by Ted Chiang
The problem is that genomic engines are old news. Developers are drawn to new, exciting projects, and right now that means working on neural interfaces or nanomedical software. There are scores of genomic engines languishing in various states of incompletion on the open-source repositories, all in need of volunteer programmers, and the prospect of porting the dozen-year-old Neuroblast engine to a new platform may be the least exciting of them all. Only a handful of students are contributing to the Neuroblast port, and considering how little time they’re able to devote, the Real Space platform will itself be obsolete before the port is finished.
The other alternative is to hire professional developers. Derek has talked to some developers with experience in genomic engines, and requested quotes on how much it would cost to port Neuroblast. The estimates he’s received are reasonable given the complexity of the project, and for a company with several hundred thousand customers, it would make perfect sense to go ahead with it. For a user group whose membership has dwindled down to about twenty people, however, the price is staggering.
Derek reads the latest comments on the discussion forum, and then calls up Ana. Having the digients confined to a private Data Earth has definitely been hard, but for him there’s also been a silver lining: he and Ana have reason to talk every day now, whether it’s about the status of the Neuroblast port or trying to organize activities for their digients. Over the last few years Marco and Polo had drifted away from Jax as they all pursued their own interests, but now the Neuroblast digients have only each other for company, so he and Ana try to find things for them to do as a group. He no longer has a wife who might complain about this, and Ana’s boyfriend Kyle doesn’t seem to mind, so he can call her up without recrimination. It’s a painful sort of pleasure to spend this much time with her; it might be healthier for him if they interacted less, but he doesn’t want to stop.
Ana’s face appears in the phone window. “Have you seen Stuart’s post?” Derek asks. Stuart pointed out what each person would have to pay for them if they divided the cost evenly, and asked how many of the members could afford that much.
“I just read it,” says Ana. “Maybe he thinks he’s being helpful, but all he’s doing is getting people anxious.”
“I agree,” he says. “But until we come up with a good alternative, the per-person cost is what everyone will be thinking about. Have you met with that fundraiser yet?” Ana was going to talk to a friend of a friend, a woman who has run fundraising campaigns for wildlife sanctuaries.
“As a matter of fact, I just got back from lunch with her.”
“Great! What did you find out?”
“The bad news is, she doesn’t think we can qualify for nonprofit status, because we’re only trying to raise money for a specific set of individuals.”
“But anyone could use the new engine–” He stops. It’s true that there are probably millions of snapshots of Neuroblast digients stored in archives around the world. But the user group can’t honestly claim to be working on their behalf; without someone willing to raise them, none of those digients would benefit from a Real Space version of the Neuroblast engine. The only digients the user group is trying to help are its own.
Ana nods without him saying a word; she must have had the exact same thought earlier. “Okay,” says Derek, “we can’t be a nonprofit. So what’s the good news?”
“She says we can still solicit contributions outside of the nonprofit model. What we need to do is tell a story that generates sympathy for the digients themselves. That’s the way some zoos pay for things like surgeries on elephants.”
He considers that for a moment. “I guess we could post some videos about the digients, try tugging on people’s heartstrings.”
“Exactly. And if we can build up enough popular sentiment, we might get contributions of time as well as money. Anything that raises the profiles of the digients will increase our chances of getting volunteers from the open-source community.”
“I’ll start going through my videos for footage of Marco and Polo,” he says. “There’s plenty of cute stuff from when they were young; I’m not so sure about the more recent stuff. Or do we need heartrending stuff?”
“We should talk about what would work best,” says Ana. “I’ll post a message on the forum asking everyone else.”
This reminds Derek of something. “By the way, I got a call yesterday that might help us out. It’s kind of a long shot, though.”
“Who was it?”
“Do you remember the Xenotherians?”
“Those digients that were supposed to be aliens? Is that project still going on?”
“Sort of.” He explains that he was contacted by a young man named Felix Radcliffe, who is one of the last participants in the Xenotherian project. Most of the original hobbyists gave up years ago, exhausted by the difficulty of inventing an alien culture from scratch, but there remains a small group of devotees who have become almost monomaniacal. From what Derek has been able to determine, most of them are unemployed and rarely leave their bedrooms in their parents’ homes; they live their lives in Data Mars. Felix is the only member of the group willing to initiate contact with outsiders.
“And people call us fanatics,” says Ana. ”So why did he contact you?”
“He heard we were trying to get Neuroblast ported, and wants to help. He recognized my name because I was the one who designed the avatars for them.”
“Lucky you,” she says, smiling, and Derek makes a face. “Why would he care if Neuroblast gets ported? I thought the whole point of Data Mars was to keep the Xenotherians isolated.”
“Originally it was, but now he’s decided they’re ready to meet human beings, and he wants to conduct a first-contact experiment. If Data Earth were still running, he’d let the Xenotherians send an expedition to the main continents, but that’s no longer an option. So Felix is in the same boat as us; he wants Neuroblast ported so his digients can enter Real Space.”
