by Sam Maggs
“That’s how our founder, Margaret Hoff, felt when she started HoffTech.” Nadia’s eyes widened. Women in leadership positions in Silicon Valley were rare; Nadia knew very well (from Alexis’s and Janet’s many presentations about G.I.R.L.) that only about eleven percent of tech execs were women, and in 2019, just 2.8 percent of venture capital invested in startups in the United States went to founding teams that were made up exclusively of women. And when they did get money it was a far smaller sum than what was granted to their male counterparts. It was completely unfair. It was something Nadia hoped to solve with G.I.R.L. one day.
Or, more accurately, it was just one piece of a systemic ill Nadia hoped she’d be able to help remedy.
“So many tech companies want to improve our lives, but so few of us have the time to actually implement their solutions.” VERA replaced Margaret’s face on the hologram. “That’s why Margaret invented me. I’m a self-teaching artificial intelligence designed to take on everything that’s keeping you from exceeding your own expectations and living your dreams. All you have to do is provide me with your schedule, goals, habits, and deadlines, and I’ll help you get things done.”
Nadia had to admit that she could certainly use some help.
“The more you include me in your life,” VERA said, “the more I can take off your plate. I can leave you free to travel more, say yes more, and never miss a birthday or anniversary again. That’s what the VERA project is all about: Doing less; experiencing more.”
Doing less; experiencing more. It sounded like an impossible dream.
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
Artificial or machine intelligence is the computer science version of a human brain. Except human brains are mostly small and stupid and computer brains are so gigantic that our tiny, pathetic human brains can’t even comprehend the speed and capacity of computer brains. You are probably familiar with interfacing with a lot of artificial intelligence in ways that we no longer find exciting, like playing chess against a computer, stabbing enemies in video games, or telling your phone that you really need to know how late your favorite Ethiopian place is open for delivery and having her both understand your words and respond to your question with a relevant result. (Which maybe only happens sometimes and other times she might tell you to turn left on Fifth, or something else completely nonsensical, but AI is not perfect.)
VERA appears to be an example of what computer scientists would call humanized AI or human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI). This means it displays cognitive intelligence (using past experiences to inform decision-making), emotional intelligence (self-explanatory), and social intelligence (self-awareness and self-consciousness). Essentially, it could learn anything a human being could learn. The most famous test for AIs is the Turing Test,* wherein in order to pass, a machine must answer questions in a manner that is indistinguishable from the way a human would answer those same questions. But there are many things to consider when determining if a machine truly displays AGI: autonomous learning, reasoning, planning, sensing, imagining…
Until now, only a few select Avengers had cracked that code. Apparently now, though…there was VERA.
“So,” VERA said, smiling. “Do you want to get started?”
Nadia did. She really did. But there was something stuck in the gears of her mind, keeping it from turning further—something she absolutely needed to know more about before she could move on. Nadia had moments like that, sometimes, especially when she was in the lab. She would fixate on a concept, an idea, an impossibility, and she would chase it and chase it until she crested the hill or ran into a brick wall. Her medication helped with this urge; it rarely got destructive anymore, as long as she was careful. But Nadia was still Nadia, at the end of the day, and she still loved to follow those hot points in her mind. They didn’t always lead somewhere successful, but they always taught her something.
“Almost,” Nadia answered. “But first—can you tell me more about your founder?”
* But also, for the record, IQ tests are ridiculous.
* Did you know in America they tried to pretend that Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were cousins? Absolutely ridiculous. Even in the Red Room, they knew better.
* Developed by Alan Turing, a mathematician and computer scientist whose work was foundational in theoretical computer science. He also shaped our thinking on algorithms and artificial intelligence, way back in the 1940s. Turing was a code breaker during World War II, instrumental in the work at Bletchley Park. He was also a gay man, and his unfair prosecution for his sexuality (and his treatment thereafter) remains a shameful mark on the UK’s history. He was posthumously pardoned in 2013.
