Great, Karl thought. I can tell this is going to be a productive relationship.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they didn’t ask me who I wanted to be implanted into, either,” Maynard said. “Otherwise, we might not be in this situation.”
We both signed up for this, Karl commented in his head. The least we could do is try to make the best of it.
“Oh man,” Maynard started. “Once you get to know me, you’ll realize how stupid that statement was.”
First Impressions
Karl found it a bit more difficult than he’d anticipated to retain his sanity while working with Maynard, as the cybernetic engineer was callous and generally uncooperative. In moments of silence when Karl needed to concentrate, Maynard would ramble about something. Whether it was to intentionally mess with him or just a lack of awareness, however, the psychologist could not determine.
There was a little part of Karl that wished his surgeon had mentioned the possibility of being annoyed to death when he was given a post-operation check-up.
“You know, I was working on something just like this,” Maynard commented as Karl looked over the code injections he would working on. “Except that was thirty-one years ago. Has nothing advanced since then? What, was my death the end for mankind’s scientific achievements?”
“We’ve made plenty of progress since then,” Karl said aloud. He preferred to speak directly with the I.I., rather than using his thoughts to communicate. Something about having someone else pick apart his consciousness made Karl uncomfortable. “For example, you’d be happy to know that we’ve improved on your initial cerebral computer designs significantly.”
“And they’d be three times as improved had I been the one working on them,” the I.I. retorted. “Don’t brag about taking a few steps to a roadrunner, pal.”
“Could you please stop calling me ‘pal’?” Karl requested.
“You know I don’t mean it seriously, right?” Maynard said.
“I know.”
It was the second day of trying to work on Karl’s taste-and-scent project, and little to no progress had been made. Maynard insisted on tearing down any idea the psychologist presented, no matter how hypothetical it was to begin with. Even when Karl requested no feedback be given, it was delivered against his will. Since the I.I. communicated straight to his brain, there was nothing he could do to shut the voice out. Plugging his ears did nothing to silence Maynard, nor could any daydream be vivid enough to blot out the I.I.’s constant commentary.
This is what I wanted, Karl had to keep reminding himself. This was my choice.
“Hey, we all make mistakes,” Maynard said, probing into the psychologist’s thoughts. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I’m not,” Karl replied.
The hang-up the two of them were having, besides basic personality conflicts, was in how the I.I.’s programming read the code injections. The cerebral computer could handle the commands just fine, but when they were passed from the hardware to Maynard, the I.I. could understand the code no better than he could Mandarin. It clearly frustrated Maynard, thus leading to a number of distractions. Since the I.I. had no body with which to drum his fingers or fidget with a pen, the only means of stress relief came from harassing Karl.
Karl, in turn, was constantly fidgeting with a pen while they worked.
“What if we worked backwards?” the psychologist suggested. “We could begin with a code injection you can read, then figure out how to translate it to the cerebral computer.”
“I understand English just fine—why can’t you write it like that?” Maynard whined.
“The cerebral computer isn’t going to do anything with English. It needs a programming language.”
“I know,” Maynard replied. “I’m just screwing with you, man. You are really uptight, you know.”
“And you’re not helping.”
“What made you think I was trying to?”
Karl gritted his teeth. If it were possible to reach inside his own skull and smack Maynard, he would have done it without any further consideration. It wasn’t helping their rapport that the I.I. could hear every unpleasant thought the psychologist might have about him. It was a never-ending back-and-forth of mild animosity.
“We’ve been thinking about this for over a day now, haven’t you come up with any ideas?” Karl asked.
“Sure, but not about this trifle,” Maynard answered. “I’ve been preoccupied with more important matters.”
“Really?” Karl spat, his frustration boiling over. “What do you consider ‘important’?”
The cybernetic engineer hummed inside Karl’s thoughts. “I’ve always thought we should focus more on the decline of honeybees,” he said, his tone sarcastic.
The psychologist tried to ignore him and concentrate on the code before him. Still, there was no mental wall thick enough to keep the I.I. out.
“You know, I was murdered,” the voice in his head started.
“Is that so?” Karl had little patience for sarcastic tall tales.
“It is,” Maynard said. “Yet no one seems to care. Can you imagine how disappointing that is?”
“Thankfully not,” Karl retorted.
“See, you’re just like everyone else,” the I.I. snapped. “Can’t even be inconvenienced by the truth.”
“How were you murdered, then?” Karl asked, his interest absent. “There are no records of it.”
“That’s because they covered it up.”
“Who did?”
“I—I don’t know,” Maynard admitted.
Karl scoffed.
“I don’t remember, okay?” the I.I. started to explain. “But I’ve seen the reports and they don’t match what I know. Someone wanted to hide what really happened.”
“Why?”
“That’s something I’ve been wondering for over three decades. As the inventor of the most controversial smart computer ever made, it’s impossible to say how many enemies I have or why they might hate me.”
“Well, is there any chance you can worry about it after we get this bug sorted out?” Karl urged. “We don’t have forever to work on this.”
“You might not, thanks to mortality,” Maynard argued. “I, however, don’t have the same constraints.”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” Karl started.
“You’re not taking me seriously,” Maynard interrupted.
Karl’s agitation finally bubbled over the brim and he pushed away from his desk with a grunt. He could feel Maynard mocking his frustration internally, and that only drove his focus further away.
“We’ll just pick this
