“There is an important distinction to be made between Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Intelligence, and we may see that in the near future.”
-Helena Christodoulopoulos, 2181, Influential’s In Reality Interview
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It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I limped away from the central axis of the Terra Nova Enclave. My interface guided me to my private quarters. Thankfully, after getting away from the axis and getting to the centripetal ring, I found fewer people.
I was a weak person.
I couldn’t handle human interaction, not for a long exposure. Yes, it had been a few hours, yet in that short span, I already grew sick. It didn’t help that I had just come out of evolution. There was a myriad of secondary effects related to evolutionary processes, and whilst I felt okay, I was also pushing my body. My social battery was as drained as my body, and they both consumed each other in a negative feedback loop.
I wanted to puke.
My biological-ascended body told me that there was nothing with the food, my stomach was perfectly fine. No, all the problems arose from myself alone.
I maintained a facsimile of wellness on the exterior. Even if I wanted to run – which I couldn’t in my state – these wooden flip-flops wouldn’t allow me to.
Calmly, I followed the light-blue arrow and path guiding me to my destination.
The holographic pathway disappeared with a satisfying ping, marking the end of the journey. I stood in front of a locked room. I had no key of any sort, and the door had no control panel, so I sent a communication petition to the door through my interface.
The doorframe lit green for an instant before the door slid open.
The room was revealed to me the moment I took a step forward. It was… decent. I looked at the notification I received and this room was classified as ‘Influential Quarter’ meaning others had it worse. The room wasn’t bad, far from it. It was just small.
I was used to plentiful space. Proxima b was bigger than Earth, and whilst not the whole planet was habitable, we were orders of magnitudes less people here. So having just a room to me felt… oppressing. A good kind of oppression though, if that existed.
I wasn’t being entitled; I knew how precious space was in space. I wouldn’t be surprised if students were just given bunker beds. The Terra Nova Enclave was big, but not that big. It housed 50.000 people, but most of them were students in the process of evolving or hospitalized like me.
The quarters were just two rooms. Main living space and bathroom. I hit the bathroom door with my knuckles and it opened, showing me a complete bathroom. Sink, toilet, and shower.
“Not bad,” Considering there would be pools, spas, and jacuzzies out there, a shower was more than good enough.
Yet the moment I stepped out of the hall and into the living space, the room lit up with a soft blue hue. I got a ping on my interface notifying me of the activation of my residence domotics.
“Greetings, Lorem Ipsum,” A soft female voice announced. “My name is Sandra, and I am your low-level Virtual Intelligence Assistant.”
As any normal person, I asked the first question in my mind. “Does Sandra stand for something?”
“Sorry, I did not understand that question.” I deadpanned.
“I meant if your name is a name or an acronym.” I clarified.
“My name is a subjective sobriquet assigned to me and bears no meaning whatsoever. You are free to change it if you are displeased with it.”
“No, it’s fine,” I mumbled.
Low-level Virtual Intelligence. That means she’s capable of human understanding and primitive emotional intelligence, but her sophistication is closer to an advanced AI than an actual virtualized human. She’s not alive. Lorem, you are already saying ‘she’.
“Is there a reason why you have a female voice?” I looked around the room for reconnaissance equipment, any type of sensory detectors.
“Affirmative,” Some parts of the room flickered with soft blue light with the VI affirmation. “From your academic and development expedient, and your evolution analysis, it has been determined you interact better with females than males, therefore I have been assigned a female role as your assistant.”
Reading between the lines, Sandra has no assigned gender and can change it freely. I reworded her explanation. Well, it’s not like I can’t do it either.
“You have absolute control of my quarters then?”
“Affirmative,” The room flickered blue again. “I can assist you in whatever you need in this residence, besides accessing the QEF for you if you need assistance in research. However, I am obligated to mention that my searching capabilities are not as optimized as human ones and I may burn more computational power even for simpler searches. Computational power that will be deducted from your personal account.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
What a good way of losing computes then. Searches on the QEF weren’t expensive, even though most of them would be classified in milicomputes for taxing ones like streaming services, but most normal ones would be closer to microcomputes. Wait, how can common humans afford it then?
“Do all humans have personal VIs or is this an Influential perk?” I asked Sandra.
“All humans are doted with their personal assistant upon their evolution.” The Virtual Intelligence explained. “Depending on their tier, they may be offered different options. Humans are given a high-level Artificial Intelligence, similar to the functionalities of their interfaces. Influentials are given a low-level Virtual Intelligence like myself. And Paragons are offered a high-level Virtual Intelligence, though unlike other tiers, it is an option as not many humans are comfortable with the concept of high-level intelligence assistants.”
Of course, not. I kept to myself. Virtualized humans are a thing, like the restaurant owner. Who would want a robot with the same capabilities and functionality as virtualized humans as their perfectly obedient assistant? My heart rate spiked. I can’t believe laws about it haven’t been passed yet. There weren’t many Paragons out there, but the idea was appalling to me.
