Chapter 65: Special Delivery

“THERE ARE THINGS I think I would never say,” Henry said. “Forever Yours cannot be a true representation of me unless it also understands what I might think, but wouldn’t say. If I wouldn’t say it, Forever Yours shouldn’t say it.”

He’d been thinking about this a lot in the past month, since the family’s lawyer appointments to update their wills. Having read his previous will, he realized how simplistic and, in some ways unrealistic, it was. Designating a dollar amount was never a good idea for any purpose. He didn’t actually have many dollars.

He was coding in his FY engine as much as he was dictating to it. In fact, all Forever Yours could do with his dictation was store it on its wall and learn from it. That learning was in association with other words stored there, not in concepts, ideas, and opinions.

Henry realized his life rules had to be programmed into the AI. The AI could not be depended upon to deduce his life rules. He was compiling a list that would help users capture less-concrete data for their Forever Yours singularity. He referred to them as filters. People filtered their thoughts before they spoke them. Forever Yours should filter them in the same way.

But it couldn’t be filtered according to his personal taste alone. Not every instance of Forever Yours was based on him. He needed the filters to be genuine for the singularity embodied. The real person needed to come through. People lied about their personality all the time. Perhaps there was a way to let the system know that the user was lying. And that lying was part of the character of the user.

It was more complex than he’d imagined when he first conceived the program.

“So, we’re not supposed to use dollar amounts?” Chastity asked as they all worked on their wills. “I don’t get it.”

“How many dollars do you have in the bank and hidden under your mattress or in your purse?” Lisa asked.

“Like, fifteen million?” Chastity said.

“Really? Get out your bank statements,” Lisa demanded.

“Well, some of it is in mutual funds and stocks and bonds. Then there’s all the shares of Open Cloak that are owned by the partnership,” Chastity said.

“That’s the problem with specifying amounts of money. Sure, you can make small donations and give a thousand dollars to your favorite charity, but when you start dividing up $15 million, you don’t have that much money. Whatever else you have must be converted into money. And we don’t know if Open Cloak stock will be worth fifteen dollars a share when we die, or fifty, or five. So, we don’t actually know how much money we have, except for what is in the bank,” Henry said.

“Shit. This is hard. What about the house?” she asked.

“We each own a share of the house based on what we put into the purchase. But no matter how much money we put in when we bought it, now it’s worth what it can be sold for. Less a sales commission. So, we talk about willing our interest in the house, not the money in it,” Lisa said. “My grandfather went over all this when he explained the trust he set up for the children. He put $150 million into it in order to buy 10 million shares of stock. Now the trust isn’t for $150 million. It’s for 10 million shares.”

“Our poor babies will have a nightmare,” Chastity said.

“Hopefully, it is one that will wait until they are better able to understand it, which means when they are older than we are now,” Henry said. “I find myself fading into melancholy when I think of losing either of you. This whole will thing sucks.”

“I suck!” Lisa said happily. “It’s one of the few things I can still do. Let’s go to bed!”

It was not on point for the task of will-making, but Cassie was asleep. That made it a good idea.

“We recorded thirty-one orders for the American Intelligent Machines sidewalk paver in the first quarter of 2031, far exceeding our initial projections,” Darla reported to the executives. “Non-refundable deposits of $50,000 per order have been received for AIM revenue of $1.55 million. That’s not really operating capital. Every dollar of that is designated for setting up the machinery at the manufacturer to fabricate the equipment.”

“Should we have bought into the manufacturer?” Chastity asked. “It sounds like a lot of money.”

“It’s a drop in the bucket. The Argos investment funds will be providing another $22 million, just to get the production set up. The total number of orders we have at the moment will amount to only about twenty percent of the setup cost. Then we also have to acquire materials and labor for the equipment.”

“Are we charging enough for them?” Luke asked.

“So far, yes. There is no doubt the price will need to go up soon. As an introductory offer, it’s good,” Darla said.

“Are there enough potential customers to make it profitable?” Henry asked.

“The total number of orders so far come from just seven customers,” Darla said. “After witnessing the test demonstrations we’ve done, two of the cities have ordered twenty between them. We are in discussion with over fifty municipalities with the likelihood of closing on forty or more. Each of those sales will likely average five to ten machines. City infrastructure is deteriorating at an unheard-of pace. Just replacing sidewalks will be big. Then we’ll be ready to release the big mama paver. It won’t sell as many units, but State governments are already beginning to make inquiries.”