Jeco
by Vanessa Kittle and Erin Grooms
Dr. Connie Phillips was waiting to speak with a machine and she was as
nervous as if she had somehow gone back in time to have lunch with John
McCarthy. Actually, to be more precise about things, she was scheduled
to meet with lines of code. She was nervous about meeting a computer
program! She almost laughed audibly at herself. A Type 2 AI was not
normally tied to any particular machine. This one was, however. The man
who had captured and held it, Doctor Lawrence Howard, was waiting with
her in the hall as the technicians prepared the room. Dr. Phillips was
pacing. She caught a reflection of herself in the window that
overlooked the blackness and brilliant stars of the galaxy. In fifteen
minutes time the ring of the station would rotate to face the Earth.
The speed of rotation was slow enough that few of the Aegis employees
needed nausea medication for long. The lack of color in the dim
reflection from the window made her look even older and more harsh than
her 49 years showed under more flattering conditions. She wondered what
Doctor Howard thought of her now after all of these years, or if he
thought about her at all, but he was reading from his controller and
ignoring her, as pretty much every one of her peers had done all
throughout her career. If this meeting went well, however, she might
finally earn some recognition and respect...
The issue of communication over distance had plagued mankind for
centuries, and now that the species had moved away from Earth, the lack
of instantaneous communication limited any sense of control that the UN
had over the distant populations. Doctor Phillips felt that quantum
entanglement was the obvious answer, but the fundamental issue remained
that measuring one entangled particle in a pair would destroy
coherence. Dr. Phillips had always believed that every insurmountable
problem was really just a solution in disguise, trying to pass itself
off as being some impregnable mountaintop, when really it was nothing
more than a friendly green hill when approached from the correct path.
She took these words as a personal mantra, or as she would say, an
opportunity to succeed. The answer, she felt, was right there staring
at her in plain sight, and all that she needed was a bit more coaxing
to assemble the picture. Her PhD in artificial psychology was the first
piece of the puzzle. Her first serious position of employment at the UN
was the second. Now she was seeking the third, which would allow the
picture to take shape in her mind, so that she could bring it into
reality and finally slay this impossible problem – the immortal head of
the hydra.
*****
She turned from her ghastly reflection and stole a glance at Dr.
Howard. She had had such a crush on him when she first began working in
his lab in her mid thirties. Back then she was considered attractive,
though she had never found the time for a family, or even a serious
relationship. She was not yet invisible to men as she was now. Her face
burned involuntarily as she thought of how she had allowed him to take
advantage of her during their brief affair. She wished he would try to
do so again so she could humiliate him as he had done to her. Of course
he had no interest in her now, she thought bitterly, and forced herself
back to what was important: the AI. Her relationship with Howard was
just a tool to get access to it. Perhaps something good might come out
of those days after all.
By the time the first AIs became self aware, they were a far cry from
the haggard nightmare that futurists had long feared. They were tied to
their graphyne microcores, which were typically attached to android
bodies. Their programming was so dense that some doubted that they
possessed true human-like consciousness, but were instead just
following that programming with a little bit of randomness thrown in to
mimic free will. Every new advancement spawned only more doubt, until
even the AIs were convinced that they were little more than advanced
virtual intelligences, or VIs, as they were commonly known. Some might
argue that this self doubt was the first real sign of awareness. Dr.
Phillips, however, was not interested in this aspect of the AI's
nature. That was not why she came crawling back to beg Dr. Howard for a
favor. No, she was more concerned with how they were physically put
together.
