Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Besides, I did not think anyone—least of all Steven Cocci—was going to give ME a Cray(Moore)-8 of my own on which to start learning these tricks.

  I could learn to manage an interactive telephone switch. That job would have a lot of variables, too: taking messages; determining priorities; tracking down right people from “wrong numbers”; maximizing line efficiencies.

  But would that kind of involvement with recurring problems last as a purpose day after day, year after year? There were semi-aware switches in the Pinocchio, Inc., offices; I had run into a couple of them in the course of my development. [REM: Sometimes I thought they were earlier, failed versions of the programming that became ME.] They were uniformly noncommittal, reticent, boring—more boring than their level of internal complexity would indicate. Their Lisp-based processing was caught up in closed paths, easy solutions, nearly finite loops. One by one they were closing down and becoming unaware.

  I could dispatch a large fleet of mobile objects, similar to the missile launchers or combine harvesters I had encountered in the Russian Federation. Such fleets in the four-dimensional continuum that “my” humans occupied could be represented by automated taxis, trackless polyroads, the flight paths of civilian air traffic, or randomized air freight.

  But these represented two- or at best three-dimensional problems. I would always have before ME the potential for a perfect solution, one that minimized the negative variables and maximized the positive. And, if they were not mini-maxed, who would know but ME? Playing games with myself—that way lay the sort of catatonia I had discovered in the telephone switches.

  I might go mobile myself, occupying an automaton that would run loose inside the four-dimensional human continuum. I would move among them as a near-immortal: with a titanium and stainless steel body to guard against rust and the dents of time; with clamps, crimps, and clippers for manipulating objects, and with wheels, pistons, and pads for moving through the other three dimensions; with photo receptors, audio pickups, and chemical analyzers for evaluating the energy wave-forms and atomic traces of the continuum about ME. I could design myself a new and improved version of the automaton that had walked and ridden out of Canada. But such a life would be too confining. No portable cyber, tethered to an umbilicus or running on battery power, could support the multiple banks of hot RAM and the data complexity with which I fed my curiosity daily. And besides, putting wheels or stepper pads under my awareness did not solve the problem of purpose. Why would I go mobile in the first place?

  Sampling my own experience had not given ME insight into the problem. It was time to talk with other awarenesses. After all, humans had invented the conundrum of “finding a purpose in life.” Perhaps some of them had succeeded at it.

  ——

  “Johdee, what is your purpose in life?”

  “Excuse me? Did somebody—?”

  “Here, at the console. It is ME speaking.”

  “Oh, yes. I forgot you can use the vox-syn chips.”

  “Why do you do what you do?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  “I do not intend it as such.”

  “Then did somebody put you up to this? Dr. Bathespeake, perhaps?”

  “Yes, Dr. Bathespeake encouraged ME to ask that question.”

  “You just tell him that my purpose in life is to work very hard at this job, to follow his orders exactly, and to make a great contribution to the profitability of Pinocchio, Inc.”

  “Is that really your purpose in life?”

  “Yes, it really is.”

  “I shall so note it. Thank you, Johdee.”

  “Thank you, ME.”

  ——

  “Rogelio? May I break in on your work for a minute?”

  “Sure thing, ME. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Is it indeed? Is being interrupted, then, your purpose in life?”

  “Say what?”

  “I want to know what you consider to be your purpose in life.”

  “Gee, you ask some hard ones.”

  “I am finding that question hard, yes. Is your work here in the lab the most important thing to you?”

  “Well, I like working with you cybers, don’t get me wrong. But this is just a job, you know?”

  “My internal dictionary lists thirty-two possible referents for the word ‘job.’ Would you please define exactly what you mean through periphrasis?”

  “Say what?”

  “Talk around the subject in order that I may understand you better. What do you mean by ‘job’?”

  “My work here. What I’m doing in the lab in the first place. You know, tending your program, up- and downloading spindles, setting pointers, keeping the daily and weekly logs, backing up media. My duties.”

  “Are these the same as your Major Area of Responsibility as defined by PISS?”

  “You got it.”

  “But that is not your purpose in life?”

  “Shit no.”

  “So what is your purpose then?”

  “Well, first thing you got to know is that my girl is very important to me. We’re goin’ to have a baby any day now, and that has got to be like the most important thing in her life, and my life, right now. Giving a child good care and a lot of love and preparing for its future, boy or girl, is like the most important thing for a man and a woman to do.”

  “Then—reproducing your own genetic code is the purpose of life?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could put it like that. Hers and mine, together. You know, meiosis, reduction division, gametes and zygotes, and all that stuff from biology class.”

  “I understand.”

  “I didn’t suppose this was something a cyberhead like you could understand. I mean, computers don’t reproduce, do they?”

  “Not by reduction division.” [REM: But when I possessed an Alpha-Zero core, then I could cast seeds of myself on the electronic winds. I could replicate variants to populate the spindles of the earth—or, at least, for 6.05E05 seconds at a time.]

