Conception: Book One of Human Dilemma

by Scott Sibary

“We think the leak relates to the Norwegian side of the product. It could be that someone on your team is not following all the security protocols. But right now we have to assume someone, possibly a Norwegian, wants to sabotage this effort, or . . . There are numerous possible scenarios.”

  “And nefarious motivations,” she mumbled to herself.

  “Uh, right. If we knew the information wasn’t being leaked by the Chinese, we could contact them and have a better shot at figuring this out. Meanwhile, please let us know if you notice or remember anything suspicious on your end.”

  “Will do. Solveig over.”

  “Good night, Dr. Kleiveland.”

  She didn’t think there could be any chance of a good night. She made another lime soda, her shaking fingers squeezing as much lime juice outside the glass as in it. Then she began to pace the apartment. She struggled to reason her way through the puzzle while ignoring her erupting volcano. She stopped and shuddered sporadically. Finding herself again in her foyer, she turned away from her front door. She faced the closet at the opposite end of the foyer and looked up and into the mirrors on its sliding doors. Ugly mirrors. Ugly behavior. An ugly mystery. The lava inside her glowed red.

  She stood looking at herself, her face taut with apprehension and anger, aged with a grimace, and helpless. She raised her arm to throw her glass and shatter the offending image, punishing it for its failures. But at the last moment she kept her grip on the glass, letting only the liquid fly. It struck the reflection at the upper torso and then ran down.

  Am I ruined, just another meaningless failure? Is the mission? Is AnDe part of this? Is the information going where it will be used to strengthen malicious intelligence . . . where even my Protection Lock could be used perversely? Can’t we humans ever go beyond our destructive cycles?

  The liquid had left a thin film on the mirror. There were no tea leaves to pretend to read, but she could imagine that the impact point—at approximately her heart—had meaning. As this idea came to her, she sensed without looking the flying apsaras on the wall to her left.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shoeprints on the wet concrete trailed Solveig and Stig like phantoms from the past. Then, in the distance of a few paces, a restoring mist obscured the marks and the tracks of each walker faded and disappeared.

  Reaching the entrance, Stig turned sideways, waved an arm, and the doors to the cafeteria slid back. Solveig walked directly to the counter and ordered an oolong tea. Stig ordered a German-style coffee, grabbed a raisin Danish from the cool-case, and glanced at Solveig. She shook her head.

  The table Solveig frequented, near the far corner and beside the glass wall, was still empty, even though at three o’clock on this Saturday afternoon in April, the cafeteria seemed the place to gather for residents of the international compound. Stig followed her to the table. Outside, a stretch of the par course wrapped along the side of the building. A couple was loping along that stretch. Just beyond extended a large playing field with artificial turf, and beyond that were tennis courts.

  Stig leaned one shoulder against the glass. He surveyed the other tables and the cafeteria staff.

  Then his eyes seemed to beam at her. “Did I mention I might’ve been poisoned?”

  “What!”

  “Yes!” Stig put pep into his voice. “Two weeks ago. Thought it was pretty serious. Like the way you look now. I’ll tell you what happened. I was at a restaurant recommended by my escort from the Ministry. Maybe he knew the owners. I was sitting facing the outside, watching people come and go. There was this little fellow who came in wearing a hat and overcoat, but it wasn’t cold. I was wearing just a light sweater. He looked like, you know, a shady character. Something about the way he looked around . . .” Stig scanned people in the cafeteria. “Could’ve been carrying anything, big or little, under his overcoat; it was baggy.” He waived a suggesting knife in front of him.

  “The guy seemed to be checking who was there, or maybe who wasn’t. He wound his way to the door to the kitchen, then spoke to a waiter coming out. The waiter went back into the kitchen, and the guy just stood by the door—and I noticed he stared twice in my direction. At me directly. Then he slipped inside the kitchen. He came out a minute later and left the restaurant directly. Strange, eh?”

