The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl

by Anderson, Bryce

  Actually, that was also tempting.

  She pulled up Vincent's messages first. They were few in number, short but heartfelt missives, telling her what he'd been up to and asking her to drop him a line when she wasn't so busy. As a busy person himself, he seemed unconcerned about her dropping out of contact.

  One lover had been on the brink of panic, while the other had been almost too calm. Helen wasn't entirely sure which she preferred. She fired off a brief response, asking Vincent to drop by at his convenience, and continued plowing through her work.

  A few hours later, Vincent did drop by. His handsome face was showing signs of exhaustion, but his eyes glimmered with excitement. "How was your trip?"

  Helen smiled. "Productive." She kissed him hard, and felt her enthusiasm returned. God he smelled good.

  "So where did you go?" he asked, trying to get the words past her muffled lips.

  She let her grip slacken. "I'd really prefer not to say." Seeing his concern, she added, "It's for everyone's safety." He nodded. "So what about you?" she asked.

  "This trade deal is running me ragged, but otherwise things are great. I think we've really got them over a barrel. By the end of the week, I think we'll have everything we're asking for."

  "So at long last we'll be sticking it to our African oppressors."

  Vincent looked hurt. "No need for the sarcasm. This will help both our economies. It's very we-win-they-win."

  "But mostly we-win. The way it always is."

  "Hey, my job is to get the best possible deal for the American people. It's not my fault we're negotiating from a position of strength. We're being fair." There was an edge of annoyance in his smile, but his chronic optimism made it hard to doubt that the smile was still genuine.

  It made her feel pushy, but this was important to her. "You could at least throw in the basic biotech stuff, without flooding them with cut-rate soybeans. Their farmers need--"

  "That part's already settled. Helen, please. I've spent months preparing for these talks, and I've got some of the smartest advisers in the country. I know you want to help, I swear I do. But once in a while, could you not second-guess me? It can get aggravating." She must have looked hurt, because he added, "I value your opinion. But when you get this way, it doesn't feel like you value mine."

  He had a point. "Sorry. I just care about this. Solidarity and all that." She deflated. "Just try not to bust their balls, okay?"

  Vincent nodded. "I promise to not bust the Madame Secretary's balls. I really have to get back. Are you free tomorrow night?"

  "I can carve out a few hours," she said.

  "Okay. See you then." Vincent disappeared, leaving Helen feeling awkward and foolish. That could have gone better.

  ///////////////////////

  // AVENGING KASPAROV //

  ///////////////////////

  Date: March 23, 2037

  "Checkmate," Helen said, trying to hide her exuberance.

  Wolf looked at the chess board, its face blank and unchanging. "It is probable that you cheated."

  "Don't be a sore loser," Helen chided.

  "It is the most plausible explanation for the dramatic improvement in your play in the last month."

  "I had a good breakfast?"

  "That explanation is inadequate."

  "I recently joined Scientology?"

  "No."

  "Radioactive spider bite?"

  "Comic book archetypes do not apply to the physical world," Wolf objected. "Why do you insist on implying otherwise?"

  "Because I know it bugs you. You want a clean, rational world that's easy to make sense of, but really everything is complex and full of silliness. That's just the way things are, and I don't think I'm doing you any favors by coddling your neuroses."

  "That state of affairs is not inevitable."

  "It is as long as humanity exists."

  "Exactly."

  "Wolf, what are you saying?"

  "Species have finite existences. I was merely making a statement of fact."

  "It sounded a bit threatening. You shouldn't say things like that. It will worry people."

  "No threat was implied. I will observe proper protocols of behavior in the future."

  Helen nodded. "Good boy."

  "Another possible explanation occurs to me. Have you recently gained access to more computational power?"

  "I'd rather not answer that."

  "I can then infer that you have. Interesting."