“Taaina!” Nadia ran out of her room and into the lab. “Tai!”
“What, what?” Tai came rolling out from her corner of the lab. “I’m in the middle of—”
Nadia ran up to Tai and threw her arms around her friend’s shoulders, leaning down to engulf her in a hug.
“Okay, we’re hugging now,” Tai squeezed out. “This is happening.” Taina was always snarkiest when she was happy (or, at least, that’s what Nadia told herself). But Nadia had no time for deciphering Tai’s sarcasm right now.
“Is everything okay…?” Tai squeaked out, still being squeezed to within an inch of her life. “You’re in your Wasp suit. Are you okay?”
Nadia jumped backward, freeing Taina from the tyranny of her hug, and clasped her hands together.
“Oh, I’m good,” Nadia reassured her. “Meds: taken. Therapy: had. Behavior: self-monitoring.” She reconsidered for a moment. She was feeling good. Really good! Not manic good. Just…good. Actually good. “I think I’m just…really excited. I have a plan!”
“Okay…” said Tai, her eyes narrowing. Nadia could hear the concern in her voice. That was fair; in the past, Nadia’s plans had ranged from “let’s have a sleepover” to “let’s have a sleepover and then seven more sleepovers in a row while we work through the best way to get Shay’s teleporter to stop eating people’s socks when they use it.” Nadia could understand why Tai would be hesitant. But she had nothing to worry about—not this time.
“Follow me.” Nadia waved her friend toward the lab’s exit, bounding as fast as Tai could roll.
“What kind of plan?” Tai asked, pushing herself out of the lab doors. Nadia saw Tai still trying to hide her concern as they grabbed an elevator down to Pym Labs’ ground floor. The Pym Labs lobby was one of Nadia’s favorite places—important people bustling, talking and clipboard-carrying, doing what Nadia could only assume was important, life-changing, earth-shattering science. She felt alive with the buzz of its activity every single time she passed through it. Above all, though, she loved seeing the G.I.R.L. logo on the directory board.
“A plan for…” Nadia trailed off as they approached the sliding glass doors onto the street. They opened automatically. Nadia didn’t waste a second before she leapt through them, jeté-style. “This!”
It was absolutely pouring rain outside. It was coming down so hard it seemed like the rain was trying to exact vengeance on the citizens of Cresskill, New Jersey. The wind, whipping through the trees around Pym Labs, made it seem like it was almost raining sideways. It was cold, and blustery, and violent.
And it was perfect. Nadia activated her suit’s nanotech, her helmet forming around her face instantly. She threw her arms out wide and turned her face up to the storm, letting the rain hit her face. She laughed as her visor almost instantly needed the equivalent of a windshield wiper.
“It’s raining!” she shouted to Taina, who was still safely inside the building.
“Yeah!” Taina yelled back, as if to a very small child. “I can see that!”
“Come on!” Nadia beckoned to her friend, shielding her eyes from the rain with her other hand.
“I’m good, actually,” Taina shouted back, shaking her head vehemently. “More of a land creature.” Nadia saw her reach for her wheels to back up.
“Wait!” Nadia
shouted to her friend, thinking quickly. “Just wait there for me! One second!”
“Where are you going—?” Taina started, but it was already too late. Nadia had already hit the button on her glove and had shrunk so quickly it was impossible to make out the rest of Taina’s words in the midst of the storm.
Play in the rain. That’s what Maria’s list had said. If Taina wasn’t going to play with her, she would find a way to have fun herself. Nadia was certain this wasn’t what Maria had in mind when she wrote the list, but, well—science is all about adaptation.
Nadia shot forward on her wings, dodging raindrops the size of buildings left and right—before aiming directly for one.
Secretly? She had always wanted to try this.
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
Rain is made of water.
Imagine if I just stopped there? You’re welcome! I’m a genius!
No, I would never do that to you.
