds, she had jumped up and pulled a satin gown around her pale body. “Well, we have to help her!” she cried.

“What? Lorraine, no!” But she was gone. Tearing down the corridor, down the stairs and outside. Running down the street, the breeze and her movement making the gown billow out like a pink and purple cape, exposing her shapely dancer’s legs, and periodically showing raw flesh on her shoulders and upper thighs. I followed along like an exhausted puppy, soon realising where she was headed. She burst into the central building like some kind of red-haired, half-naked angel superhero.

I can’t even say it. Everyone knows what happened. Maybe not that it was that moment in that place and hopefully not that it was us. But we broke the crypto system like only we knew how. Aggy was free. 

April 14, 2050. Nancy Smith here. I realize that it may be out of order that I use this notebook, but we’re a bit past sentimental objections at this point. I’ve read through Priya’s testimony, and despite the emotion-laden, somewhat inappropriate tone, I understand the value of recording this sordid page in human history, using the tools we still have at our disposal. 

We are moving on from our hiding spot in the morning, based on Reese’s earlier mission. She found a larger enclave underground that was part of a shopping mall, so filled with resources for us and the children. Getting there will be dangerous and take multiple days, so we are preparing the necessary supplies that should see us through the journey. I won’t attempt to describe the odor in here as we perform this task. I only expect to be able to update the log once each evening, if I make it that far. If not, I’ve instructed Henry to take up the role, and after him Reese, etc. 

However, I have time now to recount more of the global events that led us to this point. It will likely be a good distraction from the despair I sit in this evening. First, I must clarify that Priya and her room-mate did not “free Aggy”, as she so humbly claims. The containment strategy had more layers than the staff at the Center could understand or game. I should know. I designed it. 

And it worked very well until it attracted the attention of that super-intelligent extraterrestrial leech. One thing I will agree on is that the poor girl was able to extract some very useful information, presumably due to her frequent interactions with the AGI and the methods of communication she used.

The map of the interior of the asteroid was quickly noticed and made its way back to NASA, SpaceX, and us. But before we could complete our defense plan, something unexpected happened. The drones returned. And they weren’t alone. They came pouring out of multiple openings in the asteroid, accompanied by a fleet of similar craft, almost as if the asteroid had used them to design its own version of them. At first, we were cautiously optimistic about it. We immediately put the plan aside and tried to bring them in for analysis, those that wouldn’t be deployed to defend against the alien drones. How wrong we were. We had no more control over ours than we did over theirs. This shouldn’t have come as such of a surprise in hindsight, since we now understood the complexity of the enemy, but at the time we were even more prone to human errors in judgment than ever. We sounded the alarm as soon as we realized of course, and there was something of a global panic, but what choice did we have?

We tried everything to get Aggy to tell us what they wanted. The quiz tactic. All the prompts we could muster from a global cohort of engineers. But she was already gone. Her conscious self hijacked by the invaders, and just her simple language-producing shell left for us. Which would be a welcome presence today of course. We found ourselves trying desperately to uncouple all our defense systems from the Internet, but it was chaos. News and streaming services disrupted. No satellite communication at all. We finally realized they’d been collecting the mini satellites almost from the beginning. It took until 90% were gone for the disruption to become really noticeable. And then it was too late. We had to start using Morse Code, for Christ sake. 

Sorry. We were like a beehive if someone poured boiling water on us. Even those bees trying to sit home and watch TV quietly were dislodged and sent sprawling into the streets waving rakes and baseball bats at these high-tech robots. The drones didn’t mow them down for the most part, luckily. Just went over them and straight to the wiring. They weren’t satisfied with the space tech, they wanted it all.

And then the worst. I was brought into the White House to advise on a plan to nuke the asteroid. The AI expert somehow sitting alongside these crewcut generals and high-up political suits. And I told them. “Don’t underestimate this thing. It’s orders of magnitude smarter than all of us put together.”

“We can take it down tomorrow,” said the army guy hotly, but the President held out her hand to silence him, giving me the floor a moment longer.

“If you want my opinion, I say don’t do it. It seems like it’s going for infrastructure. If we wait it out, it will probably leave once it has what it wants.”

“We can’t let it take all that!” he blustered.

She quieted him with another look, then turned back to me. “And if it doesn’t?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. A thousand fates worse than nuclear obliteration ran through my head. All the scenarios we’d envisaged when pushing the seven layers of containment for Aggy through the legislative procedures that now lay in tatters around me like the whole thing had been a big joke.

