Barely Human

by Dhtreichler

  “Another thing I’m working on, but don’t have a good solution for yet.” I admit.

  “You’re just a work in progress,” Reese notes.

  “More than you know,” I think aloud. “That’s one of the things that’s so exciting. Some really hard problems to solve. But when we do get them solved, immortals will have a very different experience. My challenge is to resolve the biggest issues before there are many of us. The more there are the harder it will be to make changes because just like everyone, once we get used to something we resist changes. But that’s the hardest part, we don’t want to make changes, but everyone is making them every day. The changes for us may be bigger than for you. Mostly it’s in the speed with which we process information and the amount we can process simultaneously. Great for solving big data problems, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications, but the thing you have to remember is I’m not artificial. I’m the same person you went to college with. I direct this body the same way I did my old body, well that’s not exactly true, the mechanisms are different, but you know what I mean. I’m able to apply artificial intelligence in the manner in which I’m able to solve problems. So many people have said that the primary responsibility of most people is to solve problems. What transitioning has done is make me a super problem solver.”

  “Wasn’t expecting the sermon on the mount.” Reese responds. I’m not sure she understood everything I said. I’ve got to figure out how to keep simpler language in my discussion with everyone, including my friends, because my vocabulary and technical jargon adoption is accelerating. If I’m not careful I won’t be able to communicate with anyone who isn’t like me. That’s the very concern I raised to Jermaine’s team. I need to practice what I preach.

  “We’re speculating on a lot of things where there just isn’t enough information yet to know.” I respond to deflect the discussion towards something they can handle better.

  “What I really wanted to talk about is your mental health.” MC picks up on my cue.

  I reflect for only a second as that’s all the time I need, but I wait before responding so it doesn’t seem like I’ve given MC’s question no thought. “I’m coming to realize a lot of things I was ignoring.”

  “Like?”

  “Rocky. Every time I go see him, I come away with a different understanding of what Iife has been like for him. What role I’ve played in our relationship that I was totally unaware of.”

  “Tell me more,” MC responds in her psychologist voice.

  “Yes, doctor,” I let her know I know what she’s doing. “Well, I really can’t do anything about all the years.”

  “But you wish you could.” MC knows the answer so I’m not sure why she has asked this question.

  “Of course. He’s my father.”

  “But he abandoned you, at least emotionally,” now I know where MC is going.

  “No more so that I abandoned him.”

  “It’s good you can see that. But do you believe you’re responsible for what he did to you?”

  MC is the only one engaging me as Reese, Windy and Delilah just listen in patiently.

  I wait again as I seem to remember I should be feeling badly or responsible or that I made Rocky feel badly about how he handled me. But I don’t feel anything. I need to make MC think I am at least experiencing remorse. But I’m not. I’m not experiencing anything other than gathering more information about how I should react in different situations. But I can’t tell MC that. It would ruin her whole psychologist approach to me. “I contributed to the situation differently than I have thought this whole time. I was as much a causative factor as he was.”

  “And you didn’t see that before?” Windy cuts in now, getting impatient about having to let MC control the discussion.

  “No. I blamed Rocky for making me what I am. But now I see we created me together.”

  “That’s bullshit, Sage. Why are you wasting our time here?” Windy’s still mad at me.

  “Are you still pursuing your divorce?” I push back.

  “Hell yes. You think I’d ever get back into bed with Tom? He’s so slimy it would be like sleeping with a fish.” Windy often has interesting descriptions.

  “I get the picture although I’m not sure I really want to. Anyway, you going to stay here or move back to Texas?” I ask to give her wiggle room on what she’s going to do next.

  “I’m not going anywhere, friends.” Windy is emphatic. “This is home, even if that house I’ve been living in isn’t.”

  “You moving?” Delilah acts surprised.

  Windy takes a sip of her wine and savors it before responding. “I haven’t decided. The memories there aren’t great. If I’m starting over again in a major part of my life I’m not sure I want to be constantly reminded of the mistake I made.”

  “But you have all the good memories of your kids growing up there and that’s the only home they’ve ever known. You move, and you disrupt them, take them away from their friends and all the good memories they have in that house,” Reese contributes to the discussion.

  “Mrs. Mom.” Windy responds. “I know you’d never move. But I’m not mother earth. I love my kids, but I’m saddled with the part of each of them that’s their father. And I’m not eager to keep them thinking he walks on water. ‘cause he certainly doesn’t.”

  “You can’t blame your kids for what Tom did to you.” Reese pushes back. “They may have his DNA, but they aren’t him. If you start looking for the parts of him they pick up, then you’ll have a tendency to reject your own kids. Don’t you see that?”

  “I don’t blame them.” Windy backtracks. “I just don’t want those traits to be the dominant ones. Hopefully if I’m the only one they see most of the time they’ll be more like me.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” MC dispels Windy’s thoughts. “They will be what they’re going to be and by this time that’s pretty much predetermined. Taking them away from their father will have other effects which will include resentment towards you for being the one who sent him away.”

