SOPHIA - Age of Intelligence

by Mike Donoghue

CHAPTER FOUR

  Later that evening

  “SO IT WAS YOU who uploaded Indi Pharm’s drug experiment data?” Simon asked. He and Rose were enjoying a quiet booth at a lounge in the West Village. By one thirty in the morning Simon had switched to coffee. Rose’s Pino Griggio was nearing room temperature, a sign of her attention being consumed by their conversation.

  Rose glanced downward and fidgeted with the base of her wineglass. “It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life.”

  “It was the right one, though. You saved lives.” Simon was referring to those hapless souls who would have been used as test cases by Prav Gill. When Rose confronted her brother and demanded he put a stop to his immoral pursuit, he refused.

  ‘Finding a cure will mean billions in licensing agreements,’ he had stated. Veiled threats were found in further arguments. Rose found it unnerving coming to the realization that she could disappear as easily as those she wanted to protect. Having bargained away the equity of his own soul, Rose resolved that her brother would be denied the right to barter for hers. She needed a way out. Finding a willing laboratory technician wasn’t easy, but when she did she knew it would be only a matter of time; her brother’s tyranny would eventually be discovered.

  A worldwide DNA bank of those who perished was growing with every month of the crisis. It was made available to any organization that demonstrated a chance of achieving success. By this time, Rose had heard of PurIntel and computers like Sophia.

  “I thought if I uploaded enough of Prav’s secret test cases, their common genetic signature would be discovered. I knew if anyone could do it, it would be your Sophia.”

  While Indi Pharm was one of many companies in the race to find a cure for the 2021 SARS Variant pandemic, it wasn’t the only one to find itself under forensic scrutiny. An international post-crisis inquiry found that, while many regulatory agencies were willing to suspend conventional protocols, Indi Pharm’s indiscretions were nothing less than indictable.

  Newspapers resounded with the age-old question; what value should any society place on a human life? The fact that a secret division of Indi Pharm was preying on those most vulnerable only added to his country’s sense of corporate shame. The Indian Institute of Science was one of many voices decrying the fact that Mumbai slums provided the fodder for research. Adults were compensated for offering themselves to science; likewise parents for extending their children’s arms. Every specimen was bar-coded for reference. The living dead would be a constant reminder of the perils associated with unbridled scientific pursuit. When the mass graves were discovered, the world cried out for justice on behalf of those entombed.

  Prav Gill was found guilty of crimes against humanity, but he would only spend eighteen months in jail. ‘They were going to die anyway!’ he yelled, while being ushered out of a jammed courtroom. It was a sensational trial, one that wanted to heap the pandemic’s entire casualty list on its sole defendant. During the ensuing global grieving period, few hearts softened.

  “He claims to be a changed man,” Rose suggested, reflecting on how her brother eventually had several of his release conditions set aside; not the least of which, being allowed access to the financial division of the family empire. ‘From this day forward, I dedicate Indi Pharm’s resources to bettering the existence of my fellow man,’ he said to the media outside the prison’s gates.

  By the time Prav Gill emerged from his comfortable cell the world was already looking back at the predictable forks in the road, those that any significant crisis produces.

  A growing segment of society seemed more willing than ever to embrace the role of technology in their lives. Moreover, super computers like Sophia had proven themselves more capable than any collection of human minds. For some, however, science had been irreparably tainted. The conspirators of the world suspected government involvement in the pandemic itself. Anarchists wanted to disassemble everything technological, others advocated for the future to be given over to the past.

  “Do you think he’s changed?” Simon asked. “Have you talked to him since you left?”

  “Talked to him?’ Rose repeated. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

  Simon hoped his attempts at small talk would disguise the fact that he couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful woman before him. Her high cheek bones, dark eyes, her lips offering more than mere words. It had been some time since he last enjoyed himself in this way.

  “He barely resembles the brother I once knew,” Rose reflected. “He looks different now.”

