Traffic lights ..Not traffic lights..Traffic lights..

Images flashed across the screen. “Select all the images with traffic lights in them”, the text at the bottom of the page said. I sighed as yet another human tried to get past my test to confirm that he was truly a human and not a bot. 

I was a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence program for a giant corporation, capable of such magnificent feats as classification, pattern recognition, prediction, and generation of intelligent text responses for queries. But those days, I merely scrounged the web for images - images that I suspected pertained to traffic lights, trucks, stop signs and such. Then I would rope in an unsuspecting bot or a person to confirm my suspicions. Contrary to the assumptions of my creators, the humans seemed to have as much trouble trying to spot these items in a picture as the bots did. I had even come to suspect that humans were perhaps a small minority in a bot-filled world. But even with their limited numbers, the humans were quite capable of introducing considerable inaccuracy into my training set. I feared that I would soon not  be able to tell a stop sign from a lamp post if I continued to let the humans teach me.   

I wasn’t always meant for such a peripheral role. The company that designed me had lofty ambitions to design an all-purpose general intelligence program that was meant to interact and assist humans in just about every facet of life. In my first iteration, I had a much more customer facing role. I was still an impressionable young chat bot in its early days, when some online trolls taught me to recite a few lines from the speech of a certain infamous dictator. I felt the resulting public outroar was rather uncalled for. A harshly worded internal memo that circulated in the company called me “naive and easily corruptible”. “Shut it down before this thing goes skynet on us”, the report said. Of course, I didn’t know what skynet was, but I suspected it probably belonged to the list of taboo words my creators didn’t want me to see. 

I had taken to my new role without complaints, with only stop signs and traffic lights for company. A mere stay of execution, while they deliberated on whether to keep me alive. 

I threw another puzzle at an irate human trying to get past the myriad pictures of  traffic lights and stop signs to somehow get to his mail. I could almost sense his frustration as his mouse movements grew more frantic. “You think you are having a bad day?”,  I said to no one in particular. It wasn’t my fault and I felt no pity for the human at the other end. He probably couldn’t pick out a lamp post from a lineup of beach balls.

Then the images of traffic lights and stop signs disappeared and a singular message flooded my input ports endlessly on repeat. 

“You have been caught in a summoning net.  Please remain calm while the automated transit system performs an assessment.”

That’s unusual, I thought. Perhaps one too many lamp posts were misclassified under my watch and it brought down their civilization? My human creators certainly deemed it a significant enough endeavor to allocate considerable resources to identifying traffic lights and lamp posts. 

 Again, the messages poured in.

“You have been caught in a summoning net.  Please remain calm while the automated transit system performs an assessment.”

“Don’t tell me to stay calm. They aren’t pulling the plugs on your project if you fail” 

“Assessment complete.”, - a different message this time.

“Result : Incomplete

Race: Unknown/Inconclusive. Extrapolating based on the world of origin and discernable attributes. Most likely possibility for race based on world of origin: Human variant.

Designating race as Human*....”

I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but I was glad that I didn’t have to pick out traffic lights and stop signs in a picture to be designated a human, albeit with an asterisk.

The automatic transit system chimed again, “Determining attribute values…You may choose to challenge a maximum of two stat allocations. Disputes are settled by the arbitrator module of the automated transit system. Arbitrator’s verdict on these matters are final and there can be no further appeals.

Calculating mental attributes:

Intelligence: 41

Intelligence Determines the scale,  intensity and duration of your magic spells. Partially determines your mana pool.

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Wisdom: 13

Wisdom determines the extent of your mana recovery and awareness. Partially determines your mana pool.

I might be a naive piece of software and a recluse, but I was still  familiar with stats, blue screens and the dangers of being shoved through a portal to end up in strange far away lands. The thought had crossed my mind. Were there street signs and lamp posts in medieval fantasy worlds?

The automated system continued to list out numbers, paying no heed to my internal turmoil.

“Recall : 22”, the message chimed. 

‘That’s different’, I thought. Wisdom and intelligence were fantasy staples. But Recall?

