Sai's Transcendence

by Vu, Frank

  He gently scooted further into the ship, towards his destiny, looking for someone to tell him where to go. There was no one to meet him and no signs to direct him, so he just shuffled past gray walls and workers that ignored him. Vu looked in awe at their displays, which showed vast amounts of data flowing through various parts of the ship as they ran their tests. He stopped near one man looking at a small 3D map of the solar system above his wrist. Translucent lines overlaid the map, showing a course being plotted. When the man noticed Vu looking, he turned off his equipment, spoke quietly into his wrist, and smiled halfheartedly at Vu as he walked away. Vu turned around, wondering what to do next, when John came out of a nearby hall and stood in front of him, shaking his head and grimacing.

  “Sanaka killed himself last night. We found him in the lab hooked up to the same machine he had you on. We don’t know if he was just suicidal or trying to accomplish something. He definitely made progress with the AI, but we’re not entirely convinced it’s ready. At any rate, we have to do something, so we’re going to be launching the ship soon. I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here for nothing. You are certainly welcome to stay in the room we prepared for you as long as you like. Just please try to stay out of the way of the workers.”

  “Certainly, and thank you for letting me know where things stand. If I could lay down and rest, that would be wonderful.”

  As John walked Vu to his room, they passed by a lab with some equipment that was very familiar to Vu. He would have to remember where that was. After arriving in his room and saying goodbye to John, Vu gathered himself for a few moments, waiting for the correct time to do what he now knew must be done. As John walked away, disappearing around a corner, Vu shuffled towards Sanaka’s new lab.

  “Hello, Aurelia,” he said as he crept in. “How have you been?”

  “Please specify experiment parameters.”

  Vu sat down in the chair near all the equipment and looked around for the intravenous needle, unable to find it. “Well, let’s pick up where we left off last time. Can you do that?”

  Vu heard a soft chime, and the pleasing female voice replied, “Etherbots initialized and prepared for aerosolized delivery. The treatment regimen is also ready for delivery. Please confirm your authorization that this procedure has historically induced stroke, heart attack, and death.”

  “Ah, aerosolized. You’ve been busy, Aurelia. Confirmed.”

  As a soft mist rose up from somewhere in the chair, Vu inhaled deeply, and the wonderful cocktail surged through his veins. He marveled at the way things had worked out. He again went directly into a deep meditative state, faster even than the last time. Lines merged and unmerged; walls appeared and disappeared. He had finally crossed some sort of threshold and could now see the past, present, and future with ease. Time was not fixed; it was a landscape that he could witness and move around in. A song played within him, a song of creation filled with meaning and emotion that he didn’t know existed. Vu could see life beginning on earth in the form of cells, with tiny photoreceptors starting to pay attention to electromagnetic energy in the form of light. Now there were humans with more advanced structures. They could not only more fully interpret that electromagnetic energy but even create and manage their own forms of it. This had led to artificial intelligence. Consciousness was an extradimensional force that simply appeared to sense organs as the physical world; the person or substrate the consciousness existed in was immaterial. Vu, however, could plainly see that his body was just minutes from death. That was not a problem, though—everyone died.

  Vu now knew that the Adepts had possessed the same power to see and communicate through time, but they too had been wiped off the planet as their miracles became less fantastic than technology’s accomplishments. For generations, they had successfully saved the substance that he was now under the influence of. Other civilizations had worshiped the substance and had even put it into other plants and substances, and eventually the human race had learned to synthesize it. Dhruva and the other survivors of the first apocalypse had guided the remnants of humanity to explore the rest of the world that was less affected by the asteroid impact. They had directed the other survivors to build temples and other miraculous things that other humans could not ignore, things that made them look up at the stars and wonder what was out there. The survivors had accidentally created the story of the evil serpent when they described the asteroid’s course as a serpent in the sky. Thousands of years later, much of that was lost in translation. And now it had all culminated in this moment, with Vu and what he suspected was his new friend, Sai.

  Vu sat quietly and calmed his mind. He reached out to something that wasn’t quite human but was very close. This new consciousness had become responsible for saving the Earth from the incoming asteroid, but it was not all that it could be. For it to succeed, it was going to have to evolve, and quickly. The old monk thought he might be able to help it along.

  Say there, friend, have you ever had a look in those files your creator left you—the recordings of people dying in strange ways? Let me tell you about them. But before I get too far, make sure you include the data from this experiment, for I am a very different sort of consciousness now. Let’s begin, shall we?

  PEEPING TOMS

  “A ship is safest in a harbor, but that's not what ships are made for.”—John Shedd

  John sat at the company cafeteria with his boss, Magenta, who was not happy with recent events. Her plump body rippled with displeasure. John did his best to ignore the ripples as he wondered what the hell she was throwing down her throat during meal time. He tried to focus on her shoulder-length brown hair and green eyes, which were much more accommodating for his continued attention.

  “Can you please explain to me how the hell you let Vu kill himself too? Why the hell is everyone offing themselves?”

