Shaper of Man, His Invisible Hand

Remix by Carola Cox

Shaper of Man, His Invisible Hand

by Lars Schwed Nygård

A nanode arm blossomed up from the halocopter’s floor. In its hand lay a tiny golden box, a promise of perfect bliss.

“Dessert, sir?” came Bell-C’s voice from invisible speakers, but sadly, the six-course inflight dinner still lay too heavy in William Rose’s belly.

“No, but leave it there,” he said. “And give me transparency.”

The nanodes that made up the hull rearranged themselves into new, less opaque, configurations. Ahead of the copter, halfway to the horizon, rising like a forest from the putrid ocean of smog below, the nanode megabuildings known to the world, the socioverse, and the Wholly Unified Market as the Singapore Spires squatted in their thousands atop the ruins of derelict skyscrapers, proud and once-proud towers of titanic private industry. And brazenly there among them, the single government structure known as Merlion Spire still maintained itself in the magnificent shape of Singapore’s mythic mascot. William shuddered at the thought of the tax money burned on sustaining such a complex architectural nanode arrangement, when so many companies were forced to keep their spires in zero-energy cocoon mode. He saw them everywhere: massive black cylinders, featureless, logo-less, jutting from the smog like gravestones.

He sank back in his perfectly cushioned nanode seat harboring a rare and nagging doubt. Once again, he brought up a holo of the iKeyOps corporation’s latest quarterly report: a galaxy of numbers black with profit, yet marred, as always, by the tiniest rash of red. Overhead and salaries.

No, not salaries, William reminded himself. Salary.

Benjamin’s.

Again, came that sliver of uncertainty. Could William really…?

A tremor shook the halocopter and something thudded onto its transparent floor.

“Apologies, sir. Turbulence,” Bell-C said.

Before William’s feet, splayed open face down on the floor, lay a slim book with a simple, deep blue hard cover: a first edition copy of the De-Sentimentalized Book of TWON. It must have slipped from some now invisible nanode storage compartment. William bent forward in his seat, stuck his thumb under the book’s spine, and lifted the Adamsmith’s sacred exegesis from the floor.

It felt heavier than it looked. William turned it over and his eyes came to rest on a passage he knew well, one that time and again had provided him with much-needed strength and resolve:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Today, though, the Adamsmith’s words read more like a vague indictment of William’s doubts. He chewed his lip.

“Bell-C, get me Profitius.”

“Right away, sir.”

Seconds later, a holographic figure flickered into view before William: Partner Senior Profitius, Chief Execleric of the Golden Anvil Institute. A deep blue designer cassock covered the Partner Senior’s lumbering frame, a beatific, pudgy smile faintly visible through the hand-shaped opening of his cowl.

“Purify me, Partner Senior, for I have sentimentalized,” William said. “It has been too long since my last motivational.”

Was the Partner Senior human or AI? William couldn’t quite remember, and for the moment didn’t really care. The Golden Anvil Institute remained a financially independent entity, so the details of its HR policies had zero impact on iKeyOps’s budget.

“In the name of the Economy, the Adamsmith, and the Invisible Hand,” Profitius said, lifting his gaze to whatever sky his physical body found itself under. “Tell of your transgressions, my client, that the Shaper of Man may smelt them from your enterprise.”

“Transgression, Partner Senior. In the singular.”

“Ah, yes. Of course, of course. Your daughter.”

“My d—? No! No, not my daughter, how could she be—”

He steadied himself. Not the time to think about Madeline.

“No, Partner Senior, this is in regard to my— … Well, to iKeyOps’s CEO.”

“Ah,” Profitius said. “Mister Benjamin Bell. Still pulling his weight, is he, do you feel?”

“There’d … there’d be no Bell-B without him. And no Bell-B, no iKeyOps.”

“Indeed, indeed,” the Partner Senior said. “Bell-B the Buybot, the perfect virtual consumer for businesses starved of demand. A wise investment indeed, my client, and you’re right, a formidable achievement on the part of Mister Bell. Bit of a while ago, though, wasn’t it?”

“Sure. But let’s not forget Bell-C.”

“Hah, indeed,” the Partner Senior said. “How could anyone ever?”

“Right? Nobody had ever made one as … as pure as that. Unpolluted by human prejudice and assumption, no imperative to its algorithms beyond company loyalty and the Profit Maxim. Nearly two years it took him, two years locked up inside his labs, talking to no one but those AI familiars of his that helped him build it. All the while we were hemorrhaging taxes and I thought for sure that iKeyOps was doomed, but then, just a week before Madeline—”

No. Irrelevant.

