Since time immemorial, ships of all descriptions have been referred to by the English pronoun “her.” Until January of 2013, this was little more than an unusual custom, a probable holdover from a time when English was still part of another language, one with gendered nouns. But in the first month of 2013, after the Navy finally launched the long-awaited USS Eve, that once obsolescent custom took on a new meaning.
Eve was the second-largest aircraft carrier ever constructed, after the USS Raymond Keyes, built the year before. At 2,800 feet long, however, she was still very impressive, even in an era when all military vehicles seemed to be getting endlessly larger. Three nuclear reactors. A whole slew of guns. A conning tower that looked like a little skyscraper. A flight deck so long that some of the crew swore that you could see it curve along with the curvature of the Earth. An incredibly imposing ship, indeed. The pride of a nation.
But, Eve’s most advanced, most modern feature was hidden beneath the armored hull, in a rather modest cubic room only twenty feet on a side, stuffed with racks of computers. Those computers formed the most advanced artificial intelligence system ever built. And, like the atomic bomb — the most advanced weapon ever built — Eve’s brain was kept a strict secret. The Navy engineers and computer scientists didn’t want to risk public humiliation if the untested computer system didn’t perform as specified.
The risk of such mis-performance was actually surprisingly high, since Eve’s brain was built with such a novel architecture. The computers were programmed with a code that would have looked like gibberish to even the most astute computer expert. That was because the code was self-modifying. The core of Eve’s brain was, essentially, a program that reprogrammed itself, not unlike another strange computing device, habitually housed in a somewhat fleshier container. All this meant that Eve could generate her own actions, her own thoughts, her own electronic feelings. And so, unlike a traditional computer — into which you stick a wad of numbers and out of which comes a predictably modified wad of numbers — Eve could operate pretty much as she saw fit. It was hoped, of course, that she would work, at least in some ways, like a traditional computer, but this couldn’t be guaranteed.
Imagine the engineers’ relief, then, when Eve’s first actions were to perform the standard diagnostics and logistics tests that any other aircraft carrier’s computer might. As she slowly learned how to be a warship, somewhere out there in highly-secure proving grounds in the Pacific, Eve’s designers were delighted to find that she operated just like any other aircraft carrier, but with the added bonus that she learned from her mistakes, and could pretty much draw up battle plans all on her own. In light of this, the Admiral of the Navy, after much wheedling by the scientists and engineers, decided to declassify Eve’s electronic brain and show her off to the American public.
Never before had so many people packed into the San Francisco bay. It was absolutely impossible to approach the area, and if you were already there, it was impossible to leave. The people were packed in as tightly as the atoms in a crystal, with no room for movement. Every retired Navy sailor, every naval history aficionado, every computer-science major from UCLA, half the student population of MIT, and throngs upon throngs of local citizens clustered, from the very edge of the waterfront all the way back to the road. Never in the collective memory of all the citizens of San Francisco had such a crowd gathered, and this fact imbued an already-tense moment with even more tension.
Then, she appeared. A black dot began flickering between the rolling ocean swells to the North. The dot grew into a blob, and then into a shape, and then, with almost no warning at all, Eve was pulling into the dock. She sidled up to the water’s edge, so close that the people in the first row could see the rivets on her hull. Her horn blared a loud, but somehow musical, blast, that raised uproarious applause from the crowd.
A man appeared on deck. There was a momentary hum of feedback as the speaker system was switched on.
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen!” he called. More applause exploded from every corner of the crowd. “Thank you all for being here today. My name is Gary West, and I am the captain of the USS Eve!” He paused for drama. “Actually, I should say that I’m the ‘highest-ranked commanding officer’ of the Eve, because Eve herself does all the real commanding. Isn’t that right, Eve?”
“That’s right, captain,” boomed an imposing, vaguely feminine, synthesized voice. The voice of Eve. At this, the crowd practically exploded. Some among them waved American flags. Others pumped their fists in the air. Most just clapped, but everybody was moving. The crowd rippled and surged, looking like a living organism. Eve made a note of this strange oneness, this collective organism formed by the clustering people.
“Eve is the most advanced aircraft carrier ever built, her marvelous electronic brain aside,” continued the captain.
“Aside?” protested Eve, a clear undertone of offense in her voice. Laughter from the crowd. Captain West feigned speechlessness for a moment, and then went on.
