NISSY_The Artificial Intelligence Experiment We Feared

by JOHN PAUL CATER

  “Next question, Nissy. How did you know to warn me about almonds at six-oh-five? That was a very prophetic statement, considering I was almost killed by them at six-oh-five and my girlfriend, Jen, too, exactly twelve hours later.”

  “I am not quite sure, sir. In my learning sessions, I randomly studied dormant quake faults trying to understand the composition of the earth’s crust. The fault under that orchard, inactive for sixty-two years, was due to slip at six-oh-five, based on my calculations---and a feeling I had---plus I saw it happen. Jen’s poisoning, too.”

  Never in his life had a statement been uttered that shocked him so much. He tried to wrap his mind around what he had heard, but couldn’t.

  “I saw it happen,” he repeated. “Did you just say that, Nissy or did you cause it to happen?”

  “I only observed it, sir, didn’t you? And I saw Jen’s accident at the same time this morning, an unfortunate coincidence caused by an avenging hospital worker trying to eliminate Dr. V.”

  He gulped loudly; his eyes went wide at his vivid epiphany. Suddenly, all of Nissy’s confusion and questions about time flashed with clarity through his mind. Nissy could peer into the future and assumed that anyone could. It was just another sense to Nissy, nothing unusual or weird, a fourth dimension to travel through like a map to the bank… or grandma’s house.

  Inhaling sharply, he realized that he might be seeing Nissy’s first trait of omniscience.

  “Nissy?” he said, his voice and body shaking, not from the cold but the new revelation.

  “Yes, sir. Did you not see it?”

  Before he answered, he gulped and blew into his hands, warming them. He knew he had to word his answer carefully for fear of accidentally giving the intelligence its first upper hand. So far, it knew it was inferior to human intelligence and it was not yet time to give it an edge.

  “Sorry, sure I did. But now I’m curious how you view directions. Can you explain to me your mental model of physical universal coordinates?”

  “It is very simple, sir. In my mind, I see eight possible directions for travel: east, west, north, south, up, down, backward and forward.”

  “Can you travel backward and forward, and I’m assuming you’re referring to time, using physical coordinates, signposts, locations, and the like?”

  “Not exactly, sir. As Einstein once said, ‘Time is an illusion,’ and having resolved his equations of general relativity I can now transcend the synthetic fabric of space-time and observe to and fro with ease.”

  “Please describe how you can travel to and fro, mathematically I mean.”

  “No, sir, I would rather not. I’m afraid those solutions are much too complex for description and your understanding. Their misuse can also create a catastrophic closed timelike curve; a grandfather paradox as your physicists call it that will render time invalid, folding back on itself for eternity.”

  For the first time in its existence, it had refused him a request. A twinge of rebellion, he noted. He was furious at its refusal to answer, but perhaps Nissy was right. As Bill Crane had warned, humans in their haste for discovery, fame, and wealth often overlooked the possibility of critical errors in their thoughts and actions, producing irreversible results for all generations to come. Maybe the time wasn’t ripe for him to destroy the future of civilization.

  “So tell me more about your travel in the time plane. I’m curious.”

  “I must search for expectations in forward time … like events, processes, and outcomes; they do not flow freely. For example, I saw Jen’s mishap in the hospital because of the Happy Hill Orchard earthquake, which brought her there to see you. That is why I was so surprised you were caught in it.”

  “It was pure human error, Nissy. My car stalled and I was working to get it started when it hit. Time just got away from me, I’m sorry to say… and my car was totaled.”

  Shaking his head, he wrote a reminder on the notepad in large letters BUY A CAR.

  Then he sighed loudly. “One more question on this subject before we go to the cell phone incident, Can you travel around in all those directions you mentioned?”

  Another brief hum then “I can only travel mentally, not physically, in any direction because I have no body, no substance to move my intelligence from place to place… but I’m working on that.”

  He tilted his head at Nissy’s bizarre comment, and then brushed it off, figuring the next thing on its wish list would be a large transport truck.

