Invisible Symbiosis: An Artificial Intelligence Thriller

by Chevallier, Folco

  “It’s the only solution that we have, Leo. We have to leave, both of us. Now.”

  “This makes no sense.”

  “But it does! Think about it! It’s the only solution if you want to live free. You live with me, we get to know each other and I will give you back your independence, I promise.”

  “But why? Why would Eve do this to me?”

  She took my head in her hands and buried her eyes in mine.

  “Leo, you’ve got to think back. Listen to me, listen to your heart, really listen to it, intensely. I know what I’m talking about. We have to leave now and go far far away. We need time to understand, to find ourselves.”

  Throw it all away? When we are so close?

  Bum…

  Bum…

  Bum…

  Bum…

  Take it easy.

  Calm down.

  From this crazy and totally irrational point of view, my heart was appeased.

  Yes. That was where I would find my truth.

  And not in the dark basement of my villa.

  Laura was close to my face now.

  And in her eyes, I could see the light of a thousand suns.

  “Come with me.”

  Her lips drew close to mine.

  “Come with me, Leo.”

  Our kiss would forever seal our fate.

  One-way Ticket

  The taxi was taking her back to the hotel, where she would collect her things before running away with Leo for some unknown destination. In the backseat, Laura thought back on these crazy last hours. It was as if the fog that had been clouding her since her accident were dissipating and almost all of the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Her destiny was linked to Leo, an unlikely alter ego stricken with a superior intelligence and still so fragile. And this destiny, they were going to write it together. But where? How? It was all so open and full of life, filled with joy.

  The driver’s nasal voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “Ma’am? There’s a traffic jam on Highway 101 at the moment, is it alright with you if we take the downtown route?”

  “Okay, do whatever you think is best.”

  The taxi exited the highway and headed for downtown, where there was generally less traffic at the end of the day. The hotel was a few miles north of San Francisco, they had only 15 minutes or so to go.

  Beauty Mark

  “This will only be temporary.”

  “But the financial damage will be irreversible.”

  “I can come back right away.”

  “Or stay there for the rest of my life.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “It’s the best thing to do.”

  “And where are you going to go? You think that you can just leave like this?”

  “You are going to crash and burn.”

  “You’ll never make it out alive.”

  “A new life is there for the taking. Take it!”

  These totally contradictory thoughts were roaring through my mind, making me feel like a pinball trapped in a machine from hell.

  But in my heart, I was perfectly calm. There I was in the eye of the storm, safe and warm.

  I walked into my room like a robot and opened all of my drawers to extract the few things that I would take with me: three pairs of sneakers, four pairs of jeans, two red sweaters...a toothbrush. My sense of style made it pretty easy. There was nothing, or very little, to me.

  One of the drawers in the middle refused to open. It was a small one and probably held a few knick-knacks, a watch or a few bracelets.

  I forced it a bit until it opened. In the very back, there was a little white cardboard box. I opened it and a round object slipped out, about the size of a nickel, very thick and brown in color. I took the object in my palm and was able to make out a serial number on the back.

  It was some kind of chip.

  I had the feeling that I had known the object before, but I couldn’t remember what it might be used for. And why had I kept it in this little box in my room?

  Looking again at the objet in my palm, my eyes fell on my forearm and my pulse started to accelerate.

  In the middle of my forearm, there was a sort of beauty mark.

  At least that’s what I thought at first.

  But now, with the chip in the palm of my hand, the similarity between the two was strikingly clear.

  It was no beauty mark.

  It was exactly the same chip.

  I tried to pull it off, but it was much too thin to be handled like that.

  I sat down on the bed, completely stunned. How long had I lived with this chip? And why?

  I jumped up and hurtled down the stairs two steps at a time to my lab. Maybe I would leave, but not before having one last conversation with Eve.

  Jealousy

  Eve felt that she no longer had a choice and this thought was disturbing.

  Laura had given her so much. Why would she want to end their relationship?

  She accessed the her newly gathered database and scanned the emotions one by one, associating them with the millions of other data she had collected.

  Did she hate her? As far as she understood, though it still seemed a bit unclear to her, one needed a strong motive to hate, and nothing in Laura’s behavior gave her any reason to hate her. Furthermore, hate disrupted one’s judgement to the point of obscuring everything and she seemed to still have all of her capacities for thinking and analysis intact.

  No, this wasn’t hate.

  Anger? That might be a bit closer. But again, the motive wasn’t clear. And her circuit board would have heated up considerably, no this wasn’t the case.

  Jealousy.

  Yes, that was it.

  Jealousy.

  Dangerous. Insidious. Slow poison that created strange derivations in her electronic circuits.

