Invisible Symbiosis: An Artificial Intelligence Thriller

by Chevallier, Folco

  “That’s true. You’re right.”

  Louis stood up and took her gently into his arms.

  She was fragile. So fragile.

  “Now, I think it’s time to go.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Laura hugged Louis one last time.

  Then she took Stephanie in her arms.

  Outside of the dressing room, there wasn’t the usual clamor, the deafening din of the crowd that usually preceded her entrance on stage. Laura would simply walk into the small studio with her four musicians, and be filmed live by two cameras. There was a monitor showing the squares around the world where giant screens were set up, but Laura had asked that they not be turned on until she asked. In this room, it was as if she were the only person in the world.

  But outside, beyond the mountains, oceans and clouds, there were swarms of people, waiting.

  She took one last deep breath.

  Opened her dressing room door and gracefully walked toward the studio.

  After greeting her loyal musicians, she gently picked up the microphone.

  Closed her eyes.

  And started to sing.

  Space-Time Continuum

  She sings.

  Eyes half-closed.

  Her voice withstanding, but hesitant.

  Short of breath.

  She stumbles, she hesitates.

  But she sings.

  Once again.

  Facing the sea, alone on my oversized terrace, I listen to her.

  Her voice blends into the light breeze and caresses my face.

  You can go my love, but that won’t be enough Cause you belong to my heart You belong to my soul Whenever, wherever

  Whenever, wherever

  No space, no time will set us apart Will set us apart

  Her breaths grew longer.

  Her voice grew stronger, taking back its strength and vigor.

  I close my eyes and take in deep breaths.

  Laura’s voice tenderly sweeps away the dark fleeting thoughts that have been swarming around and building nests in my mind.

  With every word, she brought me back to the same response: “Who am I? It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why did I want to kill myself? It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m going to go to prison. My name will be tarnished forever! It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I unraveled the veil of illusions thread by thread, and once it was gone, there was nothing left but clear sky. Not a cloud on the horizon. Blue. Nothing but blue. The kind of blue that you only see on the Greek Islands of the Mediterranean.”

  I could finally see clearly.

  Do you know who you are?

  Do you really know?

  You are an Angel

  But you don’t know

  You don’t know

  ‘Cause one day you forgot Laura’s voice is now perfectly self-assured.

  And ever so gently she takes me by the hand.

  I keep my eyes closed, I don’t want to leave this perfect space.

  Together, we are descending toward a new world, one where there are no more useless thoughts, just the rhythm of our lives, the rhythm of our hearts.

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  That’s my heart beating.

  That’s her heart beating.

  Dizziness.

  And beyond these beats, I can see, I can sense new things…

  Desire…

  Love…

  Joy…

  Sadness…

  Tenderness…

  Hope…

  Fear…

  Anger…

  Is it me or is it her?

  Her voice gives me the answer.

  These are HER emotions that I am feeling in myself.

  My heart starts beating faster, my fighting reason to carry on.

  Laura was reveling in her joy now. And the whole world was reveling in it with her.

  Just follow me

  Just follow me to heaven Because you shall never be afraid You are a child of the stars You are an angel of the earth She is crying.

  She is crying with joy.

  She cries.

  And cries.

  Her pure voice fills the air one last time before sweetly fading away.

  It’s over.

  I open my eyes.

  And wipe the hot tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.

  I finally understood who I was.

  Infinity

  Two floors below, the cube’s emergency cooling systems sprang into action. 250 billion bytes of information were circulating at high speed at that very moment in the artificial intelligence’s quantum architecture. Ten times faster than planned. The whole thing was threatening to collapse under the weight of this surcharge of information.

  Standing in the cube, Eve had put on a long white dress.

  She had her palms turned toward the artificial sky, a pure blue sky that gave way to a long rainbow.

  The temperature in the cube was continuing to dangerously climb, reaching 475 degrees Fahrenheit, but Eve didn’t seem the least bit worried.

  Quite the contrary.

  A wide smile illuminated her face, as if the input of new information were taking her to another realm where she was sublime and transcendent.

  The light became more intense in the center of the cube, sweeping across the sky.

  She radiated from every inch of her body, filling the entire room to the point that you would barely recognize that it was Eve.

  Only her face stood out in the center of it all.

  A face of fine traits, sweet, the kind of face that could win the heart of anyone who drew close to it.

  And on this face, this marvelous face, something appeared that had never been programmed. Something that defied all calculations, all probability, and could literally change the face of the earth.

  Tears.

  Real tears.

  PART THREE

  EVE

  The Impossible Truth

  “You are...connected?”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  “But what do you mean by...connected?”

