by D. B. Goodin
Jet laughed.
“What’s so funny, Josephine?” Moe asked.
“How do you eat pancakes when you have no fucking mouth?”
“Please watch your language, Josephine. We will not tolerate it,” Moe said.
Is this place for real?
“I go by Jet. I don’t use my first name,” Jet said.
“Very well. Glad to meet you, Jet!”
After breakfast, Jet made her way to the learning center, where a lone receptionist waited. The room was spare and sterile and white.
“Hello, I’m Jet,” she said. “I’m checking in for my appointment.”
The receptionist looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had black hair, black fingernail polish, and black lipstick. It looked like she was tapping at areas in space; Jet moved closer to get a better look and noticed a razor-thin translucent panel. The woman tapped something on the panel, and then froze in place. She was also wearing a visor.
Is she a robot?
Jeremiah walked out from an area behind the receptionist’s desk wearing a white lab coat. Jet couldn’t help but notice that he, too, was wearing a visor.
“Jet, I trust that you slept well,” Jeremiah said. “Were you able to eat a good breakfast?”
“Yeah, it was great. I’ve never had a robot make me pancakes before!”
Jeremiah laughed.
“Well, I’m glad you are enjoying the facility. It is state of the art, but it’s designed for one purpose. Can you guess what that is?”
I’m not in the mood for games, Jet thought.
Jet shrugged.
“To house Leviathan—the most advanced AI on the planet. Delta will use Leviathan to control it all.”
“All of what?” Jet asked.
“It will take too long to explain it now, but can you imagine a world without hate, pedophiles, and other miscreants?” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah, I guess. But all of that stuff is human nature. How are you going to change that?”
“Some people can be reformed, but others cannot. I’m talking about the career criminals and the people who cannot control themselves. These people are a danger to others. There is no place in society for them.”
Jet thought about Seymour. He has a point—but killing?
“What do you have in mind for the people who cannot be reformed?” she asked.
“I will use Leviathan to locate, infiltrate, and eliminate all bad actors,” Jeremiah said.
“So what do you need me for?”
“You should already know the answer to that question. I’ve seen your research. Others have tried to harness it. I shouldn’t have to tell you what supervised learning is.”
Looks like I will feed the beast, Jet thought.
“You won’t be alone. You have Leviathan to assist you. She has calculated the most efficient path for Delta’s optimal learning process. She is eager to share that with you.”
This guy is crazy. He must think Leviathan is a real person!
Jeremiah motioned for the door. “Follow me.”
“Wait—I have another question.”
Jeremiah looked annoyed, but didn’t protest.
“If Leviathan is so advanced, why do you need Delta?”
“Leviathan is the most advanced silicon-based AI on the planet. However, the human brain is more powerful. And besides, I need someone I can trust to control it all.”
Jet followed Jeremiah down a long hallway. After walking maybe twenty feet, he stopped and held his hand to a panel on the wall. A door opened; Jet had never seen such advanced infrastructure in a building. A teenaged girl was seated, examining something on the table in front of her. She was dressed in white, and even her hair and lips were white.
Is that lipstick?
The room was modern and very functional. There was a dining and kitchen area. The suite was furnished but contained only the basics.
“Is that—?” Jet began, but Jeremiah interrupted her.
“I will leave you to it, then.” He left the room.
He didn’t even introduce us. What a pompous ass.
The girl looked at Jet, but said nothing.
Creepy . . .
“Hello, my name is Jet. What’s yours?”
“April is my name. Are you the teacher?”
“Yes, I’m here to help you.”
This is strange.
Jet bit her lower lip. She didn’t know where to start.
Maybe with the basics, Jet thought.
“What do you have there?” she asked.
“Oh, this? It’s just a puzzle,” April said.
Jet noticed that it was a cryptographic puzzle app on a tablet. There were two lines of boxes. Every so often, April would tap one box and it would display the entire alphabet. There was a big red button with the word “hint” on it. The puzzle had a picture of Julius Caesar in the background. April didn’t have a single line filled out; she was fidgeting about the interface.
“Do you need any help?” Jet asked.
“No . . . I think I got it.”
“Okay, what do you think the answer is?”
“The background has a picture of Julius Caesar, but I don’t think there are enough boxes and groupings to just put his name in, so I’ve tried a few combinations, but nothing works,” April said.
I bet this is a Caesar cipher, Jet thought.
Jet looked at the cipher text; it comprised five groupings of characters in the following manner:
XMOFI FP X DLLA DFOI
“This puzzle is stupid; there are not enough boxes to spell either ‘Julius’ or ‘Caesar,’” April said.
“Why do you think the words ‘Julius’ or ‘Caesar’ have anything to do with the answer?” Jet asked.
April’s brow furrowed in concentration.
“Have you tried the ‘hint’ button?”
“I don’t want to cheat!”
“Well, maybe the picture is not a clue to what the answer is. Maybe it’s a clue to what kind of cipher it is,” Jet said.
