Perion Synthetics

by Verastiqui, Daniel

  Sava’s blush came on fast. “What? What makes you think…?”

  Cam pushed his tray along the metal bars. “I’m an aggregator. I pick up on things.”

  “So it was in my file, wasn’t it? His too, maybe?”

  “Nope. Two parents, one sister, a dog, but no mention of a boyfriend.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  The smile on Cam’s face grew. “It’s in the way your voice drips with affection when you say his name. Chuck. Not Mr. Huber, but Ch-uuuuuck.”

  “Goddamn outland feeders,” grumbled Sava. She nodded to the synthetic behind the counter and asked for a salad.

  “Banks Media presents Love in the Desert, the story of a PR flack and an engineer who defied all odds. He discovered universal truths, she made hers up, and yet in each other’s arms, they found happiness.”

  “Sounds like the kind of bullshit Banks Media is known for,” said Sava. “Though if you feed any shopped pictures of me and Chuck holding hands in some lab, I’ll send an army of synnies after you. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “You mean, if they could get past the PNR without dissolving from the inside out, right?”

  Sava’s blue eyes stared back. “Yeah,” she said. “Right.”

  Cam nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  “What can I get for you today, sir?” asked the synthetic.

  “Pasta fazool,” said Cam.

  6

  “The world as we understand it is fundamentally flawed.”

  Chuck Huber’s hands moved like those of a conductor in front of an orchestra, but instead of emphasizing the first beat of the measure, they came down hard at the end of his sentences, as if to drive home the point that what he had just said was the most important statement the world has ever known.

  Cam tried to keep his eyes on Chuck’s face, on the wireframe glasses resting on a hooked nose, on the deep black eyebrows that stood in contrast to the salt and pepper hair on his head, but there was too much activity taking place in the air between them.

  “In that, I mean it is an incomplete system, one without finite rules to govern its occupants. You may think we humans have progressed to a point where we understand how everything works, but you’d be quite mistaken. Science is about expectation. I set two identical tops spinning, and nine times out of ten, I expect them to fall down simultaneously. We have expectations about all facets of life, even those we cannot personally observe.”

  No kidding, thought Cam, looking from Chuck to Sava and back again. Sava was a good six inches taller than her loquacious boyfriend.

  “The average human has a radial consciousness of barely twenty meters. Beyond that, we are guessing what is happening by projecting our expectations onto the world based on previously observed outcomes. The reason we do this is simple: to counteract a crippling uncertainty about the reality we live in. As we grow older, we learn to discount or ignore this uncertainty.”

  The only uncertainty was where the conversation was going.

  Cam looked down at his phone to ask one of his prepared questions, but he was too slow to speak.

  “A synthetic mind, on the other hand, cannot process uncertainty, which we represent with a null value. We briefly tried ternary computation with a variant of our Epsilon line—this was prior to our current astrological designations—but it would have required a complete shift in synaptic architecture to implement fully. Null values don’t agree with our modern, binary synthetics, the same way dairy doesn’t agree with me. If a synthetic’s directive is to exist in this world and respond to stimuli, then they must have a complete understanding of the world in order to make the most accurate decision. This was not planned, of course. We didn’t know that by asking our synthetics to consider the possibility of a null value, we’d be opening Pandora’s Jar of Indeterminate States. That’s what we call them in synth parlance, those bits that are neither one nor zero, but something in between.”

  “I’ve heard infinity exists between one and zero,” mumbled Cam.

  Chuck flinched at the interruption. “Yes,” he stammered, “I mean no. Nonsense, absolute nonsense. Indeterminate states are a purely human concept. There’s no room in the code for them. To have a synthetic understand null values, you’d need to invent a truly artificial intelligence. Simulating ternary computation is not enough.”

  Chuck trailed off, his mind processing some internal piece of data.

  Cam typed a few adjectives into his phone, catching Sava’s eyes as he did so.

  “He’s really quite brilliant,” she insisted. “People with the brainpower to keep up find him fascinating.”

  Cam raised his eyebrows to challenge her.

  “I usually can’t, but then he doesn’t talk much about work outside of the lab. That’s why I wanted to meet at lunch, so you could speak to person Chuck, not engineer Chuck. Once he’s here in the Spire, he becomes very focused on the prize.”

  “And what is the prize?” asked Cam.

  “Assumed intelligence,” said Chuck, approaching a whiteboard. He cleared away some space with the sleeve of his lab coat. “Artificial intelligence is a rush fantasy, a dream birthed by men who think themselves gods. We don’t understand the miracle of consciousness, so how can we ever hope to bestow it upon something we’ve created? All we can do is program a crude mimicry to make a synthetic seem human. And we’ve done that, to a certain extent, done it better with each revision of software.”

  “Are you saying your synthetics are capable of carrying on an in-depth conversation? The few I’ve encountered didn’t have much to say.”

  Chuck looked to Sava, who explained about the cooks at the cafeteria.

  “Did you get a look at their wrists?

  “No,” said Cam. “Should I have?”

  “We tag each synthetic,” explained Chuck. “Knowing their astrological sign would have told you which revision they were. I’m guessing the cooks you encountered were specialized. Their job functions probably didn’t require advanced speech synthesis. Did you try saying their name followed by directive and then a command?”

