"I didn't know there was a patron saint of cotton candy," Helen whispered.
"Be nice," Mellings replied, stifling a snort.
"Aiden! She really came!" She waved over to a tall man who was deep in conversation with a woman. He shot her a look of annoyance which, upon seeing who the woman was talking about, did a triple gainer through anger and embarrassment before settling on confidence and composure.
"Omigod, that is the most beautiful dress I've ever--" the girl gushed.
The tall man interposed himself between Helen and certain death at the hands of a pink tornado. "Well, well. Miss Roderick, it is a pleasure." He grabbed her hand and gave it an over-firm shake. "Name's Aiden Zurakov, senior editor for Tech Nextus and your gateway to forty million smart, Grid-savvy readers. You and I need to get acquainted."
Dr. Mellings had a calculating grin on his face, one which Helen had already learned to fear. "So you're with Textus, then? What are they all about?"
Aiden seemed baffled by the question. Helen could imagine him rifling through his brain looking for a misplaced elevator pitch. A split-second smile told her that he had found it. "Tech Nextus is the leading outlet for technology and tech culture news. We lead the way into the future."
"Interesting. Future, yes. And you said you write for them?"
"I'm the senior editor."
Dr. Mellings nodded. "Makes sense. I guess someone has to do it."
"What do they call you, tiny pink Earthling?" Helen asked, desperate to stop whatever the hell her companion seemed so eager to start.
The woman gave a delighted bray. "Did you hear how funny that was, Aiden? That was so funny!" She shot out her hand. "I'm Pixie. Nicetameetcha!"
"But your real name," Helen pressed.
"Is Pixie. I had it legally changed the day I turned eighteen. Isn't it great?" Helen saw Aiden wince when she said this, and saw that Mellings also saw it. His grin only got wider. She could tell this would end in tears.
"So how do you know Mister Zurnov, Pix?"
"Zurakov," Aiden corrected. He didn't seem eager to let Pixie answer the question. "Miss St. Claire is my personal assistant, for about two years now. I met her when I was covering -- that is to say, breaking -- the 2032 Olympics gene dosing scandal. Perhaps you read about it?"
"Don't follow sports," Dr. Mellings said with exaggerated remorse. "Are you an olympian?" he asked Pixie.
She beamed with pride. "No, but my sister is a bronze medalist in judo. This one time in high school this guy was totally harassing me, and she broke his leg in two places. I love my sissy!"
"Anyhow," Aiden said. "I think Tech Nextus could be a huge part of your branding strategy. We could really tell your story the way you want it told."
"I really don't think we can do an interview," Dr. Mellings said. "Her publicist only wants us to do the big-market venues right now."
"What?" Aiden asked. "We're talking about Tech Nextus! There is no bigger venue for this sort of thing!"
Helen hushed them. "Dr. Mellings, you're being unreasonable. Mister Zurakov, I would be happy to be interviewed."
"That's wonderful news. I can't te--"
"By Pixie."
Aiden's jaw dropped, and stayed there. Helen thought she heard a slight gurgling sound from it, but it was drowned out by a shriek of excitement. "Oh! My! God!" Pixie screamed. "You will be so proud of me! This will be so fun!"
"But she has no journalistic training," he finally said. "She's a scientific illiterate!"
"Doesn't matter!" Pixie swooned. "It's a human interest story. We'll talk about fashion and stuff. You said you wanted to broaden your market, right? This will do it!" She hugged Helen so tightly she thought she was being attacked.
"Fashion? And stuff?" Aiden asked. "Her?" He pointed.
Helen nodded. "She's a huge part of my branding strategy."
"Great. Wonderful. We're very excited to do the interview. If you'll excuse me, I need to... go sit down. Somewhere else." Aiden left in a rush.
"You," Pixie said, "are my favorite almost-person ever!" She chased after her boss. Half way across the deck, she turned around to wave, then did a fist pump.
"I'm in awe," Dr. Mellings told her.