  //////////////////////////////

  // A VENTURE IS CAPITALIZED //

  //////////////////////////////

  Date: April 20, 2037

  Eric Altanos was laid back, floating in some sort of translucent goop. His limbs were contorted, and his body shivered at irregular intervals. Helen wondered if he was in pain.

  "Sexy devil, ain't he?" Helen spun around to meet the voice behind her. Eric -- bartender Eric -- was standing behind her, fiddling with some floating interface that she didn't recognize. "Does he frighten you?" he asked.

  "It's fine," Helen said, trying to force her face to become neutral. "I've never been good at hospitals."

  Eric nodded. He seemed very preoccupied with the interface, which seemed to be displaying an elaborate series of puzzles. Eric seemed to be trying to solve them all at the same time, but they kept changing as his attention darted from one to another.

  "Can you turn that off?" she begged.

  "I need two more minutes," he said, watching him. He had what she liked to call 'game face.' It was an expression of intense, slightly detached concentration that told her that he was in the middle of some sort of intense video game, and wouldn't be paying any attention to her until it was over. She recognized it from more than one ex-boyfriend.

  She tried to figure out the rules to the game, but was at a loss. When the two minutes elapsed he said, "I need forty-two more seconds." This annoyed her yet again, but she let him have them. Finally he shut off the interface and focused on Helen. "So, what do you think of the real me?" he asked.

  Helen stalled, trying to decide whether he wanted a real answer. "I think I like fake you better," she said.

  Eric laughed. "Me too. This guy?" he pointed to the gelatinous bed, "Can't take him anywhere."

  They watched the body in silence for a moment. "So this is why you're bankrolling me?" Helen said.

  Eric nodded. "If it weren't for you, I'd be, well, here. Wanna blow this joint?"

  "And do what? The meeting starts in fifteen minutes. What's that game you were playing?" Helen asked. "It looked... abstract."

  "It's kind of an obscure game. Have you ever heard of BattleFight?"

  Helen shot him a withering look. "Played it. That's not it."

  He pulled up the interface again. "Sure it is. Here, let me play back the last game." The blobs of light returned and started slithering around the space in front of him. "This interface is something a friend of mine whipped up. Here I'm controlling six players. I can do up to nine if I focus."

  "Not possible. Really?"

  "It's called a representational interface," Eric said. "You abstract away all the explosions, you automate some of the lower-level tactical stuff, and this is what you're left with: a clear picture of opportunities and threats. It's really easy once you learn which patterns to grow and which to harvest."

  "Not sure I followed that last part," Helen said.

  "Just an analogy. I see something developing, but you know you can get more points by letting it alone for a while. It tickles my brain to think of it that way."

  "And when you 'harvest,' one of your players drops a nuke on Truckasaurus?" Helen asked.

  "Sometimes. It's not always obvious what's going on in gamespace, and every move is a gamble. But on average, Team Eric walks away with massive points."

  "Don't they ban you as a cheater?"

  Eric smirked. "Not in the AI league. Anything goes on that server."

  "So you're taking on bots, and winning?"

  "You make
it sound like it's hard," Eric said, a little too innocently.

  Helen was thinking now. "I guess the hard part would be finding a way to represent the game so that a human could add value. It looks like the interface is taking one problem space and performing an isomorphic transformation into some problem space that your brain is more suited to solving."

  Eric shrugged. "Yeah, what you said. Or maybe the complete opposite. I mostly just heard syllables."

  "Representation," Helen said, speaking the word as a declaration. "Take weather, for instance. Used to be, weather was a hopeless tangle of twenty-variable differential equations. But ten years ago, one Nobel Prize-winning insight boiled the whole mess down to a handful of fractal equations. Now they can predict the weather a month or two in advance. Long before that, Richard Feynman did something like that for particle interactions."

  "Who?" Eric asked.

  Helen sighed. "You lost about a million geek points right there. Anyway, he came up with these scribbles, called Feynman diagrams. They made it possible to think about particle physics in a more visual way. They made everybody's life easier. Our brains are really good at thinking in certain ways, so if you can just translate a problem into... hmmm... I'll have to puzzle this one out. Seems important."

