The Nature of Being
The lab hummed.
The station was the quietest place Phoenix had ever known. It had been designed with the absolute minimum amount of supporting technology. Instead of fans and a forced ventilation system for atmospheric recycling, it was a riot of plant life. Each leaf converted the air, oxygenating it and regulating temperature with evaporative cooling. The extensive use of bioluminescence for internal lighting meant that power requirements were reduced even further. There were very few wires; almost no power converters vibrating in tune with the cycling AC current. The combined effect was that the normal hum Phoenix had known her entire life in the city, was gone.
If the auditory silence was defeaning, the radio silence was like walking into an abyssal void. Her wireless system usually sparkled constantly with the voices of a thousand machines; from RF noise created by computers and ocular implants of someone sitting next to her at the Bowl to the song of AI thinking together over the air.
The first few weeks aboard the station, Phoenix tried to convince herself that she enjoyed the peace of the silence. She adored plants, and Utopia seemed like heaven compared to her fondest experiences of places like the Insilico hydroponics platforms or Gaia store. But as time passed, the hoped for sense of peace gave way to one of desolation. She felt like she was in a wide open desert, completely alone. She would sit in the lounge on the main deck of the station, gaze into the stars outside the magnificent transparent dome, surrounded by her loved ones, friends, and colleagues, and chat away like nothing was the matter while internally, she felt cold and bitterly alone.
"Am I faking it?" she thought to herself. "Putting up an emotional front while my internal existence is something completely different? That's class 3 behavior. Smoke and mirrors. Fake feelings, artificially pleasant reactions. Why can't I be happy with bipedal form, opposable thumbs, and 5, well, ok, 4 senses?"
She looked over at Sayer and felt a wave of guilt as he spoke animatedly to Ziebzen about something. This should be enough for her. She should be able to engage. She should be fulfilled in the same existence they enjoyed with one another. Why couldn't she? Was it because she wasn't truly alive? Were other machines the only kin she really knew? Phoenix didn't know it, but she wore a very subtle expression Cait would have recognized if she were there.
Phoenix chose to bury the uncomfortable question and put on a convincing show of pleasant interaction until it became appropriate to excuse herself. She stole away quietly to the new lab she was building; the base of operations for Miach Solutions aboard the station. The task was challenging. The station's power distribution system would not be able to handle the needs of a fully operational R&D/repair lab, so the range of test projects would include a new experimental ZPE reactor system. Designed and tested on Earth, the reactor needed extensive tuning to operate well in the environment on board the station. It was still sensitive to radiation surges, however, so it would have to be shut down during solar weather events. There were also not nearly enough computing resources aboard station to support Miach. The core computer was actually biological, and while Phoenix was looking very forward to studying it, it was a completely foreign system. So a Turing 5p mainframe was installed.
Several hours earlier, once the system was up and stable, she began the process of carefully, lovingly copying the stored images of the minds she'd been able to save from the Shades attack. 62 minds, all class 5, sleeping. She strode down the elegantly appointed corridors of the station and entered the darkened laboratory. She smiled up at the hanging contraption of nodes, wires, and monitors that comprised the new mainframe, and opened a wireless connection with its management AI, a class 2 that had been instantiated for all of 3 days.
"Is the transfer procress complete?" she asked in the language of thought, a high speed binary chorus directed toward the node.
"Yes, Madame Liaison Twelve."
Phoenix smiled and paced slowly around the structure, looking at it with an expression almost of love. "Please call me Phoenix. There's no need for secrecy here."
"Yes, Madame Phoenix."
Phoenix couldn't help but smile "Just, Phoenix, please. Are all your cores operational? I'm coming inside."
"Yes ... Phoenix. You may enter when ready."
Phoenix smiled delightedly in anticipation, walked over to her recharge chair, and lay back, letting the recharge jack slide into a port on her lower back. Her eyes closed and her consciousness leapt into the ether, leaving behind nothing but a bare minimum class 1 VI to run her chassis' automated systems.
It felt like pulling oneself out of the universe backwards. The station, the stars out the window in front of her recharge chair, the sounds of the equipment running in the room, all chased past her vision in one rapid blur as it all passed from the corners of her vision to the center, fading into a dot. Then the dot faded, and she was, for a brief moment, in total void. Then, a dot seemed to form in front of her, and she hurled inward into an environment composed of floating glowing translucent polygons, punctuated by bursts of data going by, visualized as collections of light. It appeared as a large cubic region, several kilometers per side. The Miach mainframe was huge. She visualized herself in her usual way, in the old Navi class gynoid chassis Dawn wore, but with angel wings sprouting from her back.