  “They won’t see me that way because I’ll make it clear he was the one who broke us up.” Windy sounds like she’s making this up on the spot, probably because she is.

  “Will he confirm that when he sees them?” MC hopes to burst the balloon gently.

  Windy frowns as if she hadn’t thought Tom might want to see his kids.

  “Even if he doesn’t bring up the divorce, in time the kids will want to know his side of things.” MC informs Windy. “It’s inevitable. So, you need to know what he will say. Will that be that you slept with someone while you were still married to him or that he was sleeping around and you were innocent?”

  Windy takes a long slow sip of her wine.

  “This wasn’t the first time. You said so yourself.” Delilah reminds her.

  Windy looks at her sharply, like she’s not supposed to raise this. She looks at the rest of us and knows we now know it wasn’t.

  “Well, you’re sleeping with him too, Delilah. Did he fill you up and carry you over too?”

  THE TIDAL WAVE

  I get to Dr. Woodall’s lab early. I’ve put off coming as I’m still trying to understand if I’m going to get a version of A’zam’s software I don’t want. Even though I was contracted to deliver the code I don’t know if Dr. Woodall actually delivered what I wrote, whether he had someone change it to conform to what A’zam specified or whether A’zam found my changes and had someone else rewrite them. There’s just so many ways this upgrade could go wrong for me. And I don’t want A’zam having that much power over me.

  I check in and go back to the surgical suite where I know the upgrade will occur. This time when I look through the window my old body is no longer hanging there. I know I should feel the loss of it, that would be the normal reaction one would have, isn’t it? But I don’t. Instead I note I have verified the opportunity to go back no longer exists. I have no choice but to continue as an immortal. With that knowledge
I look away from the window and sit down on the table in the room where the procedure will be performed on me. A’zam said something about a new processor. The one that only he and I will get. That is if I can believe anything A’zam tells me. I certainly wasn’t prepared to learn that Delilah is sleeping with him now. I was really curious about Windy’s reaction since she knew about it before the rest of us. Maybe Windy really wasn’t mad at me. Maybe she learned about Delilah and that validated what I’d told her about A’zam. That he wasn’t about to limit himself to just one woman, no matter how good they were in bed, or how gorgeous they are, or how much she might love him. But that still doesn’t tell me how Delilah and A’zam got together. Somehow, I think he’s sleeping with as many of my friends as will sleep with him. That would mean he’s making a run at MC and Reese next if he hasn’t already. Both Windy and Delilah have confirmed he’s really good in bed. The best either of them have had. But they’ve both been warned not to expect A’zam to be looking for a second date, if that’s what they want to call it.

  Dr. Woodall enters the room, bright smile. I notice he’s wearing a different cologne. “Sage. Bright and early and I suppose you’ve been waiting for me to get in.”

  “I have.”

  “Let me take a quick look at your diagnostics before we get started.” Dr. Woodall goes around behind me and picks up a tablet. He interrogates my processor and a readout tells him anything he would want to know about the performance of any or all of my systems. He scrolls down, nodding and when he gets to the end he nods. “No issues. You’re performing as you should.”

  Dr. Woodall sets the tablet down and comes around to talk to me. “How are you doing?”

  “You just told me. I’m performing normally.” I’m not sure what he wants to know.

  “Any issues about how you’re managing all the data and information your systems are throwing at you?”

  I shake my head, “You’re asking if I’m able to keep up.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Woodall reacts to the tone of my voice which was dismissive. “But more than that. We’ve sped you up a couple of times. But are you ready for a jump?”

  “Jump?” Now I’m the one reacting to the tone of his voice, “How much of a jump?”

  “This one could be big.” Dr. Woodall sounds like he wants to be cautious. “Much more of a change than you’ve seen before.”

  “Didn’t you already take A’zam up to this level?” If he did then why is he asking me if I can handle it?

  “The AppleCore team made a break through since then. This chip will be twice as fast as what we put into A’zam last week. And that was three times faster than you are now.”

  “So, six times faster.”

  “Plus, we will be upgrading your memory correspondingly.”

  I listen to what he’s saying and wonder if he’s really concerned whether I can handle the speed. “I should be able to handle it. But I don’t think that’s what you’re concerned about. Is there something else making you hesitant?”

  Dr. Woodall glances through the window into the surgical room where my body had been hanging last time. He nods, then looks back at me. “I have a few concerns. The first is not so much a concern as something you need to be aware of. All this processing power will run your battery down quicker. You’re going to have to recharge more frequently than you do now. You just need to be aware of that and watch for the sensors to let you know when.”

  “That’s not why you’re hesitant,” I call him out.

  “No, you should be able to handle that easily.”

  “What don’t you want to tell me?”

  “It’s not something I’m going to tell you so much as it is a concern. Something that I’ve thought about more and more as we push your processing speed up.”

  “Which is?” I’m unable to identify anything that should be a concern.

  “Whether you’ll be able to slow down to communicate with mortals.”

