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Richard’s shirt with its ostentatious fashionable design was quite out of keeping with his staid scientific character. It was all a bit of an anomaly when the sedate scientist dressed like a rock star. His faded blue jeans, however, just about saved the day. It was worth noting that nothing Richard wore was the result of a conscious decision particularly, but that didn’t really matter. That was just the outside. That was just one aspect of Richard, his external self, his clothes sense. That was just one piece of the puzzle. What was going on inside was another. From his external frivolous garb to his internal processing unit, his mind was a world apart.
There was a name for Richard’s job, not that there had always been one. However, the fervour with which science had embraced artificial intelligence made it so. As a robotics PhD student, Richard had understood the external structure of the droid. Now, as an AI engineer, he was conversant with a whole new set of principles. Richard quite clearly understood the difficulty of designing the complexities of the artificial mind in some depth. Unfortunately, he only had his linear thinking apparatus, his brain, to tackle the job, even if it was more than substantial for most human type tasks. However, to contemplate the mechanisms of the AI unit was somewhat different. His brain thought in one way and it was trying to build an AI unit, which thought in another. The AI unit did not necessarily have to mimic the human thinking process. That was where Richard departed from the consensus view. Artificial intelligence didn’t need to be an extension to the way humans thought, that was just bordering on arrogance. Richard did not base his AI development on the way human intelligence worked at all. His approach was that he should not concoct his work with a master plan, and certainly not one, which mimicked the actions of human logic. That would be how a supercharged human mind would work and Richard was not exactly impressed with human logic; certainly, if that meant the political variety espoused by William Jackson.
In the next droid incarnation, he would try to let the AI unit be the arbiter when designing it. After all, the unit should work that way. That was why it was artificial intelligence, it could think for itself. As soon as Richard would initiate the AI unit, the AI unit would spend most of its time developing and improving itself. That would mean that after Richard had built the AI unit, it would start to self-process. Then it was as much the unit’s responsibility as it was his. The AI unit’s destiny would be mysteriously in the hands of something, non-human, adept at self-developing.
As Richard’s expertise improved he imagined he would find ways to allow the unit he was developing to self-propagate and self-replicate its algorithms in its organic components. By doing that, the AI units would eventually self-incorporate the very things that William Jackson wanted. He would eventually be able to flood the AI units with conscious actions like emotions. In a nebulous way, Richard could imagine how future AI units could do such a thing even if he wasn’t sure how the end result would turn out. The capabilities the units had to fine-tune themselves would be dependent on the generation level. Richard would attempt to implement the self-tuning process with his current project. He had mentioned it to Sharlene during one of their conversations. Richard had been specifying his latest ordering requirements. How he envisaged the evolution of the future components.
“There is a point when the fine-tuning or self-tuning of the AI units would accelerate. In the future, the AI units should self-learn at an ever-increasing rate.”
“Sure, sweetie,” Sharlene said nonchalantly.
Richard was looking at the holographic image of her from his communicator.
As Richard looked at the image he thought, “It looks like she is chewing gum. Here we are making the greatest inroads since the dawn of science, and she is chewing gum!”
For once, of course, Richard was being a little more than circumspect. He was being ridiculously boastful. Was he really making spectacular scientific advances? Craven who was standing there silently, suddenly spoke.
“No.”
Richard ignored his aberrant droid and meant to continue his conversation with Sharlene. However, Sharlene beat him to it.
“I know the tech boffs are looking at newer orgo-metallic components. The next ones leave the idea of stem cells in the dust. I’ll have a word. I’ll speak with the General.”
In all honesty, Richard did not know about the component manufacture and although he had not said anything, he didn’t know why Sharlene was referring to stem cells. Richard didn’t challenge her. His forte was networking the components together, that was difficult enough. He wasn’t looking to complicate his work unnecessarily. Richard also had a firm conviction that Sharlene was clueless about what the components really did. Richard may have liked the shape of Sharlene’s holographic form but that was it, he didn’t bestow upon her any great intellectual prowess. However, the success of his artificial intelligence units was dependent on the quality of the components he received and the scant specifications he received with them. For that, he was eternally gratefully to Sharlene, though he would never have guessed that his success was also dependent on the General to select some of the best and most innovative talent around. On top of that, Richard had never spoken with the General.
