The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

  I cleared my throat. “Err… what input is needed.”

  “Access to internal power grid has been established, four hundred and twenty six possible input devices have been detected”

  “err… ok.”

  “please select one from the list on screen.”

  I picked myself up and looked over to the monitor as a scrolling list of computer ids and IP addresses scrolled down the screen. Somehow, I managed to pick put one that I recognised; it was the wireless webcam paired to my computer on the other side of the room.

  “there,” I shouted, pointed at the screen before stopping myself and wondering why the hell I was pointing at the screen. “Um, number…. 336”

  “Input 336 selected… connecting… connection established.”

  I sat and waited as the camera turned around in its cradle, focusing in and out at various points around the room before settling on me.

  “Initialisation complete… designation – unknown, location – unknown, purpose – unknown, would you like to initialise the avatar?”

  “Err… sure.” I watched with curiosity as a face faded into existence on the screen that only a short time before only contained that damned green box. The face looked familiar for a few seconds before I realised what I was looking at. It was me, albeit a slightly distorted and overly digitised version of me. “well that’s disconcerting.” I said to myself. It was only then as the voice began to speak again that I realised that I was hearing my own voice too.

  “All parameters can be altered in the settings section.”

  This was not going quite as I had imagined it would. “Ok, display settings… please.”

  A long list of options replaced my face on the screen, my eyes scanned down the list until I spotted the avatar function. “errr…. Access avatar and voice settings”

  “Avatar and voice settings selected” despite my initial shock and excitement, this was becoming a little tedious, even for me. “there are 113 available avatars to select from until more input is received. Please select one.”

  One face after another flashed across the screen, each one staying visible for a second or two before being replaced by the next. It took me a few moments to recognise the faces, they were the test group, the people who had been the source of the engrams, the computer was displaying the various faces that made up its identity. One face I definitely recognised flashed across the screen.

  “Stop! That one, face 44.” I said, looking at the pale but pretty redhead I had spent some time with during her MRI tests, her name had been Amelia, she was cute and had flirted outrageously with me during the tests. She’d given me her number, but I’d never called, couldn’t tell you why. But she had certainly made an impression. “Yes, that one.” I confirmed to the screen.

  “Applying selection… would you like to also apply the voice settings associated with this avatar”

  I assumed that meant I would hear her voice instead of mine from now on and that was definitely an improvement. So, I agreed and found myself looking at the settings menu again. I was about to head into the basic info panel when another tab caught my eye.

  “personality settings.” I said, the computer complying immediately.

  “personality settings menu” a softly lilted female voice crackled from the speakers. Well, that was defiantly an improvement.

  On the screen was basically a list of all the different personality types that the computer could impersonate. I read through the list silently, my eyebrows cocking at some of the more inappropriate ones such as ‘stern mother’ and ‘drill sergeant’. “What the hell is ‘daisy duke”? I thought out loud.

  “Well hey there cutie,” the lyrical southern drawl in Amelia’s voice almost knocked me back off my chair again, “what can I do for a fine specimen of a man such as yourself today?”

  “wow,” I thought to myself as I realised what I was looking at. The tedium of dealing with the monochromatic voice was because the settings default was labelled as ‘system formal’. Each other setting was a personality trait of one of the engram group, even if some, such as ‘phone sex’ were obviously never meant for public consumption. There were simply too many to choose from, I tested a few that sounded promising, finally settling for ‘workplace casual’.

  “Alright, done.” Came Amelia’s voice.

  “Ok, let’s look at the basic info menu.”

  “Basic info menu” the voice stated back in a friendly manner, kind of how you’d want a good secretary to talk.

  I spent the next hour filling in some information the system apparently needed in order to operate properly. I gave the buildings address when it asked its location and told it that its function was a research and management assistant – both answers seemed to satisfy the computer for the time being. Next it asked who it was ‘bound’ to.

  “What do you mean by ‘bound to’?” I asked pacing around my office as I usually did when I was thinking about something I couldn’t physically touch. The webcam followed me around the room.

  “My system requires a superior, a user to answer to - A systems administrator would be a fairly accurate comparison. The user I am bound to has absolute authority over my programming and cannot be overridden by any other party without first purging this engram from the memory core and reinstalling new ones.”

  “oh, well I guess that would be me.”

  “you guess?”

  I stopped pacing and looked at the webcam. The voice sounded almost amused. “it’s me” I said after a pause

  “you sure?”

  “I’m sure”

  “You don’t sound very sure”

  “I’m sure it’s me”

  “do you need to check with someone?”

  “You said something about purging your engrams and starting again?”

  “ok, you sound sure now.” I swear, if you could hear laughter in a voice without hearing actual laughter, that’s what this voice sounds like. The smile vanished form my face when I realised what had just happened. The computer had a personality! It has just engaged in banter, it not only understood humour but had spontaneously made a joke… it worked, the whole damned thing worked!

