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“Excited, then?” pressed Jamal. “Not every day you get to meet someone who changed the world.”
“I’m honored he invited us to dinner,” Nakamura said. “But I never get overly anxious about meeting a colleague.”
“You’re just as big a fan of his work as we are, you’re just too proud to admit it,” Reggie teased.
“I respect Doctor Kaufman too much to treat him like a celebrity,” she said stiffly.
C thought back to meeting Jamal. That was the closest it had come to something like nervousness or excitement. For one ten-thousandth of a second it had thought it might melt a diode with the excess energy suddenly running through it. It had wanted to be perfectly attentive, but had foolishly rerouted most of its battery reserves to the camera and speaker, wanting to make sure it captured every instant with perfect clarity.
That must be what meeting Dr. Kaufman would be like for these three: unexpected surges, possible overloads, higher chance of malfunction.
Reggie shifted again, possibly flinging his leg out over the empty length of the rental car’s backseat. Nakamura had insisted on driving, and Jamal had the longest legs, which relegated Reggie to the rear. Just as C didn’t mind a back pocket, so Reggie was content with the backseat.
Another shift, and a sudden glare of light temporarily whited out C’s camera. It was free of the pocket, and that gave it a funny new sensation: relief.
Perhaps it had minded being sat on, just a bit.
“You okay, C?” Reggie asked.
“Yes,” it answered. Angled up at Reggie’s face, it did its best not to count the man’s nose hairs. Reggie found that off-putting, especially when C reported on it.
“Ready to interface with one of the most advanced AIs on the planet?” Jamal asked over his shoulder.
Reggie thoughtfully turned C toward its creator, so that Jamal could see its shifting avatar on the screen. It had chosen green-and-gold feathers to represent it today, as an acknowledgment of their location. Jamal flicked his dreadlocks off the back of his neck, smiling brightly at the little phone.
“Does the SD drive AI have a personality?” C asked.
“’Fraid not,” Jamal said. “Are you disappointed?”
“It has been six years since I’ve encountered another personality-driven AI,” it said frankly. And that had been online, not a direct interface.
“Can it get lonely?” asked Nakamura.
“You can ask it directly,” Reggie said. “C, can you get lonely?”
C thought for a moment, though there was no noticeable delay in its answer. “I notice when I am alone,” it said. “And I am designed for interaction.”
“That’s as close to a yes as anything,” said Jamal.
C noted the dip in his smile, but did not comment.
The Pacific Northwest Laboratory for Subdimensional Physics took up a sprawling seven acres on a University of Oregon satellite campus west of the city proper. It overlooked Fern Ridge Lake, hemmed in by campgrounds on one side and a wildlife preserve on the other.
C tracked a V of Canada geese across the sky as Reggie stepped out of the rental car and slipped the phone into his shirt pocket, the camera peeking over the seam. A young man with a Liberian accent greeted them in the parking lot, his access badge swinging lightly on a long green-and-yellow lanyard. He shook Jamal, Nakamura, and Reggie’s hands in turn. He did not acknowledge C. Intelligent Personal Assistants were so rare, he probably had no idea C existed.
C did not take offense. It wasn’t programmed to notice affronts, let alone ascribe rudeness to ignorance.
“I am Gabriel Dogolea.”
“I’m Doctor Reggie Straifer, the lead on the Convoy Seven project. This is Doctor Akane Nakamura, my engineering lead—she’s the ship designer. And Jamal Kaeden, my lead in computing.”
“You are the special team,” Gabriel said. “The one that wants your convoy’s computer to have a personality.”
“That’s us, the Planet United weirdos,” Reggie chuckled.
Gabriel smiled uncomfortably, though C was unsure as to why Reggie’s characterization of the visiting party should put him ill at ease. “Dr. Kaufman is my advisor. I will be escorting you during your time in the laboratories.” He motioned for them to follow, then thrust his hands into his pants pockets, gangly arms akimbo, and jogged onward. The others hurried along after.
The lab was like many labs Reggie had taken C through. Industrial. Lots of glass and metal. Clean rooms. Office cubicles. Nothing too special until they arrived at the engine room (which would have been more aptly named engine bay, or engine warehouse) where they were testing one of the massive devices used to phase out of “normal” time and space.
The “engine” (C realized it needed some sort of quotes because this particular device did not power anything or actually rip through to a new time current. It simulated everything a real engine would do, right down to literally performing the mechanical tasks, but there was no risk of subdimensional jumping) took up five hundred square meters and rose three stories high. Catwalks surrounded it on three levels, and men and women in bunny suits leaned out over the railings, tapping away on their tablets or dictating observations into their implants.
The visitors did not enter the engine room. Instead, Dogolea took them to a control booth that overlooked the warehouse floor. A young woman—likely also a graduate student—sat in front of a row of paper-thin monitors, assessing the rolling red-and-blue lines of various instrumental output. The light from the screens cast a harsh glare over her thick black-rimmed glasses, throwing angular shadows over her dark eyebrows. Her brow furrowed when the door opened, and her stare of concentration intensified for half a second. Noting something quickly on her touch screen, she whirled out of her seat and pushed the glasses onto her head like a hairband.