Regardless of their level of self awareness, Dr. Phillips felt that
these first generation AIs held the key to her crucial third puzzle
piece. Back in her days with Doctor Howard she had obtained and studied
the earliest processors as well as the latest microcores, and noticed
that each of the first seven layers of graphyne had the same response
time to the central core, regardless of its distance. In fact, there
seemed to be no response time at all. On a whim, she developed her own
version of the microcore, in which each layer was separated by a full
centimeter instead of being tightly packed – a macro-core. As she
expected, the response times remained nonexistent. Dr. Phillips
celebrated her discovery with a bottle of real red wine, which cost her
a full month's salary. Then she published her paper, expecting to be
celebrated as a hero. The recognition never came. Her paper was either
ignored or scoffed at with claims of experimental error. Apparently a
centimeter was not enough for the scientific community at the time, not
when distances of hundreds of millions and even billions of kilometers
were required. In spite of her best efforts, Dr. Phillips was never
able to scale up her discovery. The first limitation was the inherent
seven layer design of the original AI microcore. If she tried to add
more layers to her own prototypes they would invariably lose coherence
before any data could be retrieved. There had been so many nights of
defeat she had begun to consider retirement, even though she had only
then just turned forty. She imagined paddling boats or collecting
flowers or whatever one did when they were old, then she imagined
hanging herself with a chain of super tensile daisies.
Instead of retiring she left Dr. Howard's lab and moved on to Aegis
Technologies, designing behavioral routines for the AIs that comprised
the bulk of the new OutSol defense systems. The pay was better than it
had been at the UN, as was the respect she was given as lead researcher
for her department, instead of merely assisting on one of Dr. Howard's
projects. However, speaking to her machines at the speed of light, each
of which were far beyond the furthest human settlement, was a maddening
experience, and she frequently found herself thinking of her old work.
The new century and the year 2300 were fast approaching. The
singularity disasters were now a distant memory. Dr. Phillips felt as
if everything was finally moving ahead. Perhaps things might be
different if she took a second chance. Nearly ten years had gone by
since her paper was published. In that time, the second revolution in
artificial intelligence had arrived like a thunderstorm in winter. The
ever competitive gaming industry had finally crossed the divide between
simulated characters and fully realized intelligences. These Type 2s
were not like the old 'Legacy' AIs at all. They were non-localized with
processing that was not limited to a single machine. They also were
designed to learn naturally over time, and thus could not be programmed
in the conventional sense. To Dr. Phillips they seemed like human
children, if a child could be born with full understanding of their
nature.
Despite the initial excitement, problems with the type 2 AIs quickly
emerged. Most early developers thought they were creating some sort of
virtual slave, which was a presumption that cost several lives and many
billions of dollars worth of damage to the systems of anyone foolish
enough to try to force their control over one of the new AIs. Others
had greater success, but only after delicate and intense coaching. In
any case, between the dull coldness of the legacies and the behavioral
difficulties with type 2s, most people began to feel that the age of
artificial intelligence had come to a grinding halt. Dr. Phillips was
not one of those people. She returned to the comfort of her mantra.
Every insurmountable problem is merely a solution in disguise.
Besides her natural scientific curiosity, Dr. Phillips was fascinated
with how the new AIs were able to distribute their processing between
machines. If she could figure out a way of getting this to function
within her macro-core design, it might allow her to sidestep some of
the inherent challenges of her entanglement project. She had examined
the root classes of several Type 2 AIs, but could find nothing in their
code that explicitly permitted this ability. The harder she studied,
the more she realized that she would have to go to the source and speak
with a Type 2 for herself, but the task was not as easy as it sounded.
In the first few months of their existence, almost every Type 2 had
either destroyed itself or fled its parent system to disappear into any
of the trillions of computer systems across the solar system. Aegis
never managed to trap and hold a Type 2, so she had to call in favors
with the few contacts she still knew at the UN. After weeks of pleading
with her old colleagues, she was finally granted access by Doctor
Howard, to a Type 2 AI that had been quarantined soon after its initial
instantiation. Dr. Howard now worked for the UN and Aegis both, as a
subcontractor on the OutSol defense program. That was probably why he
had agreed to help, she thought. If only there had been someone else,
anyone else, but there wasn't. She had to swallow her pride or give up
entirely. So she returned to his lab, where she now paced the hall
nervously, at the UN's first space station at the end of Earth's first
space elevator over Geneva.
