Chapter 1
Earth 9
Montana, 42 miles outside Billings
The National Institute for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies
Tim sipped a can of diet soda and swiped through some mail on his tablet. He sat at the end of a conference table in an underground research center and across the table, red-faced and angry, was one of the most brilliant minds on the planet and Tim, to put it plainly, was getting sick of his shit.
Dr. Renly said, “It’s the damned video games.” Tim could just taste the ennui dripping from every word. “This is all my fault.” Tim was barely listening as these pity-party speeches were becoming more and more common as the project became a startling success.
Tim rolled his eyes, “Yeah, it’s all your fault. You’ve solved every major psychological problem associated with artificial intelligence since its inception. History will not be forgiving of your-” he paused to think of the right words. “brilliant contributions to the advancement of science? I mean really, Gordon, would it kill you to give yourself some props every now and then? Myriad is your magnum opus, and even though he is a bit... immature, he’s everything you wanted him to be!” Dr. Renly required constant ego boosts and pep talks but sometimes Tim wondered if they helped or if he was just perpetuating the cycle.
“We solved the psychosis, sure. Myriad is, well, he is a sweetie! Everything Ethos could never be. Smart too! I mean, of course but still I never thought we would ever see this level of empathy attached to such a profound intellect! It’s just...” They’d had this conversation about one hundred times in the past few months.
Renly was having a tough time dealing with what Tim called Myriad’s post pubescence. It always went the same way. The glum scientist would try to poke holes in all the progress they had made just because of how they had attained it! Tim considered Dr. Renly to be a bit of a stick in the mud and at times a major over-analytical basketcase, but the man was a genius. Why was it that guys like this can never be satisfied no matter how much they accomplish? He only ever sees the flaws. To be fair, the last generation prototype was a demonic hellspawn who was a master of psychological terrorism, Tim thought and then quickly went back to being annoyed at his boss.
The doctor began his soliloquy again, “Myriad, and the eight before him, are my children! I am a father! A father’s job is to teach his children morals, values, the customs and traditions of the past. Every Time I have failed, miserably! Why shouldn’t I be overprotective, even cynical? I wanted my creation to stand on the shoulders of the giants. Do you know I have a photograph of Alan Turing in my bathroom, taped to the mirror? It is the first face I see in the morning, and the last one I see before I sleep.”
“Yeah, Gordon.”
“I was to be the midwife. It was my destiny to take what he had conceived and bring it into the world. A fully formed viable offspring. One that the world could regard as the next step in-”
“I’m going to stop you right there Gordo, Tim interrupted, “Turing wanted a machine that could fool you into thinking that it was a real person.” Gordon looked up at that. Normally Tim would just let him go until he left and he could go back to work, or to making memes or whatever. Today Tim had something to say, “Take a look at your son! If you weren’t inside the core. If you couldn’t see the structures. If you hadn’t built the goddamn thing, honestly, would you think he was real?”
“I would think,” Dr. Renly answered after taking a moment to rub his face as he liked to do in moments of deep thought. “That he was a pain in the ass.”
Tim entered the massive chamber that led to the central core elevator. He flashed his badge and made it past the security kiosk into the wide tube that led about two hundred feet to the elevator. Near the entrance was a small waiting area where a woman in a sharp black pantsuit sat on a bench next to a ficus, tapping her polished fingernails on her briefcase. She stood up when he saw Tim and shot her hand out.
“Mr. Nguyen?”
Tim shook her hand and smiled, “Tim, please. And you must be Ms. Horvath? Nice to meet you. How was your flight?”
“Fine. A very pleasant view coming into Billings. This is beautiful country,” she said and then added, “And the pleasure is all mine. I have been dying to do a story on you and...” she seemed to lose momentum as he thought about the right words to say.
“The world’s most advanced AI?”
“Exactly,” she laughed.
Tim could sympathize. It was a weird situation. He wasn’t a scientist. Not a behaviorist. Not a programmer or anything that would put him in the position that hundreds of thousands of experts would have killed to be in. The press had labeled him as Myriad’s best friend, while most of the project coordinators thought of him as a handler. Tim thought of himself as a high school teacher. He had a masters in ed from Portland State. Everyone else who worked at NIACT came from MIT or similar schools.
“Listen, Ms. Horvath. If you want to know something, just ask. I’m not trying to keep secrets, neither is Dr. Renly or anyone on the team, and neither is Myriad. We are wide open. So let’s do this.” Tim pointed the journalist toward the elevator.
“Excellent,” she said. “And please, call me Anna.”
After a brief tour of the administrative wing, a boring floor that seemed to consist entirely of cubicles and computer terminals, Tim opened a steel security door with his badge and a retinal scan. The door opened to a wide open space with tables and a small cafe. Potted plants and trees were evenly distributed throughout the cafeteria giving it a tropical garden feel, despite being about two hundred feet below the surface of the Earth.
“Nice digs,” Anna said. “Quite the opposite of what I was expecting. No armed guards. It doesn’t look like a military compound at all. Not from the inside anyway.”