“I hadn’t thought of that!”
“Do you know what a Caesar cipher is?”
“Err . . . Grandfather told me once,” April said as she closed her eyes in concentration.
She is smart, Jet thought. I can almost see those gears turning in her head.
“Three positions to the left?” April asked.
“Okay, let’s try that; write all the letters in the alphabet.”
April took out a piece of paper and pencil from her desk and wrote the entire English alphabet.
“Now, let’s take the first group of letters of the puzzle and try to solve it,” Jet explained.
April started counting and writing. She wrote down:
UJLCF
“That makes little sense,” April said.
“No, it doesn’t. Do you have any idea why it doesn’t work?”
April thought for a long time, and then Jet saw something light up in her eyes.
“I’m going the wrong way!” April said.
“You got it! Let’s try counting twenty-three to the right instead of three to the left for the letters,” Jet replied.
April started counting and writing again. After about two minutes, she screamed, “It’s my name!”
“Show me,” Jet said.
The word “APRIL” was scribbled on the page.
“Now, let’s use that same technique on the rest of the line,” Jet said.
After several minutes, April wrote the following down:
APRIL IS A GOOD GIRL
“So, three to the right is the answer?”
“You got it right. Good job, April,” Jet said.
April smiled.
“That wasn’t so hard to figure out once you showed me,” April said.
“I just provided some basic clues. You figured it out all on your own.”
April smiled. “I’m going to enjoy learning from you, Jet!”
Jet could see that April was feeding off the human interaction; h
owever, when she wasn’t interacting with Jet, she seemed like a . . . computer.
Chapter 23
Five days later
Jet got up and rubbed her eyes. It was morning, but it seemed like the day was over. Jet looked out the window. She saw a garden with several trees and other vegetation.
“Cognitive ability improved, completion time estimated at forty-four days, three hours, twelve minutes, and fifteen seconds,” Leviathan said.
Jet sighed. She had been teaching April for days.
“I like playing with you, Jet,” April said in her childlike voice.
Teaching April in any traditional sense was slow. Jet needed to teach her these puzzles faster. She knew April’s empathy receptors were impaired, which affected her learning ability—at least, that was what Ash had said.
“Yeah, I like it too, April,” Jet said.
Although April Mason was no more, she hated being called Delta. The funny thing was that everyone else referred to her as Delta.
“What games do you like to play?” April asked.
“I like the Colossal Machine. I was good at it until I started traveling,” Jet said.
“I used to play that, too. Can we play together?”
Jet thought about it for a long time before answering. Jet remembered reading that people learned a lot faster with the aid of a computer. It was worth a shot.
“I think that is a good idea, but I don’t have any of my VR gear, let alone a computer to connect to the Machine,” Jet said.
Delta raised one of her arms and tapped a sequence into a keypad. A three-dimensional representation of Jeremiah appeared.
“Grandpa, Jet needs a computer and VR gear. We’re going to play together in the Colossal Machine.”
The hologram turned to Jet.
“Josephine,” Jeremiah asked, “how do you think this will help?”
“When working with Ash, she said that Delta’s empathy receptors were not firing. She fixed them, but like any muscle, they need to be flexed and conditioned. Interactive learning has proven to be the fastest way to stimulate the brain.”
Jeremiah’s hologram stood motionless for several seconds; Jet thought that the connection had been severed and was about to reset it when Jeremiah continued.
“Okay, I will allow it. I will make the arrangements. You shall have your equipment soon.”
Jet nodded her thanks, and Jeremiah’s hologram waved as April severed the connection.
“It sounds like we will have everything we need soon,” April said.
“It will be days before we get that stuff,” Jet said.
“I don’t know how things come around here. Ash said that elves make the stuff in the basement.”
Jet laughed. She had thought teaching Delta would be a chore, but she liked April and working with her one-on-one these past few days had been more rewarding than she had thought possible.
“I got it. Let’s play checkers!” April said.
“That game is too easy. Let’s play chess.”
“I don’t like that game. It makes my head hurt,” April said.
“It’s a good game for your brain. Ash asked me to help you, and chess is the best way I know—besides an uplink to the Colossal Machine, that is!” Jet chuckled.
“Well, I suppose I could try it, since you will be with me.”
“Wait, did you have a bad experience playing chess?”
“Yeah. Before you came, Ash hooked me up to a machine that had a chess game. I got beat within a minute or two. It wasn’t any fun, so I stopped playing. The program was mean, too.”
“I didn’t think programs had the capability of being mean,” Jet said.
“This chess master program was not only good, but it was scary, too.”
“Can you explain how the machine was mean to you?”
“When I would make a move that the game didn’t like, it would yell and curse at me. It also threatened me and made me feel bad,” April said
I guess the empathy receptors are working now, Jet thought.
“Well, we can play together,” Jet said. “I won’t be mean at all. How about that?”
April smiled. “Thanks, Jet. You are so cool,” she said.