  I instantly review what I know about the systems in me that permit me to change processing speeds. I consider the much faster speed and the amount of simultaneous data I’ll be working with in memory. Nothing stands out that I should be concerned about. So why is Dr. Woodall? “Shouldn’t be an issue unless you’ve changed something else on the board. But you’re not changing the motherboard, are you?”

  Dr. Woodall both shakes and nods his head, “Same board layout, but we’re pushing boundaries here. I don’t know anything about this new chip I’m installing. I don’t know if there will be side effects, as you’ve known them. Only in this instance it would be an integration fault I can’t see. I didn’t do any of the testing. I’ve not had an opportunity to run a pilot on it. So, I’m going into this blind. That always makes me uncomfortable.”

  “I understand.” I reach out and touch him. Another memory of how I should react to someone who is unhappy. “But if I become unintelligible I assume you’ll shut me down and put the old board back in.”

  Dr. Woodall reveals yet another concern. “I’ll only be able to do that if you let me.”

  “That would be my plan. Why are you worried?”

  “A’zam.” Dr. Woodall finally admits. “I don’t trust him. And since he’s supplying parts now, I really have lost control of more and more central systems.”

  “He’s pushing the state of the art. You should be happy.” I smile at him.

  “About that? Absolutely I am. I can’t wait to see how you respond to so much improvement in your capability. But at the same time, what if I can’t help you if you need me to.”

  I should be grateful he has given this so much thought. But, again, the memory of an emotion I don’t have reminds me I have nothing to fear. I’m now all replaceable parts. If the board blows up Dr. Woodall can simply replace it. If I act strangely he can shut me down just as he will to change out boards. The fact that A’zam has sent up signals should be a concern, but, somehow, I don’t think I have to worry at this point. If A’zam is going to disable me somehow that won’t be until I have enough Immortals across for him to achieve his plans. No. “It shouldn’t be a problem, now. In the future we may want to be more concerned about the provenance of what you’re putting in me. But at the moment A’zam needs me even more capable if possible.”

  Dr. Woodall looks at me curiously. “I have to accept that you have weighed the risks and find them acceptable.”

  “I have.” I get up on the table and lay back. “Will this hurt?” I kid him.

  Dr. Woodall shakes his head, but smiles at me, tentatively not sure how he should react to my decision. He goes back around the table and picks up the tablet. “I’m going to shut you down now, but I’ll have you back up in only a few minutes. We’re getting faster at the change out.”

  “Good to know.” I respond just before everything goes black. No more thinking. I just am. Floating in a sea of black. No sensory inputs. Just here in the dark.

  I have no way of knowing how long I’m in this state, but then I see the room come back into focus. Dr. Woodall is looking at me. My mind fills with thoughts and I handle each one at an incredible speed. And yet I realize I know so much more than I did just the moment before. It seems like a tidal wave washes over me, only the wave is data that turns into information I note and file away. I concentrate on creating filters that move the data into different buckets that are processed when they have the right data. And then the information is presented for my consideration and then filed. A co-processor then matches new information with stored information to determine whether new insights can be created from an ongoing matching. If a new insight is created it too is presented for my consideration. This is all happening so fast I can’t separate the insights into distinct knowledge nodes where I think about them consciously. But my memories consider them subconsciously and present anything important or urgent as I’ve tagged them for conscious consideration.

  I suddenly notice Dr. Woodall hasn’t moved since I opened my eyes. I haven’t either. That makes me realize I’m processing so
fast that a mortal’s second seems like thirty or more to me. I try to sit up, but my body is not responding. Sit up. Still no response. Why have my motor functions shut down? It must be something in the software settings. Dr. Woodall is right. I’m having difficulty figuring out how to slow my consciousness down to his speed. What do I do?

  The only thing I can think of is what I always do. Think about it. Slow Down. My processors will decide what I need to do. And even as I’m thinking this at the same speed as my mind is processing, the tidal wave of data continues to pass by with insights popping into my consciousness and then filed away until I ask to see them. Slow Down. The tidal wave of data, information and insights continue but behind the scenes. I’m no longer aware of anything other than the periodic insights I have already tagged as important for me to know. Now back to the second problem. How do I turn my motor functions back on? Return motor functions to default settings, I think. I sense my body has re-engaged and it reacts to my thought, Sit up.

  Dr. Woodall looks at me curiously, “How are you reacting to the new capabilities?”

  I listen to my reaction to gauge whether my mind has picked the right speed, “Took a moment but I’m good now.”

  Dr. Woodall nods, “That’s to be expected. Actually, it appears you adjusted much faster than I thought you might.”

  “That based on your last upgrade of A’zam?”

  Dr. Woodall hesitates, which seems to go on forever. I’m having difficulty keeping my processor working at two different speeds. It wants to go back to the higher speed. I have to concentrate on staying at the slower speed for Dr. Woodall.

  “It’s really okay for you to tell me,” I try to put the doctor at ease. “Since he’s the only other immortal you’ve upgraded so far any issues you’ve observed with him would naturally be expected to occur with me, just as my reaction now is likely to be what you see when you do the next upgrade on him, if it’s as big a jump.”