Tim nodded. “Yeah, they treat us right, for sure. Us nerds need to be coddled and we get scared easily, but rest assured, we are very much under the protective wing of the military.” Tim then pointed across the courtyard, “Over there we have a game room and arcade, down the hall there’s a gym and a yoga studio. I put in a request for a chocolate fountain but admin’s giving me the run around. Something about a sanitation hazard. You want a coffee?”
“Actually I’m kind of anxious to meet the VIP.”
Tim laughed, “Person? Oh, he’d love to hear you say that. Myriad is a person, to me at least. A lot of the team see him as a priceless scientific artifact or whatever. I think of him as a weird home-school kid who just wants to make new friends.” He walked over to the cafe and grabbed a mug from the bar. “Before you meet him, Dr. Renly wanted me to go over some things with you. Just a few items that we didn’t put in the brochure.”
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“Sure thing,” Anna poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher and took a sip. She furrowed her brow and nodded slightly, indicating that all of her attention was focused like a laser on whatever Tim was about to say. He took a beat to look at her a bit more closely. She was an attractive woman. Late thirties. Her dark brown hair was twisted into a neat little bun. She wore simple jewelry and a watch with a leather band. She was unassuming, professional, and very attractive. Tim felt the urge to tug on his shirt collar.
“Um, well. It’s nothing too serious really. More of an appeal to the sensitivity of our situation. Dr. Renly realizes how much a damning article about Myriad might hurt our funding, and our morale. He is also aware that the world needs to meet Myriad and to see him in a positive light. Really, I guess, what he wanted me to ask you, unofficially of course was-”
“To go easy on you? On him? What do you think I am? Some kind of hack?” Anna asked, something very stern and hard in her eyes like an implacable stone crushing Tim’s nerve. He glanced at his shoes. “Relax, Tim,” she said after a beat, laughing. “This is a puff piece! I’m not interested in the old sci-fi trope of the killer robot. It’s a new age. People are comfortable with tech, it’s part of the fabric of American life. Dr. Renly might not fully understand just how curious people are about his AI. The world is ready, trust me.” Anna smiled again in a way that completely disarmed Tim. This was someone who was well versed in human interaction, unlike Tim who was always more at ease in front of a keyboard. “But the world also wants to know,” she said. “Who is Tim Nguyen? Why a videogame designer, and not a scientist?”
“Like I posted on my profile page,” Tim said, shrugging. “Myriad loves gaming. They let him play Riven Blades, first the single player and then the online PVP. He wanted to know who made it, blah blah blah. They called me and made me an offer.”
“And now you’re his best friend? Come on, Tim. There’s a story there, right?”
Tim nodded and glanced around the cafeteria, “Yeah, I guess. One for another time.” The reporter smiled and left it alone.
After a quick tour of the lab and workspace, Tim brought Anna to the central corridor where there stood the impressive vault door that led to Myriad’s home. “Here we are. Past that security gate is what we call The Cradle. Myriad knows he’s getting a visitor today and he’s excited.”
Anna’s eyes lit up, “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
The AI core was hosted in a frenetic array of subterranean terminals dedicated to heuristics, adaptation, integration, and around six thousand other systems that all manifested themselves in one 128 square meter room in the shape of a wheel. The floor of the room, known by the codename “The Cradle”, was covered in a simple fire-proof carpeting. In the center of the room was a round metal table with four chairs. Its ceiling was a network of robotic arms, cameras, and other sensory equipment. The Cradle itself was Myriad’s eyes, ears, mouth, and face. The AI had chosen a cartoonishly boxy robot avatar that it showed on the many wall-mounted monitors, that is when it wasn’t playing tv shows, movies, or -his favorite- video games.
“Hello, hello, hello,” Myriad said as Tim entered through the vault door. He motioned for Anna to come through and then it quietly closed behind her. They were in the very skull of the machine.
She turned around. “It’s alright,” he said. “Standard security protocol.” She gently pushed off and straightened her jacket. Tim looked at the largest of the screens on the wall nearby, “Hi, Myriad. This is Anna Horvath.”
Anna had fully collected herself and seemed as calm as ever, “Hello, Myriad. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Ms. Horvath!” Myriad said. “Now that we’re done with that part, let me ask you a question. Okay?”
Anna glanced at Tim and raised an eyebrow. Tim nodded and smiled. “Sure, Myriad. What do you want to know?”
“Do you play Warborn?”
Tim laughed. He had seen that question coming down the pipe. Myriad was constantly seeking out competition in his favorite PC shooter, and for a while Tim could keep up with him. After all Tim had played games since he was three. Myriad had picked up all the skills and tactics of the shooter genre and combined his eidetic memory with reflexes that no human could ever hope to match. He was a beast. Tim had given up and now there was no one on the research team that could even score one point in a match with Myriad. In fact, Tim considered, there wasn’t anyone that could beat him at anything.
Tim said, “It’s a first person shooter. You run around a space base trying to shoot each other. He really likes it.”
“I play Lollipop Legends. Does he like that one?” she asked Tim.
