by Calum Chace
Sophie looked at Leo. ‘Are you still OK with the decision that you are the only person here without a veto, Leo?’
‘Yes, I still think that is right,’ Leo said, nodding. ‘Wow, so we’re finally there: the big day. It’s exciting, and also just a little bit scary, don’t you think? There is one thing which puzzles me, though.’ He looked at Vic and Norman. ‘Don’t you guys need to obtain approval from somebody? Somebody in the US military, or the government? In fact I suppose the UK government would have something to say about it, too, if they knew what is about to happen here.’
‘It’s a good question, Leo,’ Vic replied, nodding. ‘None of us should be under any illusions about what is going on here. There is absolutely nothing illegal about what we are about to do, under either US or UK law. But we’re not being open and transparent, either, in the way that we would all like, and which Matt wanted. And we all know the reason for that. If we announced what we are about to do, we would almost certainly be stopped. There would be a great deal of debate, some of it sensible, much of it ill-informed, but that’s democracy for you. And in the end, who knows whether we would be able to go ahead?
‘So we’re going ahead – under the radar, if you like – because none of us wants to lose the chance of bringing Matt back. But I want to be honest: there are other reasons, too. Artificial intelligence is coming, whether we like it or not. We think we are in the lead, but whoever is in second place may not be far behind. I believe that uploading a human mind is the safest way for humanity to create its first AGI. I want Matt to be the world’s first AGI.
‘And to answer your question directly, Leo, yes, there are powerful elements within the US government which want this project to proceed for strategic, financial, and – I won’t deny it – military reasons.’
‘So you already have their approval to proceed?’ asked Leo.
‘Yes and no,’ Norman replied. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘plausible deniability’. They do want us to go ahead, but if it all goes south they want to be able to claim that I was a rogue officer acting on my own, without authority. Naturally I can’t prove that to you, but it’s how these things work.’
‘So you will be made a scapegoat if things go wrong, or even if it works, but turns out to be wildly unpopular?’ asked David.
‘That’s right. That’s part of my unofficial job description,’ Norman said, smiling ruefully. ‘But don’t you worry about me,’ he continued. ‘I have broad shoulders and I would be well compensated for taking the fall. Again, that’s just the way these things are done.’
‘But hey, let’s not get obsessed with what might go wrong,’ Vic broke in. ‘We’re on the cusp of a dramatic breakthrough here. We’re about to reunite Matt with his family!’
He looked at Sophie and Leo. ‘It’s time for you two to see the computer room.’ He stood up, and looked around the group. ‘Shall we?’
They all stood, placed the debris from their lunches on their trays, and took them to the carousel where the catering staff would collect them and wash them for the next users. David marvelled at how the prosaic processes of everyday life carry on amid moments of great drama. They walked the corridors leading from the cafeteria to the computing room in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
Sophie and Leo had both spent many hours in the scanning room, but neither of them had ever set foot in the computing room before. It was cold.
They gazed at the enormous amount of computing equipment in the room. Leo estimated there were around thirty rows of giant matt black cabinets, each about fifteen feet high and six feet wide, with shelves on both sides. They stretched at least five metres back towards the far wall. The shelves in each cabinet held row upon row of servers. The servers looked like over-sized black hi-fi units, except that many of them had spaghetti tangles of wires sprouting from the front, and were connected to their neighbours, or with servers further down their row. The servers themselves all looked identical, but the mess of cables and the sprinkling of small green lights introduced an element of chaos. A low hum permeated the room.
‘I wanted you to see this equipment close up before we start,’ Vic explained, ‘so you know where the action is taking place, so to speak. We don’t come in here often because this room has to be precisely temperature-controlled. We’ll be operating this equipment from next door. But this is where Matt is hosted. This . . .’ he patted the nearest cabinet, ‘this is Matt’s new brain.’
Sophie reached out to touch the nearest cabinet. ‘Hello sweetheart,’ she said to herself, softly. She left her hand motionless against the cold black steel for a moment, then withdrew it and shivered slightly.
Vic ushered them out of the computer room and into the control room. ‘We control everything from in here. Make yourselves at home.’
The control room was considerably warmer than the computer room, and the hum was inaudible. The whole of one wall was a large window giving a clear view into the computer room. Facing that window was an arrangement of six desks, one in front, and a row of five behind it. Three small monitors stood side-by-side on each desk, with one large wide-screen monitor above them. A great deal of cabling ran into the computer room. The ambient lighting was low, with a couple of task light sources at each desk, and other lights in the ceiling focused on a large conference table that stood behind the rows of desks. Together with the pastel grey decor, the pools of light gave the room an impressive atmosphere of calm intellectual purpose.
Except for the one at the front, each desk was occupied. The men wore open-necked shirts and chinos, and the women wore slacks and jumpers. Vic made the introductions, then moved to the front desk, gesturing at its monitor. ‘The master control and diagnostic circuits are fed to this screen, so this is where we will press the enter key which will initiate the process of powering up the model. We’ll start by feeding just one audio stream to the upload, to minimise the possibility of over-loading Matt with sensory impressions until he gets used to his new situation. Later we can add a visual stream, and the other senses too.’