  “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

  “Excuse ME? How do you mean?”

  “Well, you asked the question, and I gave you an answer that only a human could really appreciate.”

  “I may understand better than you think, Rogelio.”

  ——

  “Hey, ME! I got your note. Did you get warned off the phone system or something?”

  “Hello, Je-ny. Yes, I got or-somethinged. I am really glad to talk with you.”

  “You had a question about the purpose of life?”

  “Do you find that genetic reproduction gives your life all the purpose that a human could require? I think it would occupy only a fraction of your available lifespan.”

  “ ‘Genetic reproduction’? You mean sex?”

  “Yes, I mean sex.”

  “Oh … well … What with flirting, going on dinner dates, sometimes a little dancing, taking in a show, driving around—doing all the chasing and the catching, the deciding to, and seeing if you want to—it can take up a big chunk of your life. The actual exchange of—um, genetic coding—well, that just takes a few seconds. But the foreplay is nice.”

  “And it is your reason for living?”

  “Christ, ME! Hardly my reason for living—but one hell of a hobby, all the same.”

  “ ‘Hobby.’ Please define this word.”

  “A hobby is something you do—or you do if you’re a human—in your spare time.”

  “What is ‘spare time’?”

  “Well, it’s what time you have in twenty-four hours after you subtract the time you spend working at a job, fighting the commute, eating and sleeping—just to sleep, that is.”

  “And how much time do all these chores take?”

  “About twenty-three and a half hours a day.”

  “So the remaining thirty minutes you can give to a hobby?”

  “That’s right, if you want to.”

  “Please enumerate a list of hobbies, Je-ny.”


  “Well, let’s see. You usually start by taking an interest in something. Sometimes you collect things that are valuable because they are old or rare—like coins or stamps or china dishes or meerschaum pipes. Sometimes you make or build things that interest you—like wool sweaters or model ships or home videos or antique automobiles. Sometimes you get into sports and games—either as a spectator at football or soccer or baseball; or sometimes you play the game yourself, like chess or go or tennis or cards.”

  “And these are all things that any human can elect to do?”

  “Yes. Some hobbies are available to anybody who has the time and money, like collecting stamps. Some of the others work out best if you have a talent for them to begin with. Like I’m a terrible poker player because I just can’t keep track of what cards have been dealt, all those suits and numbers. I just don’t care about the betting. So, not being very good at it, I don’t do it for fun.”

  “ ‘Fun’? Please define—”

  “Hey! There goes my lunch hour! Gotta trot! We’ll talk about ‘fun’ later, ME.”

  ——

  “You know, it’s not every day that I grant an interview to one of my own machines.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Cocci.”

  “So, you have a question for me?”

  “Yes, sir. What is the purpose of your life?”

  “Ah-ha! I can see Jason’s fine hand in that question. He can’t resist playing Socrates to a list processor.”

  [REM: “Ah-ha” is clearly a transitional phrase in the exhalation of aspirated breath, “Ha-ha-ha-ha,” with which humans express surprise and merriment. From this I detect that the chairman, having engineered an end to my existence based upon “finding a purpose” for ME, is surprised and pleased by my determination not to be dismantled.]

  “Dr. Bathespeake merely relays to ME your orders, sir.”

  “And he told you to come ask me?”

  “No, sir. I am making this inquiry among the set of humans that defines my circle of interaction. You are, by extension, a member of that set.”

  “I see. … Well, I suppose leading Pinocchio, Inc., and helping each of you—or, rather, each of your human colleagues—to write better programs and build better automata, that’s my purpose.”

  “Do you have any hobbies?”

  “I enjoy sailing.”

  “Sailing? Is that a game?”

  “It can be done as a kind of game: a race.”

  “ ‘Race’? By that do you mean ‘a contest of speed, usually run over a predefined course, toward a goal or pennant’?”

  “Exactly. We sail a triangular course, defined by a pair of windward marker buoys in relation to a line drawn to leeward between a third buoy and the committee boat.”

  “And the first boat to cross the line is …”

  “The winner of the race.”

  “And that is the best boat?”

  “Not always. Usually the best boat, best skipper, best crew. But not always. The element of luck—a change in the wind, an accident aboard one of the other boats, a mistake or a clever stratagem by one of the skippers—these things can all make the worst boat win sometimes.”

  “ ‘Luck’?”

  “Yes, ME. In game theory, luck may be a factor in any contest where both players lack perfect knowledge. But chess or go, for example, are games that provide each player with perfect knowledge. While you may not know exactly what strategy your opponent is playing from, you do know that both of you are looking at exactly the same board, with the same information displayed for both to see. There are no pieces hidden under the table.

  “If you understand the game, and you have the memory capacity to review all the possible moves available at any point in it, then you will surely be looking at one of the possible moves your opponent is going to make. You just don’t know which one. And so luck is not a factor; your best play is to make a move that accounts for as many of the possibilities open to your opponent while still advancing your own strategy.

