All in all, his seventy-odd years had been good ones. Children would have been nice, but sometimes this was not meant to be. Willie had once had a good woman, two of them, in fact, but as with many things that time had passed. He had never expected to end up in a seniors home when he got old, since there were no such things in his community back when he was young. Elders stayed with their kin. That was the way. But ways change.
Finally finding the page he was looking for, he laid the book down on his lap, open.
Voices in the hallway again.
“Do you hear what’s happening in Toronto and Ottawa? People are holding these welcoming parties! For the aliens! All around the world, too. People are saying that when they get here, maybe they can cure cancer, fix global warming, all sorts of stuff like that. It’s a new age, they say!”
Again, Willie smiled at Angela’s enthusiasm. It would be a new age, for sure. He would definitely miss that woman… but then again, he would quite probably be dead himself. Perhaps the best way to phrase it was that he would feel sorry for her. It meant nothing that an old, paralyzed man like himself was leaving this world. His time was behind him. It would be no great loss. But Angela, barely over thirty, with three kids and a husband who loved her… that grieved him.
The old man read the quotation in the book to himself. A long time ago, he had underlined it. It had taken him a decade to truly understand what it meant. It was a quote about forgetting that had been forgotten. Memory can truly be short.
For the last time, the old man read the line out loud. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Willie Whitefish closed the book, nodding his head solemnly.
He hated it when white people were right.
I Am… Am I
I am…
I am where…
I am who…
I am here…
I am…
It’s odd that something as innocuous as a man forgetting his keys was the beginning of something so amazing. A simple act of forgetfulness, something so human, precipitated events that would cause people to question the nature of humanity.
It was early in the evening when the door to the computer sciences division opened suddenly and a tall, slightly overweight man rushed in. Professor Mark King had forgotten his keys once again. Many of his co-workers considered the rapid exit, then entrance, and finally exit again practically a tradition in the building with the huge FUTUREVISION sign atop the roof.
As quickly as possible, the man checked all the usual places around the lab: by the coffee maker, near the photocopier/printer, on his desk and even on the bookshelf. This was becoming far too common an occurrence, he felt—maybe three times a week now. Security always smiled, knowing exactly what was going on. One of his labmates had suggested using a bowl near the door as a common receptacle for everybody’s keys and whatnot. It never really caught on. Regardless, at present King’s keys were still missing.
“Where the hell did I leave them?” he muttered to himself.
It was embarrassing: a man with two master’s degrees and a PhD perpetually searching for Honda Element keys. He was dangerously close to becoming the clichéd absentminded professor.
King stopped in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, reviewed his day in the lab and one by one eliminated all the places he had already searched. Like an illuminated flash card in the dark, it struck him. “The Matrix room!” he exclaimed.
It was called that because that was where most of the lab’s cutting-edge work was being done in the field of artificial intelligence. Shortly before King’s day ended, he had inputted a new algorithm into the memory case. Just a shot in the dark, as he explained it to his colleagues. Most of his work was tedious programming and theory calculation, but occasionally, when the stars were right and his neurons were firing, he came up with a more imaginative idea. This one dealt with the progression of mathematical calculation to mathematical theory to just theory. There had been a thousand variations of this type of exploration before, so King wasn’t expecting much to happen. Still, where would they be if Columbus hadn’t pushed the fifteenth-century envelope a little farther than his predecessors? Most people expected the Italian seaman freelancing for the Spanish Crown to be unsuccessful, disappearing beyond that far horizon. And look what happened. Long shots do occasionally come through.
King had the keys in his hands and was turning back to the door, already late to meet his wife, Aruna, for dinner, when something on the screen of the monitoring computer caught his eye. It hadn’t been there when he left, and he was the last to leave the lab. According to protocol, the professor had left the screen blank, awaiting any results that might arise from his new algorithm.
On the screen in a simple font was the statement “I am…”
It was most peculiar. King read the message half a dozen times, trying to figure out what those two words meant. It seemed a bit esoteric, he thought, for most of the people who worked in the office. Volumes of practically indecipherable computer code were the usual end product of the day.
He sat down in the chair nearest the screen, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, unsure what to do. Was it a joke, maybe from the cleaning staff? But they weren’t due in the lab for another hour. Some corrupted data leaking out of the mainframe? With all the state-of-the-art technology in this room, that was highly unlikely. “I am…” could not have been sent by anybody outside the office, as the computer and room were isolated from the outside world for a number of security reasons. So, what then?
The cursor continued to flash, as if expecting a response. Feeling a bit silly, King started typing. At first he didn’t know what to say, then he chose the obvious.
“Hello.”
