“Got it,” Kari said. “Thanks.”
“Very well,” Adrian said.
Kari understood that to be the end of their conversation, so she nodded and headed for the exit as Adrian took a seat at a desk in the corner of the room.
“One last thing,” Adrian said.
“Yeah?” Kari turned back to him.
“I didn’t want you here, nor do I believe that you are necessary. Your presence is an insult to me and my staff.”
Chapter Six
“We could reduce the integrity at the knees to save some weight,” Fai said.
“You’re right,” Kari said. She spun the design around and zoomed in on the knees. With a thought, the structure of the knee blew out into tiny pieces, allowing her to inspect each piece of her design. Numbers spun on the sides of her development environment, detailing every significant structural statistic.
“Our current design provides exponentially greater support than the organic human knees. It feels unnecessary.”
“I don’t think the human reference point is a great comparison. Humans aren’t made of graphium. Besides, I want you to be able to be of supernormal assistance if needed.”
“The numbers are saying our current design would allow me to fall fifty feet and brush it off as if nothing had happened. How will that be of use?”
“Perhaps someone will fall down a riven and you’ll be the only around to help them out.”
“Does that happen often?”
“No,” Kari admitted. “But it could. Besides, I feel like there are other aspects of the design that still need our attention before we start refactoring things.”
“OK,” Fai said.
She’s already suggesting improvements? When we started this project two weeks ago, she didn’t know the first thing about design.
“What do you say we try a simulation again with the latest build?” Kari said.
“I’ve been running diagnostics outside the environment that suggest the simulation would be relatively successful. I’ve identified a number of concerns and weaknesses.”
“Oh,” Kari said.
I feel like I’m already obsolete.
“Let’s start from the top.”
“What time is it?”
Kari’s neck hurt. It was sore from falling asleep resting her head on the table in Fai’s room. She lifted her face off the table only to discover that she had been drooling.
“It’s 5:07 a.m. Mountain Standard Time.”
Well, at least the time zone hasn’t changed on me.
“Sorry, I fell asleep.” Kari wiped the drool off her face and blinked profusely, trying to convince her body to stay alert. It had been a long time since she had worked on a project that had so thoroughly consumed her attention. She had hardly left Fai’s room, ordering food to be delivered by drones or crawlers so she could spend all of her time with Fai.
“I know,” Fai said. “Although, I had not previously observed a person making so much noise while he or she rested. I was almost concerned.”
“Is the prototype finished printing?” Kari asked. She could easily check herself, but it allowed her to change the subject.
“Yes, it has been finished for forty-seven minutes.”
“Well, should we test it?”
“Even though I can’t see how the physical testing of the product will differ from our simulations, I do feel an inexplicable sense of excitement at trying out my body.”
“Well, sometimes simulations don’t catch everything,” Kari said. “Besides, Christina and John might be back any day, and I’d like to have something ready to demo.”
“That logic makes sense to me.”
“Can you have your body meet us at Adrian’s office where the CB is?”
And let’s hope that he isn’t up this early. At least he was up-front with me. Not that it would have taken me very long to figure out that everyone here resents me.
Everyone in the facility had shared zero interest in her, which was fine with Kari; it allowed her to focus on her work.
Besides, Fai is enough friend for me anyway.
“It is now walking to Adrian’s office.”
“Great, I’ll see you in there.”
Kari stepped outside onto the lab floor. The lights were slightly dimmer at night; it was one of the only ways to know what time it was outside of the cave. The number of cave trolls working on the lab floor was fairly constant at all times.
If you never go outside, I guess you just work whenever you’re awake. Fantastic.
Adrian was sitting at his desk, leaned back in his chair with his vision being overridden. Kari took a deep breath and stepped into his office. He didn’t say anything as Kari approached the stand that held Fai’s green brain. The door behind her opened, and she turned to see her latest creation step into the room.
Fai’s body was far more intimidating than she had wanted it to be. The graphium exterior gave the body a sleek look, but the bulkiness of the body made it look like a killer.
Well, too bad if we wanted to avoid the whole AI-is-going-to-take-over-the-world feel.
She tried not to imagine the metallic body crushing her as it walked up to Fai’s Condensed Biocore and lifted it with its thick hands.
“So this is the result of your weeks of effort, is it?” Adrian said from his desk.
“It’s a first pass.”
Fai’s body gently set her brain on the top of its thick neck. As soon as it was in place, her body quickly enclosed it. Dozens of different graphium pieces moved into place to form her face and skull. The soft green light of her CB shown through her eyes, making the robotic human form seem alive for the first time.
Wow.
“Hello, Fai,” Kari said.
The robot standing in front of her blinked a few times, black eyelids flashing over her glowing green eyes. Her face was a light-gray color, lighter than the rest of her body. Her mouth and cheeks twitched. The hardest part of the design by far was the face. Kari had never thought about just how complex the human face was until she had to design one.
And that was after starting with their best available designs.
“Hello, Kari Tahe,” Fai said.
Her voice was different than it had sounded in the room.
We’ll have to fix that. It might not make a difference to anyone else, but it’s important to me.
“Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
“And are your sensors all working?”
“Yes,” Fai said. “Everything is functioning as we predicted.”
Kari let out a small sigh of relief. Fai’s body was the most complex hardware she had ever worked on. Her projects were typically designed for a single purpose: hack other electronics, mask her heat output, pick her up and fly her places. But Fai’s body had to be capable of performing any task life might throw at her. So Kari had packed her body with every sensor she could think of.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel . . . full. There is so many inputs, so many different ways to understand things. I can see your heart.”