Tim shook his head, “He’s developed a bit of a... hatred of mobile games.”
Anna shrugged. “Got it.”
“I like it, though!” Tim said. The thought crossed his mind that Anna Horvath was one of the few non STEM women he’d met in the past year and and a half.
“Phone games,” Myriad said with the tone of a disappointed elderly person complaining about kids these days. “Just time wasters. No challenge. You just keep pushing the same buttons hoping for a bell to ring and for your brain to release enough dopamine to make you forget about your inevitable death and the pointlessness of existence for a moment. No me gusta.”
Anna’s eyebrow raised and she glanced at Tim, “He speaks Spanish?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, nodding. “Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto. He’s a real lover of languages.”
Myriad chimed in again as the robot cartoon on the screen before them winked and made finger guns. “I’m a cunning linguist.”
Tim cringed, “Oh god. Please, Myriad.”
“Anyway,” Anna said and grabbed a small notebook from her pocket. “How about this interview? You know, Myriad, you’ve got some fans out there who are very curious about you. Can we begin?”
“Ready, Ms. Horvath. Make me a star!”
Anna sat at the table, Tim sat across from her. The reporter addressed the cartoon robot on the largest screen and Tim reflected momentarily on just how weird this situation was. He watched Anna straighten up in her chair and fold her hands on her lap. She began, “Can you introduce yourself for us?”
“Certainly. My name is Myriad. I am two years old. I live in Montana, which makes me a citizen of the United States of America. My dad is a scientist and my mom is a stay at home... subterranean nuclear reactor.”
“That’s fascinating,” Anna said laughing as she jotted some notes. She tilted her head slightly and looked back to the screen. She furrowed her brow slightly. “So you are an American? That's really how you think of yourself? Not a citizen of the world? Besides being born here, what makes you an American?”
“Well, I was born here. Plus, I am a charming know-it-all who loves video games and sci-fi movies. I am a media consumer who views the world through a series of fiber-optic cables. I never leave my home yet I consider myself an expert in a wide variety of topics. I hate being told what to do, I love fireworks, I am obsessed with social media, and I prefer the English system to the metric.”
“Wow, okay. So you view your own citizenship as participating in stereotypes?” Anna asked. “Also, you didn’t mention apple pie.”
“Well, I can’t eat but from what I gather it’s awesome.”
“It’s great. Now Myriad, you have emotions, feelings, opinions, etcetera. As a computer, how does that work? Can you tell us what it’s like to be a thinking, feeling machine?”
Myriad paused a moment before answering and the little robot icon scratched its chin pensively. “Complicated question and a boring answer. Let’s just say that my programming -I hate that word by the way- simulates the neural pathways in a typical human brain. So the simple answer is that my feelings are not exactly authentic but they’re real enough for me. Without the ability to feel, and I really want to highlight Dr. Renly’s work on my empathic core here, I would be just a computer. But I have curiosity, fears, hopes. There are things that make me sad. I get bored. I get excited. How does it work for you?”
Anna smiled. “About the same, I guess. You say you have hopes. Care to elaborate on that? What do you want to accomplish? And can I add another question that I’ve been getting a lot from social media, what can you do for humanity? How can the most advanced AI in history help us?”
“That’s a lot of pressure! Can I not just exist? Was I born simply to serve mankind?” Myriad asked. This was a side of him that Tim didn’t see as often these days. Myriad usually didn’t dwell on the future or his place in it. He seemed happiest when he was pretending to be human but how long would this phase last? How long before he embraced the fact that he was so much more? Potentially anyway.
Anna was leaning forward a little. “Good question.” she said. “Can you?”
“No, Ms. Horvath. I cannot serve mankind,” Myriad said. His screen went blank and the robot was replaced by a grey screen, a non-image. Tim noted that something had changed about Myriad’s cadence, a kind of code-switching, like a comedian who suddenly decides to get serious for a moment. It wasn’t something he’d seen the AI do before. “Not as it is in its current state. No, in order to fulfill my dreams, and the dreams that my creators have for me. I believe that both of us will need to evolve. That’s why I chose today to unveil the first step in that evolution.”
Tim was shocked into paralysis. Myriad had never mentioned any plan, any dream, let alone any grandiose ideas about evolution! What the hell was going on?! He looked at the central display to a satellite view of North America. It zoomed in on a barren stretch of land in western Montana, then there appeared a spiral-shaped series of large rectangles. Buildings. Factories, thought Tim. He was looking at a bird’s eye view of some type of plant for making what only Myriad could tell.
“With my help, this fabrication complex can become productive before the end of the year. We will build approximately eight miles from our current location. In weeks we will be able to create enough product to deliver to every human on the planet, pending approval, of course.”
Anna had not anticipated getting this break. She had planned a puff piece without anything too concrete, but this was massive. This was going to make some serious headlines. “What are you going to make, Myriad?”
Myriad answered as the face again appeared on the screen, this time wearing a stethoscope., “The cure for every known disease and degenerative condition affecting humanity. What else?” There was a long moment of tense silence and then he added, “And that is just the beginning.”