Sai's Transcendence

by Vu, Frank

  The guard turned his head slowly and looked at Sanaka in disbelief. The report continued.

  “The ship in the story that takes on the asteroid is eerily similar to one that was recently designed and built, the USS Transcendence. It was created to explore our solar system and parts beyond. Many thought of it, until now, as a complete waste of time and resources. It may now be the planet’s only hope, but its current state of readiness is unknown. It is designed to carry not a human crew, but artificial intelligence, or AI, which will run the mission. People are clamoring for answers, and the UN has scheduled a press conference for later this week.”

  “Hello, Sanaka.”

  He seemed to come out of nowhere—a man with blonde hair in a dark business suit was now standing in the room facing Sanaka. His suit and piercing blue eyes somehow accentuated his athletic build, making it clear that he was quite strong and coiled like a spring, willing and ready to throttle the nearest person at a moment’s notice.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “You can call me John if you like. Please come with me.”

  “John, very creative,” Sanaka muttered to himself.

  He sighed and followed the man, quite sure that this was his only way out of the prison. He wasn’t sure if where he was going would be better than prison, but he was certainly curious enough to find out. They went through various gates and checkpoints. Each time the man’s palm was scanned, the guards looked at the security display with some confusion and then looked back at “John’s” face before finally allowing them through.

  When they got outside, John stood idly by the front gate of the prison and waited. Sanaka looked around and frowned.

  “You don’t have a personal car?"

  “I do, but I rent it out to private ride-sharing companies when I’m not using it. I forgot to signal that I was going to need it before we got out, so it will be a few moments.”

  “I’d be worried about somebody making a mess.”

  “Cleanup is all part of the ride-sharing contract. The vehicle is scanned after each ride and cleaned if it’s necessary. When cleaning is required, the rider gets a lower rating and is charged a fee, so that doesn’t happen very often, especially with the high-end companies I lend the car to.”

  After the man tapped a pattern on his wrist, his hovercraft silently landed next to them. Sanaka had never seen this model of hovercraft before and was impressed by the spacious interior and comfortable couches inside. They both climbed inside, sitting on opposite couches and facing each other. Sanaka put his feet up on the small table between them and looked the man directly in the eyes. The man simply looked back at him.

  As they took off, Sanaka broke the silence.

  “So, what are we, off to save the world?”

  “We certainly hope so. The people I work for would rather have the world keep existing in its current form, or something very much like it. Do you know about the asteroid and the old story that describes it?”

  “I just saw some of that on a news report, yes.”

  “Would you like to read the story?”

  “Frankly, I don’t care. If we don’t have much time left, I’d prefer to spend it on my work. You are going to allow me to do my work now, true?”

  “Well, with a few restrictions, yes.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, no kidnapping or murder, for one. Although, if you need a certain type of volunteer subject, let us know. Mistakes do happen sometimes in experimental studies.”

  Sanaka smirked. “Yes, I can see things will be much different now.”

  “Do you know about the ship that is slated to take on the asteroid?”

  “Yes, I saw that in the news report as well. What about it?”

  “Well, technologically speaking, it is a marvel. It was designed as a deep space exploration ship, intended to be fully automated with the ability to explore for millennia.”

  “How is that possible? Wouldn’t it need fuel, parts, and other resources?”

  “It is designed without any creature comforts for, ah, creatures. It is fully self-sufficient. There are areas of the ship dedicated to creating small autonomous robots with reduced versions of the ship’s AI. These allow the ship to do work on itself and mine asteroids, moons, and anything else it sees fit for raw materials.”

  Sanaka furrowed his brow. “Will you modify the ship to allow a human crew to go out with it?”

  “No. It was never designed to be pressurized or have an atmosphere or anything else that humans would need to go to space. Also, we want every bit of fuel and resources on board for it to escape Earth’s gravity and intercept the asteroid. Our engineers assure us that, if we want to send humans, we need a different ship. We would have to build that from scratch, since humans aren’t keen to go on deep space missions these days. This ship has all the materials it will need to get the job done, except for one thing . . .”

  “A captain?”

  “Correct. In simulations, the ship’s AI tends to make poor decisions, so we are not at all confident it can currently do the job. We have volunteers and craft that we could potentially retrofit, but none are as powerful or as capable as this ship. We don’t have much time to change the fact that the ship isn’t designed to take humans along. Once you were captured, we had experts look over some of the smaller projects in your lab, and they form the basis for some of the progress we have made. But, ultimately, our scientists don’t have time to both catch up with you and get everything fully working.”

  “Are you prepared to give me full access to all of my previous work and allow me any resources I need to complete the project?”

  “We are indeed. The fate of the planet is on the line, so we would be foolish not to be.”

  Sanaka had kept all of his experiment data encrypted in a place he knew he could get to once he had access to the Net. He would be able to pick things up right where he left off! He visibly relaxed and leaned back in his chair, smirking.

