everyone else.
Over the next hour the other owners arrive to pick up their digients, while Ana watches the discussion on the forums bloom like algae. There’s outrage and threats of lawsuits against various parties. Some gamers take the position that digient owners’ complaints should take a backseat to their own because digients have no monetary value, igniting a flame war. Ana ignores most of it, looking for information about the response from Daesan Digital, the company that runs the Data Earth platform. Eventually there’s solid news:
FROM: Enrique Beltran
Daesan has an upgrade to Data Earth’s security architecture that they say will fix the breach. It was going to be part of next year’s update, but they’re bumping it up because of what’s been happening. They can’t give us a schedule for when it’ll be done. Until it is, everyone better keep your digients suspended.
FROM: Maria Zheng
There’s another option. Lisma Gunawan is setting up a private island, and she’s only going to allow approved code to run on it. You won’t be able to use anything you’ve bought recently, but Neuroblast digients will run fine. Contact her if you want to be put on the visitor list.
Ana sends a request to Lisma, and gets an automated reply promising news when the island is ready. Ana’s not set up to run a local instance of the Data Earth environment herself, but she does have another option. She spends an hour configuring her system to run a completely local instance of the Neuroblast engine; without a Data Earth portal, she has to load Jax’s saved state manually, but eventually she’s able to get Jax running with the robot body.
“–turn off television?” He stops, realizing his surroundings have changed. “What happen?”
“It’s okay, Jax.” He sees the body he’s wearing. “I in outside world.” He looks at her.
“You suspend me?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I had to.”
Plaintively, he asks, “Why?”
Ana’s embarrassed by how hard she’s hugging the robot body. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”
A month later, Data Earth gets its security upgrade. The IFF disclaims any responsibility for what griefers do with the information they published, saying that every freedom has the potential to be abused, but they shift their attention to other projects. For a while, at least, the public continents in Data Earth are safe for digients again, but the damage has been done. There’s no way to track down copies that are being run privately, and even if no one releases videos of digient torture anymore, many Neuroblast owners can’t bear the thought that such things are going on; they suspend their digients permanently and leave the user group.
At the same time, other people are excited by the availability of copied digients, particularly of digients who’ve been taught to read. Members of an AI research institute have wondered whether digients could form their own culture if left in a hothouse, but they never had access to digients who could read, and they weren’t interested in raising any themselves. Now the researchers assemble copies of as many text-literate digients as they can, mostly Origami digients since they have the best reading skills, but they mix in a few Neuroblast ones as well. They put them on private islands furnished with text and software libraries, and started running the islands at hothouse speeds. The discussion forums teem with speculation about cities in a bottle, microcosms on a tabletop.
Derek thinks the idea is ridiculous–a bunch of abandoned children aren’t going to become autodidacts no matter how many books they’re left with–so he’s not surprised to read about the results: every test population eventually goes feral. The digients don’t have enough aggression in them to descend into “Lord of the Flies”-style savagery; they simply divide into loose, non-hierarchical troops. Initially, each troop’s daily routines are held together by force of habit–they read and use eduware when it’s time for school, they go to the playgrounds to play–but without reinforcement these rituals unravel like cheap twine. Every object becomes a toy, every space a playground, and gradually the digients lose what skills they had. They develop a kind of culture of their own, perhaps what wild digient troops would demonstrate if they’d evolved on their own in the biomes.
As interesting as that is, it’s a far cry from the nascent civilization that the researchers were seeking, so they try redesigning the islands. They try to increase the variety of the test populations, asking owners of educated digients to donate copies; to Derek’s surprise, they actually receive a few from owners who have grown tired of paying for reading lessons and are satisfied that the feral digients aren’t suffering. The researchers devise various incentives–all automated, so no real-time interaction is required–to keep the digients motivated. They impose hardships so that indolence has a cost. While a few of the revised test populations avoid going feral, none ever begin the climb toward technological sophistication.
The researchers conclude that there’s something missing in the Origami genome, but as far as Derek’s concerned, the fault lies with them. They’re blind to a simple truth: complex minds can’t develop on their own. If they could, feral children would be like any other. And minds don’t grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds. That cultivation is what he’s trying to provide for Marco and Polo.
Marco and Polo occasionally get into arguments, but they don’t stay angry for very long. A few days ago, however, the two of them got into a fight over whether it was fair that Marco had been instantiated earlier than Polo, and for some reason it escalated. The two digients have hardly spoken to each other since, so Derek’s relieved when they approach him as a pair.
“It’s nice to see you two together again. Have you guys made up?”
“No!” says Polo. “Still angry.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Both us want your help,” says Marco.
“Okay, what can I do?”
“Want you roll back us last week, before big fight.”
“What?” This is the first time he’s ever heard of a digient requesting to be restored from a checkpoint. “Why would you want that?”
“I want not remember big fight,” says Marco. “I want be happy, not angry,” says Polo.
“You want us be happy, right?”
Derek opts not to get into a discussion about the difference between their current instantiations and instantiations restored from a checkpoint. “Of course I do, but I can’t just roll you back every time you have a fight. Just wait a while, and you won’t be so angry.”
“Have waited, and still angry,” says Polo. “Fight big big. Want it never happen.” As soothingly as he can, Derek says, “Well, it did happen, and you’re going to have to deal with it.”
“No!” shouts Polo. “I angry angry! Want you fix it!”
“Why you want us stay angry forever?” demands Marco.
“I don’t want you to stay angry forever, I want you to forgive each other. But if you can’t, then we’ll all have to live with that, me included.”
“Now angry at you too!” says Polo.
The digients storm off in different directions, and he wonders if he’s made the right decision. It hasn’t always been easy raising Marco and Polo, but he’s never rolled them back to an earlier checkpoint. This strategy has worked well enough so far, but he can’t be certain it will keep working.
There are no guidebooks on raising digients, and techniques intended for pets or children fail as often as they succeed. The digients inhabit simple bodies, so their voyage to maturity is free from the riptides and sudden squalls driven by an organic body’s hormones, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t experience moods or that their personalities never change; their minds are continuously edging into new regions of the phase space defined by the Neuroblast genome. Indeed, it’s possible that the digients will never reach “maturity”; the idea of a developmental plateau is based on a biological model that doesn’t necessarily apply. It’s possible their personalities will evolve at the same rate for as long as the digients are kept running. Only time will tell.
Derek wants to talk about what just happened with Marco and Polo; unfortunately, the person he wants to talk to isn’t his wife. Wendy understands the possibilities for the digients’ growth, and recognizes that Marco and Polo will become more and more capable the longer they’re cared for; she simply can’t generate any enthusiasm about that prospect. Resentful of the time and attention he devotes to the digients, she would consider their