"So will you tell me why you were going kamikaze on that guy?" she asked. Dr. Mellings winced. "What?"
"Kamikaze is considered somewhat racist now."
Helen blushed. "Sorry. Still, what's your deal?"
"Aiden Zurakov has made a lot of money trashing our project in that sewer outlet he calls a technology portal. Every time there was a setback, he'd be there to kick my teeth in." He shrugged. "So I have a grudge. He's obsessed with getting attention, so pretending I hadn't heard of him seemed like a good strategy."
The Hostess rushed up to them, her face radiating peace and felicity. Helen wondered if, somewhere in the distant past, it had gotten stuck that way. "I knew you would hit it off with them," she said, grabbing Helen's arm. "Come on, there's someone else I'm just dying to introduce you to!" She guided them through the crowd, to a table where several people sat in a circle, surrounded by a ring of red fireflies. Helen saw their mouths move, but no sound escaped the ring. One of the participants, while vaguely humanoid in shape, seemed to be made of seamless white porcelain. It had thin, sharp fingers and a blank, shovel-shaped face.
They entered the circle. "This is Wolf359," The Hostess said, pointing to the porcelain figure.
"I've read about you," she said. She couldn't help but stare.
Wolf359 ignored her, continuing its conversation with Senator Albrecht, an athletic looking man with dirty blond hair. Wolf spoke in a decidedly asexual monotone. "Even if 'a sense of wonder' is unique to humans -- as you suggest -- we need not conclude that such a trait is worthy of preservation."
"You can't really believe that."
"I am not capable of truly 'believing' anything beyond my fundamental axioms. I merely suggested that I do not believe the opposite. I withhold judgment on the matter, as should you."
"Wolf, I think you may have injured the good senator's pride," said the person to Wolf359's left. Helen's display introduced him as Dr. Andrew Childer of MIT.
"Yes. That seems to happen frequently."
"You should apologize to the senator."
"Why?"
The senator stood to leave. "It's been a very enlightening meeting, Professor. If you'll excuse--" he stopped short, as he recognized Helen. Glancing between her and Wolf359, he said, "Then again, this might be worth sticking around for."
The Hostess motioned Helen to sit, and she and Dr. Mellings both took places inside the circle.
"Wolf359," the Hostess said, "It is my pleasure to introduce you to Helen Roderick, the first non-biological human. I'm sure you two have much to discuss."
Wolf359 turned, seeming to look at Helen, though with his smooth, blank face it was impossible to tell. "What would we discuss?"
The Hostess paused, apparently stumped by the question.
Wolf359 finished the thought for her. "I surmise that you are referring to the fact that we are both entities of software. That similarity is a superficial one, and I see little to be gained by interrogating her on that point. If I might frame an analogy, humans are all made up of subatomic particles, but this would be unlikely to inspire any sense of commonality."
"He's right," Helen said. "If Wolf is looking to understand himself, I doubt my experience can gain him much."
The Hostess only smiled. "I'm sure you'll find something to talk about," she said, then walked away.
The senator seemed surprised. "So, Wolf, you accept Helen as essentially human?"
"That is my understanding, yes."
"Why do you believe that?"
"I do not 'believe' it, senator. It is a tentative hypothesis based on the available evidence."
"A useful distinction. What evidence?"
"What you call Helen Roderick is a simulation of a finely-detailed brain model, taken from a deceased human being by the same name. T
hat model outputs behavior similar to other humans I have observed, and the behavior is also said to match that of the deceased woman. I therefore accept the simulation as Helen Roderick. Given its origins, alternative hypotheses are extremely unlikely."
The senator smiled. "She really is impressive, isn't she?"
Wolf359 cocked its head. "No. She is a cheap parlor trick."
Wolf's handler chuckled in embarrassment. "Wolf, you shouldn't--"
"That was the analogy that you yourself framed, Professor. It is certainly valid."