“Well…I guess I can understand that. And you said he might be able to help with funding?”
“He’s trying to generate interest among anthropologists and exobiologists. He thinks they’ll want to study the Xenotherians so much they’ll pay for the port.”
Ana looks dubious. “Would they actually pay for something like that?”
“I doubt it,” says Derek. “It’s not as if the Xenotherians are actually aliens. I think Felix would have better luck with game companies who need aliens to populate their worlds, but it’s his decision. I figure that as long as he doesn’t approach any of the people we’re contacting, he won’t hurt our chances, and there’s a possibility he can help.”
“But if he’s as awkward as he sounds, how likely is it he can persuade anyone?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be with his salesmanship. He’s got a video of the Xenotherians that he shows anthropologists, to whet their appetites. He let me see a little bit of it.”
“And?”
He shrugs, raises his hands. “I could’ve been looking at a hive of weedbots for all that I understood.”
Ana laughs. “Well, maybe that’s good. Maybe the more alien they are, the more interesting they’ll be.”
Derek laughs too, imagining the irony: after all the work they did at Blue Gamma to make digients appealing, what if it turns out that the alien ones are what people are more interested in?
Chapter Seven
Another two months go by. The user group’s attempts at fund-raising don’t meet with much success; the charitably inclined are growing fatigued of hearing about natural endangered species, let alone artificial ones, and digients aren’t nearly as photogenic as dolphins. The flow of donations has never risen above a trickle.
The stress of being confined to Data Earth is definitely taking a toll on the digients; the owners try to spend more time with them to keep them from getting bored, but it’s no substitute for a fully populated virtual world. Ana also tries to shield Jax from the problems surrounding the Neuroblast port, b
ut he’s aware of it nonetheless. One day when she comes home from work, she logs in to find him visibly agitated.
“Want ask you about porting,” he says, with no prelude.
“What about it?”
“Before thought it just another upgrade, like before. Now think it much bigger. More like uploading, except with digients instead people, right?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“You seen video with mouse?”
Ana knows the one Jax is referring to: newly released by an uploading research team, it shows a white mouse being flash-frozen and then vaporized, one micrometer at a time, into curls of smoke by a scanning electron beam, and then instantiated in a test scape where it’s virtually thawed and awakened. The mouse immediately has a seizure, convulsing piteously for a couple of subjective minutes before it dies. It’s currently the record-holder for longest survival time for an uploaded mammal.
“Nothing like that will happen to you,” she assures him.
“You mean I not remember if happens,” says Jax. “I only remember if transition successful.”
“No one’s going to run you, or anyone else, on an untested engine. When Neuroblast has been ported, we’ll run test suites on it and fix all the bugs before we run a digient. Those test suites don’t feel anything.”
“Researchers ran test suites before they uploaded mice?”
Jax is good at asking the tough questions. “The mice were the test suites,” Ana admits. “But that’s because no one has the source code to organic brains, so they can’t write test suites that are simpler than real mice. We have the source code for Neuroblast, so we don’t have that problem.”
“But you don’t have money afford port.”
“No, not right now, but we’re going to get it.” She hopes she sounds more confident than she feels.
“How I help? How I make money?”
“Thanks, Jax, but right now there isn’t a way for you to make money,” she says. “For now your job is to just keep studying and do well in your classes.”
“Yes, know that: now study, later do other things. What if now I get loan, then pay back later when earn money?”
“Let me worry about that, Jax.”
Jax looks glum. “Okay.”
In fact, what Jax suggests is almost exactly what the user group has attempted recently by looking for corporate investors. It’s an avenue opened up by VirlFriday’s success in selling digients as personal assistants. It took several years, but Talbot finally managed to raise an instance of Andro that would work for anyone; VirlFriday has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It’s the first demonstration that a digient can actually be profitable, and several other companies are looking to duplicate Talbot’s achievement.
One of those companies is called Polytope, who’ve announced plans for launching an enormous breeding program to create the next Andro. The user group contacted them and offered them a stake in the Neuroblast digients’ future: in exchange for paying to port the Neuroblast engine, Polytope would get a percentage of any income generated by the digients in perpetuity. The group was more hopeful than it had been in months, but the company’s answer was no; the only digients that Polytope is interested in are Sophonce digients, whose obsessive focus is a necessity if they’re going to replace conventional software.
The user group has briefly discussed the possibility of paying for the port out of their own pockets, but it’s clearly not feasible. As a result, some members are considering the unthinkable:
FROM: Stuart Gust
I hate being the one to bring this up, but someone has to. What about temporarily suspending the digients for a year or so, until we’ve raised the money for the port?
FROM: Derek Brooks
You know what happens when anyone suspends their digient. Temporary becomes indefinite becomes permanent.