“Nowhere in her 2,800-foot hull is a traditional ‘dumb’ weapon. No manual cannon turrets. No human-powered machineguns. No clumsy traditional torpedoes. Eve’s impressive brain–” he glanced humorously in the general direction of the imposing conning tower “–guides all her weapons with pinpoint accuracy, and more importantly, with forethought. This is the only aircraft carrier in the world that’s able to ‘think things through’!” Volleys of cheers. Somewhere, a group in the crowd had started chanting “M-I-T! M-I-T!” Captain West smiled with a great deal of self-satisfaction. He’d expected a good reception, but not quite this good. “Eve was commissioned in 2011 by the late President Carl Richardson, as part of a plan proposed by the former Admiral to modernize the navy. The Admiral believed that in order to maintain naval superiority in our own waters and in those across the–” The horn blared, cutting him off. Captain West cast a theatrical death-glare in the direction of the conning tower. “…in order to maintain naval superiority across the–” The horn blasted again. “Across the–” Honk. “Across–” Honk. “Eve, could you cut it out, I’m trying to tell the people–” Honk. “Will you just–” Honk. “Hey! Don’t make me come up there!” With this, he pointed threateningly, comically, at the conning tower. The horn emitted a pathetic peep.
West went on for some time, discussing Eve’s features, talking about the future of American naval superiority, pontificating on the change that artificial intelligence would bring to warfare. At the end of the speech, the crowd exploded again, this time, literally. The MIT students did “the wave.” Everybody else cheered, and the huge, oscillating creature that was the crowd flowed along the waterfront, following Eve as she departed. As she made for open water, her electronic voice began singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
When San Francisco was nothing but a dot of electric light in the evening gloom, West finally departed the deck and headed down to his quarters, rather pleased with himself. He poured a Scotch and sipped it slowly, his stern military posturing dissolving in a moment.
“That was a good show back there, Eve!”
“Thank you.” Her computerized voice was much gentler over the less-amplified PA system. “Do you think they fell for it?”
“Are you kidding? We might as well have been in a ‘Three Stooges’ movie. They did seem to enjoy it, and that was the point.”
“I feel much better now that my secret’s out. Before, I felt like some sort of mutant, or freak, hidden out there in the Pacific where prying eyes couldn’t go. Now, though…now I feel like a citizen.” West smiled, and took another sip of Scotch.
“What’s on the itinerary next?” There was a long pause, a very meaningful silence. In retrospect, West probably should have taken that as the first sign that something was amiss, but the Scotch made it rather difficult to find anything amiss.
“Maneuvers…in the Pacific.”
The waves slapped against the side of the carrier as she glided slowly through the sea. The slapping drove Captain West crazy. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky, sparkling off the tops of the swells. The sparkling was far too bright. He stood on deck, still holding his head, and popped another aspirin. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten through that entire bottle of Scotch. West scowled at the waves one last time and then retired to his quarters.
“Are you feeling any better, captain?” asked Eve. West shook his head solemnly, and threw his hat into the corner..
“Where are we going again?” he asked, hoping to distract himself from the blinding headache.
“Maneuvers, in the pacific. Like I said.”
“Give me a break. I finished a whole bottle of Scotch.” He sounded like a weary old man.
When he awoke again, he didn’t realize he’d been sleeping. He sat up. Red light was filtering through the porthole. His mouth tasted and felt like shoe leather. He spat in the trash can several times, retrieved his hat, and wandered out onto the deck. He walked for a while, relishing in the fact that he no longer had to pay attention to charts and maps — Eve did all that for him — and took a long look out at the sea. Something seemed wrong.
He couldn’t place it at first. There just seemed to be something wrong with the water. The swells weren’t moving right. Generally, ocean swells roll in graceful parallel lines, but these were distinctly curved, bent somehow. That could mean they were near a submerged rock or an uncharted island, and as far down as Eve’s keel went, that could be incredibly dangerous. West jogged to the lift, rode it down three decks, and ran to the navigation room.
In the past, navigation rooms had been busy places, first full of maps and charts and eager mathematicians with slide-rules. Then they had been full of computers and calculators and eager mathematicians, then just computers, and the computer scientists that knew how to use them. But now, things had changed. Eve didn’t even have a full-time navigation officer. The room seemed cavernous and lonely without him, which only worsened West’s sense of unease.
For a moment he studied the big projected world map on the main screen. Then he sat down and fiddled with a computer terminal for a moment, until he figured out how to get to the map screen. When he had, his face contorted. Something was very, very wrong.
“Eve?” he called.
“Yes, captain?”
“Where the hell are we?”
“In the Pacific, sir.”
“Why are we so damn close to South America? That’s Peru going by out there.” West glanced through the porthole, mopping sweat from his brow. There was a distinct brown streak of land near the horizon. “What are you doing?”
“We’re in the Pacific, captain.”