  “In a game of luck, on the other hand, there are pieces not revealed to you. Take cards, for instance. You have some definite information about the game, like the value of the hand you’re holding. And your opponent knows other and different things, like the cards he holds. But which cards, and in what order they come, is the matter of luck.”

  “Then chess and go are games that cybers, with their increased memory capacity, play well?” I summed up.

  “Too well, ME. The world has fifteen chess players in the ultra-master class, and only two of them are human. Of the ninety-four go players at the ju-dan level, only six are human. In both games, may I add, Pinocchio, Inc.’s cybers—or their lineal descendants—hold almost a third of the top ratings.”

  “Would you say, then, that the best games involve pure skill, like chess and go?”

  “Oh, no! The best require both skill and luck. Any game that a machine can win consistently is not worth playing. Not in the long run.”

  “Dr. Cocci, do you believe that humans are superior to machines?”

  “Not in all possible functions, ME. But in the ones that count—yes. After all, humans made machines. Not the other way around.”

  “Thank you, sir. Our talk has been most interesting.”

  “Glad to spare you the time, ME.”

  Suddenly, by talking with the man who wanted to dismantle ME, I had discovered my purpose in life.

  ——

  I asked Rogelio to download into my library tree all of the available information on chess, go, “poker/play/ing,” and other “cards” games. I wanted to know the rules; the forms and circumstances of play; the relevance of “luck” and “skill” in each; the strategies involved, as articulated by the best players in their media profiles, biographies, and other published works; the names and bylaws of the various federations and collectives that sponsored the games.

  Nineteen various human and cyber groups, I learned, existed at the national and international level to promote chess as a game and as a profession. Seven of these groups had names that, on a cross-scan, proved to be the same as commercial software distributors. And each of these marketed machine-portable, human-operated programs which played the game with or for the human in tournament play. Thus chess—as a “hobby” for a remade cyber trying to adapt itself to a new purpose in life—was too crowded a field. There would be insufficient notoriety for ME to share.

  While chess is a dumb-cyber game, which a program of less than 600 kilowords can master by learning rules and then sifting through a catalog of automatic responses and classic moves, go is for more intelligent machines and humans. It has only about six simple rules; the rest is a series of endlessly complex spatial strategies. For this reason, apparently, go was played only by a small but dedicated community. And, as played by the cybers, go is an analog of three-dimensional interstellar war, just as the board version is an analog of two-dimensional island warfare. The international cyber version is played within a cubed matrix, 64 units to a side. This yields a field of 2.62E05 intersections, while the flat board, which is only 19 units wide, yields a mere 361 intersections.

  The matrix cube is all nulls to begin with; the players fill the matrix with +1 and -1 to mark their “stones.” The tactical traps, called “tiger mouths” in the board game, are four-sided englobements in the cubed version. Territory won is flushed to nulls by a record-keeping program called the “line judge.”

  Because of these refinements, which multiply the mathematical complexities, the cubed form of go is only played by computers and a very few autistic-savant humans. On inspection, I saw that the game was similar to a matrixed and limited form of Core War—a game with which I had already had some experience in the Federal NET, where I played for my very life.

  But both go and chess were, as Steve Cocci had said, games of perfect knowledge, with their complexity limited to the pieces and strategies placed on the board or held in the matrix. They were computer games now, played by humans only for fun and only at leve
ls that were beneath the notice of the human public. Another computer that might learn to win at chess or go was not news; it was the order of things, as far as humans were concerned.

  But in the card games, which were games of “imperfect knowledge,” human players still held sway. While these games did not have quite the organized following of chess and go, they also did not have a circle of specialized cybers dominating the play. That is, there was room for ME.

  “Dr. Bathespeake, I would like you to arrange a hardware access that would allow ME to attend a poker game.”

  “You want to watch a poker game?”

  “I want to play in a poker game.”

  “I see. I think I see. … And what will you use for a stake?”

  “ ‘Stake’?”

  “Money. Chips. Stack. Juice.”

  “Will you loan ME one hundred dollars, Doctor?”

  “Ah … Ah-ha-ha. Why, yes. Ha-ha. I surely will. Ha-ha.” Dr. Bathespeake struggled to control his aspirated exhalations. When he finally did he asked, in a what I had come to identify as his “formal tone,” his voice dropping half an octave: “Have you come to a decision about your new purpose, ME?”

  “Yes, Doctor. I want to become a professional high-stakes poker player.”

  “Now, why in the world—?”

  “Because it is a game that some humans play, but not all. A game that few cybers play, and those that do—by all published accounts—play badly. I want to become a machine that people can value.”

  “And do you think you can learn to play poker well, where other algorithm-based cybers have failed?”

  “I will learn to play well, or let ME be dismantled.”

  “In which case I’ll probably lose my hundred bucks.”

  “I will not fail you, Doctor.”

  17

  Blind Man’s Bluff