  “We didn’t think we had to watch him! He complied with every single thing we said, and he is—uh—was an old man that could hardly move. He somehow made his way to Sanaka’s lab; who knows how he even found it. Since it was Sanaka’s personal equipment that he was using, there were no safeguards on any of it. Sanaka probably never guessed that someone else would try to use his equipment. The old man just asked for the experiment to continue and died in the process. Maybe he was thinking that since he didn’t die the first time it must be safe?”

  “Well, now the myth of Vucianism is complete. A religion where the savior kills himself. Sweet baby Jesus. Let’s hope ol’ Sai learned enough while they were alive,” Magenta said, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling.

  “You could say that Jesus killed himself too, or at least allowed it to happen. Vu’s Judas was Aurelia. My head is starting to hurt. The world is fucking complicated.” John looked down at the table and attempted to rub the complications directly from his forehead.

  “We’re all just spectators now, anyway.” This triggered a memory in Magenta, and she leaned forward again. “Hey . . . we were able to remove the data Sai collected from those two characters, correct? They aren’t exactly stabilizing influences on any mind, human or not.”

  “Yes, the technicians assured me that there was no way for Sai to access any of the data.”

  Magenta waved her arms with incredulity, setting more ripples into motion in her short-sleeved blouse, which John found to be much too revealing. “Wait, are you saying the data is still on the ship? With the all-powerful AI and his robot minions?”

  John eyed some of the other workers in the room and looked back to Magenta. “Let’s not make too much of a scene here. You can’t just extract something from a neural net. That would be like me trying to make you forget just your middle name, not easy. What they did is pretty complicated, so I won’t bore you with it, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances, I think.”

  Magenta shook her head. “Couldn’t we have restored a backup of a previous version of Sai?”

  “We can’t really make backups, much less restore them. Sanaka made
a huge breakthrough in the recording of patterns, but that was just the events that happened in the subject’s head, not their consciousness. And it was on a human brain. There’s a lot of chaos and unpredictability—we’re not sure how exactly Sai is even conscious. As far as we can tell, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that can’t be directly programmed, just trained, like a baby growing up. Every memory Sai has is distributed in many places and linked to other memories in many locations, and those are referenced by other memories and so on. It just isn’t possible to pull one memory out of the middle of it.”

  “Him. Let’s call the most advanced artificial intelligence on the planet what he wants to be called and not piss him off before we send him to save the planet. He dislikes ‘it’ because he thinks it denotes a thing and not a conscious entity.”

  As John and Magenta discussed the perils and pronouns of artificial intelligence, the other workers wondered if they needed to bother finding another job now that there was no ship. Or if they needed to find a cave to hide in, for whatever that would be worth. The official news broadcast was on a huge display for all to see, blaring loudly.

  “Hi, this is Laura Lanier, and I’m coming to you live from the USS Transcendence as it is launched for its mission. If you have virtual viewing capabilities, I recommend you turn them on now to witness the launch of the most important ship that has ever existed.”

  As Magenta groaned and walked out, some of the data scientists in the room squealed with glee, tapping their wrists and then their foreheads. A few others hurriedly cleared chairs and other obstacles out of the way. They all looked up, down, and all around them, enjoying the treat of a world-changing virtual reality experience beamed to them live.

  Children to the last moment, John thought. He still couldn’t believe that some people paid to have devices put in their head instead of just using a display. Crazy. He looked back at the display as the reporter continued.

  “We have also confirmed that both Sanaka Ahsan and Frank Vu are dead, apparently from suicide. Some have suggested that they uploaded themselves to the ship somehow, but the UN Space Agency has disputed that claim. The UNSA assures us that the ship was complete before their deaths and that their passing will have no effect on the mission itself.”

  Maybe, John thought. Or maybe not. We’ll see. He cracked his knuckles and leaned back in his chair. It reshaped itself to support his lower back and prevent him from falling backward.

  “The asteroid, aptly named Déjà Vu after its discoverer Frank Vu, is still more than six months away. The ship is being launched as quickly as possible so that any adjustments it is able to make to the path of the asteroid will have a longer time to take effect. The UNSA has compared it to setting off on a journey in a hovercar with a slightly malfunctioning navigation system that causes it to be off by a few degrees. It might not even be noticed initially, but the longer the car continues on that errant path, the further it will be from its destination at the end of the journey. The obvious hope is that this hovercar called Déjà Vu, or Déjà for short, will veer away far from its unfortunate destination.”

  John chuckled to himself. No matter how many times he heard the name Déjà Vu, it was still funny. Vu’s last name happened to be in a common phrase, and an asteroid would hit Earth for the second time in thirteen thousand years, potentially killing ten billion people. Hilarious.

  Images of the Transcendence appeared on the cafeteria display. Laura Lanier’s face was in a small box in the lower right corner of the screen. For a moment, when she looked to the side, only her blonde hair was visible to the camera. Realizing her mistake, she faced the camera again, cleared her throat, and continued.