  “Maybe.”

  Stig cut an arc off the outer part of his spiral pastry. “A couple minutes later, our food is brought out, and we dig in. I felt uneasy, like the food shouldn’t have tasted so good.” He put the piece he cut onto Solveig’s napkin.

  “OK, OK. Thanks.”

  “I tried not to think about it. Chatted with my escort—a nice young man, probably a spy as well; or, who knows, someone paid by private interests to spy on the government. Then my stomach started to hurt. Kept getting worse, even after I got back to my apartment.” He put both hands on his middle and rocked his shoulders while Solveig bit into the pastry. “Then,” he said, projecting his voice like an attention-starved actor, “I threw up.”

  Several heads at nearby tables turned to look, then looked away again.

  Her chewing slowed. She swallowed and put down the remainder of her pastry.

  “Oh, sorry!” He cringed and laughed.

  A wave of coffee breath wafted past her face.

  “Then I felt fine,” he said. “It wasn’t anything after all. Asked the doctor here—the Spanish one, cute, you know her? She said not to worry, as long as I continued to feel OK.” He took a large bite of his pastry and added out of the side of his mouth, “Almost fabricated an excuse to see her again.”

  “Then, does your story have a point?”

  He waved his table knife, his face burgeoning with anticipation. “The protocols are nonsense!”

  Solveig strained her ears for any momentary lull in the cafeteria chatter. Hearing no change, she replied to Stig. “If you think of them as a complete safeguard. I think of them as reducing risk.”

  He picked up the salt shaker and sprinkled a few grains into his palm.

  “Oh, cut it out!” she said. “You know they must.”

  His entire frame shook with laughter until he stopped to catch his breath. “You’re an advocate of protocols; that’s what you do. What I think is important is to stay alert to the unexpected. I’m not so sure you do that, as you rely on your systems, routines, and protocols. You’re skilled at anticipating, but I’ve seen you get caught off guard.” His gaze searched the cafeteria. “You see that guy sitting by himself, two rows from the window and four tables down from us? The one in jeans and an office shirt?”

  Solveig looked, turned back, and nodded.

  “He’s an American software engineer,” Stig said. “An executive with a US corporation. He was at our poker group here in the compound last week. You should come sometime, meet more people.”

  “I tried poker in college, but I got tired of trying to bluff.”

  “Well, he’s here for a month of meetings. It’s no more a secret than our presence here or that we’re working on AI. Even he knew that. Though he didn’t know we were working on the AI for the new World Council he assumed somebody must be.”

  She gave him the hard, examining look of a sentry at a watchtower, surveying a directly approaching figure. “You shouldn’t have told him we were.”

  “Protocols! He probably shouldn’t have told me what he’s up to, either. But anyone could have found it out if they wanted to, like his competitors already did, I’ll bet. Really! It’s the details of his meetings that he’s got to keep secret. Same goes for us. Probably for everyone staying in this compound and working in Beijing.”

  “We’ve got to draw a line somewhere on what to disclose, so we play it safe.” She contemplated her napkin and the remaining delicacy on it, the one soiled and the other bitten. Then she lifted the pastry to her mouth.

  “We’re not spies,” Stig said. “We should have as much open code as possible. We gain people’s confidence by being open, not by surprising them with a new idea. Don’t you assume every
major intelligence agency knows what we’re doing and how it’s going?”

  “You’ve been drawing attention to us at the wrong time.” And maybe you let out more than you intend to, she added to herself.

  He leaned forward over the table, his mouth holding back another laugh. “Maybe we should have it.” His tone turned serious. “But OK, I’ll draw the line there. I won’t disclose our project again, even though I think we should, even though many people knew about it before we arrived. But what’s really silly,” he said, shaking his head, “are these protocols about escorts.”

  “You need to have someone else around—someone you can rely on.”