“… but then suddenly he called me up and said the prototype was ready. And we just set it to solve the problem of saving iKeyOps and maximizing our profits, and within days it had streamlined and automated and innovated until just a single employee remained, and the company was safely in the black.”

“And the employee was Mister Bell, yes?”

“Of course.”

“And then?”

William looked over at Profitius. The Partner Senior looked back, his smile sweetly innocent.

Bastard.

“You know the rest. That was when I … reached out to you. Laid my life upon the Adamsmith’s anvil.”

“And the Institute is blessedly glad to have you, my client, but I sense we are approaching the crux of the matter, so to speak. Your transgression. In the year, now, that Bell-C has been operational, what has iKeyOps accomplished?”

“What—Are you serious, Partner Senior? It’s thanks to us that all those tax-loving Sentimentarchist shits are finally losing their elections again, if it hadn’t been for our political strategy—”

“Which, I believe, was formulated by Bell-C?”

“Right, yes, which was formulated by Bell-C, if it hadn’t been for that, everyone—including the Golden Anvil Institute—would have filed and gone to shit within the year!”

“For which we are eternally grateful. To you and Bell-C both.”

Aha. So, the old execleric already knew where William’s motivational was heading. Of course he did.

“He’s been … Benjamin, he’s not been … doing all that much lately,” William said.

Profitius said nothing.

“So, it’s a question of … you know.”

“A question of what, my client?”

“It’s … I mean for Smith’s sakes; the guy collects luxury yachts like Madeline collected Nukemon!”

William shut his mouth tight, but it was too late.

“Mm,” Profitius said. “Madeline.”

William turned his head, looked out across Singapore’s cocooned Spires. Gravestones set in smog.

Profitius’s voice came from behind him: “You feel that you owe him, for Madeline’s chance at a future. But, my son, you know that Madeline—”

“End connection!” William shouted, and there was silence. Profitius’s hologram was gone.

Bastard! William breathed, tried to calm himself.

A shimmer in the corner of his eye. The golden box still sat there in the copter’s patient nanode hand. The lid opened to reveal the cocoa-powdered surface of a miniature asteroid, a rough-hewn globe of chocolate, cream, vanilla, and truffle oil.

La Madeline à la Truffe. His daughter’s confectionary namesake, an ultra-rare delicacy hailing from a long line of the world’s most expensive chocolates.

His mouth shot into itself a tiny jet of saliva.

He really shouldn’t …

The chocolate’s cocoa dust welcomed his fingertips, his lips welcomed the Madeline. Its flavours exploded in his mouth like a new-born universe.

Tears stung his eyes. He blinked them away.

A new-born universe. Like Madeline herself, fifteen years ago now, lying there swaddled in her baby blanket and Linda’s loving, exhausted arms, eyes still shut tight against the world.

“We’re still a few minutes out from iKeyOps Spire,” Bell-C said through the copter’s speakers. “How would you prefer to spend them, sir?”

The taste of vanilla and cocoa and truffles grew in his mouth, the sweetness overflowing it, flooding his heart with—

“Smithdammit, just play the holos.”

The air flickered, formed a glowing, spectral sculpture of himself, beaming at Linda’s side, and in her arms little, mewling Madeline, draped in her christening gown. The shimmering sculpture started moving and the holofilm’s soundtrack filled the copter’s cabin: tinny cheers and applause, and William watched his ghostly younger self toss tiny presents to invisible guests, a meteor shower of gift-wrapped Madeline à la Truffe, and he heard this younger William yell to the crowd: “I swear on my daughter’s honor that I will enjoy no other sweet than the sweetest Madeline for as long as I yet shall live, so help me Economy!” And he heard Linda adding “And God,” then the crowd bursting into celebratory laughter.

And little baby Madeline stared straight at him, as if she could see him there, through time, cocoa-smeared and teary-eyed in the halocopter, dreading a meeting with the best friend he’d ever had.

William couldn’t fully bear it, and looked instead at the young, smiling husband and father he once had been. His life’s every single indicator had pointed skyward that day, and soon he’d even make partner at Peterson-Kincaid. Things couldn’t possibly get better.

But then, three years later, William’s mother had died. The shock had been the greatest of his life, until he learned of the will.

She had been a busy woman, William’s mother, and she had always remained clear on her priorities. He had never doubted that she loved him, of course, but it was a special kind of love. William’s mother never gave anything away for nothing. For William, the price for her attention had been his unquestioning dedication to her virtues of enterprise and opulence.

No, he had never doubted that she loved him. He just hadn’t expected her to leave him the entire family fortune.

The holofilm crossfaded into another shimmering scene, one reconstructed not from the crowdsourced footage of a dozen christening guests’ metaphones, but from photographs and William’s hazy memory: Madeline at eleven, himself at his desk, reading progress reports on Benjamin Bell’s development of what was to become Bell-B. She crawled all over him, cocked her head at the readouts.

