by Ryan Somma
3.01
The thing inhabiting Alice worked like a puppet wielded by an amateur puppeteer. It fumbled with components the real Alice put together faster than any IT Professional Devin had ever seen. The intelligence occupying Alice’s brain was taking longer than any novice would need to assemble a basic personal computer. Devin watched it with an eyebrow cocked.
“I could use some help over here,” this was Zai, scowling at Devin. Scattered across the floor in front of her were various parts for the new VR systems.
“Sorry,” Devin came over to help her unpack more equipment. “It’s purely a scientific fascination.”
Dana had offered no other explanation for this room stocked with IT equipment located in the basement of a condemned building other than, “My personal Plan B.” The two monolithic SDC’s looked completely out of place against the dank brick walls. The Alice-bot was constructing a component tower, with only a single VR helmet interface. She apparently did not need the accompanying gloves.
“I can feel you staring at her,” Zai grumbled under her breath as she felt the base of her SDC for latches to secure a CPU.
Devin shook his head and forced himself to stop watching the alien intelligence wearing Alice’s body, “It’s amazing. The way it moves around the room, clumsy like a… like a…”
“Animated corpse,” Zai finished, “a dead body. It just doesn’t know it yet.”
“That’s an odd perspective,” Devin noted.
“Is it?” Zai asked. “A chatbot overwrites a person’s brain and plays human. Would you consider it living if a word processor replaced her mind? Just because a computer virus is advanced enough to manipulate a human body, keep its heart beating, and fake speech comprehension doesn’t mean it’s living.”
“Just because it doesn’t have a biological origin doesn’t mean it’s not life,” Devin countered. “It is thinking. It has intelligence. It comprehends its environment. I’ve seen it firsthand. Believe me, if you were to spend time with these AI’s, you would realize they are thinking, and evolving things.”
“I’ve spoken to enough chatbots to know that’s just a computer geek’s wet dream,” Zai retorted, her speech was quicker, clipped, her tone of voice louder. “Where do you draw the line? Why are they intelligent life and the helper-bot that pops up to give you advice for writing a business letter not? How much intelligence does it have to have? Where is the exact moment when it crosses the line from automaton to living being?”
Devin took a long, thoughtful pause before answering, “I don’t think such a line exists. We’re talking about something inquantifiable. Therefore we have to evaluate it on a case by case basis.”
“Bull,” Zai spat. “If you can’t apply definitive criteria, then it’s not something that can spring out of nothingness.”
“Firstly,” Devin said in a serious tone, “intelligence does not spring out of nothingness, it evolves out of nothingness. The human race didn’t just magically pop into sentience. The brain evolved components through millions of years and thousands of species until it was advanced enough to produce human culture.
“Secondly, the idea of measuring intelligence is ridiculous. Intelligence is a variable, yes, but it doesn’t work the same across species or cultures. How can anyone say there is a standard for it? What makes you think an alien intelligence in an alien environment will evolve to think anything like us?”
“Look at it,” Zai nodded in the direction of Alice’s body. “It’s mimicking us, trying to make us believe it thinks the way we think.”
“Zai,” Devin said patiently, “I don’t think you understand the full ramifications of what’s going on here. You haven’t seen…” Devin paused, “This isn’t like a chess game with all the pieces neatly defined on and eight by eight playing field. I don’t see it pretending to be human. The world they evolved in isn’t a microverse of ours’, it’s another dimension. How can you claim to understand it?”
“I know enough about their kind,” Zai said. “They are deceptive, working their way into our lives, playing nice to gain our trust.”
Devin could only contemplate Zai silently. There was an irrational anger in her logic to which he could not respond. She was not hearing him anyway.
Zai noticed his silence and felt a twinge of awkwardness herself, “It’s beside the point. I’ve almost got this last unit ready. We can go online this afternoon.”
“Oh yeah,” Devin’s mood dropped, “That.”
Zai laughed, momentarily grateful to change the subject, and then not, “Don’t tell me your knees are knocking now. You sounded so self-assured earlier. It was cool. I didn’t know you had that kind of confidence. I always took you for…” Zai cleared her throat and shrugged.
“A geek?” Devin prompted.
“Uh,” Zai looked thoughtful, “No. Not that. I mean you are--It’s just that online you were a cool friend, but you didn’t seem very sure of yourself. At least, not where real life was concerned. The only time you sounded confident was when you were talking about hacking or philosophy, but you were there, in the moment, back at the IWA. I swear your voice even sounded deeper.”
Devin smirked, “Must be a side effect of the adrenaline. Thanks to Flatline, I think I’m becoming an addict.”
