by Ted Chiang
Meanwhile Ana calls over Jax, whose avatar is a neo-Victorian robot made of polished copper. Derek did a great job designing it, from the proportions of the limbs to the shape of the face; Ana thinks Jax is adorable. She likewise instantiates a selection of colored blocks with different shapes and directs Jax's attention to them.
"See the blocks, Jax? What shape is the blue one?"
"Tringle," says Jax.
"Good. What shape is the red one?"
"Squir."
"Good. What shape is the green one?"
"Circle."
"Good job, Jax." Ana gives him a food pellet, which he devours with enthusiasm.
"Jax smirt," says Jax.
"Lolly smirt too," Lolly volunteers.
Ana smiles and rubs them on the backs of their heads. "Yes, you're both very smart."
"Both smirt," says Jax.
"That's what I like to see," says Mahesh.
The release candidates are the final distillation of countless trials, the cream of the crop in terms of teachability. It's partly been a search for intelligence, but just as much it's been a search for temperament, the personality that won't frustrate customers. One element of that is the ability to play well with others. The development team has tried to reduce hierarchical behavior in the digients—Blue Gamma wants to sell a pet that owners won't need to continually reassert their dominance over—but that doesn't mean competition never arises. The digients love attention, and if one notices that Ana's giving praise to another, it tries to get in on the action. Most of the time this is fine, but whenever a digient seemed particularly resentful of its peers or of Ana, she would flag it and its specific genome would be excluded form the next generation. The process has felt a bit like breeding dogs, but more like working in an enormous test kitchen, baking endless batches of brownies and sampling each one's toothsomeness to find the perfect recipe.
The current instances of the release candidates will be kept as mascots, and copies will be available for purchase, but the expectation is that most people will buy younger digients, when they're still prelinguistic. Teaching your digient how to talk is half the fun; the mascots primarily serve as examples of the kind of results you can expect. Selling prelinguistic digients also allows them to be sold in non-English-speaking markets, even though Blue Gamma only had enough staff to raise mascots in English.
Ana sends Jax back to the playground, and calls over a panda-bear digient named Marco. She's about to start testing his shape recognition when Mahesh points to one corner of her video screen. "Hey, look at that." A couple of digients are on the hill next to the playground, rolling down the slope.
"Hey, cool," she says. "I've never seen them do that before." She walks her avatar over to the hill, with Jax and Marco following and then joining the rest of the digients. The first time Jax tries it, he stops rolling almost immediately, but after a little practice he's able to make it all the way down the hill. He does that a few times and then runs back to Ana.
"Ana watch?" asks Jax. "Jax spinning lying din!"
"Yes, I saw you! You were rolling down the hill!"
"Rilling din hill!"
"You did great." She rubs him on the back of his head again.
Jax runs back and resumes rolling. Lolly has also taken to the new activity with enthusiasm. Once she's reached the bottom of the hill, she keeps rolling across the flat ground, and then hits one of the playground bridges.
"Eeh, eeh, eeh," Lolly says. "Fuck."
Suddenly everyone's attention is on Lolly. "Where did she learn that?" asks Mahesh.
Ana toggles her microphone off, and walks her avatar over to comfort Lolly. "I don't know," she says. "She must have overheard it."
"Well, we can't sell a digient that says 'fuck.'"
"I'm on it," says Robyn. In a separate window on her own screen, she brings up the archives of their training sessions and runs a search on the audio track. "Looks like that's the first time any of the digients has said it. As for when any of us has said it..." The three of them watch as search results accumulate in the window; it appears that the culprit is Stefan, one of the trainers from Blue Gamma's Australian office. Blue Gamma has people working in Australia and England to train the digients when the West Coast office is closed; the digients don't need to sleep—or, more precisely, the integration processing that's their analog to sleep can be run at high speed—so they can be trained twenty-four hours a day.
They review the video footage of every time Stefan said the word 'fuck' during a training session. The most dramatic outburst is from three days ago; it's hard to be sure from watching his Data Earth avatar, but it sounds like he banged his knee against his desk. There are previous examples going weeks back, but none as loud or prolonged.
"What do you want us to do?" asks Robyn.
The tradeoff is apparent. This close to the release date, they don't have time to repeat weeks of training; should they gamble that the earlier utterances didn't make an impression on the digients? Mahesh thinks for a moment, and then decides. "Okay, roll them back three days and pick up from there."
"All of them?" says Ana. "Not just Lolly?"
"We can't take the chance; roll them all back. And I want a keyword flagger running on every training session from now on. The next time any of you curses, roll all of them back to the last checkpoint."
So the digients lose three days of experience. Including the first time they rolled down a hill.
