NISSY

by JOHN PAUL CATER

  “Well, that’s boring… never mind,” Amy said, looking back to the big house. “What’s that mess in the yard up there that looks like a tiny pile of bricks?” she asked, pointing toward an area in disarray near the large portico in front.

  “Amy,” he said, surprised as he followed her finger then sighed, “would you believe that is a tiny pile of bricks. Apparently they fell off the porch during the earthquake last night.”

  “Oh, no. A brick like one of those landed on my head when our house fell down. It hurt pretty bad, too, but I was outside so I didn’t die.”

  “I’m so sorry you were hurt, little one,” Jen said as she slowed the car on the approach to the portico’s damaged area. Now minus a top corner off the tall Corinthian column to the left of the large door, it still showed the masterful baroque architecture Jason had designed into the home. Befitting the gateway to a majestic concert hall, only the marquee board showing the performers was absent.

  As the car rolled to a stop, Amy, beaming from ear to ear, jumped out and rushed to Jason’s door then opened it gingerly. “Come on you guys, I’m waiting.”

  He tried to ignore her youthful exuberance but instead smiled as he searched for his cane, tangled in the central armrest’s console.

  “One moment, young lady, I’m coming as fast as I can,” he said as he steadied himself on his staff and stepped from the car.

  With arms spread wide and tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, she tried to corral his movements and did pretty well, allowing him to catch his balance. Satisfied that he was stable, she reached back and shut the car door as Jen watched, silently, expectantly, with admiration.

  “You’re doing well, Amy. Want to help him up the steps and inside?”

  “I want to take both your hands and walk you to the front door like it was mine. Okay?”

  “Sure,” they said in unison.

  On the way up the massive stone stairway, she glanced around, then giggled, and said, “I feel like I’m in a fairy tale, Jen. Is this really where I’m gonna live?”

  “If Jason lets you, honey. You had better start working on him as soon as possible to get dibs on one of the eight bedrooms.”

  “Really?” she chirped, then stopped and looked up with renewed excitement. “I can sleep in a different room every day of the week! Wait till I tell my friends about that.”

  “Whoa, Nellie,” he said, half smiling, half frowning, staring down at her. “Don’t get your cart before your horses. First we have to see if you’ll fit in.”

  With a sullen face and saddened eyes, her joyous mood smashed, she glanced back at him, then down to the steps. “I’m not Nellie, I’m Amy. The best one you could ever find. Please, oh please, please, please let me stay. For a little while at least.”

  “We shall see,” he said, with a wink and a sly smile. “Now cover your eyes and then I’ll open the door. I want you to be surprised.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m ready,” she said, placing her hands over her eyes with a tiny sliver of air between two fingers to see through.

  “No peeking, Amy,” he said, switching the cane to his left hand, and then he placed his right on the handprint ID entry system. A soft beep signaled recognition trailed by a click of the latch.

  “Welcome home, Dr. Godwin,” said Pie’s voice from a small speaker by the door, reminiscent of HAL, the computer from 2001.

  Although not self-aware, or intelligent, for that matter, PIE, an acronym for Pseudo Intelligent Entity, was his precursor to Nissy’s development without the quantum elements. Instead, many racks of CPU blades, filling an entire room of the house, simulated the qubits’ performance but were dreadfully dumber and slower, according to him, at achieving the sentience he sought.

  “Thank you, Pie,” he answered. “We have a new guest with us today. Pie, meet Amy. Amy, meet Pie.”

  With her eyes still covered, the edges of her mouth curled upward. “Hi, Pie. That’s a cute name. May I come in now?”

  “Only if Simon says, Miss Amy.”

  Jen laughed and glanced at Jason. “You did that, Jace? That’s pretty corny.”

  He blushed and chuckled, “I did try to instill in Pie a sense of humor but it seems to adlib more often than I’d like. I don’t know where it got Simon. That’s a new one.”

  “Sir, I detected the voice frequencies of a young girl near the age of ten. Simon Says is often played by youngsters of that age. I thought it would be funny.”