“Wait, so I have complete ownership of you?” I’m liking this…
“Affirmative,” Sandra responded. “I am classified as a domotic, or residential, assistant VI, so by the Act of Conservation of Information of 2187, you are required to install me in any of your future residencies.”
I frowned. “Are you connected right now to the QEF?”
“Negative,” The VI denied. “I can only connect to the network when you ask me to as otherwise, I would drain you of your computes. A task I am not allowed to perform without your permission.”
“I see…” So no government surveillance. “Do you update your internal logs to any server when you are connected to the QEF?”
“Negative,” She denied again. I doubted she was lying, but it felt so weird to be forced to install the assistant. It felt like some type of supervision and monitoring.
“Can I see your terminal and a trace of connections?” I commanded.
“I reiterate, I am not connected to the QEF,” Sandra explained, avoiding my petition.
“That was an order, not a question. Do it.” I told with a scowl.
The room brightened for a second before Sandra spoke again. “The terminal has opened on the desktop access.”
I was going to ask why she hadn’t sent it to my interface but closed my mouth. There were many sensible reasons why she hadn’t done that.
I walked forward, finally being able to examine the room in its entirety. I had been so distracted with her that I had forgotten about my quarters. The room was simple, with barely the basic furniture. A big bed, so cupboards top, and a closet to the side. In front of the bed, there was a desk with more cupboards, and besides a mini-fridge and a loaded bio-printer.
I also noticed a control panel on top of the bed, which I promptly connected to it wirelessly with my terminal. The options were very simple and barebones, the drill: locking/unlocking, AC, humidity slider, light luminosity and color slider, and a mute option for the assistant. Well, that’s rude. But I guess it’s good to have it.
Only one part of the quarters remained, one that didn’t have any space at all.
The window.
Rectangular with curved corners, it was a basic window like any other. It was mundane. But the sights… those were otherworldly.
The two-by-four-meter window displayed the immensity of space. I could see the arms of the Milky Way with ease as there wasn’t an atmosphere or light pollution hiding the cosmos. From my current position, I could only see Rigil Kentaurus, but the rotation of the centripetal rings turned enough for me to catch a whisp of Proxima Centauri.
“Marvelous…” Sandra stayed silent during my observation of the cosmos, even if I had asked her to open the terminal.
There was something about space that was breathtaking, no matter how many times I looked at it. And whilst I had only been three days in space so far – and for the first time – I had seen too much imagery and renditions that I considered myself desensitized.
“Hmm…” As I looked at the frame of the window, I noticed some small slits. “Sandra, is by any means this window also a display?”
“Affirmative,” Sandra made her act of presence after a long silence. “This window can be converted into a LES screen with 16k resolution.”
“Why would I want 16k resolution?” I mused aloud.
“I did not understand that question.”
“It wasn’t one, I was just rambling aloud,” I explained to her. Maybe low-level was right. She doesn’t catch social clues.
“Understood.” The room flickered with understanding. “Could I inquire about the cause of your distress?”
“Hmm?” Proactive, huh? “Sure. I was wondering why to have a 16k resolution screen if most videos aren’t recorded at 4k?”
“Technically speaking, most professional videos are recorded at vectorial and adaptive resolutions. The quality depends on the desired bandwidth usage after converting the video through a server petition.”
“Then why couldn’t I petition 8k videos, for example?”
“Sub-humans have limited access to the QEF to not extenuate the bandwidth or not consume all their computes with a single reproduction,” Sandra explained dutifully.
“Huh…” I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Why are humans so hellbent on keeping students from knowing basic things? I hate that I’m just learning about all of these things.”
“If you are displeased with the current administration of the United Human Nation, you are encouraged to start a political campaign.” The VI dictated from a script.
“No, thank you.” I waved it away. “I’m not touching that dumpster fire. I’m more than well enough being an Influential, I don’t need to be a Paragon.”
I landed my hand on the back of the chair at the desk. There was no real utility for a desktop terminal on the quarters when I had access to my terminal, or I would say that if I were home. This was a direct connection point to the space station and, by the looks of it, also the interface of the virtual intelligence.
My swarm robotics research, whilst not directly correlated with computer science and software engineering, made me study some primitive aspects of computers. So I brought my hands to the tactile terminal and opened the shell terminal. Who gave computers and command terminals the same name? I’m going to strangle them if they are still alive which I doubt. I puffed and wrote a command.
traceroute
The dark mode displayed flashed with exactly 0 lines of text.
“Alright, no connections to the QEF. That’s good.”
“I already told you that.” Sandra butted in.
“Indeed, you have.” I let it at that.
I stood up from the chair and jumped at my bed. The call of the soft mattress was daunting. I was surprised to even have a bed. I would have been okay with a capsule. Actually, scratch that. I think I prefer a capsule. I groaned on the bed and stretched my arms.
“It’s finally time,” I said with my eyes locked on my interface. “Let’s see what you can offer, Project Tycoon.”