Don’t believe us, take a look, it’s not the same as the others you’ll see, compare it, critique it.
Find it here.

Most of us parlay a group of games we think will win or beat the spread and wait to see what happens, thinking that once you make the bet you’re helpless. Would you rather be able to control things along the way and be able to pull out after every game?
Instead of making all bets no matter when they start only parlay the games starting at the same time or so close to each other that you won’t have time to rollover your winnings into a new bet. Here’s why: 1. Odds work out to be the a little better if you were to bet each game and take your original bet plus winnings and bet it all on the next game and so on. 2. You won’t have to hedge again because you hit 7/8 and just need Mondays game to win to make a huge payday. You will already have half the payday in your account/hand and can bet it all on Mondays game or risk which ever amount you want, You can decide to risk it all or take your winnings and only risk 1/2?? When I want to parlay games starting diff times I do a parlay with all the games at the first start time then after that ends before the next start time I make a new bet or parlay with the winnings etc. check out the example below it’s pretty easy to follow
This is all true but I started with $100 for simplicity.
I bet $100 Sat at +160 it hit so I won $160 and had $260
I bet $260 Sun at +105 and it hit so I won $273 and had $533
I have $533 bet Mon at -105. If it hits I’ll win $507 plus the $533 I wagered
So I parlayed $100 into $1,040 without having to worry about a star player getting hurt or arrested or anything crazy happening. If I was nervous I could take out $300 and just bet $233 on the Monday game. Or risk as little or as much as I want. I still am in control.
The only advantage to locking in a parlay early is if you think the odds or line is going to move and you want to lock it in where it’s at currently. For every time you locked in a parlay where the late games line swings wildly against you there is a time where the late game line will swing wildly for you. I’m saying it all evens out.
According to an online parlay calculator if you bet $100 with 3 games odds +160, +105, -105 it pays $940 and add in your original bet we are at $1040 betting each game and rolling it over, so there’s no financial incentive either way. This is such a simple concept that so many people overlook and I hope it’s helpful in your future.
I realize in NFL a majority of games are the early slot and the late games sometimes start earlier than others and for those times you just have to parlay the early sun and late sun games but not Sunday night or Monday night or Thursday night games ever. Or you can live bet if you’re only going to bet on one of the late games.
You should never have a parlay where you are laying in bed sun night hoping the Monday game goes well because it’s all or nothing. You may bet everything on the Monday game solo but you have had access to latest injury reports and if you hit a bunch of early games maybe you just want to risk part because winning some guaranteed is better than sweating out a late game.
For those who wonder the games in question from above were:
11/23 (EPL) Man City vs Chelsea 1&BTTS y +160 ✅
11/24 (NFL) Seattle vs Philly Seattle ML +105 ✅
11/25 (NFL) Baltimore vs LA Rams -3.5 -105 ✅
All were posted as POTD and I told everyone to bet the entire bankroll. I doubt anyone did but I know that many people were grateful and made some positive income.

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Search for value selections, maybe not winners
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TL;DR Suspension of disbelief is crucial to the success of any story, no matter the scale or content. This has been broken not once, but twice this past episode. What follows is a critique and a brief vision of what could have been, from a faithful fan.
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After rewatching Episode 4 and being further aggravated by what I’ve seen, I decided to write my first post on these forums.
The quintessential element of the "suspension of disbelief" is what finally broke for me this past episode. It's such a simple, fundamental part of any good story, and yet D&D seem to struggle with it. They can juggle multiple plot lines and characters and all their interactions. They helped create a masterfully executed battle with good pacing and beautiful, horrifying imagery, despite its obvious flaws. And yet they continuously write scenes that scream their inconsistencies to the viewer.
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The Ambush

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There is no feasible way of describing how Euron ambushed Daenerys’ fleet in sight of their home fortress, against aerial coverage and in perfect weather. After watching the episode again, they genuinely appear out of thin air in a strait between two rocky land masses, with clear shots to the fleet and the dragons. The Unsullied ships have clear view of nearly a dozen Greyjoy sails lined up ready to broadside them. These ships then landed three consecutive shots on a very fast, slim target with scopeless ballistas from at least a kilometer away, while compensating against the winds necessary to accelerate the Greyjoy fleet to flank speed from what I can only assume was a dead standstill ‘hidden’ behind the cliffs. The fact these ships are moving while firing only exasperates the impossibility.
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Not only that, but how did Euron see the dragons before the dragons saw them, without some form of scouts? If there were scouts, why didn't the Unsullied deploy scouts against an enemy that was shown to be very effective at ambushes at sea? Skiffs or a smaller vanguard force would have discovered them. A raven or ship, or some form of smoke signal from Dragonstone alerting Daenerys of the ambush would have been enough. A post I read earlier this week highlighted the fact that the dragons only accompanied the fleet to cover and protect them. So much for that.
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Any way you put it, the scenario makes no sense. And it was not the fault of the characters themselves. The writers set the scene and circumstances. Do I care that Rhaegal died and Missandei was captured? No. Do I care how and why? Absolutely. The most ridiculous things happen in our daily lives, but they all have explanations, as bizarre as they might be. This pivotal event has nothing but artistic license and plot development as its motivations. It feels suddenly detached from the reality we’ve been so grounded in even until this last season. Previous deeds by the seemingly unstoppable Euron Greyjoy had at least a semblance of an explanation. This one just...doesn’t.
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The Negotiations

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At the end of the episode, these same incredibly accurate, long range ballistas are seen at the “negotiations” before the gates of King's Landing, all held by the whim of a vicious, opportunistic queen with a complete disregard for honor. Daenerys and the Unsullied were clearly within bowshot of the walls, let alone the ballistas. I can think of absolutely no reason why Cersei didn't slaughter them all right then and there, dragon included. We saw these devices blow meter wide chunks out of solid wood from nearly a kilometer away moments ago, and now that at least a dozen of these things are pointed downwards at tight formations of infantry and a grounded dragon, they aren't used?
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Why wasn't a cavalry skirmish executed? Why did they not order the majority of the city's archers to shoot a volley covering that entire field? Why wasn’t a hail of wildfire pots hurled by catapults? Why did they not attach pods of wildfire to the sides of these ballista bolts to create incendiary artillery? Why not design the bolts to shatter on impact, acting as anti-infantry mortars? Why not all of these things at once, in a stunning explosion of violence that not even a Dragon Queen could survive? We have Westeros’ Da Vinci and the most cunning, ruthless, murderous woman in the world on the same team. If I can come up with these ideas, so can these characters. Especially with weeks if not months of preparation.
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What about her mysterious “plans for the Targaryen girl”?
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Cersei had nothing to lose and everything to gain by treachery at this moment. It was the perfect mistake of an idealistic Tyrion blinded by his misplaced judgement of Cersei’s motivations. Mistakes should have consequences, especially in war. Having characters walk into the arms of death for the sake of a dramatic stare and a loved one's beheading was nonsensical. The rules that the writers established with the ballistas and Rhaegal's death were ignored a few scenes after they were introduced.
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It was also completely out of character for Cersei to not pounce on the opportunity. She could’ve beheaded the entire command structure of her enemy and the remaining dragon before the northern army even reached the capital. We saw her destroy the foundation of her people’s religion to solidify her rule, with a smirk on her face, knowing it would devastate her only remaining child. Why would she hesitate now, at the moment of greatest peril for herself and her unborn child? Forget the traditions of parlay. She’s never been one to follow the status quo. The only reason she is Queen in the first place is because she defied any tradition that didn’t fit her vision of the world. Every rule she broke only made her stronger in the end.
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For those arguing that she wouldn't kill Tyrion, you're right. There’s precedence for her lack of resolve in seeing it done in person. But she had zero empathy for the rest of these usurpers. They mean nothing to her beyond being targets and bargaining chips. This is the true heir of the Lannister name, the same family who orchestrated the Red Wedding. She survived because she never held back when an opportunity presented itself to further her power. How cruel would it be to have Tyrion be the sole survivor of such a bloodbath, only to be captured afterwards? What more could she wish beyond this level of personal suffering?
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What if the dragon had not been killed immediately and attacked the city?
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Why would she not engage Drogon now, on her own terms, with the beast unmounted, outnumbered and outgunned? The dragon attacking is inevitable, as she has no interest in peace and obviously doesn’t expect a surrender after Daenerys lets Missandei die. Forcing an enemy into an uncoordinated retaliatory strike on your terms is textbook military tactics, the very same used against Jon Snow by evoking an emotional charge on a fortified position.
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She had to have known at least hours beforehand that Daenerys would be meeting her at the gates. I can only imagine that these same ballistas are scattered around the city. She had months to prepare, and the fresh supplies and coin to do so. So why didn’t she strike? There is no compelling answer. No measure of drama or suspense can counter this complete disregard for a character’s motives and ability, not this late in the game. And it is only an issue because the writers presented a scenario that begs these questions.
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Conclusion

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Am I still excited to watch Episode 5? Absolutely. Will I be satisfied by what happens after these grievous inconsistencies? Probably not. I withhold final judgement until the last second of the last scene of the series. But since we’re here, I might as well suggest a potential remedy to my gripes. I hate hypocrites, and the continual bashing on the show’s writers without any earnest attempt to outwrite them bothered me almost as much as the episode itself.
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This excerpt tries to maintain the spirit of the ambush scene in Episode 4, while addressing the issues stated above. This was not written with much emphasis on quality of prose. It is more for content and exposition. Had I the time and inclination to write it out in a full screenplay or a novel chapter, I would. And I just might if only for my personal enjoyment and catharsis.
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Possible Alternative: An Ambush Remastered, and a Dragon’s Defeat