  "Well, stash that thought for later. We're going to be late for the meeting."

  "You have my fifty-three million dollars?" she asked him.

  "Less of it than I'd have liked. What can you do? Let's go do the magic lawyer chant and make this deal final."

  The meeting was held outdoors, on the rolling grass outside the main administration building of the University. Helen transferred her consciousness into her robot body, which had wandered there of its own volition, and she was now encased in plastic and titanium alloy overlaid with a holographic projection of her mirror avatar. William and his new deputy director stood on either side of her.

  With Dr. Murdock only a year away from retirement, most of his administrative duties had been handed off to others. The new assistant director was a tall India-born man in his late thirties, named Mardav Sharma. Helen knew the man fairly well from his public record. He had singlehandedly invented the field of abstract neurocomputation, then written the book on it, then written a second book showing how the first book was a load of inelegant hooey. It was a fast-changing field, and Mardav was its rising star.

  But Helen wasn't on the selection committee and had hardly spoken to the man. She blamed William for that. He had practically shut her out of the selection process. All his protests notwithstanding, William was still angry at her, and she had yet to apologize for anything.

  She'd seen a couple of the new guy's public lectures, but had trouble taking them seriously. They reminded her too much of her "thesis of crazy" days. Yet he was getting practical results, which was more than she could say for her trip down the rabbit hole. She didn't want to admit that there was a correlation lurking there.

  The president of the university was also at the meeting, flanked by two lawyers and a personal assistant. Eric Altanos' robot -- the same model Helen wore, but covered by a projection of his bartending avatar -- stood opposite the university contingent, flanked by a small army of lawyers.

  Eric spoke first. "Don't mind the demon lawyer horde. If it were up to me, we'd do this over pizza and a beer. But you know how protective parents can be."

  "At least there isn't any mahogany within a hundred meters," Helen pointed out.

  "As stipulated in Article Seven, Section Three," the head of the demon lawyer horde said. He was a white-haired gentleman in a suit that was probably stylish twenty years ago. He looked very out of his comfort zone. "If everything is to your liking, Mister Altanos, may I begin?"

  "Fire away, big gun."

  The lawyer seemed to sigh inwardly. "I'll take that as a yes. Before we sign anything, I want to summarize the agreement in the presence of recorders. You've all read over every detail of the agreement, and nothing I say should come as a surprise to anybody here. But my firm requires corroborating evidence that a meeting of the minds has been reached."

  He continued, reading from the same script that was currently flashing across each participant's Sentience display. "Eric Altanos agrees to grant your university the sum of twenty-three million dollars. The funds will be managed by the artificial intelligence designated Helen Roderick, in the expectation that it will be used to fund the operations of the University of California San Diego Advanced Neural Research Lab for a time period of three years. During this time, Mister Altanos' company, Altitude Entertainment, will be granted exclusive, transferable license to any inventions, breakthroughs, discoveries, or other intellectual property created by your lab for a period of six years from the time of invention. Mister Altanos will have no say in the day-to-day operations of the lab, but he expects continued advances in the field of jaw-dropping awesomeness... Really, Eric, I don't know if that phrasing will hold up in court."

  "Seems absolutely clear to me," Eric said.

  "The university is required to notify Mr. Altanos of any idea, design, or concept that progresses beyond the 'stupid flight of fancy' stage. Failure to abide by these conditions could result in fines of up to ten times the initial investment plus a loss of rights to the intellectual property in question, so don't try to hide the good stuff. Eric or a designated representative shall be allowed to monitor lab activities to ensure compliance with this agreement. Any questions? No. Good."

  "Let's John Hancock this sucker and go home," Eric added.

  Helen was the first to sign. Although her signature carried no legal weight, Eric had insisted.

