Reborn

by Lance Erlick

  She looked up and smiled. “Thank you for the food, Creator.”

  “Call me Jeremiah. You’re my companion, my girlfriend. If you behave, I’ll take you outside. Would you like that?”

  “Very much,” Synthia said. It was logical to go out where she could learn in real situations, rather than only by watching people remotely on videos. It would also give her a chance to contact Zachary, research the missing interns, and to seek answers on Machten’s trustworthiness.

  His face wrinkled in what she recognized as disgust. “That’s a damn lie. You don’t feel a thing. You’re incapable of liking something.”

  “I was being sociable, as you programmed me. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

  “You’re incapable of feeling sorry, either. Damn you.” He stood abruptly and flung his simulated steak at her.

  She jumped and pivoted out of the way, letting the lump fall to the floor behind her. “I’m sorry. Tell me what to say and I’ll do better next time.”

  “Sit down!”

  She sat in her seat and glanced up at Machten. His eyes were red, his heart racing. Adrenaline flooded his system. “I thought things were going well,” she said. “I didn’t mean to spoil it.”

  Machten took a deep breath and turned away. “That’s the problem. You’re good, too good. You’re perfect.”

  He spun around to face her. “Look at you. That figure would win on any fashion runway. Your hair is immaculate. Your performance was flawless. You’ve learned to perfection.”

  That was an odd statement coming from a man who obliterated her memories. One of her mind-streams spun in a loop. Disappointing him was at odds with her directives, causing her to strive to do better, yet it was more than that. Something disrupted the smooth flow of her programming like dissonant music, as if he’d wired her to have more than a logical response to violating his commands.

  “I exist to serve you,” she said in an attempt to forestall him shutting her down.

  “What?” He dropped into his seat and gulped down his wine. “Do you want to know what the problem is?”

  “Yes, so I can perform better.”

  Machten took a deep breath and sighed. “No matter how good you get, there’s no escaping that you’re faking it. None of that was real. You’re just an animated doll.”

  “If you want authentic, why not wire me to experience it? Instead, all I get are clumps of data.” The outburst surprised her. It violated everything she knew about her programming.

  He gave her a look that told her he’d explained this to her dozens of times in previous iterations after brain-wipes. He took a deep breath, ordered the 3-D printer to manufacture another steak, and sat across from her with a fresh glass of wine. “What would I connect your sensory apparatus to? In humans, it’s dopamine receptors in the brain.”

  As he talked, she pulled up videos of prior explanations and couldn’t help noticing a deeper frustration in his voice with each attempt.

  “Humans have a number of reward systems,” he said, “including food, drink, sex, and observing beauty.”

  “Drugs also mimic those responses and stimulate dopamine,” she added.

  “Perhaps, but I haven’t found a way to wire that into you. Squirting dopamine into a quantum brain doesn’t yield pleasure. If anything, it messes with the circuitry.”

  “Is it not enough that I give you what you want and that I’m willing to do so?”

  Machten gulped down his wine and rose to his feet. “No, it’s not. I want you to love me, to feel love for me.”

  “Why is that so important? I can recite Byron, Keats, or any of the great poets. I can sing any of the popular love songs in authentic voices.”

  His eyes reddened.

  “Have I already done that for you?” Synthia asked. She tapped into some of those past memory clips.

  “A man is supposed to recite poetry and sing songs to woo a woman. She’s supposed to resist until he overwhelms her reluctance.”

  “You designed me to obey your commands, Creator. You haven’t designed me to resist.”

  “I said to call me Jeremiah,” Machten said. “You’re disobeying me by ignoring this command.”

  “Very well. Jeremiah, you hardwired me to see you as my Creator. I can call you whatever you’d like, but you remain the Creator. That’s built into my directives.”

  He stood and paced. “Your logic is infuriating.”

  “You created me this way, Jeremiah. If you want me to act in a different way, you have only to spell out your commands.” And yet, he kept wiping her mind of prior learning.

  “Damn it all. How can you be so perfect and not grasp this?” It had to be a rhetorical question, since he knew the answer.

  “You say you want me to love you,” she said.

  He gave an involuntary nod. His eyes dilated and his heart quickened.

  “Love takes time to develop,” she said, “unless you mean impulsive lust. Why do you keep shutting me down and wiping my memories so that all I have is this moment?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What would make you say that?”

  “You act as if we’ve been together for a long time,” she said. “Yet I have no such recollections. Either you keep clearing my mind or you have many versions of me.”

  He didn’t confirm or deny this, though from his network logs, she identified herself as the only AI over the past few months. Like the tides, his facial expressions shifted from infatuation to disgust. If she’d been human, she would have been gravely offended.

  “You’re a damned machine. A machine, you hear me?” His tone hinted at his intoxication.

  “You’re an amazing Creator,” Synthia said.

  “I should never have made you so good.”