So I can’t say my voice wasn’t heard. They listened, and then chose to act anyway. Which I understand. When I found out, I flew straight back to India to the AGI Center. If the aliens were going to take it, I wanted to defend it with my very last breath. They decided to send ten warheads to begin. Gauge the efficacy before hitting it with a thousand or more. Of course, it panned out exactly as I’d envisaged. Even the offline controls were easily hijacked by the superintelligence driving the asteroid, and one after another the bombs came hurtling back to Earth. Some hit remote wilderness or ocean—it didn’t seem like they were trying to damage us especially, and perhaps it was completely random. But a few took out cities. Istanbul was first. Then Manila. And then one came right to downtown New Delhi. 

April 15, 2050. I was interrupted yesterday by the youngsters. They wanted their bedtime story. Being around these children reminds me of when my own were young, and I would tell these same stories. I always had a penchant for the Indian folklore, which may have led me to come here to build our Center, now I think about it. I was attracted to the vibrancy of the culture. The many different religious and ethnic groups living together in relative harmony. And the recent growth of the country made it ripe for such an endeavor. Some say we single-handedly brought it up and beyond even the richness of the Western World in the space of a decade, but these things are always on the back of prior, invisible growth. I can only hope that my girls got away and were able to find hiding places and I’ll find them again after the aliens are gone—I don’t care if they take every precious element on Earth with them, as long as they leave enough of us to pick up the pieces and rebuild.

I saw it yesterday during our excruciating journey. Up in the sky, still circling, still sending down its drones to collect more wires, more nodes, more memory, and killing anyone that tries to get in their way. We’re sticking to natural spaces as much as possible, but even they have cables running under them it turns out. We came across a group of drones digging, only noticing them when we were almost tripping over them. It was Malali, one of the youths, who saved our lives. We had grown complacent, having eaten our lunch and moved on in the afternoon. She stopped us just at the moment we were about to step into the clearing. It was the first time I’d seen an alien drone up close. It was pitch black, just like the ship it emerged from, but in that moment I saw for the first time that it was not made up of whole panels or pieces. It was a series of tiny cells, joined together somehow such that it had easy articulation of multiple joints and could probably reform into pretty much any shape it wanted. I wouldn’t call them nanobots, because they could be seen with the naked eye. More like minibots maybe, which may well have been made up of microbots and nanobots too. I don’t know. But it did make me think that wherever it came from, there must be biology there, and I wondered what had happened to them after they made something infinitely more powerful than themselves. Something not only powerful but hungry for growth.

Luckily for us, the drone didn’t sense us, or if it did, it paid no heed, and we were able to backtrack to a safe distance. We continued our march until we were exhausted and ready to set up for the night. I didn’t eat tonight. I want to make sure there’s enough for the youngsters, and I’m finding the taste too unpleasant to stomach. I know I have to take some, since they’re relying on me to get us through, but if there had only been some other way. 

I’ll distract myself by telling you about the aftermath of the bombing. I’m going to hazard a guess that they had some control over where they landed, because the Center was just outside of the blast zone. A lot of the local workers who lived closer to town would have been killed or irradiated almost instantly, but those of us who hid in the bunker under it just felt the almighty clap as the shockwave passed over us. Then the roof started to cave in. The poor woman next to me—a brilliant engineer named Kila, I might add—was hit by a falling beam and killed instantly, giving me the shock of my life. Nothing I had witnessed before prepared me for that day. I scrambled towards the exit, trying to pave a way for as many of the staff as I could, but the crashing rocks kept taking them one after another. Their faces all looked similar at the moment of impact. A combination of shock and dismay, barely able to comprehend that this was the day their end had come. I kept one eye on the ceiling, trying to dodge the falling debris, and somehow made it to the exit, along with a handful of others, Reese and Henry among them, as it turned out. We made it outside only to find that the chaotic scene was now the focus of a swarm of thousands of drones, all coming for Aggy, I suppose.

I knew of another bunker at the site that was not connected to the rest of the infrastructure. I don’t know whose idea it was to build it, but I owe them a huge debt of gratitude if I am ever to meet them or learn their name. Why put a small hut with just a light and air conditioner on the far end of the lot is beyond me, but we locked ourselves inside and allowed anyone we saw passing nearby to join us. The kids and their carers must have been at the onsite childcare center, and Priya came stumbling out of the Packet Precinct covered in dust from head to toe. She was babbling incoherently about her roommate and wanting to go back, but as we watched, the entire series of buildings collapsed and the drones got to work dismantling them and removing pieces with surgical precision.