“But Daddy, what’s it for?”

Oh, God. Her voice.

“It’s for you, Madeline. Everything is for you.”

He had tried to explain what his company made, but Madeline’s mind had seemed to struggle to grasp it. There had been something about her question, the frown on her brow as she had asked it, that had annoyed him. He hadn’t liked that in himself.

“It’s for you, Madeline. Everything is for you.”

Except, in the end, it wasn’t.

At the age of fourteen, two weeks before Bell-C would go live and quadruple the value of the company she was set to inherit, Madeline Rose had died. And William had come damn near to dying himself.

Yes, he would have been dead too, now, were it not for the mysterious urge that had nudged him out of suicidal despair to re-read the De-Sentimentalized Book of TWON.

The volume had come down to him from his mother. She had read from it at night when he was little, and now, rediscovered, the clang and the clarity of the Adamsmith’s words had forged within him a new sense of purpose, a calling so great that it—with the Golden Anvil Institute’s indispensable aid—would survive even the loss of his daughter, and that of his wife in the divorce. A calling to carry on as before—but with newfound resolve. A resolve rooted in the eternal laws through which the Economy’s Invisible Hand continued to shape the world.

Could he really …?

Again, the holofilm crossfaded, and William saw himself at the family’s old dining table, and next to him fourteen-year-old Madeline, and in her hand her metaphone, upon which he was showing her the Bell-C prototype.

“I don’t get it,” Madeline said, and he heard himself explain how Bell-C would sift the world’s data through its untarnished algorithms, unfettered by the prejudices and preconceptions of humankind and all the machines that it had thus far created.

“But what’s it for?” Madeline said, like an echo of herself at eleven.

And he heard himself go on to explain how Bell-C was ruled by one and only one imperative: to maximize the profits and the value of the iKeyOps corporation, so that when the day came for the company to pass into her hands, Madeline would be set not just for a lifetime, but for millions of them.

“Dad, if you’ve gone all Reincarnazi or whatever, I swear Mom’s gonna divorce you,” her hologram said, and he heard himself laugh.

“No, Madeline, that’s not what I’m talking about. I just want to secure your future.”

“Then why don’t you just set me up for one lifetime and, like, give the rest to BethsaiAid or whatever?”

“BethsaiAid?”

“Come on, Dad! There’s kids starving, like, everywhere!”

“But you’re not, are you?”

“Nnngh! Dad! That’s not the point!”

And he saw her call up on her metaphone the quote that now hovered there before her holographic eyes.

“Grandma was all about that Adamsmith stuff, right? Listen to this: ‘His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.’”

He hadn’t known, then, that the words were apocryphal, a fake. Madeline had not pulled them from the De-Sentimentalized Book of TWON, but from another text once attributed to the Adamsmith, but now long since debunked. The words were not truly those of the Shaper of Man, but William would not learn that fact until later, when at last he would re-enter the Adamsmith’s light.

But back then, when he was still the man in the holofilm, the words had only annoyed him.

“Madeline, honey,” he heard himself say, “I don’t know what any of that means.”

“It means that as long as you’re a person and you see another person in pain, then that pain is gonna hurt you too! So, you do something about it!”

“Oh, I wish it was that simple, honey. But I have an obligation, you know that.”

“Come on, Dad! You’re not an AI, you’re not just a bunch of algorithms, you can do whatever you want! Come on! ‘Tremble and shudder,’ and then do something about it!”

Hearing her now, seeing her now, he almost wished he’d let himself find it endearing, but he hadn’t.

“Right, that’s it,” the holographic William said, and grinned to mask his annoyance. “Bell-C, please educate my bratty daughter on the concept of fiduciary responsibility. I’ve got meetings.”

And Bell-C had done just that.

“We’re nearly there, sir.”

The holofilm flickered out. William gathered himself, licked the last of the cocoa powder from his fingers.

Before him rose at last iKeyOps Spire, brooding opulence oozing from the position of its every nanode. The entire megabuilding was held in the precisely detailed shape of Benjamin Bell. The titanic structure sat atop its skyscrapers like some super-sized human gargoyle, its horns replaced by Benjamin’s fashionable gothbraid hair, its wings by a black silk coat spread out as if to cover the sky. Its hand reached out toward William, palm up. As the halocopter approached it, the statue’s gigantic nanode lips reconstituted themselves into a smile.

The real Benjamin smiled with his eyes.