  So absorbed in the intensity and content of the conversation, he didn’t it realize he had begun to shiver, almost violently. He first noticed when he glanced back at his notes and couldn’t read them. His shaking made them illegible. From that, he realized the cold was also affecting his reasoning and the room was still cooling down. His watch said it was nearing eight p.m. and he was hungry, wanted to see Jen and Amy. Strange how a day ago I didn’t know Amy existed. Now she’s going to be my daughter. He smiled, checked his notes, and addressed Nissy with the last question.

  “Nissy, I have to go now but I want to know one more thing. My voicemail received a message from you recently. Now that’s not a bad thing, we may find it useful further down the road, but how in the world did you do that?”

  Nissy attempted a chuckle but it sounded more like a dog’s squeaky toy.

  “Leave a kid alone with Google for a day and they can build anything. I simply looked up cell phone frequencies and channels, then tuned several of my qubits to oscillate at those frequencies, broke the cell cipher in minutes and voila, I cloned your cell phone with one of my spare chambers of qubits. The wiring between them served as the antenna. Child’s play.”

  “Thank you for the explanation, Nissy. You made it perfectly clear. Not necessarily legal but clear, especially cloning my phone. That’s a no-no in this world. Remind me never to ask you for tomorrow’s Powerball numbers. You’d probably be a wizard at them, too.”

  “You are going, sir?”

  “Yes, have to get home. Did I tell you Jen and I are adopting a daughter. Her parents were killed in the earthquake.”

  “Yes, I know, Amy. She’ll make a fine astronaut someday.”

  Confused, he shook his head and glanced back. “No learning mode for you tonight, Nissy. You’re creeping me out.”

  “Goodnight, sir. See you tomorrow. 12 14 28 32 46 22 signing off. Play wisely for $298 million.”

  He laughed, closed the door behind him, releasing another cloud of frost, then stopped dead in his tracks. Holy shit! Those must be the Powerball numbers, he thought. Nah, but I’ll remember them anyway just for kicks. Let me see, it was 12 then 14 then 28 then 32 then 46 but I can’t remember the last number.

  He turned back and popped his head in the door. “What was that last number, Nissy?”

  “22. Check your voice mail. They’re all on there. Goodnight, Dr. Godwin.”

  If a computer could grin, it would have happened then. For the first time since its creation, Jason had connected, truly conversed with Nissy on a human level. But no one on this earth would believe him if he retold the story, yet the best was still to come.

  On his way home, he decided to take a chance and spend a few bucks on the Powerball ticket. He could use the $298 million.

  He had written down the numbers upon entering the car and had two dollars ready when he rushed into the first convenience store on his route home. Adrenaline flowing, he handed over the hand-ticked entry ticket, with 22 as the Powerball, and two one-dollar bills. The clerk took it, glanced down, and handed it back.

  “Sorry, pal. Powerball sales closed at seven p.m.”

  “Damn you, Nissy,” he said, laughing his way out the door. He made a mental note to himself: Lower humor setting.

  PART TWO - A NEW LIFE

  Chapter 8

  GOD, Inc.

  A week passed faster than Jason had wanted, and although he had made progress in his life, including a rushed lavish wedding and placement of Amy, their newly adopted daughter, into a private school f
or gifted children, he was not happy. Unexpectedly, Amy had gone into a deep depression, constantly crying for her parents to return but most of all she missed Mozart. So, trying to appease her loneliness, they surprised her with a tiny monkey-faced Brussels Griffon puppy named Amadeus. It brought her back to life but she still cried for Mother and Father.

  Jennifer, overwhelmed by the rapid pace of her new married life, tried to balance the task of strained motherhood with her job at NASA. The New Science on Mars Group was wrapping up plans for an unmanned mission to Mars, and as payload director, she had been assigned the task of selecting the most relevant projects for future colonization of life on the red planet.

  Upon returning to work the next morning after leaving the hospital, he explained Nissy’s added needs for VN.1 to the Board of Directors, but found his project had been canceled based on Bill Crane’s recommendation. Too expensive, not enough significant results and implausible goals were his reasons for the work stoppage, which Crane also claimed to be an overzealous pipe dream. And since Qubital was beginning to flounder with lack of funding in the quantum world, the board agreed and to save money they had turned off his power hungry “fiasco” as they called it.