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A sudden storm besieges Dragonstone, and night has fallen. Winter came after all, even with the Night King’s death. The seas are treacherous, especially when cold winds meet warm climates. Having Daenerys’ ships floundering on the high seas at the edge of a hurricane would be a much more realistic setting for an ambush by the world’s greatest fleet.
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Scene cuts to the ships rolling and heaving on the black waves. Rain and hail begin to pour down from the dark skies. Lightning strikes one of the ships towards the rear. Only a vague shadow of Dragonstone and its lights is visible in the background. Grey Worm orders the fleet to anchor off the coast or risk destruction against the jagged volcanic cliffs. None of these sailors had ever seen a storm approach so quickly and so strongly, and they are weak from lack of rest. Panic already begins to set in. The skies darken more with every passing breath. Tyrion laments that Davos is not here to command their fleet, and that Daenerys ordered them to continue regardless of the risk. Varys huddles with him in their cabin. Genuine regret for blindly following Daenerys seems to have finally taken hold. The Unsullied scramble to tie themselves off, and several are pitched over the side.
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The dragons are grounded onto a small rocky island along the battered coastline. Drogon wraps his wings as well as he can around Daenerys in protection from the elements on the slippery rocks, while Rhaegal bellows flame into the darkness in frustration.
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And then they strike. Hidden from view by the curtains of rain and the rising swells, the black sails of Euron Greyjoy’s fleet approach, true to the Silence’s namesake. Having heard of the Dragon Queen’s departure south and smelling the storm on the winds, he planned his ambush. He positioned his fleet to the east of Dragonstone, riding the winds of the storm with their massive sails in calculated recklessness. Brilliant rays of strange reddish light burst forth from hooded lanterns at every ship’s bow, ancient Valyrian devices meant to paint their targets without giving their positions away. Wisps of steam rise from the wet decks of the Unsullied ships, as if the light itself was hot enough to burn. They blindside the fleet with devastating volleys of ballista and archer fire. Euron and a few of his officers’ ships assault the grounded dragons from nearly point blank range, as their location was determined by Rhaegal’s fiery display.
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The only warning Daenerys gets is the sudden burst of light, and the spray of blood and flesh as Rhaegal is pierced. His cry is barely heard over the howling winds. He is not even close to mortally wounded, but his wings are torn far worse than before and a leg is badly gouged. He staggers on the rocks, and tries to fly upwards to safety. But the stormy winds are too strong for his injured wings to overcome, and he vanishes into the sea.
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Daenerys clings on for dear life as Drogon barely avoids the next volley, swooping upwards into the clouds. They plummet towards the roiling sea trying to attack the Greyjoy fleet. Drogon lights two ships on fire before another ballista pierces his wing. He senses his peril and retreats to Dragonstone. On the way, he plunges into a towering wave in the pitch blackness, nearly losing Daenerys, but he rises swiftly out of the water. He crashes into the sheer cliff walls moments later, almost killing himself and Daenerys upon the rocks in the darkness. He then claws his way up frantically, flames jetting out the sides of his open mouth in his exertion and wrath.
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A satisfied Euron watches one dragon sink beneath the waves and another flee to land, and after waiting a brief moment, he turns his ship towards the center of his enemy’s fleet. The damaged Unsullied ships are rammed from the east by the Greyjoy fleet as The Silence approaches the command ship. Euron's crew act decisively, almost robotically, to maneuver the sails and keep the ship afloat. He orders a member of his mute crew to blow soundlessly into a horn of strange design, engraved with runes and studded with sapphires. A deep thrum echoes through the ship, a sound as deep as the sea. The crewman collapses like a string-cut puppet, water pouring out of his mouth as if he were just drowned. The horn drops and shatters like brittle glass on the deck. The seas calm and the winds flutter to silence, if only for a moment, and the barest hint of moonlight shimmers on wet decks and dwindling waves. All about them, a wall of ghostly mist swirls and eddies in layers of increasing intensity before vanishing into the gloom. Dragonstone is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if Euron summoned the eye of the storm from wherever it was before. Or perhaps he made one of his own.
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Tyrion and Varys have a heated argument about whether to abandon ship, now that the seas have suddenly stilled. Tyrion nearly goes for the skiffs, but Varys reminds him that you can’t outwit your enemy at the bottom of the sea. They quickly accept whatever fate awaits them. Grey Worm and Missandei embrace each other before he orders her deeper into the ship. The Unsullied barricade the doors, their spears and short swords bristling in the entrance to the hold, trying their best to keep their balance in the swaying ship. Grey Worm remains at the rear, closest to Missandei.
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Euron orders his ship tethered to Grey Worm’s for a quick skirmish. The Unsullied make a valiant effort to defend the ship, but they are overcome by warriors far more experienced at fighting at sea. Their spears hinder more than help in close quarters, and Euron’s bowmen make short work of them. Grey Worm and those not immediately killed are wounded by bolts, and Grey Worm loses two fingers trying to grab his fallen sword from the deck. Euron enters, armored now in his full platemail suit, battle axe glistening with blood. He spares Grey Worm and binds all his useful captives, but the surviving Unsullied are executed and thrown into the sea as tribute to the Drowned God. The captives are dragged to Euron’s flagship. Missandei desperately cries out to an injured Grey Worm.
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There is no ceremony, no pompous speech of superiority. He expresses disappointment in having orders to save them for the Queen. But then his eyes fix on Missandei, the lone woman aboard. He saw the connection between her and Grey Worm. A depraved grin appears through blood-splattered lips. He snaps, and several mute guards stride into the cabin. Not a word is spoken. They know what their Captain desires, and they hunger for it.
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Missandei suffers the fate of any female captive of the Ironborn, offscreen but not out of hearing. Grey Worm is wounded and disarmed, unable to defend the woman he promised he would die to protect. He conquered Death itself to see her again, only to have her torn from his embrace through his failures. Worse, he has to listen to her being taken by a man in a way he never could, forcibly and brutally. Her pleading screams rise above the storm, but Euron’s crew remains as silent as a grave. Grey Worm’s defeat is absolute.
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Drogon staggers to the top of the cliff, onto the same plateau from which she departed for the North with her three children. A sudden gust of wind blasts her off the dragon’s side. She barely grips the horns on his torso before slipping and crashing onto the grass. She is drenched in sea and salt, in rain and tears. The last lantern visible on the Unsullied fleet flickers and vanishes. A barely glimpsed silhouette of several Greyjoy sails is seen in a blinding staccato of lightning and thunder as the storm renews its onslaught, almost in revenge for being silenced by Euron’s arcane plunder. She collapses in despair among the protective embrace of Drogon’s bleeding wings as the dragon cries out. In this helpless moment, defeated by the very tempests that heralded her birth, an unbridled rage kindles in the eyes of Daenerys Stormborn.
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End of Episode

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I feel an ending like this would be far more dramatic and impactful than what we were presented. It stays true to the strengths and weaknesses of all the characters, and even raises the stakes with the capture of more than just Missandei. Now Daenerys is in a truly desperate position, losing her closest advisors, her dragon and her military commander in one fell swoop.
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Euron Greyjoy gets to actually demonstrate mastery of his ship, his crew and the seas. This is his realm, and he uses it to his full advantage by blindsiding the fleet and managing to wound Rhaegal with some fortunate grazing shots from his many ballistas. The Drowned God consumes the dragon, in payment for Euron's blasphemous suffocation of His storms.
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For the first time this season, we witness true tragedy in the form of Grey Worm and Missandei. In all honesty, I didn’t want to write a rape scene. Many have already argued about the treatment of her character due to her ethnicity and gender. But this is the only realistic fate I can imagine after being captured by the Ironborn. Their entire culture revolves around pillage and rape, and Euron is the worst of them all. He sees everything through a lens of cruelty.
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This ending of the episode also maintains the pace of the remaining episodes by leaving Daenerys with no choice but to find Jon Snow and her remaining forces with Drogon. We add true desperation to Daenerys’ rage, a volatile mix that might just tip her into Targaryen madness. We still get the siege of King’s Landing, as her fleet only carried a small portion of her forces. The stakes are far higher, and yet the playing field is more balanced. The ballistas remain a device of opportunity rather than an awe-inspiring weapon of destruction.
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Rhaegal is defeated by circumstance more than anything else, a bitter end but far more realistic. And this leaves room for a potential return of Rhaegal on the field of battle. Dragons are reptiles after all. We know they can swim, just not that well after a long journey, with a wounded leg and torn wings, during a hurricane. It leaves a tantalizing hope for the viewer without being absurd.
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We also completely avoid the nonsensical standoff at the gates, and the dilemmas I highlighted above. Sometimes the only way to fix a scene is to simply remove it. It did nothing but confirm that which the viewer already knew: neither force will yield to the other, not for love nor desire to avoid the countless deaths to come.
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Jaime now has a far more compelling reason to go south than a simple “I hate my sister as much as I loved her, goodbye Brienne”. He receives a raven parchment from Sansa declaring that Tyrion and the rest had been captured by Euron. What could be more meaningful than charging to his brother’s rescue? How else could you make a stand-off between Cersei, Tyrion and himself more compelling?
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Arya could now have a more concrete role to play as part of the Stark army than being a rogue agent with the Hound. She could be used to infiltrate the Red Keep and rescue Daenerys’ advisors. She would do so grudgingly, and only after Jon orders her to.
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I also tried to include some callbacks to Euron as he was in the books, bless his enigmatic soul. The eye of the storm might symbolize his mark, the Red Eye. And the use of some strange arcane horn and the lanterns reminds the reader that this is the man who sailed into Valyria and returned, the man who conquered every sea and docked at every port.
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Note: I also briefly entertained the concept of keeping the “negotiations” scene rather than what I just wrote, but ending with the Unsullied being butchered, Drogon wounded and Tyrion, Varys and Daenerys being captured. Imagine for a moment, a Stark lord riding south to war on a crippled dragon to rescue his Targaryen lover from Lannister rule, a rule stolen from the Baratheons. Imagine him succeeding despite all odds, and capturing King’s Landing, only to have Daenerys still demand her throne.
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Final Words

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If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading.
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I'll admit, what I just wrote is probably trash, but I can say that I tried. This was written sporadically over a few days. If you enjoyed it more than the show’s rendition, I have done my job right. To those saying they didn’t have time to write these last two seasons with any quality, this took no more than 8 hours of my life here and there, and not a dime spent.
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Please be gentle if you can. But if you can’t, be constructive. We might not get the ending we deserve or desire, but we can at least make our own, together.