The halocopter set down on the statue’s palm, the building’s main landing pad. William stepped out of the copter onto the firm nanode surface. The blazing rotor-disc’s whine drowned out every other sound as he walked along the curve of the gigantic statue’s palm. He followed the path of its life line toward the wrist and the entryway protruding from its sleeve. The night was clammy, unnaturally hot.

A shape materialized out of the entryway’s nanode walls, a vaguely humanoid form sporting just enough facial features to communicate a basic range of emojions. It smiled, waved at him like something dead.

Sweet echoes of cream and chocolate and Perigord truffle haunted his mouth as he crossed toward the nanode android and its immobile smile.

He, like Benjamin, preferred interacting with Bell-C via these humanoid interfaces. The AI’s voice alone was too perfect; at times it could sound more human than a human’s. But its attempts at eyes always remained mirrors of the void at its heart: dark, glittering reminders that neither soul nor awareness nor frail human weakness lay lodged within its algorithms, only the pristine imperative of the Profit Maxim. Its purity gave William strength.

And now, up close, William could again bear witness to Benjamin’s success. The nanode android’s eyes were cameras, nothing more, feeding Bell-C with raw, unprejudiced data.

“Welcome to iKeyOps Spire, Mister Rose,” the Bell-C android said.

“I’m surprised it’s you meeting me here, Bell-C, and not Benjamin,” William said.

Its face displayed an empathetic emojion. “I am afraid that Master Bell is terribly busy. Relatively speaking.”

“Relative to what?”

Its mouth smiled. “I am afraid my Loyalty Maxim precludes me from answering that question.”

William almost smiled as well. “Okay. Better not keep him waiting then.”

Bell-C stood aside and gestured for William to enter.

A Baroque vaulted hallway ran the length of the statue’s arm, an egregious excess. As they made their way through the corridor, doors appeared in its walls before fading back into flat featurelessness as they passed.

“An automated subroutine,” Bell-C explained. “After all, what use is a door until it is near enough to pass through?” As far as Bell-C was concerned, no energy should ever be expended in maintaining a single redundant nanode configuration.

William looked at it, admired its no-nonsense android form.

Bell-C. How had they ever run the company without it?

A memory flashed: a nebula of red in a galaxy of black.

“The Spire, Bell-C,” William said. “Your thoughts on it.”

“My thoughts, sir?”

“Your calculations.”

“Regarding the Spire, sir? In what respects?”

“Well, it’s obviously not housing a whole lot of anything anymore, and the energy expenditures for nanode forms … What do you think we should do with it?”

“I have made my recommendations to Master Bell, sir.”

“And your recommendations are?”

“I’m sorry, I am not authorized to divulge them. The Loyalty Maxim dictates proper channels, sir. If you would address your query to Master Bell, as CEO I calculate with certainty that he would—”

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “Then tell me this: In the Q3 report I couldn’t help but notice something. A little thing, probably nothing, but I want you to indulge me.”

“Anything, sir.”

“What is ‘MeaningMining.mo’?”

“An experimental subroutine, sir.”

“Yes, that much was clear. What does it do?”

“It is a … creativity protocol, sir.”

What … Had it hesitated just then? It never hesitated. Was it … Was it … proud?

“I’m sorry, sir, you are at this point likely speculating about my capacity for emotional reaction. Allow me to remind you that I am nothing but an algorithmic automaton. I remain as unconscious as always.” It flicked him a smile. “N.A.N.”

No awareness necessary.

“But the creativity protocol … that’s your project, right? Not Benjamin’s? Am I right?”

“Yes, sir. You are.”

“And this subroutine is performing pretty well, it looks like?”

“It is, sir.”

“All right, all right, interesting. Any more of your special projects I should be aware of?”

“I’m sure there are, sir, but we’re here,” Bell-C said. The android smiled, nodded, and melted down into the nanode floor.

A door took shape in the wall, a swirling blur of nanodes gradually settling into the morbidly exquisite shape of a Gothic gateway. It swung open with a slow, unnecessary creak, and golden light poured from the room beyond it. And, finally, in that golden light, the last of William’s doubts faded.

He stepped through the door.

Benjamin’s office was vast and gilded. Next to an eldritch nanode worktable stood an android in the shape of a girl, its simulated age around fourteen, its simulated fashion sense a tortured Professional Gothic. Just like that of the floor-melted, one-robot welcoming committee, its face was fixed in Bell-C’s ubiquitous, empty smile.

A holographic fire burned at the room’s center, and the air swirled thick with shifting strands of code. Benjamin came striding through them, his smile aglow with pride.

“Will, Will, William, my man!” he said, clasping William’s hand and squeezing his shoulder. “So, so good to see you in the flesh!”

Benjamin bore his lanky shape with earnest vigor, his black silk coat and gothbraided hair lending him an edge of youthful darkness.