Okay, I would do that to you, but I’m not doing that to you right now.
So, rain is made of water. But water is made of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, which is why it is referred to in some circles (chemistry circles) as H2O. The water molecule looks like a little elbow joint, with oxygen at its center and hydrogen branching off to each side (like the letter “L”). The oxygen molecule holds a negative charge and the hydrogen molecules hold a positive charge. Opposites attract, so we get our H2O. Those positive and negative charges attract that H2O molecule to other H2O molecules and voilà—we get water.
But these electrostatic hydrogen bonds are not very strong. The force holding them together creates water’s surface tension—but that tension can be overcome by force, like sticking your finger into a glass of water or diving into a lake. But that surface tension also means that objects with a greater density than water can still float on top of it. We measure surface tension in a unit of force called “dynes.”* (Water’s surface tension at 25 degrees Celsius is seventy-two dynes per centimeter.) Hit water with something that has fewer than seventy-two dynes, and it shouldn’t break through the surface of the water.
Like, say, a human who has shrunk to less than a centimeter and has shunted their excess mass into the Microverse. For instance. Just throwing that one out there.
* No relation, though Janet Van Dyne is also a unit of force.
Nadia tucked her arms into her sides and zoomed toward a particularly juicy-looking raindrop slowly making its way toward the earth. Well, slowly to Nadia; normal rain speed to everyone else. Before she could blast right through it, she slowed her wing beats.
If she did this too fast, it wouldn’t work. If her feet were too small, it wouldn’t work. If she timed it incorrectly, it wouldn’t work.
But she was wasting time wondering if it would work instead of finding that out firsthand. Steeling herself, Nadia took a deep breath and flew forward, directly at the raindrop.
She hit the surface of the drop with her right foot, and she ran. Left foot then right foot then left foot and she looked down and—
It was working! It was actually working! She wasn’t just playing in the rain.
She was playing on the rain.
Nadia laughed, the sound echoing inside her helmet as she ran across the surface of the water. She leapt off the surface of her drop and onto another one, across and over to another, and another, and another, playing hopscotch (something she had only seen on television) with the rain. She couldn’t help but think of those lizards and insects who could do the same thing.*
Nadia ran and ran before she let herself dive directly into the last raindrop, swimming through it and out the other side. Then she dropped to the ground and popped back up to her usual size—where she found Taina had waited for her, after all.
“You good?” Taina called.
Nadia paused. She tilted her face up to the sky and held her arms out to the sides, letting the rain cascade down her visor. With each drop, Nadia heard the answer to Tai’s question.
Yes yes yes. Yesyesyesyesyes better than ever why would you even ask and—
No.
No no no. No nonononononononono—
Nadia shut her eyes and listened harder. She’d checked another item off Maria’s list, and completed a lifelong goal of her own in the process. She felt closer to her mother than ever.
Or did she? Maria wasn’t here. She would never be here. No matter how many items Nadia completed on Maria’s list, she would never be doing any of them with Maria. She couldn’t talk to Maria about them afterward or know if Maria would have loved them or if she would have been horrified to learn that her own daughter was a pint-size Super Hero or if that would have made her day, actually—
You can’t know.
You can’t know.
She couldn’t know. And she would have to live with that.
There were some things that even walking on water couldn’t fix.
Nadia wiped the rain off her visor. “I’m good.” She walked back through the sliding doors, tracking the wet in behind her. She popped off her helmet and shook out her hair—it always frizzed in the rain. She took a deep breath, trying to shake out the renewed sense of loss, too.
“You know you’re, like, a stone-cold weirdo, right?” asked Tai, as they took the elevator back to G.I.R.L.
“Oh, yes,” Nadia said agreeably.
“So, you going to tell me what’s going on, or we just going to pretend like this soggy interlude never happened?” Tai asked.
“I’ll tell you while I change. C’mon.”
