Year's Best SF 17

“I have a baseline ready for implantation,” Paul admits on Thursday, and it feels like a victory for Mason. “We can use that as a jumping-off point to test things, if you don’t want to use simulators.”

“You don’t use simulators until you have a mock-up ready. The baseline is unimportant while we’re still working on components.” Then he thinks about it. “Where did you get a baseline with no R&D approval?”

Paul grins. “Black market,” he says.

It’s the first time Mason’s ever suspected Paul might actually care about what they’re doing.

It changes a lot of things.

On Friday, Mason brings in a few of his program’s parameters for structuring a sympathy algorithm, and when Paul shows up he says, “I had some ideas.”

Paul bends to look, his motorcycle jacket squeaking against Mason’s chair, his face tinted blue by the screen.

Mason watches Paul skim it twice. He’s a quick reader.

“Fantastic,” Paul says, in a way that makes Mason wonder if Paul knows more about specifics than he’d admit. “See what you can build me from this.”

“I can build whatever you need,” Mason says.

Paul looks down at him; his grin fills Mason’s vision.

Monday morning, Paul brings Nadia.

She sits in the back of the office, reading a book, glancing up when Mason says something that’s either on the right track or particularly stupid.

(When he catches her doing it her eyes are deep and dark, and she’s always just shy of pulling a face.)

Paul never says why he brought her, but Mason is pretty sure Nadia’s not a plant—not even Paul could risk that. More likely she’s his girlfriend. (Maybe she is an actress. He should start watching the news.)

Most of the time she has her nose in a book, so steady that Mason knows when she’s looking at them if it’s been too long between page-turns.

Once when they’re arguing about infinite loops Paul turns and asks her, “Would that really be a problem?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” she says.

It’s the first time she’s spoken, and Mason twists to look at her.

She hasn’t glanced up from her book, hasn’t moved at all, but still Mason watches, waiting for something, until Paul catches his eye.

For someone who brings his girlfriend the unofficial consultant to the office every day, Paul seems unhappy about Mason looking.

Nadia doesn’t seem to notice; her reflection in Mason’s monitor doesn’t look up, not once.

(Not that it matters if she does or not. He has no idea what he was waiting for.)

Mason figures out what they’re doing pretty quickly. Not that Paul told him, but when Mason said, “Are we trying to create emotional capacity?” Paul said, “Don’t worry about it,” grinning like he had at Mason’s first lines of code, and that was Mason’s answer.

There’s only one reason you create algorithms for this level of critical thinking, and it’s not for use as secretaries.

Mason is making an A.I. that can understand as well as respond, an A.I. that can grow an organic personality beyond its programming, that has an imagination; one that can really live.

(Sometimes, when he’s too tired to help it, he gets romantic about work.)

For a second-gen creative guy, Paul picks up fast.

“But by basing preference on a pre-programmed moral scale, they’ll always prefer people who make the right decisions on a binary,” Mason says. “Stockholders might not like free will that favors the morally upstanding.”

Paul nods, thinks it over.

“See if you can make an algorithm that develops a preference based on the reliability of someone’s responses to problems,” Paul says. “People are easy to predict. Easier than making them moral.”

There’s no reason for Paul to look at Nadia right then, but he does, and for a second his whole face falters.

For a second, Nadia’s does, too.

Mason can’t sleep that night, thinking about it.

TO: ANDREW MASON

FROM: HR—HEALTH/WELFARE

Your caffeine intake from the cafeteria today is 40% above normal. Your health is of great importance to us.

If you would like to renegotiate a project timeline, please contact Management to arrange a meeting. If you are physically fatigued, please contact a company doctor. If there is a personal issue, a company therapist is standing by for consult.

If any of these apply, please let us know what actions you have taken, so we may update your records.

If this is a dietary anomaly, please disregard.

The company appreciates your work.

They test some of the components on a simulator.

(Mason tells Paul they’re marking signs of understanding. Really, he wants to see if the simulation prefers one of them without a logical basis. That’s what humans do.)

He pulls up a baseline, several traits mixed at random from reoccurring types in the Archives, just to keep you from using someone’s remnant. (The company frowns on that.)

Under the ID field, Mason types in GALATEA.

“Acronym?” Paul asks.

“Allusion,” says Nadia.

Her reflection is looking at the main monitor, her brows drawn in an expression too stricken to be a frown.