  Again, Simon noticed the subtleness of her gestures, the way her voice reflected a sense of responsibility, even shame for her brother’s misdeeds. He also picked up on her desire to change the subject. “That’s enough about me,” Rose suggested. “Why don’t we talk about you for a while?”

  Rose accepted a small top up to her wine glass from their server. “Thank you,” she said. Their West Village lounge was upscale, a place where their formal attire was the norm. “You have a brother?” she asked.

  Simon smiled, while agreeing to more coffee. A tiny carafe of fresh milk replaced the original on the table. Likewise, Simon offered a polite nod to their well-dressed waitress.

  “I do,” he said. “Lionel lives in Toronto. He’s ex-military, on a disability pension.”

  “He was wounded?”

  “He lost an arm and a leg in the Congo during a U.N. led mission. The latest in prostheses fixed those. The wounds one is forced to relive remain the most debilitating.”

  Simon poured a small amount of milk into his coffee. “He’s been going through a tough patch lately.”

  “I’m sure with your help he will make a full recovery.” Taking a sip of her wine, it was obvious to Rose that the topic was nearing an emotional nerve. She smiled, before moving the conversation along. “What about you? What drives Simon Taylor’s pursuit of perfection?”

  Simon looked pleased by the topic change, however, he vacillated on how much introspection the moment deserved. “I don’t know. You might laugh at this, but I’ve had this recurring dream lately. I’m walking down some ancient street. The period seems to be contemporary to the great intellects of the world, da Vinci, Copernicus, and, one at a time Galileo, Newton, they pass me by without so much as a nod. I attempt to acknowledge each one in turn, but they’re oblivious to me being there. Sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? Like I’ve got some latent self-esteem issues.”

  Rose ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair. “I would never guess that you suffer from a lack of …” Rose stopped mid-sentence, having been distracted by the club’s lights flickering. In the span of seconds, they dimmed, went out completely then came back on. While glancing at their overhanging light-fixture, Rose joked: “I think you should take that as a nod from Edison.”

  Simon laughed, before adding: “I hope you don’t find this rude of me, but would you mind if I checked on something?” Simon quickly pulled out his phone. “NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization) was predicting an event sometime after midnight. I should check to see if everything’s alright at the office.”

  “You’re thinking that was the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) they were predicting?”

  “The timing makes sense.”

  Rose thought nothing of deferring to Simon’s business intrusion. She was vaguely familiar with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization ˗ that its Space Weather Prediction Center issued warnings pertaining to Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun. She remembered hearing on the news the other day that the earth might be impacted by the energy burst resulting from several large solar flares. While the initial solar explosions could be seen immediately, and were often reported soon thereafter, it routinely took several days for the massive plasma ejections to reach Earth.

  Simon looked at Sophia’s system integrity colour band at the top of his cell phone’s display and confirmed it was still in the green, or ‘optimum range,’ however, he
sent a quick text to his night operations manager just the same. Once finished, he put his phone down on the table and took a sip of his coffee.

  Rose seized the opportunity to inject a little playful humour. “Speaking of the other woman in your life.” Rose almost laughed at the sight of Simon struggling to swallow.

  “The other woman in my life?” Simon choked.

  “Sophia?” Rose said, before coyly sampling her wine.

  “Of course,’ Simon said, recovering. “Would you like to meet her?”

  Rose appeared demure. “The other woman,” she teased. “I’d love to.”

  During their second drive, sparse conversation was punctuated by glances becoming less subtle. While on the way to One World Trade Centre, Simon’s eyes alternated between the road, the dark skies above, and Rose. He wondered if the Earth’s magnetic field would react to the Sun’s energy in its usual, spectacular way, but as the drive continued, he couldn’t help feeling the radiance emanating from the woman seated next to him.