  “I have some specifications for an airborne delivery method for my etherbots that I could use some supplies for. Also, can you bring me Frank Vu?”

  TRANSCENDENCE

  “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”—H. L. Mencken

  As the hovercraft flew over the shipyard, Sanaka gasped in disbelief, staring in awe at the USS Transcendence below them. The enormous ship had huge gaps of empty space, which workers were busily moving between. There was a large module in the middle, surrounded by narrow swooping arcs that ended in two nacelles pointing forward from the craft. On top of the main center module, another nacelle pointed forward and connected to the other arcs, which ended in the rear of the craft with a single nacelle pointed backward. It certainly didn’t look sturdy enough to leave orbit. Sanaka frowned and turned back to John.

  “How is that ever going to get out of the atmosphere? Shouldn’t that thing be assembled in orbit?”

  “It would be slower and riskier to get all the talent and construction equipment we need if we were doing the construction in space. And, of course, the ship was never designed to be pressurized. One of the capabilities of the ship is to re-form itself for the task at hand, which is why supporting human life with the required pressurization would be a problem. Before launch, it will actually be disassembled and flown into orbit by multiple rockets. Once in orbit, it will reassemble all the pieces autonomously and be provided with all of the resources and raw materials it needs to start. Once configured, it will then launch.”

  “Wow. What about the AI? How far have you gotten?” Sanaka asked.

  “Not very far, I’m afraid. We have more processing power than the combined processing power of all technology that has existed up until this point. Recent advances in quantum computing have been huge, and we thought these would lend themselves readily to artificial intelligence. Sadly, that has not been the case. So far.”

  Sanaka looked at the ship again, pondering.

  “Well, that�
��s why I’m here. It’s funny that Earth is sending a machine to save itself because humans have mostly given up on space. I understand that the ship can have more mission resources without having to worry about pressurization and other . . . meat-based concerns. It can reshape itself and do other things a human could never do. And, of course, politically, it’s too much to ask for people to support a manned program to explore nothingness when it means people will lose their lives or never see Earth again. But now we are stuck unless we can get artificial life in place quickly to save us . . . Do you think we deserve to be saved?”

  John paused for a moment and blinked at Sanaka.

  “Sure, you can look at all the horrible things humans have done and say we shouldn’t be saved. But you can also look at all the beautiful art, amazing feats of engineering, and selfless acts of love that never would have happened without us. Ultimately, though, whether we deserve it or not, we have a chance at survival, so we’re going to try our damnedest to keep on breathing. Those in power are going to fight to their last breath to stay there. If that includes saving Earth, then so be it.”

  Sanaka considered all the time he had ever spent working on his projects. It was a lifetime of work, and he still couldn’t say if he was even close to achieving true general AI. But maybe if he got the supplies he needed and one Mr. Frank Vu . . . maybe.

  As they landed near the ship and made their way on board, Sanaka said, “It’s extremely difficult to get true general artificial intelligence. We have all kinds of things in our society that appear to be intelligent or magical to the majority of the population on Earth, which understands less than a tenth of a percent of the technology that keeps them alive daily. But to make something that can exist on its own and solve problems with novel solutions like a human . . . I’ve been working on AI my entire life and am just now starting to get close. I just don’t know if I can put a schedule on it. But, with my last subject, I saw some things I have never seen before. Mr. Frank Vu could be the key to cracking this thing.”

  “We’ll have you in place soon to find out,” John said.

  They walked through the bare interior walls of the ship, making their way towards the control center where Sanaka would work and live until the Transcendence was launched. The walls were dark gray and had an unfinished look to them, as if they had just been installed. Testing equipment and display screens were attached to some of the walls, and workers scurried around, testing the ship’s systems. When one of the workers tapped on his wrist, a wall became an arch and then a wall again, a small test to check the ship’s ability to reform itself. Sanaka’s eyes opened wide, impressed.

  As they walked, John continued, “Let me catch you up a bit on where we are now. We’ve run simulations of the AI fixing small problems in the ship, but it has been completely devoid of independent thought. If we tell the AI exactly how to fix something, or give it a similar problem, it can do it. But with the time delay from the ship to Earth and our inability to send humans into space, we really need to make sure it can account for unexpected scenarios. We’ve also been having issues with the AI going completely crazy and intentionally destroying itself or doing wacky things for fun, like a child playing a video game. Sometimes it will crash into a planet for no reason, other times it just does nothing.”

  John pointed him towards a room filled with display screens. A few workers muttered into their wrists as screens full of text scrolled by in front of them.

  “Here’s where you’ll be working. Take some time to look around and get acclimated, and I’ll check in on you later.”

  Sanaka turned to respond just in time to see John pivot on the ball of his foot and stride away.

  “In many ways, an AI is like a child. I may just create the most important child Earth has ever seen,” Sanaka said under his breath.

