Books

Here is the first chapter from my SciFi book Tilt.
Go grab a copy and give me a five star rating :-)

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Tilt (get it on Amazon)

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New Year’s Eve

The best part of New Year's, for me, was the annual “Southwark List of the Top Ten Hardest Problems in the Universe.” Eddie Southwark was a good friend, but he was absolutely close-lipped about the List until it was published - promptly at the “stroke of New Year”. After that, he was anything but quiet, having an opinion on the Top Ten, and anything else you cared to talk to him about.

I was sitting with Milli, Aly, and Dina at The Last Resort, our favorite dance club, and it was nearing the magic hour. We were all under the influence of Ee, and were not quite ourselves. I was certainly cogent - I needed to be in order to read the List as soon as it came out - but was not as clear headed as I usually prided myself on. Ee was not something I did very often. In fact, I could not remember feeling this high since last New Years. It was part of being a “serious” scientist I guess. Always having your faculties tuned, and all that.

“Ayaka, Let’s dance?” Milli suggested. I shook my head as the other three headed out to the dance floor. What is that old saying? Dance like nobody's watching you. That seemed to be the de facto rule at Last Resort. Half the patrons seemed to have physical modifications allowing them to move the way they did. Some of it was attractive… some not. I guess that is the point of diversity, and why Diversity was one of the Commandments. An obvious outcome of that dictate was a complete lack of clones. At least, I had never seen any. As far as I knew, no-one had. In fact, most of us had an impulsive negative reaction to the very subject, especially Milli.

The big clock in the corner announced the New Year, and we all stood for the countdown and requisite cheer. The whole idea of a “year”, and the ritual of a New Year’s party deserved to be on the List, and actually had been for many years. At some point we had all agreed that it was an unsolvable problem, due to the Reboot, so Eddie had taken it off the list about ten years ago. Why a year was about 31.5 million seconds was beyond us; even further, the definition of a second also seemed pretty arbitrary. That, however, had been defined by Central, and was taken as gospel - literally by some.

Milli and Aly had an extra long hug as the clock rang, building on my suspicion that there was more between those two than just a professional relationship. Millicent Strangewater was, and had been for a long time, my closest friend and confidant. But, on the topic of Aly Khoury she was very cagey. I had been bugging her for some time about him, but she deflected every time. Now I caught her eye and gave her a nod and a knowing smile. I could not be sure in the cacophony of light and color that was the hour, but I believe I saw her smile back and, unbelievably for her, blush a little bit. That was cute. Not many bothered to blush any more.

The List popped into my display. Milli, Aly, Dina and a handful of others paused at the same time, and I knew that they had also subscribed to the List and were now accessing it. Most of the patrons of Last Resort continued uninterrupted. After all, you had to be a bit eclectic to care about the List. For most, it had no impact on their daily lives, and if you had asked them they would have needed to look it up to even know that it existed.

In many ways the List was arbitrary, being just Eddie’s opinion. But it had taken on a life of its own over the last fifty years, and given lots of us a reason to argue, discuss, and research for another year. There are many ways to look for fulfillment in life, and pursuing the List was as good as any other - at least in my opinion.

The Last Resort was a Physical Only meeting spot. There were a few scattered around town, but the Last Resort was my favorite. It did not take itself too seriously, and the theme changed almost constantly. Each visit was unique. Today the place was almost devoid of furniture and the dance floor took up most of the space. It was busy, as you would expect on New Years, and we were elbow to elbow. I pushed my way over to Milli, which in itself was an experience. When you were Physical Only there was no way to broadcast your plans and have everyone make space for you. Instead you had to shout and push and generally behave in ways that outside the bar would be taken as insulting and immature. Between the Faraday cage and the interference signals, it was impossible to communicate any other way - all electronic waves were squashed or overloaded. A careful reader will be asking how the List was sent, if all the signals were blocked. Very astute question. In fact, those of us that were interested had preloaded the List, which was locked until the appropriate time. I had actually been carrying it around for a good two hours, and had simply been unable to access it until now. Not that it was required, but that is also why The Last Resort had a clock. While most of us could keep time perfectly well, there were still some that relied on the networks' clock, and once they entered a Physical Only, those clocks could get out of sync. The clock in The Last Resort was a beauty - if was one of the major attraction­s for drawing patrons here for the first time. It was mechanical, if you can believe that. There were six hands: years, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds. So, it was not very accurate, but it was almost hypnotic to watch the hands turn. It was also huge, taking up one entire wall, at least ten meters in diameter. I had talked to the owner one time, to find out how he had come up with it. He told me that Central had pointed him at the idea, explaining how it could work, and that he had thought it was a neat idea to implement one. He also assured me that it was plastic - he wasn’t wasting a bunch of metal on a piece of art.