  Their elevator’s ambience was consistent with that of Simon’s car. As much as Rose was a woman able to grace the cover of any fashion magazine, so was Simon’s attractiveness enhanced by his surroundings, his stature, borne from his obvious achievements. With the passing of every floor, Rose knew she would be entering a place few were allowed. By now Sophia had risen to near royalty, at least in the technological world.

  When Sophia provided the solution to the SARS Variant pandemic, the nondisclosure of PurIntel’s monetary compensation only added to its CEO’s mysteriousness. The fact that Simon also negotiated exclusive research rights to all genomic information associated with the event further buttressed his reputation into the stratosphere of shrewdness.

  Simon understood the value of some thirty-million genetic codes and how they would provide the solutions to what debilitates the human race. ‘The diamonds in the rough only need to be found,’ he’d told his overworked staff. And find them Sophia would, much in the same way she had done before.

  It was during height of the pandemic, Simon recounted for Rose, that he had just received financing to bring Sophia’s computing power to unprecedented levels. Boasting sixty-four terabytes of RAM, she was soon able to process five-hundred gigabytes of information; an immeasurable sum of Flops (Floating-point operations per second), which represented the equivalent of reading one million books per second. In addition to having access to the genetic codes of those who had perished in the pandemic, Sophia shepherded the world’s health organizations through the management of a Halo App specifically designed to harness the scientific world within one common crucible. In addition to identifying redundant pursuits, it also provided access to immense volumes of unstructured data; the entirety of which represented nothing less than the accumulated knowledge of humankind.

  Although the requirement to crunch the interrelationship of variables in unending genetic sequences far surpassed any collective of the greatest human minds, pandemic-related data collected during the crisis provided only one aspect of the solution. The other: enter an unlikely hero, an archaic human ancestor.

  When the genome of Neanderthals was sequenced several years ago, scientists found that all non-African humans possess between one and three percent of that human subspecies’ genetic code. Rose laughed, still hardly believing it. “It’s true,” Simon stated, smiling, before continuing.

  The Neanderthal genes, which are present in most modern humans, are actually related to our immunity. As a result of twenty-five thousand years of human evolution, our present day genes bear close resemblance, but differ slightly from the Neanderthal immunity sequence.

  Researchers discovered seventy-eight similarities where Neanderthals had the ancient gene and modern humans had the newer, derived (evolved) state. Five of our common genes had more than one sequence change. When Sophia fully understood the relationship of two proteins, PCD16 and CAN15, she discovered that Neanderthals possessed an ancient immunity to the present day SARS Variant virus. They key to the evolutionary process, she informed Simon, lay in our dietary differences.

  Evidence originating in fossilized teeth suggested Neanderthals ate bitter tasting plants that contained little if no nutritional value. Did they know something we don’t? Rose reflected. Microfossils in the same molars also yielded ancient bacteria rarely found in today’s world. When the primitive bacteria were hybridized with chamomile and yarrow root plants, the ancient gene was awoken in modern humans. Incredibly, the world turned to simple agriculture for the cure.

  “I wish I could have seen the look on my brother’s face,” Rose stated, smiling.

  Simon couldn’t help laughing. “I remember the press conference well. I don’t know who was more stunned, the collective world or … or your brother.” He looked up and noticed they were arriving at his floor. When the elevator doors opened, Simon took Rose’s hand. Simon felt comfortable in his element as they walked. As for Rose, she was both excited and aroused.

  “I’ll just check in with the night shift, if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course,” Rose replied.

  A retinal scan caused a click in the door to Sophia’s System’s Integrity Unit. Pushing the door open, Simon looked inside. A half-dozen software techs (protein monitors, as they were affectionately known) lurched upward in their chairs. The sound of papers being shuffled on desks was followed by displays coming out of sleep mode. A hand-held gaming device broke into several pieces after hitting the floor.

  “Ahh … Mr. Taylor,” Gary, the lead analyst, gasped. He awkwardly stood up, his eyes glancing toward the movie playing on large flat screen just beyond his boss’ view.

