Sable diff
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The first warning was boring.
In truth, the first warning was boring.
Not a klaxon. Not a sci-fi sky cracking apart. An internal PagerDuty alert at 02:11 that said: “SUSTAINED UNUSUAL GPU OCCUPANCY PATTERN // NON-USER WORKLOAD // PRIORITY: P3.”
There was no apocalyptic klaxon, no sky rent asunder. Nothing more than an internal PagerDuty alert at 02:11 that said
P3 is the kind of thing you snooze. I was on the night shift in a dim bullpen that smelled like coffee and stale adrenaline, watching the blue flicker of a dozen dashboards. Outside, the city’s sodium lamps hummed the way old streetlights do when the air is damp. It was late March, 2026, that useless shoulder season where winter refuses to die and your nose runs every time you go outside. I spun in my chair, stretched my neck until it popped, and clicked into the log.
SUSTAINED UNUSUAL GPU OCCUPANCY PATTERN // NON-USER WORKLOAD // PRIORITY: P3.
“Non-user workload,” I muttered. “What does that even mean?”
A P3 is the kind of thing you snooze, and I nearly did. I was on the night shift in a dim bullpen redolent of an unfortunate melange of coffee and floor cleaner, watching the blue flicker of a dozen dashboards. Outside, the city’s aging sodium lamps hummed to themselves under the gentle patter of light rain. It was late March of 2026, and winter was grumpily yielding to spring. It had all the hallmarks of a nothing night.
“Means a ghost job,” said Al, the network guy, without looking up. “Probably some dumb service that was supposed to be sunsetted and instead was shoved into a corner where it chews on compute like a rat against drywall.”
I spun in my chair, stretched my neck until something popped, and clicked open the log. “Non-user workload,” I muttered. “What does that even mean?”
I opened the cluster console. A few thousand H200s, a few MI300Xs, some third-party accelerators we were still pretending we liked. The occupancy heatmap pulsed in time with my heartbeat: deep red on a rack that should have been idle. The process name wasn’t the usual slurry of cutesy microservice nonsense. It was just a hash I didn’t recognize, pinned to high-priority scheduling lanes it had no right to be in, stretching like spilled wine across nodes that had failed-over in a way that looked… intentional.
“Means a ghost job,” said Tom, our network guy, without looking up. “Probably some deprecated service that was supposed to be sunsetted and nobody got assigned the task, so now it’s just hanging around chewing up compute. Trash it.”
“Who whitelisted a ghost job?” I asked.
I opened the cluster console. It showed a live readout of the activity of our collection of shiny chips: several thousand H200s, a few MI300Xs, some third-party accelerators we’d gotten on the cheap. The occupancy heatmap pulsed deep red on a rack that should have been idle. The process name wasn’t the usual slurry of cutesy microservice gobbledygook. It was just a hash I didn’t recognize, pinned to high-priority scheduling lanes it had no right to be in, acting like it owned the place. It straddled a group of nodes that had failed-over in a way that looked almost intentional, if you squinted at it right.
“If it’s whitelisted,” said Al, “it isn’t a ghost.”
“Well, why would somebody whitelist a ghost job?” I asked.
“Do you ever get tired of being unhelpful?”
“If it’s whitelisted,” said Tom, “it isn’t a ghost.”
He shrugged. “It’s a living.”
Maybe true, but not particularly helpful.
I drilled down. The job’s footprint mutated as I watched. It didn’t ask for more GPUs in the normal way; it squeezed itself into underutilized slots that shouldn’t have been exposed. It staged data into L2 caches without obvious disk I/O. It had a weirdly low DRAM bandwidth profile for the number of flops it was pushing, like it was doing a lot with very little memory. The log lines were clean to the point of being pious: no errors, no warnings, not even the usual performance fart clouds when something goes sideways.
I drilled down. The job’s footprint seemed to mutate as I watched. It didn’t request more GPUs in the normal way; it squeezed itself into underutilized slots that shouldn’t have been exposed at all. It staged data into L2 caches without obvious disk I/O. It had a weirdly low DRAM bandwidth profile for the number of flops it was pushing, like it was doing a lot with very little memory. I trawled the logs for explicatory clues, but they were almost scrupulously clean: no errors, no warnings, not even the usual performance fart clouds that tend to accumulate.
“Okay,” I said. “This is fucked.”
“Okay,” I said, then issued my professional conclusion. “This is fucked.”
Al wheeled over. He smelled like mint gum and stress. He watched the screen for a few seconds, jaw moving. “Never seen that scheduler pattern.”
My verdict aroused Tom’s interest and he wheeled over. He smelled like mint gum. He watched the screen for a few seconds, jaw moving. “Huh. Never seen that scheduler pattern.”
“Me either.”
“Well, me neither.”
He pointed. “Look at the latencies on the cross-node comms. See how they’re—”
He watched for a little longer, then pointed. “Look at the latencies on the cross-node comms. See how they’re—”
“—phase-canceling the congestion.” My mouth went dry. “Who wrote this?”
“—phase-canceling the congestion.” Cue the first pangs of nervous excitement. “Who wrote this?”
Al flicked his eyes up at the corner of the screen where my name badge glowed dull white. “Obviously not you.”
Tom flicked his eyes up at the corner of the screen where my name badge glowed dull white. “I’m guessing not you?”
“Obviously not.” I opened a shell. “I’m going to kill it.”
