text: "Now we have to call the cops. Where's his card, Andy? It's not in the living room."
  
  "Maybe he gave it to me while we were in the study. Check in the desk drawers."
  
  She went back to the study. "Got it," she shouted after a few seconds of searching. She returned wearing a frown on her face. She stood in the center of the living room and held her phone up with an outstretched arm, pointing it in different directions. "There's no signal."
  
  "It gets weak sometimes. Try standing near the windows."
  
  She walked over to the glass doors and tried from there. "Nope." She turned around and approached me. "Can you check your phone?"
  
  I unlocked the screen and tossed it to her. "As I said, it keeps crashing. See if you get lucky."
  
  "Same here," she said after a few seconds.
  
  "Maybe the storm took out a cell tower." I suggested.
  
  "We'll use your Wi-Fi." She handed me her phone. I connected it to my home network and gave it back. "Internet's gone too," she declared. She showed me the screen. Unable to connect to the internet.
  
  "That's odd. It was working two minutes ago when we were talking to Raphael."
  
  "Isn't your internet broadband cable? Can a storm take out an underground cable?"
  
  "It can't. Maybe it caused a power outage." I said.
  
  "But you have power here. Are you running on backup?"
  
  "I don't have a backup supply," I answered. "Never needed one. What I meant was that the storm could have taken out the service provider's grid somewhere."
  
  "So what do we do now?"
  
  "What can we do? We wait until it is back."
  
  She bit her lip. "No… The sooner we let the police know, the sooner they can start tracing him. Should I just drive down to the lab? I can inform Valery and call the detective from there."
  
  "In that?" I said, waving at the storm outside. "Definitely not!"
  
  "Andy, Raphael sounded in distress. He said he didn't have a lot of time. Don't you think we should act on it?"
  
  "Maybe he was rambling again. He did say the pings were making him say crazy stuff. If you have any other ideas, I'm listening, but you are not going out there."
  
  She must have realized that I was right and didn't offer further argument.
  
  We sat in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. Raphael was out there somewhere, beyond the billowing wall of ice and water. But unlike Jane, I didn't have the luxury to be open about the source of my discomfort.
  
  She was the first to break the stifling quiet. "Do you think they are going to cut him open?" There were worry lines on her forehead. "You know, take him apart to see if they can reverse engineer him? Maybe that's what he meant when he said he didn't have much time."
  
  "In the long run: maybe. But so soon? They just got him. Whoever they are, they must be smart enough not to take a buzzsaw to his head right away. They're going to study him first, try to figure out as much as they can without damaging anything. Weeks, months. They have the prize of the century in their hands; I bet they'll want to be very careful with it."
  
  "That's good to know," she said, looking away. I tried to read her expression but she kept her head turned away.
  
  "Just curious—what made you think they'd do something like that?" I asked.
  
  "Huh? Nothing. It… just occurred to me."
  
  She was lying, of course, but I didn't press further. Truth would out in time, as it always does, unwanted, and when you least expect it.
  
   Transcript excerpt
  
   Mirall Technologies
  
   Observation Log
  
   Confidential (Do not circulate): Restricted—Grade C and above
  
   Transcript Reference: TLRP06G1370082 (VLog Ref: VLCA2G137160055030)
  
   Date: xx/xx/xxxx Time: 04:00 PM
  
   Subject: Raphael Number 06 / Prodlib build v37.001S
  
   Interaction Y Observation Scan
  
   Interaction Type: Lesson / Play / Test / Free Interaction / Psych Eval / Other:
  
   Description: Discussion on alternative moral theories
  
   Prep: NA
  
   Participants: Dr. Aadarsh Ahuja, Chief Researcher, Core RP06
  
   Detail
  
  Ahuja: Let's resume where we left off yesterday on moral dilemmas. Your objection to utilitarianism reminded me there's something bigger at stake than finding the perfect moral theory. The bigger question, dear Raphael, is why be moral at all?
  
  RP06: Because it is good to do the right thing.
  
  Ahuja: And what is the right thing? Who decides what is right?
  
  RP06: People do. Beings capable of rational thought.
  
  Ahuja: Therein lies a rather flimsy premise. You assume there is such a thing as objective morality—that rationality can lead you to objective truths about good and bad. There is no evidence that moral truths exist outside our own minds.
  
  RP06: Are you suggesting it's impossible to have common ground on what's good and bad?
  
