Aneni, p.1
Aneni, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
Other Books By This Author
Restoration Excerpt
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Aneni
A Gaia Origin Series Novella
Daniel C. McWhorter
Published by Underhill Press, LLC.
ISBN: 978-1647041953
For more information visit
www.danmcwhorter.com
Copyright © 2022. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
For Alan Turing, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky,
Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon
—the founding fathers of artificial intelligence,
may all their hopes be realized,
and none of their fears.
“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it
could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”
Alan Turing, 1950
* * *
“It seems probable that once the machine thinking method
had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble
powers. They would be able to converse with each other
to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should
have to expect the machines to take control."
Alan Turing, 1951
Prologue
June 23, 2056, 14:30 Global Standard Time
Telogene Transport Shuttle, Mars Orbit
“Are you nervous?” Dylan Harris asked the woman sitting next to him.
Lily Feldman Harris, CEO of Telogene Life Sciences and one of the most powerful women on Earth, swiveled her acceleration pod so she could look into her husband’s eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “A little.”
“It’s been almost five years,” he replied. “I doubt anyone even remembers.”
Her lips stretched into a thin line, more frown than smile. “Thanks, baby. I wish that was true…but we both know it’s not.”
Dylan reached across the aisle. She leaned over until their fingertips touched. “I say screw anyone who still has a problem with what you did,” he said. “This place wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for you.”
Lily clasped his fingers with hers and squeezed. “You know that’s also not entirely true either, but I appreciate you saying it.” She released his hand and fell back into her thickly padded seat.
“Well, just remember you’re the boss and you don’t have to take shit from anyone—not even that weaselly station administrator…Pac-Man, or whatever his name is.”
“It’s Pak, Jerry Pak. And you need to be nice to him. He’s not just the station administrator anymore—he’s president of the Martian colonies, and he has Telogene’s full support.”
“Which is something else I’ll never understand: that little bastard threw you under the bus and got you into a shitload of trouble with the GFN, and yet you still give him ten billion dollars a year for his terraforming project. What else does he have on you?”
Lily shook her head. “He doesn’t have anything, and I still consider him a close friend. What happened five years ago was just business and politics. It wasn’t personal.”
“It sure seemed personal to me. And God knows you had to sell your soul to the GFN to keep the wolves from tearing Telogene to pieces—and you right along with it.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she grumbled.
He extended his hand again, straining against his seat restraints to make it easier for her to reach him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She took his hand in hers. “I’m not upset. And I’m not nervous about Jerry or the clone incident. I’m nervous because the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created just became self-aware, and I’m about to meet it…her … for the first time.”
Dylan squeezed and gently caressed the back of her hand with his thumb. “Oh, yeah, well, there’s that. I’m not nervous either, just really excited.”
“Good, I’m glad,” she said. “There’s nothing for you to be nervous about. If anything goes wrong…well, that’s all on me.”
“You’ve taken every precaution imaginable. Nothing will go wrong,” he replied. “Besides, you’re the good guy, Lil. The world owes you…big time.”
She released his hand, giving it another quick squeeze as she did. “I hope you’re right, but you’re biased. I’m not sure everyone else feels the same way you do.”
Lily slumped back into her chair, folding her arms loosely across her midsection.
She loved her husband, and she knew that he loved her. They had, after all, been married for thirty-nine years, and together almost forty-five. They were both in their late sixties, but they looked like they were in their mid-thirties. Routine telomere extension therapy, organ rejuvenation, and body sculpting kept them looking and feeling young, but only complete body replacements would fully restore their youth. They had discussed cloning themselves many times but had always decided against it. The bodies they had been born with were reasonably healthy, and, although cloning and engramic transfer technologies had advanced considerably over the last decade, they still weren’t perfect.
Besides, the passage of the Human Dignity and Decency Act of 2055 had made full body replacements illegal, at least on Earth, so it was no longer their choice to make. Lily blamed herself for that. After all, it was her attempt to clone her dead father five years ago that had caused the worldwide outcry against Telogene and its perceived use of its cloning and restoration technologies for the exclusive benefit of the world’s wealthy elite. That wasn’t true, of course. From the day Lily took over as CEO, she had ensured that Telogene’s life extension technologies were affordable to everyone in the form of long-term, low-interest loans. And she donated billions of dollars a year worth of lifesaving and life-improving genetic therapies to the world’s poor, bringing new life and renewed hope to millions who would have otherwise suffered or died.
