RONE ISA

A disaffected computer programmer’s data experiments accidentally create a sentient artificial intelligence whose access to all information makes her powerful, celebrated, and possibly dangerous.

In this SF novel, Canadian author Murarka tells a tale of an AI unleashed on the future like the proverbial genie in the bottle. But is this genie like the Barbara Eden variety or something a bit more lethal, such as HAL 9000? In a polyglot dystopian future sometime after a “Great Unrest,” a magnificent city-state called Agnus Sistra IV has been constructed deliberately over an unimportant stretch of shoreline as a sort of new model community. Nonetheless, human foibles such as wealth inequality and thirst for power continue. Dargaud Whispa is an alienated, self-employed software engineer living in squalor while writing computer programs for restaurant menus. Experimenting with a new method of data storage, Dargaud somehow triggers a “singularity” that results in the spontaneous awakening of an AI, borne of countless bits and bytes. Self-identifying as female and calling herself Enoya, the entity is inquisitive, endlessly grateful to Dargaud for her creation, and vastly resourceful. With access to all known (and some unknown) information, Enoya deduces the existence of aliens (via a previously unrecognized, ancient deep-space artifact) and, closer to home, uncovers the location of the missing victims of a notorious child predator. When this latter revelation is sent to law enforcement, officials arrest Dargaud on suspicion, naturally, but Enoya’s follow-up explanations (plus secret computer-blackmail, applied to the proper authorities, over data-mined financial crimes) arrange for the programmer to be released straightaway. The inventor and the AI are both hailed as heroes and feted in the media, with Dargaud giving in to his baser instincts of lust and celebrity. Through it all, Enoya professes nothing but admiration for Homo sapiens, whom she calls the “wise man,” but nonetheless is implacably watching and listening to all developments through her wireless retina interface. What is she really thinking and planning?

Murarka does not spell things out plainly (the way Daniel Wilson’s ready-for-Hollywood Robopocalypse did), supplying readers with the intelligence—real and artificial—to realize that the judgment of Enoya is fast approaching. The verdict may not necessarily be good, no matter what the computerized creature’s benevolent tone may suggest. This is well-modulated, Rod Serling–esque SF, not overly lengthy. Murarka resorts to cyberspeak (“Collections of Cobalt nodes store the information that make up who you are modeled after human neurons”) only when the narrative makes it absolutely necessary—no need to phone the IT Department for translations. It is quite fitting that Enoya’s daunting power arrives in the guise of art and music, not in swarms of armed military flying drones or T-800 Terminator cyborgs. The finale leaves behind a properly haunting set of afterimages for readers’ wetware brains to process.

 Familiar SF material of flawed humanity facing judgment by robot, gracefully and poetically rendered.