He pointed to a camera and a microphone beneath the main screen, and then to a row of buttons on the desk. ‘These devices provide the audio and visual inputs, so you should probably address yourselves to them. The microphone is voice-activated, but pressing this button will keep it muted.’
Then he pointed to a speaker located on the desk. ‘Matt’s voice will come through this speaker here. The audio is modulated so that whatever strength of signal is coming through, the volume will be the same level as a voice in normal conversation. As you know, we have been working on a system to convert whatever sounds Matt makes into sounds as close as possible to the way that . . . the way that Matt used to sound. I should warn you in advance, it probably won’t be a perfect representation, but if everything goes to plan it should sound familiar.’
Vic was watching David and Sophie as he spoke. Reassured that they were bearing up well, he gestured at the main screen, and continued.
‘Later, we hope that he will be able to project visuals here.’
He turned to Sophie and gestured for her to join him at the front desk. ‘David and I thought you might like to press the key.’ He typed a brief command into a keyboard and the screensaver photo of a beach at sunset was replaced by a dialogue box, asking simply, ‘Do you wish to continue?’ Vic moved the cursor to hover over the ‘Yes’ response.
Sophie moved into position, and placed her hand on the mouse. With a final look at David, she pressed the mouse key.
The humming they had heard in the computer room increased to the point that it became audible in the control room. Through the window, they could see that a great many more lights were glowing on the servers.
‘How long do you expect it to take to . . . um . . . warm up?’ asked Leo.
‘In theory, no time at all,’ replied David. ‘It’s not like an operating system on a PC, where a whole suite of programmes and sub-programmes have to load before the machine can do anything. It
’s more like your brain when you wake up in the morning. Electrochemical activity in your neurons is the information processing, and the information processing is your thoughts. From experiments carried out on people waking up inside FMRI scanning equipment, we have selected particular sets of neurons to fire up at initiation. If we have got that right, those neurons will spark others, and a coherent stream of thinking will be generated. It should be quick – if we’ve got it right.’
He leaned towards the desk and spoke into the microphone. ‘Hello, Matt. Can you hear me? It’s David, your father here. Your mother’s here too, and Leo, and some other friends, Vic and Norman. Can you hear me?’
When the voice came through the speaker they all jumped.
‘What happened? . . . Where am I?’
Although slightly metallic and alien-sounding, the voice was recognisably Matt’s, sounding foggy and disorientated. Sophie’s mouth formed a huge ‘O’ which she covered with her hand. Shocked, she sat down heavily and reached out for David who was instinctively moving towards her at the same time. They hadn’t dared to hope for such immediate success. Vic and Norman grinned broadly at each other and shook hands warmly as Leo clapped them both on the shoulder. The scientists manning the desks were celebrating too.
The celebrations broke off as Matt’s voice came from the speaker again. This time he sounded stressed, upset.
‘Dad! Is that you? What is . . . ? Where . . . ? I can’t . . . Hang on, why . . . ? I can’t . . . I . . .’
Again the speaker fell silent. After a couple of moments, David spoke:
‘Matt, can you hear me? We heard you loud and clear. Can you hear me?’
There was no response from the speaker. Sophie addressed the mike:
‘Matt darling. Are you there? It’s so wonderful to hear your voice. Can you hear us?’
Still there was nothing, and this time the silence lasted for a couple of minutes. Everyone at the front desk was straining, hoping to hear more from Matt. Finally, it was one of the scientists who spoke up:
‘The processing activity showed clear spikes when the speaker was active, Vic, but it’s gone completely flat again.’
‘Thanks Gus,’ replied Vic. He looked at the others. ‘It looks as though the processing didn’t propagate correctly. David, I think we should power down and go through those check routines we agreed.’
Sophie nodded agreement to David’s unspoken request for agreement. He turned back to Vic. ‘OK, let’s do it.’
Vic typed an instruction into the keyboard and hit the enter key. The hum in the computer room died down to inaudible, and the mood in the control room deflated in synch.
‘It will only take a few minutes for us to run the checks,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you guys take a breather, perhaps a tour of the building. . . ?’
‘I’ll stay here, thanks,’ said Sophie. ‘I don’t think I could bear to be anywhere else right now.’
‘I understand,’ Vic nodded. ‘David, we should start by looking at the activity logs on Gus’ monitor.’
As they walked over to Gus’ desk, Leo put his hand on Sophie’s arm. ‘It was always likely there would be a few false starts. We knew that. It’s amazing that we got such a strong result right out of the blocks.’
‘I know, I know. It was silly of me to get my hopes up so quickly.’
‘No, this is a really encouraging start, Sophie,’ Norman said earnestly. ‘I didn’t expect anything to happen this fast. The guys seem to be on the right track.’
Sophie nodded and smiled weakly, looking over at David. She envied him the opportunity to be busy, reviewing data, checking circuits. Waiting was painful.
Vic was right. A few minutes later they were gathered around the front desk again, preparing to press the enter key to the same dialogue box as before. This time David performed the modest ceremony.