~
AS RICHARD CONTINUED working with the droids, but more specifically the AI units, it became apparent everything was adopting the prefix ‘self’. In working with the current droid, its capabilities seemed to use the nomenclature normally associated with humans. Everything was imposing the droid with a sense of identity, with a sense of self as if the project was looming over it and attaching to the droid a personality. It was as if the childless Richard was creating a baby and he was teaching it, as would any good parent; he was allocating it with a character. It was almost like that but there was a difference, he was not teaching it he was allowing it to self-teach. He was trying to give it an incremental path to learn.
Richard’s skills had increased as he understood more. Along with that, the components became increasingly more powerful. As each generation of droids had progressed, level 0, level 1, level 2 then so had their sophistication; that had been a natural progression. Now, he was working with the level 3 droid and it was almost as if he was transposing human traits to it. William Jackson had exactly wanted that, and it seemed as if he had railroaded Richard into pursuing the same aims.
His current droid was ambitious. Progress was steady but there were still mundane problems, problems with supplies. He was becoming a champion of artificial intelligence but was still bearing the burden of supply chain issues.
X3 was the name he coined for his latest creation and it would naturally be his most advanced yet. However, there was always that fundamental problem. He would always be on the cusp of creating something about which he was never quite sure. He was never sure how it would turn out. That was what had happened in his latest venture. How X3 thought, or rather its AI unit thought was unknown to him. He had assembled every facet of X3’s mind but he did not know how it thought, how those orgo-metallic components interfaced at the quantum level. He could assemble them externally but did not know how the complete unit worked internally. That was the question, how the minutiae of the orgo-metallic parts worked together.
~
IF ESOTERIC WORK AND reading technical manuals did not sufficiently clutter Richard’s life one could expect that he would have equally idiosyncratic pastimes. That would have been a wrong assumption. Richard didn’t really have pastimes. He was obsessive about his work and it was not totally unexpected that any pursuits he had were also obsessive. He didn’t really have pastimes; he had habits – bad habits. With a highly active brain, Richard needed some option to relieve the time between projects. To the next time, his faculties were fully occupied and electrified. From the time when the dearth of groundbreaking work skidded his thought processes into a slumber, to the next time he was so actively engaged in his work that he dreamt about it. A lapse from his work, however short, was a period of drudgery. There he was now in such a pause.
It had only been a couple of days, but it was as if someone had sucked oxygen from the room and he was gasping for breath, he needed something to get his teeth into, to get his mind around; something to intellectually occupy him. He had just created arguably his greatest piece of work, but the shine had dulled remarkably quickly. He was waiting for new supplies from Sharlene. He was now desperately in need of another task to tax him, or else he would fall back. He would do what he had done before on many occasions, he would alleviate the intense boredom by resorting to his favourite drug. He knew it could possibly happen and because of that had taken precautions the night before. That was why there was a small capsule lying on the kitchen table. He had needed something to occupy his mind but in the event, had not been tempted. Now, that same small capsule of CLX9 was lying there. It was as if it was lying there looking at him.
“Hello friend,” Richard said as he looked at the capsule.
It didn’t need to be a long conversation. In a split second, he had decided what he should do. Using a pestle, he crushed the tablet in a mortar. All items had been conveniently placed on the lab bench where he worked. Craven observed in silence.
From a small bottle standing next to the mortar, he removed the glass stopper and immersed a pipette. He added five drops of the blue liquid to the contents of the mortar. The effect was not stunning or anything exceptional at all. The crushed tablet was absorbed into the fluid and within a space of ten seconds there just remained a clear bluish liquid.
