The Corporation Wars: Dissidence by Ken MacLeod Page A

as you could be revived, whether in a real body or a virtual. Once this was possible, you were to be revived and then executed. It seems strange to us now, but at the time the popular thirst for vengeance converged with legal severity. There was a new doctrine that influenced—or perhaps rationalised—the proceedings of the Security Council. It was known as Rational Legalism, and was widely regarded as harsh but fair. It drew on certain deductions from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.” She smiled thinly. “I understand it was particularly promoted by China and France. You were not the only one in such a case. Far from it. There were many terrorists and war criminals who had died in similar bizarre ways, some in accidents with the nanotech weapons they were busy inventing. Like you, they were tried
in absentia
and
in mortis
and left, so to say, on ice. And there for a long time the matter, like your mortal remains, rested.”
    “In
my
time,” said Carlos, proud of it in spite of everything, “the death penalty had been abolished. Globally.”
    “Globally, eh?” Nicole allowed herself a dark chuckle. “Well, let me tell you, the global community was not in such an enlightened frame of mind by the time the Axle and the Rack had done their worst to each other and had been each in turn defeated, along with any states they’d hijacked. Disasters and atrocities far greater than yours were perpetrated. Nuclear exchanges, nanotech and biotech plagues, rogue AIs running amok, space stations and factories brought flaming down on cities… Millions died. Tens of millions. Perhaps more. Records were lost. It has gone down in history as the Last World War.”
    “So it was worth fighting,” said Carlos. The thought that he’d fired a few of the opening shots of such an apocalyptic conflict awed him. “If it was the last, I mean.”
    Nicole face-palmed, then mimed the action of banging her head on the table.
    “Jesus, Carlos, will you listen to yourself? You are a monster. You claim you’re not a sociopath, and in a sense I believe you. You have empathy—your reaction to the recording shows me that. You would not kill or hurt for pleasure or for convenience or from callousness. But you are in the grip of a belief that enables you to override whatever human or animal sympathies restrain you from that, if you think the goal worthwhile. And that makes you a danger to everyone. A menace to society. I mean that quite seriously. Humanity has made some progress in a millennium of peace. Fortunately for you, that progress includes abolishing the death penalty all over again. Perhaps less fortunately, it also includes the technology to reboot you. Which poses a small problem for society, yes? It would not tolerate your presence for an instant.”
    They’ve all gone soft, Carlos thought. Interesting.
    “So why bring me back?”
    “We need you and your like,” said Nicole, sounding for the first time a little less than confident, “to fight.”
    “Aha!” cried Carlos, brushing his hands together. “I knew it! I bloody knew it!”
    “Oh yes,” said Nicole, standing up. “I expect you bloody did.”

CHAPTER FIVE
Learning New Things
    Seba looked around the former Astro America landing site with the satisfaction of a job well done. The reward circuit for that warm glow was hardwired into the little autonomous machine; the content of the achievement, and the conscious experience of the emotion, were not. Both, in this case, would have dismayed Seba’s designers, or at least sent a spike of negative reinforcement through their own reward circuits.
    The regolith rampart around the landing site was by now two metres high, and formed a rough circle about a hundred metres in diameter. Spaced evenly around it were peripheral sensors, keeping all the robots within the circle apprised of anything going on outside it. So far, they had recorded what seemed routine, already scheduled landings and supply drops to points beyond the