It did look like a new gap under one corner of the house. But, surely, someone else would have noticed this by now. Anyway, the government searchers were thorough. What were the odds that…
Slip-knotting the tether to a chunk of concrete, he moved close enough to peer inside the cavity, careful not to disturb much sediment. Grabbing an ikelite from his belt, he sent its sharp beam lancing inside, where an underground wall had recently collapsed. During the brief interval before his lungs grew stale and needy, he could make out few details. Still, by the time he swiveled and kicked back toward the surface, one thing was clear.
The chamber contained things.
Lots of things.
And, to Xiang Bin, almost anything down there would be worth going after, even if it meant squeezing through a narrow gap, into a crumbling basement underneath the stained sea.
Wow, ain’t it strange that-boffins have been predicting that truly humanlike artificial intelligence oughta be “just a couple of decades away…” for eighty years already?
Some said AI would emerge from raw access to vast numbers of facts. That happened a few months after the Internet went public. But ai never showed up.
Others looked for a network that finally had as many interconnections as a human brain, a milestone we saw passed in the teens, when some of the crimivirals-say the Ragnarok worm or the Tornado botnet-infested-hijacked enough homes and fones to constitute the world’s biggest distributed computer, far surpassing the greatest “supercomps” and even the number of synapses in your own skull!
Yet, still, ai waited.
How many other paths were tried? How about modeling a human brain in software? Or modeling one in hardware. Evolve one, in the great Darwinarium experiment! Or try guiding evolution, altering computers and programs the way we did sheep and dogs, by letting only those reproduce that have traits we like-say, those that pass a Turing test, by seeming human. Or the ones swarming the streets and homes and virts of Tokyo, selected to exude incredible cuteness?
Others, in a kind of mystical faith that was backed up by mathematics and hothouse physics, figured that a few hundred quantum processors, tuned just right, could connect with their counterparts in an infinite number of parallel worlds, and
The one thing no one expected was for it to happen by accident, arising from a high school science fair experiment.
I mean, wow ain’t it strange that a half-brilliant tweak by sixteen-year-old Marguerita deSilva leaped past the accomplishments of every major laboratory, by uploading into cyberspace a perfect duplicate of the little mind, personality, and instincts of her pet rat, Porfirio?
And wow ain’t it strange that Porfirio proliferated, grabbing resources and expanding, in patterns and spirals that remain-to this day-so deeply and quintessentially ratlike?
Not evil, all-consuming, or even predatory-thank heavens. But insistent.
And Wow, AIST there is a worldwide betting pool, now totaling up to a billion Brazilian reals-over whether Marguerita will end up bankrupt, from all the lawsuits over lost data and computer cycles that have been gobbled up by Porfirio? Or else, if she’ll become the world’s richest person-because so many newer ais are based upon her patents? Or maybe because she alone seems to retain any sort of influence over Porfirio, luring his feral, brilliant attention into virtlayers and corners of the Worldspace where he can do little harm? So far.
And WAIST we are down to this? Propitiating a virtual
To duplicate the deSilva Result and provide our creation with a mate.
11.
“Are you certain that you want to keep doing this, Madam Donaldson-Sander?” the holographic figure asked, in tones that perfectly mimicked human concern. “Other members of the clade have been more attentive to their self-interest, spending millions on far better surveillance systems than you have.”
Lacey almost changed her mind-not because her artificial adviser was speaking wisdom, but out of pure impatience. She begrudged the time that this was taking-arguing with a computer program when she could be looking out through a double-pane window, as mountaintop Incan ruins rolled past, giving way to misty rain forest, then a moonscape of abandoned Amazonian strip mines, each one filled with a unique, bright color of toxic runoff.
It was quite a view. But, instead of contemplating ruins of ancient and recent societal collapse, she must pass her time debating with an artificial being.
Still, it kept her mind off other worries.
“I pay my dues to the zillionaires club. I am perfectly entitled to the information. Why should I jump through hoops in order to get it?”
“Entitlement has little to do with matters of raw power, madam. Your peers spend more money and effort acquiring sophisticated cryptai. As you have been warned repeatedly, a top-level tech-hobbyist may have access to snoop programs that are better than me. Surely a few clade-members will detect the queries you are making.
“In short, I cannot guarantee that I am protecting you properly, madam.”
Lacey glared at the simulated servant. Though depicted wearing her family livery, with every fold of his uniform real looking, the features were altogether too handsome to be real. Anyway, you could see right through the projection, to a cubist-period Picasso, hanging on the far bulkhead of her private jet. The irony of that overlap almost made Lacey smile, despite her frustration and worry. Semi-transparency was a flaw inherently shared by any creature who was made entirely of light.
At least, when the Hebrew patriarch, Jacob, wrestled with an angel, he could hope for a decisive outcome. But with aingels, there was nothing palpable to grapple. All you could do was keep insisting. Sometimes, they let you have your way.
“I don’t care if some other trillionaires listen in!” she persisted. “I’m not endangering any vital caste interests!”
“No, you aren’t.” The handsome, lambent image simulated a concerned head shake. “But need I remind that you are already seeking help from your peers, in the matter of looking for your son? Isn’t that the reason for this hurried trip?”
Lacey bit her lip. Hacker’s latest misadventure in space had yanked her away from the altiplano observatory, even before first light could fall on the experimental Farseeker Telescope that bore her name. What typically infuriating timing! Of course, the boy was probably fine. He generally built his toys well-a knack inherited from his father-a kind of hyper-responsible irresponsibility.
Still, what kind of mother would she be, not to drop everything and rush to the Caribbean? Or to call in favors, summoning every yacht and private aerocraft in the region, in order to help search? Despite a misaligned trajectory and unknown landing point, Hacker’s final, garbled telemetry told of an intact heat shield and chutes properly deployed. So he was probably floating around the warm waters in his tiny capsule, chewing emergency rations while cursing the slowness of rescue. And the difficulty of finding good help these days.