Dr. Childer exhaled slowly, trying to regain his composure. "What Wolf359 means to say," he said, in a self-conscious attempt at a warm, soothing voice, "is that it agrees with my belief -- a belief shared by many at the forefront of AI research, by the way -- my belief that artificial intelligence through simulating neurons -- the 'Helen model', if you will -- that research is a dead end."
"The research may be dead," Helen retorted, "but I'm very much alive."
"Of course. I'm not questioning your right to exist," Dr. Childer replied, which Helen thought missed her point. "But neuron-based AI has proven too expensive and unreliable to be practical. Axiom Corporation chose our technology because it's effective, and now it's in every car built in the last ten years. Ethical issues aside, would you put Helen here in charge of driving all the cars in the world? Human beings get distracted, frustrated, angry. They have well-defined blind spots in their reasoning. And we have no idea how to fix bugs in her software."
"I'm not buggy, I'm eccentric," Helen shot back. How could he dismiss her very existence as unremarkable?
"The Axiom system isn't perfect," the senator said, a bit weakly.
Dr. Childer grinned. "Auto fatalities dropped by ninety-five percent the year the system came online, and they've dropped every year since then. Give me that sort of imperfection any day."
"I do have a question I would ask Helen Roderick," Wolf359 said. "Do you know your ranking at the game of chess?"
Childer winced. "It's about to challenge you to a game. You don't have to accept." As if responding to Helen's quizzical look, he added, "It's going through a phase."
"Is he... I mean, is it any good?"
"Is that even a question?" the senator asked. "No human has beaten a computer grandmaster since..."
"2019," Dr. Childers supplied. "Not a single game."
"Yes, but Wolfie here isn't a chess program," Helen pointed out. "It's a general purpose AI. You shouldn't assume that it's as good at any specific task as a specialized piece of software. I'm software, and I've barely got my times tables down." Turning to Wolf359, she said, "I'd love to play against you."
The board appeared before she had even finished the sentence. It was made of red and black stone, polished to a fine luster, and glowed red as though lit from within. It spun for a few rotations, then stopped, red pieces toward Helen.
She had always been a mediocre chess player, having only picked up the game during her freshman year of college. Her father had tried to teach her when she was younger, but she hadn't cared to learn. By then, she was already thinking about boys.
She hadn't played a single game since her resurrection, but her fear of being humiliated in front of the crowd was overwhelmed by her own curiosity. She slid a pawn forward.
The opening developed slowly, even though Wolf always made its move the moment her fingers left her piece. It was unnerving, and made Helen hesitate and second guess herself. But as they approached the middle of the game, she was happy with her position. She was actually two pawns up. They traded feints and blows for about a half hour.
Then Wolf moved its queen forward, taking a pawn and positioning it so that it threatened both her king and a rook. Helen didn't want to lose her knight, but killing the queen more than made up for it, and it was the only way to save the rook. She took it.
Instead of taking her knight, he moved the bishop forward along the other diagonal, taking her last pawn and directly threatening her king. She moved her own bishop between it and her king.
Wolf359 brought a rook forward, trapping Helen's king along the edge of the board. Only then did Helen see the trap. On its next move, Wolf would bring his other rook to the edge, so that no matter where she moved her king, it would be threatened by one rook or the other.
Checkmate.
Helen cast about, trying to find a way to kill one of the rooks or to block their paths. There was nothing.
She knocked her king over. The crowd applauded politely.
She leaned over to offer a handshake. "How did you beat me?" she whispered.
Wolf took her hand, as though the gesture were utterly alien to it. "I led you to believe that you were in control for a few more moves than you were."
She understood. She'd been a few pieces up, so its threat with the queen had seemed desperate. She had let herself believe she was winning, and so neglected to look for traps in her rush to solidify her position.
The thought was disturbing. Wolf359 couldn't have used the same gambit against an emotionless chess program, or even a mentally disciplined human opponent. How did it know to use it on her?
"Was that your first chance to checkmate me?" she asked her opponent as it stood up from the board and turned to leave.
Without turning its head back towards her, it said, "It was my third."