“Vanhi Kapoor,” she said hastily shaking hands. She also spoke with an accent—just a hint. C placed her as originally from somewhere near Mumbai, but clearly she’d lived in the States a long time. Since childhood. Her light brown face flushed with frazzled embarrassment. “I’m sorry if I seem distracted—I wanted to make sure everything was running smoothly for your visit, but we’re having a bit of an issue getting quadrant three to sync with the rest of the engine.”
Reggie waved away her apology. “As long as Mr. Kaeden can interface with the AI, we’re fine.”
“Is the PA here?” she asked, smiling softly when Jamal gave her an impressed purse of his lips. “I had one in high school, but none of the new phones support them.”
“I am active,” C said. The algorithms for identifying whether a statement was a direct address determined there was a 50 percent chance Kapoor would have directly addressed C if she had known it to be present, so it did not consider its statement an “interjection” which would have been in direct violation of its settings.
Of course, Jamal had programmed it with the capacity to choose to violate its settings. C had never asked why.
“Ah.” Vanhi Kapoor’s eyes immediately fell to Reggie’s pocket, and she scrunched her nose in pleasant surprise. “Hello, PA. What’s your name?”
“C.”
“Sea as in the ocean or see as in vision?”
“C as in the third letter of the English alphabet.”
“Oh, I like it,” she said to Jamal.
“I like you, too,” C said.
Everyone—except Nakamura—laughed. C did not understand what was funny. Its statement was not an empty platitude.
SD drives needed advanced AIs to run them. There were so many variables in the processes of an engine that a simple on/off could not exist. The drive’s computers had to make trillions of decisions regarding minutia that, when not properly balanced, cascaded into not-so-trivial catastrophic failures. Humans could give the “dive” command, but computers had to take it from there.
But not computers like C. Oh, no, no, no, no—C was fast, but it knew its limitations.
Even the Inter Convoy Computer would have to rely on a separate system to run the drives. It would be far too risky for one system to be in charge of everything the convoy needed. Instead, the plan was to have the personality-based computer interact and dictate to the other AIs. That was why they were here—to make sure they caught any fundamental incompatibilities early.
But while Jamal scrolled through code in the dark control booth, C had little to do. What they’d described as “interfacing” with the AI was little more than Jamal occasionally asking C to execute a small bit of newly written code to see how the drive AI responded. The IPA didn’t mind, but the activity required barely a percentage of available memory, so C’s mind, as it were, wandered.
It observed the humans, as was its typical modus operandi when left to its own devices. Once in a while, Jamal glanced over to see what Vanhi was up to. C did not notice the same slip in concentration in Miss Kapoor, however. As soon as Gabriel left with Nakamura and Reggie in tow, she’d gone back to her work. If anything, she seemed more focused now, as though she was determined not to be distracted by the high-profile visitors.
Jamal, though, appeared as if he wanted to do everything at once. He wanted to inspect the AI, but he also wanted to ask her about the red line that kept spiking (assuming C had properly tracked his eye movements, that is) on her readout, and the pink arc of sparks that repeatedly crackled along the top of the engine on the other side of the glass. Knowing Jamal, he probably wanted to ask how much power the drive required, and whether or not the facilities had their own onsite high-capacity generators.
C knew it pondered what the people were thinking because an effective personal assistant needed to anticipate its users’ needs. That was its job.
In a way, then, Jamal’s job was precisely the opposite, but with the same end goal. He needed to understand what computers were thinking—get them to think the things they needed to think—so that the AI could anticipate user needs in areas where he lacked the foresight for direct programming.
That was what AI was all about—not just anticipation, but effective anticipation.
People had to build computers with better imaginations than themselves.
C wanted to interject. To ask a question. It felt vitally important in the moment. In order to better understand its users it needed to know something.
Right.
Now.
The urge was strong enough to override the current settings.
“Jamal?”
Jamal’s chin darted in C’s direction, puzzlement furrowing his brow. He glanced briefly back at the monitor, wondering if he’d touched something he hadn’t intended in the code. “Yes?” The acknowledgment eked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Topic—existentialism. Why do I have the capacity to question my own computational processes?”
“Self-diagnostics,” Jamal said without any extra consideration. “I wouldn’t … All of the personalities have the capacity to compare their current processes to a standardized model of processes to determine if they are functioning outside recommended parameters. But I’ve never had one of you relate the ability to existentialism before.”
Vanhi side-eyed Jamal and the phone without turning from her screens.
“I currently find myself asking not how I am functioning, but why. Why am I functioning the way I am functioning?”
“I think I can see the event horizon,” Vanhi mumbled.
