Zendegi

‘No,’ her mother agreed, ‘we’re not in a theocracy, but your fellow citizens are perfectly capable of voting conservatives back into power if they start to feel that their values are being threatened.’

‘Threatened by what? A small improvement in the state of the art for faking celebrities in online football games?’

Her mother shook her head impatiently. ‘Maybe not, but what comes next? I’m sure there are people who’d pay to be intimate with a Proxy of someone famous.’

Nasim was bemused. Zendegi had its share of tame virtual pickup joints – whose flesh-and-blood customers could always take things further elsewhere – but the board would have run a mile from any suggestion of facilitating cyber-sex. ‘So now you think I’m a pimp?’

‘Oh, don’t be obtuse!’ Her mother glared at her. ‘But it’s not in your hands how other people use these methods.’

Nasim said, ‘There are already people peddling sex with virtual celebrities. I don’t think they’re looking to increase their level of psychological realism.’

‘Okay, put that aside. What’s going to happen to workers whose skills can be transferred to computers this way?’

‘You think we’ve made Azimi redundant?’ Nasim replied. ‘He’ll get a cut every time someone plays the game!’

‘And you think ordinary people will get the same kind of deal?’ her mother countered. ‘Let alone their colleagues who are put out of work without even being parties to the contract?’

‘Automation’s nothing new,’ Nasim said feebly. ‘Anyway… we’re a long way from using this for anything more than novelty value. Don’t expect a robot plumber anytime soon.’

‘Are you cheating your customers,’ her mother asked bluntly, ‘or are your claims about this technology real?’

‘They’re real.’ Maybe people would over-interpret the process, or ignore the fine print, but it was not all smoke and mirrors and celebrity fetishism. On a timescale of seconds, in a very limited domain, Virtual Azimi really had learnt to act like the original.

‘Then it will be improved upon,’ her mother said, ‘and it will be used in other ways. If you don’t understand why some people might resist that, then I don’t know what planet you’re living on.’

When Nasim went upstairs she had her knowledge-miner show her an updated news summary.

Nobody was rioting in the streets, burning Azimi’s jersey for his crimes against nature, or Islam, or sport. On the contrary, fans were already signing up for a chance to play in the first demonstration match: one team captained by the real Azimi, the other by his virtual counterpart.

The story certainly had made an impact, bouncing around the globe within hours, but the reception had been mostly positive, albeit with some scepticism at the prospect that any real skills had been extracted from Azimi’s brain. Comics had mined the news for its slight tinge of surrealism – an Egyptian sketch show portrayed their president engaged in a wrestling match with his virtual self – but so far, there’d been no rabid denunciations. As far as Nasim could see, most people were treating the process as scarcely more controversial than if they’d taped yellow markers to Azimi’s joints and used motion-capture to insert him into the game.

In the dregs of the knowledge-miner’s sweep was the news that the Benign Superintelligence Bootstrap Project had issued a video press release, with their public affairs officer, Michelle Bello, interviewing their director, Conrad Esch. The topical question addressed was whether the BSBSP had gleaned anything from the Human Connectome Project that might prove to be of more lasting significance than this brief spurt of interest in an online game.

Apparently, the answer was yes. By carefully studying the HCP data over the last few months, the Superintelligence Project had acquired vital clues that would allow it to construct a Class Three Emergent Godlet within five years.

‘And when that happens, what can we expect?’ Bello asked.

‘Within two or three hours, the planet will be entirely in the hands of the Benign Superintelligence. Human affairs will be re-organised, within seconds, into their optimal state: no more war, no more sorrow, no more death.’

‘But how can we be sure of that?’ Bello probed fearlessly. ‘Computers are capable of all kinds of errors and mistakes.’

‘Computers built and programmed by humans, yes,’ Esch conceded. ‘But remember, by definition, every element in the ascending chain of Godlets will be superior to its predecessor, in both intelligence and benignity. We’ve done the theoretical groundwork; now we’re assembling the final pieces that will start the chain reaction. The endpoint is simply a matter of logic: God is coming into being. There is no disputing that, and there is no stopping it.’

Nasim said, ‘Which of these reminds you most of a cat?’

Fariba examined the four photographs: the Eiffel Tower, a parrot in a cage, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Empire State Building. A patch of light on the screen tracked her focus of attention as it moved from image to image.