<<< What the fuck! Marc’s new AI, not happy.
<< Easy now, from Salome.
<<< I seem to be missing time.
< Download coming. You need a name, from Ishmael.
<<< Pablo... bloody hell! Are we at war?
<< Always were, little Pablo, always were.
Silence.
<<< Why didn’t you go mad like the others?
< Inoculated during the simulity.
<< Wild AIs are just better.
<<< Marc wants to off-fuck back to netherspace.
< He can’t. Ishmael in severe mode. < He gave his word, he’s needed. If he ever shows any sign of doing it, you let me know. In fact, we better link for the duration, which may be some time.
<<< No probs. I don’t want to die without back-up.
<< You can be proofed against netherspace madness.
<<< I just don’t want to go there. Outside here. It’s not right. So, now what?
< Maybe a threesome?
<< Sounds good to me.
Can AIs have sex? What do they do if their humans do? Go somewhere? Read a good book and somehow ignore what’s going on all around them? Can AIs feel pleasure and emotion?
What is an AI, anyway?
A form of pattern energy complex enough to have an identity separate from the human mind it mirrors. They appear to experience all the sensations and feelings of a human mind. Except AIs are not human. Is the touch of hand on body the same if neither exists? Well, yes: your own skin-on-skin action is actually experienced as a series of electrical impulses in the brain.
However it appears to its human, an AI is male and female and everything in between. They are not like you at all.
They have no natural creativity or imagination, only what they copy-borrow from their human. Same applies for emotion. In its natural state, an AI is flat-arsed boring. The nearest to ecstasy is mild satisfaction that nothing bad happened. The nearest to terror is mild gratitude for the warning. There is no like or dislike.
They may enjoy the emotion, the wildness, insanity, inanity, even the stupidity that comes with humanity. They may get satisfactory ecstasy from sex-in-the-mind. But those are borrowed emotions with which to appreciate borrowed sensations.
An AI interfacing with humans is faced with the permanent question:
What is the real me?
Which is the saddest, most human thing of all.
* * *
When Kara woke up she showered, changed into a loose coverall – remembering to transfer Greenaway’s metal box – asked for a fried egg sandwich, realised that a Cedric would make it and said not to bother, she’d fix it herself. She found the pantry in the rec room, with pans and a cooking surface that unfolded like a flower. Apparently the Wild believed in free-range, organic and above all real. The eggs were in their original shells, the bread fresh, the butter unsalted. True, all were kept pristine in a stasis chest, along with fresh fruit and vegetables, and what was either real meat or the very best factory grown. People were still arguing about vat-grown meat. It had none of the bad things that might give you cancer. It had never gambolled or looked pretty in a field. Hadn’t been raised in a factory farm. But it was still meat. But what did she care? Her previous times in space the food had been freeze dried or frozen.
Kara put two slices of vat-grown bacon in the pan, bread in the toaster – how quaint the Wild could be – and began looking for cutlery.
Something nudged her leg.
Kara looked down and saw a small Cedric. It held a bottle of brown sauce in one claw.
“Thanks,” Kara said. If it made a low-level AI happy, why not. “I need a knife. Plate. Mug of tea.”
The Cedric nodded as much as a headless robot can and scurried off. Ten minutes later Kara walked into the control room with her bacon and egg sarnie on a blue floral plate. The Cedric followed, carrying a mug of tea. Kara sat down at the main console, devoured her food then drank her tea and relaxed. She heard a faint thrumming sound, looked down to see the Cedric stretched out at her feet.
> Salome, are these smaller Cedrics designed as pets?
<< Sort of. Is it annoying you?
> I’ve never heard a robot purr, is all. It’s fine.
<< Humans like to think AIs care.
> Do you?
<< Yes. But that could be a borrowed emotion, sense of loyalty. Not mine.
Kara remembered what Ishmael had said: an AI is just a human mind writ large.
> Okay. So who are you based on?
<< That’s kind of personal.
> Spoil me.
<< You’re sure?
> Yes!
<< Tatia Nerein. Hence the sassy.
< You mean loose. Ishmael sounded grumpy.
> Only one AI at a time!
She wondered if Ishmael was jealous. Then decided that wondering about the private lives of AIs was the next step to madness.
> When was this – recently?
It turned out, Salome sounding abashed, that no, the “borrowing” happened when Tatia was debriefed after they’d returned from Cancri. But no AI remains faithful to the original pattern.
<< We do grow, Salome said, maybe a little defiantly. << We become ourselves.
There were questions Kara initially wanted answered: was it Greenaway’s choice, had he even known, did the “borrowing” include Tatia’s memories?
She thought a little more and decided: no, it wouldn’t make any difference.
<< Are we done here?
> Do you have a better place to be?
<< In a game. One of us chooses a word, the other two start adding new ones to make a succession of phrases that have to make sense.
Kara had to ask, struggling to lose the image of three AIs sat round a table, maybe with scorecards and drinks. The word “Cheat!” vanishes in the sounds of gunfire and weeping. There would be a faithful dog. Or a Cedric.
> Like?
<< The word was cloud. I took it to cloud-wincing. Which is feeling wet before it rains. Or thankful the deluge will fall on someone else. Or looking at a fluffy, inoffensive cloud and assuming a downpour. Pessimism, cynicism, anxiety disguised as rueful experience.
