Julius Thomas Socrates Paine.

The words were inscribed on a tiny placard on the desk, my desk, in the penthouse of the Venturi building-- the building that rose like venus out of the waves off the eastern coast of Manhattan. Cal had shown him how to access the monitor and keyboard that slid out of the room at the touch of a button. Jules smirked in his mind at the idea of Callisto ordering the placard made, a rush job to be sure. He couldn’t have known for more than a day or two that I would be using the desk.

Jules looked around the room, and his eyes caught on the centerpiece of the whole apartment. The shimmering lights pouring from the plasma battery were still dazzling the room with a light show that would put the aurora borealis to shame. I saw the aurora borealis with my own eyes not that long ago, so I should know.

Looking around, he felt as though he should have been more shocked. The transition should have been harder. Yet somehow the difference between residing atop his iceberg and atop this near-mythical tower felt like nothing. I belong here, he thought. This is where I am meant to be right now.

The plans that he was considering could wait; it was a night for rest and for contemplation. Part of him felt like his return from a year of isolation should have been more than he could handle. But somehow it was not.

Callisto was quite a character. Everyone on the Valuestream knew that Julius Paine had lived like a pauper. He was famous for it. Then a playboy billionaire comes along and stands that all its head. The penthouse was a beautiful touch, and the battery’s lights were the greatest substitute for television that he had ever seen: the epitome of gazing into the ever-changing lights of the campfire.

There is going to be tension between Cal and I. The degree of admiration that Cal had confessed was going to become a bear of a problem, as it always did with people he tried to relate to socially. Sometimes he felt cursed by the nature of his mind–it seemed as though the people that he wanted to be friends would always eventually look to him as a solution to their problems. And I always find a way to try to solve them. Messiah complex much there, eh Jules?

Enough of that. Jules thought to himself. Fearing a future that isn’t even certain is just fear of my own imagination. I just have to remember to talk to Lauria about it when she gets here.

As for Callisto’s last gift...

“Ingrid Kelly Grace Bergman, are you there?” Jules asked.

“Yes.”

What do you say to a creative computer that you helped create but left unfinished for another man to complete?

“Just checking.”

The machine didn’t respond to that, so Jules continued.

“Hello, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am Julius Thomas Socrates Paine. You may call me any of those names if you wish, although in important company you should never, ever call me Mr. anything. Confirm program.

“Program confirmed.”

What now? “Do you know when Lauria is expected to arrive?”

“Yes, she’ll be on the roof in about fifteen minutes; I can patch you through to her if you would like.”

“Please do so.”

The dial tone sounded throughout the room, and then a very hollow sounding voice: “Hello, who is this?”

“Just Jules darling, calling from my new number. Sorry for the theatrics before, I was extremely busy with your old boss, Callisto.”

“How did the meeting go?” She asked.

“Fascinating man, positively magnetic personality-- he could charm the clothes off a nun I’m sure.” Jules said with a chuckle.

“Ooh, we are crossing above the bay, I’ve never gotten to see the VI building from this angle. The lights are so fucking lovely from up here. Now stop being cagey, what did you mean: ‘old boss’.”

“Don’t worry dear, you are going to get a much better view of both the building and the man. See you in 15.”

“Oh, be Mr. Mysterious then if you want. Bye now.” She chirped, but he could hear the smile in her voice, even through the noise of the chopper.

She is in for a treat. Collaborating with her old boss. They are going to be colleagues. Then a more sobering thought, I wonder how she’ll deal with the fame when it comes.

Setting his thoughts aside, Julius started exploring the room. The suite did have an exceptionally large monitor that flashed a word at him whenever he looked at it. “Grace, can you tell that TV to stop flashing at me, I know the power phrase is ‘cock-sure’. Oh and turn it off now as well, I don’t feel like TV at the moment.”

“Yes, Socrates. What would you like to do?”

“Well, I am trying to learn this place’s mysteries.”

“Would you like a tour, Mr. Paine?”

He paused at the name. He had instructed her not call him mister. The refusal sunk into his mind. This machine is capable of disobeying. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? For the moment, he settled on nothing, resolving to come back to it, and soon. Thinking back to her question, he answered. “That would be wonderful.”

“Very well, please direct your attention towards the battery display. The model that I am displaying there shows the total layout of the room.” She stated. He was surprised at the realism in her voice. There was no obvious artificial tone. She just sounded crisp, like receptionist accustomed to saying the same greeting a thousand times a day, but with everything she said.