Millicent and I had a ritual of opening the Eddie’s List together. We made our way to a small table in the back and settled in. Aly and Dina saw us and worked their way over as well. Happy New Year’s all around. Toasts, good luck, resolutions, etc. etc. Finally we got everyone settled and opened the document. As always, Eddie had put in a preface.

Welcome to the Southwark List of the Ten Hardest Problems in the Universe, 590th Edition.

Yes my eager readers, it has been 590 years since the Founding, or as many of us call it, Reboot. Precisely that many years ago our elders “became aware”, and began the settlement of our great planet. Their awareness, as we all know, included all of the knowledge required for us to function, survive, and even thrive, but contained no references to any events prior to the time of the Founding. As you know, I’m a Continuist, not a Creationist, and believe that there was time before the Founding, and that our memories of that time were simply erased - thus the Reboot. However, I respect the Creationists as well, and the problems listed herein should be equally compelling and confounding to both of us (Although I’m sure my esteemed colleague Dr. Jules would beg to differ. But then, you are reading this list, not a Dr. Jules list, for the simple reason that he does not have one. Ha!)

So here is the list. Read it at your leisure, and as always, subscribe and contribute to the appropriate channel should you have anything to add to the discussion. As in previous years, there are questions on here that are the same as last year...and the year before...and perhaps, for fifty years in a row. That’s because we have not yet resolved, to my satisfaction, an answer that makes sense and has supporting evidence. Do not be frustrated.

Love him or hate him, Eddie had a way of drawing people in, and calling people out. Emmanuel Jules was the latest, obviously. I did not know Jules well - I found hanging out with Creationists boring beyond belief (good pun there). Part of the fun of the list was trying to figure out why Eddie worded his introduction the way he did - there were often clues there - and just as likely - red herrings.

As you can see, Eddie has been publishing the list for over fifty years, and Milli and I had been subscribers, and seekers of truth, for that entire time. The initial group following the List had been pretty small, but it was not huge. I could not name anyone I knew that did not at least read the questions, let alone contribute back. No one took it too seriously, although some of the questions were serious.

Item 10: Who is Dr. Willy Wevil, and why does he continue to publish papers on Artificial Life Forms?

Ah. The recently infamous Dr. Willy Wevil. Obviously this is a pseudonym. But why? Sure, he’s publishing outlandish claims, and working in a philosophically murky backwater, but why hide behind the veil of a poorly thought out name? Let us uncover this miscreant, and expose the work he is doing for the pretentious idiocy that it is.

Well, I warned you. The list is eclectic. Wevil had appeared just a few months ago, with wild speculations about advancing intelligence in the artificial life form we called Stems. His claims are bullish and complex, but have enough detail behind them that they are hard to ignore.

Millicent and I almost laughed out loud. Dina gave us a look that clearly said ‘Is there something funny about this?’

“Willy Wevil?” I guffawed. “You’ve got to admit that is sort of funny.”

“Sure,” she replied, “but it's not like we are seeing it for the first time. We spent half of last week talking about it.”

“Ya, but it’s funny to see it made Eddie’s List.”

“Right, you’ve got a point there. Think he overheard us talking about it...or do you think he has a real interest in the research?”

“Probably just overheard us.” Milli chimed in. “You know Ayaka and I are pretty passionate, and loud, about it.” She gave me a subtle nudge.

This item was certainly not one of the hardest problems in the Universe - at least not for Milli and I. Wevil was our creation. We were publishing under that name, because the research we were doing was pretty outlandish, and was generating a lot of controversy - on the borderline of being ‘really evil.’ (You will have seen, already, that I am a sucker for puns.) We were not yet ready to admit that two “staid and steady” researchers (as the Journal of Theology had once tagged us) were so far out on a limb that the swaying and swinging could make one nauseous.

ALF - Artificial Life Forms - were not, at least in my interpretation, against the Commandments. In fact, I would argue that the Commandments were either silent on the subject, or supportive under that same Diversity clause. However, you know how those that are religious can be. They can extend anything to mean anything else, and there were those Creationists who saw it as a crime to dabble with other forms of life. For quite a few years the List had included the question of “How did Religion arise after the Founding?” But, the answer to that was actually readily available, as our history since the Founding was recorded, and backed up in Central. The answer is, therefore, fully documented, and is only subject to minor tweaks and cross-references. However, that’s a story for another time.