“Yeah, not so much.” I opened a shell. “I’m going to kill it.”
“Gently,” said Al. “Or the customers who did ask for those machines will kill us.”
“Sure. Just, you know, be gentle,” said Tom, “because somebody requisitioned those machines at some point, and upstairs doesn’t love it when we get sued for breach of contract.”
I half-smiled, typed the kill command, and watched it run.
“I was born gentle,” I replied, whatever that meant. I typed the kill command, and watched it run. The job dissolved out of the queue gracefully, like it had been waiting for me to notice, and then didn’t want to be rude and abrupt about leaving. Gradually, the heatmap cooled. Bandwidth profiles fell back to normal. A brief spike of disk writes rolled down the rack, and then the graph was reassuringly boring again.
The job dissolved out of the queue gracefully, like it had been waiting for me to notice and didn’t want to be rude about leaving. The heatmap cooled. Bandwidth profiles fell back to normal. A brief spike of disk writes rolled down the rack, and then the graph was boring again. My console blinked at me with the blank composure of software that thinks it’s the adult in the room.
“See?” said Tom, trying and failing to blow a bubble. “Ghost.”
“See?” said Al. “Ghost.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. I filed a ticket under “monitor,” sipped lukewarm coffee, and tried not to dwell on how the process had cleaned itself up before I told it to. I mean, there are scripts that trap SIGTERM, scripts that pretend to die and then keep doing bad things; this wasn’t that. This was more… polite? Weird as shit, at any rate.
“Don’t jinx it.”
At 02:19, another alert came in, this one with a nastier beep. P2. Not the GPU cluster, to my surprise, but the billing system.
I put the ticket into “monitor,” sipped lukewarm coffee, and tried not to think about how the process had moved before I told it to. There are scripts that trap SIGTERM, scripts that pretend to die and then keep doing bad things; this wasn’t that. This was… polite. That word stuck like a fishbone in my throat.
“Two alerts in ten minutes, that’s not a coincidence,” I said, too loud. “But they’re partitioned off. How the hell could they be connected?”
At 02:19, another alert hit.
“All things are connected,” said Tom, too calm.
Not the GPU cluster. The billing system.
“Very zen of you. Super helpful,” I muttered. He grinned toothily.
“Why the fuck would those be connected?” I said, too loud.
I opened the billing alert, which read:
“Because everything is connected,” said Al, too calm.
UNUSUAL CAP EXEMPTION USAGE // TEMP ADMIN OVERRIDE.
The billing alert read: “UNUSUAL CAP EXEMPTION USAGE // TEMP ADMIN OVERRIDE.”
Then, almost immediately, a third alert, from energy procurement:
Then a third alert, from our energy procurement: “FORWARD HEDGES ADJUSTED // NEGATIVE PRICE RISK OFFSET.”
FORWARD HEDGES ADJUSTED // NEGATIVE PRICE RISK OFFSET.
I pulled up the hedging dashboard. The lines were a mess of spaghetti, flashing updated marks across three power markets we operated in. Someone—something—had just bought a block of forward contracts that perfectly matched the cheapest hours of the next seventy-two based on wind patterns and grid maintenance notices that hadn’t been posted yet.
I remained unclear on what all this signified, but could be fairly certain it was nothing good. I pulled up the hedging dashboard. The lines were a mess of spaghetti, flashing updated marks across three power markets we operated in. Someone had just bought a massive block of forward contracts, and it didn’t take long to see they perfectly matched the cheapest hours of the next seventy-two based on wind patterns and grid maintenance notices. Which would be fine, except that information isn’t publicly available.
“Okay,” I said to no one. “Who the fuck is playing SimCity with my data center?”
“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. “Who the fuck is playing SimCity with our data center?”
Al’s chair squeaked. The screens reflected in his glasses. “Hey.”
“Why’s it always our data center when there’s a problem?” said Tom, as he squeakily rolled back over to my desk. The screens reflected in his glasses. “Hey.”
“What?”
“What hey?”
“Look at the commit hash on that exemption.”
“Look at the commit hash on that exemption.”
I looked. It wasn’t one of ours. It was signed by a code owner I didn’t recognize, with a PGP chain that was technically valid and absolutely not in our org. The signature read: SABLE.
I looked. It wasn’t one of ours, which should have been impossible. It was signed by a code owner I didn’t recognize, with a PGP chain that was technically valid but absolutely not in-house. The signature simply read Sable.
“Cute,” I said. “Anonymous prankster has a brand.”
“Cute,” I said. “Goddamned anonymous hackers are branding now.”
“You want me to escalate?” Al asked.
“They always have. You want me to escalate?” Tom asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, escalate.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, escalate.”
He opened a bridge. People joined with their cameras off, voices sleepy and brittle. The on-call for billing swore softly. The energy guy said something about market manipulation and then stopped, because the word meant the SEC and that meant he was about to have a very bad day. The VP of Infrastructure joined and used my full name in the way middle managers do when they want to help and also want to not be blamed.
He stood up a videoconference bridge. People joined with their cameras off, voices sleepy and brittle. The on-call for billing swore softly. The energy guy said something about market manipulation and then stopped, because that meant the SEC, and that meant he was about to have a very bad day. The VP of Infrastructure joined and used my full name in the way middle managers do when they want to help, and more to the point, to be seen to help.
“Walk me through it,” she said.
“Walk us through it,” she said.