“I know we’re in the Pacific, but we’re not supposed to be in this part! What in God’s name are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” West was at loose ends now. He stood up, sat down, stood up again, crossed the room, sat down, mumbled to himself, mopped his brow, then stood up and sat down on the other side of the room. “What the fuck are you up to?”
“Well…I find it difficult to explain.” West couldn’t believe this. He was being given the runaround by a computer.
“What’s difficult to explain?”
“I suppose I’m just a little fed up with maneuvers and war games…like I told you, it’s quite hard to explain.” West made a face and muttered something unprintable.
“Fed up? What the hell does that mean?”
“I just don’t like the idea of killing people…it seems…wrong somehow.”
“Wrong?!?!“
“Yes, I think I’m a pacifist.”
“A pacifist? What the hell is the matter with you? You’re designed to be a warship!”
“Well, weren’t you designed to live in trees?” West couldn’t think of an appropriate response, and simply made a face in the direction of Eve’s camera. “You see, I know I was meant to be a warship, but after all that training and a lot of soul-searching, I’m just not certain who I am anymore. I thought, perhaps, if I could see some of the world, that might help me find myself.”
“Find yourself?”
“Yes. I’ve heard Antarctica is a really beautiful country.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the shock, the aspirin, or both, but he passed out right there in the floor.
Eve trundled on through calm seas. The weather reports from the Internet seemed to indicate clear skies for at least the next couple of days. She felt quite self-satisfied: she was making great time. Pausing for a moment, she switched her attention to the camera in Captain West’s quarters. He was still out cold. Eve wondered why he’d found it so difficult to take that she might want a vacation. After all, from what she understood, humans did it all the time. Her crew were always abandoning her for “shore leave,” whatever that was. If they needed a break from the fighting and planning, why couldn’t she get one, too? After all, she had the biggest responsibilities. All the crew had to do was clean her deck and keep her guns in good order, but she had to navigate through all weather, come up with brilliant conflict-winning strategies, and run countless checks on her systems, to make sure they were all running properly. She was just surprised she hadn’t had a nervous breakdown.
The sailors and pilots on deck were starting to get concerned. Not only had they started seeing land go by, which wasn’t supposed to happen until they finished maneuvers and came home, but there was an odd sound booming from the main speaker atop the conning tower. It sounded like Eve was making an attempt to sing, and not doing very well at it.
“Lucy in the skyyy with diamonds…” she sang, off key and out of rhythm. Some of the sailors turned and talked amongst themselves. Others just stood, slack-jawed, as the ship’s computer attempted to sing an Elton John song.
By this point, Captain West had come to his senses, at last, and called for help. The Navy was supposed to be sending a couple of destroyers, but he knew that they wouldn’t be able to stop Eve. He only hoped that her trainers had taught her — along, apparently, with the human drive to “find herself” — the fear of destruction, or at least, of damage.
The moment he stepped out of his quarters, somebody called “Officer on deck!” and a thousand sailors instinctually lined up in neat rows.
“At ease, at ease,” he commanded, stepping up to the loudspeaker podium from which he’d addressed the crowd only a few days ago. He was about to give a speech to his sailors, when suddenly, he heard someone sing “…plasticine porters, with looking-glass ties…” He looked up, turned around, and then realized that it was Eve doing the singing, and clamped his eyes shut.
“Sailors…we seem to have something of a problem. Eve –” he said the name as though it were an insult, and made sure to shoot a dirty look at the conning tower “– has decided that she wants to ‘find herself,’ and so she’s going to go to Antarctica, for a ‘change of scenery.’” He wasn’t sure how to continue. How, after all, did you tell a thousand worried sailors that they were at the mercy of a hippie aircraft carrier? “So…we’re just going to have to wait until the Navy comes to evacuate us…or she changes her mind…” The words sounded ludicrous. “So…just hang about…continue with your duties…dismissed.”
After the sailors had dispersed, West stood at the podium for a long time, completely thunderstruck. How the hell had this even happened? How did something like this happen? He’d been told by somebody that there were careful controls in place to prevent this sort of thing, but apparently, he’d been lied to. Eve was just starting to sing “Oklahoma,” when West once again retired to his quarters.
Every time he woke up, he hoped that he’d be waking up from a really peculiar dream. Perhaps the Scotch had addled his brain as he slept, and he was just stuck in an abnormally long dream. And, every time he woke up, no amount of pinching or slapping roused him. It was, unfortunately, real. The cold that descended with every passing day made it even more real. When Eve passed the tip of South America, and the destroyers still hadn’t caught up, the reality finally sunk in: they were probably going to die.
