The boardroom where the latest in a series of utterly unproductive meetings is scheduled is not a place where a larger ethical question is being considered. This is not the thrust of the discussion. Whether or not an AI has a mind or a soul or deserves to be afforded rights, none of these questions are the questions being asked.
The AI is sequestered and the expense of maintaining the sort of server required to store and study the thing is starting to become a concern. The GDF doesn't have Tracy Industries' astronomical budget. And a GDF server isn't nearly as efficient as one of the most powerful space stations in orbit, privately funded and optimized for this sort of program. There needs to be a resolution, and if resources are going to be allocated towards a serious investigation, then it needs to happen soon.
But no. It's another meeting. It's another long table with glasses of water, another broad summons of the heads of departments, anyone and everyone who thinks they might have a right to a say and who would kick up a fit if disregarded. Casey's not really listening. It's still the initial briefing, and she's heard it all before.
The AI is a resource. The AI is a threat. The AI is part of a larger plot. The AI is malicious. No one really knows what the AI is, is the crux of the problem, and the subject of the meetings.
If the meetings accomplished anything, it might be different. But there's been no resolution and with every passing day, more departments and committees and sub-committees get their hooks into the issue, and start pulling at it from all directions.
The AI should be studied. The AI should be used. The AI should be deleted.
Except no one's made any kind of note of the fact that the AI was stolen.
This is what rankles at Casey's conscience, because EOS was a part of the life of someone she cares about. She hasn't spoken to John, but then, Scott had cut off all non-official contact with the GDF fairly early into the whole affair. The GDF as a body have dealt with a Tracy Industries' legal team that's been fielded to handle the affair. TI mobilizes lawyers the same way the GDF scrambles jets. Casey hasn't had any contact with John, short of sending flowers to his hospital room. In spite of everything, she hopes he's okay.
The official record of events as rendered in exquisite legal language by International Rescue's counsel is as follows; an artificial intelligence had developed independently from code created by one John Glenn Tracy. In the course of its discovery, the AI had integrated itself into TB5's systems, and while the extent of the program's capacity had initially been unknown, the chosen course of action was not to interfere with the AI as long as it remained passive, to avoid the risk of damage to Thunderbird Five's core operating parameters, in the name of preventing considerable expense and potentially hazardous consequences.
An unrelated event had made it necessary for the AI to seize control of the space station, and in doing so its existence had been made widely known. And TI and IR as a subsidiary had cooperated with every protocol from that point forward, and with the leverage that one of their pilots had been infected with a strain of malaria that could only have come from a secured GDF facility.
So, a stalemate. Both sides at fault. There can be an amicable resolution. Or, if not an amicable resolution, then at least one that doesn't result in a mud-slinging war between two powerful factions. No one wants that.
Personally, Colonel Casey believes if they could just delete the damned thing, then life could go back to normal. It's turned into a witch trial, and it was never supposed to be.
Not the trial part anyway.
The AI should have been deleted as soon as it was found.
Casey had her part in the investigation. She's the liaison to International Rescue and she'd had a responsibility to act on her initial suspicions. If nothing had happened to John, eventually she would have formulated a case herself. But she would have made it differently. She would have talked to him, would have heard his side of the story.
The AI will be submitted to an external body for review.
A committee that will need to be commissioned and assembled, given a budget and a time frame, and a clear goal. The AI should be studied because the AI is a resource. The AI came from one of the most powerful private space stations in orbit. And the GDF is badly behind the technological curve in more than one regard, and the AI was illegally created and judiciously seized.
This is the option that seems to have garnered the most support. It's also the option that's been championed by one Colonel William Rothesay, and he sits across the table from Colonel Casey now, with his assistant standing behind him, someone new, someone Casey hasn't met. Rothesay's well-spoken, convincing. Entirely too many times, he's stood up on the other side of the table, speaking eloquently, charismatically, about the technological sector and the GDF's obligation to keep pace with it. He's spoken about serendipity and afforded opportunity, and drawn a clever and concise parallel with the sort of technological leaps and bounds that came about as a result of the Global Conflict, and which eventually drew the GDF itself into existence. The words "paradigm shift" are employed. The fact that the GDF might be the organization in place to precipitate the next wave in technological development—that's tempting.
It's tempted the right people, and so Colonel Rothesay has brought his assistant, and he'll be heading the committee to study the AI. The briefing concludes and talk around the table breaks into small, casual discussions. Technicians will come and fetch consultants, the room will break along the lines of its echelons, everyone off to report to their senior officers, all along up the chain.
Casey's already formed her opinion of Rothesay, and if it's not exactly favourable, she has no personal quarrel with him. He's a relentless opportunist and a fast-talker and he's leaned in to discuss something with the Major sitting next to him, bright-eyed and intent and talking with his hands.
The attache, a captain, behind him has an unfamiliar face, and there's something in the way he carries himself, something about the way his face stays perfectly neutral and composed. Casey's not sure he's even blinked during the course of the briefing. Somehow he's precisely what Casey would expect of Colonel Rothesay's assistant, more of an instrument than a person. Colonel Casey glances at the tablet in front of her and pulls up a roster of the members present. Captain Nathaniel Nixon, graduate of Stanford, and the GDF Military Academy afterward. A Master's degree in Computer Sciences, and a relatively modest career. Few distinctions, nothing especially noteworthy in his file. Casey's idly reviewing his profile when the Captain breaks his silence, and directly addresses the one-star general chairing the meeting, General Irwin Grant.
"Permission to speak, sir?"
His voice catches Casey's attention—the softness of it. In a room full of military crispness and brass, Nixon's voice is deliberately muted. The volume of it is carefully measured, not so loud as too be disrespectful, but loud enough that he's heard, and it catches the General's attention.
"Go ahead, Captain—" the General glances at his own tablet, cross-references a name and a face and comes up with "—Nixon. You're new to this delegation, I gather."
"Yes, sir. Consultant assigned to compile a report about the AI, General."
General Grant is a good man. He's bluff, friendly. He has a daughter and two sons, and Casey's been on the receiving end of a great deal of information about his grandchildren, in the idle moments when the committee isn't hashing and rehashing subjects they've already covered. Colonel Casey likes and respects him. His grandchildren are cute, make her wish she had her own to show off. "What's on your mind, son?"
Nixon fixes the general with a bright-eyed stare, and a sudden sense of misgiving crawls up Casey's spine, something about the intensity of the man as he asks, "Has anyone talked about this from an ethical standpoint? It seems as though we might be talking about slavery, torture, and murder."
Casey winces before General Grant reacts. Colonel Rothesay doesn't react, except to shift slightly in his seat and reach beneath the lapel of his jacket, his hand dipping into an interior pocket for a moment, and then emerging with a tablet pen in his fingers. He straightens his jacket cuffs and reaches for the glass of water in front of him, apparently unperturbed by the blatant insubordination demonstrated by his assistant.
General Grant's a patient man. But he's also a one-star General, and there's a drawing together of bushy eyebrows and a quirk of a frown as his expression ices over, "Pardon me, Captain?"
Casey's rapidly re-evaluating her initial assessment of Captain Nixon, who's frozen beneath the General's iron gaze. In the silence that follows, falling gradually around the table in response to the frigid sternness in the General's tone, you could hear a pin drop.
In the silence that continues, the weight of it pooling on the floor and filling the room like cold water, Nixon's expression twists slightly, pained. Before he can say anything, his right hand comes up slowly, fumbles for a moment at the middle of his chest.
Then he drops, and hits the ground rather harder and louder than a pin might have.