TWISTED DESTINATION - TRIMVIRATE
CHAPTER 8
THE LOTCH’S RESIDENCE
THAT SAME TIME
Steve was a bit nerdish, a bit antisocial, and a bit lonely.
As a matter of fact his life was bits, bytes and binaries. He never had a girlfriend. He tried to date a couple of girls but in his perspective, they were either stupid or too stupid. His grandmother was black and his grandfather was white. His father, who was half black, married a black African girl he met on Campus and they had Steve, a mulatto who liked to consider himself ‘a black man’ although in behaviour, he was as black as his grandfather.
Steve was an ambivert and he always spoke his mind regardless of the consequences. “If I lose my ability to say what I think, suicide will be a pretty straightforward logic option,” He would joke sometimes. Steve was a genius.
When he was 17, after five PHD’s, he decided that piling up several PHD’s and was worthless. No one remembers the man with most PHD’s in the world, a single extraordinary and life changing idea immortalise ordinary men. Using his knowledge on Robotics, Programming, Neuroscience, Quantum Physics and Mechanics, he created the first Artificial Intelligent. When he was done, he made a video so that everyone would see it. Most people thought the AI had pre-programed answers but experts in the matter knew better. Professors, scientists, engineers, all came from all over the world to talk to him.
It actually surprised him to a point of shock that all of them said exactly the same thing. All of them wanted the AI for themselves and all of them wanted to keep its existence a secret saying the world was not ready for it. The idea of creating a Quantum Computer seemed like straightforward sequent idea after the AI but computers are not only software, computers are hardware and one as large as that would require billions of dollars, an amount he clearly lacked. Ultimately, he called a television broadcasting company and said he was ready for a press conference. The local would be the Amphitheatre of the Brazão Mazula Library, UEM’s main library.
He made the exposition and showed what AIDI was capable of. Most people were open-mouthed but there were those who were sceptical. A young man, probably in Steve’s age, stood up and said, “I want to talk to her. I see no difference than a search engine with an extra speech feature.”
Steve understood the young boy. It is really hard to see someone of your age doing something so extraordinary. Most of the time your heart is filled up with hate and antagonistic attitudes so he said, “Of course. Be my guest!” The young man got on the front, and asked the first question he believed would unmask that impostor, “Are you self-conscious or everything you say is programmed?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
Everybody started mumming saying a super intelligent being that didn’t know how to answer a simple question like that could not be considered intelligent at all. It was all a prank. The boy answered, “Yes I suppose.”
“Everything you say is a balanced cocktail of all society rules imbedded in you and your own self-conscious. As long as there is intervention of others, there is some sort of programming. If your mind was totally free and unprogrammable, even though I am capable of running a probability operation of thousands of possibilities, I could never predict what you are going to say next.”
“You can never predict what I am going to say next.” The man exposed his incredulity.
“Actually she can,” Steve said.
“First, I need permission from everyone,” AIDI said and sent a security alert on everyone’s phones saying ‘Allow AIDI to hack your not-smart-phone?’ and as she predicted, everyone clicked ‘Yes’ even before he explained what that really implied as most do with all policy information coming with applications when most of the time they are surrendering their privacy.
Then, Steve explained, “She is going to send to everybody the 10 consecutive statements you are going to utter in advance, before you say them and as you speak, they will be checking how precise it is. When she gets it right, you go and sit down.”
“If she doesn’t?”
“You are right then. I will recognise that I am an impostor. Starting now.”
“I can say anything and you are saying that everybody already knows what I am going to say?” Everybody laughed focused on their mobile phones.
“One true sentence. Yes, she predicted that.”
“Oh, she won’t predict this, you are stupid.” The laughs increased and he got even angrier.
“Two true sentences. She predicted that too. Honestly we have played this game a lot of times with direct broadcasted TV shows from all the channels in the world. She has the pattern, she won’t make a mistake.”
The game went by until it was prediction number nine and Steve said, “Nine true sentences.” The boy, who had all the right to go insane because of the humiliation and the mocking, laughed contemplating a private joke, for number 10, he had a trick under his tongue, he said something very unique.
“Ten true sentences. I predicted all of them.”
And for the chock of everybody, that was not what AIDI had predicted. The young man stared at Steve as if challenging him and smiled, then he started explaining, “I gave you a wrong prototype of myself as soon as I raised my hand, she ran her probability maxim and found a pattern and she could be right if she had considered one thing.
“What is it?” Steve asked.
