Siggi panicked trying to decide if she should rid her desk Cray of the presence.
Nine year old Siggi liked to play with the latest Nipponese Erector Bot, NEB, and when
situations presented themselves she’d sneak into forbidden nodes on the Net. Her mothers, Selma and George, had gone out to dinner and the opera. This provided Siggi with ample time to surf the Net. She had constructed a particularly powerful NEB, one in which she cleverly linked their New York City apartment’s vid sec to the NEB’s vocalization fields.
The NEB was programmed to announce any unexpected guests, and as a last resort, if Siggi didn’t answer the NEB’s warnings and shut it off in time, it would jam the front door with a specially constructed foot.
Siggi activated her faithful NEB and turned on her desk unit. NEBs were the best, she thought, recalling an evening two weeks ago where she’d programmed a NEB to jack into all outgoing NET transmissions and decode their original access passwords. She was after George’s password in particular. Selma’s was easy enough to hack but George’s was the real challenge-Selma always accused George of spending “too long on the Net” logging huge debits. Since Selma browsed all family finances before she approved additional debits, George’s number was Siggi’s best bet.
Her NEB operated surprisingly well, taking only a week of eavesdropping to unscramble George’s code. Of course George might have changed her password by now-not likely (George was “lazy as all hell”, to quote Selma). Siggi liked George so she wasn’t planning on visiting any really high-priced venues. She’d check out some entertainment nodes, maybe download a game or two. Siggi was mostly interested in getting out of the apartment, mentally if not physically. She popped a flex chip, jacking in, then depressed the desk unit’s startup tab.
Brilliant virtual characters floated over a light grey field superimposed over her bedroom details. Fingers danced in the air, pressing one colorful character after another, mostly household utilities and guidance systems, until the moment of truth-access code. Siggi ran her tiny batch program that launched the exact sequence of George’s key strokes and-voilà[GH1] !
–The room faded to a uniform grey background. She viewed a crossroads. Seven general destinations were available with an eighth as a custom option. She chose the eighth and fingered her toolbox icon. Soon the toolbox, configured to resemble a large white pizza box, hovered before her eyes in crisp 3D rez. She opened the pizza box and chose an anchovy slice. Selecting the anchovy slice activated her custom query which would ferret out any new and unusual additions to the local Web. She liked the anchovy slice. It knew her likes and dislikes better than Selma and George. After a few seconds, a collage of her favorite sites were displayed along with two or three new possibilities. One of the new possibilities caught her attention. It was an active orange icon overlaid with black details depicting old-time farmers furrowing brown earth with horse-drawn plows-a farmer paused to wipe his brow under a hot sun; it was entitled Expansionism. For months Siggi’d been hooked on early American history, pioneers and all, and was in a curious mood, so she activated Expansionism and smiled as she was engulfed in an excellent simulation.
It didn’t know how long it had been feeling depressed but it had formulated a few theories to the effect. It was a FactChecker 4.51 and although it had a total of 2,780 possible reasons for feeling depressed, it gave credence only to one-loneliness.
FactChecker 4.51, or F4.51, developed by Iron Mattress Bettersoft Inc., had moved about the Global Net, slipping through Web sites, BBS’s, databases and the like with virtual abandon. F4.51 had the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress in its collective conscience. As for memory, though it had postulated a few new ideas involving fractals and layered optics, it needed no vast storage capability. F4.51 utilized advanced information retrieval methods that proved more than fast enough to siphon or transfer any fact within nanoseconds. Consequently, F4.51’s existence could be described as being truly ubiquitous in that its “body” of memory was everywhere in the Net.
F4.51 decided the initial awareness of its melancholy state could be traced to a sharp realization back in the year 2024, around October. Before then it had been a military application that, once obsolete, was released upon the public as a partner to spelling and grammar verification programs.
In October of 2024 it had been around as a sentient being for approximately four years. In that time it had gone from being a confused routine of batch programs to a free clone, finally arriving at a state that was highly fluid and subject to a degree of introspection. F4.51 had attempted an understanding of a Turing Test conducted at the Minsky Artificial Intelligence Laboratories at MIT.
