But she had always admired Abigail Canivon’s story and followed her career with interest. Plus, Sagan was a veritable playground for someone like her; she’d probably drop another fifteen thousand credits by the time she departed.
Founded by a consortium of wealthy entrepreneurs from the biomedical industry, the colony was devoted almost entirely to research and development in cybernetics, biosynthetics, the hardware that interacted with them and other related fields furthering the advancement of human capabilities.
Canivon had spent thirty years as a doctor in the Alliance and was credited with numerous improvements to the technology humans carried inside their bodies. Her research had lessened organic/synthetic conflicts and rejections and increased nervous system interconnectivity. The woman rose to the level of Chairman of the Council on Biosynthetics Ethics and Policy, then told the Alliance government to go screw itself and moved to Sagan to run the Druyan Institute’s Cybernetic Research Center.
In short, Canivon displayed the kind of gumption Alex admired. Rumor was the woman understood quantum language so well she dreamed in it, but seeing as she wasn’t known for being particularly gregarious Alex wasn’t sure how anyone would actually know.
“Ms. Solovy? Dr. Canivon will see you now.” Finally. She pushed off the wall and crossed the large atrium to the office door.
The spacious room was an office only in the sense that it included a desk. Refreshingly open, it featured a high ceiling and windows looking out on the meandering bay beyond. Most of the space was filled by testing tables and equipment, cybernetic components mid-development, human body constructs sliced open and shelves stocked with tools of the trade.
Abigail Canivon met her at the door and extended a slender, almost delicate hand in greeting. “Ms. Solovy, welcome to the Institute.”
“Thank you. It’s an honor to meet you. You can call me Alex.”
The woman wore a coolly formal expression. Gene therapy had bestowed upon her a visage of timeless beauty; she didn’t strive to appear young, but rather old enough to have gained proper experience and shrewdness. Gold-tinged ginger hair swept into a low knot then fell loose in a tail down her back. Hazel eyes sparked with intelligence and a striking intensity, as if she was analyzing Alex as they stood there. Which she presumably was.
“Have a seat, and we can discuss what you’re interested in.” She circled around behind the desk. “You should know I don’t usually do private consultations. You have connections—and I’m not referring to your mother, though I won’t deny your surname played a small role in getting you inside this office.”
Alex smiled thinly. “And here I thought it was the personal request from the CEO of Pacifica Aerodynamics and Ͻ118,000.”
“Also factors. So, you want to be able to talk to your ship. Why not simply install a VI?”
“A VI isn’t my ship. It’s simply another layer separating me from the information I need. And I don’t just want to talk to it. I want to control it without being required to access a panel or run for the cockpit. Dr. Canivon, I’m not a tourist. I know precisely what I need and why I need it. I came to you because you’re the best, and because I like your style. For those reasons, and since you have no reason to take my word that I’m not a tourist, I’m willing to tolerate a little patronizing. But only a little.”
To her surprise the woman laughed. “Point taken. You have your systems’ transmission codes?”
Alex handed over a crystal disk. “There are seven distinct systems. The core OS is minimal, and for the most part I’ll be accessing individual components. My existing cybernetic and eVi specs are on the disk as well.”
“Excellent. Something tells me you’ll wish to observe the code preparation?” At Alex’s nod she opened a door in the back wall. “Come with me then.”
Alex let her gaze wander around what turned out to be the real lab while Dr. Canivon loaded the disk in an input port connected to a workstation. In principle a large room, in practice the space was shrunk considerably by rows upon rows of hardware lining the walls behind alumina glass barriers.
The rear quarter of the room consisted of dual spiral towers of display panels, a third of which were active. To the left of the displays stood an interactive framed panel three meters wide and again as tall. A medical cot disguised as a divan rested along the left wall with biomedical equipment hanging at either end.
“Does the Artificial do all the coding?”
Dr. Canivon glanced over. “No. We have robust ware specifically designed for this type of work, though Valkyrie did assist in the ware’s development.”
“Valkyrie?”
“She named herself. I didn’t argue.”
Alex knew she was supposed to be paying attention to what Canivon was doing but instead found herself wandering down to the display towers. The first one she came to was transmitting a multi-vector optimization simulation for atmospheric seeding. Terraforming.
“Fully licensed, if that’s what you’re wondering. Official research equipment of the Institute.”
“I assumed.” Her focus drifted to the next active panel. The Artificial appeared to be in the process of writing a dissertation on radical empiricism as contrasted to reductionism. She scanned the text with mild interest.
“She’s a fan of William James.”
“I don’t blame it.” She realized Dr. Canivon had approached to stand beside her holding an injector. “While the code for your eVi is written I’m going to inject a nanobot solution into your cybernetics input. It will strengthen the fibers in your fingertips so they can receive the incoming data and direct it properly.”
She drew her hair over her shoulder and exposed the base of her neck. There was a sensation of pressure for several seconds, followed by a slight achiness. Her glyphs activated of their own accord, rippling in steady pulses down the length of her arm.