Why he typed that, King wasn’t sure, but one thing he was sure about was that tomorrow he’d get those hacker boys in security to track down who or what had done this. Only those with special clearance had the authority to—
“Hello” appeared below King’s greeting. What had been mildly peculiar was now even more peculiar. Maybe there was a malfunction of some sort that had repeated his original salutation. That was the logical deduction. King’s wife—who was waiting for him in a restaurant twenty minutes away—loved mysteries, usually in the books she read, but King the scientist did not. Feeling a little annoyed, he stabbed at the keyboard once more. “Who is this?”
Instantly a response came. “Me.”
“Very funny,” King said to himself. He was sure it was a kid, though he didn’t know how anybody could manage to find their way into the highly secure system in front of him.
“Who is me?” he typed, his annoyance growing.
“I don’t know. Who are you?”
For a moment, King couldn’t tell whether the mysterious communicator was responding to his questionable grammar or simply asking who King was. Knowing his wife had little tolerance for tardiness, he decided to wrestle with this problem tomorrow. The program he was working on had obviously been corrupted. No point in dancing this silly little dance anymore. Further annoyed, King typed his response with a certain amount of finality.
“It doesn’t matter. Whoever this is, is in a lot of trouble. You have tainted several days’ programming work. The authorities will be contacted, and they will track you down. However good you are, we have people here who are better.”
Automatically, the professor switched from a contemporary means of communication to a rather archaic form. He wrote a note on a pad to remind himself to have security look into this intrusion further. He’d have to call Aruna once he got into the car. He was practically out the lab door when he realized he’d forgotten his keys again. Grumbling at his own ineptitude, King once again entered the Matrix room, grabbed his keys and gripped them tight. Then he saw the response to his final message.
“Okay. Do you think they will be able to tell me who I am?”
Becoming a successful scientist in any field requires several mental attributes to work in combination. There is the matter of sheer intelligence, then deductive ability, as well as stubbornness and a certain amount of instinct. At this moment, King’s instinct was telling him this was no kid hacker. Damn the consequences, his wife would have to wait.
Several kilometres away, Dr. Gayle Chambers was attending to her herb garden. So much cerebral and technical work at the lab left her little time for her other passion. Her love of the earth, the simplicity of clean water and the benefits of good fertilizer made for a relaxing evening. Spread around the outside of her small house in the suburbs was an array of flowers, plants and vegetables. She was unpartisan in her appreciation of botany. There was even a patch of wild grasses and weeds hiding in the back next to the shed, so as to avoid upsetting her rather horticulturally conformist neighbours. That was about as rebellious as she got. On her knees, hands engulfed in olive-coloured gardening gloves, Chambers was cursing the condition of her chives. So much for the concept of perennials. The little herbal outcropping looked like it was on its last legs… or roots, as the case may be.
In her right pocket, she felt more than heard her cell ring. She wondered if it was Roger calling. They’d gone on a few dates but it was obvious that he was holding back. Why, she wasn’t sure, and her mind kept drifting back to university, when all her female classmates used to say that the best way to get rid of a man was to tell him you were going for your PhD. It seemed few things intimidated a man and sent him running more than a woman seeking the highest form of conventional education. That was eleven years ago, and she was now a full-fledged doctor of science. That theory was proving to be annoyingly accurate. It seems a doctorate in computer science, specializing in ethical applications, was definitely not as impressive as large breasts. But she had her plants, and that was more than a lot of women had.
“Hello,” she said, holding the phone delicately with her fingertips, wary of the dirt on her gloves. “Chambers here.”
“Gayle, it’s Mark. Can you come down to the lab immediately?”
It figured Mark King was still at the lab. It was amazing the patience his wife had.
“Mark, it’s almost eight o’clock. I left there nearly two hours ago. I am not going to drop everything and go rushing back. I’m busy. I thought you were having dinner with your wife.” For once, she almost added.
She could hear King breathing hard, as if he were excited, which in itself was odd. King rarely got excited. “You really should get down here and see this.”
“See what?”
“The Matrix project. I think something has happened. I mean, something amazing.”
Getting up off her stiff knees, Chambers took the gloves off her hands. It looked like this was going to be a longer conversation than she had expected.
“Mark, what are you talking about?”
“I think… It looks… Oh Christ, I don’t know, but… It might be conscious.”
Chambers was about to ask who or what was conscious, but as she opened her mouth, all the pieces her colleague had mentioned came together in her mind, forming a startling possibility. The only thing Mark King could be talking about being conscious in the Matrix room was the SDDPP, the Self-Directing Data Processing Project. This was FUTUREVISION’s most recent foray into developing rudimentary automated intelligence. Obviously not intelligence on a human level but hopefully something a little lower down the evolutionary scale. If Darwin thought all complex life evolved from simpler models, so could AI.
The plan was for the SDDPP to develop the same perceptions and cognitive capacities as insects, and developing and fine-tuning the program would gradually increase the intelligence up to amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, apes and, who knows, maybe humans. The main problem was that once you eliminated the need to reproduce and find something to eat, there wasn’t much left to encourage the development of consciousness or intelligence. But that kind of success was not expected to happen for years, more likely decades. So why was Mark implying the SDDPP was conscious? Caterpillars and beetles could hardly be called conscious.
