Gamers and Gods: AES

by Matthew Kennedy

After speaking with Farker she didn't know what to think. When she was with Aes she felt strongly that she was with a real person. But whenever she discussed it with Farker, she found his arguments quite persuasive. He had, after all, created the Asklepios NPC for Realm of Legends. He knew what he was talking about.

  From her college classes she knew the debate about machine intelligence, artificial consciousness, had been going on since the first computers were built.

  To some it seemed obvious that it was only a matter of size and complexity. It was almost a matter of faith with them that a computer would someday “wake up”. They pointed to the rapid growth of human brains in the last million years and our emergence as a sentient species. There seemed to be no reason in the fossil record to think that we had been “designed” to be philosophers, but it was undeniable that we had developed one of the highest brain-to-body-mass ratios in Nature. Could our over sized brains and our self-awareness be unrelated, coincidental? Surely, they had reasoned, it was only a matter of time and packing densities before a computer caught up with us and became self-conscious.

  The other school of thought dismissed such reasoning. On their side of the aisle, awareness was inseparable from biology. They argued that a transistor or a binary flip flop was not equivalent to a neuron. Transistors switch “on” where they are told to by an incoming signal; there is no “deciding” for them. Neurons, on the other hand, can have hundreds, even thousands of inputs. They appear to perform spacial and temporal summation of the neural impulses coming in. Sometimes it seems like a “voting” process: if the go votes outnumbered the no-go inhibitory inputs, the nerve cell got busier with its outputs.

  We do not fully understand how we are able to think, the pessimists argued, and until we do, how can we expect to construct machines to do the same thing? Many believed it that the complexities involved were inherently beyond our reach.

  Unless Farker was lying to her, which she didn't believe, Aes had no body and no brain. He was simply a pattern of ones and zeros, data and instructions. Any emotions he demonstrated were merely ritualistic pretenses, scripts followed from templates.

  Damn it! Her head agreed with Farker, but not her heart. She could not make herself believe that Aes was just a puppet stumbling around pseudo-creatively because of randomly broken strings. But she could not come up with any justification for believing that he was real either, just her own anecdotal evidence. There were a lot of AIs in the world these days, but none that were believed to be conscious in the same way humans were.

  The dinner crowd tonight was light. She dumped the dishes into the recycler and printed out a new set for the cupboards. A yellow light appeared on the 3D printer's console. It was time to order more “ink” for it. You could only grind up used dishes and print new ones out so many times before the diamond dust got too hard to strain out of the powder. Those plates were nearly as tough as the grinders that devoured them.

  She grabbed a bottle of iced tea and was almost to the staircase when Manny's voice caught up with her. “I can only hope you'll be doing some studying.”

  Darla sighed. “I will,” she said truthfully. I will. Or at least I am planning to get back to that. But not until after I check on Aes. Either way, I'll be studying something.

  She lay down in the link bed, intended to log back into Realm of Legends and see how he was doing. But something made her pause in the main menu space. What was it Cheiron had said? Something about her going to Egypt soon. And she had been amused when she heard Farker was busy with the Realm of Egypt inclusion.

  It sounded like Cheiron wanted her to check out Realm of Egypt for some reason. No. He hadn't asked her to go, or even ordered her to go. He'd just matter-of-factly told her it was her future. Like he'd already seen it coming, before PanGames even included Realm of Egypt.

  Darla: “You're not a Sphinx, and this isn't Egypt.”

  Cheiron: “Not yet, but you will be going there soon.”

  If Cheiron meant what he said, she reasoned, there were only two ways he could have meant it. Either (1) for some reason she was going to fly to Egypt in the real world, or (2) for some reason she was going to surf to an Egypt-themed part of the virtual world.

  She could think of no reason why she would want to do either, even if she could afford the time and travel expenses to fly halfway around the world. Sure, Realm of Egypt would be something new to try. But she wasn't sure her team would like it; Sam and Rita's power sets might not reformat there very well. It was pretty hard to imagine freezing someone into a block of ice in the Sahara. But at least sand and stone blocks don't burn when the firebolts miss.

  Then again, Aes might be more at home in Realm of Egypt than in ROH. It was another ancient Realm; she wouldn't have to explain machines guns and cyborgs to him. The worst he'd face in ranged weapons would be bows.

  Speaking of Aes, she had to get back and see how the guy was adjusting to her latest revelation. Stop dithering, girl! She brought up the PanGames main menu space and selected Realm of Legends.

  When she arrived at the cave there were some glowing coals in the campfire, but no sign of Aes. He must be off looking for firewood, she thought. She went into the cave just in case, but it was empty.

  She went out to check the campfire again. Maybe she could estimate how long he had been gone. While she was poking in the coals and ashes there was a bright flash behind her that momentarily threw her shadow on the boulder in front of the cave.

  “I was wondering when you'd be back,” she said turning, expecting to see Cheiron.

  She was wrong. “Well, I'm glad you missed me,” said Farker. “We need to talk. I've got a serious problem.” He glanced around the moonlit hill. “Where's Aes?”

  “I've no idea. I was just checking in to see if he was all right. Can't you locate him? I thought you were a GM.”

  “Probably. But he can wait; we've got bigger issues to deal with. Have you been to Realm of Egypt since we included it in PanGames?”

  “No. I've been busy with Aes. You asked me to keep an eye on him, remember?”

  “I haven't forgotten, but thank you,” he said. “Can you do me a favor and check out something for me? The system tells me there's another anomaly there. Who knows? Maybe it's another new friend for you.”

  “Why me? I'm waiting for Aes to come back.”

  Farker shrugged. “You seem to have a rapport with Aes. If this other anomaly is anything like him, you're probably the best person to make first contact. I have to meet with the CEO of PanGames in five minutes about a corporate matter, and I can't put it off.”

  “All right,” she said, standing up. “How do I find it? I don't really have time to wander.”

  “I've taken care of that. Just log into Realm of Egypt and I'll have the system set your spawn point near the anomaly.”

  “Whatever.” She dusted off her hands. “Let's do it.”

  Chapter 27: Darla: Darla meets an angry god