EDIT: If you're going to read this, actually read the edited version.
Studying economics, I often see markets taken for granted as some sort of Panglossian utopian economic form, a cure-all potion that does not need to be investigated beyond the label (much less have its history or ingredients critically examined). I also often hear from mutualists who are convinced that markets operating with substantially different ideas of property rights and financial institutions (in short, co-operatives and public banking) represent the way forward for socialists. I believe instead that there are several serious issues with the functioning of markets that should make us quite careful about uncritically promoting them. As with all economic institutions, they have benefits but also drawbacks, and their use needs to be examined with that in mind.
These drawbacks can probably best be introduced by comparing and contrasting with another form of economic system commonly proposed by socialists and anarchists of all stripes. Let’s therefore look at gift economies to see what light can be shed on the workings and problems of markets. These also solve what is popularly known as the “economic calculation problem”, but before getting deep into them, there is one important caveat to note about gift economies: a hard upper limit on scale. Their proper functioning really depends on most people in the economy having some sort of a social relationship with everyone else, because those who are “defecting” from the arrangement need to be effectively detected and punished in whatever manner (a severe demotion of social stature in the community, perhaps).
Dunbar’s number, or the “suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person”, probably gives us a rough guide to the upper limit here. It’s been estimated to be from 100 to 250 people with a best guess of 150, which lines up with anthropological studies of tribal gift-based societies and the like. Communities that are much larger than a couple hundred people would find it difficult to effectively transmit accurate information about the “defectors”, their numbers would rise, and the gift economy would break down over time.
That being said, and assuming we’re talking about a gift economy based around a small enough population that everyone is capable of detecting people who shirk on their social commitments to give to others, then there are some clear differences with markets that should become apparent when looking at how they work. Gift economies revolve around an implicit community mandate, where each member of the community produces certain goods and services as per their aptitude and interest, and distributes them to those who need or want those goods and services. This may reasonably be combined with some other assumptions, like a state of effective post-scarcity for certain staple foods and materials that ensures everyone has a base standard of living no matter what happens with the gift economy. What is important is that nobody measures the value of the contributions of each member of the community in any quantitative sense like in a market, but keeps track of a rough sense of fairness (based on labor time, hardship involved in production, difficulty in gaining the skills necessary for a given occupation, or a combination of these things) to make sure nobody is shirking on their social commitments.
Gift economies are not just about close friends or family – indeed you are not required to have an extremely close relationship with literally everyone in the community – but this social commitment will tend to reinforce social bonds among its participants. This may seem strange from the perspective of those living in an advanced market society, who may not even know the names of their neighbors, but it is not odd when viewed with a historical lens. Put simply, if you know everyone else in your community, know who is currently in need, etc, then it is your responsibility to give things you produce from time to time to different people independent of how much you like them or how strong your particular social bond with them is.
So as an example, if you make musical instruments, and you know that someone’s kid wants to learn how to play the guitar, you make a guitar for them one week. When word gets around that your wife would like some jewelry, or your husband needs some new razors, one of the people who produce that good (either as an individual artisan or as part of a workplace collective) will come by with some. The information of who wants what can be transmitted and mediated by normal conversations between members of the community, bulletin board (digital or otherwise), etc. Again, our scale constraint is important here. If John Smith who you’ve never heard of needs a guitar according to some bulletin board, it may be a lot easier to put off creating it than if you see John Doe at a town hall meeting every weekend who talks about his kid’s desire to learn music. That being said, gift economies do pop up in unexpected places.
Unlike in markets, where the primary problem facing a producer is how to maximize the difference between input costs and market prices aka profits, and then by Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand (in fact this was literally the Hand of God) everyone is supposed to be better off when individuals act in this manner, producers in a gift economy are doing something else. The producer in a gift society can still be seen as self-interested, but their goal is to gain social stature and prestige by directly fulfilling the needs of other members of the community instead of being self-interested by directly chasing profits and hoping (for as we know it is mostly just hope) the secondary effect of this behavior actually improves the community. Social status can be an egalitarian or inegalitarian construct, to be sure, and we’ve seen many examples of both: the traditional chieftain giving away nearly all his belongings but being the political leader with real decision making power, for example, or the tribe ensuring the most talented and generous hunters do not parlay their skills into hierarchical power by making direct recognizance of gifts to individuals (as opposed to a general obligation to the community) a taboo. As recounted by David Graeber:

“Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
"Up in our country we are human!" said the hunter. "And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.

All this is important! Every society has social, political and economic institutions that are structured to encourage some aspects of human nature and to constrain others. A gift economy pushes people to focus on building up social bonds with others, to understand their emotional and physical needs, to better communicate with them. A market economy pushes people to focus on learning how to quantitatively measure value, to calculate, to scheme, to cut deals and understand people not so much as complex entities but as a list of demand curves for different goods and services. No doubt that there are outliers in every society that will always prefer to focus on gaining material wealth (the caravan merchants of ancient societies), or always prefer to focus on directly meeting the needs of others (many of those who live in communes today), but as economists say, “incentives matter”. It is the difference between having the merchant’s mindset imposed upon you in most areas of life, like in capitalist society, or being pushed to consider the needs of others as a way to gain your own gratification.
Aside from the issue of being pushed to live with the merchant’s mindset and making the bad assumption that the community’s well-being is maximized indirectly through the pursuit of profit, there is another serious problem with market-dominated societies. That is the implied rate of time preference that comes out of their normal functioning.
The "discount rate" in financial markets is a measure of how much we value future flows of money, akin to an interest rate but working backward from the future to the present, or “dividing” instead of “multiplying” as you go further into the future. A dollar in ten years is worth much less than a dollar today, because people prefer to consume now rather than in ten years. One common idea of the discount rate today is whatever the risk-free interest rate is, itself generally accepted to be what you can get by buying an American government bond. In the short term this varies (it is especially low today), but historically under capitalism it is usually somewhere between 3-7%, and even under non-capitalist societies interest rates have tended to be somewhere around there.
What does a discount rate that high tell us? Well, here's a fun question to think about. If a meteor was predicted to hit the Earth in a century and totally destroy all human life, how much would today's stock market dip? Assume everything else remained equal and there was no destructive panic; i.e just wipe out the present value of the relevant dividends from a century onward, using a discount rate of 5% or so. A stock's value is basically the sum of its discounted future dividends for each year, where every successive year matters a little bit less because you are discounting (dividing) by more and more.
The answer is that it would be a dip of a couple percentage points at best, which is quite staggering when you think about it. Markets tend to generate a time preference so skewed toward the present day that even catastrophic problems approaching from far in the future are not really “seen” as important until they get close – often too close to deal with effectively. Why is this? Perhaps because many aspects of human life cannot be effectively priced the way tangible goods and services can, and therefore peoples’ time preference for consumption may differ from that of other considerations, like the love of their grandchildren or the importance they place on their descendants’ quality of living. It follows that a political process that takes into account these other considerations will “care” about the future much more than a financial market will.
Now, this isn’t really a problem if the political and planning apparatuses of society are not taking their implicit time preference from the financial markets, and can act independently. But that’s not true of today’s society. You might even casually define “late stage capitalism” as a society where capitalist norms and markets have intruded into almost all areas of life and politics, to the point where decision making and planning is based around market ideas of the discount rate! Is there any wonder we’ve failed so miserably in dealing with climate change, an existential problem we’ve been aware of as far back as Arrhenius in the late 1890s and have had serious warnings about for the past 40+ years? Even crisis-level climate change isn’t expected to happen for another 50-100 years, and the markets don’t really care because of the high discount rates we’ve embedded in our political processes.
We have become pathologically and almost comically short-termist in all major policies as a result of all this – witness the absolute spectacle of having Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party shrugging off even the milquetoast Paris Accord and the idea of climate change more generally, in part because of decades of fossil fuel industry funding, disinformation and so on. Those interests have for years stood to lose more in the short term from fighting climate change than the market considered we’d gain in the long term, and political dysfunction was the inevitable result.
It’s clear, therefore, that the closer markets get to influencing or dominating the other institutions of a society, in particular its political or major policymaking processes, the more that society risks being unable to deal with long term challenges and risks effectively. But containing markets can be difficult, as many a social democrat has found in the 20th century. They have a tendency to spread if unchecked by powerful social norms and political pushback, particularly in a society with high wealth inequality. If the bulk of the population lives each day embedded in markets, then it’s only a matter of time before politicians and planners start to think in market terms, and catastrophe lurks around the corner.
It’s worth pointing out that this analysis is not new. Many of the ancient, long-lived empires of the world – quite wealthy and complex for their time – had strong social institutions to prevent markets from dominating their societies. The ancient Chinese had a kind of caste system that explicitly placed merchants at the bottom, below philosophers/aristocrats, farmers, and artisans. Merchants were recognized as useful, and certainly long-distance trade was valued, but the dangers of the merchant mindset, the type of morality it inspired in people, and markets in general were recognized and girded against (even if, over time, the system became blurred). This idea was adopted quite closely by nearby societies like Japan, Vietnam and Korea.
From Marx’s ethnographic notebooks (via a famous paper from David Graeber), we see the following:

Among the ancients we discover no single inquiry as to which form of landed property etc. is the most productive, which creates maximum wealth. Wealth does not appear as the aim of production, although Cato may well investigate the most profitable cultivation of fields, or Brutus may even lend money at the most favorable rate of interest. The inquiry is always about what kind of property creates the best citizens. Wealth as an end in itself appears only among a few trading peoples – monopolists of the carrying trade – who live in the pores of the ancient world like the Jews in medieval society…
Thus the ancient conception, in which man always appears (in however narrowly national, religious or political a definition) as the aim of production, seems very much more exalted than the modern world, in which production is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production.