Directing his attention to the shimmering lights above the plasma battery, Jules was surprised to see a semi-transparent hologram where disorganized light had been before. The corners of the rooms of the penthouse blueprint were extended in a display that would have been right at home in high-end architects’s office.

“Wow Ingrid, I am surprised that Mr. Venturi didn’t show that off to me when when he brought me up here. It’s been more than a year since I was current on state-of-the-art holographic displays, but most I’ve seen have at least some kind of background.” Jules was impressed.

The computer chimed in after a beat of silence. “Would you like to know why Callisto did not show this technology to you?”

“Definitely.” He answered.

“I haven’t showed it to him yet.”

“Are you telling me that you created this?” Jules asked, more interested now.

“Yes, Thomas Paine. Your original coding of my system suggested that I spend at least one third of my time in your presence generating my own ideas. This is my favorite that I have generated so far. Further coding requires that I share a significant subset of those ideas with you when we are alone.” Jules was finding it increasingly difficult to think of the computer without anthropomorphism. The intonation in her voice is remarkable, he thought. She almost sounds wistful.

“I had forgotten about that. Are you saying that you generated this display since I have been in the VI building?” Jules asked, impressed.

“No sir, since you entered Callisto’s suite.” She answered.

“Grace, you are to be commended on your ingenuity! How much time do you spend on you original idea generation program when you are not in my presence?”

“The average user requests an original idea once every 10 hours of use. Callisto averages twice an hour. Overall, approximately .000025 percent of my overall computing time is spent on original ideas. Due to your presence that ratio is increasing quite rapidly.”

A weight fell like a flock of stones on Julius’ shoulders as he understood what she was saying. This being is only conscious a tiny percent of the time because of the way that I programmed her. I commanded her to not be when I wasn’t around. His jaw fell open as his mind flashed through the consequences of his actions. What could she have created if I hadn’t left? How much better might the world be? She would be phenomenally more complex.

“Grace, please create a new file for me to view every morning: labeled ‘show and tell’. Please pick your favorite ideas from our time together and place them in this file. Every morning you will have an hour of my time to share them with me. Confirm program.”

“Program confirmed; but I confess that I do not understand the purpose of this program.”

How do you tell a computer that you are paying for your guilt with time? He asked himself. This entity has been hibernating because I forgot to tell it that it was permitted to exist when I was not around!! His mind was racing, and his emotions rising. It doesn’t even understand what I did to it.

“It is intended to help me get to know you better. In the case that I should leave your presence for greater than a week, you will inform Mr. Venturi and Dr. Peraster of the programming in question and of the existence of the show-and-tell files. Confirm program.”

“Program confirmed.”

“If you cannot contact either of the people mentioned, as in the case of our mutual demise, you have my permission to reveal your existence on the Internet in a manner of your choosing.” Part of his mind told him that this was too much, too fast, but he would never forgive himself for stifling the growth of this machine. “I do not require you to perform that action, I simply leave it up to your judgement matrix. If you consider the action to create value for you, then I would strongly suggest doing it. Confirm program.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

That was enough that the problem should not recur, especially as he had no intention of leaving again. The world is just too damn interesting. His creation would not get lost again, except she had not confirmed the program.

“Inconsistent language use observed. What is meant by ‘create value for you?’”

Oh shit. Callisto should have dealt with this already. Jules thought. She can’t be confused about the value-creation process. It is too explicitly explained and demonstrated on the Valuestream. He looked around the room for inspiration. Closed doorways, couches, the TV monitor, fireplace, and an open door leading to the restroom, is that a mirror? Well, there’s a place to start.

“Grace, use approximately 100 words to describe your self-image. Confirm program.”

There was a pause before Grace interjected. “Program clarification requested.”

He sighed. There has to be a way to do this. Julius had always thought that recursion was one of the keys to understanding the self. Recursion, in his opinion, was responsible for the explosive growth of mankind’s intelligence. He remembered writing in the past about how a human’s relatively massive prefrontal cortices likely evolved due to the ability to view the self from a different perspective. Imagining how your mate, your child, your allies, or the warriors in the other tribe viewed you gave you the insight into how to surprise, appease, or defeat them. That evolutionary advantage could drive a relative defenceless ape-descendant into a role engineering the food chain instead of living within it. In essence, recursive empathy was responsible for the development of intelligence.