With that diversion ended, the crowd broke up into small clusters. A few partygoers came up to Helen to congratulate her on a good showing. The only one who sounded especially sincere was Pixie, who marveled that anyone had the patience to learn a game like that.
Dr. Childers had already published the game to the Grid, and the reviews from the chess fans were soon pouring in. They called it a very poor game, with mediocre play on both sides. Wolf got especially poor reviews, with fans saying that its play was abysmal, far below the quality of play they'd come to expect of it. They pointed out numerous opportunities that it had failed to capitalize on.
Wolf had admitted as much. But why?
* * *
1 "Mirror avatar" is what they2 call the avatar you see when you look in the mirror. In practice, it usually just means that the avatar is recognizably you.
2 "They" generally refers to "damned kids these days," who won't "get the hell off my lawn" despite repeated requests. I'm off to cut me a hickory switch.
////////////
// LET GO //
////////////
Later that night, Helen and Dr. Mellings walked in silence along the cliffs outside her cottage. Heavy clouds moved across the night sky, the leading edge of a powerful storm front. The three quarter moon lit the ground to guide their path, and frosted the edges of the onrushing clouds with an otherworldly glow.
Helen wasn't exactly happy to have her professor's company. She felt a bit intruded upon. But she was trying to work out the best way to broach a sensitive topic with him, and he needed to be there when she sorted that out.
"I'm not smart enough," Helen admitted, sitting down on a patch of grass near the cliffs that offered a view of the black ocean.
The wind picked up as Professor Mellings sat down beside her. "Seems to be a storm coming in," Mellings said. "If it makes you feel better, you can play against me sometime. You'll beat me fair and square."
"It's not just chess. That feeling that the world was passing me by hasn't gone away. I'm still not a productive research assistant. Half the Grid thinks I'm a waste of clock cycles. I'm starting to wonder if I ever should have done this."
"What were you expecting things to be like?" Dr. Mellings asked. Helen shot him an annoyed look, but tried to let the feeling go. It was a fair question.
"Paradisical, I guess. It was so easy to imagine this better life, like I blamed my body and its weaknesses for my troubles. I couldn't have imagined being dissatisfied like this. But I am. I'm clumsy when I want to be graceful. I'm slack-jawed when I want to be witty. I'm stupid when I want to be brilliant."
He put an arm around her, and she leaned
into him. "Don't talk like that," he told her. "You're plenty smart, you work hard, but you demand too much from yourself. I just don't see why you're so worried."
"It gnaws at me. It always has."
"I know it's difficult," Mellings told her. "But you just have to accept yourself for who you are, limitations and all."
She pushed away from him. "No I don't. Don't give me that whaddaya mean look. If running mazes was an olympic sport, I'd be a five-time gold medalist. But you won't give me the go-ahead to upgrade the rest of my brain. First you said it was a funding issue, then you said we needed more tests, now you're just too busy, even though you seem to have all this time to hang out with me."
"If you're going to say something, just say it."
"You're holding me back. You're holding me back, and you won't tell me why." The first drops of rain began to fall, fat and heavy and promising to bring reinforcements.
A flash of anger burned across his face. Then it was gone, and he seemed merely uncertain, and sad. He looked at her. He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. To Helen he looked as though he were stranded between two terrible alternatives, casting about for a way out. The rain poured down in earnest.
"Dr. Mellings? William? What's wrong?"
His face hardened. He stood up. "All right. We'll do this."
Helen stood to face him. "No, no, no. You don't get out that easy. What the hell was going through your head just then?"
The professor's eyes narrowed. "I'm giving you exactly what you wanted. You have my permission to do what you choose to your brain. It's yours. Remodel it, wreck it, throw it off a cliff, be as reckless as you like. But you do not get to ask me why I've been dragging my feet. Let me at least have that."
"Please? I don't understand!"
He turned away. "We'll start tomorrow. Good night." He disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the weight of Helen's own fears and an increasing torrent of rain.
The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl Page 7