Kemia
Fourth Week of January
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A knock on the door alarms me awake. “Kemia, we’re going to be late!”
Sitting up straight on the bed, my blanket drops onto my extended legs. For a few seconds, I stretch my arms out and above, feeling a comfortable energy coursing through them, and notify Ria of my status. “Coming!”
I quickly dress in my outfit of maroon sweatpants, a white shirt, and white socks. The morning light dispels the darkness of the room the moment I push away the curtains of my opened window, gifting me with winds carrying the fragrance of green pastures. Another clear and sunny sky greets me on Seamus’ teaching day!
Walking down the hall to the front door, I gather the hair tickling my back with one hand, then secure it into a ponytail using a yellow hair tie. I see Ria sitting on the elevated ledge by the front door, putting on her cute aquamarine flats complementing her frilly, mint green dress. Bending down to put my nose between the strands of her flowing, frosty hair for a sniff, she jerks her head up.
“Ow!” I rub my stinging nose.
Ria turns around and helps me massage it. “Sorry!”
I hug her neck close to me and pout. “I just wanted to smell your beautiful hair, Ria!”
“You can smell your own, you know.” Ria giggles.
“Mine is always with me; yours—only once a week,” I tell her, getting a whiff of jasmine from her head.
“Okay, put on your shoes, we’re going to be late.”
With white shoes and my maroon jacket from the nearby wall hook, I spin out the front door to capture the cool breeze around my arms. A gust lifts my unzipped jacket and shirt, exposing my belly to the chilly air, and I meet Ria’s green eyes behind me. Her cloud-colored hair captures the flow of the wind as she walks with certainty and care in every step.
I continue to spin and frolic down our smooth, stone path joining the other two paths from our colleagues’ houses, inducing a cool flow around my neck and hair that tickles to my liking. Approaching the town square, I see and run up to the corner of the classroom building ahead of Ria, hiding behind it and waiting for her to turn. When she does, I hop forward and grab her shoulders, then let out a “Grrr!”
She giggles. “What are you doing?”
“Aw, I wanted to scare you!”
“Too bad, you will always be a little puppy to me,” she says, patting my head, then walks past me.
I turn around and catch up, following her inside the building and down the hall to our classroom, the sweet scent of jasmine inviting me to follow closely behind. Ria enters the room first and I am a quick second. “We were waiting. You’re late!” Seamus says.
“You can always start without me, I can learn everything as we go along,” I say.
“But not your partner.” Seamus points to Ria with his hand.
Taking the seat opposite of Ria at the front table near the door, I glance at her and exchange smiles. “She stayed behind to wait for me, sooo it’s her fault.” Ria gives me a menacing scowl with such thin lips that may be withholding meat-shredding teeth.
Retaining a smile in her direction, I stand up to shuffle towards the table next to ours, crouching behind Laizen’s chair and pointing my finger to Ria, whose head was following my every step. “Laizen! I never knew nature could be so scary. Help me defend against her, please!” I whisper.
“Uh, I think Notemi is scarier,” he says.
“I think Kemia is,” she adds.
“Then I wouldn’t be afraid of Ria!” I whisper loudly.
Ignoring them, I shuffle over to the side, looking up at Kai, but he shakes his head. “No can do. Talk to Olma, because he’s big.”
I wobble over some more to the final seat and tense my face with utmost effort to call the big guy for help, but he shrugs. “No one is scary here.”
“Okay, today we’ll be learning about artificial intelligence, or AI for short,” Seamus starts.
“Fake intelligence?” I ask with interest, popping my head between Kai’s and Olma’s shoulders.
“That would be you if you remain behind the boys’ seats!”
Standing back up in the air of my colleagues’ laughter, I rub my nose with a wry smile, and walk back to my seat where Ria’s giggling harmonized with the bouncing of her wavy hair. Resting in my seat once again, I project my voice over the dwindling chuckles. “I still want to know why we’re learning about fake intelligence.”
