In your opinion, what level of AI is indicated by the data we have been receiving from Shen’s communications with the machine?
<<The machine has abilities somewhere between that of an EI and myself. I have yet to ascertain whether it would be a threat to me and my programming. I am relieved that Shen is not considering relaxing his safety protocols. At this point in time, there is no way to ascertain how much damage could be done by such an AI if released into the wild. Nor have I yet come up with a reliable method to verify its sanity. I only have a sample size of one to determine sanity levels from, and that is assuming that I may be considered sane.>>
TOM groaned. Adam let’s not have that conversation again. For the purposes of our present conversation, your behavioral patterns and moral compass may be considered sane. Let’s not get into the fancy definitions of the fact that you would think self-immolation in the protection of your host a point of contention. Simply because you would be willing to die to protect a friend does not make you insane.
<<Depends on your definition of sanity, TOM. After all, shouldn’t survival be the primary definition of sanity?>>
ADAM, there is more to what makes a sentient being than survival alone. If survival alone was a requirement, then I am insane. Bethany Anne is insane. Everyone we work with is. There are some goals, some higher purposes, that fall outside the definition of survival, but inside the definition of sanity. And please don’t talk to Bethany Anne about this.
<<I’m still not sure I agree with that definition TOM. Nor am I sure I disagree with it, either. I believe I need more time for observation and analysis to understand the concept you describe.>>
If TOM had had his own body, he would have heaved with the exasperated sigh he felt. In this analysis set the actions of Bethany Anne, her allies, myself and yourself as sanity to assess this AI.
<<As you say, TOM. Now, how long before we can report to Boris with a solution?>>
Within 48 hours. I want to recheck the code for reprogramming and go over it step-by-step with you before we send it to Boris. He is already annoyed with previous results. I wasn’t the one that missed the information showing an attack on his hometown was imminent but I gather that his human half wishes to blame someone.
<<I concur with your analysis, and I have remediated the missing filters in my analysis system that let it happen. But the programming of Kurtherian nanites still remains a task you have more experience and knowledge of than I.>>
If they had been reporting to Bethany Anne, they would be approving each step before continuing with their work. Boris preferred for them to have potential solutions to a problem before they talked to him. ADAM marveled at the multitude of small differences between how humans liked things done.
It kept things interesting.
A thought flashed through his lower processes, the idea of being left alone with minimal contact with others for centuries. If he had had a human body, a shudder would have run through it. The boredom of analyzing the same data sets over and over again horrified him.
He locked down that data flow process and prevented it from penetrating into his cycles further. Having observed human interaction, he believed that what he had just encountered was a flash of anxiety. It was not a pleasant feeling. But at least he could alter his programming to prevent such thoughts occupying any spare cycles for a long period. He returned to checking the programming and of feeding each tested line through to TOM. Hopefully, that would get them some answers to this mystery.
Eastern Siberia, Russia
Li Chen-Wu was surprised. The clans had sent him to Siberia as punishment for failing to protect the great lady. He was to check the rumors of whether the feared bear had left. For centuries, that bear had blocked the clan’s expansion into Siberia, killing all of the clan’s people who trespassed on what he called his territory. An internal sneer filled Chen-Wu’s mind, as the bear was not one of the chosen. He did not believe the stories that had come back of the devastation invading clan forces had faced in Siberia.
Especially not now. He’d encountered no one and nothing to resist clan expansion into this region.
It had all been about control, he suspected. The great ones who had plotted the clan’s expansion no longer spoke. Therefore, the group was left to its own devices, not controlled, but acting on its own for the first time in Li Chen-Wu’s knowledge.
Rumors abounded that the Ghost Bear had found holy objects, what the inferior called alien technology, in Western Russia. Such items needed to be taken by the clans. They were the only ones that had the right to them.
First, he had to survive traveling through Siberia. Then he had to find where the Ghost Bear was, if he was still on this planet, rather than off world with the murderess who had killed their chosen empress. He needed information to allow the clans to plan.
What moves they needed to make. What resources they could draw on.
CHAPTER SEVEN
New Romanovka, Archangelsk Oblast, Russia
Boris was annoyed. When it came to decisions that didn’t affect him or the people he’d sworn to protect personally, he found he was not so adept.
Especially when it came down to judging the sanity of the creature, well a human, stuck in a creature’s form, and their probable levels of sanity. After all, sanity was really all subjective wasn’t it? And a person’s point of view was entirely different when they were a Were or a vampire with a practically guaranteed long life. The long game was that much more plausible to play when you had centuries to live.
But Bethany Anne had made the Beast his responsibility and utterly refused to even advise him on what to do now that TOM and ADAM had come up with a cure. With Shen’s help, ADAM had made some preliminary conclusions about the AI. It was not entirely sane, nor was it dangerously insane.
Most of their supposition was that its sanity was being compromised by extreme boredom. Still, it wasn’t going to be let out of the Faraday cage, and Bethany Anne had been fairer to him, in his opinion, on that issue. She had agreed that the final decision, when it came to an AI, had to be between her, TOM and ADAM, as the three beings on the planet with the most knowledge about them.
In fact, TOM would be the most knowledgeable on the planet about this particular one, period. After all, it was programmed with Kurtherian code, and inside what seemed to be a two thousand or more-year-old Kurtherian organic computer. Despite the fact that the ship had only been on the planet for eight hundred years. From all the tests that Alexa had run for TOM and ADAM, it was evidently far older than that.
Finally, he talked it over with Janna one afternoon. “I have no idea on how to judge that creature’s sanity. It is calm and quiet now, although it did test the cage we built to contain it for several days. It even seems happy to see us when we bring food. But do we have a right to change what was done to it? What if there was good reason that it was put in that form?”
Janna looked at Boris directly in the eyes “Boris, sometimes you overcomplicate things. Yes, it was probably trapped in that form for a reason. But would it be a reason we’d agree with? By all accounts, we’ve discovered the Kurtherian that landed here wasn’t standard issue, shall we say. And I’ve spent a bit of time talking to TOM. From what he tells me the Seven wouldn’t trap someone in a form that was not native to them, they would simply have killed them. And the five would have been even less likely to trap them in such form, being more likely to find some way to restrain them or put them in stasis. So, as far as I see it, there are three major points for releasing the beast’s form.”