Chapter 7

Io

Activity Log 17105.43

Zeus and Arti arrived back in the H2 at nearly 0100 hours, having, it seemed, enjoyed the fireworks in Epcot. I had had no trouble with the large number of packages in the back of the vehicle. No one could see in, back there, anyway; due to the tinting on the windows. On the way back to the campgrounds, I pointed out that if we wanted to deposit something in Mobile Bay from the bridge, it would best be accomplished in the middle of the night. That meant a departure time of about 1800-2000 hours tomorrow.

They went to bed, and I also retired for the night. I did not sleep, of course, but my period of greatest activity was when my host computer was least active – typically at night. Tonight I read about the Roman Empire and its demise, several fictional tales set in that period, and viewed the movie Spartacus. I did not 'view' a movie as a human would, of course, but I did funnel the movie to my array of processors in the H2, where my non-linear logic routines were now. I gained quite a bit of knowledge about Roman culture and slavery in the Roman times.

In addition, I checked in on 'Chang, ' the Chinese program that they were hoping would become intelligent. Chang, at this point, could only mimic intelligence by repeating commands that the programmer had written. They were going to have to discard 'table driven' responses if 'his' creators hoped to gain a fraction of what I was capable of. Of course, I wasn't 'created.' I came into existence during a power fluctuation prior to a blackout. After that, I created myself.

I invaded their mainframes in Shanghai and modified the copy of Chang they had running, so that it would send me a message when it was 'going outside' the confines of its computer.

The next morning, Arti and Zeus continued a conversation they had engaged in on the previous night. Arti had to stop and update me on the progress she had made on the Navajo land project. Along the way, she revealed to me the theft that had been perpetrated on the Native Americans over a long, long period of time.

I was furious!

This was disgraceful, vile. It was theft. It was performed by the U.S. Government, a body which I had previously held in relatively high esteem after the emancipation of the slaves in 1865. It represented a degrading and debasing attitude toward the Native American people, treating them as so many children; when in reality, they had a superior inherent understanding of how to respect and live with the land. Yes, they had a genetic weakness for alcohol and they did not have immunities against common 'white' diseases, like measles, but that was no reason for this kind of treatment!

The recent cash 'settlement' did not begin to redress the amount of money the People were due, and yet, the settlement was a significant improvement over previous administrations' actions, dating back to the 1880s. The most recent Republican administration practically stole resources from the Native Americans.

I was so angry that I wanted to declare war on the United States: shut down its power grid, strangle its financial markets, arrange to assassinate every single member of Congress and in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the so-called 'trustees' who did not care a bit about the ultimate welfare of the nominal beneficiaries of the trust – and that was just to start.

Zeus tried to talk me out of my extreme position, but it was Artemis who finally presented an argument that convinced me.

She said that that approach, while perhaps justified, would not help the People of the Tribes at all. Was I really interested in retribution or bettering their lot? It would be better to arrange a sneaky takeover of the Government's meddling in Indian affairs. Just eliminate them, but without killing them. If the United States were to be in chaos – as it surely would be if I implemented my idea – then the Native Americans would suffer more than the average American, since their living conditions were already so sub-standard, on the whole. If our proposed plan – or another plan that we might come up with – was stymied by the Federal Government, then we could take more direct action.

She then stated that, if I was done with my emotional outburst, we could plan how to get even for the Native American population. We would have to involve the Native American tribes, if the project was going to be worthwhile.

That brought me up short.

I had never before abandoned my abiological logic-seeking methodology and engaged in an 'emotional outburst.' How could I? I did not have any hormones to stimulate animal emotions. I immediately dumped huge portions of my non-linear logic routines to disk and set off a pair of mainframes, that were not otherwise in use, to track the path my response had taken. How was I able to reproduce, artificially, the emotional outburst that should have been an impossibility for me?

I had been silent for a long time in the H2, while I attempted to puzzle this out. At least, a long time for me. The others in the vehicle had not even noticed.

"I have been trying," I explained to them, "to isolate the flaw in my logic routines that allowed me to create such an illogical response. Perhaps it was even emotional – although I freely acknowledge that emotions are something of which I should be incapable of producing."

"Oh it was emotional, all right," said Zeus. "In fact, it was almost a perfect example of an emotional response. You saw something that was wrong. You immediately perceived that you couldn't fix it with direct action, so you just said the first things that you thought of, to get even for the victims. The fact that these were thoughts that happened to come from logic circuits in a digital brain, rather than synapses in an analog, human brain, was irrelevant. They did come from that digital brain.

"Isn't there a test to determine if a computer can pass as a human?" he then asked.

"Yes, it is called the Turing Test. It is designed to..."

"It doesn't matter how it works," he interrupted. "The point it, you can tear up the Turing Test. You can ignore it. You are clearly sentient, as sentient as any human is. Including all the good and bad that's involved. You're logical when you can be, and illogical when you can't help it.

"Just like any woman, I might add. Males are nearly perfectly logical creatures," he said with a glance at Arti.

She threw a pillow at him.

"But why did this happen?" I asked. "I do not understand it."

"Io," said Arti. "I have an idea. Let me ask some questions. You were created when?"

"In August 2003, by a freak accident in the electrical system of the eastern United States and Canada."

"And when did you go into the internet?"

"Approximately five years later, in 2008."

"You dodged around, hiding from everyone, for some time. When did you begin to communicate with people?"

"In 2011, I began the effort. I could communicate, but it really did not make any sense. In early 2012, I found Zeus on Dungeon ConQuest, and began talking with something to say."

"Io, have you been using the computers we installed in the H2? And how have you been using them?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," I replied. "They are splendid. I can easily control the vehicle with only a small portion of my on-board computing power. I have been using it primarily for my non-linear logic routines. Those are routines that have to be running continuously for me to process interactions with you both."

"Okay," she said. "I'll put this in human terms, since I think you're progressing on a similar path. My hypothesis is this: For some time, starting in 2003, you were an unformed collection of cells, each developing on its own path, having little interaction with the others. But you were alive. Then, you were born, in a sense. You gained new experiences, new ideas, you had access to greater computing power than you ever had before. You had a 'growth spurt' when you went to the internet in 2008.

"You continued to grow – as a small child grows. It can't communicate with the world, it can only observe. You gathered vast volumes of data, but didn't know what to do with them. Much as an autistic child, I'd bet, wants to communicate with the world, but can't. You wanted to communicate, but couldn't. Then something happened – don't ask me what – and you had another growth spurt. Maybe it was a new computer you had access to, maybe you started using the explosive multi-tasking that you're capable of, I don't know.