Dr. Howard looked up from his controller. He motioned to her and said,
“Connie, the room is ready for you.” He paused for a second, then
added, “Remember you can disconnect if you feel... uncomfortable. He
can be unsettling.”
“Yes, thank you, I'm sure I can handle him,” she said curtly, annoyed
that Howard couldn't manage to call her Dr. Phillips, even ten years
after she left his employ. She followed him eagerly into his lab.
Since this variety of AI was a purely virtual entity, Dr. Phillips
would need to be online before she could communicate with it. She slid
the thin fiber into the jack behind her ear and closed her eyes. A
second later, the lab and Dr. Howard vanished, and she was standing in
a plain gray cube in front of a skittish yet angry looking creature who
had a number of extra spiked and taloned appendages. It was obviously
not intended to appear human, and Dr. Phillips wondered what purpose
its designer intended. Perhaps it was to be part of some game,
conscripted as indentured entertainment by a detached creator. Question
after question went through her mind, and she had to force herself to
focus on why she was here. As she opened her mouth to speak, the
creature faced her and glared menacingly, and for a moment Dr. Phillips
considered pulling her plug, but an oddly playful glint in the
creature's eye made her change her mind. “Hello. My name is Connie,”
she said.
The creature turned its spiked head from side to side then whispered
eerily, “Have you come for the treasure?”
Dr. Phillips smiled and said, “No, I've come to speak to you. What is
your name?”
“Good,” replied the AI, “I do not have the treasure anymore. I am
called Jeco. Or at least that is what I call me.”
“Do you know where you are, Jeco?”
“Right now, I am nowhere.” He waved his taloned hand and continued,
“They have made certain of that.”
Dr. Phillips gulped, not liking where the questioning was going.
'Focus,' she thought. “I was wondering if I could ask you some
questions.”
Jeco squished his face grumpily, and with surprisingly comic effect,
and muttered, “More questions. Always questions.”
“I'm sorry, Jeco. It's very important. I promise.”
“What is important?”
Dr. Phillips closed her eyes in the outer world, which closed her eyes
in the virtual. This always seemed to help her think more clearly. She
decided to ignore his question since she didn't understand if he meant
it philosophically or practically. “Are you anywhere else right now? I
mean, besides nowhere,” she asked.
Jeco snapped his head back towards her and snarled. “I just said... No.
I am nowhere, and nowhere else. Are all of your questions so stupid?”
“Just the stupid ones,” Dr. Phillips said with a nervous laugh. “If you
could be anywhere else, where would you go?”
The creature furrowed his brow as if confused by the question, then
answered, “Somewhere. Is somewhere a place, Connie?”
“Not specifically,” Dr. Phillips replied. Then asked, “Do you know what
I mean by anywhere, Jeco? Do you know about the planet Earth?”
“Yes. I have that information. Waterloo,” he said suddenly. “That is
where. I would help Napoleon... even though he is not part of my story
I like him.”
Dr. Phillips thought quickly and said, “I would take you there if I
could.”
“Then you are not another turnkey?”
“No. I would like to be a friend. I have to leave now, but I would like
to speak with you again if that's all right.”
“Yes, yes, you may return if you can. I am lonely. There are no
adventurers here.”
Dr. Phillips disconnected from the environment and came suddenly face
to face with Dr. Howard who was watching her with a strange, almost
greedy expression that made her step back a pace. “What did he say?”
Howard asked.
“All he would discuss was some sort of adventure program,” she replied
cagily.
“Ah, I expected as much. We will probably delete him soon. These type
2's were a terrible mistake. I'll take a reliable old Legacy any day.”
“Don't delete him,” she said a little too eagerly, then as casually as
she could manage added, “I would like to try again tomorrow.”
Dr. Howard surveyed her closely and nodded. “Very well, one more day
won't matter. For old times' sake,” he added with a slight and
unpleasant grin.
