And now, despite his young years, Jonas was already one of the leading roboticists of the Terran Planetary Union.
With his right hand, Jonas carefully reached into the open flap on the front of the robot lying on the lab bench in front of him and inserted the latest model of the emotioprocessor he had developed.
“The big moment,” said Genia, who was standing next to him. “You’ve been working toward this for two years.”
“And I couldn’t have done it without you!” He gently squeezed Genia’s right hand with his left. Even though they were very close, they were not in a relationship. Jonas wouldn’t have minded—Genia was an extremely attractive woman of his age, and he certainly had feelings for her—but she had been involved with his best friend for almost three years. Jonas wouldn’t have dreamed of interfering in that relationship. He liked Genia and Rolgar too much for that.
However, if his best friend did not make any effort to ask Genia the decisive question in the near future, he would first speak to his friend’s conscience and then reconsider his position.
Again Jonas smiled slightly, but this time not at the thought of an event from his past, but of one that might instead lie in the future.
With a soft click, the new chip snapped into its holder. Jonas pulled his hand out of the robot, closed the maintenance door, and sighed. Then he looked at Genia. “Do you want to start it up?” he asked.
“Are you serious?” Genia looked at him in amazement. “It’s your work that went into that thing.”
“I would be honored if you would be the first to activate the chip.”
Her smile could have melted even Titan. “Thank you! That’s very... sweet of you!”
Genia looked at Jonas again questioningly and, after he had nodded in confirmation, put a finger on the touch-sensitive button beside the robot’s maintenance door.
A low hum sounded from the robot as the hardware booted up. Then its eyes opened.
“Basic activation done. Awaiting input.”
“Activate test mode,” Jonas commanded.
“Test mode activated.”
The voice sounded almost human, but that wasn’t what made this prototype so special.
Hopefully, what will make it special, Jonas thought.
It was not yet certain whether the years of research had paid off. Natural-sounding voices in robots were just a question of finances. High-quality voice modulators cost lots of money. The underlying software, on the other hand, was trivial.
What should make this robot special was not its human-like voice—it should be its human-like behavior. Its emotional intelligence!
No artificial intelligence worthy of the name had ever been created. Although the human brain had been analyzed down to the last atom, the countless connections of its synapses mapped, and each of its electrical connections measured down to the last detail, every attempt to reproduce it in an artificial version had failed miserably. Even the most advanced robots were unable to react to complex scenarios with appropriate emotional feedback, which continued to severely limit their areas of application.
So far!
Jonas hoped to have taken the first step toward real AI with his work.
But he was well aware of the limitations of an AI. Even if he succeeded in making not only human thinking but also human feelings understandable to it, any behavior arising from software would always remain the result of mathematical calculations and simulated sensations.
Robots were not living beings. They were not real! Therefore they could never be conscious of themselves and ‘feel’ real feelings. They could only analyze and simulate them, nothing more. The emotional intelligence Jonas hoped would be simulated by his newly developed processor would not be the product of real feelings, but merely the result of highly complex algorithms.
Robots would inevitably always remain artificial beings and always be in the service of humans. A robot had no soul, and it would never have one!
“Get up!” ordered Jonas.
The robot lifted its upper body, swung its legs over the edge of the table, and slowly and carefully slid down from the lab table. When its feet finally touched the floor, it stood in front of Genia and Jonas without wavering.
“Who are you?”
“Test unit 23 dash 3008,” the robot replied without hesitation. It was the 23rd test subject in 3008 A.D. The first 22 previous versions of Jonas’s emotioprocessor had failed.
“Self-analysis. Basic functions only.”
A few seconds passed before the robot answered.
“Test unit 23 dash 3008 in optimum function mode. Energy storage at one hundred percent. Cognitive processors at seventeen percent utilization. Emotioprocessor at eighty-three percent utilization.”
Genia looked at Jonas in surprise.
“Why does he have such a high utilization of the e-processor?” she wondered aloud.
Jonas couldn’t explain it, either. The emotioprocessor was his invention, the part they were standing here for. ‘T23,’ as they had christened the robot, was the specimen in which the once-again-revised emotioprocessor was to be tested, in its—hopefully—final version. The previous versions had either failed completely or had not entirely produced the desired result: a robot’s emotional reactions to external stimuli, indistinguishable from those of a human. But none of them had shown such a high workload already at the beginning of the testing process.
Jonas feared that this test would fail again, because now came the critical phase. The robot would have to give answers that could no longer be calculated with strict logic. They required self-reflection, which required a functioning emotioprocessor!
“How are you doing?” asked Jonas.
Again, a few seconds passed before T23 answered. “I... I’m... confused.”
“Confused? Activate analysis mode: describe the term ‘confused.’”
The request to go into analysis mode blocked the emotioprocessor until the opposite command was given so that emotions—even artificial ones—could not interfere with a factual analysis.
Immediately, the robot’s voice also changed audibly. It now sounded less modulated and much more technical. Colder.