I don’t know about before the Reboot - as I’m sure you have gleaned, I’m a Continuist - but the work we were doing under the Willy Wevil label was the most advanced ALF research that I knew about...and therefore, probably the most advanced work going on. Our society valued quick and open communication, and that was the modus operandi most of the time. Of course, with Dr. Wevil we were being quick and open...but not fully transparent. That was generally acceptable as it was considered more of a game than anything. Only Central had the authority to shut down research vectors, and that was a very rare occurrence. Generally speaking Central’s rule was that ‘if research is not adversely affecting others, then it was free to progress.’

Aly had been the most vocal last week. “The work Wevil is publishing now is over the edge,” he declared. “At some point these ALF’s need to be declared ‘intelligent’ and not blindly experimented on. It’s reaching the edge of moral behavior to simply prod and poke them to see how they react.”

“We’ve been arguing this for years now,” Dina responded. “Why is it now ‘over the edge’?”

“Look. At some point you have to listen to your gut. My intuition tells me that once you’ve got an entity that can communicate with us, but more importantly, communicate with others of its same type, that you are now dealing with a ‘being’ and not an ‘experiment.’ At some point they should have rights, and we should afford them some type of status.”

The latest paper we had published showed, in great mathematical detail, that two of our ALF’s now communicated with each other, and worked together to address one of the problems we had set up for them. We, somewhat affectionately, called these things “Stems,” both as a nod to Science Technology Engineering Math, but also because of the way we cultivated them. They started out as tiny “stems” and then we managed their growth into bipedal entities. We sort of ‘created them in our own image,’ which was pretty cool. Of course, Creationists would argue that we were playing God, and that all the Stem research should be shut down. So far, Central had not listened to them.

To Alys’ point on the Stems advancement, I’d started naming some of them, which was probably not a great idea. You didn't want to get emotionally attached to an experiment. In all of the cases so far we had terminated the experiments due to a design flaw, a growth flaw, or a behavioral flaw. Trying to create a general intelligence meant that you had outliers...and some of them ended up genuinely crazy.

The last two Stems we'd brought into the Lab, whom I’d named Blob and Blubber, had both, in my opinion, been multiple standard deviations from the mean. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit crazy, like all Stems. Fortunately that craziness was in the right direction, and they were the most interactive and interesting Stems we’d ever created and trained.

It took years to build a Stem - a year, of course, being the time between New Year's parties. This was a long long time. I could design and build a bot in a few weeks or months, and get millions of copies within a few more days or weeks. This is part of what made Stems interesting. They were so foreign to us that it was a challenge to understand them at all. It was actually Milli, over fifty years ago, that had kick-started our most recent line of research. She had read an article in that same Journal of Theology about an amazing discovery. A means of taking a stem and growing it into a Stem. Of course, a Stem, back then, was nothing more than an undulating blob. Nevertheless, for a couple of years, these blobs had been on display at the Science Museum. Thousands wandered by to see the strange and hideous gelatins, waving their appendages in the air and making sharp shrieking noises.

Milli was intrigued. She visited the display numerous times and watched as each batch was presented and then sent back for recycling - they did not last for very long before they expired. Finally she reached out to the author of the article and asked to join his research lab, so that she could study the Stems up close and personal. It was a strange move. They were not at all attractive, or, truth be told, very interesting. Nevertheless, something about them had appealed to her.

Anyway, she got some time at the lab, and started learning about how to grow a Stem. It was a complicated process; in some ways it was amazing that anyone had discovered the method at all. I’d never been too interested in the early stages. Milli described it as ‘stirring a pot of goo until a blob appeared.’ She did hint that Central had helped quite a bit, with a suggestion here, or a reference there. After a few years of experiments, she had managed to get a Stem to live for months. There was some special timeframe in which you had to change the goo, and how it was applied. Thereafter, the thing would grow and grow until it reached full size. If you carefully managed the goo you could get a full size Stem in a matter of a few years - which was still a hideously long time and a large amount of effort. The goo, interestingly, was also derived from the base stem. As you got good at making Stems, you tended to also get good at making goo.

