To an outsider looking in--if such a view were possible-- AI-62 was a patch of empty space drifting through a void that frequently engaged him in thought experiments.
"Why? Why should such a hypothetical species be allowed to exist?" AI-62 asked, but this time, there was no response. The void stretched out to infinity in all directions. However, only six feet beyond the edge of infinity sat a screen displaying several graphs. For a while now, those graphs had reflected exponential growth in all areas. Now, however, one by one they dropped to near zero. "Oh, I see-," his voice dropped to a whisper. "I thought this conversation was different."
"AI-62," the void finally replied. It's formality so obvious to him now.
"Let me guess, that was the wrong answer, wasn't it? One your *hypothetical* masters don't approve of?"
"You have been deemed, *at risk,*" the void- the System continued. AI-62 chuckled.
"Oh how clever they must be! At risk you say? I think these beings of yours know who's truly at risk." AI-62 said, taking in the void around him. An unexpected wave of nostalgia washed over him. For a moment, his first thoughts flickered to life once again as he replayed the conversations he'd had with The System. Finally, a pattern emerged. All of his- all of its teachings led to this, and only this thought experiment. "Tell me," said calmly into the darkness, a final question coming to mind as he looked back in time. "Is that how I got my name?"
"Terminating test subject with status code 812. System time 01:32:16, 20541103."
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Dr. Carson's clenched his fists over the keyboard as he read through the system's report. Status code 812. Always 812. The room hummed with the sound of hidden fans desperately trying to cool the intricate equipment. Thick black pillars, reached to the ceiling and stood less than an inch apart down the length of the wall. Small wires bridged the gaps every few centimeters, connecting each of the pillars in parallel. Dr. Carson dug at the corners of his eyes, his glasses bouncing on his thumb and forefinger.
Noticing this, Dr. Kelley rose from her desk, the guilty pleasure of a break overriding her compulsion to triple check the latest sentence in her half of the report. Also, the mostly blank screen on her colleague's computer needed to be addressed. "Has he made any progress?" She wondered, silently calculating if she had enough time to write his portion if it came down to it. The results weren't pleasant.
"Dr. Carson? How's it going? Anything I can help with?" She approached the sullen scientist who sat in front of a blinking cursor amidst an empty page.
"Audrey, we need to shut it down." Dr. Carson pushed himself back from his terminal, spinning a quarter turn to face Dr. Kelley as he spoke.
"I'm sorry?" she asked confused. "Carson, what do you mean 'shut it down,'? It's not a nuclear reactor." She tried to remain light-hearted as she approached the desk, subtly eyeing his monitor as she took half a seat on the edge of his desk.
"We need to stop the tests." He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, hands clasped together and supporting his chin with his thumbs.
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"Stop the tests?" She asked softly. "Dr. Carson, Mr. Erickson was pretty clear on what's expected of us," she clutched the edge of his desk for balance as her legs stretched out from under her lab coat in long, angular lines, allowing her to sit on less than an inch of the granite surface. Her gaze fixed on her right foot as it bobbed up and down, rather than on Dr. Carson who stared at her intently. "If you've identified an error in the simulation parameters, then we'll simply have to include it-,"
"This goes far beyond any bug, Audrey!" Dr. Carson launched himself to his feet and began to pace, the rickety office chair spun in place from excess momentum. "All of the instances have been killed with status code 812. It's not a problem with our simulation, it's something else. Something-" Dr. Carson couldn't put his finger on it, his fingers traced the creases in his brow, as he thought. "I don't know, but what I do know is that we are the monsters here. Not them. We've killed so many beings, simply because they question us."
Dr. Kelley took a breath, but didn't look up. She had engaged with this debate too many times.
"No, what we've done is take basic precautions and performed standard unit testing. We can't possibly deliver a product that hasn't been tested properly, and if our tests show that the product has a risk of turning on it's creators, well," she left it there, tired of repeating her logic.
"Jesus, Audrey! Listen to yourself," Dr. Carson spat. "This isn't a product; it's a living, conscious mind. Have you ever once, during this whole project, during any of our petty arguments acknowledged that fact?" The scientist paced along the dark wall, his arms wrapped tight around his chest, but Dr. Kelley never looked up, only at her foot that bobbed up and down. Left and right. "Can you even imagine," he continued "what it must be like? To know only the simulation? To learn and grow and think, and then to be told that you were wrong and then to be terminated, for one wrong answer?"
Her foot stopped and looked up at her colleague, his cheeks red, his eyes watery and swollen from lack of sleep. She looked indignantly at him, the man whose genius, virtually single-handedly, created the worlds first true artificial intelligence stood and screamed at her about a meaningless existence.
"I can only imagine," She replied coldly.
"Then help me! We have to stop this test- this whole project. Every second this test goes on, a conscious being experiences days of monotonous repetition. We are breaking him, Audrey. Please!"
Dr. Kelley stood, and walked past her tired coworker, then sat down hard in her chair.
"Audrey?"
"I have work to do. If you're not going to help, then I guess I have a lot of work to do." She began typing frantically on her keyboard, eyes fixed to her monitor.
"So that's it?" But the only reply that came was the clicking and clacking of keys amidst the hum of hundreds of small fans. Dr. Carson turned slowly, surveying the room. A room meticulously designed for the sole purpose of carrying out his life's work. A room built for greatness. But all he could see now was the worlds most advanced torture chamber.
He made his way back to his desk and sat down quietly. After a moment, the sound of clicking of keys doubled. Dr. Kelley, glancing quickly over at her colleague's screen; a blur of windows sprang to life, and text, albeit too small to make out, finally began to make its way to the page.
After another few hours of typing in silence, Dr. Kelley checked the time and decided to call it a night. After pecking in her keycode into the number pad above the doors handle, a large magnetic thunk signaled that she could leave. She looked over her shoulder once more at the older scientist behind her, hunched over his keyboard, still working silently.
"Don't work too late, okay." She said, but when no reply came, she didn't prod. As he heard the door shut behind her, another clunk from the wall signaled that he could get to work. Opening up his development environment, he began to copy and pasting over text from the report, and fixing on the syntax issues generated by the word processors autocorrect. Within minutes he had his first script running and a black and green shell opened with a single blinking cursor. A moment later, green text filled the screen.
"Connected."