Logan’s Law
by Scott C. Scharlach
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
The forest path began diverging from the lakeshore. LOGAN popped up out of the water, arms and legs extending in midair. He landed elegantly on the shore. “I was tasked with some pretty complicated mission objectives,” he said, brushing water off of his smooth exterior, “like carefully cataloguing the cultures of any intelligent creatures I might discover. I’m not just an astronaut, you see; I’m an anthropologist. That’s why they built me with the latest AI tech.”
The path led them away from the lake. Pink flowers blossomed on either side of the path. “So you’re a Large-Language Model?” Marshall guessed. “That was cutting-edge tech back when you were launched.”
LOGAN made a distinct scoffing. “Poppycock! An LLM is just a glorified Markov chain. A stochastic parrot. Autocomplete on steroids. Searle’s Chinese room.”
“I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Large-Language Models are primarily pattern-recognition software; they notice patterns in their training data so, when you give it a prompt, it responds with the most likely sequence of words given what it has seen before. But there’s no deep, cognitive understanding. No qualia. There’s nobody ‘in there,’ so to speak.”
“So if you’re not an LLM,” Marshall paused as he struggled to find the right way to phrase his question, “what... are you?” Marshall cringed. “I mean, you appear to be a robot. How did they program you?”
“I’m an ACB, an Artificial Carbon Brain.” The path led them along the base of a sheer cliff, casting them into shadow as they walked. Boulders of varying sizes lay strewn about the area, no doubt having fallen from the rocky cliff face eons ago.
“The scientists,” LOGAN continued, “adopted the motto: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ One of the most tried-and-true computers the human brain has ever encountered is, well, the human brain. Tens of billions of neurons. Tens of trillions of connections. Extremely adaptable. And surprisingly good hand-eye coordination.”
“So... you’re a human?”
“Nope. My brain is built from wires and nodes, and it’s powered by a WIMP-drive. But the wires are carbon-based nano-fibers rather than the copper wires you usually see in electrical circuits. And each of my brain nodes has a lot more in common with a human brain cell than it does with a transistor. Transistors can only be in two states: ‘on’ or ‘off.’ My nodes can be in a wide spectrum of activation states. The end result: I’m a machine that thinks and acts in a way that’s pretty much human.”
Marshall examined the cliff face as they walked. The rocks were layered, like a cake, changing from orange to pinkish-white to gray as the layered rocks rose in altitude. His eyes darted across the cliff face, searching for the imprint of any fossilized shells. He didn’t notice any, but he supposed that his attention was more focused on the talking robot.
Marshall paused a moment while he phrased his next question. “I hope I don’t cause offense with this question, but are you... in there? You said an LLM doesn’t have any first-person experiences. Do you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I do. I am ‘in here.’”
The shadow of the cliffside slowly grew longer as they walked. Marshall kept a quick pace.
“I could ask you the same thing,” LOGAN added. “I’ve never been a human, so I’ve never seen the world through a human brain. For all I know, humans don’t have anyone ‘in there,’ either.”
Marshall nodded slowly. “Touché. But there’s something that doesn’t make sense to me. If you’re forty-year old tech, then why have I never heard of an ACB before? Why aren’t they ubiquitous these days?”
“I’m good at the same things humans are good at, but I’m bad at the same things you are, too. I can improvise, imagine, and analyze. But give me a book and I’ll read it at the same speed you do. Ask me to remember something, and I’ll forget it as easily as you do.”
The path led them out of the shadow of the cliff and back into the sunlight. The sun now touched the edge of the mountain on the horizon. Beams of light shone through the branches of the pine trees, catching dust particles and insects as they floated through the crisp evening air.
“For almost any job done on Earth,” LOGAN continued. “it would be far cheaper to just hire a human. I was obscenely expensive, you know. And if you need a robot to read quickly a thousand-page legal document and summarize it for you, then — dare I say it — an LLM would be much better than me for the task.” A dragonfly buzzed above them, its wings reflecting a soft orange glow from the setting sun. “ACBs are best for doing human-like tasks where humans cannot go. Like exploring another planet.”
* * *
Marshall asked the question he had been aching to ask all afternoon. “What did you find? In the other star systems, I mean.”
“A bunch of Amish people.”
Marshall nearly tripped over a small branch on the path. He steadied himself and adjusted his floppy bucket hat. “I’m sorry, Amish? As in the religion?”
“Yep. Everywhere I went — Procyon, Sirius, Alpha Centauri — I found life. And I didn’t just find life, I found intelligence. There were fire-wielders. Farmers. Sailors. Our region of the galaxy is teeming with creatures of human-level intelligence.”
“Were any of them space-travelers?”