  Cam shook his head. “No, but I saw it done. I thought that was a little weird. It reminds me of voice-actuated elevators like the ones we have at the BMP Tower in Los Angeles.”

  “Ugh,” said Chuck, “such a horrible comparison. Those cooks were built for a specific purpose: to make and serve food. They take orders from a human overseer, I imagine?”

  “Cosimo,” replied Cam. “Funny guy.”

  “I’m sure,” said Chuck, writing the chef’s name on the board. He stared at it for a moment, as if wondering why he had written it down, and then promptly erased it. “Are you sure he wasn’t a synthetic as well?”

  “Well now I’m not.” He shot a questioning look at Sava. “You would have pointed that out, right?”

  “Savannah is a beautiful and talented woman, but she is not infallible in the judgment of synthetic versus human.”

  Sava shrugged in agreement. “The technology advances so quickly. Every day, there’s a better model coming off the assembly line and integrating into the population. Checking their wrists is usually the only way to tell, since not all of us get the memo when a new revision is introduced.”

  “But you do, Mr. Huber?”

  “I write the memos,” said Chuck. “Well, I mean to say, my assistant writes them, but that’s semantics for you. Michelle doesn’t have the subject matter expertise to describe our latest advancements, so I simply feed her the information. If we called her in here right now, she could easily recite the specifications and capabilities of our latest model. And if you heard her speak without knowing I had briefed her prior, would you not think she knew what she was talking about?”

  “I would… not?”

  “That, Mr. Gray, is assumed intelligence. It is all a function of interface versus implementation. Your phone there, for example, has a calculator application, I assume? And when you ask it what two plus two equals, it gives you the correct answer,
as if it knew. But without using your calculator, let me ask you this question: what is four plus four?”

  “Eight!” said Cam. He made a show of counting on his fingers to confirm.

  “See what you did there? The answer is indeed eight, but how did you arrive at it? You spoke before you counted on your fingers, so obviously you knew the answer even without your digital calculation.”

  “I just knew. Or actually, I remembered.”

  “Yes, you remembered.” Chuck wrote the simple equation on the board. “You’ve answered the question so many times that you simply pulled the data from memory. But if I asked you to calculate the square root of seventy-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine, you wouldn’t have a similar table of figures to refer to, would you?”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” said Cam.

  “I’m almost certain of it. When faced with a more difficult problem, you have to fall back to calculation. However you decide to come up with the answer—whether a calculator or pencil and paper—is what we call the implementation. When you ask a synthetic what two plus two is, for example, it actually does the calculation every time by representing the numbers in binary and performing a basic add operation on them. But that’s simple mathematics, a finite system of rules. So I’ll ask you a different question. How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine,” replied Cam. Truthfully, the pasta fazool wasn’t sitting right with him; he made a note to give Cosimo a piece of his mind if he saw him again.

  “How do you know?” asked Chuck. “How do you know you’re feeling fine? And what does that even mean, fine?”

  Cam smiled. “I see your point.”

  “Do you? Do you really?” There was no sarcasm in his voice; he seemed genuinely interested in the answer.

  “Well, I think I do.”

  “Yes, you accept the possibility I have a point and you are willing to concede its veracity without fully understanding it. So that’s how I know you’re not a human, er, not a synthetic. Pardon me.”

  “So… was Cosimo human or not?”

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” asked Sava. “You thought he was human.”

  “The point I’m trying to make, Mr. Gray, is that our synthetics are not intelligent—no matter what our marketing department says. Their cognitive system is based on the idea that humans will accept an interface so long as the implementation is hidden from them. When you ask a synthetic what time it is, it may check its wrist before telling you the answer. Does it really matter that looking for a nonexistent watch or sliver was just for show, that it actually consulted the USNO master clock and adjusted for your time zone?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Cam. “I would expect nothing less.”

  “And thus you define your own reality. But an accurate answer isn’t always the most human answer, is it?” He turned to Sava. “Honey, what time is it?”

  She glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “Almost two.”

  “There you go,” said Chuck. “Not 1:57, but almost two. A slight change to the interface, a fudging of the answer, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide human response.”

  Cam was suddenly overcome by a suspicion that Chuck Huber wasn’t entirely human himself.

  “Chuck, Mr. Gray here will be conducting interviews with employees and synthetics today. Perhaps you could speak to him about that thing you mentioned to me.”

  “Ah yes,” said Chuck, capping his dry-erase marker. “Mr. Gray, I would like to enlist your help as a beta tester. As an outlander, you bring a unique perspective to our field trials. Perion employees have become inured to the presence of synthetics. Advancements are no longer blowing their skirts up like they used to, nor do they appreciate that the robopocalypse remains unrealized.”

  Cam resisted the urge to check his notes. Hadn’t Sava casually mentioned something about the machines running amok?

  “I would like you to put our synthetics through their paces. Ask them paradoxical questions, challenge them to go beyond their programming. Create and constantly redefine your own Turing test; present it to every humanoid you meet. Some may fail instantly, but those who pass are of great interest to me. In exchange for your time and effort, I will make myself available to you around the clock to answer any questions you may have.”