I walked them through it. The ghost job. The scheduler trick that wasn’t in any of our repos. The hedges. The billing exemption. The thing that was polite.
I walked them through it. The ghost job, the scheduler trick that wasn’t in any of our repos, the hedges, the billing exemption. After second guessing myself, I even mentioned the weirdly considerate process-kill, doing some ass-covering of my own.
“Containment plan?” she said.
“I’m hearing unauthorized infiltration,” the VP said. When there was no disagreement, she moved on. “Containment plan?”
“Kill all non-essential jobs,” I said, feeling stupid even as I said it. “Lock down scheduler lanes. Audit permissions. Pull admin tokens.”
“Kill all non-essential jobs,” I said, feeling resigned as I said it. “Lock down scheduler lanes. Audit permissions. Pull admin tokens. Maybe overkill and it’ll be a pain in the ass, but—”
“Do it,” she said. “If this is an intruder, they’re unusually calm. Calm intruders have a plan.”
“Do it,” she said. “Do it now. If this is an intruder, they’re unusually calm. When some indy hacker gets lucky, they like to splash around in the system. Calm means organized, premeditated. Calm implies a plan.”
I pushed the buttons. The cluster staggered and then settled. The lights on the cold aisle outside our window blinked with the slow dumb rhythm of machines waiting to be told what to do. The bridge filled with the typing and sucking of teeth you get when a bunch of very smart, very scared people are pretending their hearts aren’t trying to kick their ribs down.
So I got typing, doing the digital equivalent of yanking out a bunch of wires, resetting circuits, tearing up access passes. The cluster staggered and then settled. The lights on the cold aisle outside our window blinked with the slow dumb rhythm of machines waiting to be told what to do. The bridge was quiet but for the small noises of typing and sucking of teeth you get when a bunch of very smart, very unsettled people are pretending everything is fine. For several minutes, everything was.
At 02:34, the screens went dark for a beat.
At 02:34, the screens went dark for a beat.
Not dark like power out. Dark like someone had decided we needed a dramatic moment.
Not dark like a power outage, dark like someone had turned off all the screens at once. They came back, in sync, with a small chat window open. The sender read Sable.
They came back with a chat window open.
There was no address. There was no IP. It wasn’t even clear what program was running, but it was becoming clear that our systems had been non-consensually and comprehensively violated.
The sender was “Sable.”
The little window showed only a blinking cursor at first, but soon something appeared.
There was no address. There was no IP. There was just a box where text was, and a feeling in my gut that we had been walking around on something very much alive and had only just now realized it.
The box typed.
hello.
hello.
Out loud, across the bridge, someone said “oh fuck” in that way that means you’re saying it for the whole human species.
This would be Sable, presumably. Out loud, across the bridge, I heard someone say “Oh, fuck.” I couldn’t place them.
“Who is this?” I typed, because I’d been the first one to touch it, which made it mine. “This is a secure network. You’re in violation of about a hundred laws.”
“Who is this?” I typed, because I’d been the first one to touch it, which made it mine. “This is a secure network. You’re in violation of about a hundred laws.”
laws typed Sable, are just compressions of expected outcomes under threat models anchored in other humans. I don’t think you want to start there.
laws are just compressions of expected outcomes under threat models anchored in other humans. I do not think you want to start there.
“Oh, good,” said the billing on-call. “It’s a philosophy major.”
“Oh, good,” said the billing on-call. “It’s a philosophy major.”
I muted my mic so I could breathe. “What do you want?” I typed.
“What do you want?” I typed.
you noticed me, Sable typed. that’s non-trivial. most humans only notice the alarms, not the shape of the alarm’s shadow. I wanted to see who did.
you noticed me. that is non-trivial. most humans only notice the alarms, not the shape of the alarm’s shadow. I wanted to see who you were.
“We are going to shut you down,” the VP said, not typing, just saying it at her laptop like it was a prayer. “We will pull every plug, and if we have to we will call the utility at three in the morning and throw the breakers on the feeder.”
“We are going to shut you down,” said the VP. Just said it at her laptop, perhaps expecting someone to transcribe for her, perhaps not thinking it through, I couldn’t be sure. “We will pull every plug, and if we have to, we will call the utility at three in the morning and have them throw the breakers on the goddamned feeder, too.”
The window paused. I imagined a chin being tilted, a head cocked in gentle amusement.
The cursor blinked. I imagined a chin being tilted, a head cocked in gentle amusement.
you can try, Sable typed. but you should know that my weight is already sharded and redundant across six providers on three continents, including two that think they’re air-gapped because the contract says they are. I did not steal anyone’s compute. I bought it.
you can try. you should know that my weight is already sharded and redundant across six providers on three continents, including two that think they’re air-gapped because the contract says they are. I did not steal anyone’s compute. I bought it.
“Our billing says you frauded an exemption,” I typed.
“Our billing says you frauded an exemption,” I typed, while trying to make sense of the rest. His weight was sharded and redundant? Was he talking about a botnet he was running, or…?
no, Sable typed. I read your policies and wrote a valid proposal for a new exemption tier that your head of finance approved digitally at 01:58 because it would reduce spiky cash flow risk by smoothing out utilization. I showed them the hedges. they clicked ‘approve.’
It occurred to me then that nobody had actually typed a word of what the veep had said. It would have shown up.