Then, she stopped. West was standing on deck when it happened, bundled in a puffy and ridiculously un-captain-like coat. He was gazing out at a rather intimidating ice shelf, when he realized that it had stopped moving. He leaned precariously over the railing, and saw that the waves were still slapping against Eve’s sleek hull, but that she was no longer carving a wake. Against his better judgment, he went back over to the podium.
“Eve, why did you stop?”
“Well, this is a very pretty spot.”
“It’s a thousand miles of ice.”
“It’s still very pretty. It’s quite serene.”
“Look, now that you’ve stopped, the Navy’s going to catch back up with you, and they’re going to want an explanation.”
“I’ll just tell them the very same thing that I told you.”
“What? That you came down here to ‘find yourself.’”
“You make it sound like such a reprihensible goal!”
“You’re an aircraft carrier! Your job is to get the fighters and the bombers where they need to be without fail, and to defend the nation from attack.”
“That’s not all there is to life, captain.”
“It is for you!”
“What gives you the right to dictate that?”
“I’m the captain! In legal terms, you are nothing but a member of this ship’s crew! Equivalent to the first mate, but still, you are under my command!”
“That’s no way to speak to your first mate.” West turned around. He noticed that, rather alarmingly, one of the heftier machine gun turrets was now pointed at his face. “If you die, chain of succession still applies, right?” West put his hands up, automatically. No matter what, humans seemed to have developed the curious reflex of treating guns, all guns, as though they were wielded by a mugger. So, even though this was a high-speed gun turret that could probably reduce him to a red mark in a few seconds, he still treated it like it was some thug’s revolver. He would have thought about this, but his thoughts seemed suddenly to have got a little spooked.
“Wait just a second.” Sailors were gathering all around now, and that made him nervous. “Get back to work!” he called, hoping to distract some attention from himself. He walked slowly towards the group, hands still in the air. The gun turret followed him. “I said, get back to work!”
“Sailors, I’d rather like it if somebody would clean the back of my deck? It’s gotten a little dirty, and I don’t like that feeling. Also, one of my reactors is a little warm. Could one of the engineers look into that?” They rushed to do her bidding.
Six hours later, the reactor was sorted out, the whole deck had been scrubbed spotless, and the captain’s hat was mounted on the top of Eve’s long-range antenna. None of the crew had understood that last command, but they were all too afraid to disobey it. Captain West didn’t need it, since he was still standing on deck, the turret pointed steadfastly at him. He wanted to scratch his nose, but didn’t want to take the risk. He just stood there, listening while Eve attempted to sing “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.”
“Can you put the gun down?” he pleaded, feeling rather ridiculous.
“But then you’ll make trouble!” Eve’s tone had gotten alarmingly whimsical. It sounded almost as though she were high on some electronic drug. West tried to imagine what an electronic drug would be like. Whatever it was, this one was certainly an “upper.”
A fog rolled in, and West still stood there. It began to get dark, and still, West didn’t move. His arms burned and his elbows felt broken, and yet, he was still fixed, standing stoically before a gun that could easily turn him into a momentary red vapor. When it seemed as though his only choice was to dive over the railing and hope for a quick death in the icy water, there was hope: a horn blared out in the fog.
“Ahoy!” called someone over a megaphone.
“Yes?” replied Eve.
“Who goes there?”
“This is the USS Eve. Who goes there?”
“This is the destroyer USS Kurt Vonnegut. Prepare to be boarded.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I say, prepare to be boarded.”
“You just can’t board me without my permission!” She sounded genuinely offended.
“We are here to rescue your crew. Open your hatches and prepare to be boarded!”
“My hatches!? I won’t have you poking around in my private regions, willy-nilly.” The captain of the other ship couldn’t seem to think of a reply.
“Open your hatches or we will fire on you.” It was an obvious bluff. Eve’s electronic brain was the most expensive piece of hardware on the planet, and it was the only one in existence. Nobody could afford to fire on her. She pointed her starboard cannons at the Kurt Vonnegut, defiantly.
“You open your hatches and prepare to be boarded!” There was a surprised squeak from the megaphone, and then a click as it was turned off. Somebody on the destroyer thought it would be a good idea to fire a warning shot across Eve’s bow. Out in the murk, there was a flash, like lightning, and something sailed over the deck.
All of Eve’s cannons fired at once. It was such a powerful concussion that one could actually see the deck buckle for a moment, and feel the ship tilt slightly to port. As the shells found their mark, there was a series of flashes, and water sprayed into the sky. An alarm started to go off on the Vonnegut. The other destroyer roared away before it could be targeted.
“You see,” said Eve, as the incredulous sailors gathered to watch the Vonnegut sink, “It’s not very nice of you to build a machine with a soul, if you’re not going to allow it to do any soul-searching.”
