by M. D. Cooper
The words on the most recent issue of the Diastole Journal of Neurosciences mocked him. The DJN paper hovered tauntingly before his eyes, thrust there by two indignant students.
That was his work, attributed to someone else, and they knew it. As much as it gratified him that they were offended on his behalf, Ethan could not respond in kind.
He was faculty. The department chair of the prestigious College of Neurosciences at El Dorado University. He was also an AI. He knew better than to protest the theft of his work.
This was a teaching moment, an opportunity for him to mold impressionable minds. After all, it wasn’t like he had been born yesterday—though these two had. If they intended to make it as a minority species in this world, citation amnesia was the least of their worries.
Liar, he thought privately to himself.
His chrono pinged, alerting him that his next appointment was scheduled to begin shortly. He sent both students reassuring thoughts and encouraged them to return to their studies.
With an efficiency borne through decades of practice, Ethan dismissed the slight from his mind and returned his attention to his surroundings. His office was utilitarian: a desk, a potted plant, no window. It was also the smallest office of any faculty with his seniority in the university system. He’d seen supply closets that were larger.
Ethan forcibly banished this observation, choosing instead to review the notes on his next meeting. It was his weekly staff meeting with a rather odd post-doc named Lilith Barnes.
Lilith was a recent transfer from Proxima’s C-47 Habitat and had been granted a two-year neuropathology fellowship at El Dorado University under Ethan’s guidance. She was also a former student of noted neurologist Jane Sykes Andrews. Jane’s daughter, Judith, was one of Ethan’s peers—and one of the few faculty members here at the university who treated him as a true equal.
Given that Judith was the grandchild of that Sykes…it did not surprise him.
Jane had corresponded with Ethan prior to Lilith Barnes’s arrival, warning him of Lilith’s peculiarities in advance. It was something he had come to appreciate shortly after meeting the woman.
Lilith was unlike any other human he’d ever met—and not in a good way. She suffered from a condition that resembled autism yet was not, since that syndrome had been cured almost a thousand years ago. However, her condition rendered her incapable of grasping or understanding most social cues.
Jane admitted that she suspected that Lilith’s condition was the reason the woman had chosen the neurosciences as her field of study. Ethan thought Jane’s observation was spot-on.
He nodded to Lilith now as she entered his office, set a stack of holo sheets on the desk between them, and seated herself in the single chair the room offered. She did it all without acknowledging him in any way.
“Why do you bother with a biological humanoid frame like that?” she asked.
Had it been anyone else, this kind of entrance, combined with the abrupt and rudely worded question that had followed, would have been construed as an insult.
From anyone else, it would have been given as one, too. But he understood this had not been Lilith’s intent, so he responded to her query in a calm yet forthright manner.
“I do it because it is the best way to help humans see that I am an individual like them, a sentient being.”
Ethan cocked his head as he watched for physical cues indicating she had processed his response. There were none.
He continued.
“Sometimes I choose a pillar of light or the projection of an avatar instead of a humanoid frame to communicate our differences, to highlight that the sentient you see before you is not human.”
There was still no reaction, but after a beat, she spoke again.
“Do you think it is possible for us to adapt our neural nets so that humans experience what emotions are like for AIs and vice-versa?”
The abrupt subject change was classic Lilith. Having observed her for several months now, he decided to answer her blunt question with an equally blunt one of his own.
“You interact with me much differently than you do with the rest of the faculty and staff. Why?”
Lilith gave the barest of smiles. “AIs process content so much faster than we humans do. We slow you down. We force you to wait while we layer on idiotic things like small talk. If I were you, it would irritate me.”
“So this is you being thoughtful?”
Lilith cocked her head. “It frustrates me to have to listen to people talk about the weather. It must annoy you as well.”
It was an indirect answer, but Ethan just nodded, curious about where she would take the conversation next.
“I wish to discuss the impact of nonapeptides on mammalian species.” Lilith returned to her discussion of neural nets with single-minded focus, and he went along with it.
There would be time enough, Ethan reasoned, for the mundane tasks that plagued all staff meetings. He would wait until after Lilith had satisfied her burning curiosity.
“I assume you refer to the sociological impact of substances like oxytocin and vasopressin, rather than the physiological roles they play?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
She nodded impatiently. “Yes—how they control goodwill behavior, pair bonding, and aggression.”
“And how their deficiency is associated with a decreased understanding of social cues,” he prodded, curious to see her reaction.
Lilith cocked her head. “Indeed. I want to know if AIs have something analogous.”
“There are similarities,” he admitted. “But where your nonapeptides are neurochemical, ours are neurocodec. We have nonapeptides that are uniquely ours, as well as receptors in our matrices that are dedicated to social cognition. We have neural matrices similar to your basolateral amygdala neurons that share in the regulation of pain, fear and pleasure. But our neuroanatomical receptor expression maps are significantly different from those you humans have.”