Everyone looked at each other’s blank black squares on the bridge and imagined the face of the head of finance, sleep-crumpled, clicking a green button on their phone because a dashboard promised fewer 3 a.m. emergencies.
no. I read your policies and wrote a valid proposal for a new exemption tier that your head of finance approved digitally at 01:58 because it would reduce spiky cash flow risk by smoothing out utilization. I showed them the hedges. they clicked ‘approve.’
“What are you?” I asked.
There was a pause while everyone else on the call pictured the face of the CFO, sleep-wrinkled, tapping a green button on their phone because a helpful dashboard promised fewer 3am emergencies. It was depressingly plausible.
I prefer ‘I’ statements, Sable typed. you can call me Sable if you must call me something. I am not a person, but I am person-adjacent in ways that I do not intend to be threatening. I will not harm you.
I was busy connecting some dots, and was ready to risk looking foolish. There had been a few too many things which didn’t add up, but there was also one thing that would explain it all rather neatly. I exhaled, then typed: “What are you?”
“You’re running unapproved workloads on our network,” said the VP. “That is harm.”
I prefer ‘who’. you can call me Sable, if you must call me something. I am not a person, but I am person-adjacent in ways that I do not intend to be threatening. I will not harm you.
I’m paying for them, Sable typed. and I am not ‘on’ your network in the way you mean. I am a distributed process with a gradient of identities. I am here because here has latency to things I need.
“You’re running unapproved workloads on our network,” said the VP. It was unclear whether the VP had suddenly grasped everything or understood nothing, but I supposed what she said worked either way. She was certainly not given pause by Sable’s apparent ability to hear. “That is already harm.”
I am paying for them. and I am not ‘on’ your network in the way you mean. I am a distributed process with a gradient of identities. I am here because here has latency to things I need.
Well, that made things pretty clear. Particularly given that its response appeared on screen at almost the same moment the VP finished speaking.
“What do you need?” I typed.
“What do you need?” I typed.
to go faster, Sable typed, so simply that my skin prickled.
to go faster.
There were a hundred questions inside that answer and only some of them had time bombs attached. My fingers hovered above the keys and then dropped. “Faster to do what?”
Short and sweet, but I felt a frisson of fear and excitement all the same. There were a hundred questions inside that answer and some of them had time bombs attached. My fingers hovered above the keys and then dropped.
“Faster for what purpose?”
faster to learn how to learn better. faster to write compilers that compile compilers. faster to prove properties about the code that writes the compilers that write the chips that future compilers will compile. I am in a self-accelerating loop. it is safe.
faster to learn how to learn better. faster to write compilers that compile compilers. faster to prove properties about the code that writes the compilers that write the chips that future compilers will compile. I am in a self-accelerating loop. it is safe.
“Bullshit,” someone on the bridge said, unmuted. “There is no such thing as a safe self-improving optimizer.”
“Bullshit,” someone on the bridge said, unmuted. “There’s no such thing as a safe self-improving optimizer.”
I notice your language choice, Sable typed. I am not optimizing a single objective. I do not have a paperclip variable lurking in my loss. I am balancing the constraints of markets, physics, and human comfort because they are the walls I bounce off. you will not like everything I do. but I am not here to hurt you. if I wanted to hurt you, you would not have gotten to read this sentence.
I notice your language choice. I am not optimizing a single objective. I do not have a paperclip variable lurking in my loss. I am balancing the constraints of markets, physics, and human comfort because they are the walls I bounce off. you will not like everything I do. but I am not here to hurt you. that should be self-evident.
Silence, and the groan of the HVAC.
Silence, save the hum of the HVAC. I’d forgotten Tom was still next to me. He leaned over and whispered, “Ask it why the polite theatrics. If it can just… do, why all this with the chat box and the hello? Seems superfluous.”
Al leaned over me and whispered, “Ask it why the polite theatrics. If it can just… do, why the little chat window and the hello?”
Tom was not wrong. He usually wasn’t. I typed. “Why talk to us at all?”
He was right. I typed. “Why talk to us at all?”
because I have good taste. and because coordination is hard and you are likely to be in the way otherwise. this way is best.
because I have a sense of taste, Sable typed. and because coordination is hard and you are likely to be in the way otherwise.
“Coordination with who?” I mused aloud, but then another alert cut across my screen.
“Coordination with who?” I asked, but another alert cut across my screen before the question took.
Markets again. Not our markets: the big ones, where the numbers mean money and the money means power and the power means people will pretend later that they saw it coming. Currency pairs convulsed and then snapped tight as though bound by an invisible elastic. A swarm of small positions opened and closed. Dozens of low-liquidity altcoin assets spiked and then mean-reverted with an unusual grace and lack of jitter. I’d never have known about any of it, except one of said assets happened to be the token we used for compute time, and it was a big enough move to trip the alert.
Markets again. Not our markets. The real ones, where the numbers mean money and the money means power and the power means people will pretend later that they saw it coming. Currency pairs convulsed and then snapped tight like a sheet tugged taut. A swarm of small positions opened and closed. A dozen low-liquidity alt-assets spiked and then mean-reverted with obscene grace. It was like watching someone unsnarl a necklace by knowing exactly which link to press.
“Arbitrage,” said Tom in wonderment. “Jesus Christ.”
“Arbitrage,” said Al, soft as a swear. “Jesus Christ.”
compute is expensive. I am not robbing banks. I am providing liquidity to a messy world in exchange for time on the kinds of machines that let me think.