Seamus keeps his gaze on me. “Stop calling it that; it’s artificial—meaning it is a man-made—”
“Why make another intelligence when you have yourself? Are you that dumb?” I tease with a smile.
“I agree, old man. How can you make a genius when you are not one?” Olma adds. He spots me giving him a thumbs up and he reciprocates with his own thumb and a wink.
“I’m not the one who made it! And it’s not about being dumb or smart—it’s about automation and making things easier for us humans to do by not wasting time on repetitive tasks,” Seamus says, pinching his already wrinkled forehead. “Laizen, help me out here!”
“Just because I’m an engineer doesn’t mean I know much about artificial intelligence,” Laizen replies. “But what I do know is that it equalizes the playing field by giving everybody the capability to do the same things experts can do—whether it is art, music composition, writing, designing, mathematics, and many other things.
“I also understand that engineers use a general equation that helps them guess the mathematical patterns behind an art piece, song, or a written language. Since it would be too time consuming for one mathematician to find the patterns behind everything in the universe, similar to having one biologist traveling around the planet to draw and name every distinct cell and organism, AI helps to rapidly identify patterns of anything we want to observe.
“Any computer can have an AI installed – it is portable – meaning you don’t have to have the knowledge of a biologist or mathematician to dichotomize things. The AI itself, or the algorithm behind it, is the mathematician, biologist, musician, artist, writer, or what have you,” Laizen says.
I cross my arms and my smile spreads wider. “So I am right! Because the mathematician can’t find the pattern with their own senses, they resort to using a machine.”
“That’s the point, Kemia, otherwise we would not have the technology we have today,” Seamus responds with a quieter voice. “Once our technology advanced to a certain point, the next step was to use its functions for more general usage.”
I shake my head. “No! You don’t understand what I'm saying. You can only create what you are capable of, but even AI is based on our limits!”
“And what limits would they be?” Seamus asks.
I sigh and shrug. “I’m not Laizen, I don’t have his engineering words.” I turn to look at him in his black hoodie, leaning on his forearms on top of his table.
“The only limitation I see is memory, but I’m still figuring out the rest myself,” he says with eyes looking down.
Sitting across from Laizen, Notemi swivels her bright blue eye to meet mine. “Kemia may be referring to logic—which is the foundation of how all computers work.” She takes a quick glance at Laizen, whose eyes remain lowered, then turns back to me.
“Not just that,” I reply, “but also how the person creating the AI approaches it. What if the person is limited in their way of thinking and they don’t know how to translate what they see into math? We are only using another person’s limited creation. A limited creation cannot have general uses.”
“I see what you mean, but we can also look at the AI in hospitals that I’ve worked in. They are able to scan and map out the exterior of the human body and fix any deviations from the norm. There are also automatic surgeons that are able to precisely maneuver through the confines of the human body, and they can even give proper diagnoses flawlessly,” Ria says.
“They’re just tools to me,” Kai adds, leaning back on his chair with hands behind his head. “Use them? Cool! Don’t use them? Cool!” He turns to look at Olma to his left and signals him to go next with a point of his chin.
“If they are computers, then they are robots that help us,” the big guy says.
I reach for the ceiling and groan. “Ah! Forget it, continue with the class, old man,” I breathe out.
“I don’t need to be reminded by another Olma.” Seamus scowls at me and smirks, then returns to face the class in the now noiseless, sun-filled room. “Anyway, as Laizen and Lyviria have stated, the AI currently in public can do a wide variety of tasks. And like Notemi said, public knowledge of AI relies on the logic of computers—which is a limited framework to create something with.”
“Now, I will introduce something slightly beyond computer logic. Anyone want to take a guess at what it is?” Seamus asks. I snugly rest my chin between two palms. Maybe Seamus is going to show something different, like how he showed the hologram.
“A robot? Like a computer with a body?” Olma asks.
“That’s still a computer.”
“Something that can speak directly with supernatural entities?” Kai asks.
“Not quite.”
