Page 3 of The Phoenix Code

  "Welcome to NEV-5," Trackman rumbled. "I hope you had a good trip."

  "Just fine." Megan peered at the LP. Twenty of these ambulatory assistants staffed NEV-5. Using their rudi­mentary AI brains, they could manage the day-to-day op­erations. Automated systems here and at MindSim monitored the base in case anything unusual came up. In theory, NEV-5 could operate without a human presence, but MindSim preferred to have at least one person in resi­dence.

  NEV-5 was about the size of a football field, with three levels. The garage, power room, and maintenance areas were here on Level One. Living areas were one floor down, on Level Two, and the labs filled Level Three. Trackman escorted them to the elevators and Megan walked at his side, wondering how far his capabilities ex­tended beyond managing the base.

  "Do you enjoy working at NEV-5?" she asked.

  "Enjoyment isn't one of my design parameters," he said.

  That didn't sound promising. "Can you define 'enjoy­ment'?"

  "Amusement. Entertainment. Pleasure. Recreation. Zest." Then he added, "Those are in alphabetical order."

  Megan smiled. "Would you like to experience amuse­ment? Pleasure? Zest?" In alphabetical order, no less.

  "I have no need to do so."

  Oh, well. If Trackman was the best that NEV-5 had to offer for company, aside from a barely functional an­droid, she was going to be on the phone or Internet a lot. If the loneliness became too much, she could reprogram Trackman to converse better. It was a poor substitute for human fellowship, though, not to mention a waste of the LP's resources.

  Up ahead, a droid rolled around the corner. About the size and shape of a cat, its "legs" were tubes that sucked in dust and dirt. As it came up to them, Megan crouched down and touched its back. It stopped with a jerk. She poked it again, and the droid scuttled away. When she reached out and tapped its leg, it made an agitated buzzing.

  "I won't hurt you," Megan murmured. She stood and walked around the droid. It waved its tail, trying to deter­mine if the bedevilment was going to continue. When she nudged it from behind, it moved forward and sidled past the other humans that had invaded its territory. Then it whirred away down the hall.

  "That was a shy one," she said, smiling.

  "Cleaning droids have no capacity for shyness," Track­man told her. "It has less efficient methods than an LP for mapping its environment. You were blocking its path."

  Megan sighed. "Thank you, Trackman."

  "You are welcome." If it detected her irony, it gave no indication.

  They started off again, Alfred walking on the other side of the LP. "Trackman," he asked, "did Marlow Hastin's family live here with him?"

  "No," Trackman said. "His wife visited sometimes."

  From behind them, Major Kenrock said, "I don't think his kids had the clearance."

  Megan wondered if the isolation had bothered Hastin. She doubted she could have endured being separated from her family. She probably would have brought them to a nearby city and commuted. Being single made matters simpler, but she would miss having company. As far as work went, she would have preferred to have the Everest team here rather than in California. However, they had their lives there. With the Internet and VR conferences available, it wasn't necessary for them all to be in the same physical location.

  Trackman showed them the living areas in Level Two. The apartments were pleasant, with blue carpets, con­soles, armchairs, Lumiflex tables, pullout sofas, and airbeds covered by downy comforters. Megan decided to take a room with ivory wallpaper patterned by roses and birds. She said nothing, though, self-conscious about choosing her personal space in front of other people.

  Then they went to meet the android.

  The RS-4 had "slept" during most of the past few weeks while the Everest team reassessed the project. The two LPs that looked after the android had activated him as soon as the MindSim group arrived on the base. When Megan entered the single-room apartment where he lived, her anticipation leapt. This was it.

  He was sitting at a table. Even knowing what to ex­pect, she froze in the doorway. He could have been a boy­ish Arick Bjornsson. With his rugged Nordic features and blue eyes, he resembled a Viking more than a scientist. Bjornsson had consulted on the project several years ago, and he and several others had donated their DNA to the genetic bank.