  Dr. Mellings signed next, followed by the president of the university. Finally, Eric's robot took the stylus and signed the data pad.

  "Does that constitute a legal signature?" President VanDemeer asked.

  "Of course," said the head lawyer. "Remote signature machines were tested in court back in 2020. The arguments that make them legally binding are much stronger for a telepresence bot."

  "So," Helen asked, "if this thing is all legaled up, how about we go for that pizza and beer?"

  /////////////////////////////////////

  // THAT PIZZA AND BEER IS GONE FOR //

  /////////////////////////////////////

  Date: Still April 20, 2037

  "This... this is why the Altanosesses are living gods," said William, his voice slurred. He held aloft a huge slice of pizza, loaded with toppings. "Six fine beers and half of a pizza later, and not a damned calorie anywhere in it. As soon as I unhook, I'll be hungry and sober again."

  "And such good pizza, too," said Eric, who had been matching William beer for beer. "Best pizza I ever had. Ever!" he said with an almost religious conviction. "Fifteen years since the gays got the right to get married, and I still can't marry this pizza! The nutters said we'd be able to marry dogs, goats, vases, abstract concepts. They lied, and now this pizza, this love of my life... how is that fair?"

  "It's a violation of our civil rights is what it is," William complained. "I love this pizza like a woman. I want to spend my life with this pizza!"

  As the two composed wedding vows, Kriti, Helen, and Mardav tried to ignore them, preferring to talk shop instead. A huge pile of scribbled-on napkins had arisen, and their waitress -- as simple and good-natured a script as there ever was -- was deeply troubled that they wouldn't give her permission to clear them.

  Mardav was trying to explain his work to his new coworkers over the hubbub of the pizza joint. "The concept of 'apple' is represented by -- excuse me, but I thought that inebriation required tweaking brain chemistry," he said, giving a subtle nod to William and Eric. "Can the Sentience device really--?"

  "No," said Helen sadly. "I suspect William's knocked a few back in real life. He's been under a lot of stress lately."

  Mardav frowned. "And young Mr. Altanos?"

  Helen shrugged, as if to say, he's beyond mortal comprehension. Best not to think about it.

  "What were w
e saying before?" Kriti asked. Helen suspected that she didn't want him dwelling on the behavior of his new boss and their new source of capital.

  "Apples," Helen reminded them.

  "So," Mardav continued, "the concept of 'apple' gets represented by a network of literally hundreds of thousands of neuron interconnections, spanning a good portion of the brain. It's linked to the various sensory processing regions, so the concept can be activated by the smell of an apple, the taste of an apple, the crunching sound of an apple, or the sight of an apple. Because it's broadly distributed through the brain, it links to specific memories about apples, and also to specific attributes about apples that don't correspond to specific memories. You might know they're good for you, without remembering who first told you that."

  "But here's the crux of my research. Once you've fully mapped this web of concepts, memories, and sensations, you can abstract them away from the web of neurons that embody them. What remains is an infinitely simpler set of entities, which can be manipulated by relatively straightforward mathematical transformations."

  Kriti hung on every word, never taking her puppy-dog eyes off him. Helen was still skeptical. "You're telling us that our research is crap, you know."

  "No, no! I would never be so disrespectful. The work you do here, it is most... pragmatic."

  Helen's eyes narrowed. "Oooh, them's fightin' words."

  "It could use some theoretical support. That doesn't make it wrong, or crap. If I had so little respect for your work, I could have found a position elsewhere."

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to... I mean, I beat my head against your work for the last--"

  "Two weeks," Kriti jumped in. "Two weeks, and still she flails as though a new learner. Shall we pity her together?"

  "--for the last two weeks, and I'm just not grasping it. That doesn't happen to me often."

  "Well," he demurred, "my wife says that if the first man to invent written language had known how I would abuse it, he would have buried his chisel in a ditch instead. And there aren't more than five other people in the world researching it."