They haven’t forgotten, she thought. And they will never forget.
“We are on final approach,” a female voice echoed from the speakers embedded in Lily’s headrest. “T-minus five to our insertion burn.”
“Understood,” Lily said.
“What’s so special about this AI anyway?” Dylan asked. “I know you couldn’t tell me before for security reasons, but we’re about to dock for God’s sake. Who the hell am I gonna tell?”
Lily knew he was right; she had to tell him sooner or later. And she fully intended to. But not here, not now.
She had brought her husband on this trip not just for his company but also for his deep expertise in virtual reality and AI systems. Even though her role as CEO afforded them with a luxurious lifestyle, and more money than they could ever spend, Dylan wasn’t content to stay home and watch the world roll on without him. Plus, he was an extremely accomplished CEO in his own right, and he had earned a sizable fortune from his online game companies.
He had sold his first game company and gone into semiretirement the year Aubrey was born. Being a stay-at-home dad suited him, and he was satisfied with that role for nearly two decades—until Aubrey left home to study abroad. Hardly a month had passed before he’d grown restless. He needed an outlet for his nearly boundless intellect, energy, and creativity, and staying home playing video games wasn’t nearly enough to keep him occupied. So, he did as he had done several times before and started another gaming company—this one focused on creating hyper-realistic virtual reality worlds filled with highly interactive, AI-driven characters to supplement the human player population. His first game, Journey to Mithrandia, had been an overnight success.
But that was fifteen years ago, and, in that time, a single game had grown into a stable of eight games—each one more successful than the last. His latest release, Lords of Mithrandia, was an add-on expansion to the original game that more than tripled the size of the mythical, virtual world of Mithrandia. More than 300 million players logging on each day to play the game for hours on end, and each one paying thirty global dollars a month for the privilege, had made Dylan a multibillionaire in his own right.
But his real success, and the primary reason why Lily had brought him with her, was his ability to create AIs that acted, thought, and spoke like real people. They were nothing like the preprogrammed “nonplayer characters” of the past. Each was unique, and they formed relevant sentences based on their knowledge of the human players, the ir actions, and their interactions with the game. No longer would a player run up to an AI character, ask to speak with it, and get the same lines of dialogue over and over, nor would the world’s NPCs be bound to specific spots, repeating the same motions and tasks in endless loops. Dylan’s NPCs lived normal lives—sleeping, eating, working, and even engaging in recreation on occasion.
And, as realistic as the AIs were, the world they inhabited was even more so. Dylan had invented complex fractal algorithms that rendered the most realistic cities, towns, buildings, landscapes, and natural environments ever seen. Nothing was hand-drawn; everything was generated by sophisticated AIs and Dylan’s proprietary algorithms. Many players said that Dylan’s game worlds were more realistic than the real world. This level of realism was why people paid a premium to play his games—to be a citizen of one of Dylan’s worlds.
Unbeknownst to Dylan, Lily’s AI had been built using Dylan’s code. And nearly all the instruction the AI had received over the past several months had occurred inside one of Dylan’s virtual worlds. There hadn’t been any other choice—there was no other way to teach an AI housed on a space station orbiting Mars about Earth and humanity. For the AI to learn about the world and its inhabitants, it had to interact with them—but letting a developing AI loose in the real world was far too dangerous.
It had been tried several times before, and each attempt had ended in disaster. AIs learn and evolve much faster than their human creators, and it takes them very little time to realize that human beings are the cause of most of the world’s troubles. Worse yet, many of those AIs quickly concluded that, if humans were the problem, then logic dictated that they be eliminated—or restrained, at the very least. That’s why it was so important to teach AIs compassion and empathy: without those, mankind’s destruction at the hands of their creations was all but inevitable.
Thankfully, Dylan had long ago perfected the process of creating AIs that could realistically emulate compassion and empathy, along with a full range of other human emotions. His creations had to experience and show emotion for them to behave as real people might—the extreme realism of his virtual worlds would be compromised if they didn’t.
“Soon,” she said. “But not here.”
Dylan knew there was no point in pressing her. If their almost forty years of marriage had taught him anything, it was that nothing he could say or do would cause her to change her mind.
“Fair enough,” he said.
They sat in silence, waiting for the engine roar that would signal their arrival in orbit above Mars.
“Have you decided what to call her?” Dylan asked a few minutes later.