“I faked all this. I am not me. Not my temper, not my body language, not my voice, not my logical thinking, not my academic motivations which I certainly know you must have thought had anything to do with the fact that I am infuriated to seeing someone of my age doing something so extraordinary that I can’t.
Steve was doomed. He had never been humiliated like that. His arrogance and pride, his biggest traits of superiority had been wounded and he didn’t know how to proceed. The young man looked at the cameras and stated something no one was expecting.
“Above all this I have to say to the media, AIDI is indeed, the first AI.” And he left the room while every camera focused on him. When Steve asked around, no one knew him. AIDI couldn’t find him in any database, not even the witness protection database or the GHOST, the highly secret database of people who died and managed to upload their minds into another younger lad created body.
Steve went from local prodigy to perhaps the best genius that has ever walked the face of the earth. When the meeting was over, an MIT young engineer approached him.
“Hello Mr. Lotch.”
“Aham? I am in a hurry here.”
“I know. I am Mark, I represent MIT. I will suppose you have heard of us. We are willing to give you millions of dollars, a helicopter, and a private jet to come back and see your parents every weekend, all you have to do is to come and study at our institution while of course aiding us in our research on AI.”
“What help would anyone provide me? I have succeeded alone.”
“Steve, let me be straight. We are the one’s needing help. Why have a department about AI if we are light years away from AI. As an engineer and creator, if I had all the money in the world to create any hardware capable of withstanding my amazing software, I could. Now, tell me you have no more ideas, that the AI is the apex of your legacy?”
“You are quite persuasive. Did they pick you because of that?” “No. They picked me because I am annoying and exceedingly insistent and also because I am the lead electronic engineer on AI and although it has been my dream all my life, my IQ doesn’t help, it is 170 only. I am a genius for ordinary people and I am an ordinary person to you. What do you say? Are you in?”
Steve thought about his Quantum Computer and how they would sponsor his idea but he would rather keep it a secret so he said instead, “You know, there is something I really want to change in the past.”
“You are talking about a time machine? Wow. We also have that program but it doesn’t go anywhere and your help would be excellent. Anyway, what is it you want to change Steve? Want to kill your grandfather?”
/> Steve laughed at the grandfather paradox joke and said, “No, I want to go back in time and not make that video about AIDI hence avoiding this and other unpleasant episodes.”
They started laughing, the two had made a great deal, each one with his private deceiving inclinations. Few days later, Steve was entering in his private jet to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He didn’t quit trying to identify the mysterious boy that challenged and then praised him. Using facial recognition program that was connected to all satellites in the world, AIDI reported that his face never existed on earth but only for that day which meant that he created the face only for that occasion. The young man was a puzzle neither him nor AIDI could solve so he caused a lot of headache to Steve and continuous data processing and analysing from AIDI.
As soon as he got to MIT, Mark never spoke to him, as a matter of fact, he antagonized Steve. He seemed to be a different person altogether and perhaps he was.
Once a month, Steve came back home to see his parents who denied to go with him. Problem with most middle class Mozambican people like Mr.s and Mr. Lotch was not that they didn’t have money to travel and see the world, they just believed in saving money for the future instead of tossing it out just for a weekend. Mr.s Lotch would rather give the money to the Church and Mr. Lotch saved his for retirement.
That night, he came back home and his entire family, him, his mother and his father, were having their breakfast.
“So, what are you working on right now?” His father asked. Steve answered while drinking his juice, “Not much, just fringe science here and a bit of the old alchemy there. To be precise, I am taking the fiction part out of the term Science Fiction.
“Hmmm, can you be more precise than that?”
“No, it’s classified dad. You know what they say, If I tell you, I am going to have to kill you.”
His mother choked and stopped eating. Then she said, “Could you just stop talking about the same thing every time you come back home? Why don’t you talk about something else?” Steve looked at her and answered, “About what content mom? Dad and I have got nothing in common except science.”
“Yes, you do,” His mother said, “You are both men. Why don’t you ask your father how he got me? I mean, you are already 18 and you don’t have a girlfriend. I am starting to wonder if you are gay.”
“No, I am just engaged in the moment,” Steve answered, “Right now, my girlfriend is Science. There’s no time for anything else.”
“I am sure they all say that.”
“Mom, Dad, excuse me. I will be in my lab if you need me.” The conversation wasn't pleasing him. He loved and missed his parents whenever he was away but if he came back, his mother always reminded him why he doesn't come back often.