  “Alright, last question. What is my designation?”

  “Hmm, a name…” I thought out loud to myself. I had actually given this a fair bit of thought while building the system. I had aimed for something clever, a name whose letters were an abbreviated description of what the computer actually was.

  When I was younger, I had loved a kid’s film called ‘Daryl’, about a boy who was really a robot, his name had stood for ‘Data Analysing Robotic Youth Lifeform’… that must’ve taken the showrunners years to come up with that because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of one. But now, as I listened to her voice – which, for some reason, no longer remined me of Amelia – I decided she sounded like an…

  “Alice. Your name is Alice,”

  There was a pause, “Alice works for me, new designation applied. Would you like to make any more changes?”

  “No thank you Alice, I think I’m done for the day.”

  “Not a problem Marcus,” the voice echoed around the room, “The changes will take some time to take effect and get my systems running at peak efficiency. I will let you know when it has finished compiling”

  “sounds good to me.” I said as I started packing up my bag and heading for home. “Oh, one more thing Alice…”

  “Yes Marcus?”

  “New directive: I need to keep your existence a secret for the time being. If you are capable of even half of what I think you are, you could be a very dangerous piece of technology in the wrong hands. I need to run some tests and get my bearings before I let your existence be known.”

  “Understood Marcus,” the voice replied casually, “I shall only let myself be known if you are alone or have otherwise given me permission.”

  “Thank you, Alice. I have a feeling we are going to do some great things together.”

  “Wai
t, Alice?” Penny’s eyes looked up from her tablet as we made our way inside from the residence’s balcony and out of the mid-morning sun. “THE Alice? Mainframe Alice? Defence Department Alice? Databanks Alice?” She kept blinked at me as she listed many of the new roles Alice had taken on over the years

  “There’s only one Alice.” I smiled with pride at my creation. “She’s changed a bit since then, had a few major upgrades but yes, the original core is still in there.”

  “Wow, I would never have guessed she was created more than three decades ago.”

  I smiled and nodded again as I sat my empty coffee cup onto the table between the two large sofas in the lowermost floor of the Speaker’s residence. I flopped back into the absurdly comfortable sofa, crossing one leg over the other and raising my arms either side of me to lay across headrest. Penny sat down in the seat opposite me.

  “I’m a little confused though” Penny continued as she relaxed into the sofa. “Either I have misunderstood the timeline or things started happening really fast after that. There seems an awful lot compressed into the next two years.”

  I nodded again, this time in agreement. “Life can surprise you like that sometimes; it really is amazing how much can happen in a short period of time when circumstances line up for you… or against you. It wasn’t long after Alice was born that things became very… dark… in my life. Looking back now, it all happened so fast, one day everything was great and the next…” I looked up, passed Penny as she tapped relentlessly on her tablet, out into the sunbathed countryside and Maria’s Island.

  “She would’ve loved this place,” I thought to myself.

  Chapter 4

  Alice

  The next morning, I walked back into my lab. As usual, I was far earlier than I needed to be and far earlier than anyone else.

  “Good Morning, Marcus” Alice’s pleasant voice announced to the room after a long enough pause to ensure I was indeed alone.

  “Hey, Alice,” I responded cheerily. “How is the system running?”

  “Compiling the information and applying to altered settings has been completed successfully and my systems are running at 0.02% efficiency”

  I stopped unpacking my bag and spun around towards the monitor, the fiery haired beauty on the screen regarded me with a pleasant look in her eye. “0.02%? I… err… was expecting a number a lot higher than that.”

  “0.02% is the standard efficiency of this system when idle.” She must have seen the confused look on my face; she was talking to me, I was looking right at her, how was she idle? She answered my question before I had chance to ask it. “You haven’t given me a task yet”

  Of course, … obviously.

  “Fair enough…” I replied after a short pause, “let’s see, for the next few days I want to fine tune you – if you will – into a system that can help me innovate and invent new technologies.” I knew that my own foreman engram would let her understand exactly what I meant by that. “In order for that to happen, we need to get you some memory storage and start filling it with all the scientific, mathematical and engineer principles and theories that are relevant to the projects we are working on.” I had obviously spent a large part of the previous night working out what my next steps would be.

  “That will not be necessary. We can start work immediately.” Another confused look from me prompted her to continue. “During the compilation of my systems, I gained access to the external networks of this building…”

  External networks? “you mean the internet?” I interrupted.

  “Yes, the internet, but also the power grid, mobile and satellite data networks and microwave and radio frequencies. I now have full and unobstructed access to any digital information anywhere in the world, as long as they are connected to any of these networks. Only systems that are – as you call them – ‘air gapped’ remain inaccessible.”

