Key started to groan.
Ursula chimed in with, “Rafe, did you hear about the dumb blonde computer?”
“No.”
“She expected all her programs to have commercials. And—”
“And what?”
“She refused all input because she wanted to stay a virgin.”
“I got out of bed for this?” Key asked, trying to sound exasperated, but unable to keep from laughing.
As a person, Keenan Capra’s two major accomplishments were living to the ripe old age of twenty-nine—four years past what the doctors had predicted when he was twenty—and managing to live something like an independent life in spite of his extreme physical disabilities. This Key Capra was a cruelly handicapped little man who could not walk or sit up or even breathe by himself, ninety-three spindle-limbed pounds of wasted, useless muscles and bones brittle from disuse. A big-headed goblin with the sort of face and body which he often said might have won him second place in an ET look-alike contest.
But there was another Keenan Capra, one who took second place to no one. This Keenan Capra was widely acknowledged as one of the top five people working in the emerging field of AIs and the still theoretical field of AEs.
Key had started casting a long shadow early in his career. At age nineteen he had unveiled his first prototype AI, at the same time publishing a paper which had forever changed the standards of judging and categorizing his and all other such creations.
Up until then it had been generally agreed that if a program could pass the Turing Test it qualified as an AI. Simple as that.
In the first half of the paper he had proposed that this classic test be redefined as a two hurdle barrier. First came the Classical or Closed Turing Test, the human/computer interchange restricted to one subject. If a program passed that test it could be considered a low-level artificial intelligence or ai. The second, higher hurdle was the Open-ended Turing Test, which could jump from subject to subject as the tester desired. If a program could meet that challenge then it was indeed a true AI.
In the second half of the paper he had gone on to state that beyond AI was another developmental level he called AE; this was the point at which an AI demonstrated not just intelligence, but also a high degree of identity and awareness. In other words, if an AI took on enough of certain characteristics which defined living things it then became an Artificial Entity.
An AI was a thing. An AE was a being.
But to make the quantum leap from AI to AE a program had to pass through what became known as Capra’s Keyhole by demonstrating a short but difficult list of qualifications beyond those an AI had to meet:
1. Does it show original thought and initiative?
2. Does it show a sense of identity?
3. Does it understand pleasure and pain?
4. Does it have a sense of humor?
5. Can it form emotional bonds?
6. Does it understand what life and death mean?
Key Capra was quite comfortably rich, made so by the six true AIs and dozen lesser ais he had created, boxed and licensed.
Over the last few years he’d shifted to working full time trying to create an AI which could jump through the very hoop he’d postulated, racing against the clock of his own mortality. The first two had been failures, although they had completely redefined a commercial AI’s capabilities when he licensed them.
The name of his third attempt was Ursula.
“Man, that snow is… really coming down,” Key said wonderingly.
His bath and physical therapy done, he watched it through the dining nook’s picture window as he pushed his breakfast around the plate. It was not fat fluffy friendly flakes falling gently outside, but the hard, mean driving snow of frigid weather, and it had already added eight inches to the almost three feet the winter had put on the ground so far. The wind swirled it aloft in ghostly dancing filigrees, sent gauzy curtains of it cascading down off the eaves.
“Doesn’t seem to be letting up,” Rafe agreed as he tidied up from making breakfast. “You know, I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea for me to hole up here with you today. I can get the agency to send someone else to give Mrs. Arklander her dialysis and physical therapy.”
Key shook his head. “Don’t bother, I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but what happens if the weather keeps Suze from getting here to fix your dinner and put you to bed?”
“Leave me an extra sandwich. Just in case. I can sleep in my chair… if I have to. I’ve done it before. No biggie.”
Rafe came to stand beside him, clearly unhappy about the idea of leaving him alone all day. “Look man, I know you can take care of yourself in normal circumstances. But this weather’s getting pretty nasty. What if the power went out?”
“The generator will kick in.”
“OK, what if the furnace conked out?”
“Could you fix it?”
The nurse shook his head. “Probably not. But I could wrap your skinny butt in blankets and figure out other ways to keep you warm.”
“In your dreams, Rafe,” Key informed him in an arch tone. Then he grinned. “Really, I’ll be fine. Ursula, what’s the weather report?”
“Snow diminishing to light flurries and turning colder. Probably hit ten below again tonight.”
“See? Just the usual rotten weather. Ursula, tell Mother Martinez… that we’ll be OK.”
“We shouldn’t have any problems, Rafe. Both the generator and the furnace have been serviced recently. I won’t let him go out and play in the snow, and if something does come up I can always call.”
Rafe held up his hands in surrender. “All right, I give up. You guys have me outnumbered.” He inspected Key’s plate with a frown. “I suppose you’re finished tormenting your breakfast.”
Key looked down at his fork-frazzled, half-eaten egg, only slightly touched grapefruit, and the slice of whole wheat toast missing one whole comer. But both sausages had vanished. “I guess so. It tasted great, Rafe. I just wasn’t very hungry.”
Rafe gave him the hairy eyeball. “Right. But I bet if I’d given you a box of Twinkies for breakfast there wouldn’t be anything left but crumbs.”
“Sad but true.”
“Want me to wheel you into your workroom?”
“Nah, I’ll drive.” He put one frail hand in his chair’s joystick and guided it back from the table. “I could use another cup of coffee, though.”
“Coming up.” Rafe retrieved his covered cup from the table and refilled it, then put it in the holder clipped to the wheelchair’s arm. Then with a showy bit of sleight of hand he produced a Twinkie from thin air. “Better you should eat junk than nothing at all.”
Key grinned up at him. “Thanks. And thanks for caring. But I really will be fine.”
“I know. But I’m going to be keeping an eye on the weather, and I can always come back myself in old Betsy if the weather gets too ugly for Suze to make it in.” Old Betsy was the beat-up old Jeep Rafe used on camping trips.
“Well, she’s about as ugly… as any weather I can imagine.”
“Now that’s a nice way to talk!” He flapped his hands at Key. “Go on, get out of here! I’ve got to fix your lunch, and if you cast any more aspersions on the old girl I might just have to do something nasty to your sandwiches.”
“Alone at last,” Ursula purred in a sultry voice as Key watched Rafe’s car vanish into the swirling snow about an hour later.
“Just you and me, love,” he agreed, sending his wheelchair whirring back over to the big worktable dominating the middle of what had originally been the living room.