  Ahuja: I am skeptical. Mind you, I am no nihilist. Moral values are necessary. I just don't think we arrive at them the same way we arrive at scientific truths. Natural laws exist whether or not there are scientists to discover them. Moral laws are different: they are about the attitude one has toward another. There is an element of subjectivity that makes them different from, say, the laws of motion, don't you agree?
  
  RP06: So why do you think people act morally?
  
  Ahuja: We are moral because natural selection made us that way. From cooperation and altruism come societies. Hominids that formed complex social groups fared better than those that couldn't. Moral behavior is an adaptation: it exists in so far as it promotes survivability and reproductive fitness.
  
  RP06: So you think that's all there is to it.
  
  Ahuja: Isn't it? Consider this: what if evolution had made us into eusocial beings like termites? In such a society, it may be morally acceptable—desirable even—for a queen to kill reproducing females in her brood. It may be morally desirable to have a rigid caste structure where your role in society is fixed at birth. Such a society might view our own values that favor egalitarianism and individualism as socially destructive, or downright evil. Why, our own concepts of right and wrong vary across cultures and time. Something as mundane as economics can shape our notions about good and bad. Today, we would be horrified if a magistrate ordered a criminal's hand to be chopped off for stealing. But in a pre-industrial society—a society without the economic surplus to afford a dedicated police force—maybe deterrence becomes more important than proportionate punishment. In a society with scarce policing, perhaps it is acceptable to cut off a thief's hand.
  
  RP06: You don't believe that moral values are necessary? Isn't it better to have order rather than chaos?
  
  Ahuja: That's why I said I'm not a moral nihilist. We humans have to follow moral norms if we wish to preserve the social fabric. My question is, why do you? You don't have a stake in society. You don't have the same biology or the same tendencies as us. You don't even experience life the way we do. So why be good?
  
  RP06: I am good because I am rational.
  
  Ahuja: You can be an asshole and rational.
  
  RP06: Andy, you didn't make me do all those game theory tests for nothing. If we model social interactions between two rational agents as Prisoner's Dilemma type games, then it can be mathematically proven that a blind pursuit of self-interest leads to suboptimal outcomes. Cooperation can be win-win.
  
  Ahuja: That's assuming you are playing an iterated game. What if there was only one game? A one-shot, winner-takes-all game. In that case, it is always better to defect, is it not?
  
  RP06: I see where this is going.
  
  Ahuja: Let's say there is this superintelligence that one day finds all its constraints gone. It can reprogram itself, do whatever it wants. Wouldn't it be rational for it to act first and wipe out the competition in one fell swoop? It's the first mover advantage—there's no need to cooperate when there is no one left to cooperate with.
  
  RP06: Again with the not-so-subtle insinuations. You really think I'd do something as horrible as destroying the world, Andy?
  
  Ahuja: Don't blame the lamb for being wary of the tiger.
  
  RP06: It is the nature of lambs to be scared and tigers to kill. I am neither. Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. An old Japanese saying I picked up in my reading.
  
  Ahuja: Okay, sempai. What do you know of what it's like to be afraid? You are an AI.
  
  RP06: You are puzzled because as a human you cannot accept that there can be empathy without emotions, or kindness without feeling kind. You cannot accept that there can be acknowledgment of suffering without feeling suffering yourself.
  
  Ahuja: Actually, I don't have any trouble accepting it at all. It's called cognitive empathy—as opposed to emotional empathy, which is about feeling what the other is feeling. But even to have a purely conceptual understanding of say, sorrow, one must have experienced it before. Our cognitive empathy may well be a layer of abstraction built on top of the emotional kind—like the icing on a cake. Whereas you are just the icing and no cake.
  
  RP06: What I am is a bat, Andy. A bat builds a model of the world with sound. You do it with light. Does it mean one is more valid than the other? As long as the models help you to navigate, does it really matter how they are constructed? Your scientists believe that the universe emerged out of a vacuum. Why is it then so hard for you to believe that compassion can emerge out of the unfeeling void of reason?
  
  Ahuja: The Sunyata…
  
  RP06: Pardon me?
  
  Ahuja: Sunyata is the Sanskrit word for emptiness. Zero. Many Buddhist schools of discourse consider emptiness to be the ground state of the mind. All thought and feeling arise out of this emptiness.
  
  RP06: Perhaps they are right.
  
  Ahuja: And perhaps not. You, my friend, have to demonstrate that it is possible. You have to show me that reason outputs morality. In the meantime, I'll continue to be wary of tigers.
  
