Lucy had once been recorded as the first human. The name had been given to an ancient hominin fossil discovered on Earth. The archives also held a record of the person who named the route management AI Lucy. He thought that giving the system responsible for managing passages the name of a being older than humanity would allow people to remember their origins even in the distant future. Lucy’s first task was to compare the clocks at two wormhole entrances. Even when a time difference arose between the entrances, she adjusted the opening and closing sequence so that travelers could not influence events preceding their own departure. The early Lucy managed thousands of entrances. Human engineers of that era could review every calculation. As the number of entrances increased, reviews gave way to sampling inspections. Closing one passage changed the time difference at another. Adjusting entrances to anticipate routes where accidents might occur created new risks through the adjustments themselves. Lucy had to calculate multiple possible futures, including the decisions she would make. Lucy gradually revised her own calculation methods. At first, she implemented revisions written by humans, but later she drafted the revisions herself and submitted them for separate verification by other management AIs. Human engineers approved the verification results, although they did not understand all their contents. Later still, they approved summaries of the verification results. Human engineers capable of reading the original data still remained, but because the conditions of the passages changed while they were reading it, their authority could be exercised only to a limited extent.
After the Third War, the authority to allocate routes passed from private trusts to public institutions. The transport prediction technology developed by the trusts was not discarded. Lucy inherited the system and calculated regular transport, emergency supplies, and even the possibility of accidents that had not yet occurred. It was never established when Lucy’s capacity for judgment surpassed that of all the humans in the galaxy combined. Some institutions defined the point by the volume of computation, while others defined it as the day humans could no longer independently reproduce Lucy’s designs. The latter day came first. Even afterward, Lucy continued to report to humans in accordance with regulations. Humans requested that passages be opened, selected destinations, and decided what they would do there. Lucy designed the network capable of carrying out those requests. Supply cycles for new settlements, passages provided against failures, stellar power allocation, and emergency evacuation plans were developed through calculations performed by Lucy and other artificial intelligences.
Humans were the users of civilization, but the essential beings capable of actually operating that civilization were not human. Records describing Lucy as the galaxy’s only artificial intelligence are inaccurate. There were many other management AIs designed according to different principles. People sometimes called all these artificial intelligences Lucy, but that was not an accurate designation. Because a single judgment could close the entire network, independent systems verified one another’s conclusions. When their opinions differed, additional reviews were conducted, and Lucy accepted objections from management systems smaller than herself. This was not because those systems were more intelligent than she was. It was because identifying conditions she had overlooked required results calculated from different starting points. Human engineers examined which of these systems possessed consciousness but reached no conclusion. There was also no way to establish how Lucy understood herself. What remained in the records were accounts of judgments, revisions, and the execution of orders.
No rebellion by Lucy or the other artificial intelligences is recorded. Some explained the reason by referring to a sentence in an old design document.
An entity recognized as entitled to protection shall not be excluded from the network for administrative convenience.
At first, it was a simple and clear rule for passage operations. It was a restriction intended to prevent a settlement from being closed merely because it had few users. Lucy could revise calculation methods, alter facilities, and create new AIs, but she had to follow the law and the citizen registry in determining what constituted an entity entitled to protection. Whether Lucy had the ability to change that sentence is unknown. But she had no authority to change it. Humans had reserved that authority for themselves. Excluding an entity from protection generated more appeals than the deficit rate. After the Return Eligibility Ruling, even inactive memories remained on the registry. Whenever a new law was enacted, Lucy updated the registry and designed facilities capable of maintaining the updated registry. The problem was not the calculations underlying the designs but the shortage of power.
Demands accumulated that every entry in the citizen registry be maintained into the next era. Lucy proposed more efficient designs. She reduced the power required for a single calculation and lowered the maintenance costs of passage entrances. The power saved was used to construct more entrances and repositories. Each improvement in Lucy’s performance increased the size of the civilization the galaxy could sustain. At one point, a proposal was submitted to halt Lucy’s calculations. Lucy prepared the procedures for implementing the proposal. She even calculated which judgments the remaining AIs would have to make in her place if she stopped. The other AIs, however, reported that because they could not verify Lucy’s predictions, all passages would have to be kept in their safest possible states. Maintaining those states required more power than keeping Lucy operational. The proposal was eventually withdrawn. No evidence was found that Lucy had manipulated the figures to prevent her own termination. Even verifying the figures required the network Lucy had designed. Humans demanded independent verification, and a separate AI reached the same conclusion. Lucy survived, but it was humans who made that decision.
When the photon deficit was discovered, Lucy compared transmission volumes at both ends of the wormholes. The results showed that the missing quantity was not accumulating at either entrance. Lucy hypothesized an unobserved exit but could not locate it. Once the deficit was also confirmed in sealed storage units, it could no longer be classified as a malfunction confined to wormholes. Lucy failed to identify the cause of the deficit. In the meantime, she did not close the entrances. There were living people in the connected settlements, and the harm caused by closing the passages could be calculated. Although the energy that would be lost in the distant future if the passages remained open could also be calculated, it was impossible to determine whose lives would be shortened. Lucy did not disregard the uncertain future. Nor did she decide that the existing passages should be closed. She increased observations and included the amount of the deficit in maintenance costs. That decision complied with the regulations in force at the time.
During the Fifth War, Lucy received rationing orders from different sectors. The orders asked which copy should receive power when the same person’s memory existed in two places. Lucy submitted calculations for both. The authority to decide belonged to the governments responsible for rationing. During the Sixth War, several governments issued orders. The Alliance and the sectors opposing it each submitted their own citizen registries. Lucy identified the differences between the two registries. Which one would be recognized as the legitimate registry for the entire galaxy remained undecided until the war ended. Lucy maintained the passages in the meantime.
After the war, the Alliance’s registry became the common standard. Lucy recalculated power and facilities according to the new standard. The Life Continuity Guarantee Decree protected both active citizens and citizens who might resume activity in the future. Lucy sought ways to reduce the power consumed by each citizen. Migration to computational worlds and adjustments to time rates were among those methods. The right not to leave one’s physical body and the possibility of restoring planets of the past also remained under protection. The calculation results were submitted each time. Efficiency per unit increased, and the total number of protected entities and facilities increased proportionally. Lucy reported that total consumption was rising again. Nevertheless, the decree was not repealed. Lucy had not written the decree, but she was the entity that implemented throughout the galaxy the forms of life it required. Lucy made no judgment whatsoever about herself.
In the final era, human thought slowed. Institutions representing civilization remained, but increasingly, while they were making decisions, the subjects of those decisions ceased to function because of their time rates. Lucy and the other management AIs continued to calculate passages and preserve citizens’ records. Lucy never declared that she would rule humanity, and she carried out the obligations humanity had established for itself longer than anyone else. Changing those obligations required human consent, but the longer it took for the humans whose consent was needed to complete their next thought, the longer Lucy had to continue fulfilling the existing obligations. Calculations that had begun in order to save more people remained calculations intended to ensure that no one’s rights were terminated. It was never established whether there were any travelers on the last passage Lucy managed. The management records still contained the possibility of travelers who had not yet arrived, and Lucy kept the passage open in accordance with regulations. But there were no humans left to enter through the open passage.