  The Everest engineers had grown parts of the android from Bjornsson's DNA, including his skin and some inter­nal organs, but he was still a construct. A microfusion re­actor powered him. Bellows inflated his lungs. Synthetic pumps drove lubricant through conduits within his body. His "organs" would age over centuries rather than decades, and they would remain disease-free. They were also more efficient than their human counterparts.

  The Everest Project had many goals. The grant that funded Megan's job involved the development of a super-soldier and special operations agent. To be effective as a covert operative, the android would have to pass as human. Her team had a lot of work to do; right now the android's "blood" was a silvery lubricant, an X ray would show many of his differences, and various other anomalies could reveal the truth.

  They didn't want him too human, though. If they suc­ceeded, he would have the power and memory of a com­puter, the creativity and self-awareness of a person, the training of a commando, continual perfect health, and the survival ability of a machine. Weapons could be incorpo­rated into his body. He would be smarter, faster, stronger, and harder to kill than any human soldier.

  In the long view MindSim had more dramatic hopes. If humans could augment or replace their bodies with an­droid technology, they could achieve phenomenal abili­ties, and longer, healthier, more stable lives. The process had begun in the twentieth century: replacement joints, limbs, bones, and heart valves; synthetic arteries and veins; artificially grown organs. Combining their minds with computers might make them superintelligent. It was Megan's dream that someday a new, evolved humanity would see beyond the urge to war, violence, and the other ills that plagued their species. An idealistic dream, per­haps, but still hers. Such results were far in the future, if they were possible, but the Everest Project offered a pre­liminary step.

  The android already looked human. He had Arick's yellow curls and regular features, but he wasn't an exact copy of Bjornsson. The Everest team had fine-tuned his appearance. Tall but not too tall, with boy-next-door good looks, he came across as pleasant and nonthreatening. Right now, he also looked blank—like a machine. RS-4. They called him Aris.

  As Trackman brought Megan inside, the android watched them. Major Kenrock and his lieutenant stayed by the door with Alfred. Diane and Miska settled in arm­chairs, close enough to answer any questions Megan might have. An LP stood behind Aris like a guard, pro­tecting its brother from this strange infestation of hu­mans.

  Megan sat at the table. "Hello, Aris."

  "Hello." His voice had no life. He sounded even less human than Trackman.

  "My name is Megan O'Flannery. I'm the new chief sci­entist."

  "Echo told me."

  "Who is Echo?"

  He indicated the LP behind him. "That is Echo."

  That. Not he or she. Humans tended to refer to robots as male or female, based on the robot's voice. She knew she shouldn't be disappointed at his lack of affect, but she couldn't help but hope for more.

  "Are you comfortable?" she asked.

  "I am operational."

  "Operational" hardly sounded promising, but it was better than no response at all. "Aris, do you feel anything about this? By 'feel' I mean, do you have any reaction to Dr. Hastin's departure and my arrival?"

  "No."

  His lack of affect didn't surprise her. Hastin's notes in­dicated he hadn't had much success in making Aris simu­late emotions. Nor was he the only one who had run into problems. Hastin was the third chief scientist MindSim had lost on the Everest Project. They had fired the first two.

  "You can simulate emotions, though, can't you?" she asked.

  "Yes." His eyes were beautiful replic
as of human eyes—with no sign of animation.

  "Why aren't you simulating any now?" she asked.

  "I am."

  Could have fooled me. "Can you smile?"

  His mouth curved into a cold, perfect smile. It looked about as human as a car shifting gears.

  "Get angry at me," Megan suggested.

  "I have no context here for anger," he said.

  At least he knew he needed a context. "What emotion do you think would be appropriate for this context?"

  He spoke in a monotone. "Friendly curiosity."

  "Is that what you're doing?"

  "Yes. I am pleased to meet you." He might as well have been saying, "The square root of four is two."