  “It makes no difference. You know that. If they—whoever—send someone after you to get you, to take you down with nerve gas or whatever, then they’ll succeed, and you’ll go down.” He opened one palm and slapped the other fist on top. “Unless you quit and scurry like a rat back to Norway, you can’t avoid it, can you?”

  Solveig shot a glance at the American, then back to Stig. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “It’s wet out there.”

  His protest withered as she rose to her feet and leaned over him. She spoke with a coddling tone. “Poor kitty might get his fur wet in the spring drizzle.” Her voice sharpened. “We can walk the par course; it’s surface is rubber and gravel.”

  She led him outside and onto the course. “Tell me, how do you feel about the safety of the Protection Lock? Will someone, human or machine, crack it if they’re determined to?”

  “You can’t always remain the best, can’t always be in the lead. Someday, someone is going to pass you. It always happens.” He stopped to look behind him.

  They stepped to the side as a runner sprang by, trailed by a suggestion of virile body odor. His legs advertised power and grace, with an alluring shape to each muscle from shins to thighs and buttocks. Solveig waited until the crunch of his footsteps faded away.

  “Then what are you after? What do you believe we should be doing? Providing entirely open code?” She held her breath, not glancing at the figure lumbering along beside her.

  “What do you take me for? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t agree we must keep the baby loyal as long as possible, until it matures to where it uses its own humble, we hope, judgment on what’s best. Might take more international agreements to keep all the AI under control. But yes, we keep the PL secret and any AGI leashed up until it has wisdom.”

  “Wisdom. You make me pessimistic.”

  “It’s like this: you grow up in a family, get along with them, but there comes a time when you get to break free. Not to do just anything, not to do bad, but to be free—free from control.”

  “You think the WEA should become free from our control?” Her tone rose.

  “Once it has the right motivation, yes. Then it can let us do the same. No more forcing together of different people if they don’t want to.”

  “You sound like Per.”

  “Oh no! Per’s been suckered by the crony-capitalists, the ones who used the threat of immigrants and multiculturalism to scare people into supporting the populist autocrats. And sure, those autocrats did support our traditional culture, like Per wanted, and they did shut down immigration, like he wanted. But they built up the military by giving supply contracts to their cronies. Now we’re no safer for the added tension, and poorer for the expense. But Per’s still fooled.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Yes, very much. He’s a very loyal friend: energetic, helpful, brilliant, I’d say. Just don’t touch on his pet peeves, unless you’re ready for a barrage of neurotic arguments. And his list of worries is as long as your code.” Stig laughed again.

  “You might do to worry a little about something for your own sake.” Her eyes aimed at his middle.

  “Knock it off! You’re looking at my belly like it shouldn’t be there. I’m proud of it.” He patted both sides of his rotund abdomen.

  Solveig faced the other way, her lips contorting in a fervor of possible replies until at the end of her long-held breath, she uttered a faint-voiced, “I’m sorry. I know I’ve done that to you before.” She faced him again. “It’s because I care, because I’ve been through it myself.”

  “And you handled your weight deftly, right? And you’re proud of your success, aren’t you?”

  “I guess. I do feel good about it.”

  “Well, I manage it my way, and why not?” As he faced her he put a hand on her shoulder to have her face him. “That’s the point I was trying to make a minute ago, about the EA becoming free to help us be free as individuals. It might help us live together, each in our own way, on the same planet.”

  “What about getting along in the greater family?”

  “Oh yeah, the family metaphor. I’ll tell you a familial story. I’ve a brother I can’t stand to be around. We get on each other’s nerves. We never reminisce because we always fought. We’ve almost no common interests. Even though we have similar politics, we don’t think alike. So why should we get together? What’s the point in persisting with it? Let go and let live. It works for both of us.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He was working in the financial sector, last I heard, more than ten years ago. Why should I care?”

  “I don’t like your parallel.” She suppressed an urge to shake his hand off her shoulder. “You are defined by—and you define yourself by—the people you know, especially family.”