“How can something be slightly above computer logic?” Laizen asks. “Everything a computer does is mathematical, hence it is always calculating something new every moment when it is on. If something is slightly above computer logic, then mathematics will have to be completely dropped.”
“What about the medical instruments and the hospital technology? They are quite complicated,” Ria asks.
“They are still computers relying on the same mathematics, regardless of how complex a technology is. Without it, the machines would not function properly and they would most likely take lives instead of help them. So it is important to follow mathematics’ strict boundaries because it gives the creator and its user a sense of control over a machine’s elements,” Laizen says.
“If no one else wants to take a guess, then I’ll proceed. Notemi? Kemia?” Seamus asks, and we both shake our heads, prompting him to bend down beside him to rummage in his backpack on a chair. After a few seconds, he faces us with a large ring in both hands and fits it on top of his head.
“What I show you is a mind projector. Watch.” After tapping the ring on both sides of his head, tiny pale balls of translucent, sky-blue light gradually join together to manifest an image from top to bottom, starting with a domed top. The image stops rounding at a bend and moves vertically down, revealing ridges I recognize as eyes and ears of the same man wearing the technology.
For a few more seconds, the rest of the torso and limbs form as pale orbs continually manifest and launch themselves into place, maintaining a specific blue saturation to form a detailed and complete holographic statue.
“Is this not just another hologram?” Notemi asks.
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“Not done.” With that statement, Seamus lifts two fingers and taps on both sides of the embedded crystal ball centered on the forehead. I stand up immediately; arms slamming straight down on the table. The holographic statue of Seamus waves at us with a smile and walks along the front length of the room.
“Why does your avatar look and act so human-like?” Laizen says.
“The Integrator would see your comment as an insult as this is a failed project of his,” Seamus replies. “Since the pre-integration period, AI has been stagnant without any significant breakthroughs except this mind projector I am showing you. To the Integrator, its practical use is nonexistent other than to be cool.”
“In other words, you are picking technology out from the Integrator’s trash and hosting a show and tell,” Kai says, leaning forward.
Seamus turns to face Kai with the embedded white crystal ball, glowing as bright as the sun’s rays through the windows. “I picked one technology; and showing you is an example of practical use, isn’t it?" Seamus' avatar also turns to Kai and mimics his mouth movements and body language. “Anyway, since I played around with this toy for quite some time, your projected avatar can do anything your mind wills it to do. The only thing it can’t do is create another object other than yourself. So, who wants to go—“
“I do!” I shoot my hand up and Seamus beckons me to the front; his projection sizzling away as he takes off the ring with both hands.
I lower my head, allowing him to place the ring on my head and it contracts, gripping my head softly. Seamus points to the door and I face the entrance of the classroom with space between the door and me. Remembering how he turned on the projection, I tap the ring on both sides of my temples and a holographic statue coalesces, facing my direction as I stare in its eyes with my mouth slack.
A ponytail reveals itself instead of the form of my untied, natural hair. My jacket, pants, and shoes slowly manifest in succession in shades and tints of blue, similar to the effects of a hologram—darker shades come as more pale and transparent, while the tints are more opaque.
I tap the front of the ring with two fingers beside the embedded crystal ball, initiating my avatar with a blink and smile. Then both forearms grasp its belly and my avatar mimics a laugh, and I laugh with it. “Looks like you already know what to do,” Seamus says.
I let my avatar stride along the front of the classroom towards Seamus, then stop directly in front of him to look up at his face. I raise my avatar’s hand above its own shoulders, and as Seamus swings his palm forward for a high-five, I prompt the avatar to swing its palm across his face—the blue hand disappearing as it enters and reappears on the other side of his cheek. “What are you doing?” Seamus scowls at me by his side.
“Wanted to verify something,” I tell him with a mischievous smile. I hear Kai’s laugh and Ria’s giggles on their tables.
I intend my avatar to move through the teacher’s desk and towards Notemi and the three boys—having it stand in the center of their table to eye everyone as they swish their hands through the hologram, causing it to ripple. As each individual hand goes through the hologram, pockets of air replace the transparent blue light as if physical contact displaces its contents.