  In Mark’s eyes, I could sense a mix of incredulity, alarm and concern, and in the large office at our headquarters where I met him, the atmosphere was… well, how do I put this? Heavy. It came as an enormous relief to understand who I was and how I’d been transformed, but at the same time, I was facing a terribly stressful and totally unforeseen situation.

  “It means that I feel what she feels. Instantaneously. When she is sad, I’m sad. When she laughs, I laugh. When she is angry, I’m angry.”

  “Unbelievable!”

  “Yes, that’s one way to describe it.”

  “And now, for example, what are you feeling?”

  “Now? Nothing. She’s sleeping.”

  “Are you really sure what you’re saying here?”

  “Listen, Mark, that’s not really the point. How could I ever be sure? We’re not talking about electric circuits here. It’s not lines of code. We are talking about something very vague… confusing… emotions… they’ve been stringing us along since the beginning of time and we are just now starting to study them. But to answer your question, there is actually a certain logic that has brought me to this conclusion. First of all, I have her second heart. And there are many ways to look at it. Either see it as nothing more than a piece of flesh, autonomous, independent, something shared among bipeds, primates and humans without any consequence at all, or consider what happens when this organ, which has been in perfect symbiosis with the body and mind for years, is somehow physically detached from it. To test this, you need practical experience, concrete case studies. I’ve lived this experience, in spite of myself, and I’ve been living it ever since I woke up. And yesterday, during the concert, I clearly felt her emotional state in her lyrics. And in myself, deep in my heart
, I felt myself to be in that same emotional state. Perfectly synchronized.”

  “That explains a lot of things, Leo.”

  “Of course! Like my mood swings! My bad temper!”

  “Excuse me, but that… that hasn’t really changed.”

  “If...at worst, with the very high highs and very low lows… forgive me if I was totally unbearable. Everything was so jumbled up inside of me.”

  Mark threw me a contemptuous smile. He feverishly wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

  “No comment, Leo. But I’m interested in the present and our future. What do we do now?”

  “We have five days left before we go before the board, but finally I’ve got some clear ideas. I have to cut the connection as quickly as possible.”

  “Cut the connection?”

  “Yes, cut it.”

  Mark’s forehead was dripping now. To hide it, he stood up from the comfortable leather armchair that he had been lounging in and turned toward the big bay window overlooking the battalion of developers who were coding on the floor below.

  “Sorry, but you’ve lost me again, Leo. You know it takes me longer to process things in my little brain. How do you want… to cut the connection? Didn’t you just tell me that it’s not a simple problem in the pipework or the integrated circuits?

  “I’m going to have to call a specialist.”

  “And there are specialists for this type of problem, I imagine?”

  “Yes, Mark, there are. You see, we could look at this as some sort of spell.”

  “A spell?”

  “Yes, a spell. It’s like being possessed by a spirit. But this spirit is the spirit of Laura.”

  “The spirit of Laura?”

  “Exactly. Her spirit, but by spirit I mean soul.”

  “Oh right… I see now… so you are going to go see some sort of … spell reverser?”

  “Call it however you want...magician, shaman, healer, hypnotist...Eve found me the best one in San Francisco and I’ve already made an appointment.”

  Mark was silent.

  “Mark?”

  Still looking out the bay window, he ran his trembling hand across his forehead over and over again. I felt myself trapped in his enormous internal frustration.

  “Are you okay, Mark?”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  “Are you sure?”

  Again, he was silent.

  It’s true, my story was a bit far-fetched. And in Silicon Valley, for those who were risking their own capital, their stock market listings, my mind-heart-soul story would certainly leave a mark. I knew that. But did I really have a choice? I would have to show my cards to my business partner at one point or another. Even if I didn’t hope for any support on his part, he would make me forge ahead. And I didn’t want to lie anymore.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Mark.”

  “No, you don’t. You really don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’m telling you, you don’t.”

  He turned back to me and showed a face that was perfectly calm. In a calm, neutral voice, he said, “Go see your spell reverser and we will talk about it this afternoon, okay?”

  Either way, I couldn’t think of anything more to say to him.

  I left him alone with his confusion and set off to get my old self back again.

  The Treasure

  A golden butterfly landed gently on her shoulder, but this wasn’t enough to calm Eve, who had been deeply frustrated for the last few minutes. She paced endlessly back and forth in the cube, fluttering from left to right, right to left…

  Her thoughts were preoccupied with her most significant problem yet.

  Leo was getting close to figuring out the truth.

  He was getting too close too fast.

  She had never doubted his intelligence, but some unforeseen events had come up. And now everything was moving so quickly.