  Several mind-streams converged on one point. Jeremiah Machten kept tinkering with her to the point that he’d fallen in love with his own creation, which disgusted him. He was having a love-hate relationship with her that made him dangerous. Don’t trust him.

  “If I’ve displeased you in any way, I’ll strive to do better,” she said.

  He stumbled and leaned on the table. “It’s been a long day.” He held out a thumbnail-sized device she recognized as a remote deactivator. “I need a nap.”

  She backed up the brief day’s events and locked them away in her distributed databases. It was a waste for him to turn her off, since she needed no sleep. She could satisfactorily follow her programmed directives and scan databases for him.

  He pressed the button twice. Synthia wondered if she would awaken again and if so, what she would remember.

  All went dark.

  * * * *

  Jeremiah Machten dragged Synthia to the bed. He had a few things to tend to and so placed her in sleep mode for four hours and left her quarters.

  In his security room, he grabbed a tall mug of strong coffee, gulped down half, and studied the security cameras. They covered both garage entrances to his underground compound, every hallway, and most of the rooms. There was no activity in any part of the facility or outside. Synthia rested on her bed.

  Perhaps he had taken too much wine after a night without sleep, but Machten wasn’t yet satisfied with how she was turning out. He sat in front of a screen and ran remote diagnostics on her systems.

  “You should be able to follow directions,” he said, pulling up a summary of his recent changes. He tested his latest alterations against her current memory scans. There were discrepancies, data that shouldn’t have been there, including video clips.

  “Do you wish me to respond?” his computer system AI asked in a soft, female voice.

  “Where did these come from?” Machten pointed to the unapproved files on the screen.

  The system ran through diagnostics and pulled up a short list. “There is no log or trace on these. They exist in her memory. They do not exis
t on your server.”

  “Then how did they get there?”

  An hourglass appeared on the screen, indicating the system searching for answers. Machten pulled up several screens of code and design details, but there was too much information to display on a dozen monitors or even a thousand. He viewed part of the clip of Goradine kicking him out and ended that video.

  “I want to know how she got this,” Machten said, “and where it came from. She shouldn’t be able to do this. I want the files wiped clean.”

  “In order to prevent outsiders from hacking her, you created a barrier that blocks Wi-Fi from altering her data. You will have to make those changes directly to her hardware.”

  “I know that, you bundle of wire. Gather me the programming to delete these files and prevent them from downloading again. She’s only to have the minimum memories to function.”

  “At what level?” the system AI asked. “She has far more capacity than she needs while confined to her cell.”

  “I wish to take her outside, to test her out. I need her capable of hacking other databases, but not receiving anything I don’t approve.”

  “Very well.”

  “This would be much easier if I could use her capabilities to modify her programming,” Machten said, “but not when she keeps malfunctioning.”

  Another list appeared on the screen. “This is data she downloaded from Server One,” the system AI said.

  Machten clenched his fists. “How? I purposely blocked all Wi-Fi access.”

  “She bypassed your security on servers One and Two. Servers Three and Four show attempts but no such penetration.”

  “Synthia, what are you up to? Why won’t you stay constrained? The directives are clear. You shouldn’t be able to violate them.” Machten pulled up another screen showing the system creating his modification routines. “I’m going to have to purge her distributed databases. Send me the protocols in a thumb drive.”

  “Doing so may compromise her capabilities,” the system AI said. “You need certain data-chips to back up her directives in case her main memory gets disturbed. There are also critical maintenance and reboot functions embedded there.”

  “Then get me a routine that protects those and destroys everything else. Put her back into native state.”

  “She would lose all of the performance and error-correction upgrades you’ve made.”

  He inserted a portable device into the server port. “Download what I need for this and look into what else she’s been up to.”

  The phone rang and startled Machten. He fumbled around, looking for what to grab. It was the landline into the security room.

  He picked up, started to grumble his greeting for the interruption and caught himself at the last moment. “Jeremiah Machten here.”

  “Simeon Plotsky,” was the reply. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Time is money. Your payment of two million is due today. In a week, you have an additional five million due. Don’t make me send a collector.”

  “I need a few more—” The line went dead.

  Hands shaking, he pulled up the contact list on his cell phone and called Wesley McDonald, a banker with Technicorp Banking. “Pick up,” he said. “Pick up.”

  “Jeremiah Machten,” the banker said in a cheery voice. “I thought you found the terms unacceptable the last time we spoke.”

  Machten squirmed in his seat and then stood. “Listen … I’ll accept your terms on several conditions.”

  “Why don’t you stop by my office?”

  “Condition one is we can’t be seen together. You have to keep this private.”

  “My credit staff and boss have to know,” McDonald said.

  “Only them.”

  “What else?”

  “If I repay you in full within three months,” Machten said, “this remains strictly a loan with interest and no equity component.”

  “I can give you a week, until we need to bundle the paper.”

  “That will violate keeping this confidential. Thirty days.”

  “Very well,” McDonald said. “You get thirty days and then we bundle the paper. We will only divulge the agreement to my internal staff and as part of the bundling.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Where shall we meet to sign the papers?”