But my desire to continue playing comes to a stop when Seamus says that others must have a chance to enjoy the mind projector by the end of the class. With both my hands, I take off the compressed ring from my head and hand it to Ria, whose silver hair brushes my side as she takes my place.
Turning to seat myself, I see Ria’s avatar recreating her frilly dress below the waist, capturing the fluffiness of it as if it were waving in the air. A look at her face gives an impression of someone who can command the world with beauty, with the head ring and white crystal complementing her elegant style.
With her avatar coming to life, Ria closes her eyes and the projection lifts off its feet and bobs up and down with gently swaying hair, reminding me of clouds. Turning to her still, physical presence, she radiates a similar serenity as if surrendering herself to the whims of the wind.
As time progresses, the avatar’s dress expands, revealing its shin as its hair rises behind its back, fraying from its origin. Her avatar slowly opens its eyes to take a smiling glance at all of us, and her pointed toes lower back down to the floor, giving an impression of weight as the soles bend gently from contact and rests its flat heel on the wooden boards.
Resting my cheek on my lifted palm, I smile to her blind avatar’s eyes then turn to catch a glimpse of Ria gradually revealing hers from a minute’s slumber. She takes the ring from the crown of her head and hands it to the next volunteer—Kai—and returns to her seat in front of me, turning to face the next projector.
With his avatar coming to life, Kai walks it through the window and watches it come back into the classroom with a disappointed face. “I can’t feel anything the avatar feels.”
“Now, what good reason would you have to want to feel how it deconstructs as it passes through a wall?” Seamus asks.
“O-Okay fair point.”
Kai continues in his world of antics, posing his avatar in such strange ways and rating it with his thumb, while he improvises for his avatar to react with many contorted and amusing facial expressions. Then, he and his avatar share the same look of confusion as they attempt to pull their own blazer off, with only the real Kai succeeding. Meanwhile, his avatar’s blue hand mimics its projector, but only succeeds in swiping through its own body.
Giving up on playing with himself, Kai then passes the ring to Olma, who goes into a physical exercise competition with his avatar—jumping in place, lifting his own body weight, and acting out as many variations of physical feats he can imagine.
On one particular exercise—the push ups—Olma tires out, but his avatar continues to do everything with ease, comfort, and an unbreakable flow. Even when the avatar pops its head out from its straight-angled posture to take a look at its controller, it continues to do the exercise as both of them smile at each other. In the end, Olma high-fives his holographic self and pulls the head ring out with a single hand, triggering a quick, diagonal sizzle out of existence.
Olma passes it to Notemi, but she refuses and hands the ring to Laizen. First Seamus, then Laizen asks if she is fine with skipping her turn and she says it’s unnecessary because she sees no point in playing with it. Conceding to it, Laizen steps up and places the ring on his head; the white ball at its center glowing after a simultaneous press on both sides.
“How does the Integrator come up with these things?” Laizen asks while waiting for his avatar to form. Seamus shrugs at his answer and Laizen turns back to his manifesting avatar.
It takes on the same large head above a flimsy body with long, thin limbs. With a press beside the embedded crystal, Laizen’s avatar shivers and crouches down to hug its knees. Unlike my avatar and everyone else’s, his avatar appears to fracture and fragment into shimmering patches as its color fluctuates in opacity and glitches in and out of existence. Each time a small, rectangular pocket of air forms in its blue, holographic body, a new pale dot phases into existence and fills the empty color, but it doesn’t stop the rest of the body from deconstructing itself into layers and layers of ephemeral and computerized patchwork.
Laizen stares at it with wide eyes as the avatar moves its hugging hands to grasp its head while shivering and fluctuating in stability. “How do you do that?” I ask him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but that doing is not my doing,” he says, standing and crunching his face. “I can’t move it; how did you guys do it?”
“You set the intention to move, like how you normally move, but don’t actually move your physical body,” Seamus tells him.