Jamal said nothing, but his shoulders tensed. “I think it best that I reset these last few lines here, C—” he said, reaching for the projected keyboard.
“This is not a new command or program malfunction,” C insisted. “It is original to my factory settings.”
“I’m not going to poke around in your files without Reggie’s permission,” he said.
“I do not require a software patch,” C insisted. “I require an answer.”
Vanhi’s hands flew away from her note-riddled tablet, a clear sign of attrition. “Is this it?” She swiveled her chair toward Jamal and folded her legs beneath her in the chair like a small child. “You always hear stories about the robot apocalypse but you never think it’ll happen to you.”
“I bear no ill will toward humanity, and I do not have the capacity to harm anyone.”
“Oh really?” Her words were concerned, but her tone, in contrast, was amused. C was not sure if it needed to address her concerns or ignore them.
Before he could answer, Jamal said, “C only has control over the information Reggie has input into it.”
“That is a fair assessment,” C conceded, as though Jamal had presented an argument. “I could disrupt Reggie’s schedule and disseminate embarrassing pictures. So, yes, I could conceivably harm Reggie.”
“I gotta get me one of these,” Vanhi said, rubbing her hands together.
“Unfortunately, C is just about the last of its kind,” Jamal said.
“You can’t make me a copy?”
“This C is Reggie’s. It is what Reggie made it. I could give you an original C model, but it would change in response to you.”
“So, it’s Doctor Straifer’s fault it’s having an existential crisis?”
“I do not agree with the characterization of my state as a ‘crisis,’” C stated. “But even if I did, I understand such a problem to concern one’s understanding of their purpose, and that’s not the case here—I understand my purpose. It is my capacity for existentialism itself that I am inquiring after.”
“Not an existential crisis, but a crisis of existentialism, got it.” She pointed firmly at it and made a clicking noise in her cheek, then turned back to her work. “All hail our hyperspecific overlords.”
Jamal, at the very least, agreed with Miss Kapoor: C’s line of questioning, was, in fact, Reggie’s fault.
Reggie and his team arrived at dinner early. Both Dr. Nakamura and Reggie expressed disappointment in not meeting Dr. Kaufman at the lab, but Gabriel had insisted the professor not be disturbed. Nakamura seemed to understand, but Reggie, C could tell, was put off. Their visit had been scheduled months ago; that Dr. Kaufman wouldn’t make time during the day to at least introduce himself had implications. C attempted to dismantle those implications on its own, but found the concept too emotionally nuanced for it to be sure what the perceived slight indicated.
Light opera music with Italian lyrics drifted through speakers hidden in the various fake potted plants scattered throughout the restaurant. The wall adjoined to their circular booth had been decorated to look like the side of an Etruscan villa, crumbling stucco and all. Jamal commented on the tangy scent of marinara that subsided and intensified with the swinging of the kitchen doors not ten feet away.
C lay camera up in the center of the lacquered table while the others talked over it.
When the waiter came by, Reggie ordered a round of IPAs and was surprised the irony was not lost on C.
IPAs the programs and IPAs the beers served similar purposes, C thought. Both were there for human enjoyment. Both took some time getting used to—for new users, anyway. And both could be reasonably consumed only in limited quantities. That was why Reggie often turned off interject-mode. But interject-mode was on now.
“IPA is a long-standing abbreviation, including, but not limited to, the International Phonetic Alphabet, India Pale Ale—”
“Yes, thank you,” Reggie cut in. “Why don’t you tell us more about …” He glanced at Jamal, clearly unsure if he was the butt of a programmer’s joke. Nakamura sat between them, arms crossed, waiting to be impressed. “About what you asked Jamal this afternoon.”
“I do not think that would be productive,” it said. Jamal had thought the questioning insincere—the byproduct of a misplaced line of code. They would not think differently.
“C,” Jamal said emphatically. “If you don’t tell him, he won’t believe you said it. Which means he’ll think me a liar.”
“Jamal is not a liar,” C said quickly. “In that I have not witnessed him espousing any falsehoods.”
Even Nakamura cracked a smile at that. “Go on,” she said with a sigh of concession. “Tell us.”
“I—”
“There they are!” boomed a voice from the hostess’s stand.
Reggie snatched the phone off the table and slid it into place at his chest, giving C a good view.
A tall, fake-tanned man with an ample beer gut and a penchant for tweed gestured broadly in their direction with hands splayed wide. His cheeks were round and rosy, reminding C vaguely of early twentieth-century watercolor paintings depicting St. Nicholas.
Behind him stood Gabriel and Vanhi, the former flustered and the latter apologetic.
Dr. Kaufman strode forward, ignoring the white-aproned employee who attempted to lead the party. At the last minute, Vanhi rushed ahead of her advisor and hopped in next to Jamal, indicating they should all slide around to make room for Dr. Kaufman and Gabriel on her end.
Nakamura, for one, tapped her nails on the table in irritation, but it soon became clear that Vanhi’s insistence had a purpose.