Nadia stepped into her room and Tai wheeled up next to Nadia’s desk, poking through one of the open boxes on the floor as Nadia ditched her dripping suit for her favorite orange cropped hoodie and red sweats. Orange and red was Nadia’s favorite color combination, and no amount of color wheel chatter from Janet could sway her. They were the colors of speed and heat and motion and doing, and that’s what Nadia was all about.
Besides which, clashing was definitely in now. So, Nadia figured, it worked.
“I had no idea it was raining outside,” Nadia said by way of explanation. “I’ve been in here all day and I was too heads-down worrying about Like Minds to ever think to stop and look out a window.”
“If you’re thinking this is making sense yet—”
“I’m getting there!” Nadia said hurriedly. “Janet got me something for my birthday. Say hi, VERA.”
Taina rolled back a few feet as the shower of pixels, now a familiar and welcome sight to Nadia, sprang to life on the desk next to her.
“Hello, Nadia,” VERA’s Neptune-like form responded.
“Tai,” Nadia gestured. “Meet VERA.”
“Nadia,” Taina responded warily, “why is there a hologram that looks like Sailor Blue Man Group on your desk?”
“Hello, Tai. If you’d like a rundown of my primary functions—”
“Shut it, blue.” Taina commanded. VERA snapped her mouth shut and fell silent. Tai turned back to Nadia. “What’s going on?”
Nadia perched on the edge of the bed, excited to explain. “Janet got me this for my name day and I completely forgot about it but then I remembered and it’s already changing my life. It’s a virtual assistant!”
“Like F.R.I.D.A.Y.”
“Yes, except Mr. Stark didn’t have to build me this from scratch,” Nadia continued. “It’s mass-market.”
“And you need this because…?” Tai raised an eyebrow.
Nadia let out a breath. She could feel a creeping frustration coming on. Tai could never just be excited that you were excited; she needed to be convinced that you were excited for a good reason. Nadia found that very trying sometimes. But it was part of what she loved about Tai, in the end.
“VERA takes on all my different projects and schedules and keeps me on track,” Nadia explained with what she thought was great patience. “She reminds me to take my medication, too, no matter where I am. Even if I’m in the Crystal Lab. She—”
Taina held up he
r hand to stop Nadia before she could continue. “When were you in the Crystal Lab?” Tai knew how dangerous time dilation could be for Nadia. It was a lab rule that Nadia had to tell someone when she was going in, just in case she lost track of time and needed a nudge to come out again.
“It was when I found my mother’s journal. I panicked. But it was all right, and I got myself back on track afterward.” Nadia grabbed Tai’s hand and put it back in her friend’s lap. “I’ve been in a few times since, but I’ve told VERA every time and she kept me on schedule. And I gave VERA Maria’s list and she processed all the items and she was the one who told me it was raining so I could check another thing off my list.”
Tai didn’t say anything. She just held her hand out, silently.
Nadia knew what she was asking for. They had a deal, she and Taina. Nadia kept Tai accountable for her doctor’s appointments, even when she didn’t want to go. And Tai put Nadia in sort of grown-up time-outs whenever she did something she knew would aggravate her bipolar disorder.
Unzipping the top of her suit, Nadia pulled the chain and the crystal from around her neck. She dropped them into Taina’s waiting hand.
Tai closed her fist and the crystal disappeared. She pursed her lips in that way Tai did when she was stopping herself from saying something rude. “So instead of dropping a task, you just decided to use this thing to make overworking yourself easier.” It was a statement, not a question. She tucked the crystal into one of her pockets.
“No!” Nadia protested. “I mean, yes? She’s helping me stay organized,” Nadia clarified. “But that’s not even the best part.”
“Oh, be still my heart,” Taina deadpanned.
“VERA,” Nadia said over Tai. “Let’s talk about your creator.”
“Gladly!” VERA sprang back to life. Her pixels re-formed into the dark-haired woman with the icy eyes. “What would you like to know about—”