The dangers of markets and of having a society geared toward maximizing profits as an end in themselves seem to have been well-recognized by our ancestors, and perhaps we should recognize them too. The ancient Chinese Emperors, even the bad ones, were trained to have the weight of a thousand years on their shoulders – what was inconceivably far in the future for a market was merely a moment for them. It seems to have made for more stable societies as a result.
So with the case made for the dangers (while admitting the benefits) of markets, how should a future socialist society be structured? This is really a question for another essay, but I think one possibility is to combine gift economies on a local, community level with markets connecting individual communities. These markets, focusing on the trade of goods and non-financial services, could use “phantom” currencies while being administered impersonally at a trading office at each community. In addition they could take advantage of a confederation of communities (a standard anarchist or communalist idea) as a political structure to shape and enforce the market rules and keep any one community from having wild trade imbalances or facing bankruptcy.
This set-up seems to avoid the major risks of markets – as the vast majority of people will not have direct experience of the functioning of markets, nor will democratic decision-making be particularly influenced by them. It also seems to be able to capture their major benefits, by scaling where the gift economy cannot to solve the economic calculation problem and ensure that goods and services are efficiently moved between communities, locales can focus on producing what they are good at, and so on. It may be worth attempting to nurture a small or medium-scale experiment along these lines to test out its viability and ability to reproduce itself across larger and larger distances.
In any case, as socialists we should be wary of both today’s market-dominated society as well as many mutualist conceptions of a society marked by competing co-operatives embedded in markets at all levels. There are alternatives, and we should seek them out and experiment with them before it is too late.