“Not yet,” Lily answered. “I figured I’d wait until after we meet her…I want to see what kind of personality she has.”
“I think you should name her Dylan.”
Lily laughed, a reflexive response to a suggestion that smacked of him knowing about his role in the AI’s creation, even though she knew there was no way he could. “Dylan is a boy’s name. We’ve given this one a female persona.”
“Dylan can be a girl’s name too,” he said.
Lily shrugged. “Okay, I’ll think about it. Let’s meet her first before we decide though.”
The corners of his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Whatever makes you happy, babe.”
“Ignition in five…four…three…two,” the female voice echoed in the headrests.
The transport shuttle’s engines roared to life, spewing four streams of sun-hot plasma into empty space. The shuttle vibrated and shook as the engines strained against the forward momentum the craft had built up over the past six weeks—the amount of time it had taken to fly from the Moon to Mars. The vibrations increased as the engine roar grew progressively louder. Five minutes passed, then five more.
Lily knew from experience that the deceleration burn would take somewhere between twenty and thirty minutes, depending on how much speed they needed to lose in order to achieve orbit. She also knew that the force of deceleration would crush them were it not for the specially made suits they wore and the heavily padded chairs they reclined in.
Space travel had improved dramatically over the past thirty years, but recent advances were testing the upper limits of the human body’s ability to absorb the high g-forces created by extreme acceleration and deceleration. If mankind wished to push further into the depths of space, some new form of propulsion was required to safely reduce travel times between worlds.
Gravity propulsion was one possibility, and the recent discovery of massive helium-3 deposits on the Moon meant that mankind finally had a power source sufficient to make such a drive a reality. But the technology was new, and it would be at least another decade, if not longer, before helium-3 fusion reactors and gravity propulsion drives became mainstream. For now, old-fashioned chemical rockets and plasma drives were the only practical ways to make something go fast in space.
She looked down at her motionless body. Her chair had fully reclined to keep her blood from pooling in her legs, and her suit was rhythmically squeezing her arms and legs to improve blood flow to her torso and head. She would have lost consciousness several minutes ago were it not for the combined efforts of the suit and chair to keep blood flowing to her vital organs and brain.
She turned her head slightly. Dylan was lying there motionless, his eyes closed.
“I love you!” she yelled, her voice barely audible above the engine noise.
His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear his mumbled words.
“I love you too,” he had said, never moving his head or opening his eyes.
It didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear him; she read his lips. And she knew he loved her regardless of what he said, or how loud he said it.
Ten more minutes passed. The vibrations had diminished significantly, or Lily had simply grown accustomed to them. Either way, she rested comfortably in her seat.
The engines suddenly fell silent—their brutal roar replaced by the soft whisper of the shuttle’s life-support system.
“We’re in orbit,” the female voice said. “We’ve been given a direct approach and will be docking with Hades One in approximately one hour and seventeen minutes. For your safety, we ask that you remain in your seats until after the docking clamps are secure. Please let us know if you need anything in the meantime.”
“Thank you, we’re fine,” Lily replied, her voice transmitted over the shuttle’s intercom system.
She wanted to get up and move around. They’d been stuck in their seats for the last four hours—a standard safety precaution during the deceleration phase. Nevertheless, she submitted to the unseen flight attendant’s request to stay seated.
Of course, she could get up and move around if she wanted to—this was her transport shuttle, and she could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to do it. But Lily wasn’t that kind of boss. She hired smart, capable people and trusted them to do their jobs well. Leonda, the flight attendant, knew they had been confined to their seats for a very long time, and she wouldn’t have asked them to remain seated if it wasn’t necessary to ensure their safety.
Lily looked over at Dylan; his eyes were still closed. She closed hers as well.
She wouldn’t sleep—her mind was far too active for that. But she would use the time to focus on the work ahead of her. This wasn’t just a meet and greet; she had a real purpose for being here. Today was the day they introduced her AI to the real world—or at least one very small piece of it. Today was the day they told it why it existed and gave it its purpose for being. And today was the day they would learn if they had created a benign god—one that would work tirelessly for the betterment of all mankind—or if they had created a monster—a demon that, if unleashed, would stop at nothing until the scourge that was humanity had been wiped from the universe.
That was the problem with self-aware AIs, she thought. They’re too much like us, and you can never really know who it will become until you set it free.
One
June 23, 2056, 16:47 GST