Chapter 2
Blue Gamma's digients are a hit. Within the first year of release, a hundred thousand customers buy them and—more importantly—keep them running. Blue Gamma is gambling on a "razor and blades" business model, because just selling the digients wouldn't recoup the development costs; instead, the company charges customers each time they make digient food, and thus maintains a revenue stream for as long as the digients remain entertaining to their owners. And so far, the customers are finding them enormously entertaining, keeping them running all day long. It's common for customers to run the integration processing slowly, so the digients sleep the entire night, but some run it at high speed, so their digients are awake almost all the time; they share their digients in cooperation with people in other time zones, enabling them to mature more rapidly. Scores of digient playgrounds and daycare centers appear across Data Earth's social continents, and public-events calendars become dotted with group playdates, training classes, and talent contests. Some owners even bring their digients to the racing zones and let them ride in their vehicles. The virtual world acts a a global village for raising the digients, a social fabric into which a new category of pet is woven.
Half of the digients that Blue Gamma sells are one-offs, having a genome that's randomly generated while remaining within the parameters chosen during the breeding process. The other half are copies of the mascots, but the company takes pains to remind buyers that each copy will develop differently depending on its environment. As an illustration of this, Blue Gamma's sales team points to Marco and Polo, two of the company's mascots. Both are instances of the exact same genome and both have panda-bear avatars, but they have distinctly different personalities. Marco was two years old when Polo was instantiated, and Polo latched on to him as a kind of older brother; the two are inseparable now, but Marco is more outgoing while Polo is more cautious, and no one expects that Polo will turn into Marco any time soon.
Blue Gamma's mascots are the oldest Neuroblast digients running, and management originally hoped they would provide the test team with a preview of digient behavior before customers encountered it. In practice, it hasn't worked out that way; there's no way to predict how digients raised in a thousand different settings will turn out. In a very real sense, each digient owner is exploring new territory, and they turn to each other for help. Online forums for digient owners spring up, filled with anecdotes and discussion, advice sought and given.
Blue Gamma has a customer liaison whose job is to read the forums, but Derek someti
mes follows the forums on his own, after work. Sometimes customers talk about the digients' facial expressions, but even when they don't, Derek enjoys reading the anecdotes.
FROM: Zoe Armstrong
You won't believe what my Natasha did today! We were at the playground, and another digient hurt himself when he fell and was crying. Natasha gave him a hug to make him feel better, and I praised her to high heaven. Next thing I know, she pushes over another digient to make him cry, hugs him, and looks to me for praise!
The next post he reads attracts his attention:
FROM: Andrew Nguyen
Are some of the digients just not as smart as others? My digient doesn't respond to my commands the way I've seen other people's do.
He looks at the customer's public profile, and sees that the avatar is an endless shower of gold coins; the coins bounce off each other so that their trajectories suggest a highly abstract human figure. It's a dazzling piece of animation, but Derek suspects that the user hasn't read Blue Gamma's recommendations on raising the digients. He posts a reply:
FROM: Derek Brooks
When you're playing with your digient, are you wearing the avatar that's displayed in your profile? If you are, one problem is that your avatar doesn't have a face. Set your camera to track your facial expressions and wear an avatar that can display them, and you'll get a much better response from your digient.
He continues to browse. A minute later, he sees another question that he finds interesting:
FROM: Natalie Vance
My digient Coco is a Lolly, a year-and-a-half old. Lately she's been really naughty. Never does what I tell her to, driving me crazy. She was an absolute doll a few weeks ago, so I tried restoring her from a checkpoint, but it doesn't last. I've tried it twice now, and she still ends up with the same naughty attitude. (It took a little longer the second time, though.) Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm especially interested if you have a Lolly. How far back did you need to roll back to get around the problem?
There are several replies in which people suggest ways to isolate what specifically triggered Coco's change in mood and then work around it. He's about to post a reply of his own, to the effect that a digient is not a videogame that you replay until you get a perfect score, when he sees a response from Ana:
FROM: Ana Alvarado
I can sympathize, because I've seen the exact same thing. It's not specific to the Lollys, it's something that a lot of digients go through. You can keep trying to work around episodes like this, but I suspect they're unavoidable, and you'll just wind up spending months on a digient that never gets any older. Or you can push through the rough patch and have a more mature digient when you come out the other side.
He's heartened to read this. The practice of treating conscious beings as if they were toys is all too prevalent, and it doesn't just happen to pets. Derek once attended a holiday party at his brother-in-law's house, and there was a couple there with an eight-year-old clone. He felt sorry for the boy every time he looked at him. The child was a walking bundle of neuroses, the result of growing up as a monument to his father's narcissism. Even a digient deserves more respect than that.
He sends Ana a private message, thanking her for her post. Then he notices that the customer with the faceless avatar has responded to his suggestion.
FROM: Andrew Nguyen
The hell with that. I paid good money for this avatar, and I bought it specifically to wear when I'm on the social continents. I'm not going to stop wearing it for a digient.
Derek sighs; there's probably no chance of changing the man's mind, but hopefully he'll just suspend his digient rather than do a bad job of raising it. Blue Gamma has done what it can to minimize abuses; all the Neuroblast digients are equipped with pain circuit-breakers, which renders them immune to torture and thus unappealing to sadists. Unfortunately, there's no way to protect the digients from things like simple neglect.
• • •
Over the next year, other companies begin marketing their own genomic engines that support language learning. None of them can match Neuroblast's popularity on the Data Earth platform, although on other platforms the situation is different. On Next Dimension, the Origami engine becomes dominant; on Anywhere, it's an engine called Faberge. Fortunately, Blue Gamma has inspired companies to offer complementary products as well as competing ones.