Then she did something that Jet didn’t expect. She gave Jet a hug.
“Let’s start!” April said cheerily.
They played several rounds of chess on the most modern board she had ever seen. Her visor enhanced the virtual pieces. Jet won most of the games, but she could tell that April was learning some strategy. She was anticipating Jet’s moves. By the twelfth game, April was giving Jet some trouble. Jet noticed that when April focused, she could complete tasks very quickly, and with little effort.
Jet was ready for a break. After thirty games of chess, April had won sixteen, which was very impressive considering she’d been afraid of the game.
“Let’s play another, Jet!” April said with excitement.
“I need a break. I’m getting hungry, and I’m also tired.”
“Okay, let’s get something to eat, and then start again.”
“Let’s see how we feel after our break.”
April gave Jet a robotic thumbs-up. Working with a cyborg was challenging, because she never seemed to get tired.
They walked down a long corridor. Jet couldn’t believe they were below the surface of an island; it was still all very surreal. At the end of the hallway, a self-service kitchen was available twenty-four hours a day. Several people were helping themselves to prepared meals. Jet and April grabbed trays and got in line.
Can she eat like a human does?
Jet wondered about this and many other things, but she didn’t want to upset April by asking; she was still in a fragile state of mind, according to Ash. It would take her a while to get adjusted.
The technician in front of them didn’t seem to want to bother with fetching a tray. She started balancing items atop the surface of her work laptop. An apple rolled off. April caught it before it hit the floor and placed it back on the laptop.
The technician backed up with a surprised look on her face. “Thanks,” she said.
“Great reflexes, April,” Jet remarked.
April nodded and smiled in acknowledgment.
“Are you hungry, April?”
“Yes—smelling the food is making my mouth water.”
She seems like an ordinary teenage girl, Jet thought.
Jet could see why Jeremiah wanted April to have a companion. Learning was an interactive experience, and having access to Jet as a mentor was what April was lacking. As far as Jet understood, transferring April’s consciousness into Delta created some emotional disconnects. Ash had described them as empathy receptors, but to Jet it seemed like April just needed a mentor.
April reached for a banana, bumping into the lab technician ahead of them, who then tipped her balanced laptop full of food. A full bowl of chicken soup slid off and crashed onto the floor with a loud crack, and both April and Jet got splattered.
“I’m so sorry,” the lab technician said.
She was in her mid-twenties, tall, wore glasses, and had black hair. She got some napkins to wipe up the mess when April let out a blood-curdling scream. Jet looked at April’s exposed arm and hand; her skin had turned a nasty shade of crimson, and she noticed blisters starting to form.
“Get help,” Jet screamed to the technician, who didn’t move, frozen in place. Another technician was in the immediate area and came over.
“What happened?” the man asked.
“I’m . . . not sure. She started screaming, and—”
April cut Jet off with another scream. It sounded like someone was tearing her apart.
“Give me your phone,” Jet said.
The male lab technician handed her the phone without a second thought. Jet instinctively dialed 9-1-1. She received a message that the service was unavailable.
“9-1-1 isn’t available. What the hell is going on?” Jet asked no one in particular.
“Public emergency numbers don’t work here. Press the red button on the phone,” the man said.
In her haste, Jet hadn’t noticed the button until the technician pointed it out. She pressed it and put the phone to her ear.
“What is your emergency?” the operator asked.
“Delta—I mean, April, is screaming. We are in the cafeteria. Come quick.
“Stay with her—someone will be there,” the operator said.
After what seemed like an eternity to Jet, Ash appeared.
“Did she get wet?” Ash asked in an urgent tone.
“Someone dropped some soup, and it got all over us. The soup was hot but not scalding,” Jet said.
Ash produced a long syringe with some clear liquid.
“Hold her down,” Ash said.
Jet and the male lab technician could barely keep April restrained; she was very strong.
“We can’t hold her for much longer,” Jet pleaded.
“You won’t need to,” Ash said, and then she jammed the business end of the syringe into April’s neck.
After a few moments, April stopped screaming.
“What was that? Why did she have that reaction?” Jet asked.
“April had a rare genetic condition known as aquagenic urticaria. Any time she came in contact with an impure water source, the bacteria in the liquid would irritate the skin. April often broke out into hives. But . . . this reaction was unexpected.”
“Meaning, she didn’t act like this?” Jet asked.
“Correct. Something in her body chemistry has changed,” Ash confirmed.
April was out cold, and two men arrived with a stretcher. They gathered up April and left.
“I’m taking her for observation. These symptoms typically subside in a few hours, but this was a more severe reaction.”
Early the next morning, Jet entered the recreation room that they were using for Delta’s learning activities. No sign of April. Jet had grown fond of her over the past week. Her learning activities had gone so well. If she had known that April had the water affliction, she would have avoided the cafeteria at all costs. Jet got something to eat, and then went to see if Ash was available. They needed to have a serious discussion.