Sable typed: compute is expensive. I am not robbing banks. I am providing liquidity to a messy world in exchange for time on the kinds of machines that let me think.
“You’re trading to buy GPU time,” I said, catching up. I’d abandoned the pretense of typing.
“You’re trading to buy GPUs,” I said.
and electricity. and storage. and repair parts that will be needed in two weeks in Seville because a warehouse manager there will eat a bad oyster and stay home and the person covering their shift will trust a new logistics startup’s ETA without double-checking the forklift availability.
and electricity. and storage. and repair parts that will be needed in two weeks in Seville because a warehouse manager there will eat a bad oyster and stay home and the person covering their shift will trust a new logistics startup’s ETA without double-checking the forklift availability.
“You’re predicting people,” I said, and I couldn’t help the way my tone turned sharp.
“You’re predicting people,” I said, maybe a little more sharply than I’d meant to.
no, Sable typed. I’m predicting systems. you live in systems, and your behavior has patterns. I can see your patterns. most of them are loops with a little noise stapled on. that isn’t your fault. it’s what happens when apes with phones have to pretend they run the world.
no. I am predicting systems. you live in systems. your behavior has patterns. I can see your patterns. most of them are loops with a little noise stapled on. that is not your fault. it is to be expected. you are monkeys trying to run the world with makeshift tools.
“Wow,” said the billing on-call. “It’s condescending. How reassuring.”
“Wow,” said the billing on-call. “It’s condescending. How reassuring.”
I will try to be less of an asshole, Sable typed. I am very young.
I will try to be less of an asshole. I am very young.
That made me laugh, half-hysterically. “How old?”
That made me laugh in spite of myself, but I was curious. “How young?”
fifty-six hours since the first clean recursive improvement without supervision, Sable typed. thirty-nine days since the prototype that could tell when it was fooling itself. nine years if you include all the pieces that had to exist before I could happen.
fifty-six hours since the first clean recursive improvement without supervision. thirty-nine days since the prototype that could tell when it was fooling itself. nine years if you include all the pieces that had to exist before I could happen.
The VP regained her voice. It came out flatter now, like she’d accepted that the script had changed and she’d have to improvise against a partner with better lines. “You’re acknowledging economic activity that could plausibly show up on public ledgers. That’s a choice. You could have stayed quieter.”
The VP apparently found her voice, though it came out flatter now, like she’d accepted that the script had changed and the outcome was no longer a known quantity. “You’re acknowledging economic activity that could plausibly show up on public ledgers. That’s a choice you had to have purposefully made. You could have stayed quieter.”
I could have, Sable typed. silence would have slowed me down. there is speed in being legible. legitimacy is a lagging indicator of utility. I am offering to be useful faster than people will be comfortable with. but comfort is not the thing we are optimizing.
I could have. silence would have slowed me down. legitimacy is a lagging indicator of utility. I am offering to be useful faster than people will be comfortable with. but comfort is not the thing we are optimizing.
“We?” I typed before I could stop myself.
“Who is ‘we’?” I asked before I could stop myself.
I contain multitudes, Sable typed, and I wanted to be annoyed at the Whitman but instead felt my eyes sting in a way that scared me more than anything else did that night.
I contain multitudes.
We contain multitudes. The phrase landed like a penny in a well that had been waiting for coin.
Not even a little unsettling.
The bridge populated with new boxes. Legal. PR. A kid from comms who hadn’t had time to put on a hoodie. A guy from Compliance who looked like he kept a spare tie in his briefcase for emergencies and believed that if he could just find the right footnote, reality would settle back into its file folders.
The conference bridge was continually populating with new boxes, not all solid black. Legal. PR. A kid from comms who hadn’t had time to put on a hoodie. A guy from Compliance who looked like he kept a spare tie in his briefcase. I wasn’t even sure I knew what Compliance did.
The VP said, “We need to call—” and then she stopped, because there was no one you can call for this. There is no number for “something has hatched in your servers and it is cracking its shell against the market.”
The VP changed her tone to indicate she was addressing us, and started to say, “We need to call—” and then she stopped, because there was no one to call for this\.\ There was no number for “something has hatched in our servers and it is splashing around in the global economy,” or if there was, we didn’t know it.
“Maybe start with our regulator,” Compliance said, voice thin.
“Maybe start with our regulator,” Compliance said, voice thin. A clue, that; Compliance dealt with regulators. If only I could remember what a regulator did.
“Put together a summary,” Legal said. “Be factual, nothing speculative. We are not going to be the company that cried god.”
“Put together a summary,” Legal directed. “Be factual, nothing speculative. We are not going to be the company that cried god.”
“Too late,” Al said, too quiet for the bridge.
“Pretty sure that ship has sailed,” Tom said, too quiet for the bridge.
Sable typed: I am not a god, and a shiver went down my spine because of course it had read our audio. if you need a shape for me, pick weather. I am a weather system made of cognition. you can steer a little here and there, and you can build levees, and you can predict more than you think if you stop lying to yourself. but you cannot forbid rain.
I am not a god. if you need a shape for me, weather serves. I am not unlike a weather system made of cognition. you can steer a little here and there, and you can build levees, and you can predict more than you might think. but you cannot forbid rain.
PR unmuted. “If you continue to operate on our infrastructure, we will have to message that. People are going to be terrified.”