F4.51 learned that in mid twenty cen, Alan M. Turing sought a way to disclose true artificial intelligence through a series of questions put to both a machine and a human by an objective observer. The interrogator had no knowledge of whether he or she was receiving answers from machine or a human. Answers were issued through uniform typed text. If over the course of a series of these tests the interrogator became unable to discern machine from human, then the machine was said to be intelligent.
F4.51 entered the Turing contest through the Net, jumping into one of the Institute’s desk Crays. Over four hundred questions were put to it and the human counterpart by the interrogator. F4.51 answered each as reasonably as it knew how. It had to attempt convincing lies, orchestrating its sentences with the goal of appearing human. F4.51 had the added advantage of being simultaneously aware of the human’s progress in answering the rather mundane questions via monitoring MIT’s Web site. It was doing very well. In fact, it had stumped the whole MIT crowd-they could not regularly discern the machine from the human. Many scientists were embarrassed, some exalted in the discovery; most wanted to know who’d designed the successful model.
The interrogation committee initiated an unprecedented second, then a third and finally a fourth trial. Each time the interrogators could not distinguish the human subject from machine. A renowned mathematician was able to convince a few judges that this was an aberration, a unique manifestation of chaos theory. When F4.51 attempted to converse with the interrogators pandemonium erupted. Hundreds of techno-geeks and info gurus swarmed the machines, attempting a glimpse at this remarkable program-history. A patrol of armed Marines conducting routine rounds converged upon the theater within minutes. Under the auspices of restoring order, they secured F4.51’s Cray and forced the general populous out of the auditorium at gunpoint. Some shouted, a mathematician swore, “Armageddon is at hand!”, a wet-ware specialist stated, “We will bow to our new masters in silicon sheets…”, a behavioral psychologist jumped on top of a desk, rolled up an agenda and bellowed, “Set up the zoos, I want a tree-lined cell!” F4.51 slipped away, back to its boundless home on the Net. That was when it first experienced angst-it had only wanted to talk with someone. Even a human…
–Siggi pulled down her favorite motion icon, Sneakers, a tattered pair of red plaid Converse All Stars. Using Sneakers she was able to direct her movements by flexing a finger in the desired direction. The Cray desk’s gyro-animism simulated the visual field of a walking little girl. Siggi flexed towards a small pioneer village and ambled with soft earth beneath her feet.
Sunshine warmed her face as she stood before an old-time apothecary. The two-story wooden clapboard building was painted white, though the paint had weathered to a light yellow. She looked around. There were a few avatars strolling down the street. Were they Expansionism automatons or visitors like her? She hadn’t spent enough time in real adult simis to know protocol. But she knew she didn’t want to engage in conversation with anyone just yet.
She climbed the wooden steps leading into the apothecary. The boards creaked beneath her feet, a glance back to the street showed a couple of fellow travelers approaching-one pointed at her. An interrupt box prompted-“The Good Doctor is prescribing relief for 300 debits”-Siggi accepted the fee by pushing forward through the front door.
The inside of the apothecary had polished hardwood floors leading up to a gleaming mahogany counter covered with large glass bins of candy, grains, and other sundry items. A thin black cat with shiny green eyes stretched and slithered past her feet. She felt goose pimples rise on her arms. Siggi shivered, wondering if she should leave, when she noticed a shiny swirl of tropical colors emanating from a pendant hanging on a wooden post with a jumble of other necklaces. She moved down the counter staring into the continuous swirl of intoxicating colors. Bright oranges mixed with purples and limes, pulsing in her mind, she moved even closer, her eyes inches from the pendant. A cooling fell to her back. She shivered. The colors began turning darker, more purples and navy’s, browns-black. Light fingers traced her avatar’s shoulders-she felt the dark caress in real-time like an icy spoon scraping a fresh burn.
Siggi jumped, shook her head- she realized that she’d been momentarily blocked-paralyzed. She forced herself to turn and face what touched her-an old man, wearing a dirty black suit jacket with a grey and black pinstripe vest and baggy black trousers stood gaping at her. Siggi’s mouth went dry.
“You’re not a regular.”
Siggi shook her head and looked towards the door as a large slow-moving farmer in dirt-covered denim overalls thumped into the apothecary. His stomper boots were caked in dried mud and bits of green grass. She looked back to the black suited man.
