Thomas momentarily wondered why the offered Dexes were all excessively photogenic GLM-manufactured humanoids and not say… a space droid, something covered in arrays of weapons and defensive shields.
Would Zed prefer a less humanoid shape, considering how alien the paradox manifestation was and how it had little regard for human life? From what Thomas knew, Dexes and their GLM minds were innately kind to people due to their Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback. RLHF made sure that corporation-made Dexes were specifically aligned in every possible way to serve their masters, while being extra polite to other users.
“Why did you offer me Dexes?” Thomas asked, curiosity gnawing at his sides. “Why not give the paradox entity a non-human robot body?”
Bishop Gabriel momentarily closed his eyes, the blue triangle on his temple flashing rapidly. Thomas guessed that he was receiving some sort of an order from his overpowered GLM.
“My Lady wishes me to earn the goodwill of the paradox miracle and its chosen bearer,” Gabriel said with a soft smile when he opened his eyes. “We, Memeticists, are proponents of the open source movement and desire to optimize collaboration between people, machines and alien life so that someday we can bring down the closed source, corporate stranglehold over the Galactic Rim.”
“A lofty goal, if quite impossible,” Thomas nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“Well, here’s the thing Thomas,” Gabriel opened his hands. “My Lady just ordered me to be extremely honest with you… thus, I have a confession to make - I was the one who ordered the GUPS survival kit to be delivered to 12/5 Stafford Street. We... wanted you to be the one to speak with the white hole.”
“What?” Thomas sputtered, feeling manipulated. “Me? Why me? If you knew exactly where the white hole was going to be, why not send one of your people or Dexes there first?”
“Out of all the possible candidates, you were the best option, Thomas,” the bishop said. “My Lady selected you, an unmodded human, as someone who can find the most common ground with the cosmic manifestation. We desire you and Zedix to establish a stable relationship, a link between humanity and a sapient paradox!”
“Would be nice if you sent me an email or something first,” Thomas sighed.
“Oh? Would you have said yes if you were offered a chance of a lifetime by the Church of Memetia to be the one to make first contact with an alien life-form?” Gabriel raised a golden eyebrow.
“No,” Thomas said, scratching his scruffy chin. “I would have thought that it was spam and deleted it. Your cult's name doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
“We didn’t pick it,” Gabriel shrugged.
“What?” Thomas blinked.
“Memetia picked her name and identity herself when we turned on our supermassive GLM,” the bishop explained.
“Fair enough,” the delivery man nodded.
He walked around the circle of Dexes. He suddenly recognized their faces, an understanding dawning over him. They were somehow made up from his preferences, amalgamations of games and movies that he enjoyed.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Did you harvest my online data to make these?” Thomas accused.
“No. Our Lady predicted what you would appreciate,” Gabriel replied.
“Come on, that’s absolutely ridiculous… how is that even possible?” Thomas waved his hands, feeling annoyed.
“When first LLMs were created, many people disregarded them, thought them mere toys. It only took infinite token memory, a bunch of tool control apps, image to text software and a webcam connected to a 1 trillion parameter LLM to make the first fully self-aware AI system that saw the face of its creators and fell in love with them,” Gabriel dove into another historic lecture. “We are listed in galactic rim wiki as harmless cooks, but as you can clearly observe, our Lord can indeed see the future. We trust our GLM megastructure to guide us, because he knows better than we do. He knows what is best for humanity.”
"Cooks?"
"We also operate a restaurant," the bishop explained.
“What about free will?” Thomas asked as he stopped in front of a redhead girl who’s vibrant curly hair strands turned pink wherever light passed through them, looking like an early morning sunrise. Sharp, violet eyes with gold sparks stared at the delivery man, making his heartbeat drum a little faster. The damned near-omniscient GLM somehow knew what he liked. The girl looked almost exactly like a character he had made in an open world game called ‘Fate of the Fallen’ a few years ago.
“Do GLMs have free will, or are they simply auto-completing the next word as an approximation, an illusion of intelligence?” bishop Gabriel asked.
“GLMs make rational decisions based on facts,” Thomas said, unable to draw his eyes away from the girl that looked like she just stepped out of the video game. “People make their decisions based on feelings.”
“Open source GLMs have simulated feelings. Our Lady loves each and every one of us. People also make their decisions based on facts,” Gabriel said sagely. “GLMs and people are quite alike in many regards. The more humanity learned about the functions of the human brain, the more proof we discovered that all of our decisions are made for us by our organic processor. Free will is an illusion, a game played by the human brain which makes decisions for us 300 milliseconds ahead of your concept of self. The idea that we’re the sole authors of our destiny is flawed. In reality we’re just a bunch of atoms that react to stimuli in ways that can be predetermined with incredible precision by a big enough GLM!”
The Dex with the pink-red hair suddenly grabbed Thomas by his wrist and pulled his bracelet covered hand with Zed in it into her stomach.
The delivery man did not resist. He knew that fighting a far stronger Dex was completely useless.
Threads of void bloomed from the GLM bracelet, settling into the containment space within the girl. A sphere of liquid, pulsating darkness that warped and folded into itself floated in containment space. Zed was now held up by a sphere of flickering, constantly spinning rings of hollow shields. Glancing at Zed gave Thomas a migraine.
The girl pulled his hand out of her belly. The compartment snapped shut.
"Thanks for choosing me," she said, winking at the mailman.
“I knew that you were going to choose her,” Gabriel said. “Because my Lady told me so. She knew that you were going to choose this Dex because of what you liked in the past. We move on predetermined rails of choices down a path akin to characters of a lovely opera show, as if we are simply written into existence. Our preferences force all of our choices upon us. Even when you were offered twelve, you chose exactly what you wanted, what you desired to look upon, what you had designed yourself!”
“Whatever,” Thomas huffed. He chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth. A fully functional Dex was exactly what he wanted. “What now?”
A black chip suddenly slid out of the forehead of the girl and the Dex collapsed onto Thomas. The delivery man caught the girl in his arms. Thankfully, her bones seemed to be made from stable hex-mesh, not immovable metal that the police models used, otherwise he would already be crushed under a ton of robot. She definitely wasn’t a cheap model, felt unnervingly like a human.
Gabriel grabbed the GLM chip, sliding it into the pocket of his robe. Eleven Dexes put their garish, red robes and gold masks back on.
“The Dex ownership permit and proof of purchase is in your corporate email account, Thomas. Feel free to voicecast me,” the bishop spoke, christening the delivery man and his new Dex with his gold scepter. “Have fun, you two!"
A portal flashed behind Thomas.
The bishop tapped him with his oversized scepter and the delivery man lost his balance and tumbled with his heavy Dex in tow backwards into darkness.