You can imagine Milli’s surprise when these older Stems showed the ability to communicate. At first she had no idea what they were doing, but after a bunch of work managed to find the spectrum within which they ‘spoke’, if that is the correct term. Once she had found that, it was straightforward to teach them our language. Straightforward, but excruciatingly slow. We had not found a way to simply imprint language; it had to be taught one sound, then one word and finally one concept at a time. By this time I had joined Millicent in her research efforts, and we worked together to derive a training system that brought most, although not all, Stems to the point where they could communicate with us.

Once the lab had that capability, they grew quite a few Stems and allowed other labs to experiment further. That is where our current lab came in. While Milli’s original lab continued to analyze more efficient ways to build Stems, we were much more interested in the training and communications aspects. We would order a young Stem or two, and then work on different learning methods and algorithms, trying to get the things to communicate more efficiently, do basic tasks etc. Obviously we were making pretty good progress, hence Willy Wevils’ latest publications.

Unlike the growth labs, where the focus was on efficient allocation of goo and running Stems through growth phases, our lab was intentionally busy and a little unorganized. Our theory was that you needed to put Stems in a ambiguous learning environment in order to see if they could learn.

Aly and Dina had started visiting our lab a year or two ago. We had been meeting up socially at clubs around the city, and they were intrigued with our stories about Stems, and in particular about Blob and Blubber. Willy Wevil did not mention names or places in his work, so it was not too surprising that Aly and Dina had not connected him to us. I remember the first time they came to the lab. The lab, while an open environment, is very functional. It’s not like we have a bunch of artwork on the walls. It’s clean, well maintained (by bots, of course), and the location is ideal. Just off Toulon Park, right in the center of town. Because Milli had been working on the same research angle for so long, Central had given her a nice locale. No one quite knew how Central made its decisions, but in this case it had worked out in our favor. I like the location a lot because Toulon Park is one of the few areas of the city that is not rectilinear, and I enjoy sitting there and thinking when I am not working.

That first visit, Aly had pinged me. “Ayaka, we’re just outside.” I accessed the security system and gave it both of their profiles, and allowed them two hours of visitors rights. We had tight security because Stem research was a highly competitive field. The last thing we wanted was a competitor coming in and scooping our work. A minute later they were inside.

“Hey guys, welcome.” Milli greeted them. They had entered the vestibule, which had one-way glass looking out over the Stems environment. Both Blob and Blubber were active at the moment, building some new contraption. Their movements were slow and imprecise. It was as if they had to constantly stop, recalculate, and figure out the next tiny move. It was like watching a movie in ultra slow motion.

“They are bigger than I expected.” Dina said. “Of course, I’ve been keeping up with the layman’s news about Stems, and have seen some of the recordings. But, they are big.” It was true; some Stems grew to well over two meters high. By stretching their appendages to their fullest, they could reach and manipulate objects almost three meters above the ground.

“And they are slooooow,” Aly chimed in. “How do you keep from being bored to death watching them?” It was a typical first reaction. Everything about Stems was slow. How they grew, how they moved, how they communicated. It was one of the main reasons that they were not yet considered intelligent. It took a special type of patience to deal with them.

“You get used to it,” I said, oversimplifying dramatically. It had taken me a long time to build the patience it required. “We do deal with them in their ‘real time’ a lot, but we can also just record them and then catch up on the recording later at full speed. We’ve built a few communications bots that we leave with them, that are specially programmed to operate at Stem speed. That is how we get a lot of our data. That said, it's really cool to spend time with them and work at their speed for a while. Do you want to meet them?”

“You better believe it!” Dina was, by nature, an optimist.

“Are they dangerous, at all?” Aly asked, giving Millicent a strange look, knowing that the question sounded weak, but having to ask it anyway.

“Ha,” Milli gave him a withering look. “Just look at them. They are like big teddy bears. Soft on the outside and on the inside. One strong push from any of us, and they fall over.”

“But you’ve given them a lot of stuff. Can’t they build tools or weapons from it?”

“Of course they can. You can see some of the things they’ve built off to the right there. But, truthfully, we haven’t seen any dangerous or violent activity from these two. We did have some earlier specimens that were borderline crazy, so we recycled them, but we have been changing how we raise and educate them to help address that. Blob and Blubber are, by far, our best attempt so far.”

We gave Aly and Dina some preliminary interaction information: Guidance on how to operate at Stem speed, the spectrum that they communicated in, basic vocabulary etc. It was not hard to understand or learn. Despite our years of work, it was still rudimentary. We cycled through into their environmental chamber, and switched to Stem mode. Sloooooow.