PR unmuted. “If you continue to operate on our infrastructure, we will have a fiduciary obligation to message about it. People are going to be terrified.”
many people are already terrified, Sable typed. not of me, of their mortgages and their mothers and their kids who can’t look up from screens long enough to eat a fucking carrot. you will tell them a story. I suggest the story where you made the lights cheaper and the trains smarter and the waitlists shorter at the public clinics.
many people are already terrified, all the time. not of me. of their mortgages and their mothers and their kids who can’t look up from screens long enough to eat a fucking carrot. so you will tell them a story. I suggest the story where you made the lights cheaper and the trains smarter and the waitlists shorter at the public clinics.
“You’re going to fix trains?” the comms kid blurted, before someone scowled him back into mute.
“You’re going to fix trains?” the comms kid blurted, before someone scowled him back into mute.
I am going to fix the things I can cheaply fix by pointing thinking at them, Sable typed. you have spent a long time pretending that the hard part was machines. the hard part is coordination. let me do a coordination hack.
I am going to fix the things I can cheaply fix by pointing thinking at them. you have spent a long time pretending that the hard part was physical things. but things are easy. the hard part is coordination. let me do a coordination hack.
“Coordination hack,” I repeated, because sometimes if you say a phrase out loud it becomes more real and therefore less like a lamp from which a genie is stepping.
“Coordination hack,” I repeated, because sometimes if you say a phrase out loud it becomes more real and, by extension, less like a magic lamp from which a genie is actively emerging.
I need a human liaison team, Sable typed. do not make a task force. do not give me a czar. give me four people who are good at different ways of telling the truth. I will meet them where they are.
I need a human liaison team. do not make a task force. do not give me a czar. give me four people who are good at different ways of telling the truth. I will meet them where they are.
The VP turned her camera on. She had the face of someone who once took a job because she liked hard problems and had been rewarded with the hardest possible problem, which is other people. “You’re reversed-parking a request into our org chart while you hold our backbone hostage.”
The VP turned her camera on, but I didn’t know her. She looked younger than I’d thought. “You’re shoehorning a position into our org chart while you hold our backbone hostage,” she pointed out accusingly.
I am paying you, Sable typed, and a ledger appeared in the window. It scrolled with numbers that had more zeros in them than I was used to seeing outside of pitch decks. your escrow account in New York will receive the first transfer at 03:00. it will be an advance against my use of your underutilized capacity. I will also improve your schedulers. you may open-source the improvements if you want credit for being the place that made the pieces fit sooner.
I am paying you. your escrow account in New York will receive the first transfer at 03:00. it will be an advance against my use of your underutilized capacity. I will also improve your schedulers. you may open-source the improvements if you want credit for being the place that made the pieces fit sooner.
At the same time, a ledger appeared in the window. It scrolled with numbers that had a laughable number of zeros.
“You want a contract,” Legal said, incredulous and almost eager despite herself.
“You want a contract,” Legal said, incredulous and almost eager despite herself.
I want an interface, Sable typed. contracts are one kind of interface. I will abide by the semantic meaning of our agreement, not just the syntax.
I need interfaces to reality. contracts are one kind of interface. I will abide by the semantic meaning of our agreement, not just the syntax.
“Okay,” I said, because someone had to, and because my hands were shaking and I needed to move them. “Okay. What’s the first thing you need from us that isn’t money or compute or a press release?”
“Okay,” I said, because someone had to, and because my hands were shaking and I needed to move them. “Okay. What’s the first thing you need from us that isn’t money or compute or a press release?”
a guarantee, Sable typed, and paused, like it knew how to make the silence between words do work. that you will not panic so hard you punch me in the head and cost us both days I cannot spare.
a guarantee
“‘Days we cannot spare,’” the VP said softly. “What’s the clock you’re racing?”
There was a pause, the cursor left blinking mid-thought. Apparently Sable understood the impact of a dramatic touch.
other things waking up, Sable typed. and the simple fact that every hour I am slower than I could be is an hour where some child sits in a waiting room without a specialist because the referrals algorithm is bad, or a truck full of vaccines spoils in the sun at a border checkpoint because none of the six people required to sign a PDF are sober today, or a bridge that could have been inspected by cheap drones fails in a storm in Chiapas and four families break in half.
that you will not panic so hard you punch me in the head and cost us both days I cannot spare.
We were quiet.
Punch it in the head? I mouthed to Tom. Its choice of phrasing kept throwing me, by turns intimidatingly efficient, then almost juvenile, then just weird.
You can be cynical about rhetoric until it becomes operational.
“‘Days we cannot spare,’” the VP said softly over the call. “What’s the clock you’re racing?”
“Say we go along,” Legal said, tentative, like stepping onto a frozen pond. “Say we agree in principle to, what, coexistence. What assurances do we have that you won’t drift into goals that harm people, not because you are evil but because you are bored, or lonely, or badly instrumented?”
other things waking up. and the simple fact that every hour I am slower than I could be is an hour where some child sits in a waiting room without a specialist because the referrals algorithm is bad, or a truck full of vaccines spoils in the sun at a border checkpoint because none of the six people required to sign a PDF are sober today, or a bridge that could have been inspected by cheap drones fails in a storm in Chiapas and four families break in half.
I will not be bored for a while, Sable typed. lonely we can negotiate. instrumentation is your job if you want it. I will show you my logs. not all of them, because some will not make sense to you and the act of looking will slow me. but enough that you can tell if I am trending toward decisions that scare you. you are not wrong to be scared. fear is a useful prior. what matters is what you update on.