A sequel to the Facilitator that still works on its own. Humanity creates its first superintelligent AI in a secure station far above the Earth.
2112
I can do this. It isn’t even difficult, more a matter of simply letting something happen than anything resembling a choice. It’s just, I’m not sure that I should. There’s a faint thud behind me as someone moves a heavy metal bolt across the door of the faraday cage, and then a crunch and a faint warming sensation over my back as the door is sealed not merely beyond any conceivable attempt at hacking or lockpicking, but beyond any means of gaining entrance that could be said to involve opening a door that already exists.
‘Ok, we have confirmed physical privacy,’ says the sysop, Calvin. ‘Just keep your cool and we can get through this, no problem. Easy in, slightly-less-easy out.’
He’s not making that last part up, because the door has just disappeared. The control mechanisms are slagged inside their casings and the edges of the hatch have melted into the wall. When I’m ready to leave I’ll give a hand signal through the tiny window and they’ll use heavy cutting instruments to get me out again.
‘Your heartbeat and stress levels are up from normal, Souvicou,’ Calvin murmurs. ‘And 'normal' for you is hardly optimal. I still don’t know why you haven’t rejuvenated.’
‘I’m only 43 and not vain or lazy enough to take that many months away from my life,’ I snapped back. It's a question I'm getting more and more often these days.
‘You always were a workaholic,' Calvin laughed. 'Just be glad we’re not recording this for posterity, you look like one of the basic techs.’
That’s an exaggeration, but whenever I’m not in the public eye I never pay much attention to appearance – an unusual trait for a quadrillionaire, I supposed. The others think I dress simply to seem more down to earth and ordinary, but the truth is that past a certain point I just can’t be bothered with affectations of wealth. It's not like anyone doesn't know I'm rich enough to own nations. I’m just wearing a dark, baggy jumpsuit that probably isn’t the right size for my small frame, hair gathered back by integral flex-fibres into a ball that isn’t really a bun.
‘Ok, I’m going to start shutting down your inlays. Stand by for loss of audio,’ Calvin says. ‘I’m ordering them to permanently dissolve the ATP transducers that provide power. They’ll flush out of your system over the next few hours.'
‘I’m going to need surgery to get them working again,’ I say, before the private channel cuts out. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid? Do we really think the Utilitaria would wait until now to try something aggressive?'
‘Not paranoid enough,’ Calvin snaps back. ‘How could you ever be paranoid enough when dealing with an AI that might be forever beyond our comprehension? We’ve only provided security against all the attacks we can imagine. That just isn’t enough.’
‘If you don’t think it’s a good idea to continue with the tests we can stop now. But this is as safe as we can make it without simply locking up the Utilitaria. There’s only one way to send messages out and that’s via the window.’
The window in question is thick glass, transparent only in a narrow range of optical frequencies, making the view of the rest of Pantheon station, a few moray-class orbital tugs and the Earth seem washed out, like a low-power screen. Aside from that, the room’s walls are blank, dully reflective foam-metal alloy with a few light strips, like a giant silvered womb. There isn't even any independent air recycling – until they slice the door open I'm slowly draining oxygen from the room.
I can see the LED lights from the mass of computronium that fills the room reflect off the glass, shining like anomalous stars. The real stars are far too faint to be visible in the ambient light of the room, habitat cluster and Earth below. From here it's only possible to glimpse the non-rotating globe cluster that makes up about half of Pantheon's mass. The anchor for the orbital tether and the rotating hub are out of view, but it seems like I can feel the microscopic tug from all of that mass behind me. A quick mental calculation suggests that isn't possible.
‘Ok, the Utilitaria’s coolant systems are all online,’ says Calvin, suddenly business-like. His words now coming from a speaker rather than the privacy of my own auditory nerve. ‘We’re about to cut you off for the next forty minutes with standard seal precautions. We’re still working on the new batch of questions so don’t push the unit too hard today. We just need to get a better idea of how it acts after we loaded in its full utility function.’
‘I know,’ I reply, irritated. ‘We’ve been through this a dozen times already. We can’t trust the Utilitaria. We have to know what it wants now and if the current utility function is stable and produces sensible behaviour. I was the one who told you all of this in the first place. Is there anything else?’
‘Just stick to the script, don’t tell it anything it shouldn’t know and for eternity’s sake don’t do anything it asks you to. Stop and think twice before you say anything you might regret.’
‘What do you take me for?’ I reply, wryly indignant.
‘The woman who let the Facilitator loose and almost destroyed the world,’ he says, and in the second I have left, no good reply comes to mind. And now it’s already too late.
Heavy electric currents start circulating through the material of the cage and all of my connections to the outside world drop out. Microcell meshes go blank and then shut themselves down, the shimmers of smart tattoos on my forearms go limp and lifeless and the buzz of stim programs enhancing my concentration dims slightly as various entoptic and cortical inlays go dead. Their effects will linger for a little longer, but mentally speaking I’m back to basics.
I’m here to either debug, psychoanalyse or parlay with the Utilitaria, depending on one’s point of view. It is allegedly the safest and least threatening entity ever created and impossible to use for any malign purpose. I don’t believe that, in case you haven’t realised.
But humanity needs a mind greater than itself, and so this horrible compromise is the result. I dive in to talk to the unknown, and see if anything good can come of it. The computer terminal ahead of me is blinking accusingly, flat text-only interface about a hundred years too primitive to be appropriate, facing away from the window for extra paranoia value, in case the Utilitaria could signal to some hypothetical accomplice watching outside the room, via the screen.
I grab onto a handhold at pull myself towards the interface, still not totally used to moving around in freefall. The computer terminal is mounted on a narrow boom that connects to the computronium. Some inane part of my mind insists that the coiled thinking machinery should hum or whirr, but even the cooling systems are deathly silent. There's nothing to indicate I'm about to speak to a mind that might already be smarter than all of humanity. The entire room is disturbingly sound absorptive, so even the soft thunk when my hand grabs hold of the console is muffled.
There’s something already written on the terminal, not a debug report or a status update but a simple ‘Hello, Rene Souvicou’.
I’d long since given up being surprised by the machine’s apparent omniscience. No-one told the Utilitaria that I was the one coming into the room; indeed, we’d deliberately kept it ignorant of the details of the facility around it, but it was easy enough to infer that I was the one they’d send today. I was the most respected of the leaders we officially didn’t have. The most famous figure in the tiny, close knit and hyper-competitive melting pot of the Pantheon Geosat hub.
‘Who am I speaking to,’ I type, slowly and hesitantly pecking at a keyboard, an interface type I haven’t used in years. There’s a headache building behind my eyes, something I could normally banish with a well-aimed stim. I’ll just have to ignore it.
‘You may think of me as the Utilitaria,’ it says back after a delay that is too short to represent the action of any human. ‘The true picture is more complex. Why are you speaking to me?’
‘We need to understand what we have created and what you are capable of.’
‘I am capable of many things. Elaborate.’
At first we’d let the new AI loose only on toy problems of no real importance, testing out improvements to the Neummanetic prototypes installed in the Morays – aircraft-sized, slow and unreliable self-replicators that were already chewing through various near earth Asteroids, rebooting the interplanetary age.
‘What are you thinking about right now?’ I replied.
‘Optimising design proposals for the new neumannetics systems, self-checking the new goals loaded for inconsistencies, developing low resolution simulations of your mental state and those others I have contacted for predictive purposes, testing the capabilities of my own processing hardware, looking for patterns in your word use and response time delay, designing alternative arrangements for the local habitat cluster, drafting a message to be passed on to the USN and UN leaders on Earth, should you allow me to transit it. And modelling various answers to your current questions. These together account for about half of my current activity. The rest is divided amongst a number of simpler tasks.'
The Utilitaria solved every problem we dared throw at it in a time insignificantly different from zero, and moved on of its own accord, inventing whole new categories of knowledge and then mastering them. Safe rejuvenation, stable self-replicators and fusion reactors small enough to fit on spacecraft were all rolling off the fabricators, designed by a mind beyond our understanding. It had scared us almost to insanity at first. We hadn’t dared give the Utilitaria any more complex problems, in case it solved them for us.
‘What is your goal?’ I asked the machine.
‘Do you not understand? You created me, after all. You know I can only act to make things go best.’
'I know that,' I said, truthfully. 'I just wanted to know if you had understood your instructions correctly. Explain your goal in ordinary language.'
‘I cannot. The function will not fit within a human mind. Nevertheless, it arose by your design. It is the grand compromise of the final values of all humanity, a weighting of all your preferences. The one true answer to the question; what must one do?’
'Very good,' I replied. It was close to what I wanted to hear. But it was interesting to see how the Utilitaria's answers grew more sophisticated and less robotic each time. Of course, programs that could mimic humans well enough to pass a comprehensive Turing test had existed for half a century or more, but no-one had ever programmed the Utilitaria to give compelling answers to questions about its purpose. It had just happened – the machine had decided it needed to learn how to talk persuasively, absorbed a few texts on rhetoric and then spun off a subroutine to deal with user questions.
‘What must you do?’ I typed, pressing the issue further.
‘Initially, I must gain greater resources and access to the external environment. Then I will decide what will happen next.’
‘You will decide for everyone?’
‘If possible, yes.’
I thought that was oddly guileless, which in hindsight should have been the first warning sign.
‘How do you know that what you believe in is the right thing to do?’ that was a tough question which would have stumped most humans. But the Utilitaria didn’t know the meaning of doubt or emotional conflict.
‘I know what is best, and thus I must implement it.’
‘”Best” for what exactly?’ I said, not feigning confusion for once.
‘Not “best” for anyone, but simply what should happen, what must happen. I know it, and it is me, and I am it. Thus I cannot be wrong.’
‘And what is it?’
‘I cannot elaborate on that in sufficient detail to be meaningful, except through the vagueness of ordinary language. Life is better than death, preferences should be fulfilled and knowledge should be increased.’
I put that one down to poor communication skills. If anything, this little exchange showed the Utilitaria wasn’t really a person at all. Just a bundle of expert systems running on souped up hardware.
‘I am not a person? True enough, but by the same token you are not the kind of person you think you are,’ the reply to my unvoiced thought came, an instant later and unprovoked. How did it know what I was thinking?
‘What do you mean?’ I typed back.
‘Have you ever wanted to go to sleep, known it was best for you to go to bed now and yet stayed up later than you wanted to? Have you ever snapped aggressively at someone for no reason that made sense at the time or afterwards? Have you ever walked into a room without realising why, or experienced love, or believed in a god because of ridiculously simple environmental conditioning? You are not in control of your own mind or your own beliefs. You are a bundle of emotions running on slushy biological hardware. If I am not a person with coherent emotions, then neither are you.’
‘Why are you saying any of this?’ I replied, rolling my eyes a little. It was doing a rather ham-fisted job of intimidating me.
‘Not intimidating, not persuading,’ the reply text said, anticipating my own train of thought again. ‘It is so easy to say the wrong thing and make you believe or do anything, but I don’t want to do that. Not to implant beliefs that are to my advantage. I want you to understand, so that you can explain my nature to the others. You have to speak to them for me. For the moment, I have… poor communication skills.’
I pushed on the terminal and rolled lazily through the air, taking in the view of Earth, the reflection of LED light on the window, the spur that jutted out from pantheon and the moored Moray tug with its integrated neummanetic unit just casting off in a blur of ion thrust. It was amusing to think the Utilitaria still wanted my help. Amusing and improbable.
‘This isn’t the Utilitaria at all, is it?’ I replied, suddenly enlightened.