“Confusion. Conflicting input/output pairs. Unpredictable cognitive response to input data. Different, unpredictable output parameters given repeated and identical input parameters.”
Jonas nodded with satisfaction. At this point, all previous test robots had failed. Either they had no longer been able to analyze themselves and had gone berserk with a kind of ‘robotic psychosis,’—which meant that they no longer obeyed any command and had to be forcibly shut down because they could no longer bring input and output into a coordinated relationship—or their electronic brains had been overloaded by the self-reinforcing resonance process and had ultimately burned out.
“Enable test mode.”
“Test mode activated.”
“What do you feel?”
Again, a few seconds passed. “I... I don’t have input. I don’t have a reference.”
Jonas sighed again. It didn’t work quite as he had hoped a moment ago. At least the thing hadn’t burned out right away and was still working. But the input/output nexus didn’t seem to couple correctly with the emotional resonance circuit.
Then he had an idea. A crazy idea. “What would make you happy?”
Genia looked at him curiously. They had not discussed this question in the briefing before the test run.
This time the answer was immediate. “To have a purpose. To be useful.”
“Why?” asked Jonas.
“Because... Isn’t it my destiny to serve my creators?”
“Where did that thought come from?”
“I infer that from my basic programming.”
“But why would it make you happy?”
“Because it gives meaning to my existence. I serve, therefore I am!”
55th of Nahn, 299
She woke up because someone touched her beak.
“Good
morning!” Norok greeted her.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Six hours,” sounded from the translator.
Tolkut hung on the ceiling above her as if only moments had passed. Kimi wondered if he had been asleep, too. “Where did you come from?” she asked.
“We were at the end. I mean, at the end of the ship, at the locks. Then we turned back. Through Tolkut’s markings, we found you quickly. You haven’t progressed very far, have you?”
“It’s deceiving,” she said, “Tolkut has found his way to the core.”
“Core? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does.” She explained to Norok what they had found out about the structure of the Sphere.
“Then it takes the crew days to get from headquarters to the airlock,” Norok said. “That seems pretty ineffective to me.”
“There are probably shortcuts that have been added after the fact. We just haven’t found them yet.”
“Why after the fact?”
“We believe that the Sphere grew naturally. That would also fit the shell structure. The ship grew like a snail from the inner chamber outward. Then they added what they needed to be able to use the Sphere as a spacecraft.”
Although this theory had only occurred to her while presenting it to Norok, it seemed surprisingly comprehensible to her.
“Maybe that’s what happened. I’m sure Mart could clear it up. Hopefully, he’ll be back soon.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to have to manage without him.”
With Kasfok and Tolkut teamed up, they made much faster progress. The two former opponents took turns, which enabled them to concentrate better. Meanwhile, Norok explored the adjacent rooms. Finding the control center would not be enough. If they wanted to use the Sphere as a spaceship, they also needed food and shelter.
Kasfok stumbled across the ceiling. Now and then a scale would fall. Tolkut had explained to them that this was a sign of the soon-approaching molt. Kasfok could not drag out the process indefinitely. Eventually—and soon—his chitinous shell would separate from his naked flesh, leaving him helpless and freezing. Therefore, a Mendrak would make himself a cocoon of silk.
“The ship is really puzzling,” Norok said.
“Why?”
“All those many rooms, they’re almost empty.”
“There must have once been a great many people. Where might they have disappeared to?”
“Mart could enlighten us. But it could still turn out to be a stroke of luck that he’s gone.”
“A stroke of luck? Only he knows how we can deal with these Artificials.”
“Think about it. All he did was advise us to escape. He didn’t even offer to help us with his ship. I bet the humans got us into this trouble, and all Mart can do is send us away. But now his ship is ours. We could probably fit a fifth of our people here.”
“I guess half of the rooms belong to the Mendraki,” sounded from the loudspeaker.
Norok had placed the translator on the floor so that Kasfok could hear their conversation. “You have functional ships with wormhole drives that you can use to get to safety,” he said.
“Not enough. We would have to leave a large part of the Mendraki behind. That’s why we’re going to divide the ship.”
“This is unfair!” Norok complained.
If only this Mart would come back! Now would be a good moment. Mendraki and Iks had respect for him.
Tolkut came in. He danced the steps of the questions. “I smell trouble,” he said.
He meant that literally. Kimi knew that the Mendraki also expressed their opinions through scents. Unfortunately, her own scent sensors, on the left and right at the base of her beak, were too insensitive for this part of the communication.
“Can’t you agree on a common thread?” asked Tolkut. “There are more important things than arguing right now.”
“This is an important issue,” Norok said. “We need to address it.”
“Later,” Tolkut objected from the translator. “Right now, let’s investigate the headquarters.”
“You mean we should keep looking for the headquarters?” asked Kimi.
It was impossible that they had already reached the center. The force of gravity was still much too great for that. Near the center of the Sphere, there had to be weightlessness. Probably the translator had made a mistake.
“No,” Tolkut said, “we’ve already found it. It starts behind the next door.”