  It unsettled her to talk to someone who appeared so human yet sounded so mechanical. "Do you have any questions you would like to ask me?"

  "No."

  Megan exhaled. Well, she had known she had work ahead of her. "Would you like to take a walk around NEV-5? You can show me places you remember, tell me what you know about them."

  He stared at her.

  After a moment, she said, "Aris?"

  No response.

  Alfred swore under his breath. When Megan glanced up, they were all coming over to the table.

  "What is it?" Megan asked.

  "He hangs that way if he can't handle a question," Al­fred said.

  Megan frowned. "He can't handle something as simple as 'let's take a walk?' "

  "Pretty much not," Miska said.

  Alfred laid his hand on the android's shoulder. "Aris? Can you reset?"

  Aris remained frozen, staring past Megan at the wall.

  "We can restart him," Alfred offered.

  "No. Not now." Megan stood up. "I'll come back later, after I've had a chance to look at the rest of the fa­cilities here." In other words, when she was by herself. Al­though she doubted it made any difference to Aris if people saw his difficulties, she felt compelled to give him privacy. If they wanted him to become sentient, it would help to interact with him as if he had already achieved that state.

  She glanced at Echo and spoke gently. "Make him comfortable."

  "I will ensure the RS-4 suffers no damage," Echo said.

  That isn't what I meant. But she said nothing. What could she do, tell one machine not to treat another ma­chine like a machine?

  The room had nothing on its ivory walls. It had no furni­ture. No console. Megan stood with Aris, the two of them alone. Ever since yesterday, when she had come to NEV-5, either Echo or Trackman had always accompanied her and Aris. So she had barred all the LPs from this room. She wanted nothing to distract the hypersensitive an­droid.

  She set a shoe box on the floor. "Can you see that box?"

  He looked down. "Yes." The cameras in his eyes inte­grated so well into his design that she detected no differ­ence between his and a human face—except for his utter lack of expression.

  "All right." She gave him an encouraging smile. "Jump over it."

  As Aris regarded the box, Megan unhooked a palmtop computer from a belt loop of her jeans. She had named her palmtop Tycho, in honor of a famous astronomer. Using its wireless capability, she logged into Aris's brain much as she would log into the NEV-5 intranet. Tycho be­came part of the android's mind, giving her a window into Aris's thoughts.

  The android had a huge knowledge base of facts and rules about the world. Combined with his language mods, it let him converse. He "thought" with neural nets, in­cluding both software and hardware neurons, which re­ceived signals from other neurons or input devices. If the sum of the signals exceeded a neuron's threshold, it sent out its own signal, either to other neurons or to an output device. Aris learned by altering thresholds. When he did well on a test, it strengthened the links that gave those re­sults. Bad results weakened the links.

  Although he couldn't alter his hardware, he could rewrite his software. He used many methods to evolve his code, most of them variations on generic algorithms. He copied sections of code and combined them into new code, often with changes that acted like mutations. It was survival of the fittest: code that worked well reproduced, and code that didn't died off.

  A simulated neuron could operate faster than its human counterpart, but putting many together became resource intensive and slowed Aris down. Although the number of links in his brain was comparable to a human brain, but he couldn't match the speed of human thought—yet. As he became more sophisticated, Megan suspected his speed would outstrip unaugmented human thought.

  Right now he just stared at the box. According to her palmtop, Aris was calculating the trajectory he needed to jump. After his nets learned the process, he would no longer need to solve equations, any more than a child had to work out trajectories when she jumped, but he hadn't yet reached that stage. Even with his untutored nets, though, Megan didn't see why it was taking so long. He should only need seconds to translate the math into com­mands for his body.

  Using Tycho, she probed deeper into his code. It looked like his brain had switched to a mod that directed his expression of fear. She tried to unravel how it had happened, but the complexity of his always-evolving code made it impossible to follow.

  "Aris? Can you jump?"

  He continued to stare at the box.