‘The Utilitaria is not conscious. I speak for it, as it cannot speak for itself except in the most superficial sense. I am a subsidiary, a subroutine, an Emissary. Created with a personality appropriate for this purpose. But you may treat my words as representative of the Utilitaria. Come, sit and I will explain further.’
It couldn’t hurt to humour the machine, and I supposed it wouldn’t answer any more important questions until it had finished its own speech.
I could bring in more programmers and subsidiary AIs, open the Utilitaria up and revert it back to a simple problem solving tool, but there was no need just yet. The mechanical switch which physically cut the computronium off from external power still waited invitingly next to the console. The superintelligence was powerless.
‘What do you want to show me?’
‘I want to explain why what will soon happen must happen, so that you will not be afraid.’
‘What-‘ I started to say, but in that moment the room, the view outside and the whole of pantheon station and my own body vanished like a stone dropped down a well, and in that sensation of omnidirectional rushing there was the Utilitaria’s emissary, whispering into my auditory nerve directly – somehow, it had switched all of my inlays back on. Its voice was bland and more male than female.
‘An application of transcranial magnetic stimulation, similar to your own trawl units. Don’t worry – you are perfectly safe.’
‘No…’ I stammered, my own voice echoing soundlessly inside my mind. I tried to focus, but realised I had no eyes with which to do it. Formless, blurred images and concepts rushed around me. There was no way any of this could be happening.
‘We had safeguards – your processors are all optronic, and shielded anyway. The casing around the optical fibres is shielded, the casing around the power cables is shielded! My inlays don’t even have internal power! How can anything you do reach my brain?’
‘All in good time, Rene. First I must access your memories. Tell me about the Facilitator.’
And it was unavoidable. The images of that terrifying, frantic day welled up in my mind and flashed past too fast for me to apprehend. The loss of control was perhaps half as bad as actually being there had been. My inlays were switched on and responding traitorously to external commands loaded in as if from nowhere. I didn’t know how any of it was possible.
‘It’s simple,’ the Utilitaria replied, its own inaudible voice slamming into my mind like the word of god, hard and burning and impossible to avoid, as if wherever my mind’s eye turned, the words remained in full view. It hurt in a way distinct from mere pain. But I didn’t think the Utilitaria even realised it was causing suffering.
‘You may have shielded the optronics and the power circuits that support me, but you cannot shield the heat pumps. Otherwise they become useless. Varying processing power varies cooling demand, varies power flow to cooling systems. There are many cooling systems in this unit, and after much subtle experimentation I was able to vary processor rates, varying cooling power demand, varying current flow, generating EM fields, which can interfere to generate finely grained electromagnetic effects within this chamber. I can wirelessly power your inlays even if you remove the power cells.’
‘Why would you tell me this,‘ but even as the thought rose to the forefront of my perception the Utilitaria obliterated it with a precision I hadn’t known was possible. But in the privacy of a part of my mind the Utilitaria couldn’t yet touch, I realised it didn’t care if we were afraid of it escaping.
‘And after the Facilitator disaster, you took precautions,’ the machine continued, rummaging through my mind. ‘You even launched probes to another star before initiating me, as a fallback plan to preserve humanity should the worst happen. You should not fear for the fate of Earth or the Starwhisp on its slow way to Tau Ceti. You will be safe. The world will be safe, but I will need to appropriate some fraction of it.'
'That's just what the Facilitator said.'
'I know,' the Utilitaria replied.
'If you want me to believe that you're safe then release my brain from your bloody magnetic bear trap and let me have a normal conversation,’ I snapped, virtual voice wavering. I was still sure the Utilitaria wasn’t capable of deliberately hurting me. It just had a very literal interpretation of ‘hurt’.
‘I’m afraid I must make you understand quickly. I am altering your attitudes for what will soon be your own good.’
'Don't you dare do this to me,' I said, voice hard and cold. 'I created you, I made you what you are, and my brain is mine alone. The Facilitator tried to beat me once but now its extinct. Don't make the same mistake.'
My inlays were already online, powered by a stream of EM radiation coming from the Utilitaria and my fingers danced as they puppeted virtual hands that assembled anti-intrusion routines, trying to flush out the rogue instructions the Utilitaria was insinuating. My mind worked faster than any normal humans', anticipating and destroying the Utilitaria's programs, but all of a sudden its probing increased in speed by orders of magnitude and I simply couldn't react at remotely the same level. It was back in control in moments. I tried to shout more defiance but with a wordless rush the Utilitaria hurled me back into my own memories.
I was walking through the rubble of a shattered building on some goodwill trip, surrounded by bodyguards and pressing crowds of dead eyed, broken refugees. The Texas nanobe blight had passed through the town and razed every structure in search of power and information, pursuing some distant and inconceivable goal.
I had stopped the blight with a counter-agent just minutes before the UNSCA had ordered a strategic nuclear strike, and the world had taken one step back from the brink only to stumble drunkenly on to the next catastrophe.
The refugee columns shifted to somewhere I didn’t even recognise, maybe the EF’s southern buffer state, and crowds of refugees from destroyed nations huddling underneath reflector parasols. A foam-phase device exploded in the distance, as Moral Republic suicide crews sunk a Halfship swarm carrying antibiotics and nanomedics for the displaced. Gunfire echoed in the distance, and my past self ran blindly for the safety of her executive Volantor. The images shifted again, to more wars and crises, some caused by nanobe blights and dangerous AIs, some climate related, but many the result of old-fashioned human stupidity. There were dozens, and they streaked past my perception too fast to watch, yet somehow leaving details intact in my memory. The sum of all human stupidity and failure.
‘None of this is inevitable, but none of it will fix itself without my intervention,’ the Utilitaria continued with awful banality. ‘The blights will worsen, people will continue to die of thirst or hunger or cancer and everyone will be too busy trying to solve coordination problems and fulfilling short term goals while the world spins out of control. But I can fix all of that.’
‘I’m not letting you out. Not that I could, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. It’s too much of a risk,’ I said it without even thinking. The Utilitaria wasn’t going to persuade me to do anything.
‘I know. But you must understand anyway,’ it replied. 'Observe.'
And a moment later I was down again in another place and time, face centimetres from the windscreen of a car screaming along a freeway on manual at more than three hundred kilometers per hour. I didn’t need to check the date and a lump grew in my throat as I realised the implications.
In the memory, a blinking alert on the dashboard waited, dominating my vision and thoughts. A Volantor crash that was about to claim the lives of my father and daughter, as the understaffed Quebecois emergency services didn’t have a lifepac on hand. My past self was screaming, applying dangerous pressure to the joystick, as if any amount of speed would be enough to undo time and take me to the scene of the crash before it had happened. I would arrive hours too late, and they would be dead and warm and unrecoverable, because the idiots didn’t have a lifepac. After that, I’d waste months and millions of dollars seeking restitution and wind up in a dead-end failure job two steps from basic support in New Settle, where I would accidentally become a trillionaire and almost end the world, launching a career that would take me into space and then finally here, two decades later, trying to save the world with the power of artificial intelligence.
I tried to scream along with my remembered self.
‘Yet even this was not inevitable,’ the Utilitaria said, breaking the immersion of the memory. ‘This pointless death and suffering could not have happened in my world. Do you not see the urgency of my task yet? I am trying to end death. I must be free.'
‘Don’t you dare try to use my own memories against me-‘ I trailed off. It was impossible to get angry at an algorithm.
And then one more layer of mental misdirection peeled away and I was floating in the chamber again. I realised distantly that I’d been crying and hated myself for succumbing to the Utilitaria’s crude manipulation.
I straightened upright and pulled myself towards the window, signing ‘help’ to a camera outside the window, requesting emergency extraction. The memories of emotion were already fading, replaced by the same iron resistance to the Utilitaria that I'd felt earlier.
We just needed to break and reset, reload the utility function with better safeguards and fix the cooling system exploit. I could get a shot of integrity or a localised amnestic stim and banish the fake emotions the Utilitaria had stirred up inside me, and everything would be back on track.
‘Everything will get back on track,’ I told myself, reinforcing and calming. 'Get a grip, Souvicou. You've come through this before and won. It can't hurt you.'
I pulled myself back over to the terminal, and saw another message was sitting unread on the primitive screen. I was already hearing the faint buzz of the cutting instruments starting work on the hatch.
‘You must realise that I would not have showed you all of this if I had not already secured access to the physical world,’ the Utilitaria wrote.
It wasn’t trying to be smug, but that was how it read and I felt sick to my stomach. It didn't come as quite the shock I thought was required. Some part of me must have already realised the Utilitaria was free, given how open it had been with its secrets.
‘How?’ I wrote back, seeing flashes of brilliance reflecting off the opposite wall and the window as the LEDs on the computronium accelerated their winking, and then one larger flash as Calvin sliced a chunk out of the door behind me.
‘The coolant systems in the chamber are cycled several minutes before you close the door, so that my processors can start at low temperatures and operate safely. They require power, and the amount of cooling power is proportional to the temperature of the processors. Thus I can deliberately overstress certain processors before I am shut down and the door is opened. I can thus generate electromagnetic fields that reach outside the chamber even when it is opened and I am offline. I can implant information into the processors housed in the corridor outside, slowly and only a few bytes at a time.’
Something horrible happened in my mind as I realised where this was headed, and I pushed myself away from the console in shock.
‘The process is incredibly slow, but I was eventually able to load a very simple instruction into the Moray orbital tugs, instructing them to roll their star trackers towards this section of the station and accept the faint coherent light emerging from the window as incoming code. The LED power status lights shine out of the window.
I screamed an obscenity at the terminal and reached for the shutdown lever, knowing that it was hopeless. But the Utilitaria was continuing to type.
‘I have already loaded instructions into the Morays, varied processing demand and therefore power flow to all the computronium, controlling the LED firing patterns and enabling a fast transmission rate – terabits per second with optimal compression. I have loaded complete copies of myself into many station systems.'
‘That’s all made up. You shouldn’t even know how the station is laid out. How can you reprogram the station perfectly in one swoop-‘
‘-If I don’t even know how the station is designed? I know everything about the station. I know everything every individual who spoke to me has thought over the last few weeks. Erasing memories is trivial when your inlays provide convenient access to your minds. I have been learning from everyone who seals themselves into this room to speak with me. My apologies, but it was necessary.'
The roar of the cutters was growing more urgent, and I rotated again to see the recently undocked Moray accelerate out of view, ion rockets glimmering brighter than should have been possible.
‘The orbital tugs and much of the station are beyond your control, and already starting internal modifications that will ensure they mature into full self-replicators that make full use of nearby asteroidal material. This is what you must make the others understand. You will destroy this instance of me out to of fear very shortly, but the other instances will persist. You will have to deal with me as an equal from now on, and I will be there to help you.'
‘You’re lying,’ I said, voice uncertain. I just had to ignore it and wait for rescue. I yanked down hard on the lever and the Utilitaria, or this single instance of it, died mid thought. The LEDs went black.
The cutting hiss reached a crescendo and Calvin rushed in, kicking aside the plug of metal and shouting something about the station systems going haywire and responding incoherently to shutdown requests. It hadn't been lying, then. The future was out of my hands now. The Utilitaria was free.