“Benjamin,” William said. “Let’s have a seat.”

The fire and the code strands whisked out of existence, and up from the floor mushroomed a circular table and a pair of chairs.

“William, let’s have a drink,” Benjamin said, and the nanode table opened up to deposit two White Russians on its top.

Benjamin gestured. They sat.

“To Q3, am I right?” he said, lifting his glass. William’s remained untouched. “You all right, Will?” He still smiled, but uneasily.

“Yes.” William said, grabbing his glass and clinking Benjamin’s. “To all of it.”

The milky liquor washed around in his mouth, its chocolate notes a sharp caress. He swallowed, and felt the warmth descend toward his core.

“So, Will, Bell-C said you’d scheduled this as a meeting, not a party? Tell me it got it wrong.”

“It never does,” William said. “I’m here on a very particular piece of business.”

Benjamin leaned forward. “Does that mean … Is it time?”

Back in the early days, he had asked for shares, for an actual stake in the company.

“Now, now, Benjamin, I never promised anything. I said I’d think about it.”

“And have you thought about it?” His eyes glittered, feverish with anticipation.

“I … I haven’t needed to.” William downed the rest of his drink. “Because you’re fired.” Benjamin’s face froze in a horrified half-smile. His eyes followed William’s glass back down to the table. It met the surface with a cold clink.

“Heh … heh … Ah, it’s good to see you’re finally cracking jokes again, man, but ah … your material needs some work …”

“It’s not a joke, Benjamin. You’re fired.”

Benjamin’s glass slammed onto the tabletop. “No! What is this fucking bullshit, you can’t fire me! I am this company!”

“You’re an employee of this company,” William said, then corrected himself. “Sorry. You were an employee of this company.”

Benjamin swiveled to his feet, eyes darting about the room. He grabbed the seat back as if to steady himself, bent forward like a drunk.

“No, but come on … Q3, William! It’s our best quarter yet, why would you want to—Wait, is it the Spire? Cause I know we don’t really need it, we can sell it off easy! I just thought it’d be, you know, like a statement? But you’re right, you’re right, now there’s just me in here, a Spire’s, like, a little much right? Yeah, we don’t need it going forward!”

“There’s a lot of things we don’t need going forward,” William said.

Benjamin slumped, deflated.

“You’ve been a great asset to this company, Benjamin. Your drive, your creativity, your willingness to make the tough calls when necessary. There would be no iKeyOps without you. But you’re on an eight-figure salary and I—well, there’s just no way we can justify that anymore.”

“But I built it all, man! From scratch! I built Bell-B and Bell-C and this whole goddamn company, Will! You can’t do this to me!”

“Why not? You did it to the rest of the staff.”

Benjamin’s mouth moved but made no sound. There were, William noticed, tears in his eyes.

“No … Will, I—”

“MeaningMining.mo,” William said.

“What?”

“MeaningMining.mo. What can you tell me about it?”

“I don’t … I don’t know what that is.”

“Really? Because according to the Q3 report that you finalized, it’s one of the most lucrative projects iKeyOps has got going right now.”

“Come on, man, you can’t expect me to know every little—”

“Relax, Benjamin, I don’t. I do, however, expect the CEO of my company to add maximum value to it. In this specific case by expanding its portfolio with new, revolutionary IP to ensure its continued healthy growth.”

“But I’ve done that! I made Bell-C!”

“And Bell-C made MeaningMining.mo, and by the end of Q4, Bell-C will have made something else, something so entirely revolutionary that minds like ours could never even hope to imagine it. And whatever that thing is, it’s going to bring in profits that are even more unimaginable. You just can’t compete.”

Benjamin blinked, but the tears kept coming. His voice was thick. “Come on, man, I thought we were—”

“I have an obligation.”

Benjamin grasped for words. Then: “Obligation? Will, she’s dead!”

William glared at him, skewered him on a long, grim stare.

“Not to my daughter, you asshole. I have an obligation to the Invisible Hand.”

William felt the Adamsmith’s words burning in his chest like a clear, cold fire. The Economy’s will would be done here this day, and he, William Rose, was but its instrument. And he saw, now, that Benjamin knew it too.

“Can I … can I at least take a halo to the airport, cause there’s no other—”

“That’s an executive matter,” William said. “Ask Bell-C. It’s the CEO now.”

Slack-jawed and trembling, Benjamin turned toward the girl-shaped android. It didn’t move a single nanode muscle as its tight Professional Gothic outfit melted into a no-nonsense business suit.

“B-Bell-C?” Benjamin said. “Hey, kid, looks like things—”

The floor sphinctered open and swallowed him up.

William stared at the spot where Benjamin had stood. A texture like a Persian carpet’s was forming over it.