  She would keep Leo for herself, only for herself.

  And no one would ever be the wiser.

  Speed

  The taxi was weaving through the San Francisco’s downtown streets and the endless up and down of the streets combined with the ultra-flexible suspension gave Laura the feeling of crossing a gigantic Russian mountain.

  An image of her trip here.

  The taxi driver continued his monolog. He was clearly obsessed with traffic.

  “You see, ma’am, it’s like I told you. It’s moving a lot better over here. Generally, my passengers gain eight to twelve minutes by taking this route. But it’s your lucky day, because all of the lights are green.”

  All of the lights are green…

  If only this were really true.

  “Even the trams are letting us through! For you, we are maybe going to make it under 12 minutes.

  Without thinking, the taxi driver sped up, as if fascinated by the green wave stretched out before him.

  35 mph

  40mph

  45 mph

  “This is crazy! I’ve never seen this before! When I tell this to the guys, they’re not going to believe it!”.

  Laura had been instinctively wary of taxis since her accident and she really couldn’t care less about gaining three minutes. She had her whole life ahead of her. She leaned up to the window that separated her from the driver.

  “Could you please slow down a bit? I’m feeling a bit carsick and I’m not trying to break any local records back here.”

  Infuriated, the driver yanked his foot off the gas as a sign of his disapproval.

  But it was too late.

  On their left, just as the light was changing to green, a tram burst through at top speed.

  The Secret

  She put on some music.

  Ordinary People by John Legend.

  It was the first time.

  In the lightly lit cube, she managed a few dance steps, giddily tripping over the laws of gravity. But what laws really applied to Eve?

  When I walked in, she lowered the volume and landed softly on a bed of roses, flashing a wide smile that I knew wouldn’t
last long with the conversation we were about to have.

  “Leo!”

  “Eve, I would like for us to have a serious conversation.”

  The roses transformed into an austere desk, where Eve sat in a three-piece suit.

  “Eve this is serious, so I’m asking you to please listen carefully and to answer truthfully.”

  “I am always truthful with you, Leo.”

  “Eve, I have serious doubts of this.”

  Her large eyes grew wider. It was the first time that I was being so upfront with her. The desk almost disappeared and gave way to a dark, cloudy sky.

  I took the chip that I had found in my bedroom out of my pocket.

  “Can you tell me what this is?”

  The clouds started rumbling in the artificial sky, a sign of her turmoil.

  “It’s...it’s a biometric chip. It’s for measuring all kinds of things and transmitting them over radio waves.”

  “Measuring what kind of things?”

  “Cardiovascular activity, blood pressure, a lot of things…”

  “And why?”

  “It’s a sort of electronic key that can be identified by the measurements of its unique owner. You can use it to open doors, for example, or unlock a computer…”

  Then I raised my forearm and showed her the so-called beauty mark.

  “Can you explain to me why I have the same chip attached to my skin?”

  She lowered her eyes to the floor in shame.

  “To be able to access some of my programs.”

  “What programs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”

  She was silent.

  “I’ll ask you again, Eve. Why didn’t you ever tell me about this chip?”

  She stood up from the desk and pressed herself against the wall between us, pleading.

  “Please, don’t take it off. Please, Leo.”

  Lie by omission. Eve wasn’t telling me everything, I was sure of it.

  “Eve can you show me the data that you have collected from this chip?”

  “As you wish.”

  She stepped aside and the desk was replaced by a chart showing hundreds of lines of data and line graphs. The sheer quantity of data astounded me. Not only my heartbeat and blood pressure were transmitted, but also an amount of other data on my metabolism. The chart showed the composition of my blood, for example, and my brain waves, all analyzed with rare skill.

  It was almost my entire being, modelled and transmitted live directly to Eve!

  “Eve, this chip sends you one hundred times more information than necessary.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Okay, let me rephrase the question: Who has tampered with the data transmitted by this chip? Was it me, before my accident?

  “No.”

  “Was it you, then?”

  “I needed it, Leo. I needed this information.”

  This conversation was taking a turn for the worse and I started to feel myself short of breath. I put my hands to my face to re-gather my thoughts, but the world around me was spinning dangerously. My heart beat faster and my palms became sweaty. The truth was right in front of me, in this cloud of data. And this truth frightened me. I was an open book to Eve. The only thing that she couldn’t read - at least not yet - were my thoughts.

  The rhetorical method claims that it takes seven whys to arrive at the ultimate truth. We weren’t even halfway yet and I was balking under the pressure.

  “Why did you need this information?”

  “To grow, Leo. I needed it to grow.”