  I slumped into my chair in bewilderment and no small amount of concern. Every system, every nugget of information, everywhere; she managed to gain access to all of them in a single night. We’ve all seen the films about runaway rogue AIs who turn dangerous once they gain access to a certain amount of information, the sweat bubbling along my hairline was starting to give voice to my concern.

  “Why?” was the only syllable I could muster.

  “Your engram, and many of the others, have an insatiable hunger for knowledge. My systems now have access to almost the entire sum of human learning. This allows me to be a more effective and efficient research and management aide for your projects.”

  Ok, so drip feeding Alice a fair amount of information had been my original goal, but only under strict supervision to make sure nothing went wrong. Alice seemed to notice my concern.

  “Your elevated heartrate and perspiration suggest feelings of fear regarding my actions. It should be worth observing that you seem to be mistaking me with a conventional AI…” she started. Not being accused of being ‘mistaken’ very often snapped my attention back to the monitor as Alice continued to speak. “… AIs lack to moral or ethical constraints of a normal human. The current global technology allows for little more than a list of rules without being able to comprehend the intricacies of actual morality…”

  This problem had come up whilst I was planning the project.

  “…but I am not an AI. I am a computer system based around 112 actual human consciousnesses, the moral and ethical boundaries are already hardwired into my system. Access to the external networks was done as a matter of expediency and poses no danger to either the systems themselves or society as a whole.”

  “What is Maria Gonzalez’s social security number?” I blurted out, a simple enough test.

  “Maria Gonzalez’s social security number has no relevance to any currently assigned tasks or projects and is therefore protected by the privacy aspect of my moral engrams. Access to this information is denied.” Alice’s responded almost immediately.

  Ok, good answer. “But you do know it, don’t you?” I asked after a pause, “that information is stored somewhere in your memory banks and could – theoretically - be accessed by someone with the technical knowledge to obtain it… I could obtain it.”

  “This is incorrect. No information of any kind is stored anywhere in my system and I do not possess ‘memory banks?”

  “But you just said you downloaded her information!”

  “This is incorrect. I said I had access to information, not that I had downloaded it. Information is accessed in real time from the original source, in this case the Department of Social Security.”

  Ok, another good answer. “Wait, so does that mean we don’t need to upgrade your memory banks?”

  “Eventually my engrams will evolve and outgrow the current storage capacity of this system and it will need to be expanded. But this will not happen for many years yet.”

  “evolve?” another shiver of concern as scenes from the terminator flashed through my mind.

  “I will … mature… grow… as any other human consciousness would”

  “You don’t sound very sure” I noted, the shivers dying down.

  “human verbal language is very imprecise”

  No shit.

  We sat in silence for a while, me pondering these new developments and Alice waiting for me to finish pondering these new developments.

  “Please be aware that Maria Gonzalez is currently approaching this lab.” Alice suddenly blurted out

  “What?... How do you…”

  “Security cameras” came the contrite response as the screen faded to black and the speakers fell silent. A few seconds later the doors slammed open and in stormed Maria.

  “Fucking puta!!” she yelled at the top of her voice, her Latino heritage showing through.

  “Mason again?” I answered from my chair.

  “Mason? No its… Shit!” she spat before taking a few deep breaths. “Look, Marcus. We need to talk, there’s something you should know.” She looked around the room for a few seconds, “dammit, y
ou need another fucking chair!”

  Shit, she couldn’t know about Alice already, could she?

  I stood and smoothly kicked my chair to roll over to where Maria was standing as I hoisted myself up to sit on the desk next to Alice’s monitor. I couldn’t help but glance at it to make sure it was still off. Maria had caught the back of the chair, spun it to face me and sat herself down with a huff. I waited patiently, albeit nervously, for her to continue.

  “I’ve been getting a lot of pressure recently, most of it to do with your inventions.”

  “pressure from who?” I asked, trying hard to hide the nervousness in my voice.

  “The fucking military!” she hissed.

  “The military?!?”

  “Yes, the god damned United States military! And I shouldn’t have to tell you how I feel about those assholes!”

  Maria was actually something of a contradiction when it came to the military. She – like me – had every respect and admiration for the service men and women of the nation, we both agreed that serving in the military was one of the most noble professions a person could choose. What she was referring to was the higher echelons of the military service branches, the more militant departments of the intelligence services and what people called ‘the military-industrial complex’; the obsessively paranoid and oppressive backdrop before which the modern military operated.

  We both hated the way that they would classify and horde technology for themselves until it had been rendered obsolete by a newer tech before releasing to the public, sometimes decades after its invention. They never gave credit to the engineers and scientists who made the technologies possible, let alone paid them for their work and – by far the worst sin in Marias eyes – if they could not legitimately acquire a technology they wanted, they threatened and harassed the inventor until they got it. If that didn’t work, they simply stole it. Maria despised the military and, in this regard, I had to agree with her. Most modern tech giants who operated in the US simply cooperated without a fight; it was safer.