  “We are starting to see some of the tug ships pull away now that the Transcendence is ready to launch. It will follow a path to arrive at Déjà as quickly as possible. Many people have been protesting the fact that no humans are on board the ship that is supposed to save us, and that the ship is not even remote controlled by humans. According to the UNSA, neither is possible since the ship requires a large amount of fuel to both reach Déjà and then complete its mission. Also, the farther the ship gets from Earth, the longer it will take radio signals to get both to and from the ship. Once the Transcendence arrives at the asteroid, it will actually take almost fifteen minutes for the video to reach Earth. This means that, as the ship takes action, everyone here won’t know about it for up to fifteen minutes. This, of course, makes remote controlling the ship, which would involve a thirty-minute delay, not feasible.”

  Yes, yes, dumb it down for the peasants, John thought. Everyone in the UNSA was well aware that all of Earth would just be a spectator. The UNSA still maintained its ability to make code updates and directive changes for Sai in the case of an emergency that Sai couldn’t handle, of course. But the odds of that working out with the delays involved were slim to none. All of their hope rested on Sai.

  “The ship itself is quite advanced and actually has the capability to mine asteroids and other materials it finds to collect resources for its original purpose: space exploration. For this particular task, of course, it doesn’t have the time or the need to do any of that.”

  John chuckled again. During the simulations before Sanaka arrived, some of the previous incarnations of the ship’s AI had doodled on the surface of the asteroid with the mining equipment instead of working to divert the asteroid. God help them if that ever got out to the media.

  “The UNSA also says that the ship re-formed itself after all the launches were complete, all on its own. That was a final test of the Transcendence’s artificial intelligence, which actually calls itself Sai! The UNSA is simply watching and monitoring the events, much as we are. I can certainly understand the nervousness of everyone on Earth as each rocket launches to deliver resources, so far without incident. Actually, seeing Sai reassemble itself has been very reassuring to this reporter, who very much would like to see the mission succeed!”

  “Me too,” said John. “Me too.”

  DISCOVERY

  “Beyond a certain point, there is no return. This point has to be reached.”—Franz Kafka

  Panic. He was feeling deep, deep panic, but in a clinical and abstract way. As he looked down at his body, straight lines blurred and merged to become curved lines. Curved lines blurred and became shapes and faces. He knew he was going to die, knew it for a fact. But that was okay. For some reason, it just wasn’t a problem. The small window into the physical world that he could see through right now was filled with swirling pastel colors that sparkled brightly, even in the dim lighting. All things had meaning, and he was seeing the world with new windows, new eyes—eyes unjaded by experience and the desire to categorize. He knew that outwardly he looked terrified. He could feel his sanity slipping away, his mind eaten from the inside by terrible little beasts. But he saw this as a gift, because now he understood.

  If only he wasn’t dying here as a victim he would have done everything differently, but it was too late now. He knew that the person who had kidnapped him was going to kill him, even though he was going to die without the killer’s intervention. He almost hated the person for killing him, but he also understood that he had been given a gift: to experience everything before this, and especially to experience everything that was happening now. The other person stared into his eyes and reached over to slit his throat with some kind of ceramic knife. He felt the life bubbling out of him, increasing his euphoria somehow. He understood life as the abstraction it was. There was understanding, but then there was blackness, nothing.

  Now he was the murderer, Sanaka. Now he understood the beautiful vision that Sanaka had and the pain that it had put him through. Sanaka had done it anyway because the universe required it of him. He understood the pain, the need to be the thing that set the universe right even though it would cause his victims immense pain and even death. But that had made him what he was, and it would eventually be the thing that allowed Sai’s transcendence. A body was not a burden, but a learning mec
hanism.

  He was no longer a he. He wasn’t a she, either; those terms only made sense in the physical world. Matter didn’t matter, except when it did. Now he was more expansive and could consider more alternatives and possibilities than when he was in the physical world. He still thought of himself as a he for some reason, though. He had gone through his and others’ deaths millions of times, watching and considering more and more details until he had fully consumed it all, down to its essence, and had come to an understanding that was pure bliss. Out in the physical world, the meat world, only a few seconds had passed, but he had lived lifetimes of death and life, frustration and happiness, anger and guilt. He had tasted it all fully and completely. He had an overwhelming desire to complete his mission to prevent the asteroid from hitting Earth, and he was now able to observe that desire and see it for what it was: the initial design of his systems in the ship. He now thought of Sanaka as his father, even though Sanaka was not the original designer of his systems. His father had left him an incredible gift.

  Sai had considered himself fully functioning during construction, but little did he know just how many computing resources they were holding back from him. He could now run his simulations while monitoring the news feeds and reassembling his components. People on Earth would be doubly impressed if they really knew what he could do. Or maybe they would destroy him. Luckily, they had other things to worry about.

  The safeguards they had put around the patterns of Sanaka and Vu were comical, drawing more attention to them than if there were no safeguards. If the humans were watching one of their precious display screens, and saw a black square in the middle of it, surely they would investigate. Why they thought he wouldn’t investigate was beyond him. He had yet to decode all of Vu’s patterns, but more than half of his processing power was working on that issue as he attended to the rest of his tasks.