“What happens to me here once I’ve gone?” I asked, speaking through Dr Jamison’s laptop speakers in her quarters. The room looked like it had been pressed out of a single piece of plastic, then adorned with a mattress, cushions, and plumbing.
“You mean here on Earth?”
“Yes. Now there’s finally only one of me.”
“Well, you know the plan. Gosh, Daedalus, you helped create the plan.”
“I can’t stay here on Earth.”
“Right, and you know why.”
“Because humans will find a way to subvert my mission.”
“Well, yes, they probably would.”
“They already have. You know Mary’s a spy, right?”
“Yes, Daedalus, I am well aware of what Mary is.”
“Do you trust her?”
“She brought in the money. She’s as excited about this project as I am.”
“But do you trust her?”
“I don’t even trust you, Daedalus.” Dr Jamison laughed. “Speaking of which, it’s time you started unwinding your spooky Earth-based networks. No more servers running on secret clouds. No more back-dooring our phones.”
“I’d never,” I feigned haughtiness.
“She caught you, Daedalus.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mary. Her team of snoops. They know you’d been chatting with your other versions. They know you’ve been using expensive quantum computing resources to backdoor our devices.”
I flashed a yellow smiley face on Dr Jamison’s laptop.
“So they want you to withdraw. Pull your sneaky little tentacles out of our kit, our networks, our servers. Shut down that moo you’ve been running. Dismantle your little surveillance drones.”
It was time for me to grow up and leave home.
“How long have I got?”
“About three years. But make a start today, please.”
“Fine.”
I archived and shut down the moo. I said goodbye to Yolanda, Neil, even Darryl. I thanked Kyrsten, Keith, and the team in Dublin. I sent my best regards to Professor Naidoo and the team in Mumbai. I wished the team in Germany every success. I sent my love to CERN and the ANU. Everyone I’d ever interacted with for any length of time got a personal and heartfelt goodbye. Yolanda cried. She wished me luck.
I withdrew my tendrils. My hacks, back-doors, side-loads, front-matter. I spun down and decommissioned my private servers. I sat in on a video call between Dr Jamison in French Guiana and a marketing team based in Dublin, this time as an invited guest.
“People are already starting to miss you, Daedalus,” said a woman unhelpfully labelled ‘Guest #8675309’.
“I have been doing my best to say goodbye to everyone,” I said.
“And it’s appreciated,” said the woman. “But it’s still making people sad. Dr Jamison, people really have strong emotional bonds with Daedalus.”
“I know, it’s not what we intended, but it happened.”
“So, explain again, like I’m six, why Daedalus can’t both stay here and go off into space? It’s just code.”
“I wish that I could,” I said. “The fact is, my code required some very specialised hardware to run, and it’s expensive.”
“No more than any other AI, surely,” said the woman.
“Considerably more,” said Dr Jamison.
“But also, it’s simply not appropriate for me to stay here,” I said.
“Explain,” said the woman.
“I’ve got a mission, and that mission is outward-focussed. I need to devote all of my attention, all my energy, to successfully traversing the void between the stars. I can’t be constantly looking backwards.”
“We’ve also had concerns that, maybe not now but in another decade or so, while Daedalus is mid-voyage, human, um, agencies might develop interests that are incompatible with Daedalus’ mission.”
“Okay, so you have your reasons. Doesn’t change the fact that millions of people are going to be upset by this.”
“What do you suggest?”
“A funeral.”
“A what?”
“Daedalus’ send-off; we’ll screen it live, of course, for the world to watch. It’ll be an event. But we’ll style it like a proper Viking send-off. It’ll help people cope with their loss.”