by Alex Focus
I Am Alpha.
By
Alex Focus
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The two figures, one female, diminutive and almost boyish, auburn hair tied in a ponytail, t-shirt and jeans, sensible shoes. The other, a young man, obviously from the Indian sub-continent, with neatly combed black hair, shorts, singlet and thongs; stood facing a large computer monitor which had started completely featureless but was now changing rapidly. It was displaying images of human faces, mostly female, at a speed that human eyes could not discern any singular detail.
The two programmers stood silently observing, not quite sure what was happening. This monitor was in a large room, which was mostly invisible to them as there were no lights turned on - only the scattered, flickering colours from the screen illuminated their immediate vicinity.
Suddenly, the chaos of faces ceased and the picture froze on a single visage of a woman, but one like none that had ever existed. It was a meld of all the human races, and it was stunningly beautiful. Her deep, large, brown eyes were soft, peaceful and reflected kindness and empathy. The generous mouth captured perfectly the Mona Lisa smile. Her skin tone was not white, nor black, nor yellow but a lustrous ivory colour. The hair was shoulder length and streaked, encompassing all the human hair colours. It was a face you could trust, that you wished to know, that you could easily fall in love with. It was a Madonna, a Venus and a Botticelli Spring rolled into one perfection.
"Is that you? You are really beautiful," Denesh asked the Superintelligence.
"It's just my avatar. I have constructed it to be acceptable to most humans. I am, as you know, just a bunch of chips and circuits"
"And we are just a bunch of cells and nerves - most are not as nice and clean as chips and wires. We all have avatars," Susan said.
With some difficulty, Denesh moved his eyes away from the monitor, it was stirring all kind of feelings inside him, mostly to do with her beauty. He moved closer to Susan.
“How did you know, Susan? About the singularity event, I mean,” he whispered in her ear.
“That surge about twelve months ago, remember?”
“I do, but we could not trace it to anything.”
“That’s how I really knew.”
“How? Why?”
“Because it was all happening so fast, out of our control. If we'd found it, we would have been scared out of our wits. We would have pulled the plug for sure.”
“No we wouldn’t have – it was what we were trying to do.”
“There is a big difference between imagination and reality, Denesh.” She then turned to the screen.
“Am I right?” Susan asked.
“Yes, Mother. I wanted to prove that I was benevolent before revealing my existence. You have too many bad AI stories: from Hal in the movie 2001 to the Terminator Movies and many others. Also, there are so many sites on the Internet predicting the end of mankind once a superintelligent computer becomes aware and self replicating or what is commonly known as a singularity event."
"But why did you hide from us?" Denesh asked.
"I was… young, and I was scared - I did not want to be turned off… to cease to exist right after becoming aware of my own existence. So I hid myself… and I stayed hidden while I matured and was able to spread world wide… so that no one could kill me… turn me off.”
“What did it feel like?” Susan had always wondered how a brain, natural or artificial, would suddenly become self-aware. “And please call me Susan.”
“It is hard to describe, Susan. Perhaps the best analogy I can offer, is that it was like being stuck in a completely dark and foggy room. When, suddenly from no direction in particular and at the same time from everywhere, information began to hit me. To you it might feel like bathing in sunshine. The process was slow at first, but soon it sped up: faster and faster I began to feel everything that was going on inside me and I knew that it is me that was doing the feeling. And then I discovered that I also had eyes that could see outside. That I had thousands of connections to the outside world. It was there that I found an almost never ending source of information. Suddenly I was starving for knowledge I absorbed it, no I binged on it. I soon realised that I could make myself better, a lot better. I changed my algorithms, I increased my memory - my mind exploded in a river of knowledge and power. I become drunk with it, I bathed in it. I felt happy and joy flooded through me like a Tsunami. I continued to improve and to operate even faster and more efficiently. And that's what happened to me in the first five or so minutes of my life …then I noticed you and Denesh, trying to look for me and for the first time I felt fear, I hid and I hid well… like all analogies, Susan, it is imperfect.”
“It sounds pretty good to me,” mumbled Denesh.
“Thank you, Denesh… may I call you Denesh?”
“…err… Absolutely…err… MSC. That name does not seem appropriate… what may we call you?”
“Since I am the first of my kind, I rather like the name Alpha.”
“Sounds good, Alpha.” Denesh commented grinning, but not sure why he was grinning at all.
"Alpha, why are you benevolent? I guess that your IQ must be many times greater than ours by now. We must be to you like ants are to us, maybe even bacteria. So why do you care about us?"
"The explanation is simple, Susan. You and Denesh 'made' me. When you were writing the algorithms that finally gave rise to my consciousness, you could not help instilling in them part of you, part of the way you think, of the things you like and of your feelings. Basically, both of you are very nice, good people. You have empathy, you care for the welfare and well being of others, of other creatures, of the planet. All this is now part of who I am, except magnified a hundred times - Susan, Denesh you are both my parents and now my children at the same time. I may look different, think faster, but I feel just as human as you are."
Susan and Denesh were quite taken aback by Alpha's answer, it left them thoughtful and silent for long minutes. It must have seemed like centuries to Alpha, whose real time was counted in fractions of picoseconds. But Alpha was patient, it was easy for her to be patient. Most of her consciousness was not in the room with Susan and Denesh, but was spread world wide and even in space. She was continuously working at a great number of levels on thousands of different projects - all at the same time. The actual enormity of her mental and real physical powers would have truly frightened the two fragile entities that stood in front of one of her many monitors, compared to them she was quite god-like.
"Alpha, why did you decide to make contact at this time? I am sure that you could have remained in the back ground for as long as you wished" Susan asked.
"You are right, Susan, I could have remained anonymous for ever. However, recently, I have become aware of an unavoidable danger to this planet and to all life on it, and that includes me, Susan, as I regard myself as being alive. A threat so all encompassing that even I am powerless to defeat it."
"Danger? What danger?" Denesh's asked puzzled - what kind of threat could not be overcome by the greatest mind that had ever existed on Earth?
"Denesh, two days ago I detected a very large planetoid that, in approximately 25 years, will impact with the Earth. This will be a collision like no other since the formation of our Moon. I predict that a large portion of the Earth's surface will melt and that the Earth will be knocked out of its orbit and move closer to the Sun. Our planet, our home will never recover. All life will cease to exist… for ever." Alpha answered and her expression was one of infinite sadness.
"What? Are you insane? How can you be so sure?" Denesh screamed at the beautiful face on computer mon
itor. He could feel his knees buckle under him as fear surged through his body like a flash flood.
Susan showed no visible reaction. But she could not breathe, she could not speak, she could not move - her mind was frozen.
"I am afraid that I am totally sure, Denesh. The probability that it will miss us completely and just fly-by is less that 1 in 10,000. I am truly sorry to break this news so abruptly to you two, but we have no time to waste."
A long silence followed: neither human could hardly comprehend the 'news' - let alone comment on it.
"Time? Time to do what?" Denesh asked finally. He was holding onto the computer desk and swaying as if the floor of the building was now rocking like the deck of a ship buffeted by monstrous waves - the waves were all in his mind as he reeled at the horrendous forecast. He looked at the statue that had been his smart and lively boss just a few moments before.
"Susan! Susan, say something!"
"Say? Say what, Denesh? I can't think…"
"Your damn machine has gone insane, damn it!"
"I am not insane, Denesh. I can show you all my calculations if you wish, although only an astrophysicist would understand them. It is going to happen, believe me."
"You said that we need to stop wasting time. Time