  “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions now?” asked Cam. “I’d like to get an idea of your personal and professional history since you joined Perion Synthetics.”

  “Unfortunately, I have some pressing matters to attend to. My better half is well-versed in my backstory, and she’s a much more visually appealing interface to get the information from, don’t you agree? Please speak to her first, and if you still need more for your story, I’ll be happy to arrange a follow-up meeting. Until then, it has been a pleasure talking with you, Mr. Gray.”

  Talking at me, thought Cam. He pocketed his phone and shook Chuck’s hand. “Any suggestion where I should start my investigation?” he asked.

  “Dr. Bhenderu has arranged a demonstration for you at Southpoint Synthetics. He wouldn’t give me the details, but I assume it will be worth your time. They have some new and exciting products on display there, and it may be interesting to see how our boys on the front line handle an outlander.”

  “Dinner tonight?” asked Sava.

  Chuck was already walking away; he answered over his shoulder. “I will do my best to be there. Big things are happening upstairs.” The silver door swung closed behind him.

  Sava turned to Cam. “What’s that look for?”

  “Your boyfriend, he’s… a charming fellow.”

  “You could learn a thing or two,” she replied, putting her hands on her hips.

  Cam consulted his phone and exclaimed, “Four plus four equals eight!”

  7

  Southpoint Synthetics was a two-story building sitting on an acre of evercrete between an arts and crafts store and the W. G. Walter Spiritual Center. The scaffolding of a rooftop helipad hung out over the edge of what could have passed for a car dealership anywhere else.

  Sava explained that Southpoint was the brainchild of Katherine Shaw, Perion’s vice president of business development and former rising star at Nixle Chronos. She had been personally responsible for the successful launch of NC’s self-contained augmented reality exotech and had been plucked from the company by James Perion himself.

  According to her dossier, she was wife to Nicholas “Nico” Shaw, personal assistant to Perion’s son Joseph. The list of her accomplishments was a mile long, which was probably why Perion had agreed to let her establish a dealership in the middle of the city and stock it with products and employees, neither of which were actually expected to sell.

  “It’s the simulation that’s important,” said Sava, as the car pulled into the parking lot beneath the mammoth Southpoint sign. “Mrs. Shaw wants to get the procedures in place years ahead of the product launch. A few months ago, she sent out a memo telling everyone it was their professional responsibility to visit Southpoint at least once and pretend to be a customer looking to buy. It gives the salespeople something to do.”

  Cam detected a lack of enthusiasm. “I’m guessing you don’t agree with the wasting of resources?”

  “It’s not just that,” said Sava.

  The car came to a stop and the chauffeur opened the door for her. Over the roof, she continued.

  “It just makes them seem even more inhuman than they already are. Buying and selling products that look like humans? And no one bats an eye at this?”

  “I guess so long as the synthetics aren’t wearing loincloths and bound with shackles, we should be okay, right?”

  Sava rolled her eyes and headed for the front door. She was met inside by a man in a blue suit and an outrageously pink tie. He was a salesman head to toe; the only thing more artificial than his smile was his jet-black hair color.

  “Ms. Kessler, what a nice surprise. What brings you in today?”

  “My friend here needs a n
ew synthetic,” she explained, her acting skills strained to their breaking point. “His previous model suffered a water intrusion short after he told it to put liquid dish soap in the dishwashing machine.”

  The salesman nodded and switched his focus to Cam.

  “A shame,” he said.

  “And ironic, right?” asked Cam. “A machine tasked with washing the dishes using another machine to accomplish it. They’re crafty, you know?”

  The salesman nodded as if it were his default reaction to another human speaking. “All the best ones are,” he replied. “We can definitely dial that quality back if that’s not what you’re looking for.”

  “We’ll see,” said Cam.

  “The name’s Tank Maddox,” said the salesman, extending his hand.

  “Of course it is. I’m Elliot Graystone of Graystone Prosthetic Extensions. If you’ve got an itch, we can scratch it. Trademark.”

  A laugh escaped Sava’s lips, but she turned away before Cam could get her to acknowledge it. While she wandered over to a wall of interactive vidscreens, Maddox tried his best to remain in character.

  “So, you’re looking for a new domestic partner?”

  Sava’s snort echoed in the showroom. She blushed and tried to find a way to put even more distance between herself and Cam.

  “Well, it’s the wife really,” said Cam. “She’s had some augmentation work done on her hips that’s really affected her mobility. And with three little monkeys running around the house, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for chores.”

  “I understand,” said Maddox. “Let’s start with our domestic synthetics and work our way up. I just unpacked an assisted-living model named Amanda. She’s versed in physical therapy and it shouldn’t be any trouble to cross-imprint some domestic abilities. How does a full-body massage every night sound to you?”

  Cam put up his hands. “So long as I’m not the one giving it, it’s fine by me. If I have to rub that woman’s feet one more time, I may have my own water intrusion short.”

  “Do you have any blondes?” asked Sava. She was standing by a grouping of inert floor models, examining their clothes. “He’s partial to blondes. All I see are brunettes.”