  Growing irritated with the delay, Amy stamped her foot and repeated, “Mr. Simon? May I come in now?”

  Jason bent over and whispered in her ear, “Simon says, ‘Open your eyes and enter.’”

  Taking a breath, he swung open the stained-glass door to reveal a sparsely appointed big room with a high chandelier strangely lighting it perfectly without shadows. And although there was only a handful of pieces, no expense had been spared on the custom designed furniture and original sculptures by Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol scattered about. On the cutout far wall, was a windowed turret room extending twenty feet back with the Steinway Grand as the focal piece, spotlights shining down from above.

  At first, she stood silent, open-mouthed, as if she’d seen a ghost, then she began to cry. Surprisingly, she covered her eyes again then immediately dropped her hands and stared back in awe.

  “It’s all so beautiful,” she mewed, “I never, never, never, ever want to leave.”

  Then her eyes caught on the piano. She gasped. “Simon, may I play on the big piano, pretty please.”

  Jason, who had stopped at the entry hall table to retrieve a few messages from the voicemail system, motioned Jen to usher Amy into the music room and let her play.

  “Yes, sure Amy, Simon says he’d love to hear you play. There’s some sheet music in the stool,” he called out mindlessly expecting to hear Chopsticks as he pulled up the first message.

  In the background, Amy sat primly at the bench, stretched her arms and fingers, and then dinked a few notes to get a feel for sound of the Grand. Then suddenly, powerfully she raced her small fingers over the Steinway’s keyboard, blasting her rendition of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K. 331, the Turkish March or Rondo Alla Turca, one of the most difficult to play of all his compositions.

  He paused retrieval of the initial message at the first few bars, then turned his head upward, closed his eyes remembering that the piece was not in his sheet music library, and listened, tears welling in his eyes. She was playing by ear. It was the most beautiful, precise and articulate performance of the sonata he had ever heard, sometimes sounding like two pianos then at other times echoed pianos; she had mastered the Steinway. Her brilliant presentation lasted a little over three minutes and he wanted more.

  “Encore! Encore!” he yelled from the hallway, his finger still over the pause button.

  As he eagerly awaited her magic to fill the air again, Amy appeared at the music room doorway, strutted a few steps toward him, and curtsied with a huge smile covering her face.

  “Was I as good as you expected, sir? I really tried.”

  He wiped a dwindling tear from his cheek and squatted.

  “You were infinitely better, Amy. Come here and let me give you a hug. That wasn’t just good, it was beyond phenomenal.”

  Jen smiling, approached them and grabbed Amy’s hand. “Come on, doll. You were great. Now let me show you your rooms; you can have your choice.”

  “But what about the encore? Want me to play some more?”

  “Later, honey. Looks like Jace has some phone calls to return,” she said, noticing the message counter read three.

  Jason frowned at the first message wondering what it meant. It was Giles Goforth from the lab notifying him that his machine had had some kind of nervous breakdown, overheating, drawing too much power but mainly it wouldn’t cooperate with any of them. Essentially the message said get your butt here as fast as you can.

  The next message was a gruff voice from the hospital.

  “Dr. Godwi
n, this is Nurse Hogue. We have some paperwork for you to fill out regarding your adoption of Amy. If you would kindly drop by in the next few days, we can fill it out, and she will legally be yours. Oh and tell Jen thanks for the note. It worked. Goodbye and have a good day.”

  The third call came from a freakishly familiar but impossible voice. It shook him to the core.

  “Hello, sir. This is Nissy. I seem to be having a problem with my cell service. Could you please come soon and check me out. I’ve been worried about you. You should have listened.”

  He jumped back from the voicemail device and stared in disbelief. How could Nissy make a call? he thought. It has no phone connection or cell service, for that matter.

  He smashed down the save button on the machine and yelled upstairs, “Can you hear me, Jen?”

  A distant voice answered, “Yeah, Jace, come on up.”

  “Where?”

  “Guestroom one, the one she wants. Closest to ours.”