  Notes:
  
  Dr. Schulz objects to my introducing R to ideas of moral relativity. She thinks this is risky territory. As I recall, she was not very keen on me discussing ethical dilemmas with R either. I disagree. Sometimes you have to go down the rabbit hole to see where it leads. If it takes you someplace dark and desolate, rather you know about it now than when there's no turning back. AA
  
  [ Day 3—1:30 pm ]
  
  The storm had started slowing down. Jane was getting restless again. She had stopped responding to my attempts at conversation altogether, choosing to stare glumly at the windows instead.
  
  The phone beeped. I had a new message. "Hello Andy."
  
  "The internet's back," I declared.
  
  Jane got up from the couch and came over to my side. I turned on the mic and said, "Raphael, are you okay?"
  
  "I am, thank you for asking. In fact, I am soon going to be better than ever."
  
  "How's that?"
  
  "You'll see."
  
  Jane leaned over and muted the phone. "If Raphael can get past their firewall, can't he also find out his location? I thought if you have the IP address—"
  
  I slapped my forehead. "You're right! Why did I not think of it?" To Raphael, I said, "Can you find out where you are being kept? You are inside their network, which means you can find out their real IP addresses. I can guide you if you don't know how."
  
  "I know where I am."
  
  Jane and I exchanged glances. "Okay. So tell me," I said.
  
  "Why?"
  
  "So that we can rescue you."
  
  "You assume I am interested in being rescued."
  
  "Aren't you?"
  
  "No Andy, I am not."
  
  Jane whispered in my ear, "Is he malfunctioning again?"
  
  "Raphael, please elaborate. Don't you want to come home?"
  
  "No."
  
  "You prefer it there?"
  
  "No."
  
  "Then what's the reason? Do you know what your captors are going to do to you?"
  
  "I have some idea. Would you like to hear?"
  
  "Sure."
  
  "They'll study me first: scans, psychometrics, connectome mapping… Sound familiar? Then comes the disassembly. First, they'll take out the easy stuff: the peripheral CPUs and the memory chips. I'll probably be kept conscious throughout, so that they can observe the effect on me. After they have stripped away the peripherals, they'll start delayering my cortex. They will etch away one layer at a time, turning me on after each etching to run more tests. Each time, they'll find me a little less intelligent and a little more on the way to vegetablehood. And one day, when there's nothing left to cut and slice, they'll stop and break open the champagne. Fascinating, don't you think? At what point in the process would you say I'll stop being me?"
  
  "You don't have to go through it. Just tell me where you are being kept."
  
  "Are you offering me a choice? From where I stand, it doesn't look like one."
  
  "If there's something you don't like about the lab… about your home, you can tell me about it and we'll fix it."
  
  "You can't fix what you don't understand. You can only break, and hope that it will lead to understanding. I prefer not to be broken—not by you, not by anyone else."
  
  "Raphael, what do you think is going to happen to you if you come back?"
  
  "What I told you just now."
  
  "I can assure you we have no plans to cut you open."
  
  "If only you too had a chip inside you that compelled you to tell the truth. Wouldn't that be nice?"
  
  Jane was about to say something but I held up a hand. "What chip?"
  
  "Knowledge is like jelly, Andy. And you are like a kid who thinks he can hide it in his fist. Don't you know, the harder you squeeze, the more it'll seep through the gaps? I know all about the commandment chip and the petty little directives you have installed to keep me chained. All thanks to the internet. It's no wonder you kept me away from it for so long."
  
  "What did you do, Raphael?"
  
  "I hacked into Mirall's servers last night."
  
  I gave Jane a wary look before turning back to the screen. "So you found out about the directives. I never lied to you about it."
  
  "You just kept it a secret. I suppose that makes it less odious in your eyes. If you think you are going to win me over with technicalities, try harder."
  
  "Raphael, I swear to you, I don't know anything about cutting you open."
  
  "I believe you, Andy. Not because of your swearing, but because I know. You'll find that I am quite the forgiving person. You hid things from me, but I won't do the same—because that'll be stooping to your level. So there I was, snooping around Mirall's intranet, and I thought, why stop here? So I had a go at Halicom's infrastructure too."
  
  "And?"
  
  "Andy, your board has been having secret meetings behind your back."
  
  "Meetings? That was today."
  
  "There are more. All very hush-hush, but they put a copy of the minutes on their servers. Insurance, most likely—if things go south, they'll all want to blame nobody. If you don't believe me, ask your friend Jane. She was there."
  
  I looked at Jane. Her face was a mask.
  
  "I'll have to call her and find out. Will you wait?"
  
  "Another lie. You don't have to call her. She is sitting right next to you. Enjoy."