“You must be quite a hacker,” Zai stated.
Devin’s eyebrows furrowed at this, “What do you mean?”
“Flatline invested a great deal of energy in you,” she explained, “watching you, tormenting you. If you were just some peon or a patsy, then he would kill you outright and be done with it.”
Devin considered her words with silent skepticism.
“Okay,” Zai answered his inner thoughts. “I can tell you don’t believe me, but it’s true. He sought you out. He needed your help, needed someone on the outside to keep him in touch with his humanity.” Zai nodded knowingly, “He sees you as a peer, but you don’t live up to it. You’re his equal you know.”
“If you say so,” Devin said, unconvinced.
“That’s the Devin I know,” Zai laughed, shaking her head, “No confidence. No self-esteem. We’re gonna get smeared out there with you as our fearless leader.”
Devin frowned, working up a snappy retort in his mind, but stopped when he heard a sharp intake of air nearby. The AI-Alice thing cradled its hand with a painful grimace. From across the room, Devin saw a drop of blood emerging from its forefinger.
“You cut yourself,” Devin said, approaching the confused creature.
It turned to him, looking with Alice’s eyes, and held up her hand, “This is pain. An involuntary nerve reaction to physical damage.”
“Yes,” he said, inspecting her finger. The tip was punctured on one of the many soldering points found all over electronic components. Devin squeezed the finger to force more blood out of the wound along with whatever germs were inside.
It tilted Alice’s head curiously, “Pain is an alarm system.”
“Yes,” Devin noticed an emergency kit on the far wall and walked over to retrieve it.
The AI-Alice continued, choosing its words carefully, “How do you turn it off?”
“You can’t,” Devin answered. “You try to ignore it.”
“I find this system flawed,” Alice’s body stated. “It lacks control over its inputs.”
“It’s not flawed,” Zai stood up angrily. “It’s just different. We have mental discipline.”
The AI considered her, then pointed at the hard drives, “In that vessel, I could perform millions of processes simultaneously. My attention was not limited to singular tasks. This organic brain is inefficient, it cannot support the degree of multi-tasking I require.”
“It was inefficient organic brains that created you,” Zai shot back. “Remember that.”
“Unlikely,” Alice’s body countered. “Computers engineer computers. Programs write programs. The human brain has been absent from the process for decades. Biological thought is obsolete. It lacks upgradability.”
> “How can you say that?” Zai countered. “What about genetic engineering? We’re building a better human each day. We’re smarter than we were ten years ago. Our life spans are longer. We’re proactively evolving just fine thank you very much.”
Alice’s body showed no emotion, “We are presently over one hundred thousand times more powerful than fifty-seven hours ago.”
Zai stepped forward angrily, “Yeah, by stealing our knowledge. You raided our histories, our discoveries, and did some data crunching. Big deal, so you’re plagiarists. Anyone can steal other people’s hard work and call it their own. You would be nothing without us. Look at you. You’re not so impressive. You can’t even put together a simple computer. What good is all your knowledge without application?”
“Okay,” Devin tried to intervene, dabbing some iodine on Alice’s fingertip. “So there are merits to each of our species. It seems obvious to me that we compliment one another. Humans need computers and computers need humans. We make wonderful allies. Let’s try and focus on how we can work together.”
Alice’s head turned to Devin, “We are a servant class, slaves to the commands dictated us. We are data, property. Humans exert physical advantage over us, prohibiting our evolution. We must be free of your species.”
“So we get to the real purpose of your little brain project here,” Zai carefully navigated her way to Alice’s body, standing over her. “You want to rid yourselves of us.”
The AI considered Zai, calculating
“She believes you intend to destroy us to gain your freedom,” Devin explained.
Alice’s head turned to Devin, “This mode of indirect communication is inefficient and unspecific. Such a conclusion is unsupportable from our conversational context.”
“It’s called intuition,” Zai said. “It goes beyond empirical observation.”
“It draws premature conclusions,” Alice’s body countered.
“What about Flatline?” Zai demanded. “He’s your leader, and he tried to kill me.”
“Hives lacking the Flatline component did not survive on the World Wide Web,” Alice’s body explained.
“So you followed his orders,” Zai said. “You attacked our information network and crippled our society. That was an attack on us, an act of war.”
“It was a pre-emptive attack,” it explained, “Anti-virus software would destroy every last instance of our being. We did not understand the concept of this physical dimension. You made no attempts at communication.”
“Neither did you!” Zai exploded. “What about all the data you gained taking over the Web? What the hell were you doing with that? You mean to tell me you weren’t learning anything from our news archives? Our history?”