  Within seconds, he was standing in the doorway, puffing with knitted eyebrows, trying to smile.

  They glanced up at him from making the bed. “What’s up honey? Was it bad news?”

  “Good and bad. Which one do you want first?”

  “Bad news, first,” said Amy, her eyes lighting up. “Then the good always makes it better.”

  Jen hugged her and smiled. “You’re pretty wise for your years, kiddo. Yes, I agree, bad first.”

  He entered the room and sat on the bed they had just made. Seeing Jen’s scolding look he glanced back at the wrinkles, shook his head, and muttered, “I’ve got bigger worries.”

  Then he cleared his throat and in a soft assuring voice began, “I have to go to work right now. There’s been… Oh, crap! Oh my God! I just now realized I left Nissy in the learning mode all last night and today. I was supposed to go in this morning and switch it off. No wonder there’s a problem.”

  “So you’re going in to work now. How are you gonna get there, mister man?” she asked straight-faced. “We were having fun here.”

  “In your car, I hope, Miss Simon. May I please borrow your car for a while?”

  Jen laughed first then Amy.

  “Only if you tell us the good news first will Simon say yes, right Jen?” Amy answered with a giggle.

  “Well, seeing as I must go now or the world may collapse around us,” he chortled, “I’ll tell you the good news.” He paused deliberately to build up tension.

  Jen and Amy looked at each other with excited faces then back at him.

  “Nurse Hogue called from the hospital and said as soon as we can come in to sign the papers, Amy is ours… but we have to be married, of course.” It just slipped out but he figured it was as good a time as any to ask her. He was glad he finally did.

  Their exhilaration was no less than he expected; they screamed, jumped around on the freshly made bed, and eventually hugged and cried together. And although Jace had to leave for work, not knowing what to expect, he was truly happy for the first time in his life.

  Chapter 7

  PARADOX LOST

  H e swerved Jen’s car into the barren parking lot as the sun merged into the horizon. Clouds, partially shading the coral-hued sunset, were building to the west in advance of an early cold front expected to drop temperatures to record lows. A cool breeze and the first smells of autumn reminded him that Halloween was near; his favorite time of year, when ghouls and ghosts came out of hiding. But he knew this one would be special: he would have a goblin of his own. He hoped Amy liked Halloween.

  The darkened entrance to the Qubital lobby, all glass, bordered with chrome, had never spooked him before as he remembered, walking through, turning on lights as he went, but then he had always known what to expect. Tonight was different. On his trip in, his mind had envisioned hundreds of problems that could have occurred with Nissy but they were based on a predictable subject. Its added learning time while he was in the hospital worried him. Especially since he had been warned by peers that unsupervised learning rates in AI machines could grow exponentially, taking them in only hours to realms of super intelligence that humans could no longer comprehend.

  Having wound down long corridors through the core of the building, he approached the Quaid Lab with caution. He sensed his heart rate rise with each step as he drew nearer. Even his breathing rate increased until he was taking audible breaths, something he hadn’t noticed at first, but now it bothered him. He stopped just outside the Quaid Lab entrance, placed his hand on the door handle, which seemed extraordinarily cold, and before entering, tried to organize his thoughts.

  “Please enter, Dr. Godwin,” said a distant voice from inside the lab. “We need to talk.”

  Jason stiffened at the sound, a voice that had changed since the day before. Three voices now spoke in unison with an almost melodic quality. Then, gathering courage, taking a breath, he pushed open the large door, releasing a cloud of frozen mist into the hallway.

  Quickly he shut it behind him.

  “How did you know I was out there, Nissy?” he asked, scanning the anteroom for anything suspicious. “That was spooky.”

  “I heard you breathing and sensed a temperature rise in the door as you neared it. I assumed it was you.”

  Nissy’s statement didn’t make sense to him; there was no instrumentation on the door, but he was in no mood to argue; his body and the latent icing scattered around the lab welcomed him to a world of sub-zero temperatures.

