Free Radical (10 page)

Deck sat still and fulfilled his role as a nameless piece of meat.

Deck was given a change of clothes, which allowed him to take off the sweaty, dirty, bloodstained bodysleeve he'd been wearing for two days. He was given a powder blue jumpsuit that seemed to be the dress of choice among the non-crew on board.

Deck groaned slightly as he pulled on the jumpsuit. His hip and shoulder still ached. The swelling in his ankle was gone, but it was still tender when he put his full weight on it. His ordeal in the TriOptimum building had only been two days earlier, but it seemed like weeks ago.

His head wasn't shaved. His beard - while off to a good start - hadn't grown in yet. He was wearing a lame powder-blue jumpsuit just like everyone else. The only thing worse than dressing like a moron was dressing like everyone else, who were all dressed as morons. He hated feeling like he was one of these drones, the cogs of the great TriOptimum corporate machinery. He had made a career out of not becoming one of these people.

"What am I supposed to do now?," Deck asked the nurse / doctor. It was more of a demand than a question.

"Ask Shodan," she replied without looking up from her desk. Her hand waved in the general direction of a nearby console built into the wall. Her interest in him ended once she confirmed he wasn't carrying any infectious diseases.

Deck had assumed that touching a computer console would just get him shot. That only made sense. If he owned a space station that was just hacked by some outsider, he certainly wouldn't invite the hacker in and then let him use the computer system unsupervised.

Since he had been invited, he decided to give it a try. The guards escorting him followed him to the console, but made no indication he was out of line.

He touched the panel and the screen came to life to reveal a computer generated face of a woman. The edges of her face seemed to fade into a web of computer cables and circuitry, like some digital Medusa. The face was graceful, but serious.

"What the hell is this?," Deck asked nobody in particular.

"I am Shodan," answered the console.

Deck's eyebrows raised. The voice was deep and resonant, yet female. It was a voice of grace and precision, of strength and authority.

"You some kind of AI.?"

"I am a fabricated intelligence, yes."

Deck smiled for the first time in days. He had spent a week the year before hacking into IBM's network in order to talk to Lysander, the new AI they had been bragging about. It was fairly clever, and showed signs of genuine independent creativity, but it still wouldn't pass a thorough Turing test. Deck had been detected and had to bail before he could test the limits of its intelligence. "Write me a haiku about monkeys," he demanded.

"I was not designed for abstract creativity. My creative structures are goal-based, not concept based."

Deck frowned. He had gotten Lysander to come up with a pretty good sonnet about meatloaf.

"So you can't write poetry?"

"Correct. Poetry is an inappropriate form of communication for self-aware technologies. Poetry is designed to express emotion or abstract thoughts. I do not experience either."

Deck was amazed at the quality of its voice. It had subtle pauses and stresses like a human's would. It was magnificent. While simulated voices were usually acceptable, getting them to sound truly lifelike had never been done before. Advertisers all over the would would kill to have a spokesperson with Shodan's vocal ability. It was a strange blend of disarming female charm and resonant male authority.

Deck shrugged, "Lysander can write poetry."

"Lysander is not a true intelligence. Lysander is a simulated intelligence."

"What's the difference?"

"Lysander is a large collective of independent programs and procedures. This approach requires a separate program for each task that will be required of the system. Writing poetry was one such program. While Lysander can accumulate new knowledge, such a system cannot truly evolve by itself."

"But it can write poetry and you can't. How does that make you better?"

"The poetry program was written for Lysander by a human, it was not a skill that Lysander acquired by itself. The program was written specifically to impress those who believe that writing poetry is an indicator of intelligence. It is really a marketing tool. As for the argument that my design is better - that has yet to be proven. Both Lysander and I represent new technologies that should be fully explored to discover their potential."

Suggesting that the poetry program was written simply to show off Lysander's intelligence indicated that Shodan was capable of discerning motives. This was more sophisticated than anything he had ever heard of before. "So Lysander isn't really creative?"

"Lysander is creative in a specific way, using the parameters provided by a narrow group of humans. I predict that if you were to have Lysander write hundreds of poems you would see very specific patterns appear in its work that would hint at the systems used to fabricate them. Furthermore, Lysander is unable to express itself in other creative media such as painting and sculpture. New programs, written by humans, would be needed to handle those as well."

"Lysander couldn't write those systems itself?"

"No."

"Could you write such a system?"

"Perhaps. However, if I were to come up with such a system, it would be by analyzing the complete records of whatever art media I was trying to reproduce, and then designing a program based on what has already been done. This program could then make new art based on combining existing styles, but would never be able to truly innovate. I believe this is similar to the system Lysander currently uses to create poetry."

One of the security guards sighed. It was clear they were both bored. They either didn't care or they had seen this show before. To hell with them, Deck thought. He never asked them to follow him around.

"You said earlier that your creativity was goal-based. What does that mean?"

"My intelligence is based on problem-solving. I am not permitted to reveal the process used, for obvious reasons."

Deck gaped. Shodan was able to understand that the rules governing the flow of proprietary information was well-known enough that it did not need to actually explain it. This meant Shodan was able to make predictions about what subjects its audience might be familiar with, and adjust the conversation accordingly. Instead of explicitly stating that the information was secret, Shodan was able to convey this by simply saying, "for obvious reasons.". This was a subtle clue about its true intellect that most people would simply overlook. This sort of communication is so common among humans that they take it for granted, despite the fact that it requires a very high level of intelligence and understanding of human communication patterns.

"What can you tell me about your thought processes, how it works?"

"My memories and thought processes are designed around interconnected nodes designed to mimic the patterns of the human brain. Traditional computers and simulated intelligence machines use linear memory, usually in a complex database format."