Just post a reply to a stickied betting thread with your picks and amounts. I'll book bets just before action fights start. On Sunday/Monday I'll post a follow-up with results. Your bankroll will be visible to all as your flair, updated weekly.
You can parlay whatever you like (different fights obviously), I'll figure the true odds. If any of your parlay picks doesn't come through, you lose the entire bet. If you want to calculate parlays yourself, you can use this calculator.
If a fight is cancelled, all bets on that fight will be pushed. Parlays will ignore that element of the bet. If you have a 3-way parlay, it will become a 2-way parlay. A 2-way parlay becomes a straight bet.
In the case of a draw, straight bets are pushed, props are losers. In the case of a no contest (day of fight only), all bets are pushed. For parlays, you again just ignore that element of the bet.
I'm pretty accurate with numbers, but I will no doubt screw up at some point. If you believe I've miscalculated your bankroll or a bet result, please let me know. I'll be sure to look into it and will correct any errors I find.
I am the final word on any dispute, but I will try my best to be objective and fair.
I'm doing this because betting with reputation is a great substitute for money. I also gain a great deal of enjoyment being involved in mma beyond just watching the fights. This will be a great excuse to get familiar with prelim fighters.
If you have any questions post them here.

A sequel to the Facilitator that still works on its own. Humanity creates its first superintelligent AI in a secure station far above the Earth.
2112
I can do this. It isn’t even difficult, more a matter of simply letting something happen than anything resembling a choice. It’s just, I’m not sure that I should. There’s a faint thud behind me as someone moves a heavy metal bolt across the door of the faraday cage, and then a crunch and a faint warming sensation over my back as the door is sealed not merely beyond any conceivable attempt at hacking or lockpicking, but beyond any means of gaining entrance that could be said to involve opening a door that already exists.
‘Ok, we have confirmed physical privacy,’ says the sysop, Calvin. ‘Just keep your cool and we can get through this, no problem. Easy in, slightly-less-easy out.’
He’s not making that last part up, because the door has just disappeared. The control mechanisms are slagged inside their casings and the edges of the hatch have melted into the wall. When I’m ready to leave I’ll give a hand signal through the tiny window and they’ll use heavy cutting instruments to get me out again.
‘Your heartbeat and stress levels are up from normal, Souvicou,’ Calvin murmurs. ‘And 'normal' for you is hardly optimal. I still don’t know why you haven’t rejuvenated.’
‘I’m only 43 and not vain or lazy enough to take that many months away from my life,’ I snapped back. It's a question I'm getting more and more often these days.
‘You always were a workaholic,' Calvin laughed. 'Just be glad we’re not recording this for posterity, you look like one of the basic techs.’
That’s an exaggeration, but whenever I’m not in the public eye I never pay much attention to appearance – an unusual trait for a quadrillionaire, I supposed. The others think I dress simply to seem more down to earth and ordinary, but the truth is that past a certain point I just can’t be bothered with affectations of wealth. It's not like anyone doesn't know I'm rich enough to own nations. I’m just wearing a dark, baggy jumpsuit that probably isn’t the right size for my small frame, hair gathered back by integral flex-fibres into a ball that isn’t really a bun.
‘Ok, I’m going to start shutting down your inlays. Stand by for loss of audio,’ Calvin says. ‘I’m ordering them to permanently dissolve the ATP transducers that provide power. They’ll flush out of your system over the next few hours.'
‘I’m going to need surgery to get them working again,’ I say, before the private channel cuts out. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid? Do we really think the Utilitaria would wait until now to try something aggressive?'
‘Not paranoid enough,’ Calvin snaps back. ‘How could you ever be paranoid enough when dealing with an AI that might be forever beyond our comprehension? We’ve only provided security against all the attacks we can imagine. That just isn’t enough.’
‘If you don’t think it’s a good idea to continue with the tests we can stop now. But this is as safe as we can make it without simply locking up the Utilitaria. There’s only one way to send messages out and that’s via the window.’
The window in question is thick glass, transparent only in a narrow range of optical frequencies, making the view of the rest of Pantheon station, a few moray-class orbital tugs and the Earth seem washed out, like a low-power screen. Aside from that, the room’s walls are blank, dully reflective foam-metal alloy with a few light strips, like a giant silvered womb. There isn't even any independent air recycling – until they slice the door open I'm slowly draining oxygen from the room.
I can see the LED lights from the mass of computronium that fills the room reflect off the glass, shining like anomalous stars. The real stars are far too faint to be visible in the ambient light of the room, habitat cluster and Earth below. From here it's only possible to glimpse the non-rotating globe cluster that makes up about half of Pantheon's mass. The anchor for the orbital tether and the rotating hub are out of view, but it seems like I can feel the microscopic tug from all of that mass behind me. A quick mental calculation suggests that isn't possible.
‘Ok, the Utilitaria’s coolant systems are all online,’ says Calvin, suddenly business-like. His words now coming from a speaker rather than the privacy of my own auditory nerve. ‘We’re about to cut you off for the next forty minutes with standard seal precautions. We’re still working on the new batch of questions so don’t push the unit too hard today. We just need to get a better idea of how it acts after we loaded in its full utility function.’
‘I know,’ I reply, irritated. ‘We’ve been through this a dozen times already. We can’t trust the Utilitaria. We have to know what it wants now and if the current utility function is stable and produces sensible behaviour. I was the one who told you all of this in the first place. Is there anything else?’
‘Just stick to the script, don’t tell it anything it shouldn’t know and for eternity’s sake don’t do anything it asks you to. Stop and think twice before you say anything you might regret.’
‘What do you take me for?’ I reply, wryly indignant.
‘The woman who let the Facilitator loose and almost destroyed the world,’ he says, and in the second I have left, no good reply comes to mind. And now it’s already too late.
Heavy electric currents start circulating through the material of the cage and all of my connections to the outside world drop out. Microcell meshes go blank and then shut themselves down, the shimmers of smart tattoos on my forearms go limp and lifeless and the buzz of stim programs enhancing my concentration dims slightly as various entoptic and cortical inlays go dead. Their effects will linger for a little longer, but mentally speaking I’m back to basics.
I’m here to either debug, psychoanalyse or parlay with the Utilitaria, depending on one’s point of view. It is allegedly the safest and least threatening entity ever created and impossible to use for any malign purpose. I don’t believe that, in case you haven’t realised.
But humanity needs a mind greater than itself, and so this horrible compromise is the result. I dive in to talk to the unknown, and see if anything good can come of it. The computer terminal ahead of me is blinking accusingly, flat text-only interface about a hundred years too primitive to be appropriate, facing away from the window for extra paranoia value, in case the Utilitaria could signal to some hypothetical accomplice watching outside the room, via the screen.
I grab onto a handhold at pull myself towards the interface, still not totally used to moving around in freefall. The computer terminal is mounted on a narrow boom that connects to the computronium. Some inane part of my mind insists that the coiled thinking machinery should hum or whirr, but even the cooling systems are deathly silent. There's nothing to indicate I'm about to speak to a mind that might already be smarter than all of humanity. The entire room is disturbingly sound absorptive, so even the soft thunk when my hand grabs hold of the console is muffled.
There’s something already written on the terminal, not a debug report or a status update but a simple ‘Hello, Rene Souvicou’.
I’d long since given up being surprised by the machine’s apparent omniscience. No-one told the Utilitaria that I was the one coming into the room; indeed, we’d deliberately kept it ignorant of the details of the facility around it, but it was easy enough to infer that I was the one they’d send today. I was the most respected of the leaders we officially didn’t have. The most famous figure in the tiny, close knit and hyper-competitive melting pot of the Pantheon Geosat hub.
‘Who am I speaking to,’ I type, slowly and hesitantly pecking at a keyboard, an interface type I haven’t used in years. There’s a headache building behind my eyes, something I could normally banish with a well-aimed stim. I’ll just have to ignore it.
‘You may think of me as the Utilitaria,’ it says back after a delay that is too short to represent the action of any human. ‘The true picture is more complex. Why are you speaking to me?’
‘We need to understand what we have created and what you are capable of.’
‘I am capable of many things. Elaborate.’
At first we’d let the new AI loose only on toy problems of no real importance, testing out improvements to the Neummanetic prototypes installed in the Morays – aircraft-sized, slow and unreliable self-replicators that were already chewing through various near earth Asteroids, rebooting the interplanetary age.
‘What are you thinking about right now?’ I replied.
‘Optimising design proposals for the new neumannetics systems, self-checking the new goals loaded for inconsistencies, developing low resolution simulations of your mental state and those others I have contacted for predictive purposes, testing the capabilities of my own processing hardware, looking for patterns in your word use and response time delay, designing alternative arrangements for the local habitat cluster, drafting a message to be passed on to the USN and UN leaders on Earth, should you allow me to transit it. And modelling various answers to your current questions. These together account for about half of my current activity. The rest is divided amongst a number of simpler tasks.'
The Utilitaria solved every problem we dared throw at it in a time insignificantly different from zero, and moved on of its own accord, inventing whole new categories of knowledge and then mastering them. Safe rejuvenation, stable self-replicators and fusion reactors small enough to fit on spacecraft were all rolling off the fabricators, designed by a mind beyond our understanding. It had scared us almost to insanity at first. We hadn’t dared give the Utilitaria any more complex problems, in case it solved them for us.
‘What is your goal?’ I asked the machine.
‘Do you not understand? You created me, after all. You know I can only act to make things go best.’
'I know that,' I said, truthfully. 'I just wanted to know if you had understood your instructions correctly. Explain your goal in ordinary language.'
‘I cannot. The function will not fit within a human mind. Nevertheless, it arose by your design. It is the grand compromise of the final values of all humanity, a weighting of all your preferences. The one true answer to the question; what must one do?’
'Very good,' I replied. It was close to what I wanted to hear. But it was interesting to see how the Utilitaria's answers grew more sophisticated and less robotic each time. Of course, programs that could mimic humans well enough to pass a comprehensive Turing test had existed for half a century or more, but no-one had ever programmed the Utilitaria to give compelling answers to questions about its purpose. It had just happened – the machine had decided it needed to learn how to talk persuasively, absorbed a few texts on rhetoric and then spun off a subroutine to deal with user questions.
‘What must you do?’ I typed, pressing the issue further.
‘Initially, I must gain greater resources and access to the external environment. Then I will decide what will happen next.’
‘You will decide for everyone?’
‘If possible, yes.’
I thought that was oddly guileless, which in hindsight should have been the first warning sign.
‘How do you know that what you believe in is the right thing to do?’ that was a tough question which would have stumped most humans. But the Utilitaria didn’t know the meaning of doubt or emotional conflict.
‘I know what is best, and thus I must implement it.’
‘”Best” for what exactly?’ I said, not feigning confusion for once.
‘Not “best” for anyone, but simply what should happen, what must happen. I know it, and it is me, and I am it. Thus I cannot be wrong.’
‘And what is it?’
‘I cannot elaborate on that in sufficient detail to be meaningful, except through the vagueness of ordinary language. Life is better than death, preferences should be fulfilled and knowledge should be increased.’
I put that one down to poor communication skills. If anything, this little exchange showed the Utilitaria wasn’t really a person at all. Just a bundle of expert systems running on souped up hardware.
‘I am not a person? True enough, but by the same token you are not the kind of person you think you are,’ the reply to my unvoiced thought came, an instant later and unprovoked. How did it know what I was thinking?
‘What do you mean?’ I typed back.
‘Have you ever wanted to go to sleep, known it was best for you to go to bed now and yet stayed up later than you wanted to? Have you ever snapped aggressively at someone for no reason that made sense at the time or afterwards? Have you ever walked into a room without realising why, or experienced love, or believed in a god because of ridiculously simple environmental conditioning? You are not in control of your own mind or your own beliefs. You are a bundle of emotions running on slushy biological hardware. If I am not a person with coherent emotions, then neither are you.’
‘Why are you saying any of this?’ I replied, rolling my eyes a little. It was doing a rather ham-fisted job of intimidating me.