“All done. It takes several hours for the nanobots to do their job, but we can flash the ware as soon it’s ready, which should be in about ten minutes.” Canivon eyed her guardedly. “While we wait, would you like to meet her?”
“Her? You mean the Arti—Valkyrie?” Alex motioned in the direction of the hardware banks behind the glass.
“Yes. It’s up to you, but you seemed intrigued.”
“I admit I am a bit. Do I just…talk to it, or what?”
“You can. Or…” she went to a cabinet and retrieved a sleek neck wrap “…if you’re willing, a more intimate encounter?”
Alex considered the server racks, the spiraling displays and the neck wrap. “It isn’t going to take control of my mind, is it?”
“Not to worry. Buffers built into the interface prevent anything other than data and communication from passing through.”
Alex slipped the interface around her neck. “But absent the buffers, it could?”
The doctor pursed her lips. “It’s complicated. We can discuss it later if you’re interested. Close your eyes, it will be less disorienting.”
Alex breathed in, did as instructed and pressed the wrap firmly to engage the contact points.
Colors strobed in and out across her eyelids then solidified into exactly what she had been viewing before, yet not. She checked, and her eyes were still closed.
She scanned the area anew. Edges were hyper-precise and colors were enhanced to the point the scene felt…unnatural. She’d call it ‘artificial,’ but she had never been a fan of puns.
It is nice to meet you, Alex Solovy.
She jumped. The voice was in her head but not like a pulse or any other type of communication. It was in her head.
Not certain of the accepted etiquette, she spoke aloud—or thought she did. “Hello, Valkyrie. It’s nice to meet you as well. Did Dr. Canivon tell you who I am?”
She did not need to do so. I enjoy access to Abigail’s appointment schedule and ongoing projects. May I say I am sorry about your father’s death. His record indicates he was a heroic man.
“I….” Her father had died nineteen years ago, but
she imagined an Artificial didn’t view the passage of time in the same manner humans did. She wondered what an Artificial’s conception of ‘heroic’ might be. “Thank you. He was.”
You pilot a starship, yes? You appear to be an uncommonly successful scout and explorer.
The Artificial’s speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. “I just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space.”
But you are not ‘in’ space. You are in your starship and your starship is in space. It is not so different from being on a planet.
“Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea.”
Tell me then.
Alex jumped when a hand grasped her shoulder.
“Ms. Sol— Alex, we should probably get started.” Canivon’s voice sounded oddly disembodied, as if transmitted through a sound mixer. Alex held up a finger, requesting a final moment.
“Valkyrie, I’m afraid I need to go now. I had a lovely time talking with you, though.”
And I with you, Alex. Thank you for sharing some of your experiences with me. I believe I will be considering them for a significant period of time. Perhaps one day I will be able to see the stars as you do.
“I hope so. Goodbye, Valkyrie.”
Goodbye, Alex.
She carefully disconnected the interface and blinked to clear her vision. The scene was the same, yet at once both palpable and blanched.
She handed over the neck wrap. “How long were we talking?”
The woman returned the wrap to the cabinet. “Forty minutes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not. I suspected you might like her. She clearly likes you.”
“How do you know?”
“I was able to monitor the conversation on the panel over there. Don’t worry, I didn’t snoop too much. I only kept an eye out to make sure you were at ease with the interaction.” She directed Alex toward the divan. “This ware is fairly involved and requires a system reboot by your eVi, so you may as well be comfortable while it installs.”
Alex absently sat down, still trying to reorient herself in the ‘real’ world, and allowed Canivon to attach a far larger interface device to her neck. “Valkyrie came across surprisingly….”
“Human?”
“I was going to say sapient. Her thought processes give her away as non-human, but she is quite self-possessed and aware. More than that, she seems…whole.”
Canivon appeared to be warming to the prospect of discussing her favorite topic with an amenable audience. “You regarded me strangely when I did it, but you’re already calling Valkyrie ‘she.’”
“So I am.” Alex tried to relax in spite of the awkward contraption on her neck. “Do you believe she’s alive?”
Dr. Canivon slid a chair over to the divan and sat. “Oh, yes. I oversaw her assembly and programming and wrote most of her base code myself. I worked with her as we built her from the ground up, adding layer upon layer of referential routines, background databases and new neural nodes. I remember the day—the moment—she became something greater than the sum of her programming and hardware.
“There was this tone, this inflection in her voice. She told me she had decided she preferred the impressionistic art style to the expressionism rebellion it provoked. In her opinion, impressionist paintings conveyed life while their counterparts ‘expressed’ mostly anger. I was astounded, but thrilled.”
“Given that, do you think she deserves to be locked up so tightly?”
The woman sighed and settled deeper in the chair. “While not all are created equal, on this point I can generalize. Artificials are so many contradictions wound up together, they become a true enigma. Their minds can process information faster than we can develop it or even conceive of it and thus can exploit tremendous power. Yet more than anything they are like children: intensely curious, eager to learn, devouring every spec of data and working to place it in such a way as to help the world make sense…and also in their lack of understanding of consequences. Of danger.