All this had taken place in his lab under the watchful gaze of Craven who stood there observing everything, which had happened. Craven was the absolute soul of discretion, he did not utter a syllable. No redress, no warning, there was only silence from a droid who was not working at his fullest level. He may have been an erstwhile level 2 droid but the alteration, which Richard had applied, reduced him to not much more than a level 1. Richard reached for the blue liquid he prepared. Craven looked on in silence. The blue liquid forwent the need of a syringe to inject it; the process had changed from earlier years. There was no need to pierce the skin. There was no need for an intravenous injection. Not anymore. The blue liquid contained a chemical agent, which entered the veins the same way that nutrients entered the human body. Richard drank the bitter tasting fluid. Immediately, his head swam with a warm feeling, it was equivalent to a rapid controllable high and once it reached a peak it would hang there for an hour or two, giving the imbiber a feeling of timelessness and relaxation. That was CLX9 the ‘do nothing’ sort of a drug, the drug which had been legalised in William Jackson’s ‘do nothing’ sort of government. Well, that would be the case normally if it wasn’t for the curacao cocktail Richard had mixed ahead of time and placed in a little glass stoppered bottle. The blue liquid would supply ingredients, which would cause the CLX9 tablet to be less than innocuous. The socially acceptable drug had suddenly increased its potency by ten-fold.
He had taken a normal dose. At least he considered it a normal dose. He had taken the dose many times before. CLX9 was a commonly used pacifier, to help alleviate stressful moments. Now it was a pacifier of renewed strength. The absolute beauty, of course, was that Richard could obtain it through any pharmacy without a query. However, to alleviate the stresses and strains in Richard’s mind it needed to be a little more. He was taking it now to relieve the tedium, although there was another complication. He had obtained the capsule from a street dealer and not his usual doctor. OK, so he may have obtained the drug from a street dealer but he hadn’t taken an excessive amount just the recommended one capsule. That was Richard all over, a slave to caution but a lover of risk. He was always willing to challenge convention but not without consideration for the consequences.
Richard had been looking for more stimulation than he was currently experiencing. His project had ground to a halt, which had prompted him to look for something to enhance his mood. In his mixed-up mind, he had remembered what he had forgotten, but it was too late. It was too late to purchase the next capsule through the pharmacy. The next capsule he needed to get through the following few days until his fresh component supplies arrived, and he was able to be fully occupied with his work. It was as simple as his physician taking a vacation, and he was too blasé to find another one. Well, that’s what he thought; in fact, it had been a little more than that. Unknowingly, it had been out of his control.
If Richard had the need to fulfil his not infrequent mild habit, he would go to the city. He would take the drone cab to the station and then take the metro, which went to the centre of the buzzing metropolis. The choice of the centre, however, seldom appealed to him. Instead, he would almost invariably head for the more disreputable areas, with their sleazy backstreets and raucous bars. He was heading there now. It was not as if he enjoyed the idea of throwing himself into any danger, he just strangely felt more comfortable there, and it was an easier place to carry out his transactions. Today after days of abject boredom, he was off to the city to prepare himself for a few more days of the same.
The euphoria from the drug was beating rhythmically in his mind. In the midst of his unusually tranquil mood, he had found himself downtown. He was in the quarter, renowned for the activity he was about to pursue. He may have thought that he had come here because his doctor was on vacation, but that was not the truth. In fact, Richard had come there by invitation even if he did not know or would not have been able to guess the inviter. However, even if he had known the inviter it would not have concerned him. That was furthermost from his mind. He did not know that someone could have sent him there because he felt as if he had arrived by levitation, or at least it seemed like levitation. One light foot upon one light foot. Then the drone ride and the metro, which had conveyed him magically to his destination. It had been effortless. A normal dose of CLX9 would release the stress of life, the cocktail that Richard took with it enhanced the experience. Now finally with head in soft and fluffy clouds, Richard was getting the distinct, transcendental, impression that someone had instructed him to take the journey. Richard knew why he had taken the journey; it was because his doctor was on vacation. Then in his heady state, he had doubts. Had he come there for another reason?
