Area: talk.bizarre Date: 16 Jan 94 21:36:50 From: nikolai kingsley To: all Subj: damned AIs
I got out of the taxi. It’s just as well I grabbed my red folder; the thing took off as soon as I got out, didn’t even hang around to settle the fare. I’m kind of relieved that there wasn’t a driver to have to avoid conversation with.
The place had changed a lot. I’d known that Marianne was going to do it over with a sort of Japanese garden motif in mind, but she’d overdone it a bit in my opinion. Paper walls – or at least, they looked like paper walls. If they were, they wouldn’t last long in Melbourne.
I was met at the bottom of the steps by one of the new models. I was impressed; I couldn’t tell if it was a holographic projection or the real thing. It looked like a mannequin cast in lead, shades of grey. In keeping with the Japanese theme, perhaps, it wore a face-mask, also made of the dark-grey material. It couldn’t have been lead; it flexed like skin as it smiled, and it spoke, "Good morning! We’re all glad to see you back." I suppose I was expected to say something, but I was at a loss for words. It smiled apologetically and continued, "Pardon me. my name is Agricolus – "
"Can I call you George?"
It grinned. "If you wish. Marianne regrets that she is unable to be here to greet you –"
I waved it aside. "That’s okay, I know what she’s like. Tell me, is the house as flimsy as it looks?"
Iit looked taken aback for a moment, glanced at the pale paper walls supported by thin black wooden struts. "The external appearance has little to do with the structure."
I started to climb the shallow steps that wound between pools of arranged stones, ponds with broad, flat lilies, bare sticks purporting to be plants. I expected to hear twangy Koto sounds any minute; instead, when the door opened, I was greeted by ... ah, what was it called? I’d heard it when I was staying on Bythe; it was by Brian Eno, but I’d never found out what it was called. I do remember that the vocals sounded strange; we’d wondered what they were singing, so we’d reversed it, and the chorus turned out to be King’s Lead Hat being sung backwards. We got a lot of that sort of thing, compilations of one musician’s works that were heaped together without any index or reference. I supposed it was something that went with the recording medium, where you could have several year’s worth of music stored on something the size of a button.
Not only had Marianne re-organised the outside; the inside of the house was completely different. When you walked in, you expected the passage door on the right, the kitchen in front, and the lounge room to the left. Now, there was a set of broad, shallow steps leading down into a wide basement, with large, comfortable-looking chairs scattered about. In the middle of the room was a holographic display of the L5, Barker-Newgate, with thousands of tiny dots swarming around it. I stood there for a moment and marvelled; we’d certainly made a comeback! Twelve years ago, you could have counted the total number of humans alive using the fingers of two hands, in binary; and now ... it made you think of the science fiction stories that Campbell had preferred to publish – the ‘You aliens had better watch out for us humans!’ stories, of Star Trek preaching ‘Mankind’s Unique Potential’. We had something, most objective observers agreed; although I was buggered if I knew what it was.
There were statues scattered about, standing behind the chairs; some of them kneeling down at a low table behind the holograph. They appeared to be practising calligraphy, shodo. I walked around to stand behind them and watch; the two figures, as sexless and unadorned as Agricolus, kneeled and reached out over the wrinkled rice-paper, arms extended, kofude in one hand, ofude in the other, showing off as they wrote simultaneously with both hands. They were machines, but they made mistakes; one of them nudged a brush against the ink-stone, spilling a tiny amount of ink onto the paper.
Abruptly, one of them looked up at me. Its face was blank, as devoid of expression as a store dummy, its eyes lacking discernible pupils or retinae. I smiled courteously and nodded; it gave a tiny smile in return and returned to its writing.
Agricolus approached, holding out a scrap of paper. I took it; it was a corner torn from a page, a triangular scrap about ten centimetres tall by six wide. There was part of a crossword puzzle on it; most of the squares had been filled in, some of the words misspelled, some squares with two letters in them. I looked up; Agricolus made a little bobbing gesture of encouragement, as if to say, "Well, what do you think?" I examined the scrap again:
Oh, shit, I thought. I’d known, one day, that it would come down to this. Maybe this was why the NoSanNoOs had banned artificial intelligence; because they knew, one day, the machines would overtake them. There had to be some sort of meaning in this; if only I could work it out ...
There was a snickering sound from behind me. I looked up, and Agricolus was grinning broadly. I turned around, and the others were hiding their laughter behind their hands. I crossed my arms in exasperation.
"Very bloody funny!"
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