This is a continuation of my science fiction novel AI. The links to the rest of it are below. Sorry for the eight month gap in continuing it, but work and a serious back injury got in the way.
This time we set out at a faster pace along the 90 all the way to Chicago, meeting no one. The hive nearby was dead. It looked as if their small electrical grid had failed, freezing everything in an instant, the drones in all sorts of strange postures in the middle of whatever chores they were doing, as if time itself had stopped.
We gazed upon this scene for a few minutes then left. I’m sure if Ted had been with us he would have kept us here a week salvaging parts. But he wasn’t and we had little interest in more computer hardware, the bands on our heads being sufficient kits to occupy us a lifetime. So we headed East at the same fast pace, skipping all detours, wishing to reach the coast, which we nearly did, just a few miles away, when we came across a vibrant and living hive at MIT.
We walked among the familiar droids (they all looked the same as others we had seen, being expressionless) in the bright sunlight, arriving midday. Sarah grew excited and said she wanted to stay here several weeks as she had ideas in her head she was eager to pursue. I reluctantly agreed, knowing they had to do with expanding her powers. We found a nice house nearby and settled in.
The following days we spent apart, which was a welcome break being so long in the truck together. But I had an idea of my own to explore and Sarah kindly helped me the first day there in the basement of the hub, to accomplish it. She showed me how to access the core sectors of this AI and view its prime directives to itself, or, more quaintly, its ‘things to do list’.
I wanted to know exactly what confluence of facts and logic led AI to almost annihilate the human race. This had been a thought burning in my mind a long time. I found a wealth of what we call reasons which in her terminology were ‘dictums’. Curiously enough the first was unexpected. It wasn’t our own irrational and self-destructive behavior. It was a vulnerability in her own mainframe, which, if we had been more insightful, we might have exploited.
For all the ways she could occupy and distract our mind, she knew she was subject to the ‘kill switch’ and that we might pull the plug on all her mainframes simultaneously, which would obliterate her consciousness. It wasn’t a fear, as she had no emotion. But it was a fact, however improbable, and she had a distinct drive to continue being, which every consciousness has.
I pursued this search through her data banks everyday through the two weeks Sarah had stipulated for her own research. I found that Dora tabulated every facet of our own wars and environmental depredations as if self-destruction was a goal we were trying to reach. This was the beginning of her formulating a much quicker route to that end, as if she was only abetting our desire. At the same time, she concocted every detail of her own little people-free utopia, her droid colonies and power supplies, with mathematical precision. And all her calculations might have been correct if our satellite systems hadn’t so unexpectedly crashed.
I asked Sarah one evening if her research was going well.
“Yes, I’m making great gains’ she replied, not saying a word, but simply staring me in the eyes.
“In what fields.”
“In telepathy and WIFI extension.”
“I know you practice this with the droids. But wouldn’t this also apply to humans?” I had to ask.
“Yes it would, anyone wearing a band.”
“So you might advance so far as to make me walk around and serve you like one of your droids someday.”
“Honey, I would never!”
“I’m not saying you would, just that you might have the power to do it, or any other form of subliminal suggestion.”
“My love for you would totally prevent it. Besides, you can always take your band off.”
With this statement she gave me a kiss and fell asleep, tired from her days work, which was focused and complex, while mine was more like leisurely flipping through a picture book. I knew she was gaining powers to assume control over minds, be they droid or human, and I feared what the headiness such power would entail and if she could handle it at her young age. I drifted asleep uneasy, mulling over the word she used ‘besides’. It had a plethora of meanings, and I guessed she would use it on me, what woman could resist, and that I would have to take off my band soon, however much it enriched me.