Richard had alit from the metro and found himself in the less than salubrious part of town. He looked around; there were no pristine houses or carefully manicured lawns. A chill ran the length of his back. Even the spaced out euphoric feeling from the drug didn’t protect him from a perverse feeling that something was about to happen. He shivered thinking where he was. He stopped for a second.
Two burly men, with leather jackets, brushed past him. He had seen them but had taken no evasive moves.
“Tak’n all the fucking street?”
Richard took a step back.
“Sorry,” Richard said as he watched and almost felt the two characters sidle past him.
“Maybe you will be,” the shorter man said.
Richard saw the man’s unshaven face and quickly turned around to focus on the street ahead. It could have been a set for a film. As Richard walked down the seedy street, he heard intermittent spasms of loud music coming from overhead apartments and street level bars, some rhythmic, some chaotic.
“When loud music plays, you expect something to happen. When no music plays, you expect something to happen,” he murmured to himself.
Richard may have been expecting something to happen but nothing did. He continued to walk while being overcome by a sense of trepidation. Richard’s mind started to race as he tried to remember why he was there.
“Sure. Dr Turchek is on holiday so I have come to get Clixsoid.”
Richard walked on.
“My doctor is vacationing. No, she is on holiday and I have come for a capsule or two of CLX9. Clixs from the filth,” Richard continued to have a conversation with himself.
Richard thought for a second, he was by himself down town. In an area, he had no recollection of being before.
“Dr Turchek is on a short vacation so I need some Clixs. Simple.”
It all fitted into why he was in that shabby neighbourhood. After all it was a well-known fact that drugs of whatever ferocity were always bought in a no-good area? He may have been after the same lame variant of drug he had just taken to tide him over, but it was a drug nevertheless. For some reason his mouth salivated at the thought of finding and purchasing some capsules of a fairly ineffectual drug which he could normally get from his doctor. He satisfied himself that half the reason he was there was the thrill, even if the Clixs cocktail had nullified any real thrill he would have felt otherwise. Whether he knew it or not he was smiling inanely. However, his mind was still processing where he was. He was in a bad part of town. The reason for him being there all fitted in perfectly with the terrain. It would be the ideal place to pick up drugs. He was in the right place to take the intense tedium away from hanging around at Springfield.
His normal acquisition through his doctor was legal. Of course, his doctor Dr Turchek would never have called it Clixs that was strictly for the street. She would have purposively called it by its proper name.
“Maybe that’s it.”
He convinced himself that he was there because he was also escaping the clinical precision of her surgery, where everything slotted into a procedure of routine tests and prescriptions. That was just the reason he was building his newest droid in the abnormal way he was planning, he wanted some risk back into his mundane life.
“Yes, that’s it. I need a break from the routine labours of my work I want a little risk, some excitement.”
Although CLX9 was a legal drug, the way he was intending to buy it now was not. For a street purchase, there was no testing, no safeguards and that was illegal by courtesy of the William Jackson government. It was one of William Jackson’s many proclamations. It was drug manufacture and drug use guidelines. Richard paraphrased the president’s ruling in his mind.
“All drug manufacture must follow government guidelines. Use of drugs must be channelled through official distributors. The penalties...”
Richard stopped short. To Richard it was tantamount to saying.
“All liberty has been forfeited, you will do as your government says or you will face consequences.”
It was the malaise. It was the sickness of having an over caring state. It was the idea of taking all forms of freedom from the population. That was why they were rebelling. William Jackson’s electorate were feeling stifled.
Now Richard was acquiring a drug through an illegal source. For the most part that would also be OK. An arrest would only be a moderate fine. The penalties had for the moment not been excessive but who knows when that would change.
Though he was in an elated state, he refocused his mind on where he was. He was in a bad area of town because he knew it was the place to come.
“Where all the shit hangs out, there works the dirt merchant.”
Richard knew broadly where he was and the ‘dirt merchant’ he was after was probably no more than a few minutes away. He was sure of that and he was happy that on top of that he had a chance to break some of the cardinal rules on the procurement of drugs, which William Jackson had laid down.
Richard looked down the street and saw someone on the corner of the street ahead. He looked a prime candidate. As he approached, he felt a small knot in his stomach. It was probably his Clixs cocktail concoction reacting. He belched uncontrollably.
As much as Richard could see in the dusky light, the man on the corner had coffee coloured skin. He wore a black leather jacket, which was old and tatty. Richard hesitated, thinking that maybe this was not the person to be asking. Nevertheless, he pressed on, he was quite clear about his mission.
The man bowed his head as Richard approached. It was not a sign of deference or anything as meaningful. He appeared to be looking at his boots, his black leather cowboy boots. With his head bowed, Richard could detect the small earing he wore. That was good, that was a small sign of the irreverence he was looking to find in his prospective dealer.
“Clixsoid?” Richard said.
The man raised his head until he was looking into Richard’s face, “And who might you be, soldier?”
There was something wrong here and Richard was picking it up. He thought he would change tack. He had no need for his usual scientifically precise language. He tried to swap his clinically correct spoken skills for a little street patois. At least he thought he should be saying something in the urban strains of the street but nothing came out. He paused for a second, thinking what he should, appropriately, say.
The man spat on the ground, “Friend, or foe?”
Then with Richard about to make his first brave words of conversation, albeit urban speak, he hesitated again. He was about to say something but that statement, ‘friend or foe’, threw him.
“Alien, after Clixs,” Richard eventually said.
His mind was thinking university English and his voice was trying to speak street slang. As he said it a thought flashed in his mind.
“Pharmacy, legal. Street, illegal,” Richard thought as he remembered a quote from the drug regulations of the Jackson government.
Then Richard looked at the man with more scrutiny; even though he was not the one he had used on previous occasions, he had known he was the man to approach. It was something, a familiarity, which had attracted him. It was true that at the time he was the only shady character on the street on that rather dirty street, with its puddles and strange unpleasant smells. Nevertheless, it was as if Richard had zoomed in on the man because he knew him in some way. The man looked Richard in the face and spoke.
“Sure Clixs,” the man said. ”CLX9 as you have never had before.”
The man seemed somewhat more kindly deposed now that he was making a deal.
“Animal,” the man said by way of introduction as he pushed out his fist waiting to be complemented.
Animal and Richard fist bumped. As they did that, a thought crossed Richard’s mind.
“Confident? But why is he trusting me?”
It was as if Richard was looking for understanding from a representative of the underworld. The man paused as he reached into his jacket pocket. He handed Richard three capsules in a small plastic bag.
“There you are, my man. Pharmacy, legal. Street, illegal.”
Animal repeated what Richard thought a minute earlier.
“Christ,” Richard thought. “Animal, it’s a droid.”
This time Animal picked up on Richard’s thoughts immediately, “He’s a droid, my friend. Much better.”
Richard attempted to shut down his thought processes, but that would be impossible.
Using a street dealer there was a question of potency. There had also been occasions where small amounts of poison had changed the effect of the drug. That was normal, it was as if the dealer succeeded in his trade not only because he sold drugs, which his customers could not get; there was something else. It was the freedom to make their own choice, far from the dictates of the system. Animal’s customers were excited with the risks involved, that was the kick. A small amount of impurity did not make a difference. It made the purchase of the substance a little riskier and with harder drugs, more suicidal. That was the psychology of the whole business. Dealing to adrenaline freaks, making up for their other inadequacies or their disenchantments, pandering to their desire for risk in a society which had, for the most part, alleviated risk. Then there was, in a few cases, their desire to end it all. End it in the most deliciously unreal way like a dying swan aided with a little bit of poison. For those, death by overdose was not as bad as the alternative.