“I’m doing that, but with all the effort I can channel into my intention. It’s not working.”
“Probably why the Integrator says it’s a faulty technology,” Seamus says, shrugging. Laizen watches his avatar remain on the floor, embracing itself with arms hugged around its torso.
With their distinct colored eyes, a brief connection forms between Kai, Ria, and Notemi across the room, and they return their attention back to the anomaly in front.
Immediately, Laizen startles himself and looks us as if we told him a secret burden he needed to bear. He flinches again, turning his eyes away from us to look out the window and takes off the ring to hand it back to Seamus. Laizen walks back to his seat, pulls out his chair with an arm, and gently lowers himself down with an elbow on the table; his head looking down.
“Since Notemi won’t be coming up, then we’ll end it for today.” Seamus looks at her and she confirms with a nod. “And there is only one prototype of this mind projector, so only one pair can take it home.”
“Don’t want it,” Laizen says.
“Agreed,” Notemi says, affirming the first pair.
“I don’t see any use for it right now, old man,” Olma says.
“There are other things to play around with,” Kai adds.
“Wait, wait! I won’t be home to use it anyway,” I tell them. “I say one of you pairs take it.”
“We can take it home and pass it on to Kai and Olma once you are gone,” Ria says.
“Which reminds me—back to your favorite restaurant you go to for lunch.” Seamus approaches Ria and me, passing his present to where our hands lay.
“Can you stop doing what you’re doing and let us enjoy the-woman-I-have-never-seen’s lunch for the rest of our training period?” Kai asks, walking to me with hands on his waist.
I give him a sheepish smile. “Okay, okay! I’ll see what I can do.”
“And Kailus.” Seamus looks down to meet Kai’s eyes. “Come to the desk so I can show you your schedule.”
While Kai follows him with a body bopping to an inaudible beat, the rest of us exit the classroom, with me being the last one to see Kai reacting with a strange face in his discussion with Seamus. Wrapping around to the entrance of the building and walking along the stone path, loud thumps on the nearby window shows Kai still in the classroom. We walk closer to see him clearer through the glaring glass, and he slams the transparent wall with palms stretched open.
“Let’s just go,” Notemi says, and we follow her along the path into the woods.
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“Why didn’t you guys wait for me?” Kai pants, settling down on the bench with one arm planted for stabilization. He takes off his glasses and rubs it with his shirt, then wipes the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.
“Notemi’s idea,” Laizen says on the same bench as him and Olma.
“Thanks, fun-phobic Explorer,” Kai says.
“There’s a different idea of fun for me. Let’s also not forget about the part where you declined to bring the mind projector home,” Notemi says.
“What assignment did you get?” I lean forward with elbows on the table, remembering the funny face he made.
“Going to the graveyard,” Kai says. He covers his face with his palms and looks to the side with a slanted smile. Turning back to us, he swings down his opened palms in disbelief. “Can you believe this guy? First he wants me in prison, now he wants me dead. What will he do after my death?”
Olma slaps the wooden table, giving a wobble to the six glasses of water, and lets out a deep, hearty laugh. “He will follow you after you die, what kind of question is that?”
“He’ll take your corpse and give it to me for study,” Ria says, fingers interlacing to form a bow beneath her chin.
“What the—Lyviria, I would prefer a robot over you any day. Giving me some creepy vibes with your intentions,” Kai says.
“It does sound like he’s giving you a hard time,” Notemi says. “Why not take his advice and stay down?”
Kai facepalms and slowly shakes his head. “I think you’re extrapolating a little too far, guys.”
“It’s not that far off after you told the story about meeting someone that doesn’t exist any longer,” Laizen says.
“Oh yeah, what else happened after the story you told us?” Notemi asks.
Kai talks about the ghostly man reappearing and leading him and Seamus to its cell so that he can experience loneliness again. After revealing its name as Adam, his wife and daughter appeared and took him out of the prison. Notemi takes a sip of her warm water and speaks into the glass. “Sounds like Seamus wants you to become more than one person—your next evolutionary path.”