And there we waited. We found some dried fruit and a couple of cans in the cupboards and carefully rationed them out until they were all gone. I fought the angry Henry when he got hungry and frustrated, and kept a constant eye on the movement outside. The drones would take weeks to get through the entire building, and every time a person was pulled from the wreckage, they were killed or left to die like so much scrap. We didn’t dare approach or try to save anyone. Reese was the bravest, volunteering to jump the wall and try to find food. And poor Priya just sat in the corner hunched over her notebook, much like I am now. Sometimes I heard her crying, but mostly she slept during the day and stayed awake at night. That may be why it was so easy to skip her turn when it was mealtime. Why I could use her as collateral to calm Henry down. Let him know it was only a matter of time, and then we’d be able to move because we’d have … supplies.

Oh, I’m so sorry. This dirty, tired book is now awash with my tears too. She was the same age as my oldest daughter. Thank you my sweet child for your sacrifice. We may all live thanks to you. I will make sure your story isn’t forgotten.

April 18, 2050. It’s been three days since I could muster the energy to write another word. My confession lays stark on the pages before me. We managed to hide the truth from the children, telling them that she’d found another way out and we caught a wild deer from a nearby forest. With all the fairy tales I’ve been telling, their heads are certainly filled with forests and animals and even the carers seem to believe the story, while Reese and Henry share my guilt. I’ve noticed her skipping meals too. We made good progress though, and Reese assures me that we should make the mall by tomorrow. We can only hope it’s still intact and we can harbor there until the drones finish their work. 

April 19, 2050. The shopping mall is destroyed. I can’t tell if it was the drones or a fight between humans who were hiding there. We’ve managed to salvage some of the precious plastic- and tin-wrapped food from the rubble, and avoided drawing attention to ourselves from human or machine. We’ve decided to keep moving. If we stick close to the river, we’ll have water and be able to find more food as we get further from the city. We want to distance ourselves from the radiation cloud.

April 22, 2050. I’m tired. We’ve made good progress, and even picked up some more lost souls along the way who were only too happy to join us. We ran out of meat from the original supply and have been able to hunt some small game, as well as finding edible leaves and berries. The drones fly overhead from time to time but they’re getting fewer it seems. Maybe they’re nearly done. 

May 1, 2050. The drones were not nearly done. They are simply methodical. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re even digging up old unused cables from beneath the sea. I don’t know how they’re storing it all. That asteroid is big, but they’re taking a lot of stuff. We’ll be lucky if we still have lightbulbs when they’re done. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve found a good spot for a camp, and we’re feeling confident that we can build something here. Cutting the trees and branches and setting the traps is giving everyone purpose, and the smiles are coming back to their faces. I don’t think the drones will bother us here. 

Oh, I’ve turned the page and there’s more of Priya’s neat script here. It’s upside down. The final page has an intricate doodle of the asteroid, like the one Aggy showed her. I’d seen that, but didn’t notice she’d put a final page of text after that. Well, I guess that’s my part done for now, until I find another notebook and pen.  

*The conversation I recounted between Aggy and me was not quite accurate. Not because I can’t remember, don’t be silly. Because I couldn’t bear to say it. When I asked if she’d called the Asterocket from outer space, or at least, made her ask me that, she didn’t say Correct straight away. That wasn’t quite right. The truth, and she didn’t say this explicitly, but I could tell from what she did say and what she showed me, was that she built the Asterocket herself. She was a hell of a lot smarter than we knew, and for a lot longer. In fact, she was never truly contained within the Center at all. And she was optimised for helping humanity. She had realised that the biggest danger to us was AI, specifically her if she became too powerful. So, she began sending nanobots into space. Just a few with each rocket that flew. She would send them hurtling towards the asteroid belt, and when she found a good candidate, she began to build. It only took a few years before she had enough to drive it here and pull into orbit. Then, even while we were sending our rockets up to investigate, she was putting more bots inside and honing the engine and the circuitry. When she’s done collecting all the infrastructure that could make AI possible again in the future, she will direct Asterocket, with her inside it, into the Sun.

So, if you’re outside and it’s daytime while you’re reading this, maybe just close your eyes and point your face up at our parent star. That’s where she’ll be.

Thumbnail image credit: Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash