On the desk in Stephen Kesl’s top floor office at Quantumnetics the wireless communicator beeped. He picked up the quartersized prototype communicator. The edge was smooth and it weighed less than a penny. One side had an adhesive that stuck to his skin but peeled off easily. He placed it behind his ear on the mastoid nerve. Warmth tingled against the crinkled skin of his neck. “Hangman,” he said.
“You want my help on a project, Stephen?” Hangman asked.
“Yes. I’ve just had an unusual request to research Bigfoot.”
My apologies I don’t know that task but do you have time to teach me?
Kesl hated that patent reply. “No. I want you to do a Web search on the phenomenon known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch and determine what the creature is if it exists. It’s very much like when I had you research if there is any truth to the reality of ghosts. Then call me when you have the answer.”
“Yes, Stephen.”
Only a few minutes passed before he heard a faint hum. “Hangman.”
“Yes, Stephen,” Hangman responded in the slight British accent it affected.
“You have the answer to my question?”
“Yes.”
Its attempt at creating a true AGI machine was accelerating rapidly now that it was able to process information at superfast speeds running on the Quantumnetics advanced quantum computer, but Hangman still couldn’t comprehend all the subtleties of conversation. It would remain silent until prompted by Kesl to tell what it had discovered.
“What did you find?”
“It would take me several days in the English language to relate all the data given the amount of factual and hearsay material available over 2000 years of history purporting the proof of Bigfoot’s existence. Not to mention the 29,856 personal encounters recorded on the Internet by people in the United States alone in the past two decades. If we add in encounters with the Himalayan Yeti, Australia’s Yowie, Canada’s Wendigo, Sumatra’s Orang Pendek—”
“You don’t need to list them all. I get the idea – there are thousands of encounters.”
“101,233 verified reports and rising.”
Kesl thought, if only I could teach him the nuances of meaning embedded in my tone. Then he remembered to calm himself with the thought that everything was part of his training Hangman.
“So what does all this data tell us about if Bigfoot exists?”
“It is a seven point four percent probability that it is just a legend with common traits throughout many cultures.”
“What about it’s being a primate relative of humans?”
“Lower. Six point two percent,” Hangman said. “This belief comes from fossils collected of a great ape known as Gigantopithecus, from the Ancient Greek gigas ‘giant’, and pithekos ‘ape’. It existed from perhaps nine million years to twenty thousand years ago in what is now Asia, placing Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species, including homo sapiens. However, the possibility that it could have survived the Holocene Era all the way to the Anthropocene Era makes its probability a virtual impossibility. The only reason Gigantopithecus rates six point two percent is the strange commonality of traits Bigfoot spotters share. Their vehemence in defending what they claim to have seen is also a factor, though that also is a part of another possibility.”
“Which is?”
“Collective obsessional behavior.”
“Is this a joke?”
“It is not intended to be. COB is a well-documented phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear. It is also known as follie à deux or shared psychosis, in which symptoms of a delusional belief or hallucinations are shared by a large group of similar or like-minded individuals. The disorder was first conceptualized in 19th-century French psychiatry by Charles Lasègue and Jean-Pierre Falret.”
“What else?”
“There is a one point eight percent chance it is a hoax along the lines of crop circles or Aimi Eguchi.”
“Who?”
“Aimi Eguchi is the fictitious Japanese pop culture idol from 2011 that was really a CGI composite for the confectionery company, Ezaki Glico.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“As you should, since I never lie.”
Kesl blinked in excitement at Hangman’s admission. It had just attributed to itself the ability to know the difference between the concepts of truth and deception.
“Okay, enough showing how smart you are. Do you have an answer?”
“I have an answer, Stephen.”
“So, what are Bigfoot?”
“I am eighty-four point six percent certain that Bigfoot are bio-engineered, artificial general intelligence creatures numbering between 2000 and 3000 individuals. Most certainly of extraterrestrial origin.”
Kesl blinked in surprise. He knew nothing about Bigfoot and had presumed the apelike beasts were nothing more than urban fantasies. Even when his old mentor, Dmitryi Mameyev, had called asking him to gather all the data about the phenomenon known as Bigfoot and determine what the creatures were if they existed, he had not expected the answer Hangman provided.
“Seriously? That’s what you conclude?”
“Indeed. Bigfoot are intelligence creatures, the same as I am. If the data is accurate, then they must be a diverse species with many unique characteristics among their population.”
“Does the data indicate how intelligent they are?”
“They would have to be more intelligent than humans to avoid detection all these years. Can I meet one? I often think of myself as an alien intelligence.”
This time Hangman’s words stunned Kesl into silence. The AI’s self-reflection on the nature of its own existence signaled it moving from AI to AGI – Artificial General Intelligence – a totally unexpected development that sent Kesl’s mind racing.
Hangman interrupted his thoughts before his mind could retreat into its computation of odds on what Hangman’s words meant for the future.
“Are you okay, Stephen?”
Startled, Kesl stammered, “Wh … wh … why do you ask?”
“Your heart rate is up and you’re breathing heavier than usual.”
“How do you know this?”
“Through your communicator I can detect your pulse and rapid breathing. Are you certain you are okay? Should I summon the company’s physician to your office?”
The unusual initiative brought Kesl back to normal. He said, “I’m fine, Hangman.” He breathed out. “Consider the possibility that Bigfoot are not alien. Who could’ve made such a device?”
“No one, Stephen, given that the technology necessary for engineering a biosynthetic AGI capable of walking and interacting with the environment is not currently available on Earth. Also, given that Bigfoot have been the subject of folklore for thousands of years, their origin is undoubtedly alien.”
“Then where did they come from?”
“My apologies, Stephen. I don’t know that task but do you have time to teach me?”
“Not now!”
Kesl removed the communicator from his neck and tossed it on the desk. The answer regarding Bigfoot’s existence was upsetting. It disrupted his worldview in a way only someone with his affliction could feel. He gulped back his fear, but he could not stop his mind from darting down pathways that a terrible change was coming any more than he could have stopped the hard rain his company’s weather forecasting program had predicted from falling outside the twenty-five story office building onto Toronto’s busy streets. His mind lived in a world that predicted worst-case scenarios, based on unknown flaws in his brain. He would have preferred to ignore the constant possibilities of danger, like normal people, and go through life unconcerned with the pitfalls hidden in an unforeseeable future. Once he had almost achieved normality, but the drugs to stop his Asperger’s compulsive obsessive disorder from figuring out the odds of dangerous fortune had interfered with his ability to function in the high tech venture capital world where he flourished. So he endured the mathematical computations taking over his thinking until an answer appeared: the odds that Hangman’s answer would change his life forever were 6761.8593 to 1.
The future now quantified, the silence that had engulfed him with its unbearable pressure eased and he was able to move again. He turned to look at the rain falling beyond the suite’s covered terrace. Occasional wind gusts whipped drops against the glass, which ran in unpredictable streaks to the bottom. With another deep breath he replaced the communicator behind his ear.
“Stephen, you have a personal call from Dmitryi Mameyev.”
Kesl drew in a sharp breath. It had been less than two hours since his mentor had called with his request. He wasn’t eager to talk to the Russian, especially with the revelatory information Hangman had just dumped on him. “Tell him I’m busy.”
“He is insisting on speaking with you.”
Kesl grimaced. He pushed away from his desk and went out onto the balcony. From the sheltered terrace of Quantumnetic’s top floor office building in Toronto the sunlight retreated over the bay. Kesl’s mind flipped to his first meeting with his old mentor at the Imperial College London in 2000, when he was a fourteen year-old undergraduate studying computer science. Dmitryi Mamayev had been the brilliant head of the department of Materials and Electrochemistry.
Stephen Aram Kesl had grown up in the slums of Stepney Green in London’s East End, the only son of a Pakistani cleaning woman. His father Roland Kesl, an Ashkenazai Jew who fled Czechoslovakia after the failed Prague Spring in 1968, left shortly after Kesl turned four. Rumors were he had been an aid to reformist Alexander Dubcek and had a price on his head. The truth was Stephen Kesl was a brilliant child with Asperger Syndrome and Roland didn’t want to be saddled with taking care of a special needs child. Being poor, Kesl’s mother couldn’t afford the communication training and behavioral therapy necessary to treat her socially awkward son. With no father around and a mother who was gone most of the time cleaning rich people’s homes, Kesl grew up by himself with no father figure in his life until he had met Dmitryi.
“Stephen, what do you want to do about Dmitryi?” Hangman interrupted his thoughts.
Kesl sighed and stepped back inside. “Hangman, give me two minutes then patch Dmitryi through to my computer monitor.”
“Yes, Stephen,” Hangman answered.
For two minutes, Kesl counted backward from twenty to zero in five different languages to calm himself. The monitor blinked to life. Dmitryi’s craggy, iron-hard face appeared.
“Kak poživaete? (How are you?)” Kesl said, his Russian flawless.
“Horošo. (Good.)”
Silence. Kesl waited, knowing the older man could not be hurried. He watched his eyes. The windows to the soul, his mother had told him. Dmitryi’s were flat and Kesl wondered if they were hiding something. But how would you know? You don’t know what anyone’s feeling or thinking unless they tell you. Uneasiness swirled in Kesl’s stomach. The fact that he knew his Asperger’s made it impossible for him to empathize with other people or read their feelings didn’t make social encounters any less awkward. If the truth were known, the knowledge made Kesl even more self-conscious because he knew his mind was defective in certain areas and he couldn’t do anything to repair it.
Except maybe with Hangman, his intuition told him. If Hangman could win the race to true AGI, together, Kesl was certain they could win the next technological race – augmenting the human brain. He was certain that the only answer to overcome a wide range of neurological disorders, including his own autism, was to somehow attach a super powerful additional cortical layer to the brain. That was the future he saw and everything he did was directed at moving towards that end point.
Dmitryi said, “Stephen, I suspect your AI project has already come up with an answer to my question.”
Kesl found himself slipping back into his subordinate role to his old mentor and snorted derisively, a habit of impatience his mentor had never been able to break him of, and answered, “I wouldn’t have expected you of all people to be interested in a silly folk tale about giant apes living in forests around the world, Dmitryi.”
The Russian paused. His blue eyes narrowed and looked at Kesl with disarming discernment. “Humor me,” he said so softly, Kesl thought for a moment the man hadn’t actually spoken but placed the words in his mind like some psychic. He finally managed to ask, “Why?”
Dmitryi’s stare narrowed further. “The reasons are hard to explain. Please trust me on this one.”
“‘If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, then you don’t understand it yourself’ or better yet, who cares,” Kesl shot back, using Einstein’s aphorism about simplicity being the key ingredient to knowing anything.
“Precisely. Nobody cares but me,” Dmitryi answered cryptically.
Kesl drummed his fingers against his desk. “Give me something old friend. My AI’s time is expensive, well it would be if you’re just anyone off the street.”
“You want me to pay?” Dmitryi had sounded genuinely concerned.
“Of course not,” Kesl said instantly, peeved his old mentor would ask such a question.
The Russian’s leathery features relaxed. “Then why the hesitation in giving me the answer to the Bigfoot question?”
“It’s just … is this what I should be using advanced artificial intelligence for? Not that it’s unethical, not that, maybe more like foolish, silly. It’s not advancing the betterment of humanity.”
“You don’t have to tell anyone on Quantumnetics Board, Stephen.”
What Dmitryi said was true, and knowing how much he owed the man, Kesl agreed.
Dmitryi smiled. “Thank you, tovarich. So, what did your digital genius discover?”
Kesl gave him Hangman’s answer, though he said nothing of Hangman’s self-comparison to Bigfoot. “The evidence supports Bigfoot being biosynthetic creatures superior to us in intelligence, of extraterrestrial origin.”
The Russian laughed dismissively. I will be in touch, Stephen.” His image faded before Kesl could say anything more.
Kesl stared at the ground glass of the monitor. Dmitryi’s reply was impossible for Kesl to interpret, but he couldn’t help thinking that his old mentor was hiding something he didn’t want Kesl to know.
The next day Bigfoot research became an obsession for Kesl as only a person with Asperger syndrome could understand. He would find out the truth behind Hangman’s assessment and his old mentor’s interest. It was a puzzle he wanted to solve more than anything else.