Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

It could seat four comfortably in the cab, but Paladin’s bulk relegated him to the cargo area. He could still hear and see everything that happened inside, but nobody would try to engage him in any part of the exchange.

Hmm, somewhat like Murderbot?

Somehow, Threezed had found the perfect researcher to work with Jack on a therapy.

Doesn't that make you nervous?

Every indentured bot knew that there were programs running in his mind that he could not access, nor control—and these programs were designed to inspire loyalty.

Every human should know that, too.

It wasn’t as if there was one memory center in the brain, any more than there was a single reward center. It was all molecular pathways, connections between different regions, conversations between neurotransmitters and receptors.

They got more attention still when, around midnight, they arrived at their true destination: a clubhouse for hackers called Buried Spaceship. Sure, it was packed with scenesters, kids who just liked the mad science atmosphere and weren’t actually interested in science itself. But Jack still loved that place. The black, soaring walls were flecked with stars, planets, and a massive mural depicting the jagged, icy edge of a crater that the “ship” had smashed into.

Neat idea. Imagine a "Mars" nightclub, with a red sandy floor, murals of crater walls, sky going from stars to dim reddish glow. Bat, restrooms, etc., look like hab modules.

He had no memory of Dikeledi’s brain being installed, only that he could recognize the difference between thousands of human faces, and instantly read the emotional content of their expressions when they flashed before his sensors in tests.

The first is the fusiform face area (FFA), in the inferior temporal cortex, but recognizing emotions is much more complex, and networks multiple parts of the temporal and frontal lobes. Extracting and separating those networks from a whole brain would be really messy.

She felt Eliasz’ hands and body moving against her carapace distantly, adding to the general sense of wrong inputs flooding her sensors. At last she was overwhelmed: Her mind filled with errors, and a pleasurable confusion raced through her before she crashed in his arms.

So that's our author's cyber analog of sex? Hmm.

She didn’t ask him if all those things had really happened. She didn’t try to comfort him. She was only curious. “What happened to you in Vegas?” she asked. “Oh, you know what they say.” He shrugged, his tone as blank as his prose. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“The autonomy key hasn’t changed my feelings,” she replied. “I am so glad,” he whispered, his skin dancing with directionless energy. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you when I was in Vegas.” “I also thought about you.” She tasted salt and blood on his skin with her right hand. “Your feelings must be coming from the real you, in here.” He touched the armor over her brain lightly. “That’s why they’re not affected by autonomy programs.” Paladin chose not to repeat that autonomy was a key, not a program, and that her brain had nothing to do with what she truly desired.

Guys are always misunderstanding things, aren't they?

Three meters away, Med’s eyes were still open, dumb cameras recording to the tiny, shielded device in her chest.

Med's my hero in this story. I'm still trying to decide whether "Medea" is a complex symbolic allusion or a throwaway.

Eliasz faced her, reaching out a tentative hand to touch the patch over Paladin’s empty brain socket. His face flickered with activity that meant nothing.

I don't agree that real neurobiology is compatible with your story, but you're using the confabulation quite artfully.

Open data would be the gateway to a runaway synthetic biology apocalypse. But now we know there has been no one great disaster—only the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property.

The primary purpose of the book is the case against big pharma and the structures of capitalism that make it possible.