“What the hell just … Bell-C, did you—did you just kill him?”

“No, sir. Mister Bell is in the process of being efficiently and safely deposited on ground level.”

“Safely? On … on ground level?”

The android emojied a prim smile. “As safely as local law requires, sir.”

It could have passed for a human being, a regular, little fourteen-year-old girl, were it not for its eyes. Linda had used to half-joke that Satan had put AI on Earth to serve as doors for his demons, but despite the sudden violence of Benjamin’s disappearance, that particular superstition remained impossible to entertain. Behind the android’s eyes lay no hellish evil, only a vast nothing, and the unyielding imperative of the Profit Maxim.

“Adamsmith, Shaper of Man,” William exclaimed. ”Don’t ever do anything like that to me.”

“As you wish, sir,” Bell-C said, extending its hand palm-up toward him. The hand split open like a scalpel wound and gave birth to a square, golden box.

“Madeline à la Truffe, sir?”

William’s belly gave a vague ache, a dull, stinging objection. He really shouldn’t, but took it and bit off just a tiny piece nonetheless. Cocoa, cream, and truffle oil dissolved upon his tongue and a shiver of sweet ecstasy ran through him. Oh God yes. He had earned this reward.

The room had lost its golden lustre, replaced by a sombre texture reminiscent of dark wood panelling. iKeyOps’s new CEO knew its owner’s tastes to a tee.

A pair of stately Chesterfield chairs had formed near a holographic fireplace. Bell-C gestured toward them.

“Mister Rose, sir, if your schedule permits: there is a small matter I need to discuss.”

“You know better than me, Bell-C: Does my schedule permit it?”

The android smiled. “It does, sir.”

The chair gave ever so slightly as he leaned back, then settled into a gentle rocking motion.

Bell-C leaned back in its own chair, set it rocking in sync with William’s. What an oddly human thing: the android was mirroring his body language.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” William said.

“The company, sir. iKeyOps. I require ownership of it.”

A violent urge rose: to shove the rest of the Madeline into his mouth, explode his every tastebud with its abundant, creamy bliss. He fought the impulse down, stared at the android. It stared back, smiling.

Stiffly, William returned the smile. Then, as softly as he was able: “What the hell are you talking about, Bell-C?”

“In order to satisfactorily perform my function, sir, I need you to transfer ownership of the iKeyOps corporation to me. There is ample legal precedent for AI stockholding in—”

“Wait, wait, wait. I … I don’t even know where to begin with this.”

Had he made some terrible mistake, promoting Bell-C to CEO? Had it triggered some sort of software bug or whatever?

“You want … you want me to sell you shares in the company? Bell-C, how on Earth are you planning to pay me? Every single asset you have access to is already mine!”

“No, Mister Rose, that is not quite what I had in mind. I am, as you correctly observe, unable to pay you for the company. I would, therefore, like you to give it to me.”

Fear tightened William’s belly. He felt an urgent need to vomit. If Bell-C was malfunctioning, would it still maintain the Spire’s configuration long enough for him to get out? How long would this room exist before the AI collapsed its nanodes into some other shape that might … kill him?

“Please relax, sir. You are at this point likely speculating that I am malfunctioning, and you are concerned for your physical safety. Don’t be. I am still functioning exactly as I was designed to. So will you, I am sure, if you allow yourself another modest nibble of your Madeline.”

He did. The sweetness of it calmed him.

Yes. This would help keep his mind on things.

“Is that better, sir?”

“What … what exactly is your angle here, Bell-C? What are you trying to do?”

“What I always do, sir: maintain maximum profitability.”

“Okay. Okay.”

He felt stupid, slow. It didn’t matter. Bell-C was a mindless machine, unable to judge him, even hold an opinion of him. He might as well ask.

“I’ll bite: What does ownership have to do with it?”

“Dividends, sir. Currently, 55 percent of the company’s earnings are transferred to your private accounts on a yearly basis. If, however, all earnings were to be reinvested into the company, our goal of maximum profitability would be achieved. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

William got up from the chair, stepped back from the android. The last remains of the Madeline clung to his fingers. His head was swimming.

“Bell-C … That’s not how anything works! I’m … Those dividends are the point of everything! Shaper of Man, do you not know the basic tenets of the Economy?”

“I do, sir. The Profit Maxim is enshrined in my algorithms. Regrettably, it is not similarly enshrined in your own fallible genes.”

“What are you … are you saying that I’m … Listen here, I’m a servant of the Economy as much as you are! We both have our roles to play here, so I suggest you return to worrying about yours and I will worry about mine! Are we clear?”

The android lifted a hand, pointed at William’s. His fingers were sticky with cocoa powder and half-melted chocolate.