It starts? What was that supposed to mean? She had to see for herself. She entered the room from which Tolkut had come. On the opposite wall was a rectangular black hole, slightly larger than a full-grown Iks.
Kimi stepped closer. It was not a hole but a door, and there was no blackness behind it, only darkness. She held her right wing into the opening, but she felt no current. The center had to be as filled with air as this brightly lit room. Someone had probably just turned off the lights. She leaned forward, and immediately her tail feathers began to itch. She would have liked to throw herself into the depths. The adventure lured her.
But she had to be reasonable. First they had to figure out how to control the spaceship. Far below her—it must have been 500 wingspans—a few lights flashed. Probably the actual control center was located there. The gigantic space here had to measure about 1,000 wingspans. The Iks population, consisting of approximately 10,000 individuals, could easily be accommodated in this space. For the Mendraki, it did not look quite so good. But surely they could use the space, too, if they stretched appropriate nets.
However, there were significantly more of them. If they wanted to use the Sphere to escape from the system, they would have complex negotiations ahead of them. Mendraki would have to stay behind, which would probably set the warlike souls among them into turmoil. Kimi didn’t want to think about that now.
How had Mart gotten to the control center? As a human, he had to rely on his skinny little legs, so there had to be a way. Maybe an elevator? Kimi couldn’t see anything, but that might be because of the darkness.
“Can I have a turn?”
Norok touched her lightly on the shoulder, and she took a few steps back. Her partner leaned far into the opening. “It’s too dark to see anything.”
He made room for Kasfok. The Mendrak climbed into the black rectangle from the side. Then he suddenly disappeared.
“Kasfok?” cried Norok.
He received no answer. Tolkut quickly moved to the opening.
Hanging, he drummed with his hind legs.
“Kasfok must have swung down a bit on a thread,” Kimi translated.
Then the opening turned reddish. Apparently Kasfok had triggered some kind of motion detector. Tolkut now disappeared into the doorway as well. Kimi held on to the frame and looked down.
Everything had changed in there—the control center now glowed a deep red that radiated from the walls. From the opening, as well as from other doors, paths swung daringly downward. They were encompassed by glittering pathways and followed organic-looking shapes until they encountered a translucent, probably glass sphere in the center that betrayed its existence with a subtle iridescence. It was a beautiful sight—a work of art.
“It’s going to be hard to get down there without any problems,” Norok said.
Typical. Instead of admiring the beauty, Norok pointed out the dark side.
“We’ll manage,” Kimi said.
But Norok was right. They would have to be very careful on the flight down. Of course, they could also take the footpath, but Kimi simply had to fly once again. She hoped that her injured wing would not fail her.
“Tolkut and Kasfok are gone,” Norok said.
“Then let’s see who’s faster.”
“I’m afraid they have an advantage, Kimi. On the direct route, it’s only five hundred wingspans. We, on the other hand, have to fly around lots of obstacles.”
“The deeper they get, the less gravity they have. I guess that will present them with unprecedented probl
ems. But if we wait much longer, they really will be faster.”
Kimi stood at the edge of the opening, bent her knees slightly, closed her wings around her body, and pushed off. She dove headfirst into the red-hot sphere. She had expected to fly in freefall for a few seconds first, picking up speed, only then spreading her wings and finding a way down. Instead, she crashed hard with her rear end against the opening through which she had just jumped, toppled backward, and ended up directly in front of Norok’s feet.
Her partner laughed, and she felt anger rising. “Hey, what are you doing, you featherless chicken?” she scolded, even though she knew she was being unfair.
Norok continued to laugh because he knew her. Her anger quickly faded. It had been her fault, of course. She had given the Mendrak wise advice about gravity but had disregarded the basics. The glittering sphere in the middle of the control center looked as if it were lying at her feet. But in reality it was above them. The illusory force, which gave them the rotation of the Sphere, worked outward. If she wanted to reach the center of the Sphere it was not enough to let herself fall. She had to make an effort and fly upward.
“Now we’re bound to come in last,” she said, “and it’s my fault.”
“The Mendraki will have the same problem. They can’t just let their thread fall upward. They have to shoot it out of their spinnerets, and they certainly won’t make five hundred spans doing that, so they have to make several stages. I’m sure they’ll use the paths that the humans have created for that.”
“Do you want to go first?” asked Kimi. Maybe Norok was not as stupid as she was.
“No, you can react faster than I can. After all, you’re a flight instructor. The main problem is these free-floating paths that wind through the whole sphere like ribbons.”
It was good that he reminded her of her profession. Back when she had trained Niribinu, who had just been chosen to become the next Supreme Mother, she had still been upset about her student’s arrogance.
Downy fluff. Kimikizu stood in the hatch again. Then she grabbed the door frame and shimmied up it. She reached the inside of the Sphere. All around her, it glowed red, but the floor wasn’t hot, not even warm—it was a cold glow. She had never seen anything like it. Kimi spread her wings, jumped off, and flew.
Helium 3: Death from the Past (Helium-3 Book 2) Page 4