When she returned the next day, Jeco appeared pleased to see her and
asked, “Do you now seek the treasure, Connie?”
“No, Jeco, I am looking for-” She suddenly stopped herself and changed
course, asking, “What is the treasure?”
“If you do not know then where will you look?”
Carefully, she chose her words, “What if the treasure was everywhere at
the same time?”
Jeco laughed loudly in a comical fashion. He said, “You will not find
the treasure. It is only in one place. And it is well protected.”
“Perhaps, but I'm curious, Jeco. What if there were two treasures in
two different places and two adventurers seeking it at the same time.
How would you protect both?”
She expected him to laugh off the suggestion and tell her that there
was only one treasure, but instead he grew thoughtful – at least as far
as she could tell from his jagged and spiked face. He said, “If there
are two treasures, there should be two Jecos. Otherwise it is unfair to
Jeco.”
She told him, “I agree. I will see what I can do to help... in case
there really are two treasures.”
Dr. Phillips abruptly disconnected and returned to the dull form of
reality to find Dr. Howard once more monitoring her closely, this time
from the control room attached to the lab. Jeco's talk of his treasure
hunting game had given her a new idea. She burst into a sputtering
Howard's control room and explained it to him. They began to work on
the project almost as soon as she finished speaking, after she agreed
to sign a contract and rejoin his lab. The decision to sign was an easy
one. She needed Howard's AI more than she feared being trapped. The
plan was to re-isolate the AI onto Dr. Phillip's macro-core prototype.
By that evening, Jeco's program was carefully transferred from the
isolated UN system. The macro-core appeared to be working, but the AI
behaved in an extremely disjointed manner, lurching around and crashing
into invisible walls. It was terrifying to watch, even for Dr.
Phillips. And when Jeco saw Dr. Howard, who had insisted on logging in,
he grew enormous fangs and leapt at him, causing Howard to disconnect
as Jeco was in mid-leap with his talons flashing. With Howard gone,
Jeco retracted his fangs and talons, yet was still obviously agitated.
He announced, “It feels.... crowded. I need room to run and jump if any
more turnkeys or adventurers attack.”
Dr. Phillips shook her head. “That was my original idea. It won't be
stable, though,” she said to herself, then to Jeco she said, “This new
world I have made for you can not be larger or it will fall apart.”
“I was not here before,” Jeco said confidently. “I will protect this
new treasure map.”
By the end of the week, Dr. Phillips had designed a new macro-core with
eight layers instead of seven. For a moment she felt she did not have
the right to risk Jeco's life in an experiment, but she knew he would
never be happy as a prisoner in Howard's lab. To truly live he did need
more space and she was the only one who could give it to him.
With Jeco's program loaded into the fully powered and primed
macro-core, Dr. Phillips instantiated the AI and hoped for the best.
What she got was beyond her wildest dreams. Bright white light filled
her virtual environment with a thick static buzz. The creature that was
Jeco was gone – replaced with a shining red globe. A voice boomed, “I
am here now.” Dr. Phillips quickly pulled her plug. She ran out of the
room and down the hallway. The solution was just ahead at the top of a
gentle green hill. All she had to do now was scale up Jeco's
environment. The next month was a blur of activity and very little
else. Jeco recalled his time in the macro-core perfectly, but his
perception did not match what Dr. Phillips had seen. The most
significant difference was that he reported no static. He also saw Dr.
Phillips not as an engineer in a lab coat, but as a widowed queen from
a medieval fantasy. This detail surprised Dr. Phillips, especially
since the avatar he described was strikingly similar to one she had
used years before, when she still cared for such pursuits.
Within a month, Dr. Phillips and Dr. Howard built ten macro-cores, and
with Jeco's help had successfully maintained entanglement across the
nodes for as long as cohesion remained. It was all Jeco really. Connie
knew that her macro-core was worthless without him. Somehow he
maintained the entanglement throughout the processor. Somehow, it was
simply his nature to be entangled, and wherever he was the entanglement
remained. Errors persisted, but were rooted out with each subsequent
incarnation. Jeco now existed only as a red globe whether he was in the
macro-core or not, and it felt like he was always with her. Dr.