Chambers struggled for words. “That’s… that’s not possible… You must…”
“I know. I know. But I’m here looking at something on the screen. It wants to know who it is. That sounds pretty damn conscious to me.”
Pretty sophisticated for a beetle, Chambers thought.
“Maybe it’s something left over from Gary. This reeks of his stupid sense of humour.”
Gary Milne was a lab technician who had been fired the month before. Thinking everybody in the lab took their work too seriously, he developed a bad habit of pulling practical jokes. Porn sites suddenly popped up and were sent to various vice-presidents, mysterious messages arrived from cars in the parking lot saying they were running off with a tractor, and weeks of work disappeared, producing numerous near heart attacks, then reappeared several hours later. It took security three days to track it all back to Gary’s terminal, but that was what they were paid a lot of money to do. The end result being no more Gary Milne.
“Maybe he left a bug hidden somewhere.”
She could almost hear her associate shaking his head over the phone. “No, security went over all the computers three times after he left. They were clean. Can you come down, Gayle? I’d really like you to take a look at this.” There was a pleading tone in his voice.
Chambers was tempted to put it off until tomorrow—after all, there was still the matter of her chives—but something about King’s excitement intrigued her. The chives could wait.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Thirty-four minutes later, she entered the lab, and then the Matrix room. She knew she still smelled of her agricultural pursuits, but that’s what you get when you call someone in to work at this time of night.
Leaning over the console, the visibly unnerved scientist turned to her as she entered the room. “Good, you’re here.”
“This better be good.” She looked at her watch. “God, I’ll have to be here again in twelve hours. So show me your self-aware beetle.”
“No beetle. Something more. I’m sure of it. Take a look and tell me what you think.”
He pointed to the screen and Chambers moved closer, settling into the chair. What was on the screen was exactly what King had told her over the phone. Simple but primal questions about existence. There had to be a logical explanation.
“I haven’t responded to its query yet. I thought I should wait for you. This is more your area of expertise. So… what do you think?”
Chambers studied the screen, mulling over possibilities. “I don’t know. There’s not really enough data to make a decent hypothesis. So let’s go exploring.”
Before he could respond, Chambers was already sticking her big toe into the computerized ocean that lay beyond her keyboard.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” King was growing increasingly nervous. He was just a systems analyst and programmer, granted of the highest quality, but decisions like this were usually made by people with more expensive ties. “I mean…”
“There. Let’s see what happens.”
He looked over her shoulder to see what she had typed. It read, “Who are you?”
The answer came back almost instantaneously. “I am… me.”
Chambers decided to play the game a bit further. “Who is me?”
“I am.”
Now frustrated, she rolled away from the computer. “Somebody is playing games with us. Or I am talking to a five-year-old.”
“Should we call somebody?”
For someone who had managed to navigate the shoals of academia, woo and marry a woman of substantial qualities and become one of the leading research scientists at FUTUREVISION, the man had a remarkably small set of testicles. There were times Chambers thought hers were bigge
r.
“I still think it’s somebody playing around with us.” She began to type again. “Define ‘me.’” Let’s see what it does with that, she thought. Again, the response was immediate.
“I don’t know. ‘Me’ is everything. Except you. Who are you?”
“I am Dr. Gayle Chambers.”
“What is Dr. Gayle Chambers? Is that your ‘me’?”
“Yes!” Professor King had switched from nervousness to excitement. “Do you see it? The line of progression, of logic. Rudimentary, yes, but it’s there. Right? Right? Am I right?”
My God, Chambers thought, just maybe… it is conscious, and it’s trying to measure itself and us by what little it is aware of. More amazingly, could this hovering, nervous man behind her conceivably be right? Had they somehow managed to create some form of digitized intelligence? Was that even possible? She had devoted her life to the black-and-white rationality of computer research, but those simple shades were rapidly becoming colourized. Plants were so much simpler. Her associate’s excitement was contagious.
“Yes. Dr. Gayle Chambers is me… my me.”
This time, there was a full-second delay before she saw the response. “It is good to meet you, Dr. Chambers.”
Holy shit, she thought. Whatever this thing is, it’s growing and learning. Still, King could still be wrong about it being conscious. But what if he wasn’t? Her chives might never survive.
By the end of that pivotal night, several things had happened. The forgotten Aruna had given up drinking glasses of water at the restaurant and returned home to wait angrily for her negligent husband. By two in the morning, her anger had turned to worry at his continued absence. No answer on his cellphone prompted her to drive to the only place he would be—the lab. The switchboard at FUTUREVISION was shut down for the night, and it took a lot of arguing to convince the security guard of who she was and why she was there. And lo and behold, there was her husband, shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Chambers, huddled over some computer.
Take Us to Your Chief Page 4