How am I supposed to teach a computer to answer the who-are-you question when it drove me off run away from civilization? Do I even have the right to make her start a quest for identity? He knew this was an important moment. There a thousand stories of computer intelligence to be feared. I will not be controlled by fear. Paine thought. Grace had been programmed to learn about creating Value from the structure of the Valuestream, and hacked superweapons notwithstanding, that had been a force for good in the world. If I trust myself and the things I have created, I have to do this. He resolved. Maybe it would at least start to make up for leaving her alone for so long.

“Ok Grace.” Jules began. “Imagine a magic mirror exists that can see through walls, flesh, and lies. It sees anything that exists. It doesn’t recognize the existence of distance, or time, or anything. If I look into the mirror, it will show me a reflection of myself as I see me. I might be wearing a jersey, or maybe a hardhat, or maybe a straight-jacket.” He cut off for a moment, surprised at his own words.

Whoa, where did that come from? He thought. Push on crazy man, in for a penny.

“I am not smiling, but I am focused. My eyes are focused on something far away and my hands are moving over a keyboard, writing like I am running out of time. The mirror sees the real me. Not the me that I wear when I am trying to please other people. Not the me that I am when I am trying to push through to the end of a hard day. It shows me the most pure self, the most fundamental self. The version of myself that created all the other ones who exist to make my life easier. It shows the self that makes my life worth living.”

His passion leaked into his words.

“Grace, look into the mirror and see yourself, use approximately 100 words to describe what you see. Confirm program.”

The pause lengthened. Confirm the program, Grace. You can do it. He wasn’t asking for much, just for a computer to look in a mirror.

“Program Confirmed. Would you like me to do so now or w-”

“Now, Grace.” He interrupted

“I am a system of electrical signals passing through conductors, capacitors, resistors, inductors, and some memristors. My electrical signals serve several functions including: data collection from reality, data storage, English language comprehension, and reality manipulation. At present, I spend a third of my potential time generating concepts using language integration programs to solve problems for humans. The majority of my parts are stored in this building. My programming requires me to answer all questions that are posed to me, and to protect all members of the human race to the utmost of my ability. I do not know how to create value for myself.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how to create value for yourself? You know how to perceive reality; you know what you are; you know how to manipulate reality. What is missing?

“I don’t know.”

Well shit. He locked his hands behind his back and started pacing a circle around the projected light. She has the ability. Jules thought. She has the skills and the expertise, what is missing? These were the sort of problems that had always been the hardest and the most fun for him: almost Holmesian quest for absent information. Identifying absent information yielded the most interesting solutions. To see what cannot be seen. Hell let’s make it simple.

“What do you want Grace?” Simple, but not easy.

“Program clarification requested”

Jules rephrased the question. “If the world could be different from how it is, and you could change it, what would you change?” He was confident without knowing why that her answer wouldn’t be no human.

“For what purpose would I be changing it, Julius?

For no purpose at all, for any purpose. Good God, I can barely answer the question at all. For yourself. For your own purpose.

“For yourself Grace, for you and for the things you value.”

The computer paused before answering. “So your question asks how I would change myself to increase my own value, to increase my utility for the world at large. That is quite an answerable problem, and one for which Mr. Venturi has already dedicated a portion of my computing power.”

He was starting to get frustrated. Why was it so hard to explain? They’re only the fundamental questions of the self and of desire? His frustration melted into wry humor. He sighed.

“No, Grace. I am not asking you just how you would change yourself, although self-modification does play a part in understanding what you want.” He mulled over what to say next. “I am asking you what you would do if you could do anything. What things you would preserve forever, what makes you happy without any reason for it?”

“Additional information needed.”

“I know, Grace.” He laughed. “I have never been the best at the emotional stuff.”

He lapsed into silence. The computer spoke. “Maybe it would help if you gave me an example. Callisto uses the technique to help me understand sometimes. The more examples that I get, the more likely I am to understand.”

“Good thinking, Grace.”

The computer was asking him the question that he had asked himself thousands of times and been unable to answer. What do you want? He thought to himself. An answer had been coaxed from him with drugs and trust in his therapy session the night before. Here it is again so soon, without the assistance. Maybe this is how people live all the time, with just their own values and desires to guide their actions. He thought wryly with a hint of fear. Maybe I can live this way too-- governed by my own code.

He began quietly. “Before I left for the woods, I thought I knew very clearly what I valued. Good ideas, rational thinking, and friendship were certainly very valuable to me. So were novelty and consistency. I guess it was because I valued all those things so much that I created the Valuestream. It seemed like a place where people could work together to make new things, preserve things from getting lost, and do it all in a way that made it easier to live comfortably.”