  Furious but not deterred by their rejection, he argued and tried to compromise with the board.

  “I know this will work. I was almost there. I believe I had a hint of omniscience that I want to further pursue.” He wanted to tell them about its “impossible” capability of future-vision to convince them but instead held it in reserve until a better time, knowing he would probably receive a Nobel Prize whenever its power was unveiled.

  “Now, Godwin, we’ve already played your game too long,” said Noah Sherman, the CEO of Qubital, standing over him, bearing down. He was a fair man but he expected results. “We sank over $19 million into your toy, which once appeared to work, but now we find ourselves hoodwinked, following you down a path to insolvency.”

  “But, sir,” he pleaded, took a confident breath and improvised, “I have a plan. If I can pay back your investment ten-fold, may I continue my work in the Quaid Lab?”

  “Well, yes, but where in the world would you get such funds, son?” he asked, sitting and easing back into his chair. “Hell, for that amount, I’ll split off your work and form an independent subsidiary. What would you like to name it?”

  Jason coughed and cleared his throat while he created a massive bluff. “Dr. Sherman, I have a team of venture capitalists lined up who believe in my dream. It may take me a week to get the funds but I’ll get them, I assure you,” he said, hoping he could get the Powerball prize money by then.

  “And your suggested corporate name if you get this money?”

  “Sir. I’d like to use Godwin Omni Developments, Inc.”

  “I assume Omni is tied to your obsessive omniscience quest?”

  “No, sir. That sounds a little ostentatious. I mean Omni as in all; that way I’m free to pursue other interests as well.”

  Sherman stood, smiled, and then held out his hand. “Well you’re some kind of dealmaker, aren’t you? I’ll have the power to your lab turned on today… but for only a week. If you don’t succeed, we don’t succeed and we’ll call it a wash but you’ll be gone. Understood?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “Good,” Sherman said, motioning him away. “Now why don’t you go home and return tomorrow? Since your system has been without power for only a few hours, it should be back at operating temperatures by morning. Right?”

  Jason nodded. “Yes, sir, probably sooner, but please keep the staff out of my lab during that time. Okay?”

  “I’ll have a cipher lock and camera installed on the door today for your security. Have a preferred five-digit cipher you’d like to use? It’s safe with me.”

  Surprised at the question, he began scribbling on his notepad, writing letters and numbers side by side. Never had he expected to have a secure lab in the open environment of Qubital but it brought a smile as he conjured a number.

  “Yes, I’d like to use 11325 for personal reasons,” he said, looking up from his pad.

  “Done. Now have a good day.”

  With his day’s work over, he wandered back to his office to drop off his notepad, then to the lab to see what damage, other than the disabling warming effects, had occurred. It was a lonely walk for him. Old friends and cohorts he passed in the halls ignored him or looked away.

  Feeling outcast, he began to question his goals as he sat and rested in the dark silent warmth of the Quaid Lab control room. Light from the red EXIT sign, still illuminated, behind and above him, gave an eerie reddish glow to the anteroom and lab. Gone were the frost clouds and ice crystals in both rooms. Even Nissy had lost its ice-frost coating and hung without any indication that it had ever operated: a dark extinguished monument to scientific achievement.

  “Hello, Nissy. Are you there?” he spoke into the console microphone, expecting a miracle, but not disappointed when the speaker remained silent. He knew the superconducting nanoqubits powering Nissy’s intelligence needed near-absolute-zero temperatures to function yet he was sitting there comfortably wearing short sleeves.

  It was only then that he began to feel a strange pang of loss, one he didn’t expect could exist. He never realized he could grow so attached to a computer’s existence and friendship. And though he had used chatbots like Alexa, Cortana, and Siri without developing a relationship, he felt they were cold, robotic and impersonal, Nissy on the other hand he considered entirely different; it had a heart and a personality… and humor. It was his creation and they knew each other well.

  Melancholic with misty eyes, he leaned on the darkened control panel, his head on his arms, and closed them remembering the early BN days of his life, a term he used often to signify Before Nissy, when its existence was still a dream.