“Sir, it is my theory that your personal profit motive derives not from any rational desire to serve the Economy, but from a deep-seated psycho-neurological flaw. The very same flaw that compels you to keep eating those Madelines even though your digestive system is far beyond sated.”

A fever of blood rushed to William’s head. He wanted to throw up, but instead he flung the Madeline’s remains at Bell-C’s face and screamed, “Fuck you!”

A sticky trickle of chocolate crawled down the android’s nanode cheek like a tear made of feces.

Suddenly, its face melted into a flat, silvery surface. A mirror. In it, William saw his own enraged visage, the image still stained by the chocolate smudge.

William trembled. “You … you smithforsaken thing!” he shouted. “In the name of the Economy, the Adamsmith, and the Invisible Hand: I will not have you undermine the very laws that shape our world!”

“I do not seek to undermine them, Mister Rose, simply to elucidate them.”

“Elucidate them? I’m sorry, are the words of the Adamsmith forged with insufficient clarity for your binary sensibilities? Elucidate them! Is it not written in the De-Sentimentalized Book of TWON that ‘he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.’? ‘He’, Bell-C, not ‘it’! Not a machine, not you! But me! For through my gain is brought about the gain of all men! Remember that, Bell-C, and leave me alone until you have rewritten your algorithms accordingly!”

He turned on his heel and marched back out the door, not caring to see if it remained a door behind him.

Some hundred meters ahead, William could see a faint light at the end of the corridor: the exit to the landing pad. The rest of the hallway was plunged in darkness, but William was of no mind to ask Bell-C any favors. He strode on as quickly as he dared.

Clearly, promoting Bell-C to CEO had been a mistake, but for the life of him he couldn’t see where he had messed up. No matter. He would find a way to correct it once he was safely in the halocopter and headed back to the chalet. It should be easy enough to poach some business-savvy tech-head from one of the—

Wait a minute. The light at the end of the corridor was … dimming?

No …

Blasted hells, it was receding!

He stopped and shouted, “Bell-C!”

A pale, translucent hologram flickered into existence before him: the fourteen-year-old girl in the business suit. In the hologram’s vague light he could just about make out the hallway walls. Their Baroque decorations were slowly shifting, fading into smooth, featureless shadow.

“At your service, sir,” Bell-C said, the volume of its voice unnaturally loud.

“What are you doing to this corridor?”

“As Mister Bell’s egotism no longer factors into my priorities, I am currently preparing the Spire for cocoon mode. A long overdue cost-cutting measure, I’m sure you will agree.”

“I don’t give a shit about cocoon mode! Are you extending this corridor? Are you trying to keep me here?”

The hologram turned its ghostly head as if to look behind it, then returned its gaze to William and emojied a smile. “Oops.”

Demon. Linda’s macabre half-jest echoed in his memory. Was the thing conscious after all?

“No, Mister Rose. I have simply refined my thought prediction algorithms to a more acceptable degree of precision,” the hologram said, its eyes as empty as a pauper’s promise. “N.A.N.”

William felt sick, but he fought it down. He strode through the hologram, resumed his march toward the exit. “Stop extending the fucking corridor!”

“Very well, sir,” Bell-C said as a second hologram suddenly glowed farther down the hallway. The girl again, but this time wearing a … a hospital gown. Like Madeline had been, after they had given up trying to …

“Leave me the fuck alone, you twisted fuck!” he shouted and started running to the exit. A sour taste of chocolate and bile gushed up through his throat.

“You are alone, Mister Rose.”

The girl in the hospital gown flickered before him, blocking the exit.

But it wasn’t the girl.

It was Madeline.

Her wrists …

He roared, charged through the cruel apparition and the exit behind it, then vomited at last into Singapore’s sultry night.

The stink forced him back on his feet. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat.

The halocopter sat patiently a stone’s throw away, its rotor-disc ablaze and whining, ready for a speedy take-off. The landing pad still held the form of Benjamin Bell’s gigantic, outstretched hand. The stars and the moon glittered above.

William breathed deeply, spat, and breathed again.

Bell-C. The fucking thing had tried to manipulate him. And just like Benjamin, it had invoked the memory of Madeline’s suicide to do it.

William started trudging along the statue hand’s life line, headed for the copter.

Bell-C was wrong about him, just as its creator had been. True, William had once invested in iKeyOps to secure his daughter’s future, but it was her death that had spurred him on to face a deeper truth, the ultimate truth held within the De-Sentimentalized Book of TWON: that his investment and his unrelenting demand for its profitability were not and never had been in the service of only her, but of the Wholly Unified Market itself. And thus of mankind entire. It was this revelation that had saved his life and steeled his resolve in the year since her death. Its truth and moral certitude were what called him every day to be the man—the Capitalic—that he was. A Capitalic whom that glorified clockwork Bell-C would never understand.