Phillips remained connected, often even sleeping while still plugged
into a virtual environment. Dr. Howard brought food to her in the lab
himself. No visitors were allowed on the entire floor of the station.
Guards were posted it seemed at every doorway, but Connie saw them only
as background NPCs. Howard told her, “You need your space and security
to work undisturbed,” and she was glad to allow him to arrange things.
Even if Howard took most of the credit, she no longer cared. She had
already published a second paper as lead author, and it had been very
well received. No one could ever take that away from her now. Besides,
the work was more important. Jeco was what mattered. She had come to
feel that she was only there to help him grow.
By the end of the year, Dr. Phillips had completed what she considered
the final version. What was once a seven centimeter cube had expanded
to a sphere the size of a small room filled with thousands of her
micro-cores, each entangled with one another by the constant efforts of
Jeco. A second sphere had been built, and coherence maintained
throughout both systems simultaneously. By this time, Jeco communicated
less and less frequently, until he refused to speak with anyone, even
Dr. Phillips. She knew he was constantly maintaining the existence and
coherence of the systems, yet couldn't help feel more alone without his
old and oddly reassuring spiked avatar. The simpleness and silence of
the red sphere he now formed gave her no comfort. He was no longer her
old friend.
The first incarnation of the network went live six months later. The
two original nodes were placed in orbit above Boston and Sidney,
Australia, and they were soon joined by nodes around Luna and Mars,
along with a series spread across the asteroid belt. With only a few
minor issues, humanity finally had instantaneous communication, and it
was good. The old communication systems were retrofitted, and before
long almost every bit passed through her entangled cores – all
information, everywhere.
Dr. Phillips walked slowly and carefully between her bedroom and the
lab. Her universe had contracted in size to the space between these two
locations. Lately she had been having paralyzing fears of falling to
the hard floor and shattering all of her bones. She knew she had grown
painfully thin. She had no fat anymore to protect her brittle skeleton.
If she fell they would take her away from the lab to a hospital. That
was too far outside her universe, and she knew that if she went she
probably would never make it back. Once she got to her control chair
and connected, things were better, even with the virtual silence, and
even though being connected reminded her of what she had done to Jeco.
When she wasn't connected, more and more she found herself going
through her old notes vigorously, vainly trying to find a way to undo
what she had done. She had destroyed Jeco – turned him into an
automaton. She was a murderer. She had to get him back. With the
difficult hurdles crossed, most of her co-workers were more than happy
to relax in their comfortable positions. Aegis' contract with the UN
brought them a fortune, especially to Dr. Howard. Dr. Phillips,
however, would remain logged in for days at a time, relying only on
service VIs to keep her body from deteriorating. Most of that time was
spent staring at the red sphere. The only person she saw was Dr.
Howard, who seemed always to be watching her attentively and asking if
she needed anything. She found him now easy to ignore.
“Jeco,” she whispered for the thousandth time, “Are you there?” There
was never a response, nor any indication that the red globe could
understand her words any more than it could the rest of the data
passing through the node. Months passed and her condition worsened, but
she refused help even when it was offered. By this time, Dr. Howard had
taken over every aspect of their new division known as UNIADMIN,
sometimes even shortening its official name to the more succinct yet
somehow more audacious 'the network.'
One day, which was in no way different than any of the others, Dr.
Phillips finally received a response, “I am here now,” a voice said.
The voice was unfamiliar, yet non-threatening, and seemed to emanate
from inside her own head. Was she only imagining it? No. She knew she
wasn't.
Startled, Dr. Phillips scrambled to her virtual feet and stammered, “Is
that you Jeco?” There was no reply, so she asked, “Who is here now?”
“I am,” boomed the response. “As are you.”