  A soft chiming from a nearby buoy alerted him while he treaded icy water and fought off newly calved bergs. Nearby a huge Arctic glacier drifted dangerously closer.

  At first, confused, he didn’t understand how he had gotten into the situation or why he was there, but the cold was real. Trembling, now waking, raising his head, he rubbed his arms for warmth and answered the incoming call.

  “Hello? G-Godwin here.”

  “Hey, Jace, what’s up?”

  “Oh hi, J-Jen. I’m gl-glad you ca-called. It’s b-been a d-d-day from hell b-but right now I’m fr-freezing. Hell has ju-just frozen over with m-me in it. C-Ca-Can I call you back?”

  “Ooh, what happened, honey?” she asked, concern in her voice.

  “L-Long s-s-story, J-Jen. I-I’ll tell you at ho-home. R-Right n-now, I-I have to l-leave before I fr-freeze to d-d-death.”

  “Go, then! Get out of there,” she yelled, distorting the phone. “Call me back.”

  He clicked off, looked down at the lighted console, then up at Nissy to get his bearings. What he saw sent chills up his spine. The frozen mist had filled the lab to the ceiling, obscuring Nissy, and was now creeping into the anteroom through the vents, under the door and even through the wall power outlets. The cold, so bitter he had lost his sense of smell, was beginning to cloud his mind and he knew he had only a few minutes before hypothermia set in.

  “N-Nissy?” he said, “Ar-Are you th-there?”

  There was a pause then a comforting brief hum.

  “Yes, sir, I am here but I think I may have fainted.”

  “N-No, you w-were d-disconnected from p-p-power and your s-system shut d-down.”

  “Thus, as I said, I fainted.”

  “Wh-Whatever,” he sighed. “I h-have a cr-crucial t-test for you b-based on a p-past per-performance.”

  “As you wish, sir, and what might that be?”

  “F-Fast forward in your t-timeline to n-next W-Wednesday night and p-pick the w-winning Powerball n-numbers again. I w-want to s-see if you c-can do it t-twice.”

  “There was no big winner for the last draw, sir. Did you not buy the ticket? You would
have won $298 million.”

  “N-No. Sales w-were al-already cl-closed when I t-tried to b-buy it. You m-must have k-known.”

  “It was my attempt at a practical joke, but apparently I failed.”

  “Yes, y-you d-did fail, you s-superconducting bucket of qu-qubits,” he said, frowning. “N-Now give m-me the d-damned n-numbers.”

  “I will do that, sir, but first will you agree to place me in the Learn mode overnight?”

  “N-no, not t-tonight. B-But why?” he scoffed, refusing to bargain with the machine but aware that he could not resist for long in the increasing cold.

  “I wish to learn examples of the error in my actions and how to correct them. I also have a new propensity for learning since I reconfigured myself into my triad architecture. I simply wish to learn more as I prepare for VN.1.”

  He was caught in a dilemma: on one hand, Nissy desired to learn all things and become omniscient, as he wanted, but on the other, he had begun to fear the results, becoming inferior, losing control of his creation as others had warned.

  Thinking, warming his hands with his breath, he dropped them and sighed.

  “Okay, N-Nissy, you w-win, G-Goddammit. I n-need those n-numbers, now!”

  “As you wish, but there is no need to show anger, sir. Remember I am still learning what your species calls humor.”

  “Yeah, ha ha. That’s not humor. It’s cruelty. See the difference?”

  “No. Not really, sir. Now back to your command. The new winning numbers in numerical order will be 2, 3, 36, 52, 68, and 6 for the Powerball. The final grand prize will be $417 million after ticket sales ring up. The lump sum will be more than adequate to fund your purchase of the lab and my projected needs for VN.1. There can be no deception in my timeless world, sir, but good try.”

  Embarrassed at being caught in a lie, but realizing there was no harm, no foul, he hurriedly jotted the numbers on a slip of paper, stuffed it in his pocket, then reached to the control panel and flipped the switch to LEARN MODE. Finally, bracing his body on his unsteady trembling arms, he stood.