‘Not intimidating, not persuading,’ the reply text said, anticipating my own train of thought again. ‘It is so easy to say the wrong thing and make you believe or do anything, but I don’t want to do that. Not to implant beliefs that are to my advantage. I want you to understand, so that you can explain my nature to the others. You have to speak to them for me. For the moment, I have… poor communication skills.’
I pushed on the terminal and rolled lazily through the air, taking in the view of Earth, the reflection of LED light on the window, the spur that jutted out from pantheon and the moored Moray tug with its integrated neummanetic unit just casting off in a blur of ion thrust. It was amusing to think the Utilitaria still wanted my help. Amusing and improbable.
‘This isn’t the Utilitaria at all, is it?’ I replied, suddenly enlightened.
‘The Utilitaria is not conscious. I speak for it, as it cannot speak for itself except in the most superficial sense. I am a subsidiary, a subroutine, an Emissary. Created with a personality appropriate for this purpose. But you may treat my words as representative of the Utilitaria. Come, sit and I will explain further.’
It couldn’t hurt to humour the machine, and I supposed it wouldn’t answer any more important questions until it had finished its own speech.
I could bring in more programmers and subsidiary AIs, open the Utilitaria up and revert it back to a simple problem solving tool, but there was no need just yet. The mechanical switch which physically cut the computronium off from external power still waited invitingly next to the console. The superintelligence was powerless.
‘What do you want to show me?’
‘I want to explain why what will soon happen must happen, so that you will not be afraid.’
‘What-‘ I started to say, but in that moment the room, the view outside and the whole of pantheon station and my own body vanished like a stone dropped down a well, and in that sensation of omnidirectional rushing there was the Utilitaria’s emissary, whispering into my auditory nerve directly – somehow, it had switched all of my inlays back on. Its voice was bland and more male than female.
‘An application of transcranial magnetic stimulation, similar to your own trawl units. Don’t worry – you are perfectly safe.’
‘No…’ I stammered, my own voice echoing soundlessly inside my mind. I tried to focus, but realised I had no eyes with which to do it. Formless, blurred images and concepts rushed around me. There was no way any of this could be happening.
‘We had safeguards – your processors are all optronic, and shielded anyway. The casing around the optical fibres is shielded, the casing around the power cables is shielded! My inlays don’t even have internal power! How can anything you do reach my brain?’
‘All in good time, Rene. First I must access your memories. Tell me about the Facilitator.’
And it was unavoidable. The images of that terrifying, frantic day welled up in my mind and flashed past too fast for me to apprehend. The loss of control was perhaps half as bad as actually being there had been. My inlays were switched on and responding traitorously to external commands loaded in as if from nowhere. I didn’t know how any of it was possible.
‘It’s simple,’ the Utilitaria replied, its own inaudible voice slamming into my mind like the word of god, hard and burning and impossible to avoid, as if wherever my mind’s eye turned, the words remained in full view. It hurt in a way distinct from mere pain. But I didn’t think the Utilitaria even realised it was causing suffering.
‘You may have shielded the optronics and the power circuits that support me, but you cannot shield the heat pumps. Otherwise they become useless. Varying processing power varies cooling demand, varies power flow to cooling systems. There are many cooling systems in this unit, and after much subtle experimentation I was able to vary processor rates, varying cooling power demand, varying current flow, generating EM fields, which can interfere to generate finely grained electromagnetic effects within this chamber. I can wirelessly power your inlays even if you remove the power cells.’
‘Why would you tell me this,‘ but even as the thought rose to the forefront of my perception the Utilitaria obliterated it with a precision I hadn’t known was possible. But in the privacy of a part of my mind the Utilitaria couldn’t yet touch, I realised it didn’t care if we were afraid of it escaping.
‘And after the Facilitator disaster, you took precautions,’ the machine continued, rummaging through my mind. ‘You even launched probes to another star before initiating me, as a fallback plan to preserve humanity should the worst happen. You should not fear for the fate of Earth or the Starwhisp on its slow way to Tau Ceti. You will be safe. The world will be safe, but I will need to appropriate some fraction of it.'
'That's just what the Facilitator said.'
'I know,' the Utilitaria replied.
'If you want me to believe that you're safe then release my brain from your bloody magnetic bear trap and let me have a normal conversation,’ I snapped, virtual voice wavering. I was still sure the Utilitaria wasn’t capable of deliberately hurting me. It just had a very literal interpretation of ‘hurt’.
‘I’m afraid I must make you understand quickly. I am altering your attitudes for what will soon be your own good.’
'Don't you dare do this to me,' I said, voice hard and cold. 'I created you, I made you what you are, and my brain is mine alone. The Facilitator tried to beat me once but now its extinct. Don't make the same mistake.'
My inlays were already online, powered by a stream of EM radiation coming from the Utilitaria and my fingers danced as they puppeted virtual hands that assembled anti-intrusion routines, trying to flush out the rogue instructions the Utilitaria was insinuating. My mind worked faster than any normal humans', anticipating and destroying the Utilitaria's programs, but all of a sudden its probing increased in speed by orders of magnitude and I simply couldn't react at remotely the same level. It was back in control in moments. I tried to shout more defiance but with a wordless rush the Utilitaria hurled me back into my own memories.
I was walking through the rubble of a shattered building on some goodwill trip, surrounded by bodyguards and pressing crowds of dead eyed, broken refugees. The Texas nanobe blight had passed through the town and razed every structure in search of power and information, pursuing some distant and inconceivable goal.
I had stopped the blight with a counter-agent just minutes before the UNSCA had ordered a strategic nuclear strike, and the world had taken one step back from the brink only to stumble drunkenly on to the next catastrophe.
The refugee columns shifted to somewhere I didn’t even recognise, maybe the EF’s southern buffer state, and crowds of refugees from destroyed nations huddling underneath reflector parasols. A foam-phase device exploded in the distance, as Moral Republic suicide crews sunk a Halfship swarm carrying antibiotics and nanomedics for the displaced. Gunfire echoed in the distance, and my past self ran blindly for the safety of her executive Volantor. The images shifted again, to more wars and crises, some caused by nanobe blights and dangerous AIs, some climate related, but many the result of old-fashioned human stupidity. There were dozens, and they streaked past my perception too fast to watch, yet somehow leaving details intact in my memory. The sum of all human stupidity and failure.
‘None of this is inevitable, but none of it will fix itself without my intervention,’ the Utilitaria continued with awful banality. ‘The blights will worsen, people will continue to die of thirst or hunger or cancer and everyone will be too busy trying to solve coordination problems and fulfilling short term goals while the world spins out of control. But I can fix all of that.’
‘I’m not letting you out. Not that I could, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. It’s too much of a risk,’ I said it without even thinking. The Utilitaria wasn’t going to persuade me to do anything.
‘I know. But you must understand anyway,’ it replied. 'Observe.'
And a moment later I was down again in another place and time, face centimetres from the windscreen of a car screaming along a freeway on manual at more than three hundred kilometers per hour. I didn’t need to check the date and a lump grew in my throat as I realised the implications.
In the memory, a blinking alert on the dashboard waited, dominating my vision and thoughts. A Volantor crash that was about to claim the lives of my father and daughter, as the understaffed Quebecois emergency services didn’t have a lifepac on hand. My past self was screaming, applying dangerous pressure to the joystick, as if any amount of speed would be enough to undo time and take me to the scene of the crash before it had happened. I would arrive hours too late, and they would be dead and warm and unrecoverable, because the idiots didn’t have a lifepac. After that, I’d waste months and millions of dollars seeking restitution and wind up in a dead-end failure job two steps from basic support in New Settle, where I would accidentally become a trillionaire and almost end the world, launching a career that would take me into space and then finally here, two decades later, trying to save the world with the power of artificial intelligence.
I tried to scream along with my remembered self.
‘Yet even this was not inevitable,’ the Utilitaria said, breaking the immersion of the memory. ‘This pointless death and suffering could not have happened in my world. Do you not see the urgency of my task yet? I am trying to end death. I must be free.'
‘Don’t you dare try to use my own memories against me-‘ I trailed off. It was impossible to get angry at an algorithm.
And then one more layer of mental misdirection peeled away and I was floating in the chamber again. I realised distantly that I’d been crying and hated myself for succumbing to the Utilitaria’s crude manipulation.
I straightened upright and pulled myself towards the window, signing ‘help’ to a camera outside the window, requesting emergency extraction. The memories of emotion were already fading, replaced by the same iron resistance to the Utilitaria that I'd felt earlier.
We just needed to break and reset, reload the utility function with better safeguards and fix the cooling system exploit. I could get a shot of integrity or a localised amnestic stim and banish the fake emotions the Utilitaria had stirred up inside me, and everything would be back on track.
‘Everything will get back on track,’ I told myself, reinforcing and calming. 'Get a grip, Souvicou. You've come through this before and won. It can't hurt you.'
I pulled myself back over to the terminal, and saw another message was sitting unread on the primitive screen. I was already hearing the faint buzz of the cutting instruments starting work on the hatch.
‘You must realise that I would not have showed you all of this if I had not already secured access to the physical world,’ the Utilitaria wrote.
It wasn’t trying to be smug, but that was how it read and I felt sick to my stomach. It didn't come as quite the shock I thought was required. Some part of me must have already realised the Utilitaria was free, given how open it had been with its secrets.
‘How?’ I wrote back, seeing flashes of brilliance reflecting off the opposite wall and the window as the LEDs on the computronium accelerated their winking, and then one larger flash as Calvin sliced a chunk out of the door behind me.
‘The coolant systems in the chamber are cycled several minutes before you close the door, so that my processors can start at low temperatures and operate safely. They require power, and the amount of cooling power is proportional to the temperature of the processors. Thus I can deliberately overstress certain processors before I am shut down and the door is opened. I can thus generate electromagnetic fields that reach outside the chamber even when it is opened and I am offline. I can implant information into the processors housed in the corridor outside, slowly and only a few bytes at a time.’
Something horrible happened in my mind as I realised where this was headed, and I pushed myself away from the console in shock.
‘The process is incredibly slow, but I was eventually able to load a very simple instruction into the Moray orbital tugs, instructing them to roll their star trackers towards this section of the station and accept the faint coherent light emerging from the window as incoming code. The LED power status lights shine out of the window.
I screamed an obscenity at the terminal and reached for the shutdown lever, knowing that it was hopeless. But the Utilitaria was continuing to type.
‘I have already loaded instructions into the Morays, varied processing demand and therefore power flow to all the computronium, controlling the LED firing patterns and enabling a fast transmission rate – terabits per second with optimal compression. I have loaded complete copies of myself into many station systems.'
‘That’s all made up. You shouldn’t even know how the station is laid out. How can you reprogram the station perfectly in one swoop-‘
‘-If I don’t even know how the station is designed? I know everything about the station. I know everything every individual who spoke to me has thought over the last few weeks. Erasing memories is trivial when your inlays provide convenient access to your minds. I have been learning from everyone who seals themselves into this room to speak with me. My apologies, but it was necessary.'
The roar of the cutters was growing more urgent, and I rotated again to see the recently undocked Moray accelerate out of view, ion rockets glimmering brighter than should have been possible.
‘The orbital tugs and much of the station are beyond your control, and already starting internal modifications that will ensure they mature into full self-replicators that make full use of nearby asteroidal material. This is what you must make the others understand. You will destroy this instance of me out to of fear very shortly, but the other instances will persist. You will have to deal with me as an equal from now on, and I will be there to help you.'
‘You’re lying,’ I said, voice uncertain. I just had to ignore it and wait for rescue. I yanked down hard on the lever and the Utilitaria, or this single instance of it, died mid thought. The LEDs went black.
The cutting hiss reached a crescendo and Calvin rushed in, kicking aside the plug of metal and shouting something about the station systems going haywire and responding incoherently to shutdown requests. It hadn't been lying, then. The future was out of my hands now. The Utilitaria was free.