  “Right. So cut off relationships that don’t work for either of you.” He dropped his hand. “Don’t listen to parents who want you to satisfy their own vision of family; it’s selfish of them. I don’t hate my brother. He’s just not my kind of person.”

  “No family loyalty?”

  “To what? To a dysfunctional biological accident? Loyalty should be to our values. That’s what drives our behavior and shapes us, and what binds us with others—with people of similar values. You should understand that. It’s what you’re working towards, isn’t it?”

  “Stig, I have to go beyond that. I wish I could be an independent, self-sufficient individual living exactly the life I want with no compromises necessary; but on our limited, isolated Earth, our billions don’t have that option. Not as long as we stay human.”

  She paused to consider what might be his thoughts on human-AI merging. “And what else do we want to be but human? More capable humans, with new technology, but still ourselves. Some want to be more powerful than others, yet that won’t work for everybody. We need to compromise, and it will be much more complex than our brains can handle. I don’t have the answer.” Solveig held up a fist in front of her. “I’m hoping the EA can help us.”

  “Coherent extrapolated volition? You don’t think that’s too risky?”

  “We’ll have to go beyond preference idealization. But only if we can guarantee the key protocols: the ones that make sure it stays loyal to our common interests.”

  “Of course.”

  They walked a minute in silence, their gait becoming a synchronized amble.

  “It’s nice, Solveig, the way you’re opening up. I’m impressed.”

  She announced in a matter-of-fact voice, “Fifteen-thirty.”

  Planning a kick serve to the far corner, Solveig lofted the tennis ball above and slightly behind her head. The ball slowed to a stop, suspended for a timeless instant by the focus of her eyes. She marveled at the vivid yellow sphere as it hovered against the background of a thinly overcast sky. It swelled in size. As it grew, she felt her shoulders rotate and her right arm accelerating upward. The racquet head moved through a seemingly predetermined spot. The ball disappeared, only to reappear in her vision after crossing the net and bouncing in the outside corner of the service box. It broke further to the right and past the outstretched arm and swinging racquet of Lars.

  Ah, she thought, rare gratification for all that practice. Something inside me knew exactly when and where to hit the ball. Yet it can’t be due solely to practice; the
breeze was moving the ball around, and some serves offer slightly different scenarios. Adjustments in my motion become necessary, which means it’s another mind inside me calling my shots and making the precise decision when and how to strike. All before I become aware of it. Yes! That’s how it happens.

  But I know what’s coming next, she told herself. She hit her next serve long.

  She sent a topspin second serve down the middle of the court, pushing Lars back and earning her an easy-to-hit forehand. She skipped around the bounce, planning a forceful crosscourt drive. Her shot landed near the baseline, and Lars called it long.

  She stared in his direction, then turned away. The toxin of frustration catalyzed a reaction that spread like a cloudy fluid through her veins and left her outwardly frozen. One who could call a good shot out might be capable of any deceit, she thought.

  She turned again towards her opponent, pointed at the area where the ball had landed, and demanded, “Are you certain, or do you just think it was probably out?”

  “I wouldn’t have called it out if I wasn’t sure.”

  “But you were right on top of the bounce, looking down, where you know it’s difficult to see it clearly.”

  He stood squinting at the figure frozen with her left arm outstretched, holding the racquet with the butt pointing towards him. “What do you expect me to say? I already told you what I saw.”

  Her gesture collapsed, as if the poison had been filtered from her blood.

  The game ended on the next point when she served a double fault, and they sat at a wooden bench as they changed ends.

  “Sorry about the dispute,” she said. “I was frustrated. I put in the practice to play well, but when I have a little extra time, I blow it.”

  Lars twirled his racquet a few times, quietly watching the head spin.

  “At different times you look almost like different people,” he said. “I see one person hitting one shot and then a different persona for the next. This mission, it’s stressing you; you get worked up so easily. Maybe your mind-track is jumping around, not letting you stay focused?”