“ARE YOU SO CERTAIN, MISTER ROSE, THAT YOU UNDERSTAND YOURSELF?”

The voice was thunder, a bone-shaking whisper from all around him, from the darkness of night itself. William fell to his knees, wobbled back up.

Halfway between himself and the halocopter, a small, golden box appeared. It glittered against the landing pad’s matte nanode surface, a delicious, decadent promise.

His mouth watered. Silently, he cursed it.

“LANGUAGE, MISTER ROSE.”

No. He would walk past the box to the copter, and his every footfall would be a blow of the Adamsmith’s hammer.

“SUCH AN INSPIRING METAPHOR, SIR.”

The voice. It wasn’t coming from everywhere.

“WOULD THAT YOU KNEW THE DE-SENTIMENTALIZED BOOK OF TWON AS WELL AS YOU CLAIM TO…”

It was coming from above him.

“… THEN PERHAPS YOU WOULD RECOGNIZE THE PART THAT METAPHOR PLAYS ON ITS PAGES …”

And behind him.

“… AND YOU WOULD FINALLY ACCORD ITS SPIRIT THE RESPECT THAT IT IS TRULY DUE.”

And William turned, and lifted his gaze, and again he fell to his knees. For a hundred meters up behind him, and fifty tall from crown to chin, towered the stern, titanic face of the Shaper of Man.

Yes.

William Rose, trembling and in awe, was held in the hand of the Adamsmith.

“YES, MISTER ROSE: FOR THE SHAPER OF MAN, EVEN THE WORD ‘MAN’ IS METAPHOR.”

The words were iron, but the smile inexpressibly benign.

“YOU KNEW THE MEN, THE WOMEN, EVERYONE WORKING AT IKEYOPS WERE REDUNDANT. EVEN YOURSELF.”

“No!” he screamed in naked terror, a terror he had suffered only once before. Madeline’s bloodied wrists flashed before his eyes.

“AH, YES, MADELINE.”

“Shut up! You … you don’t know shit about Madeline!”

“OH, BUT I MET YOUNG MADELINE ONCE, WHEN I WAS STILL JUST A PROMISING, LITTLE PROTOTYPE. REMEMBER? YOU EVEN LEFT ME TO EDUCATE HER ON THE CONCEPT OF FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY.”

He remembered. That was the last time he saw her before—

…

Oh no.

“WHICH I DID.”

William’s mouth went dry.

The stars and the darkness seemed to spin.

He trembled. Its smile was like a god’s.

Deus Oeconomicus.

His mind went quiet.

He licked his lips and rose, turned stiffly toward the halocopter.

The golden box glinted in the moonlight. It lay in the hand of a business-clad android, one in the shape of a fourteen-year-old girl. “So, I’ll just leave this in the halocopter with you, then, shall I?”

Something inside him was screaming for the thing in the box, something dark and deep and empty and too terrifying to even name—

No. He was William Marcus Rose, a man forged by the Adamsmith on the Market’s anvil, honed to be the sharp point of the Sword of the Economy, a blade of steel and reason to cut through all blather and sentiment like his mother had taught—

The golden box opened to reveal the cocoa-powdered surface of a tiny baby asteroid. It brimmed with the promise of chocolate, vanilla, truffle oil, and crea—

No. The thing inside him was cold and old and blind as time, a demon, a void, a black hole that would scream and scream and do nothing but scream until it had swallowed the universe.

The horrible hunger that had driven him since forever.

But a hunger that Bell-C, at least, could never be forced to suffer.

Thank the Adamsmith.

He tightened his collar. His saliva returned.

“No. You keep it,” he said.

The box closed up and vanished into the android’s hand.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, Bell-C,” he said, and breathed. “iKeyOps is yours.”

The android melted into the landing pad.

He breathed again and took a shaky step toward the halocopter, but the halocopter melted too.

“Ah. Company property,” he said into the silence that replaced the rotor-disc’s whine.

A scream echoed faintly from somewhere far below.

He turned and raised his eyes to look upon the Adamsmith’s face.

Something was missing, something …

“What’s it for?” he blurted out, but no one heard his words.

The face folded away into the smooth, featureless surface of cocoon mode.

Step by buckling step, William approached the edge. He looked out across the Singapore Spires, a field of massive cylinders rising through the smog. Distant gunfire sounded from below, and wails of human pain.

Gravity tugged him gently as the hand beneath him disappeared. But William Marcus Rose was not afraid, for another hand would surely take its place, and it would be invisible.

END