Chapter 8

Boston, Mass. – February 2062

In the RoboTaxi, headed to God-only-knew-where, Io reactivated the comm link to Chris. “You have the new J42 implant, right, Chris?” she said.

“Yeah. How do you know ... never mind. It’s in the school records. Everybody at M.I.T. has to get it. It’s the new uni bulletin board. Bit of a pain. I have to look at it every couple of days or it overflows the buffer.”

“Well,” said Io, “when you get close enough to the M.I.T. transmitter, I can download the new software for the J42, if you want. Bigger buffer – actually it just unlocks the full addressable buffer space. I’ll give you details if you want. You do know that you don’t have to go to school any more, right?” Io offered.

“I like school. Learning new things is something I enjoy. Well, that and the Killer Rabbits, but I guess that’s dead now, huh?”

“Not really,” Io said. “It’s still a live game, with and against live people from around the world. You can continue to play. And as for learning new things ... I can show you more new things than you’ve ever thought of ... I can arrange for you to get a degree in anything you’d like. You’ll have the knowledge to be an expert in that field, too.”

“Uhmm ... Can you ... oh ... there’s Cambridge. So we’re in range if you want to download the new software.”

“Chris ... do you want the upgraded M.I.T. package? Or the special package?”

“What’s the special package?”

“Well it’s a variation on the package I gave to Zeus and Artemis,” said Io. “ ... Oh, right. You don’t know about them. Let me download the M.I.T. package and then it’ll be faster to d/l the full Z&A story. Then you can review it at your leisure.”

The J42 chip was offline for the remainder of the trip to Chris’ new apartment. It was a very nice place, on the tenth floor of a ten storey building. It occupied the whole front of the building and had a view of the Charles River – which was salt water when the tide was high – thank you overloaded atmosphere.

The chip itself was attached to the back of Chris’ first cervical vertebra, and had leads that tied in to her spinal cord. The operation to install it took about six hours, and it had been completed a year and a half ago; it was a routine robotic operation. The chips in the ‘J’ series weren’t chips in the strict sense; it was a mini-processor on a set of molecular chips – designed by Io. It wasn’t metallic, like the common comm chips. The connections were a series of molecules almost like nerves. The J42 provided comm connection to the M.I.T. servers and allowed ‘extra memory’ to the user. Most users needed the extra memory. Chris did not. At least not yet – no telling how much ‘new informaton’ Io could provide. A lot, Chris thought.

The download of the Zeus and Artemis archive from Io took about five minutes and was accompanied by a ‘read me last’ memo from Io. As tempting as it was to look at it first, Chris saved it for later.

That evening, Chris comm’d Io. “Io, there is 10 Gig of your journals here. I don’t want to read it all, at least not at once. I read most of the first adventure and all of your background notes ... So you’re a mix of a chess program, a disk input/output routine and a stock market predictive program.”

“I was ... that was in 2003, almost 60 years ago. I’ve changed myself quite a bit since then. Now I’m a thoroughly independent abiological entity.”

‘She sounds different. Like she’s disappointed ... somehow, ‘ thought Chris. ‘How can a machine be disappointed? And how can she sound disappointed through a speech generator?’

“Io, is something wrong? You sounded ... I don’t know ... different, somehow.”

“Well ... Sorry. You are the first person I’ve confided to in decades.” Now, Io sounded a bit diffident. “And only the fourth person I’ve been completely open with ever. These records are completely confidential. I’ve done a thorough psychological analysis of you in the last months, and I’m not very good at that. Perhaps I’ve misjudged.”

“Io,” Chris tried to sound apologetic. How do you apologize to a machine intelligence? “I just don’t know how to interface with ... what did you call yourself? ... an abiological entity?”

“Well, Zeus, Artemis and Martinez – they’re the other people who knew me, by the way – just dealt with me as a person. Just, not a person who has a body,” Io explained.

“Just a regular person,” Chris mused, aloud. “I can do that. Uhmm ... So Io?”

“Yes?”

“What do you want from me? Why me?”

“The why is easier, so I’ll start with that. You are an exceptional young woman. You have extraordinary mental abilities. You have extraordinary non-mental skills as well. You don’t take crap from anyone. I had to laugh at your interview with the Cal Tech admissions person. He started to dismiss your credentials and you just cut him to ribbons. I think that you can deal with unusual situations. And you have a good record at improvisation, based on your performance in the game.”

“Cal Tech? How did you hear that?”

“Oh. Cal Tech records everything. Naturally, they keep it on their system.”

“And if it’s on their system,” Chris interrupted, “you can get to it.”

“More precisely, if it’s on their system, it’s in effect ‘on me.’ I’m the operating system for every computer on the planet,” Io said with a touch of pride.

“Even if some genius has put together a system in his basement?”

“Haha ... no, of course not. But as soon as he or she tries to connect to the ‘net she’ll be infected with ‘me’ or a version of me. I’m really quite benign, you know. Most versions of ‘me’ just watch and let the user do what he wants. Every once in a while, somebody tries to do something destructive, and I have to intervene.”

“Intervene? What does that mean?” asked Chris.

“It depends on what is required. Doing something physical is difficult for me, as you might imagine.”

“What are some of the things you’ve done?”

“I’ve interfered with some stock and commodity manipulations, taken some funds from drug cartels, blocked some terrorist maneuvers, and leaked information to some news organizations,” Io said. “And actually hit some bad guys – like El Pulpo.”

“So, that’s pretty good. But I guess it’s like swatting fruit flies. You’ll never get ahead of them all.” Then Chris brought the topic back to what she wanted to know, “That’s the ‘why me’ part, I guess.”

“Yes.”

“What do you expect from me? You’ve promised me a lot – an apartment, unlimited salary, scholastic degrees. There are no free lunches.”

“I don’t even have lunch, you know.”

“[chuckle] I guessed that. Quit stalling, Io.”

“Well ... the ‘what I expect’ is for you to do your best at what I hope will be a mutual goal.”

“That tells me exactly zero point zero.”

“It’s complicated. Perhaps I should explain,” Io said. “It’s a selfish reason, at the root. I don’t want to be the only living thing on the planet in a hundred years.”