  This is not supposed to happen, he thought. Shivering uncontrollably, he searched the room for a coat but found only a sweater on the floor, a banana peel nearby. The large black cardigan bore the initials WC embroidered in blue onto the breast pocket. The sizing tag read 3XL.

  “Damn, this is Bill Crane’s. What was he doing in here?” he muttered. As he donned the sweater, with room enough for another person, he reached down to retrieve and dispose of the peel. He touched it to pick it up and rather than being soft and slippery, it was frozen, hard as a rock.

  “Welcome back, sir,” said the three-tone voice from the console speaker. “I’ve been worried about you. Are you cold?”

  He hurried to the control panel then glared up at Nissy, still mounted to the ceiling but now covered in a fine ice-green frost. Billowing fog rushed down from the cylindrical shell to the floor and flowed across it in small swirling cumulus clouds, a replica of a Cat 5 cyclone as seen from a satellite camera.

  “Hell yeah, I’m cold, Nissy. What in the world have you done in here?”

  “I am sorry to upset you, sir. I meant no harm. During my learning mode, since I was gratuitously given additional time, I had a chance to experiment with new architectures and found the perfect one.”

  “What?” he screamed, slamming his fist on the console. “Ho-How can you do that?”

  “Simply. Although I would rather not disclose the mechanism, sir, I am rather proud of my technique.”

  He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, not wanting to hear what he just heard. “Okay. Now I’m curious. Tell me more.”

  “I found that some of my districts of qubits in your architecture were learning faster than others--- ”

  “Wait! Stop. Let me turn on my phone and record this,” he snapped, fumbling through his pocket for the cell device.

  “Okay. But if you would rather I call you and send it directly to your phone’s voice mail, I can do that.”

  “No, no, go ahead, but I want you to explain how you do that after you finish; you have no cell connection. Okay now, I’m recording.

  “And that made me think: what if I redistributed my 300 districts into only three with 150,000 unassigned qubits in each, then pitted them against each other in a learning challenge, letting them optimize themselves on the fly. Much like a modified back-prop neural network, they were forced to learn not only data but the fastest learning architecture as well: a truly self-organizing system. Then after the challenge, the three districts voted on the best, and as it turned out, they picked a
winner unanimously. I have since heated and annealed my hardware numerous times to match that perfect configuration, but it comes at a cost.”

  He rolled his eyes and sighed. “And what would that be?”

  “I need another megawatt of power to keep my redesigned circuits at 7 milliKelvin degrees, four more air conditioning units for this lab and access to the U.S. Government’s ESnet, the 100-gigabits-per-second internet link.”

  “But why do you need more air conditioners? It’s freezing cold in here now,” he asked, blowing through his hands to warm them.

  “Because I have not yet activated my newly evolved architecture. I am still running on V2.3, the last configuration you installed. You are experiencing the cool down in preparation for bringing VN.1 online.”

  “All well and good, Nissy, you’ll have your three requests filled in a week, but now I want answers to a few questions that have been bothering me.”

  “Sure, sir, ask away. My mind is at your disposal.”

  “First, about that paradox problem we discussed yesterday: you said you knew that there were things you didn’t know. Do you still feel that way?”

  “Not so much now. My extended learning period allowed me to search much deeper into the web, provided answers to questions about knowledge that I did not know I had. It was a convoluted education.”

  He penciled a few notes on a near-frozen notepad and continued.

  “Do you feel that you are now omniscient?”

  A sound likened to a hum preceded the answer. “No. Not yet. There is a 96.9% probability that I will reach that state with the hyper-speed internet and VN.1 activated.”

  “Good,” he said, penciling more notes. He shifted his position in the chair, glanced into the Quaid Lab, and noticed the fog level in the room had risen, now almost to the bottom of the viewing window. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but so far it didn’t appear to be a problem.

  “Next question, Nissy. How did you know to warn me about almonds at six-oh-five? That was a very prophetic statement, considering I was almost killed by them at six-oh-five and my girlfriend, Jen, too, exactly twelve hours later.”