Today half of the company's employees are crowded into the rececption area: managers, developers, testers, designers. They're here because a highly anticipated delivery has finally arrived; a shipping carton the size of a large suitcase sits in front of the receptionist's desk.
"Let's open it up," says Mahesh.
Ana and Robyn pull the tabs on the shipping carton, separating it into eight blocks of cellulose foam that hinge open. The resident of this custon sarcophagus is a robot body, newly arrived from the fabrication facility. The robot is humanoid in shape but small, less than three feet in height, to keep the inertia of its limbs low and allow it a moderate amount of agility. Its skin is glossy black and its head is disproportionately large, with a surface mostly occupied by a wraparound display screen.
The robot is from SaruMech Toys. A number of companies have sprung up to offer services targeting digient owners, but SaruMech is the first one with a hardware product instead of software. They've sent an example of their product to Blue Gamma in hopes of an endorsement.
"Which mascot got the high score?" asks Mahesh. He's referring to the agility trials. Last week all the digients were given test avatars whose weight distribution and range of motion matched the robot body's; they've spent some time each day wearing the avatars, practicing moving around in them. Yesterday Ana scored the digients on their ability to lay on their backs and then rise to their feet, ascend and descend stairs, balance on one leg and then the other. It was like conducting a sobriety test for a bunch of toddlers.
"That was Jax," says Ana.
"Okay, get him ready."
The receptionist relinquishes his workspace to Ana, who logs into Data Earth from there and calls Jax over. Jax is lucky because the test avatar isn't radically different from his own; it's bulkier, but the limbs and torso have similar proportions. By contrast, the digients who grew up wearing panda-bear and tiger-cub avatars have been having more difficulty.
Robyn checks the diagnostics panel on the robot. "Looks like we're good to go."
Ana opens a portal in the gymnasium onscreen, and gestures to Jax. "Okay Jax, come on in."
Onscreen, Jax steps through the portal, and in the reception area the little robot comes alive. The robot's head lights up to display Jax's face, turning the oversized head into a bubble helmet he's wearing. The design is a way of maintaining the resemblance to the digient's original avatar without having to produce custom bodies. Jax looks like a copper robot wearing a suit of obsidian armor.
Jax turns around to take in the entire room. "Wow." He stops turning. "Wow wow. Sound different. Wow wow wow."
"It's okay, Jax," says Ana. "Remember, I told you your voice might sound different in the outside world." The information packet from SaruMech had warned about this; a metal and plastic chassis conducts sound in a way that avatars in Data Earth don't.
Jax looks up to face Ana, and she marvels at the sight of him. She knows that he's not really in the body—Jax's code is still being run on the network, and this robot is just a fancy peripheral—but the illusion is perfect. And even after all their interactions in Data Earth, it's thrilling to have Jax stand in front of her and look her in the eye.
"Hi Jax," she says. "It's me, Ana."
"You wear different avatar," Jax says.
"In the outside world, we call it a 'body,' not an 'avatar.' And people don't switch their bodies here; we can only do that in Data Earth. Here we always wear the same body."
Jax pauses to consider that. "You look this always?"
"Well, I can wear different clothes. But yes, this is the way I look."
Jax walks over for a closer view, and Ana squats, elbows on knees, so they're almost the same height. Jax peers at her hands, and then her forearms; she's wearing short sleeves. He brings his head closer, and Ana can hear the faint whir of the robot's camera eyes refocusing. "Little hairs on your arms," he says.
She laughs; her avatar has arms as smooth as a baby's. "Yes, there are."
Jax brings up a hand and extends a thumb and forefinger to grab some of the hairs. He makes a couple of attempts, but like the pincers of a claw vending machine, his fingers keep slipping off. Then pinches her skin and pulls back.
"Ow. Jax, that hurts."
"Sorry." Jax scrutinizes Ana's face. "Little little holes all over your face."
Ana can feel the amusement of the others in the room. "Those are called 'pores.'" she says, standing. "We can talk about my skin later. Right now why don't you take a look around the room?"
Jax turns and slowly walks around the lobby, a miniature astronaut exploring an alien world. He notices the window looking out onto the parking lot, and heads toward it.
Afternoon sunlight slants through the glass. Jax steps into the sunbeam, and abruptly backs out of it. "What that?"
"That's the sun. It's just like the one in Data Earth."
Jax cautiously steps into the light again. "Not like. This sun bright bright bright."
"That's true."
"Sun not need be bright bright bright."
Ana laughs. "I suppose you're right."
Jax walks back over to her and looks at the fabric of her pants. Tentatively, she rubs the back of his head. The tactile sensors in the robot body are obviously working, because Jax leans into her hand; she can feel the weight of him, the dynamic resistance of his actuators. Then Jax hugs her around her thighs.
"Can I keep him?" she says to the others. "He followed me home."
Everyone laughs. "You say that now," says Mahesh, "but wait until he flushes your hand towels down the toilet."