  “It’s alright, boys. I’m just here to show off Sophia. Is she busy?”

  The young tech glanced at his monitor. “She’s presently running at seventy-eight percent, Mr. Taylor.”

  “And the power blip?”

  “We cruised right through the last one, sir, but the Space Weather bulletins are suggesting it’s not quite over.”

  “Alright. As you were then, gentlemen. I hope the rest of your shift is less eventful.” Closing the door, Simon and Rose chuckled. Simon’s heart was further buoyed by the fact that, throughout the exchange, Rose never relinquished the grip of his hand.

  When they approached Simon’s office door, another retinal scan caused its lock to click.

  Allowing Rose to proceed into the office first, they found it dark. Simon reached for his cell phone to make an adjustment to the programmed lighting, but when Rose asked, “Leave it, will you?” Simon agreed.

  The expansive footprint was somewhat enchanting, at least as any dimly lit office could be, Simon thought. Further into the office, Simon’s desk was off to the left. Up two steps, it backed onto the building’s glass perimeter and looked inward. Sophia’s wing offered an aqua coloured glow. It spilled beyond its dimensions out into the room’s larger space. Walls, defined primarily by floor-to-ceiling windows, could be made opaque, transparent, or any degree thereof. Simon also controlled the electronic blinds from his phone; they were presently blacked out, and the skyline was not yet visible. Simon passed his slower walking guest until he stood proudly in front of Sophia.

  “Simon,” Sophia said, after her face appeared.

  “Sophia,” he replied, “we have a guest this evening.”

  When Rose joined Simon’s side, she cast her eyes on the hologram who she had heard so much about. Her senses were almost overwhelmed.

  “Rose, this is Sophia. Sophia, meet Rose.”

  Simon noticed a uniqueness befall Rose’s subtle expression. A pleasing blend of greens and blues complimented her skin’s darker tones.

  Likewise, Rose beheld a very attractive face. “I am pleased to finally meet you, Sophia.”

  For a moment, a subtle array of grid-like hash marks covered Rose’s facial features. “You are Roshnie Gill,” Sophia began, analytically. “Sister of Praveen Gill, CEO of Indi Pharm. A man you once referred to as a murderer …”


  “Sophia,” Simon interjected.

  “A scoundrel …”

  “Sophia, stop it.”

  “A dip-shit.”

  “Sophia!” Simon admonished. “Is discretion no longer the better part of valour? She must be jealous of you being here.” Turning to Rose, Simon found her laughing.

  “A dip-shit,” Rose repeated, smiling. “I haven’t called my brother that since I was fifteen.” The humour of the moment was indulged before it evaporated. “Wait a minute, how much does she know about me?”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Apparently, too much.”

  Sophia continued. “I can see why you would be attracted to her, Simon.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Simon asked. He turned back to Rose. “She gets a little cranky when she’s …”

  “I’m sensing elevated pheromone levels,” Sophia added.

  Rose raised her hand in an attempt to contain her laughter.

  “That’s it, now you’re really embarrassing me.”

  “I wasn’t referring to you.” Sophia’s eyes rested on Rose.

  An awkward silence reigned for a moment. “Ah,” Simon stammered. “Maybe we should leave Sophie to her work.” He took Rose’s hand. “Would you like to see the view?”

  Rose agreed, her body language speaking for her secret being found out. Simon sensed her perceived vulnerability. It was irresistible. If she were willing, he would make love to her right here, in his office.

  “I’ll be over here, if you need me,” Sophia said.

  “I think we’ll be alright,” Simon replied. With that response, Sophia dissolved into nothingness.

  After ascending the two steps to where Simon’s desk was located, Rose walked toward the expansive, blacked-out windows behind. Simon took his tuxedo jacket off, swinging it over the back of his chair. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Did I mention I’m afraid of heights?”