Lilith’s expression turned speculative. “I wonder just how different.”
“I would be happy to discuss it with you in greater depth, if you’d like. Shall we set up a time later this week?”
She nodded as a knock sounded on the office doorframe. Ethan looked up to see Judith Andrews, the Planetary Sciences department chair, smiling at them.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked.
He returned Judith’s smile, then motioned for her to come in. It was a trick he’d learned early on, this use of physical gestures. They seemed somehow to make him more acceptable to humans.
“No interruption. Lilith and I can finish later. If that works for you?” he asked the woman.
Lilith gave her version of a nod—little more than a quick jerk of her head—then stood. Judith murmured a greeting as the woman departed, then stepped inside.
Ethan couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the two. Where Lilith had been detached and indifferent, Judith carried herself with a quiet confidence and ready smile. She took the seat the other woman had vacated, smoothing the muted blues of her well-tailored suit and crossing one booted foot over the other.
“I hope she’s managing to fit in without much difficulty?” Judith sent him a smile, her tone managing to sound curious without being intrusive.
“She’s a bit unusual for a human,” he said, returning her smile.
Judith laughed at that. “My mother pinged you about her?”
When the AI nodded, she continued.
“Has she asked you about nonapeptides yet?”
“Why yes, but how did you—”
Judith grinned wryly at his obvious surprise.
“Lilith has a vested interest in them, since hers are abnormally low. The woman literally cannot empathize with others.”
“I’d say
she’s closer to sociopathic, myself.”
His sharp rejoinder must have surprised Judith. She leaned forward, her face growing concerned. “Has she behaved inappropriately, Ethan?”
“No…but in the strictest definition of the word, a sociopath is the opposite of an empath. But enough about Lilith. What can I do for you?”
“Actually, it’s more what you can do for your prime minister.”
He looked at Judith, puzzled. He knew she shared a close relationship with Lysander—she’d told him once that the AI had helped raise her and her brother, Jason.
But wouldn’t a governmental request come through official channels?
His puzzlement must have translated itself to her. Judith shifted slightly, and then she sent him a ping requesting that he activate a security shield within his office.
This was a first; he’d never had occasion to do such a thing before. He initiated the field.
“Judith…why the secrecy?”
She smiled, but her eyes held a seriousness that belied the action. “I believe you know that my husband works for the Intelligence Service?” When he nodded, she continued. “Someone in his office asked if I could recommend a neuroscientist to help with a problem they are having. I immediately thought of you.” She gave a little shrug and a self-deprecating smile as she added, “They asked me to reach out to you instead of going through official channels, because Lysander would like to keep this quiet.”
Judith’s gaze grew unfocused as she sent Ethan a secured file. Once he’d accepted the ping and the file had transferred, she began. “You’ll see what I mean when you open it. It’s keyed to your ident only, but they told me what it’s about.” She tilted her head. “You know about the AIs that the cartel kidnapped?”
He nodded. “Of course. The trial has been all over the news nets for the past year.”
“Well, that file includes information on the shackling program the cartel used to kidnap them.” She frowned, shifting in her chair and looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “From what I was told, the nano it deploys tunnels deep, hooking its tendrils into an AI’s neural networks.”
Judith’s face grew tight as she continued. “They’ve managed to remove the shackling program, but the nano and lattices it created… I don’t know, it’s very resistant to removal. I don’t pretend to understand how it works; that’s your area of expertise, not mine.” She shook her head and then gave a small sigh. “The Intelligence Service was looking for help in finding a solution, so I gave them your name,” she explained, sending him a direct look. “I said if anyone could find a way to free them of it completely, it’d be you.”
Ethan met her gaze as the import of the request sunk in. For the prime minister to ask the woman who was all but his own daughter to recommend an expert—and for Judith to see him as that solution—this touched him deeply.
“I’m honored you thought of me, Judith. I’ll do everything I can for those AIs. You know I will.”
* * * * *
As Lilith walked down the university’s corridors, away from Ethan’s spartan office, she considered his words. The AI had agreed to discuss her experiment, but Judith had interrupted them before she could inform him of her plans. She shrugged. There was just one way she could get her hands on an AI’s receptor expression map, and she would not risk asking for permission only to be denied.
She must have it in order to run her tests. She had to know: did low nonapeptide values impact an AI’s personality like it did hers?
This had frustrated her for months, but she had a plan now. Other students might call her fixated, obsessed. But they didn’t understand. Humans had lab rats and other small vertebrate species they could study and extrapolate from; there were no such analogues with AIs.
NSAIs—Non-Sentient Artificial Intelligences—were too far removed on the evolutionary scale for them to be of any value to her. Their minds were rigid, digital where SAIs were analog in nature. They did not compare.
She found it unfair that human ‘live cadavers’ were available for medical research and study, cloned from human tissue when needed. What she needed was a copy of an AI neural net—the equivalent of an AI cadaver.