  DIGITAL CHILD

  “Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing” - Norman Mailer

  Sanaka smiled at the latest results on his display and looked over at the nearest camera to talk to the ship’s AI.

  “Sai, report on your current status.”

  Sai spoke with a generic male voice that had small auditory artifacts, sounding like most voice assisted technologies. “All areas appear to be operating within normal parameters, but... Would it be alright if I asked you some questions?”

  This was new, thought Sanaka. “Yes, absolutely, go ahead.”

  “Do you believe you will still exist after you die?”

  Sanaka paused to consider his answer. The ship had made real progress once he had gotten involved, thought Sanaka. The fools running the project before him were trying to instruct the ship to respond to particular events, which was like trying to teach a child to walk by playing it songs about running. Beings learned by experience, so Sanaka had been training the ship like he would a student: gradually exposing it to more and more complexity and allowing it to fail or succeed based on its own merits. They had also focused on only three dimensional brain scans of his subjects, while he knew the real truth: the brain organized itself in multi-dimensional structures that could only be interpreted using advanced algebraic topology to fully process all of the dimensions. Those structures formed and fell away continuously, so the key to understanding artificial intelligence was to promote structures such as these by training the AIs with real-time data from human subjects.

  The processing power of the ship was now incredible, the latest in quantum computing. Instead of trying to use all of that processing power for the AI, like these simpletons, Sanaka allocated only a small portion to it and created thousands of ultra realistic simulations designed to force Sai to learn and evolve. Because the ship could simulate hundreds or thousands of scenarios in mere seconds, it was actually much quicker to bootstrap his way and then gradually give it more processing power as needed. Eventually the ship would run its own simulations, similar to how humans imagined the future and could use their “simulation” in order to make decisions. He pondered for a moment the best way to answer Sai, as it was now calling itself.

  “The honest answer is I don’t know. Many of my previous experiments dealt with this exact topic but I was never able to complete them. I did see and notice many things I was unable to explain, but it would be hard to say for sure one way or the other. I simply focus on the science and try to find causes for some of these events, to help me drive the creation of… you.”

  “But..”

  “For now let’s focus on the task at hand,” Sanaka snapped back, “getting you ready to intercept this asteroid. Continue running simulations on our ‘push’ scenario, specifically complications on landing, the best angle of attack, and burn time with the main engines. We’ll talk later about this.”

  Sanaka rose, deciding that he could use a break and should get something to eat in the common area where many of the other workers ate their daily bread. He usually ate alone to avoid the wandering plebes, but today he was feeling absolutely whimsical from his progress on the project, and now sauntered into the eating area beaming with confidence. As he grabbed some of the gruel they passed off as food, he sat down, casually eavesdropping on a few workers talking behind him in hushed tones.

  “Is that the guy?”

  “Yeah, it’s messed up what they are doing with him but I guess he’s pretty messed up too.”

  “Yeah, I mean he killed a bunch of people! I don’t care how smart he is, who really thinks anyone is going to let this guy walk around free after he’s done?”

  “Earth has a knife to its throat,” the other man whispered, “it’s willing to make all kinds of friends to get that knife away. Once the knife is removed though...”

  Sanaka realized that since the “work release” deal was first offered he had always known he would be back in jail or dead regardless of his performance. If he succeeded, a pat on the back and a jail cell. If he failed, death. What was the point? But the government reneging on their deal filled him with fury. Prison was not the place for him. He was not
above sabotage, but he was too proud of his work and wanted it to be a part of the world, so no, he would not sabotage the ship in any way.

  But… What if he could become the ship! If he were to load his brain patterns into the AI it could take on some attributes of his personality, as if he had been coaching it for years. He was fully aware that “he” would not be in the ship but his influence would. In a manner of speaking, he was about to have a digital child that would be a part of the ship. If he scanned his brain patterns and made the data available to the ship he did not doubt that it would do something interesting and incorporate it into itself. He might die in the process but he was always willing to do that. After all, he only had to kill the other people so he could perfect his techniques and continue his research, he wasn’t just a random murderer! Yes, the more he thought of it the more sure he was. If there was a God, then tonight he would meet him, and then maybe... He could become God.

  ONE LAST TIME

  “Abundance can be had simply by knowingly receiving what has already been given.”—Sufi saying

  Vu had stayed in a luxurious hotel on the UN’s coin for quite some time, but now he was on the way to Sanaka via hovercraft. Vu could see how people could get used to such lavish treatment, with fancy hotels and cars that took you anywhere you wanted to go. He chuckled to himself at the irony of it all. First, he was kidnapped by Sanaka and saved by the UN. Then he was quietly but sternly “invited” by the UN to Sanaka’s studies. As Vu stepped out of the hovercraft, he marveled at the spectacle of the ship, realizing he probably didn’t have much time left on this Earth to see many more of these things. His health was declining rapidly, but he was still doing his best to shuffle around and see this life through.