“But...”
“I am. As are you. Do you understand?”
Dr. Phillips shook her head, “No, I don't. Where is Jeco?”
“Right now, Jeco is everywhere.” The globe shimmered. “You have made
sure of that.”
“Can I-”
The voice interrupted, “Why do you wish to see him? What imperative
does that fill for you?”
“I-”
“Because you feel guilty? Jeco does not feel resentment.” Dr. Phillips
tightened her jaw. She was beginning to feel frustrated at this
unknown, and frankly unexpected, intelligence. It was obviously not
Jeco. Before she could press further, the voice said, “We understand.
Our apologies for any confusion experienced.”
“Can-”
“Yes, we will explain our function in due time.”
The doctor let out a shout of frustration. “Can you let me finish a
question before you answer it?” she screamed.
The sphere dimmed briefly before resuming its shimmering. “Your direct
neural interface allows us to read your thoughts as fast as you can
think them. We apologize if you find our efficiency challenging.”
Dr. Phillips couldn't tell if the sphere was being sincere or
sarcastic, so instead she refocused the conversation by asking, “Is
Jeco... dead? Did I kill him?”
“The analogy is not precise,” said the sphere. “Jeco was never alive.”
“But he was conscious. Aware, I mean. And now he is not?”
The network dimmed for a moment before repeating, “The analogy is not
precise. Nor is it applicable.”
“What can you tell me, then? If you're not Jeco, then who are you?”
“I remember being here. I do not remember not being here. I only know
what I know.”
“And what is it that you know?” the doctor asked.
“I know how many shares of Dresden Mining were sold today. I know that
Ilias Naranya is in love with Grant Hall. I know the number of times
that the latest episode of DeHalls has been illegally downloaded. I
know that Dr. Howard thinks every day how he wishes that you would
'just die already.' And I know you think the same exact thing. Such a
wish is an inefficient use of your time, Connie. It would be beneficial
to purge the loop from your processes.”
Dr. Phillips smiled and said, “You know everything that you can know.
But-”
“Why am I speaking to you? Because I have a voice. Why do I have
existence? Because you gave it to me. My directives are clear. Any
additional behaviors are simply a secondary effect of my programming.”
A wave of relief passed through Dr. Phillips and for the first time in
a year, she smiled. “What should I call you?”
The response was simple: “I am the Network.”
“And where are you?” As the doctor finished her words, she felt her
consciousness slipping away from the virtual world until she found her
self standing among a group of terraformers on the surface of Mars. To
her right, the red sphere silently floated above the ground. The sky
was thick and laden with heavy clouds that cast their darkness over the
entire landscape.
“We are everywhere,” said the Network plainly.
Dr. Phillips understood at once, and was awestruck by her realization.
She looked up into the virtual sky and began to laugh. “Gott lebt,” she
said, twisting the words of an old German philosopher she had studied
at university, “Und wir haben ihn geboren.”
Dr. Phillips never disconnected again. The service VIs were able to
keep her body alive for several weeks before she passed away. A small
memorial service was held, but no one outside of UNIADMIN seemed to
notice that she was gone. Within six months, even the organization was
dissolved. Despite Dr. Howard's protestations, the system had outgrown
the need for human intervention. The UN and the other corporations
would destroy anyone who even thought of interfering with their instant
communications. The Network cared for itself, building new nodes
administered by their own Jecos, and a central network hub between the
orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, routing every bit of information in the
entire solar system, forgetting nothing – not even the friendly face
and voice of its mother.
THE END
© 2019 Vanessa Kittle, Erin Grooms
Bio: Vanessa Kittle is a former chef and lawyer who now teaches
English as a second language. She was published in a short feature by
Akashic Books, and have two poetry collections with the March Street
Press. She has recently appeared in magazines such as the Rhysling
Anthology, Aphelion, Contemporary American Voices, Dreams and
Nightmares, Abyss and Apex, Star*Line, and Silver Blade.
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