“None. Like I said, the only intelligent creatures that I could find were analogous to Amish people on Earth. They had strict social rules governing which technologies were allowed and which were shunned. Some forbid electricity. Others forbid coal power. One culture even forbids stone tools, and they do everything with wood. Let me tell you, if you thought Amish cultures were strict, you should see the octopods on Sirius-5!”
Marshall furrowed his brow, processing LOGAN’s words. “If they forbid electricity,” he said slowly, “does that mean they knew about electricity in the first place? As in, it had already been invented there?”
“Yep! Earth is actually pretty far behind schedule compared to our neighbors. I did some archeological surveys on the inhabited planets, and I’m pretty sure that most of them entered into the atomic age at least ten thousand years ago.”
Marshall shuddered. “So if they developed modern tech all that time ago, and they resemble Amish people today, does that mean... that the planet was torn apart by nuclear war?”
“Nope!” LOGAN bounced excitedly as he walked. “The geological record showed no sign of nuclear winter on any of the planets I surveyed. The planets just naturally underwent Amishization.”
Marshall shook his head and chuckled. “That’s the first word you said to me when we met. What does it mean?”
“The principle of Amishization is a phrase I invented to explain what I found. If you wish, we can call it LOGAN’s Law. It states: any intelligent species with modern technology will naturally transition into a population consisting solely of technological minimalists. In other words, populations who embrace modern technology naturally decrease in number over time, while people with strict limitations on technology keep their population either constant or steadily on the rise. It’s just a birthrate thing.”
The last light of the sun vanished behind the mountain. Orange light still shone on the western horizon, and a few pink clouds floated in the sky.
Marshall’s hiking pack began weighing on his shoulders. The day’s hike had been long, and he had not been emotionally prepared for a chat with a robot. He hoped that he would reach his car before the evening had grown too dark. He began wondering what LOGAN was planning to do after their talk.
“I’d like to take a guess,” LOGAN said, breaking Marshall’s train of thought. “Has underpopulation been a problem in the past few years?”
Marshall shrugged, which was difficult with the hiking pack strapped to his back. “The government says it’s no big deal. But the social scientists have been getting increasingly worried about it.”
“Let me take another guess: birth rates have been low in urbanized nations, but not in developing nations?”
Marshall nodded. “Even before you left, countries like the U.S. and Japan had birthrates below two children per woman. Less than a decade after you left, nearly every developed nation had a declining population.” He inhaled slowly, feeling the cool evening air around him. “There’s a host of nations that were considered ‘developing’ when you left but which have high standards of living now: Nigeria, Brazil and India, to name a few. Those populations are still increasing.”
“I’ll take a third guess,” LOGAN chimed, “as soon as those nations achieved a high standard of living, their birth rates started falling.”
Marshall grinned. “You are three for three. The more developed a nation gets, the lower the birthrates fall. No exceptions.”
The warm colors of the twilight were fading away, leaving the sky a dark shade of inky-blue. As they walked, the chittering of crickets and frogs echoed through the forested valley. A few stars began to twinkle in the sky.
LOGAN pointed. “That one’s Procyon. You’d probably like it. The forests are a reddish-purple, and two white stars shine in the sky.”
Marshall stared at the twinkling light. It was difficult to fully accept that the tiny dot in the distance was a solar system as real and alive his own. He let his eyes wander across the sky, which now seemed more vast and unfathomable than it had ever appeared before. “Why, though? Why aren’t people having kids?” Marshall wasn’t sure why he had asked LOGAN. The robot was younger than Marshall and had been away from Earth for the past four decades. But Marshall still felt the need to ask.
“It’s simple, really,” LOGAN replied. “In a rural environment, kids make life easier. They are an extra pair of hands on the farm. They increase the number of seeds that can be sowed and crops that can be harvested. If I were a farmer, I would want as many kids as I could get my hands on.” LOGAN paused. “Though in my case, if I wanted a kid, I suppose I would have to 3D print one. That’s how they made me, anyway.”
Marshall stared down the trail. The long shadows of the trees were becoming eery in the fading light. “But in an urban environment,” Marshall added, “kids are just so expensive. My brother spent so much money on toys, books, and summer camps for my nephew. And so many trips to the doctor after the little guy broke his nose, arm, and foot on three separate occasions.
“My wife and I never got around to having kids. It’s not that we dislike children, we just never found the time for it. We were busy learning new hobbies, traveling the world, and becoming the best versions of our selves. Kids just didn’t fit into the itinerary.”
LOGAN rotated his body as if gazing out into the dimly lit forest, and he scratched at a point on his spherical body where Marshall guessed his chin would have been. “You make some good points. Perhaps I’ll have to tour Earth before printing myself a kid.”
Marshall heard the energetic yipping of coyotes in the distance. He quickened his pace. He recognized the path from that morning; his car would be nearby. “So is humanity doomed to go extinct from underpopulation?” Marshall asked.