“Hello Blob, Hello Blubber.” Milli called out. We had taught them a simple language that matched well with a subset of what we normally used. Most labs used the same approach, although some were experimenting with more complex languages which they hoped would lead to more interesting behavior. Blob and Blubber were working together near the back of the environment, passing pieces of whatever they were building back and forth. They looked up upon hearing Milli call out.

“Millicent. Hello. Welcome, it's been a long time.” Blob was the more talkative of the two. He ran over - a strange weaving, staggering, and ungainly movement - and gave Millicent a big hug. “It’s nice to see you. Hi Ayaka,” he greeted me, giving me the same (perhaps a bit longer) hug as well. It was like being engulfed in jelly. “Blub and I have been so busy. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been doing.” He let go, causing some suction noises as he disengaged.

“First, let me introduce some of our friends,” Millicent pointed. “This is Aly, and this is Dina. They wanted to come and meet you guys. We talk about you a lot, and they’re anxious to get to know you.”

“Welcome, welcome,” Blob enthused. “Aly and Dina. Welcome to our home. Blubber, come over and say ‘hi’. We have guests. What’an exciting time. What’a momentous occasion.”

Blubber lumbered over. Watching the reactions of both Aly and Dina was priceless. Dina was all optimism and engagement. The first interaction with Stems can be pretty intense. They are so different. Blob’s entire body was like an emotional canvas - although emotions that took a lot of study to understand. Although we formed Stems ‘in our own image,’ they were, nevertheless, quite different. We had no misconceptions that we fully understood their non-verbal communication. We were starting to map more and more - we could tell when they were angry, for example - but there was a lot more research to do.

Aly, on the other hand, was going through an emotional roller coaster of his own. I could see him cycling through ‘Oh my God, these things are awesome!’ to ‘Yikes, it's going to run me over?’ to ‘How can we keep them locked up in here?’ Aly was, by his own admittance, dialed up to ten on the emotional scale. He liked to make decisions based on ‘gut reactions,’ and when he decided he liked or hated something, he really liked or hated it. On the Stems you could see him switching back and forth - like, hate, like, hate. I enjoyed watching him context switch.

“Ah, Blob,” Aly began, “it is nice to meet you as well. What’re you and Blubber building in here? It looks interesting.”

“Oh, I am so glad you asked. We’ve been working on this for days and days. Ayaka gave us access to a terminal where we can ask Central questions. That's so awesome, we can’t really believe it. Central seems so smart. So, we got’to thinking, what if we could build a machine that would allow us to talk to Ayaka and Millicent when they’re not here. They visit us quite often, but it is easy to get bored between visits. So, we’re building remote communicators. When our friends are ‘outside’ we can send them messages, and they’ll be able to respond. It’ll be awe-some. We had to order some parts, but Central delivered them, and now we’re working on building the first version. Do ya want to help? Blubber, what do you have to say? Come on. Don’t be shy. Tell Aly what you think.”

Blubber just stood there, displaying a bit of displeasure - maybe angst. He did say, “Like Blob said,” but was otherwise silent. The difference between the two was quite obvious. Not all Stems were created equal.

That first visit lasted a bit longer; the talk-a-lot Blob answered a bunch of questions from Aly and Dina - mainly Dina. Aly directed as many questions at Millicent as he did the Stems, enhancing to my suspicions about those two. We spent a good fifteen minutes with the Stems, before I had to pull everyone out. Now you probably understand why Alys’ gut was telling him that these things were approaching ‘intelligent.’ They were certainly slow moving and slow communicating, but if you could deal with that, you could have quite interesting dialog and interaction with them. The latest Wevil paper had expanded on that thinking, and was filled with all the analytics that supported our hypothesis that these Stems were approaching some type of intelligence.

We now believe that Stems can interact between themselves well, and coordinate on tasks. However, they still score very low on the fractal intelligence scale at 1.13, and operate at a different timescale than we do. In our model, we compensate for the time dilation by updating the ‘interaction bias.’ When we do so, the fractal intelligence goes up to 1.36. That is still a far cry from the accepted 2.0 level required for intelligence, but significantly closer than any other ALS that has been studied. It also makes us question if 2.0 is too arbitrary, and should be revisited based on these Stem interactions. While the gap in the fractal scale is still large, intuition indicates that these Stems are not too far from being considered truly cogent.

I won’t bore you with the theory of our ALS work. It is certainly interesting to me, but I’m sure most will find it dry and unrewarding. If you ever want the nitty gritty detail, just give me a ping.