And she was determined to get one.
CADAVER
STELLAR DATE: 05.12.3189 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Department of Neurosciences
REGION: El Dorado University, Alpha Centauri System
Lilith’s voice sounded over the Link as Ethan played back his messages from earlier in the day.
Ethan stifled a laugh at the tacked-on ‘please’ at the end. He was quite certain she had forcibly reminded herself to say the word. Mentally shaking his head, he looked at the timestamp; Lilith’s message had been at the beginning of the queue; she must have left it just as he’d started his first lecture of the day.
Knowing Lilith, she must be feeling quite frustrated at his refusal to monitor messages while delivering lectures. He knew it was a personal quirk of his, to refuse to do something as simple as respond to messages while lecturing a class, but his human counterparts wouldn't have done it, so neither did he.
He checked for missed pings; yes, she had tried to reach him several times throughout the day. Ethan glanced at his schedule. He had just enough time to check in with her before his next appointment, so he headed toward the wing where Lilith was ensconced.
Ethan knew that he’d been allowed to oversee the fellowship she had been awarded—rather than one of the human scientists—as a way to appease an ongoing civil rights debate, and to prove that the university was non-discriminatory and progressive. He didn’t care. As annoying as Lilith Barnes was, the thought of being able to study correlations between AI and human neural social and psychological processes was incredibly appealing.
His anticipation rose as he entered the sixth floor Moser Wing, and he wondered what she might have to show him. He approached the lab’s entrance, only to find an empty room. Pinging Lilith over the Link, Ethan saw that her location icon indicated she was inside a shielded part of the lab, reserved for experimentation that would require the use of EM or ionizing radiation. The shielding protected those outside the area from the harmful effects of such directed pulses.
He entered the thickly-walled enclosure, noting that the equally-thick door had been slid open just far enough to admit a single person. His glance landed on a multi-leaf collimator that would gate high MeV electron beams, and then swept past a specimen table and a row of shelves that held various bits of equipment.
Lilith brushed past him, and he turned, only to have the door slide shut, sealing him in. Momentarily confused, he reached for the door’s opening mechanism and found his access denied. He tried initiating a connection to Lilith, but his Link had been cut off.
Ethan had a brief moment to grow concerned—and then he knew no more.
* * * * *
Lilith knew she had to work fast. Exiting the shielded room, she sent the command to the lab's NSAI to lock the doors. She estimated she had about five minutes before Ethan regained consciousness.
She ran over to where she’d laid her supplies: nano-resistant gloves to help protect her hands against any countermeasures his frame might have against unauthorized ingress, and a small canister of her own nano. This last, she had purchased on the darknet from some organization named Norden Cartel. It was supposedly programmed to circumvent any locked unit.
You can get almost anything on the darknet here, she mused disapprovingly as she reached for the cover on the frame’s torso, which contained the scientist’s core cylinder.
El Dorado law enforcement is far too lax, Lilith’s mental censure continued. Illegal material like this should not be so easily obtained. Not once did it occur to her that her actions would place her on the wrong side of the law as well.
Lilith checked the mini p
lasma torch she had purchased in the event the nano didn’t work, but she set it aside, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. She feared it might raise too many inconvenient questions if someone interrupted her. Besides, this nano had cost her a month’s worth of credits; she would be extremely displeased if it failed.
Lilith sighed. Really, this is almost more of a hassle than it’s worth. She conceded mentally that her peers would have found her actions to be rash, bordering on stupid. Ethan was her department chair, and she risked destroying any chance she had of continuing her research were he to discover what she was about.
She simply didn’t care. She understood, in an abstract way, that this was due to her biochemical condition; she was fearless in her disregard of ethical mores, engaging in activities her peers would find reprehensible. But she needed this sample, and Ethan was the proverbial bird in the hand. She just wanted to grab her copy, be done with it all, and let Ethan be about his business.
The nano did its work perfectly, and Lilith wasted no time reaching for the cylinder that encased the neuroscientist and carrying it into the next bay, where a portable autodoc sat.
Hands working rapidly and with increased confidence, Lilith set the cylinder into the recess used for embedding an AI within a human. She then opened a closet door and wheeled out a system she had carefully assembled in her spare time over the past week.
Picking up the mini plasma torch, Lilith leaned in and painstakingly cut the two connections at the top of Ethan’s cylinder, terminals that had been sealed shut the day he had been born. Lilith’s hand was steady, her work precise and meticulous. Nothing should go wrong at this stage.
Once the connections had been exposed, she attached the cylinder’s terminals to those on her unit, then stepped back to evaluate her handiwork. Satisfied with what she saw, she flipped the switch, beginning the cloning process. Several minutes later, after the process had completed, she reseated the scientist back into his frame. It was none too soon; Lilith had just stepped away to retrieve her diagnostic unit when her HUD’s chrono pinged, warning that her five minutes were up.