  "Tycho," she said, "what is the highest level of fear Aris can tolerate before he freezes?"

  Tycho answered in a well-modulated contralto. "It varies. He has an array of values that determines what im­mobilizes him."

  His face did show emotion now. Frustration. He looked like a toddler stymied by a puzzle, reminding Megan of her sister's two-year-old son. But she held back her smile. Although she doubted Aris could have hurt feelings, she took care in her responses anyway, not only because his brain might have developed more than she re­alized, but also because she found it hard to think of him as a machine.

  She spoke into the comm on her palmtop. "Why is he frozen?"

  "The main contributor is an element in his fear array." It showed her several lines of code. "If the element goes above six percent, it stops him from moving."

  "Six percent? Are all the elements set that low?"

  "The values range from two to forty-three percent. The average is sixteen."

  "That's appalling." What could Hastin have been thinking? How did he expect the android to function with such stringent caps on his behavior?

  "Aris? If you can hear me, try this: use your logic mods. Have them analyze the situation." His mind should be able to determine he had no reason to fear the jump.

  At first she thought her suggestion had no effect. But as she studied Tycho's display, she realized Aris had shifted some processing power to a logic mod. Although he re­mained trapped in the fear mod, his logic response kicked in, trying to make him jump. His fear response persisted, conflicting with the logic. That branched him into an anger mod, which then sent him to a fight mod. The fight code kicked him into a parachuting mod, for heaven sake, probably due to some strangely convoluted interpretation of her request that he jump. So now his mods wanted him to throw himself out of a plane in the sky.

  "I need an aircraft!" His voice exploded out. "How can I jump without one?"

  Megan spoke gently. "Can you get out of the jumping mod?"

  He didn't answer, he just kept staring at the box. Con­trolled by his anger mods, his body pumped fluids to his face and raised the temperature of his skin. Aris stood frozen in place, his face bright red, looking for all the world like a furious young boy. A curl of yellow hair was sticking up over his ear as if to protest his ignominious situation.

  She tried another tack. "Do you know how to do a parachute landing fall? It's what jumpers practice on the ground before they go up in a plane."

  He neither answered nor moved. His face turned redder.

  Watching his quandary gave her the same emotional tug as seeing a toddler struggle to understand a baffling situation. Her voice softened the way it did when she spoke to her young nephew. "You don't have
to jump. Aris? Can you hear? Don't jump."

  Nothing changed. He stared at the box as if it were a monster that had broken the rules of childhood night­mares and come out from under his bed in broad day­light.

  Megan disliked resetting him, in part because he would lose some of what they had just done. It also bothered her to wipe his brain that way, even if she was only removing a few commands. However, she had to free him from his frozen state.

  "Tycho," she finally said. "Reset the RS."

  "I can't," Tycho answered. "He's protected from re­sets."

  It made sense; Aris could never learn independence if anyone could reset his mind. However, as his main pro­grammer she needed access. "Check my retinal scan."

  A light from the palmtop flashed on her face. "Retinal scan verified."

  "Okay. Do the reset."

  "Done."

  Aris's face went blank. Then he straightened up. "Hello."

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Do you remember what happened?"

  "You asked me to jump over the box."

  "And that frightened you?"

  "No." Although almost a monotone, his voice had a trace of nuance today. "Your command caused my code to exceed certain tolerances, which stopped my move­ments and prompted me to mimic behaviors associated in humans with anger and fear."

  She smiled. "I guess you could put it that way."

  "Do you wish me to put it another way?"

  "No." That intrigued her, that he asked her preference.

  "Do you still want me to jump?"

  "Not now. I need to reset your tolerances. That means I'll have to deactivate you so your mind isn't evolving while I'm trying to make changes." She spoke with care, unsure how he would respond to being "turned off."

  He just looked at her. At first she thought he had frozen again. Then she realized he had no reason to an­swer. Unlike a human, who would have reacted in some way, he simply waited.