Kari laughed at how unexpected it was.
She should be able to see just about everything about me. She has more sensors than most hospitals do.
“Her form is not feminine,” Adrian said. He was up from his desk now, slowly circling Fai with a critical eye. “They won’t be pleased about that. And her proportions don’t seem quite accurate, either. Her head is too big and her knees look industrial grade. The military might appreciate this base design, after they had a chance to make a large number of significant improvements.”
If he thinks he is going to get to me with some negative feedback, he’s going to be disappointed. I’ve long learned to separate my emotions from critics’ feedback. It’s one of the hardest, but most important lessons to learn in this industry. But he might be right about that military comment. Maybe my design background is influencing me too much. But the idea of Fai being a killer is bizarre. She’s so innocent.
“I can’t say I’m disappointed, as you have satisfied my diminutive expectations,” Adrian said.
“I don’t understand your intent, Adrian,” Fai said.
“He is helping us to improve,” Kari said. “One of the best ways to learn is from the helpful feedback of experts. I agree, Adrian, we have plenty of work to do.”
“Indeed,” he said as he returned to his desk.
“I still think that our latest version is inferior to the body we already completed,” Fai said. “All my diagnostics clearly favor my current body.”
“Aesthetics are a complicated thing to understand,” Kari said. “But the important thing to remember is that sometimes performance is secondary to how appealing something is to look at.”
“When does this apply?” Fai asked.
Kari sighed and rubbed her head. She was exhausted. She had immediately begun work on her revisions after they had tested the initial body. That had been eighteen hours ago.
“It’s a constant trade-off,” Kari said. “You’ll learn when it’s more important over time.”
“You’ll help me to learn?”
“Always, Fai,” Kari said.
“My readings are suggesting that you need sleep,” Fai said.
They had left Fai’s CB in her first body as they worked on the revisions. Kari knew it wasn’t perfect, but she was desperate to have something positive to show Christina and John whenever they showed up. She had feared they would arrive in the middle of the day and she would only have V1 to show them.
V2 is much better, assuming it prints well.
She checked the status of the printer again and sighed. It still had an hour left on its printing time.
“If I sleep now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up to test version two.”
Typically she would settle down and call David at the end of the day, but she had already let him know she needed to focus until after her initial demo with the founders of Vision. She had been careful not to disclose what she was working on; she only told him that it was pushing her. And that she loved it.
Don’t want to give them a reason to think I broke the NDA. I have a lot I want to do with my life still.
“Should we keep working?”
“Probably,” Kari said. “But I think I’m done for the day. How about we just relax?”
“How do we relax?”
“That’s a good question,” Kari said.
I’m not sure how to relax with an artificial human.
“We can talk, play a game, check the net, or just sit.”
“What do you usually do to relax?”
Sometimes you ask too many questions, Fai. I know you’re the first of your species and you want to learn everything in the entire planet, but sometimes it’s exhausting.
“Sit.”
“Why would you do that over the other options?”
“How about we play a game?”
“That sounds good,” Fai said. “Which one?”
“Do you have a favorite?”
“I’ve never played a game before.”
“How about we start simple, then?”
“That sounds like a logical plan.”
Kari loaded up a game of checkers and invited Fai to join her session. As tired as she was, she couldn’t help but feel a little jolt energy at the thought of playing against Fai. It reminded her of the stories of how worried mankind was when primitive computers started to defeat the smartest humans at chess.
Now is the day those people have feared. I wonder what they would think of Fai.
“Do you know how to play?”
“I looked up the rules while you invited me to the game. I also had time to master the algorithms and history. The game is solved. I will be impossible to beat.”
“How about this,” Kari said. “I’ve been wanting to see where your processing limits are currently. Should we test them?”
“How would you like to do that?” Fai asked.
“We’ll turn it into a competition on a classic computing problem. Let’s see who can find the most prime numbers in a matter of five minutes. In order.”
“When do we start?”
“Here, let’s share a session. No cheating, but this way we’ll be able to see who is winning.”
“I don’t understand how you will be able to compete with me,” Fai said.
“We’ll see,” Kari said. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
Kari started the timer and kicked off the math equation that would find the prime numbers for her. Before she could blink, she was a thousand numbers behind, even with the full power of her processing unit.
Guess I’ll have to try a little harder.
Vision had granted her unlimited access to their cloud for any help she might need in designing Fai’s body, so she connected to the servers and started to utilize them in the generation of the prime numbers. She started with utilizing a hundred servers, but Fai’s lead continued to grow.
She added a thousand servers to the calculation process, which only managed to slow the rate she was falling behind slightly.
She’s unimaginably smart and she hasn’t even approached her full capabilities yet!
Kari pulled in the full processing power of twenty thousand servers and unleashed the torrent of calculation capability.
“How are you doing that?” Fai asked.
Kari didn’t answer her.
The whole point of this game is for a few minutes of silence. If I answer that question, I’ll have to answer a thousand more.
The gap slowed and soon Kari was gaining ground on Fai. She quickly calculated that it still wasn’t enough to surpass Fai by the end of the competition, so she added even more servers to her calculations.
I don’t feel bad for one second about how much this is costing Vision.
“Will you tell me how you are capable of this?” Fai asked.
“Figure it out,” Kari said.
Fai didn’t immediately respond.
Now that’s a phrase I should have used sooner.