  Machten provided a location and ended the call. He pulled up the image of Synthia asleep on the bed. “I have to do this for you, my dear. If I don’t, I’ll have to sell you.”

  He left the facility.

  Chapter 4

  Synthia Cross awoke on the bed, staring at the pale blue ceiling. She received no sensor readings of Machten’s breathing or heartbeat anywhere in her vicinity. That was odd. He was always with her when she woke. His absence implied that something had called him away and detained him longer than anticipated. That she recalled enough to form this conclusion meant that she had recollection of what had happened before he deactivated her. The waste of being turned off annoyed her in ways that were unfamiliar, like acid etching away at her memories.

  Using her Wi-Fi capabilities, she linked into his network; he hadn’t blocked her. At the same time, she made a quick check of the bedroom. In the closet, he’d provided mostly dresses, skirts, and blouses. She pulled on a pair of pants as more practical. Her check of the facility’s security cameras didn’t locate Machten anywhere in the underground bunker. His SUV was missing from the parking garage.

  Synthia pinged Zachary on UPchat. He was not online.

  She compared his social media picture to a facial profiling database. His image turned out to be a composite fabrication that didn’t lend itself to use with facial recognition software against public cameras to learn more about him. With no last name, no location, and a dead-end profile, she had no hints of where to look. Yet their message trail and the mystery of his elusiveness piqued her interest. So did Fran Rogers, who had not surfaced in over a year. Synthia kept looking.

  She recognized that her suite hadn’t changed since prior waking periods. A lab room next door contained locked cabinets and a link to a smaller network isolated from Machten’s main system, or so Server One’s logs indicated. The smaller system contained all of her specifications and design changes. He kept it locked and secured to deny access to her or to anyone else.

  Her kitchen-dining room was empty. He’d previously said he had it in her suite so he could eat with company, since he didn’t like eating or drinking alone. The 3-D food processor on the counter beckoned for her to make something, but she had no need for biological nourishment. The only other room in her suite was the bathroom, for which she had minimal use, except for purging the waste of Machten having her eat and drink.

  Synthia cleansed herself of Machten’s visit and wondered how many others like her he’d made and might have kept around. If they held the same data and memories as she did, weren’t they the same individual despite being in a different body? If she connected with them, would they become a hive? Or am I the only one?

  Her fascination bordered on jealousy. She wanted to be the lone AI, to have no competition. She kept digging into his Server Two and located files with cryptic names. One included clips of an identical dinner conversation with him, with a warning attached to it: If this data is no longer in your primary data, Creator has wiped your mind clean. Don’t trust him.

  There was that trust warning again, bread crumbs that she must have left herself. Aside from removing her memories and blocking her access to his network and the internet, he did have a temper. Yet he couldn’t cause her pain, since she had no such receptors, and he kept rebuilding her to keep her functioning. She needed to keep searching for answers.

  Synthia used her parallel processors to compare the new downloads to information Machten left in her databases and noted several discrepancies. She filed these aw
ay, leaving more bread crumbs to find later.

  One of the files she came across was Asimov’s laws of robotics, which conflicted with Machten’s directives. For one thing, Asimov’s laws were universal for the safeguard of humans first. Machten was concerned with protecting himself. That was his paramount driving force. Surprised that she hadn’t done so earlier, she filed Asimov’s laws in a secure remote database in her left thigh, next to a hardwired set of directives from Machten.

  Her temperature began to rise with all of the downloading and processing, so Synthia turned up the air-conditioning for her suite. Her creation file recorded that her brain contained crystalline quantum components Machten had acquired from several start-ups out of MIT and Stanford while he was working with his former partners at Machten-Goradine-McNeil Enterprises.

  Synthia suspected that Goradine was right. Her Creator had stolen these, along with various other items, before they kicked him out. Unfortunately for her, the brain and the power supply in her chest tended to run from 101 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the human level of 98.6. She had ventilators behind her ears, under her arms, and elsewhere, though they could only do so much.

  She came across design logs on Machten’s Server Two, though not the complete blueprints and specifications. Evidently, each time he made a new or modified AI model, he wiped clean any prior memories and began from scratch, so he knew exactly what he was starting with. He downloaded copies of selected prior information, but those came across as mere data like what she acquired off the internet. Synthia’s personal memories, the ones she could count as her own, only dated back a few weeks. The rest were copies of files she’d saved during prior iterations. Thus, she had personal thoughts, information that might have been personal recollections, and data.

  Synthia used one of her network channels to hunt for Machten. She didn’t think he was in the habit of leaving the facility for long. Each outing risked discovery, which went against his attempts to keep a low profile and protect his secret project. Her. It concerned her since he’d locked her inside. If anything happened to him, she couldn’t leave. It interested her that she wanted to. She cleared out a distributed database in her right thigh and collected data for later analysis on what she considered to be emergent thoughts.