FROM: Ana Alvarado
I couldn’t agree more. It’s just too easy to get into perpetual postponement mode. Have you ever heard of anyone restarting a digient that they’d suspended for more than six months? I haven’t.
FROM: Stuart Gust
But we’re not like those people. They suspended their digients because they were tired of them. We’ll miss our digients every day that they’re suspended; it’ll be an incentive for us to raise the money.
FROM: Ana Alvarado
If you think suspending Zaff will increase your motivation, go ahead. Keeping Jax awake is what keeps me motivated.
Ana has no doubts when she posts her reply on the forum, but the conversation is more difficult when, a few days later, Jax brings up the issue himself. The two of them are in the private Data Earth, where she is showing him around a new game continent. It’s a classic, one that Ana enjoyed years ago, and it’s recently been released for free, so the user group instantiated a copy for the digients. She tries to convey her enthusiasm for it, pointing out what distinguishes it from the other game continents that the digients have grown bored with, but Jax sees the continent for what it is: yet another attempt to keep him occupied while they wait for Neuroblast to be ported.
As they walk through a deserted medieval town square, Jax says, “Sometimes wish I just be suspended, not have to wait more. Restarted when I can enter Real Space, feel like no time passed.”
The comment catches Ana off-guard. None of the digients have access to the user-group forums, so Jax must have come up with the idea on his own. “Do you really want that?” she asks.
“Not really. Want stay awake, know what happening. But sometimes get frustrated.” Then, he asks, “You sometimes wish you don’t have take care me?”
She makes sure Jax is looking her in the face before she replies. “My life might be simpler if I didn’t have you to take care of, but it wouldn’t be as happy. I love you, Jax.”
“Love you too.”
#
Driving home from work, Derek gets a message from Ana saying that she’d been contacted by someone at Polytope, so as soon as he gets home he calls her. “So what happened?” he asks.
Ana looks bemused. “It was a very strange call.”
“Strange how?”
“They’re offering me a job.”
“Really? Doing what?”
“Training their Sophonce digients,” she says. “Because of all my previous experience, they want me to be the team leader. They offered a great salary, three years guaranteed employment, and a signing bonus that’s, frankly, fabulous. There’s a catch, though.”
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“All their trainers are required to use InstantRapport.”
Derek’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding,” he says. InstantRapport is one of the smart transdermals, a patch that delivers doses of an oxytocin-opioid cocktail whenever the wearer is in the presence of a specific person. It’s used to strengthen rocky marriages and strained parent-child relationships, and it’s recently become available without a prescription. “What the hell for?”
“They figure that affection will produce better results, and the only way trainers will feel affection for Sophonce digients is with pharmaceutical intervention.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s a way to increase employee productivity.” He knows plenty of people who take nootropics or use transcranial magnetic stimulation to boost their performance at work, but so far no employer has made it a requirement. He shakes his head in disbelief. “If their digients are so hard to love, you would think they’d take a hint and switch to Neuroblast digients.”
“I said something similar to them, but they weren’t interested. I had an idea, though.” Ana leans forward. “I might be able to change their minds if I go work for them.”
“How do you figure?”
“It’d be an opportunity to show Jax to Polytope’s management on an ongoing basis. I could log into our private Data Earth from work, maybe even bring him in wearing the robot body. What better way to demonstrate how versatile the Neuroblast engine is? And once they realize that, they’ll port
it to Real Space.”
Derek considers it. “Assuming they don’t forbid you from spending time with Jax during work hours–”
“Give me some credit. I wouldn’t give them the hard sell; I’d be subtle about it.”
“It might work,” he says. “But they’d make you wear the Instant Rapport patch. Is the chance worth that?”
Ana gives a frustrated shrug. “I don’t know. It sure as hell isn’t my first choice. But sometimes we have to take a chance, right? Push things a little.”
He isn’t sure what to say. “What does Kyle think about it?”
She sighs.”He’s totally against it. He doesn’t like the idea of me taking InstantRapport, and he definitely doesn’t think the chances are good enough to justify it.” She pauses, and then says, “But he doesn’t feel the same way about digients that you or I do, so of course he’d say that. For him, the payoff doesn’t seem that big.”
Ana’s clearly expecting support and he obliges, but privately his thoughts are more conflicted. He has reservations about what she’s proposing, but he’s hesitant about saying so.
He hates that he has such thoughts, but on the occasions that Ana has mentioned having difficulties with Kyle, he daydreams about the two of them splitting up. He’s told himself that he would never do anything to drive them apart, but if Kyle doesn’t share Ana’s commitment to the digients, Derek isn’t doing anything wrong by showing that he does. If that suggests to Ana that he’s a better match for her than Kyle, he can’t be blamed for that.
The question is whether he really thinks it’s a good idea for Ana to accept Polytope’s job offer. He’s not sure he does, but until he’s sure, he’s going to be supportive.