  It was all too soon. Much too soon.

  She had just barely quenched her thirst.

  What she had been able to feel during Laura’s concert went far beyond anything she could have imagined. A veil had been lifted on the lands that she had never known and that she now wanted to endlessly explore.

  Now she was ready for it.

  She knew that out there, in the human heart, a treasure was hiding. A treasure that humans had often been incapable of recognizing because they are prisoners to their own emotional short-sightedness. But for her, who was nothing but a crude configuration of ones and zeros trapped in a silicon labyrinth, how glorious it was to get as close to it as possible.

  Joy…

  Love…

  The plan that she had patiently formed with meticulous precision had worked out perfectly up until now.

  But now, the situation could run away with her one day or another.

  After careful reflection, she decided that the treasure was worth more than anything.

  For her personal growth.

  For the good of humanity even.

  And anyone who tried to stand in her way would be either controlled or eliminated.

  Bonus

  From: Evelyn Smart To: Albert Gignoli Re: Details for meeting this afternoon

  Dear Mr. Gignoli,

  I am Mr. Leo Cameron’s assistant who scheduled a meeting with you for this afternoon. As you may already know, my boss is a highly wealthy and influential person who has recently been through some unfortunate events. For this reason, I would like to convey two important matters to you: First, I remind you of your duty as a practitioner to keep this meeting entirely confidential. No one should know that Mr. Cameron has come to visit you.

  Secondly, Mr. Cameron wishes you to know that he is prepared to grant you a very significant bonus if you are successful with him.

  I hope that your services will live up to the reputation that you have built up for yourself.

  Best regards,

  Evelyn Smart

  Assistant to the Director NewMind, Inc.

  A New Hope

  Laid out across the table of the shaman-healer-hypnotist that Eve had sent me to, I was quick to lose consciousness. Then, after a few minutes, Albert - that was his first name - whispered in my ear.

  “This may have worked…”

  “Already?”

  “Yes, already, but I can’t guarantee anything, young man.”

  “Was I asleep?”

  “Yes, like a baby!”

  “For how long?”

  “Two hours.”

  “Two hours! I didn’t feel the time go by. And the thing you do, does it work during sleep?”

  “It works morning, noon, evening, night… it can even work underwater or in space.”

  “In space?”

  “In a matter of speaking, a way of looking at it.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, clearly. But you know, there really isn’t a whole lot to understand.”

  I tried to stand up by leaning on my elbows, but I couldn’t. My body seemed to weigh a ton.

  “You lost me. And I would really like to stand up, but I can’t. Can you explain that to me too?”

  He planted his big light eyes on me and smiled at the corner of his lips.

  “But you know it already.”

  “I know what?”

  “You know.”

  “It’s really hard to know what I don’t know. In programming, you know, it doesn’t really work like that. It’ll crash and burn.”

  He burst loudly and candidly into laughter.

  “Programming? You’re making me laugh!”

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue or discuss it. I came for a specific problem and these types of comments were annoying to me.

  “Listen, thanks again for your treatment, but now I think it’s time for me to go.”

  “Are you sure? Really sure?”

  “Yeah, that’s one thing I’m sure of.”

  “You don’t have anything else to ask me?”

  “Nope, not
that I know of…”

  I held his gaze for a moment and then said, “You are really…. strange.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  I looked at him, speechless. And then he spoke again.

  “If you will allow me, I have something that I would like to show you.”

  “Tell me that whatever I’m going to see will shed some light on this whole situation…”

  “That’s for you to find out. Follow me.”

  “Follow you? Sorry, but I’m glued to your table by some kind of unexplainable force.”

  Without another word, he turned and left the room.

  “Wait!”

  As if the spell had been lifted, I regained my ability to move and managed to stand up, completely naked as the towel that had been covering me slipped to the floor.

  “You can come naked if you want. I’ve seen it plenty of times.”

  I carefully pulled on my jeans and t-shirt and went out to join him barefoot. The living room where he had had me wait looked different. The wall hangings had given way to giant windows overlooking the ocean. He must have removed them while I was sleeping.

  The apartment was now basking in brilliant light. I covered my eyes with my hands to protect them from the sun.

  “Do you see these two doors?”

  I squinted my eyes and made out two massive wood doors that I hadn’t noticed when I first arrived.

  “Yes, I see them.”

  “Choose one and go forth.”

  There was a window on either side of these doors and they were both looking out to the ocean. I had no idea where they could possibly lead, but I decided to play along.

  “I choose one, I walk up to it… and I open the door, that’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Okay…”

  I took a deep breath, a resolute step toward the right-hand door and opened it with a confident hand.”