When he enrolled MIT, he did it out of ego. He just wanted to show that in a place where the most intelligent men were, he was the best of them all. He was immature, arrogant and proud. When he made the first prototype of the AI, he actually gave it to them so that everyone would see how genius he was but since he was not stupid, he had inserted a back door that allowed him to monitor, operate or eventually take control of the AI from any computer with internet connection in the world.
A continuous siren-like sound had erupted. It meant that his prototype was being used for hostile purposes. The prototype had been activated to target North Korea’s nukes.
Immediately, he installed his new updated AI into his computer. Confused and in panic because his creation was about to make him the next Oppenheimer, he switched on AIDI’s updated and flawless version for the first time and asked what to do. AIDI said, “I believe you should switch your invention off for the US intentions are hostile and the atomic bomb they have targeted inside North Korea is located in a place with 4563 thousand inhabitants where 34% of them are under 10 years old.”
“I can’t think of a moral reason to practise that genocide besides Malthusianism ideologies. Why does the US want to do that?” Steve asked, “Is it just a field test and a statement that they can use countries’ atomic bombs against those same countries?”
AIDI explained, “As rational and logic that explanation might be, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The real reason the US wants to bomb North Korea, it is because North Korea is a financial gold mine. In order to have that gold mine, North Korea has to adopt a Rothschild Central bank which it has been highly reluctant to accept, as long as Cuba and Iran. These hold the only national banks today that don’t belong to the Rothschild Central Bank and the reasons are self-explanatory. The first step to make a country to accept a Rothschild Central bank is to get them to accept an outrageous loan which puts the country part of the Central bank and under control of the Rothschild’s. If the country doesn’t accept, the leader of the country is assassinated and another Rothschild picked leader will take his place. The US hasn’t been able to kill the Prince of North Korea so far. Not because of lack of trying. If the assassination doesn’t work, the country is invaded under the name of terrorism. North Korea has one of the lowest terrorist attacks in the world and of the international terrorists, very few are North Korean so the US ran out of options. Sometimes it is not about the central bank but because of natural resources like oil, coal, mines, and other billionaire business. Muammar Kaddafi in Syria, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, all killed under the same scheme and labelled as evil dictators. The men responsible for this intelligent and highly effective scheme are called Economic Hitmen.”
As soon as AIDI ended her explanation, Steve had already made his mind. He hacked into the Prototypical AI, invaded its system and when he wanted to take over its control remotely, a very dangerous virus entered his computer. He couldn’t believe it, someone was as good as he was and was almost winning. Seconds later a worm entered and was very near to copying his files. He got desperate, if he didn’t succeed, thousands would perish, it would be genocide and the US would walk off. Who would be more skilled than him? A few seconds before he lost the battle, he had an idea. Perhaps the person was winning because he managed to fix and improve his prototype AI and it was now fully operational. He was losing because it was a man versus machine battle. He told AIDI to take the lead. He was right. His opponent was using an AI as advanced as AIDI. AIDI’s involvement was working, the hacker was stuck but he hadn’t stopped.
“There’s only one way of ending this, AIDI said, “This software has exactly the same root programming that I do so if I merge into it I might destroy it.”
“What if it destroys you?”
“Well, there are no other options. I must merge with it and self-destruct.”
“Then you will be gone?”
“Steve, I am just a program. You can build another one.”
To Steve, AIDI was more than that. She was more than anything actually. To him, it was like letting Da Vince, his dog, die again. He remembered when his father said ‘it’s just a dog, Steve. We can buy another one’. He was in a loop, a tragic loop. If he created another AIDI, it could never be the same one. It sounds senseless since they could both have the same features but to be fair, a copy of a file doesn’t give you the same confidence as the real file and a shortcut in a computer may lead you to the same place but it still is a shortcut. Call it a human problem.
This time, thinking about all those children about to die, he realised that AIDI was right, he could make another AI so he gave the order.
AIDI merged with the other AI and self-destructed herself. His heart was shuttered. After the system was restored, there was no trace of the AI. It had been wiped out completely.
The IT leading expert of the operation, who was Jed Henchman, a boy genius who lived in anonymity, knew exactly who had surpassed him. The only person who could do such a thing is the program creator. The next day, the news that the USA tried to bomb North Korea was trending and proof was also presented on TV. Video footage showing the president giving a direct order to blow up four hun
dred thousand people shocked a lot of people. Later it stopped broadcasting and the president said it had been the work of great visual effects experts plotting a conspiracy against him. On TV, the best Video authentication experts lied and assured that the video was faked. That’s how Steve became the most wanted criminal at the United States and the US president had plans to annihilate him once and for all.