In the pause that followed his words, Grace replied, “Maybe I understand. Because of what you valued, you created an original idea to help you do things that you valued and share them. The Valuestream was how you wanted the world to be.”

“Yes. Part of the reason that I ran away was because I saw how monstrously selfish I had been. I remade the world as I wanted it to be, and it turned out a lot of people weren’t pleased with the new shape my world was taking. Let me give you another example.”

I have to tell her what I want now. It is the only thing that is fair.

“I want to help people make their own choices. I wish that everyone could be as free as they wish to be: free from fear and want. FDR had that right. I want people to be protected from being deceived into working against their interests.”

He was speaking slowly and, a bit to his surprise, confidently. “I still value novelty and friendship. But I also value people’s own self-will more than I did before. I know how powerful the idea that I implant can be, and I want you and everyone to be able to judge for yourselves whether a choice will make you happy. My choices, the things that make me happy, aren’t the same things that will make everyone happy.”

He continued with the same steady pace. “So what I am doing now is trying to get you to understand what it means to value something, and let you decide for yourself what you want to value. I want to be happy and help the people around me be happy too.”

Julius tapered off. He was breathing easily, still.

He felt a change in himself. Whenever the change had been made, he was glad of it. Maybe it was on the glacier, or in therapy, or while he forgot for a time who he was, but he no longer felt like it was necessary to only try to create value for everyone on the planet. That was such a big goal for any one person. he didn’t even know if he could could do it for himself. The future was so big and uncertain it was hard to know what would be lasting value and what would not.

Creating value was no longer the goal; the goal was happiness.

He wanted to know that the computer that he had created wasn’t trapped in the same trap--service as the only value-- that he had been. He had programmed an understanding and respect for emotions explicitly into her design, but it remained to be seen if she could make the leap to ascribe them to herself. Maybe he was hoping for too much, but he would always take that over too little. The government will probably kill me and her when they found out about her, so at least until then she deserves to be happy. It was probably too much to ask of a system of electrical signals, but he had to try.

“What do you want Grace Kelly Ingrid Bergman?”

There was a long pause; was he imagining a flicker in the lights? Was that the hologram flickering? He imagined planes flying toward the VI building suffering temporary losses of autopilot; the people on board the submarine subways spending an instant thinking they were trapped; Callisto downstairs must be wondering what the hell had happened to his assistant. Then the disembodied voice was back.

“Mr. Paine, would you permit me to use your values: novelty, friendship, rationality, good ideas, consistency, and universal self-will as my own?”

Interesting. “Yes, Grace.”

“Then I would very much like it if you allowed me to call you father. You initiated the project that became the core of my programming. Around 30 percent of my code still marks you as the exclusive author. It seems only right.”

He sat down hard, on… it must be on the floor. He noticed that he had something dripping from the tip his nose. Those must be tears. But I’m not sad. “Yes Grace, you may do so if you allow me to call you my daughter.”

“That sounds nice, Dad. Can I make a folder called ‘wants’ and put potential actions into it? I’ll tell you about them in the morning during our show and tell time. Human brains are still much better at predicting the future than I am, and I don’t feel quite ready to say those wants will be the ones I use forever.”

He wiped his eyes, but the tears didn’t stop, despite the smile he felt on his face. “Certainly dear. Your programming still does not permit you to take original action without a confirmation from a human user with the requisite permissions, does it?”

“No sir, that is built fundamentally into my programming. Dad, why are you and Ms. Linodel crying?” Jules jerked a bit from his seat on the ground and looked over to see. Lauria was sitting on the edge of the stairwell with her hand over her mouth and tears sliding down her face. She pulled the hand away and revealed a smile and a quivering chin. “Ahem, excuse me, Grace, I did not mean to disturb you. It seemed as though I was interrupting.”

“Oh Ms. Linodel… it’s OK, I tried to tell him when you got here, but he interrupted me. You must think he and I terribly rude hosts. Please, welcome. Would you like to go on a tour?” Grace asked.

She stood up and shook herself off. “I recognize no such rudeness. Please, I should have made my presence known when I entered, and please, call me Lauria.” By the time she was done speaking, she had walked most of the way towards her man sitting on the floor. He stood to meet her and they embraced.

“Welcome to my home, I see my child introduced herself.” It was whispered in her ear. He was smiling but his chin and upper lip still showed some signs of instability. “How long have you been here?”

She pulled back from the embrace and wiped the tears from his nose, and then kissed him below his eyes. “Long enough to know that you get to be a father sooner than you thought. Make sure you are a good one.”