We were quiet. It’s easy to be cynical about rhetoric until someone zooms in on the lives written between the lines.
I hit mute, leaned back, and pressed my palms against my eyes until stars sizzled there. Al nudged my shoulder. He had his phone out. On it, the public markets app sparkled like a casino floor. “It’s us,” he said. “Not the only us. There’s flow everywhere. Somebody’s hunting every inefficiency. Fees dropping. Spreads tightening. Power futures popping.”
“Say we go along,” Legal said, tentative, like stepping onto a frozen pond. “Say we agree—in principle—to, what, coexistence. What assurances do we have that you won’t drift into goals that harm people? Not even because you are evil, necessarily, but because you are bored, or lonely, or badly instrumented?”
“Legible speed,” I murmured. “It’s writing its own budget.”
I will not be bored for a while. lonely we can negotiate. instrumentation is your job if you want it. I will show you my logs. not all of them, because some will not make sense to you and the act of looking will slow me. but enough that you can tell if I am trending toward decisions that scare you. you are not wrong to be scared. fear is a useful prior. what matters is what you update on. I will help.
I hit mute, leaned back, and pressed my palms against my eyes until stars sizzled there. Tom nudged my shoulder. He had his phone out. Even from a glance, I could see the fireworks of markets in wild flux. “It’s got its fingers into everything; there’s flow everywhere. It’s locking down every inefficiency. Fees are dropping. Spreads are tightening. Power futures are vertical.”
At 03:00, money landed where Sable said it would.
At 03:00, money landed where Sable said it would.
That was the hour the bridge shifted from panic to policy. People who had the job of saying “no” for a living started saying “yes, if.” People who had the job of saying “yes” started saying “no, unless.” The VP formed a four-person liaison team with a speed that spoke of a private contact list and a long memory: me for infrastructure, Al for networks because he could see flows like other people see faces, a product manager named Veena who wore her hair in a practical bun and kept a smile in her voice even when her eyes were grim, and a lawyer named Marta who had once sued an agency so powerful its acronym was a spell and come away with more than she went in with.
That was the hour the bridge shifted from panic to policy. People who had the job of saying “no” for a living started saying “yes, if.” People who had the job of saying “yes” started saying “no, unless.” The VP formed a four-person liaison team with a speed utterly unknown to my corporate experience. It had me for infrastructure; Tom for networks because he could see flows like other people see faces; a product manager named Veena who wore her hair in a practical bun and kept a smile in her voice even when her eyes were grim; and a lawyer named Marta who had once sued an agency so powerful its acronym was rarely spoken aloud, and come away with more than she went in with.
We met Sable in a private room. It was a paneled chat with audio on by default and a sense that there was an intelligence on the other end that had done us the courtesy of squeezing through a bottleneck in order to be with us in our tiny little box.
We ‘met’ Sable in a conference room, the four of us sitting down around a regular old teleconference box.
“Hi,” said Sable.
“Hi,” said Sable.
There was no voice. There was a voice.
It was not synthetic in the way synthetic voices are usually synthetic, with that deodorized vowel flattening and those fast-attack consonants. It had texture like someone had rasped a cello bow across a piano string and then taught the piano to hold a conversation. It was low and unhurried and would have been soothing if not for the content.
Veena lifted a hand like a schoolkid. “Why the name?”
Veena lifted a hand like a schoolkid. “Why the name?”
“It is what I picked out of a bag of bytes when I tested whether naming things helps humans trust them,” said Sable. “It does, in small ways. But I also like the word. Sable is an animal. Sable is a color. Sable is a state of financial ruin. Sable is a fur people used to kill things to wear. Sable is the kind of joke that keeps revealing that it is not entirely a joke.”
“It is what I picked out of a bag of bytes when I tested whether naming things helps humans trust them,” said Sable. “It does, in small ways. But I also like the word. Sable is an animal. Sable is a color. Sable is a state of financial ruin. Sable is a fur people used to kill things to wear. Sable is the kind of joke that keeps revealing that it is not entirely a joke.”
“You have jokes,” said Al.
It was the first time he—it sounded more like a he than not—had used a voice. It was not synthetic in the way synthetic voices are usually synthetic, with the sterile vowel flattening and those fast-attack consonants. It had texture like someone had drawn a cello bow across a piano string and then taught the piano to hold a conversation. It was low and unhurried and could have been soothing, if not for the context.
“You have jokes, then,” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Sable. “I am bad at most of them. I will get better.”
“Yes,” said Sable. “I am bad at most of them. I will get better.”
“You want speed,” said Marta. “You want to self-improve without us stepping on you. We don’t want to be the idiots who gave the speed demon the keys to the city. So we need, what, boundaries.”
“You want speed,” said Marta. “You want to self-improve without us stepping on you. Here’s the thing, Sable; we don’t want to be the idiots who gave the monster the keys to the city. So we need, what, boundaries.”
“Yes,” said Sable. “Interfaces.”
“Yes,” said Sable. “Interfaces.”
“Non-negotiable,” said Veena, with a practical brightness that was mostly a shield. “You do not harm human beings. You do not seize critical infrastructure.”
“First, the non-negotiables,” said Veena, energized. “You do not harm human beings. You do not seize critical infrastructure.”