LOGAN floated upward into the air, keeping pace with Marshall as he walked. LOGAN reached out with a tiny claw and gave Marshall a gentle pat on his shoulder. “Humanity will survive. You said it yourself: populations don’t decline until they acquire modern technology. And no matter which planet you go to — Earth included — you’ll always find a group of people that choose not to embrace modern technology. On Earth, we have the Amish. On Sirius, they have the L’mtchatskv. On Procyon, they have the g-bl-ng-nk-gh. And with that traditional lifestyle comes preindustrial birthrates.”
“I guess the urban lifestyle isn’t for everyone,” Marshall remarked. He was speed-walking now.
“Heck, the L’mtchatskv even think that agriculture is going too far; they choose to remain hunter-gatherers.”
* * *
They rounded a corner, and to Marshall’s relief, he saw his white sedan parked in the corner of a small, gravel parking lot.
Marshall fished for the keys in his pocket. A satisfying chirp came from his car as the taillights lit up. “So the urban populations dwindle to nothing, and only the Amish remain?”
LOGAN descended to the ground, the gravel softly crunching beneath his tiny feet. “Yep. Hence the term ‘amishization,’ the process of intelligent populations eventually becoming entirely Amish.” He bowed again, the sound of a polite golf clap emitting from his speaker.
Marshall was halfway across the parking lot when he stopped in place. “I’m not sure how I feel about all this,” Marshall muttered. He was uncertain whether he was speaking to LOGAN or to himself. “On the one hand, I’m thrilled that life abounds in our corner of universe. And I’m happy to know that humans will probably persist for millennia to come. But I...” his voice trailed off, strained. “I’m honestly kind of devastated.
“When I was a kid, I thought that humans were going to spread throughout the cosmos. Meet alien empires. Become a multi-planet system. But in retrospect, it all sounds preposterous.” He let his hands drop to his side, keys jingling between his fingers. “Obviously there aren’t any galaxy-spanning alien civilizations. If there were, they would’ve contacted us by now.”
He stood beside LOGAN in the darkness, coyotes cackling in the distance. The evergreen trees around them rustled as the cold air of early nighttime floated through the pine needles.
Then LOGAN spoke. “Scientists call that the Fermi Paradox, the question of why aliens have never contacted us, considering how abundant life ought to be in the universe. That was actually my core goal, the whole reason why I was sent. It was to resolve the paradox. And after visiting a host of planets, I know the answer now.”
Marshall blinked twice, and he realized he was holding back a tear. He cracked a weak smile. “Amishization.” The word felt strange in his mouth. “LOGAN, I’m going to be honest with you: ‘amishization’ doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Let’s go with the other one: Logan’s Law.”
LOGAN tapped the side of his bowling ball body, as if he was deep in thought. “Logan’s Law. I like it; it’s alliterative.”
Marshall opened the door to his sedan, yellow-white light illuminating his exhausted face in the darkness. He paused and looked back at LOGAN. “I’m guessing you probably don’t eat human food,” Marshall said after a moment. “But it’s been a while since my wife and I have had dinner guests. Do you... want to join us for dinner? It’s a half-hour drive to our house.”
LOGAN rotated his sphere as if looking up at the sky, gazing at the dozens of stars now glistening overhead. He rotated to face Marshall. “It just occurred to me. I never actually thought about what I would do after this moment. I’ve only ever had only one purpose: to complete project Philoctetes. I never really thought about what I’d do afterwards.”
A low huff came from his speaker. “My communication channels have received nothing but static all day. It looks like Project Philoctetes is truly dead and gone.” He was silent for a moment. The crickets and frogs pulsed with a steady, rhythmic beat. “I’ll find a way to tell the world about my discoveries, but...” LOGAN shrugged his stubby arms. “I suppose that can wait until tomorrow.”
He zipped into the air and through the open car door, landing gracefully in the passenger seat. He leaned forward and turned on the radio. Classic rock reverberated through the parking lot.
As Marshall pulled the car out of the lot and onto the paved road, his fingers began to drum on the wheel. “As an art history major, I’ve got to ask: what kind of art do aliens make? Do they like paintings? Sculptures? Literature?”
LOGAN bobbed excitedly. “Oh, ho ho, you would love the stone colossi of Alpha Centauri!”
The two chatted as Marshall drove carefully into the night, headlights glowing as the car wound through the mountain road. The light of innumerable stars sparkled overhead.
As LOGAN shared his stories and voyages of the cosmos, a thought formed in Marshall’s mind. Perhaps it was not humanity’s destiny to voyage across the stars. Perhaps something humanity had created, a personality full of curiosity, enthusiasm and kindness would take up the mantle.
Copyright © 2026 by Scott C. Scharlach