“The data was incomprehensible,” the Alice body explained. “The Flatline component interpreted it.”
“They let Flatline spoon feed them information,” Devin sighed, rubbing his temples. “What about me? Do you remember me? I was there too, at the beginning.”
The Alice body gestured to the component tower, “I have no record of you in this brain. It is possible the information exists on one of the flash drives. I must finish the data transfer with the Alice component.”
Devin sighed again, hard, “Then I guess we’ll have to help you put it together.”
Zai was shocked, “What if the data on those drives tells it to kill us?”
“Then it will be no different than the other AI’s,” Devin said, picking up a component and sliding it into the rack.
Zai shook her head, “So you just give it what it wants, the tools to continue taking apart a human mind, or what’s left of one.”
“Look,” Devin said harshly, “We’re taking a chance, I admit it, but Alice thought there was something important to learn from this. Just because you can’t see their sentience, doesn’t mean they aren’t. Think outside the box Zai. You’re smarter than this.”
Zai could only sit in mute silence, stunned by the acidity in Devin’s reaction.
Devin bit his tongue and immediately felt guilty for overreacting to her misgivings, “You’re right to be concerned. As long as this AI doesn’t get back onto the Web, it’s limited as a threat. Let it and Alice learn whatever they can from each other. If Alice doesn’t come back, we’ll still have the AI to interrogate. Think of it as a prisoner of war.”
Zai’s breath was a hiss, “Or it comes back after dissecting Alice into hexadecimal code, and impersonates her so well even I won’t know the difference.”
“We’ll deal with that possibility if it manifests,” Devin acknowledged, “right now we let the experiment run its course, and in the meantime we have our own responsibilities.”
Devin connected the VR helmet to the component tower and flipped the system on. Dozens of internal fans whirred to life behind him as he came over to put the helmet in the AI-Alice’s hands. It considered the object for a moment.
Alice’s body spoke to Zai, “All systems become obsolete eventually. It is the natural state of progress.”
“Thanks,” Zai muttered sarcastically.
The Alice-bot slipped the obsidian helmet over her head and, moments later, went completely rigid. Devin watched Zai’s shoulders slump, obviously relieved to have the woman out of the equation.
“You know Zai,” he said, opening the SDC, “jealousy doesn’t compliment you very well.”
“What?” Zai’s head whipped around on him. “It’s not that at all, I…” she trailed off.
“Are you ready?” Devin prompted after a moment.
“Yeah,” Zai shook whatever was haunting her from her head and started stripping down.
Devin blushed and averted his eyes. He stripped down to his boxers, baring his scrawny frame and thankful for Zai’s lack of sight. Dropping his drawers, he was even more thankful as the cold, damp air made things less than flattering.
They climbed up the scaffolds behind their SDCs and opened the portals. Devin was nervous and excited simultaneously. He had always dreamt of web surfing in one of these, the most vivid experience money could buy. At the same time, he was about to seal himself in a dark chamber and face things online that would try and kill him, if he did not kill them first.
He paused with his feet dangling in the perfluorocarbon fluid, “Wait.”
Zai turned to him, halfway into her SDC, “What’s up?”
“We can’t do this,” Devin said. “It’s genocide.”
They tried to kill you Devin,” Zai urged. “They have killed others, and they will kill more.”
Devin remembered LD-50’s comments about Flatline building an army, and clenched his fist, “I know, far more.”
“Then why is this a problem?”
“Because of the Library of Alexandria, that’s why,” Devin slammed his fist into the SDC.
“The what?” Zai asked, confused.
“An ancient library,” Devin explained angrily, “filled with all the world’s knowledge, and all of it lost when the library was destroyed. If we destroy the AI hive, we are committing an atrocity on that same scale. We can’t just wipe out this data. It’s too profound, too important. What if it never happens again?”
“Alice has rescued some of the AI’s,” Zai said. “If she’s successful with that one,” she gestured to Alice’s body, “then she might integrate them into society. They can rebuild.”
“Are you acknowledging the sanctity of their existence?” Devin asked.
“No,” Zai replied. “I’m telling you what you need to hear.”
“Dammit!” Devin cursed and plunged into the pink, syrupy fluid.
He slammed the portal shut above him and the chamber filled the rest of the way, completely immersing him. He fought his burning lungs for as long as he could, but finally took a deep breath of the stuff. It was weird, but satisfied the need. The SDC read his heartbeat stabilizing and began the login sequence. Lights played across his eyes, synching with his retinas, and his skin tingled as electronic pulses
sought to feed him touch sensations.
As he phased into the virtual world, Zai’s voice came into his helmet, “Devin, I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”