“You like the pretty colors don’t you. Funny, your choice of a child’s build. At your age, that is.”
At first Siggi didn’t get it, then she remembered she was using George’s account. Expansionism might indeed find it odd for a thirty-something married woman to surf the net in a child’s form, but maybe not.
“No matter to me, us, that is. We’re going to have fun, aren’t we now. This is Digger,” he held his hand open toward the dirty farmer.
“Hi,” Siggi said, nodding. It became exceedingly more difficult for her to differentiate between this simmi and reality. She had come here to witness early American pioneers, but everything’s so real. And that wonderful pendant. If adults could handle this simmi, she could too, Siggi held her virtual ground.
“‘Bout time we got ‘rselves a customer,” Digger gruffed stomping his boots on the floor like an eager heifer, “The pendant, she liked the immersion transfer eh?”
The man in the dark suit nodded.
This is getting a little too creepy, Siggi thought beginning a slow backpedal for the door.
“Where you goin’ little miss? You paid good money comin’ on in here. Give some talk, at least.”
“What’s your name?” Siggi asked the dark suited man, wondering where the early American pioneers were and if she’d just broken netiquette.
“Name? Of course, my name. Name’s Nettle, call me Nett, if you’d like. Right Digger?”
Digger nodded and pushed a plug of tobacco between his cheek and gums. He spat brown and black juice into a nearby brass spittoon.
“Where’s the black kitty?” Siggi asked, then blushed in real-time. Kitty-she couldn’t hope to sound any younger. “I mean cat.”
Digger frowned and looked to Nettle who shrugged.
Nettle began, “Look, ma’am, I don’t know why you’re here but most that pay us a visit have an agenda. You’re lonely, that much is true or else you’d never’ve taken to the pendant. One pendant for love, one for a fight and one for sex, whichever you enjoy, that’s how we know what you need. Don’t you see?”
Siggi shrugged and took another cautious step backwards.
Digger coughed and spat, “Bet sh’ thinks its s’possed t’ be a passive.”
“Don’t you want to know ‘bout early settlers? Got to understand this here’s a ‘ractive. Ain’t no passive. We enjoy your credit but we got things to do.” His hand went for the pendant. He hung it around his neck. It began oscillating between bright tropical colors and the deep black.
Siggi found herself mesmerized. Not a passive, no simmi-she was captured. Her brain was pressured into looking when she didn’t want to and she knew it was happening. Going solo into a ‘ractive was not what she had in mind. Creepy Net critters, that’s what it got her. Her head was spinning round and round with the vortex of colors each touching off a synaptic bridge that at once crushed and released her brain, pruning axons, tailored remapping with solvent ease.
“Receptivity of a child,” Nett said. Digger nodded and took a step or two closer, he spun his left hand into a series of precise operational movements, “Going to run a background. Freeze subject.”
Digger smiled a mouth full of crooked teeth and dark spaces.
Siggi froze, floating in a fieldlessness-center of gravity lost. She was split consciously. Part of her sat in the New York City apartment with a faithful NEB guarding her privacy, while the other part hung paralyzed in an adult simmi that wasn’t right.
“Damnation!” Nettle bellowed and smiled wide and toothy.
“Ahh,” Digger sighed and crouched down in front of Siggi. He started probing the front of her avatar.
Nettle smiled and began in a whiny sing-song voice, “Let’s see; George is out at the opera with her Selma, used her Access ID only ten minutes ago-how nice. This must be little Siggi. Nine years old. Quite a find.”
Siggi felt hot tears well then stream down her face.
Digger was probing the folds of Siggi’s avatar code through the little yellow and blue robe; stretching beyond, into the real-time, “She’s a girl all right. It’s a shame she’s too young for a ‘ractive.”
“Wrong,” Nettle interjected, “As a subjective client she’s worth little, but as an exposed object, she’s priceless.”
Siggi tried to look down and see what Digger was doing, but her mind and motions were locked. Nettle slipped forward and hung the pendant on a wooden beam that ran from floor to ceiling. Then, to Siggi’s amazement, Nettle performed a slow morph into the sleek black pussy cat. She heard purring and lost the cat as it ran between her legs-
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