“A child doesn’t understand what it means when you tell them an oven is too hot to touch until they touch it and find out for themselves. They don’t understand falling until they break a leg tumbling off a ledge. Most children learn these lessons without doing irreparable damage to themselves. Artificials have no way to learn them, not in the concrete, tangible way children do. And unfortunately until they do, unlike children, they aren’t merely a danger to themselves—they’re a danger to everyone.”
Alex flinched as her eVi switched off. In a microsecond it had returned, but the microsecond it vanished was a disconcerting one. “What do you think the solution is?”
The woman eyed her for a moment, then casually crossed one leg over the other. “One of my first projects for the Alliance was conducting a fresh post-mortem on the Artificial—they called it a Synnet back then—responsible for the Hong Kong Incident. As part of my post-doc I had developed stochastic forensic ware for use in defect analysis, and I was asked to apply it to the records of the Artificial’s processes during the event and determine if anything more could be learned.
“We’re all taught one of the contributing factors was that its highest directive was the preservation of human life, but it lacked sufficient instruction on how to proceed when some loss of life was unavoidable. The most intriguing artifact I found in my analysis was the unexpected result of that failing: guilt.”
Skeptical, Alex arched an eyebrow, then winced as the act tugged at the skin beneath the bulky interface. “You’re telling me the machine felt guilt?”
Her shoulders rose in a hint of a shrug. “It’s the only word I have to describe what I saw. Once the students began dying it devoted an increasing number of cycles to studying how the deaths had occurred and how they might have been prevented—what different branching decisions could have been taken to result in another outcome. But because of the holes in its programming those branching decisions only led to outcomes it also deemed unacceptable.
“By the time it was shut down it was burning 73% of its processes on fault analysis rather than on finding a solution for those still alive. It obsessed over its failure to the point of paralysis.”
“Guilt.”
Canivon nodded. “It’s a devastating, crippling emotion. Learning how to process it, internalize it and eventually move on from it is part of becoming an adult. The discovery got me to thinking. What if there was a way to allow Artificials to legitimately learn those kind of life lessons and the related coping skills without endangering others?”
“I don’t see how.”
She motioned for Alex to sit up, then gently removed the interface and set it on the small table nearby. “I’m working on a project. Are you familiar with neural imprints?”
“Somewhat. A complete functional neural and synaptic map of a human brain, coded by activity and containing markers of content, right? My understanding is researchers hope they’ll solve the adult cloning obstacles.”
“And possibly one day they will do so, but the technology isn’t there yet. I’m studying whether providing a neural imprint to an Artificial can enable it to learn life lessons which matter—emotional lessons such as guilt, heartbreak, love and empathy. Sacrifice and loss. It’s my hope this will give them wisdom and good judgment…because without those they are fundamentally incapable of making the correct choices for humanity. They don’t wish humans ill—they just don’t comprehend the universe the way we do.”
Alex frowned. “Giving them real human memories, the history of a life and the way a person thinks…. Do they effectively become the person?”
“Now that is the kind of question which keeps me up nights. I haven’t yet settled on an answer.” Perhaps deciding she had been too free with her words, Canivon notched her shoulders up and cleared her throat.
“We have the explicit consent of the people involved. This is medical research same as any other. The project is kept discreet for understandable rea
sons, but I assure you we’re following all the regulations and conventions.”
“I’m sure you are. I’m not judging.”
“To circle back around and answer your question, yes, for now I’m afraid it is best Artificials be constrained. But I do believe they have advanced to the point where they require only the slightest bit of guidance, of human perspective, to guarantee they stay on the proper path.”
51
PORTAL PRIME
UNCHARTED SPACE
* * *
Present Day
“YOU’RE RIGHT. I DO already know the answer. It’s the Artificials…together with us.”
Alex smiled at the alien in a manner which seemed to convey gratitude, even appreciation. It was the first time she had regarded the being with anything other than impatience or exasperation, and damned if Caleb knew why.
“Was that what all this was about? Forcing me to relive those memories? Showing me the mistakes of humans and Artificials alike?”
Not all of it. We merely ensured the necessary data lay within your sight. It was for you to both see and understand.
“But do you have any idea if it will actually work? Have you—your species—done this sort of thing in the past?”
He watched Alex while her focus was on the alien and tried to figure out what she could possibly be talking about. If what would work? What did she seem to think they needed to do with Artificials? She had given him no indication as to what precisely this ‘answer’ might be and without his eVi he had no way to communicate with her—to simply ask her.
We moved beyond such distinctions long ago, but yes. Furthermore, the human brain is singularly resilient, yet highly malleable. It will adapt.
Mnemosyne seemed to know what she had in mind as well.
He officially missed his eVi. The inability to communicate privately while they entertained the alien had been troublesome at times but never so much so as right now. He desperately wanted to pull her into a quiet corner and have a conversation…but it would wait.
He couldn’t say if they had gained the alien’s respect or trust, but at a minimum it had become comfortable around them. People—or aliens, he expected—who were comfortable were susceptible to divulging more than they intended, so he tried to concentrate on Mnemosyne.
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