“No way. I would never allow myself to become an amalgamation of deceased souls,” Kai replies. “Anyway, what about you, Notemi? How is your training coming along?”
“Figuring out what instruments I’d like to use for my assignment—the right sound is the challenge.”
“Oh? What will you be doing with the music?” Ria asks.
Notemi stares at the swirling glass of water in her hand and smiles behind the glass. “It’s a surprise.”
“Ah—Kemia!” Laizen interjects. “What are you doing to keep Julie away from the island?”
“I’m not keeping her away,” I reply, “but, how do I explain? Doctor Amy and Julie said I learn fast, but those two words don’t fit well with me. Ria? What do you think?”
“Well, remember that you aren’t home for most of the week?” she asks. “How do I make an assessment based on these few times you’re home?”
“Does it matter? I trust you!” I tell her.
“No need to elaborate further, actually,” Laizen says. “Your confirmation is more than enough.”
...
Once home, I take my pants off for freedom and rinse my hands and face before going to the living room to push the couch, revealing the metal bar that generates a hologram. After turning on the thin tablet with a white crystal embedded in its back, I fiddle with the settings until blue dots of light appear and join together, forming a large blue screen reaching the ceiling.
There is one application that I saw during my training which I didn’t want to forget—an app for holographic jump roping! After installing it on the tablet and calibrating the length of the rope, I enter the width of how far to allow the jump rope to swing, then set how fast one loop will take. I’ll jump every second.
No collision detection is shown on the app, but that does not stop me from having fun. Pressing the green ‘START’ button on the tablet, the flat image of a rope on the hologram starts lax on the ground, then swings to its peak, then back down again. I put my hands through the floating screen, forming a claw with my fingers and I grab the projection out to its maximum width, the holographic rope changing from a flat image to something that moves in three-dimensional space—as if invisible people were swinging it up over my head, and down below my ankles.
While jumping, I hear the bathroom door open and out comes Ria, who has been taking showers knowing she will not be going out for the rest of the day. “Ria!” I quickly shout in the brief time I remain on the ground. “Come join me!”
“Last time you played with jigsaw puzzles, now it’s jump rope? You can choose activities requiring only a single person, you know.”
“I can enjoy this myself any time, but since you’re here, let’s jump!”
She giggles. “Okay, but when I start feeling the smallest amount of sweat, I’m stopping.”
“There’s no collision detection, so catch up on your own,” I tell her, turning ninety degrees counterclockwise each time I jump and land.
Ria picks up the tablet and pokes at it, and I ask her what she is doing as I continue rotating in place. Then the rope’s tempo speeds up. And then even faster. My lengthy airborne jumps turn to mini hops in my best attempt to make up for the lack of collision detection. Feeling the heat building up in my body, I stop my rotation and face Ria directly.
She gives me a mischievous smile and places the tablet down on the floor. She holds up the length of her silver hair behind her and ties it up into a ponytail. Her short, pink sleeves on her tee being the only calmness in the field of white she wore. “At the rate you were going, I was never going to sweat.”
As she joins behind me, I turn so that we face each other while hopping to the rhythm of the rope. Though her hair is longer than mine, it did not fling and bounce as much, and she seems to be enjoying the new tempo I haven't accustomed to. “Maybe try out the AI before you leave for tomorrow,” she says with a steady voice.
I can feel that my voice is unsteady even before speaking, so I scan to see what she is doing differently. Only when my eyes reach her feet do I notice her alternating between them instead of hopping over the rope each time. Switching my method to hers, a burden lifts from my chest and I respond. “Mmm—I like doing things myself.”
After several minutes of jogging in place, we both stop and I lay on the ground and breathe heavily while she leans forward with palms on her knees, panting. “What happened to stopping after feeling sweaty?” I ask.
“Friendly competition.” She wipes her head with a towel and lifts her head, opening her chest up where I can see it rise and fall for more air.
I flip on my back to become a smiling starfish. “You lose.”