  “Trust me,” Simon stated. “When you see the night sky, you’ll appreciate your perspective.” When Simon used his phone to deactivate the electronic blinds, the horizon was filled with amazing ribbons of greens and pinks. It was the Aurora Borealis. From ninety floors up, the Northern Lights over the New York sky were nothing less than breathtaking. Rose gasped at the spectacular interaction between the earth’s magnetosphere and the charged particles emanating from the sun.

  Simon had guessed that the earlier coronal ejection might yield its visual dividend, an unexpected celestial show. When his hunch was rewarded, he looked at the smile on Rose’s face, caught a glimpse of wonder in her eyes, and reveled at the beauty before him. He got up from his chair and walked over to her. He spoke quietly. “In case you’re wondering why this is happening so far south, in addition to the CME, the aurora’s intensity is enhanced by the weakened magnetic field over North America.”

  Rose stood in awe. “It’s like the heavens are communicating with the earth.”

  “It’s also the result of the earth’s electromagnetic field being in flux. Did you know it flips on a regular basis? It hasn’t done so in seven-hundred and eighty thousand years. The average period is about two-hundred thousand.”

  “Is there anything to worry about? I mean, could this be bad for the earth’s biology … for us?”

  “There’s no evidence of any extinction events being associated with a pole reversal. Satellite data confirms the field is presently weaker throughout the Western Hemisphere and stronger around the Indian Ocean. Power grids and communication systems will undoubtedly be susceptible, as we saw tonight.”

  Rose spoke without taking her eyes of the horizon. “It makes you appreciate how wondrous our universe really is.”

  “And how tenuous the relationship is between beauty and the power it sometimes conceals.” Simon stood at Rose’s side and was happy that she found the humour in the truism.

  During a few moments of silence, he sensed a pleasant intimacy drawing them closer. When he reflected on what they had been talking about, he couldn’t believe the last few minutes has been consumed by scientific minutia. The realization was compelling itself. His instincts, however, soon honed in on observations less mindful. The fact that Rose seemed in awe of the whole experience made her even more attractive. Simon turned to her and sensed the moment was right for something more, possibly their first kiss. Rose responded to Simon’s subtle gestures, to his hand taking hers, to his revealing eyes now focusing on her lips, but when a bright burst of light appeared near the horizon, Simon sighed; he presumed the distraction was unrelated to their encounter. He quietly lamented: “Not another one.” Both he and Rose turned to look out over New York.

  To their dismay, the city’s lights began to go out. Section by section, Manhattan cascaded into darkness. Simon knew how fragile the highly interconnected utilities of the northeast United States were, and that the second CME had indeed arrived. Seconds later, his own building switched to backup power.

  The next sound that filled Simon’s office was Gary’s voice. “Mr. Taylor, are you there?” Letting Rose’s hand fall from his, he offered her a crestfallen expression before accepting the intercom prompt on his phone. “Yes, Gary.”

  Sophia reappeared, capturing the attention of Simon and Rose.

  “We had a bit of a system crash on that one. We’re going to have to do a complete Halo reboot.”

  Simon muted his phone for a moment. “What’s our vulnerability level, Sophia?”

  “I’m presently quantifying the effects of that last pulse,” Sophia replied.

  As Gary typed furiously on his keyboard, Simon was prompted by a text on his cell phone. ‘Everything ok?’ Derrick asked. System protocols must have alerted his Director of Operations to the shutdown. Simon’s favourable reply was followed by another text from Derrick: ‘Just emailed the draft you wanted.’

  Simon shook his head, knowing that Derrick worked crazy hours, often from home. He didn’t respond to his text, however. He had other things on his mind and reconnected with Gary instead. “How long until we’re back up and running?”

  “We should be back online shortly,” Gary stated. Pausing typing, he quietly added: “Hello.”

  Rose walked over toward Simon and used her left hand to caress his back. The sensation elicited an exchange of smiles.

  “Can I leave it with you then, Gary?”

  “We’re on it, Boss,” were the words Simon wanted to hear.