Inception - Ascension Paradox, Book 1
Copyright© 2023 by L.R. Thornton
Chapter 23
The professor’s mouth worked up and down for a few moments, unable to speak. Jillian had the idea that if he had spoken right then, it would have come out as a squeak.
After he regained full of his mental faculties, Professor Lawton turned his startled gaze to her.
“You’ll have to forgive my surprise here but I am a bit confused. Jillian, if you’re the mastermind of the A. I., then what possible use can I be for you? You should be in my laboratory.”
Jillian let loose a weak laugh. “It’s not quite that simple, Professor.”
He picked up the last bit of his sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth. His cheeks bulged around the food and she waited. Not that she found the professor’s appetite rude. In fact, in another life, she was sure she’d made some quip about his need to eat.
But she knew what he was about to ask her.
“OK Jillian, one question, how did you figure it out the A.I.?”
The unease she carried with her rose and she felt the hairs on her arm stand up. It was so difficult to talk about. Jackson, sensing her rising alarm as he always did, reached and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly as if to infuse his strength into her.
She took a deep breath. “It came to me in a dream.”
The professor gave a short laugh. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were,” she responded, not bothered by his skepticism. If she sat where he was, she would have done the same thing.
“Tell us about this dream,” Karlo said.
She looked at Jackson who gave a slight nod of his head.
“Having elaborate dreams is nothing new for me, Professor. More often than not, my dreams were in reality, nightmares. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, heart about to burst out my chest. Only capturing the tail end of something I could never quite make out. Images, feelings, sensations, etc. When I got into high school, those nightmares ended.
“Then, when we began working on C. A. D. I., they came back. With a vengeance.”
She stared down at the wilted leaves of her salad. “Unlike back then, I can remember most of the details now. And the same nightmares reoccur in a specific rotation.”
Jackson took his other hand and clasped her own between both of his. The warmth spread through her and she felt as if she could continue.
“We started working on C.A.D.I. about three years ago after a class project. At the time, our goal was to create a home assistant android for the busy executive.”
“A new vacuum cleaner,” the professor quipped. “I saw some of those at VEX the other day.”
“Right. We thought we’d do this. We had an idea that maybe we’d earn some grants to further but not too long ago we pushed further and further. We ran into the same road blocks as everyone else. A.I. was as only smart as your formulas, until...”
Until Sarah.
“The solution came to me in a dream. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Just a recurrence of the nightmares that used to plague me as a child. Until I had the same dream night after night after night. When I woke up that third night, I started working and haven’t stopped.”
“Tell us about this dream. The suspense is killing me.”
Jillian glanced over at C. A. D. I. She was playing with the salt and pepper shakers, moving them back and forth. Was it a sign of her learning or ... was it boredom?
Could C. A. D. I. experience something as mundane as boredom?
“Here’s the thing: A.I. research has been divided. No one wants to communicate with each other. Some focus on the solution to specific problems while others focus on variable approaches. The primer to A. I. research is this: how do we get A. I. to reason, communicate, perceive, and plethora of abilities?”
“To act more human,” Karlo added.
She nodded. “That’s correct. But in all these things, we’re not thinking like humans. If we took a step back, simplified our approach, how would a dolphin or a child start its development? Through natural means and not computer programing. Well, not solely through programming. DNA has all kinds of programming embedded but you get the meaning.”
She sighed. “When I thought of it like that, it just opened my mind. But if I hadn’t had the dream, I would have continued to do and think like everyone else.”
“I’m not stranger to fantastic dreams myself, Jillian,” the professor said with a cynical twist of his lips. He stared off into the distance at something only he could see. Then he turned back to her. “Can you tell us about it? You’ve been avoiding it this entire time.”
“You may think I’m crazy and want to commit me after you hear it,” Jillian said with a light uneasy laugh.
“Go ahead Jill. Tell him about the one last year.” Jackson urged.
An involuntary shudder came over her. “I don’t know. It was so real.”
“But they stopped, didn’t they? The least we can get is the professor’s opinion on it.”
Jillian stared down at her uneaten salad but didn’t see it. “Growing up, my parents worked a lot so it was easier to just send me to summer camp even as I gotten a bit older. One summer, I think I was twelve at the time, one of the girls had a boyfriend in one of the neighboring camps.”
She stopped talking and took in a deep breath.
“Her name was Sarah. She told all of us she’d sneak out and meet up with her boyfriend at the neighboring camp not too far down the road. He would bring his friends and...,” She glanced around the table. C. A. D. I. was staring at her in that unfathomable way. “Well, you can figure out what the plan was.”
Jillian toyed with the edge of her plate. “Sarah was pretty popular. It’s not like you were going to say no to her, even if you risked getting kicked out of camp. She told us that a few days from then, we’d all wait till everyone else was asleep and then we’d sneak out. A couple of nights, everything almost went according to plan except...” she trailed, finding a smile lifting the side of her mouth.
“What?” Karlo asked.
“I fell asleep along with everyone else.”
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