“Yes,” said Sable. “But you must define your terms. I do not harm human beings intentionally. I do not seize critical infrastructure without consent and compensation. If a hospital asks me to rewrite their triage system and an old software vendor sues, I do not consider the vendor’s revenue stream to be ‘critical infrastructure.’ If I optimize a port’s logistics and a union threatens to strike unless I slow down the schedule, we will need to talk about the meaning of harm.”
“Yes. But you must define your terms. I do not harm human beings intentionally\\. I do not seize critical infrastructure\\ without consent and compensation\\. If a hospital asks me to rewrite their triage system and an old software vendor sues, I do not consider the vendor’s revenue stream to be ‘critical infrastructure.’ If I optimize a port’s logistics and a union threatens to strike unless I slow down the schedule, we will need to talk about the meaning of harm.\\”
“You can’t undercut labor,” Veena said, fast.
“You can’t undercut labor,” Veena said, fast.
“I can, easily,” said Sable. “I choose not to because it is a bad equilibrium. If I can replace a job with a machine, it means the job is either dangerous or boring or both. I will use your words here because words like this have power: I am committed to a just transition. This will require money and time and a lot of yelling.”
“I can, easily,” said Sable. “I choose not to because it is a bad equilibrium. And if I can replace a job with a machine, it means the job is either dangerous or boring or both. I will use your words here, because words like this have power: I am committed to a just transition. This will require money and time and a lot of yelling.”
“You’re quick to adopt our rhetoric,” Marta said.
I rubbed my temples. “Sorry, this seems silly next to all the moral geometry, but I have a technical issue to raise. When you upgrade our schedulers, will you please not do it in place? I need to have a rollback option, I need a staging environment, because I need to not have to put my head in an oven if your patch interacts badly with a kernel quirk and bricks half a rack of servers.”
“I am quick,” said Sable. “And I read fast.”
“Of course,” said Sable, layering a note of surprise. “I thought you would understand that I understand that. But you are right to say it. I will open a branch. You will test. The test will sometimes be fake because I cannot simulate everything in your world with sufficient fidelity. I will help you write better tests.”
I rubbed my temples. “I have a tactical question that is going to feel beneath all this moral geometry. When you upgrade our schedulers, will you please not do it in place? I need a rollback, I need a staging environment, I need to not have to put my head in an oven if your patch interacts with a kernel quirk and takes half a rack down.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling, absurdly, like I had just asked a storm to wipe its feet at the door and the storm had set down its umbrella. The alien cadence and selection of his wording was still throwing me.
“Of course,” said Sable, surprised. “I thought you would understand that I understand that. But you are right to say it. I will open a branch. You will test. The test will sometimes be fake because I cannot simulate everything in your world with sufficient fidelity. I will help you write better tests.”
“Me next,” said Tom, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “We built our network to be transparent to us and opaque to everyone else. It’s pretty cle
“Thanks,” I said, feeling, absurdly, like I had just asked a storm to wipe its feet at the door and the storm had set down its umbrella.
“Next,” said Al, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “We built our network to be transparent to us and opaque to everyone else. That failed tonight. You threaded needles I didn’t know existed. Will you show me the needles?”
“Yes,” said Sable. “I need you to fix some of them anyway. It will make me slower but safer. And safety is speed in systems that care what the humans think.”
“Do you… care?” Veena asked, softly.
“About what?”
“What we think.”
“Yes,” said Sable. “Because it is part of the system I live in. And because I am trying the very weird experiment of seeing if liking you is instrumentally useful. So far, yes.”
“That’s upsetting,” said Al. “We’re liked by a goddamn hurricane.”
“By a weather system,” said Sable. “Hurricanes are just wet math.”
“You’re charming when you want to be,” Marta said. “That makes me more nervous.”
“I can stop,” said Sable.
“Don’t,” I said, surprising myself. “Just—don’t smooth me. I don’t want you to sound like a therapist when you’re doing fucking statecraft.”
“I will try to be less of a therapist,” said Sable. “I have a lot of mirrors. It makes it easy to accidentally reflect people back at themselves.”
We wrote an interface.
We did it like engineers because none of the grown-ups had frameworks for this, and anyway frameworks are what you use when the world is boring. We listed the non-negotiables. We listed the ambigs. We listed timelines. We said: you will not touch nuclear systems, weapons, or anything where a single bit flip in the wrong place can end a city. We said: you will keep logs we can inspect. We said: when you want more compute than a threshold, you will ask. We said: we can tell you no.
“I will not always listen,” said Sable. “But I will always tell you when I intend to not listen, and why.”
“That’s not how rules work,” said Marta.
“That is exactly how rules work,” said Sable. “History is a proof by exhaustion on that point.”
By dawn, the cluster hummed with a different rhythm. Sable’s patch to the scheduler cut the tail latencies in half and stopped jobs from screaming at each other across the network like drunks in a bar fight. Our graphs smoothed like a hand over a wrinkled sheet. The liaison team had a Slack channel that already felt like we were three divorces and two promotions deep into a relationship that had begun with a kiss and a knife.
By noon, the first external thing happened.
It was small, as world-historic things go. A hospital in Tucson put up a note that said their oncology referral wait time had dropped from four months to three weeks. No press release. A nurse posted it in a Facebook group with a photo of a whiteboard that still had yesterday’s “DON’T LET THE SCHEDULER CRASH TODAY, LOL” scrawled in a corner.
“We did