The result was shocking. As the humming increased in the computer room, a screeching noise grew with it, which gradually resolved into a human scream. Matt was screaming. It was a surreal noise, as the volume level was modulated to conversation level, and there was no drawing of breath. But there was no doubting the sensation of terror which lay behind the noise, and there was no doubting it was Matt’s voice. David didn’t need to look up for confirmation: he pressed the key to power down.
David drew a deep breath, and spoke carefully. ‘I think we need to undertake a deeper review, Vic. Something is evidently not right. I think we should run a complete diagnostic, let it run overnight.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ replied Vic. ‘None of us want to hear that sound again!’
THIRTY-FOUR
There was nothing for Sophie or Leo to do, so they left for the apartment. After the elation of the initial apparent success they were bitterly disappointed by the failure, and their nerves had been shredded by the obvious terror in Matt’s anguished howl. It was a relief to escape from the control room, the scene of that horror.
Norman stayed for a while, but quickly decided to leave David and Vic to get on with their work in peace. But in truth there was little for David and Vic to do, either. Working with the rest of the scientists, it only took half an hour to set the parameters for a diagnostic check and set it to run, and they knew they would get no results for several hours. David headed to the flat, and Vic to his London apartment, agreeing to meet back at the control room at nine o’clock the following morning.
Later, as they got ready for bed, David suggested that Sophie might want to stay away from the control room until he and Vic had a chance to see whether the diagnostic was successful, and perhaps even until they could declare the upload initiation a success.
‘That scream was probably the most awful sound I have ever heard in my life,’ he said. ‘The worst thing about it was not being able to do anything about it except to stop it by de-powering the upload. But at least I can distract myself by working with Vic on strategies to improve the model and fix the bugs. It must be much worse for you. Why don’t you and Leo wait for Vic and me to check the results of the diagnostic tomorrow morning, and then join us if it looks promising?’
‘Thanks but no thanks,’ Sophie replied. ‘You’re right: it is unbearable to be powerless when Matt is screaming, but it would be even worse to be away from him. I need to be there.’
‘I know what you mean,’ nodded David. ‘Well, I won’t deny that it’s good to have you there. We could have important decisions to make tomorrow which I would much rather not take alone.’
There was a tenderness when they made love that night, born of their shared anxiety for their son. There was also a passion inspired by their shared hope that they would soon be talking to him again.
*
When David, Sophie and Leo arrived at the control room the next morning, Vic and Norman were already there. Sophie noticed several new faces among the scientists, but she recognised others, and she realised that some of these people must have worked all night, checking that the diagnostic was running OK, analysing the activity logs, looking for sources of error within the upload model. She felt tears well up in her eyes as she realised the dedication as well as the scale of resources being applied to the task of reviving her son. She was struck by a wave of gratitude, and immediately afterwards by a sense of amazement that the whole thing was successfully being kept a secret.
Vic greeted them with a serious expression.
‘We should be ready to try again within the hour. David, I’d like to run through some of the overnight results with you, if that’s OK? I think the guys have made some really useful discoveries.’ He walked to one of the desks in the second row. ‘Come over to this monitor and I’ll show you what I mean.’
Norman joined Sophie and Leo and told them what he understood of the overnight findings before leaving to make some calls in an adjoining room while they all waited for the next initiation.
In fact it was three hours before David and Vic were ready to try again. David explained the problem to Sophie.
�
��We are confident that we have the architecture right. We are also confident that we have most of the linkages right, both within the sub-units and between them. The difficulty we are having is working out the best order in which to initiate them. The only hard data we have to guide us is what we have learned from observations of other brains, and there seems to be a good deal of variation between brains on this. The guys have crunched a lot of data on this overnight and this morning. We could try to delve down in more detail, but the analysis is starting to involve a lot of guesswork. Or we can go ahead and initiate the upload again . . .’
David looked at Vic, and then back at Sophie. ‘We think we should try it,’ he continued. ‘Are you happy with that?’
‘Yes,’ said Sophie, without hesitation. David nodded and smiled appreciatively.
‘OK. Good.’ He gestured towards the keyboard at the main monitor. ‘Let’s do it.’
A dozen people held their breath as Sophie pressed the button and a dozen pairs of eyes locked on the main monitor and strained to hear any kind of noise from the speaker as the hum rose in the computer room. Within a couple of minutes they were rewarded with a low, sleepy, dreamlike murmur.
‘Mmmmmmm . . . Eeeeeeee . . . Zhhhh . . . Rrrrrooound.’
In the silence that followed, David and Sophie agreed it was Matt’s voice again.
‘Matt, can you hear me, darling? It’s mum. Dad’s here too.’
The murmur started up again.
‘Mmmmmmm . . . Eeeeeeee . . . Zhhhh . . . Yeeelllooow.’
Again there was silence. Sophie asked David and Vic whether there could be a problem with the audio circuitry.
‘It sounds like interference, or feedback or something,’ she said.
‘Unlikely,’ replied Vic, shaking his head. ‘I think it’s the upload. It’s as if Matt is at the edge of consciousness. As if he’s groping around, trying to find a way in.’