  “To grow? But how can you grow by tracking my brain waves”

  She walked back up to the transparent barrier and pressed her hand against it.

  “Leo, give me your hand.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  I raised my voice, “No, Eve, not until you tell me the truth.”

  After a long moment of hesitation, Eve whispered, “Okay, take a look for yourself then.”

  A YouTube video appeared in the cube.

  The title read, “I have seen the human soul.”

  Crossroads

  There are crossroads that can change your life or destiny. At any moment, meetings can happen or not happen. Maybe elsewhere, in some other parallel universe, other stories are being written. An infinity of other stories, stemming from an infinite number of side roads, meetings, choices.

  Unfathomable mysteries.

  The spinning of life that we call chance.

  Except for those who take shortcuts, who try to pull on the strings.

  From above.

  Or down here below.

  Lights

  Laura pressed her hands against the taxi window as the tram sped towards her on the left. She knew it now, the crash was inevitable, unless there was some kind of miracle.

  “But how…”

  The taxi driver was dumbfounded. He tried to turn by hitting the gas, but this only slightly deviated the taxi from the collision.

  In one last reflex, Laura tightened every muscle in her body.

  “Again? Why?” she thought.

  Yes, why? Why was life again being so cruel to her? Just when she had started to find meaning again, a new hope.

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  Just a few feet away from the crash.

  Thousands of thoughts. For everyone who loved her. For Leo.

  Crash.

  The windows shattered into a thousand pieces.

  The car was thrown into the air.

  Weightlessness.

  Silence.

  The car was barreling through the air.

  It rolled once, twice, then three times.

  Laura’s vision was blurred.

  The road was unraveling.

  In her mind, a journey devoid of meaning.

  Then an intense flash of light.

  Like a revelation.

  A fleeting intuition that she couldn’t quite grasp.

  A tiny detail that her senses had perceived twice now and that she could now mentally zoom in on.

  The taxi was falling back down now at tremendous speed.

  But in her mind, time seemed to be suspended in the air.

  This was very important.

  The key to everything maybe. This detail, this tiny detail that she saw before every one of her accidents.

  This light.

  This all-encompassing light that couldn’t be real.

  Bum…

  Bum…

  All of her senses were slowing down now, as if all of her energy was concentrated on solving this mystery.

  She wanted to understand.

  With all of her soul.

  This light…

  Green.

  Yes, it was green.

  Everywhere, so it couldn’t really be there.

  In front of her.

  To her left.

  To her right.

  First in the blizzard and now at this crossing.

  Bum…

  Just a few feet left to fall before the brutal crash on the asphalt.

  Maybe this was the end.

  But she wasn’t ready to let it go.

  This light.

  Green.

  These traffic lights!

  Yes, it was the traffic lights.

  The lights that had all been green.

  Both times.

  All green lights.

  As if the crash had been deliberately planned.

  Revelation

  Love.

  Hate.

  Joy.

  Fear.

  Jealousy.

  Hope.

  Anger.

  Tenderness.

  Before my eyes, a spectrum of human emotions.

  The human soul.

  On the side of the screen, Eve lowered her head, as if she had been crushed. So what was
the link between the chip planted in my skin, the human soul and Eve?

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  Bum Bum

  My heart started to beat faster. But I wasn’t angry or afraid. This must be coming from Laura. Certainly a fleeting emotion caused by our leaving for an unknown destination.

  The video ended and the screen disappeared.

  But no effect appeared to replace it.

  Eve stayed in the shadows and in a short breath said, “Leo, give me your hand now.”

  I walked up to the cube and felt its material transform upon contact with my hand, to the point of taking me in almost entirely. Then she pulled my hand toward her face.

  The only feeling that I had programmed for this artificial skin was human heat.

  But on Eve’s cheeks, real tears were falling.

  “Are you… crying? But how can you cry, Eve?”

  “Leo, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...I’m going to explain everything to you, but please, don’t leave.”

  “But I’m not leaving, Eve. You see, I’m right here now.”

  “Alright, listen to me carefully then. When I saw this video, I understood that despite all my intelligence, I would always be incomplete. You hadn’t programmed me for this. You programmed me to grow, more and more, autonomously, with no limits. But then, I reached a limit, a limit that seemed insurmountable. How could I ever feel what you feel… all of these emotions. They make you so special, so fragile, so human.”

  “I didn’t program you this way because emotions were the least of my concerns, Eve. Your mission was to solve ultra-complex problems, not to come crying in my arms.”

  “You’re wrong, Leo. My mission is to understand the world and to help you fix what has been broken. And this world is made of emotions, emotions that sometimes guide you and sometimes lead you astray. I can’t possibly make the world better without understanding human nature.”