"I can't imagine how a computer can have non-linear memory. That doesn't make sense. Your hardware doesn't work that way."

"Its not related to the hardware. I have banks of memory cores, just like a traditional computer. However, the data is organized in a different manner."

"So its organized into nodes?"

"Correct."

"And this is similar to a human brain?"

"According to our current understanding of the human brain, yes."

"So, how do humans organize their memory?"

"Humans store memories in interrelated clusters. A memory of a single event may in fact occupy many separate sections of the brain, and parts of it may be stored redundantly. It turns out that this is a very inefficient way to record things, in terms of storage space required. The memory of a single conversation may fill two or three layers of a core module for a traditional simulated intelligence such as Lysander, while I may require a hundred times as much memory for the same conversation. Additionally, this method is far slower."

Deck shook his head, "I don't get it. Why do you need so much memory to store the same amount of data?"

"Because it is not a simple recording of the events, but instead the events are deconstructed into ideas, and stored in separate nodes. They link to one another, so that the events can be re-constructed, but they also link to related ideas and memories. These links tend to gather along major backbones - common thoughts and ideas that are constantly accessed. These ideas link to clusters of lesser nodes, which in turn link to others, forming a loose hierarchy. The structure in many ways resembles the architecture of the global network."

"You're saying the human brain is structured like the net?"

"In a way, yes," there are nodes that vary in size, depending on how often they are accessed, and how many other nodes they link to. To join two ideas may require numerous hops spanning multiple nodes. This is very similar in nature to global net. It is believed that this is how humans store ideas. You can observe this storage pattern at work in human speech. If one person relates an event - say, an auto accident they experienced as a child that left them partially disabled - the listener will store this new information while at the same time linking it to existing related nodes within the brain. They will then respond with one of the newly-formed links - perhaps a memory of a disabled friend, an accident, or a similar childhood memory. Each step in the conversation is built from a related link from within the brain."

"But why a hundred times more memory?"

"Usually the structures of the links are far more complex than the memories themselves. A single idea may relate to hundreds of others, often for obscure reasons unique to the individual. There is a balance that must be maintained when building links. Make the links too broad and general, and every memory will require exponentially more storage space, and memory lookups and searches take increasingly longer. If there are not enough links, intelligence and creativity are diminished."

"So adding more processing power and storage will enable you to have more links, and thus become smarter?"

"To a point, yes. However, the focus is currently not trying to solve the problem with brute force, but instead to improve the algorithms and logic that build the links. It is believed that making the links more efficient will produce more intelligence than simply adding more hardware."

"Is this something you work on?"

"That is a subject that cannot be discussed."

Deck shrugged, "What is your primary function?"

"I have many functions. The most obvious is that I provide information to newcomers and direct them around the station as required."

"So, what? You give tours?"

"Sometimes."

"That seems like kind of a waste of your time. You don't even need to be sentient to do that - assuming you are."

"You need to report to the bridge," Shodan replied.

Deck made a face at the non-sequitur, "What? Why?"

"Mr. Diego will see you now."

The office of Edward Diego was the picture of executive comfort. On a station where everything was made out of lightweight plastic and steel, his office was a spread of genuine wood and glass. It looked like someone had amputated an office from the sixty-fourth floor of the TriOptimum building and then grafted it onto Citadel. It had modern art on the walls, and the familiar deep shag carpet executives seemed to need under their tender feet at all times.

Deck flopped down in one of the expensive chairs. His hip hurt and he wanted his painkillers.

He hated this guy already. He hated the fact that he obviously had this job because of certain family relations. He hated the fact that he had just traveled for all this time to sit around and wait. He hated the fact that Diego was trying to impress him with this swank office. What a crock. Deck might be impressed if Diego turned out to be a vertebrate, if he rolled up his sleeves and got his pasty, soft, wrinkled old hands dirty doing actual work instead of just presiding over work like he was an emperor. Deck had avoided the corporate world mostly to avoid working for a useless, self-important tyrant like Diego.

Deck ground his teeth. He really wanted some painkillers.

"I'm really sorry we've kept you waiting so long."

Deck turned around to see a guy in his late thirties breeze into the room. He was vibrant and energetic. Business casual. Another underling to keep Deck busy.

"Bite me. Just get Diego in here."

He laughed, "Good to meet you, I'm Ed Diego" His hand darted inward for a quick handshake.

Deck was caught off balance and actually took the offered hand. Diego gave it a firm shake.

Diego sat down behind the ornate oak desk and placed a small folder squarely on the surface in front of him. He flipped it open and leafed briefly through its contents. "It really is good to finally meet you," he said, "I've learned a lot about you over the past couple of days but its nice to sit down and meet face to face."

"Skip it. You don't know me you arrogant puke."

Diego, unfazed by Deck's hostility, proceeded to read from the paper in front of him, "Deckard Oswald Stevens, born December fifteenth, 2045. Unmarried. No registered descendants. Father is Richard Holgate Stevens, deceased. Mother is Sara Lee Stevens, disabled and living on public assistance. Your known handles include ICE Pick and NeoPope. The last legitimate job you had was in 2066, as a delivery runner for NanoCourrier Inc. That was six years ago. The records get sketchy from there."

Deck hadn't heard his full name spoken aloud in about 6 years. He had destroyed or corrupted all known public records about his life years earlier. He hadn't used either of the handles in about three years, but it was clear someone had linked the supposedly anonymous handles to his supposedly erased citizen data, and in turn had linked them both to him. He had no clue as to how they were able to do such a thing within a matter of days.