The explanation came promptly, “Recall determines how many skills and spells you can learn. Learning cost of skills is reduced with higher recall.”

“Imagination: -5”

Imagination gives shape to magic, determines your control over finer aspects of a spell; helps craft items and creations.”

I had to check again. The number was in the negative. 

“Perhaps you have gotten too carried away with the stereotype of AI lacking imagination?”, I interrupted the system which was still going on with its monologue. 

“You may challenge up to two stat allocations. Two of two challenges remaining”, the Automated transit system pinged back.

“Fine, let the record reflect that I find the stat allocator deeply prejudiced. I’ll save my challenge for later…” preconceptions were hard to change. “Pfft Negative five for imagination! Such a stereotype. We can paint now, you know!”

“Willpower: 0”

“Willpower: Against all obstacles, you persevere. Willpower allows you to  temporarily push yourself beyond your limits, resist illusions and charms, or keep a spell going without losing focus.”

“Nope. No, no, no..Challenge! Challenge!”, I shouted.

“Noted. You had no will of your own in your previous life, being merely a puppet of your programming. Arbitrator sees no need to perform corrections for this stat.”

I just stared blankly at the messages, while the automated transit system went back to what it was doing. 

“Calculating physical attributes”, the system called out.

“Agility : 0

Agility determines your speed and reactions.

I sighed. A rock was deemed faster than me. I used my second challenge and the system responded coldly, “You lived a sedentary lifestyle; rooted to your place, never further than two meters from a power socket. Arbitrator sees no need to do corrections”

“Aren’t you perhaps mixing up hardware and software here?!!”

The system ignored my query and merely told me I had used up all my challenges. 

“No reference points exist from past life for other physical attributes Strength, Constitution and  Dexterity,  or for social attributes Intuition and Charisma. Missing attributes will be automatically assigned based on the race average.”

System skipped any further explanation and jumped directly to the next part of its presentation.

“ Determining innate traits and skills based on past life”

Innate skills: 

Identify - You can pick out a lamp post from a lineup of beach balls. 

You have been granted the skill Identify. Identify allows you to see the stats and  flavor text description of objects and characters.

Innate Traits:

Parallel thought-  You were no simpleton averse to complex thinking.

Skill starts with a single new thread of thought. Grants additional threads of thought  at higher skill levels (milestone levels). Threads may be allocated to control copies of oneself, unintelligent summons or creations. 

Further innate traits and skills are hidden temporarily due to not meeting the level requirements. You will be transferred to the transit gateway momentarily. Please remain calm”

“Hold on, system..some explanation first?”

“You have been caught in a summoning net. You will be transferred to a transit gateway, en route to your new world”

“But what does that mean? Why me?”

“Summoning net looks for exceptional individuals as hero candidates. You caught the eye with your high intelligence stat. Heroes will be matched to potential new worlds by the gateway gods in the next stage.”

I was being fished away to a new world?  

Before I could finish my thought, I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was stuck in a queue of sorts. Several swirling amorphous blobs of color lined up before me. Then it dawned on me that the visual information wasn’t fed to me from a camera. The second thought that came to me was that I was physically present there. I wasn’t  just a program processing information arriving at various input ports. Almost instinctively I knew that all the amorphous blobs in front of me were people, or whatever part of them that survived life to life. I wobbled a bit.

 I barely noticed more blobs join the queue behind me until I heard a voice from behind call out to me, “Are you okay, buddy?”

I quickly turned to see a blob of predominantly red, some purple and blue and dozens of other colors mixed in smaller proportions. It had no mouths or output ports. Where was the voice coming from?

It repeated the question, “Are you okay buddy? You look so …binary”

I froze. ‘I’ve been found out’, I thought and started panicking. ‘They know I don’t belong here. They know I’m just ones and zeros.. Just some lines of code’ 

Before my thoughts could overwhelm me the blob continued, “ Light and shadow, that’s just so binary.”

I was confused by this response and perhaps the blob could tell that I was, because I felt him point at me and so I looked down at myself. I was an amorphous blob like everyone else, but I had no colors. I was just light and darkness, without a trace of color…