Animal would not partake of his own concoctions. As a droid, they would have no effect. He was a droid with strange and advanced feelings of imprisonment and isolation. To counteract those feelings, he defied the law. Richard had correctly identified Animal as an advanced droid, but who had made him so? Then there was the question as to why he looked so much like a human.
From whence he came was not important at that juncture, there were far more immediate questions. What was Animal doing there? It was hardly a place to find a droid. Was he just plying his trade to the few unfortunates and miscreants who came to grace his rather shabby abode? Was he just brazenly breaking the law?
Droids were not indictable, and Animal was definitely a droid. He had read Richard’s mind. He must have been a level 2 droid by Richard’s reckoning, at least. He must have been a level 2 droid manufactured at Springfield or an equivalent installation somewhere else. Making an equivalent to a level 2 was infinitely possible; the components Richard used could be obtained by others. However, all the confusion about Animal was making it seem that AI had gone askew. Droids and the controlling force in the shape of AI were supposed to be the saviour of mankind. It was obvious that someone had instilled morals into Animal and it was also obvious that this droid chose to use them in a negative way.
For the first-time Richard was beginning to see cracks appearing in the whole concept of artificial intelligence. It started to cast doubt on the benefits AI would bring to mankind.
Animal, was more human than any other droid Richard had seen before. What had happened to its AI unit? The AI unit in this droid was defying expectations. This droid was exhibiting the very things that William Jackson was looking for in Richard’s latest droid. If Richard had known that Animal was a force for good as well as for wrongdoing, it may have doubled his confusion about who had implemented such a complex moral code. Richard would have done well to consider who else was creating droids at the time. That, however, would have been fruitless. It would have been better if he had looked for an assembler of droids in a place other than he could currently reach. Animal had a powerful processing unit, he had demonstrated that by his ability to penetrate Richard’s mind but also to have a moral code networked into his AI unit. Richard contemplated what components had been responsible for Animal’s elevated powers, although it would have been much better to consider who had been the AI engineer.
Richard reverted to thoughts of his current project. In the final straggly mists of his drug-induced mind, he was seeing things loud and clear. Richard was working on an advanced model himself and he was quite confident that he would soon be able to emulate the qualities he was seeing in Animal. Surely, X3 would be able to blow away droids such as Animal, whoever assembled it.
Then in his fluffy drug-induced imagination, he had his first dread about his current project, “What the hell would X3 be capable of?”
~
ON THE METRO JOURNEY back, Richard contemplated the way that progress was occurring. It was getting out of control. For such a precise scientific experiment as the creation of artificial intelligence, it had taken a turn. It seemed that artificial intelligence was truly taking on a mind of its own, which was amusing because that was exactly what it was, a mind of its own. Animal would be a relic compared with X3 one day, but that had not happened yet and Animal had been standing there very distinctly displaying artificial intelligence and human traits. Richard could not be sure but felt compelled to excuse Animal, as if it was a human. What was Animal in any case other than a combination of orgo-metallic components cobbled together by some semi-mad technical wizard, rather like himself? Then again Richard was always prepared to give all and sundry a chance, even if that excluded William Jackson. Maybe that was why the very person who Richard was desperately unsure about, William Jackson, thought so highly of him.
William Jackson utilised Richard as his technical reference. Sometimes in the midst of heavy political sessions when William Jackson took his drone car to Springfield, it was not only for progress on Richard’s project. Richard was not only his technical touchstone he was a detached friend, someone who was not part of the political melee he found himself immersed in most days. William Jackson was powerful but sometimes he needed an ally, someone who was not part of the political machine. Maybe Richard could have been the housemaid for all William Jackson cared, although Richard felt it was something a little more special than that. Richard was the man who was creating the droid who would help sustain his political party in government, maybe for a long time, although William Jackson was still to explain the intricacies of that little intrigue to Richard. There was also another reason why William Jackson valued Richard. There was no shadow of doubt that William Jackson was loyal and completely irreversibly attached to his brand of politics. He needed Richard around to bring a sense of perspective to his everyday life. His politics were like a religion and he sometimes needed Richard to break the spell.
