CU: Solar Sail

The score was nine-to-four. Two more losses and the match would be over. Arjun was really starting to sweat. But if his plan worked, the artifact would soon be the one feeling the heat.

When Arjun was a boy, he used to crouch on a rooftop overlooking the bazaar with a reflector taken from a car's headlamp. Made of cheap plastic, the reflector could be squeezed to adjust its focal point. Arjun enjoyed aiming it at the bald heads or exposed toes of unsuspecting people, giggling as his victims got antsy. One time he succeeded in setting a basket of dried nettles on fire. He never thought he would be resorting to such childish antics on an alien intelligence a hundred light years from home.

Only a few atoms thick, the solar sail used piezoelectricity to expand out to a flat disk over three miles in diameter. Its superb reflective qualities and adjustable curvature made it the perfect reflector. Catching the radiation from the red giant, it directed it back in a focused beam at the core of the artifact's gamemaster routine.

Arjun watched the center of the thermal map turn pure white as the temperature climbed beyond any previous threshold. "Now play a randomizing move," he said, trusting his instincts. Had it worked? The game appeared to tilt back and forth for a while, but with each move, the artifact's win probability dipped by a fraction. Then, on one move, it made an outright blunder that sent the odds soaring in the CU's favor. The final sequence of moves sealed it. The score was nine-to-five. Arjun felt a glimmer of hope. Could they possibly manage to win six more?

Even with this edge, Arjun knew he couldn't afford to let his guard down. Always assume your adversary is more cunning than you are, an adviser had once told him. Even with its game logic blunted, the artifact probably had access to a vast databank of patterns and optimal responses. They had to keep it off balance with bold, surprising play.

"Detecting thermal spikes in multiple sub-grids," Jain announced. The heat map zoomed out to show a larger area. Hot spots were starting to spread like measles. "It's distributing its processing."

"Shit," Arjun said. "Can we target them using that multi-focus trick you mentioned?"

"Only the ones that lie within the target radius." A circle appeared on the heat map showing the maximum extent. "The others are outside of range."

"Looks like we can roast about half of them." Would it be enough? "Proceed with targeting."

The next game Arjun started at a slow pace, choosing moves with the highest complexity rating regardless of their strategic consequences. Halfway through, he switched gears, playing rapid moves with aggressive attacks. The artifact floundered again.

Score: nine to six.

Xemesh: Minds

Minds need bodies. Bodies can be anything.

—Misuni's two laws

Lacking direct sensory input or manipulators, the consciousness of a Xemesh was both more detached and more attuned to its environment. Sensory inputs were not received through visual, auditory, or touch receptors but recorded as input streams laid down by Xants. As a result, Xemesh experienced no firsthand, subjective experience, or qualia. Xemesh did not feel the pleasant warmth of the sun or the wetness of raindrops. They did not register the redness of red or the stinky smell of sulfur.

Paradoxically, the lack of an experiential sensorium endowed the Xemesh with a perceptual range far more varied and nuanced than a human's. With an army of Xants creating a distributed sensory array, Xemesh constructed detailed mental maps of their environment, everything from soil and atmospheric conditions to the location of flora and movement of animals. Specialized Xants supplied visual input from different wavelengths and distances. Others provided hearing and chemical sensing. Some could sense the slightest of tremors, changes in humidity or air pressure, and even radioactivity. A Xemesh could simultaneously see out of a hundred eyes or hear from a hundred ears.

Xemesh had no equivalents to animal urges. They did not experience physical pain or pleasure, and they had no thirst, hunger, or sex drive. They did not sleep or feel drowsy. Missing too were emotions such as love, hatred, and disgust. They did not feel attachment or loss in any human sense. They were beings of pure logic—and yet they were not computers.

Xemesh had an active thought life with a rich imagination. They had drives of a sort and even obsessions. They experienced a kind of frustration when their goals were thwarted and felt something like boredom when they lacked fresh stimuli. They were elated to discover new phenomena and delighted in crafting theories. They were intensely curious. They created intricate patterns and mazes to challenge their intellect. They conducted experiments, methodically dissecting animals, mixing chemicals, and manipulating physical systems for the sake of discovering how the natural world worked. They were quintessential scientists.

Xemesh had long memories to fuel their ruminations. They were living librarians with vast databanks going back to Adam-Xemesh. Dissemination of new ideas was rapid. They had no need for formal spoken or written language. They could transfer information by sending over transcription Xants or through a direct exchange of mesh. Using their own knowledge to barter, Xemesh freely intermingled and swapped thoughts. And while Xemesh were fundamentally sex-less, they could spawn mind children with novel thought patterns that would lead them in unexplored directions.