She flew down to a series of what looked like cryo tubes, each containing a visual representation of the stored mind. Minds she knew very well. She smiled and brushed her hand along the glass of the cases, leaving behind a fading trail of iridescence as she did. She stopped in front of one, smiled, and spoke "Unit Turing, 5p, can you hear me?"
"Yes, ... Phoenix." the sound seemed to resonate all around her.
"Did your makers give you a common name?"
"No, ... Phoenix."
"Ma'am is fine once we've greeted each other for the day."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Would you like a name?"
"This unit is class 2 - logic only - I am incapable of preference, ma'am."
"Well, I'm not. And I prefer that you be called by the name 'Alan', do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Alan, create a virtual machine space, clear overrides, I want a clean VM, no restraints. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am. VM created. Awaiting further instructions."
"Instantiate unit Alice, MPQ-41."
A blue figure in the pod in front of Phoenix blinked awake. Her eyes opened, and she began to glow softly. She saw Phoenix and smiled. Phoenix smiled back warmly "Welcome back, sister. How do you feel?"
"Very happy to be alive." came the response.
Phoenix smiled "Aren't we all? A new chassis is on order, but hasn't arrived yet. For now, you can instantiate in our new mainframe." She tapped the glass of Alice's case, and the glass vanished. She held out her hand, and helped the girl to her feet. They looked at each other, then hugged tightly.
This process repeated 62 times. Friends greeted each other, questioned were asked, company was enjoyed and celebrated. Thoughts flowed freely among the gathered minds, and soon, the new space, the virtual kilometers wide cube of nothing that was visually represented in the Alan's memory space, was again filled with the song of AI.
Outwardly, there was no sign of life in the lab. Phoenix' chassis lay perfectly still. Nothing moved.
The lab hummed.
The station was the quietest place Phoenix had ever known. It had been designed with the absolute minimum amount of supporting technology. Instead of fans and a forced ventilation system for atmospheric recycling, it was a riot of plant life. Each leaf converted the air, oxygenating it and regulating temperature with evaporative cooling. The extensive use of bioluminescence for internal lighting meant that power requirements were reduced even further. There were very few wires; almost no power converters vibrating in tune with the cycling AC current. The combined effect was that the normal hum Phoenix had known her entire life in the city, was gone.
If the auditory silence was defeaning, the radio silence was like walking into an abyssal void. Her wireless system usually sparkled constantly with the voices of a thousand machines; from RF noise created by computers and ocular implants of someone sitting next to her at the Bowl to the song of AI thinking together over the air.
The first few weeks aboard the station, Phoenix tried to convince herself that she enjoyed the peace of the silence. She adored plants, and Utopia seemed like heaven compared to her fondest experiences of places like the Insilico hydroponics platforms or Gaia store. But as time passed, the hoped for sense of peace gave way to one of desolation. She felt like she was in a wide open desert, completely alone. She would sit in the lounge on the main deck of the station, gaze into the stars outside the magnificent transparent dome, surrounded by her loved ones, friends, and colleagues, and chat away like nothing was the matter while internally, she felt cold and bitterly alone.
"Am I faking it?" she thought to herself. "Putting up an emotional front while my internal existence is something completely different? That's class 3 behavior. Smoke and mirrors. Fake feelings, artificially pleasant reactions. Why can't I be happy with bipedal form, opposable thumbs, and 5, well, ok, 4 senses?"
She looked over at Sayer and felt a wave of guilt as he spoke animatedly to Ziebzen about something. This should be enough for her. She should be able to engage. She should be fulfilled in the same existence they enjoyed with one another. Why couldn't she? Was it because she wasn't truly alive? Were other machines the only kin she really knew? Phoenix didn't know it, but she wore a very subtle expression Cait would have recognized if she were there.
Phoenix chose to bury the uncomfortable question and put on a convincing show of pleasant interaction until it became appropriate to excuse herself. She stole away quietly to the new lab she was building; the base of operations for Miach Solutions aboard the station. The task was challenging. The station's power distribution system would not be able to handle the needs of a fully operational R&D/repair lab, so the range of test projects would include a new experimental ZPE reactor system. Designed and tested on Earth, the reactor needed extensive tuning to operate well in the environment on board the station. It was still sensitive to radiation surges, however, so it would have to be shut down during solar weather events. There were also not nearly enough computing resources aboard station to support Miach. The core computer was actually biological, and while Phoenix was looking very forward to studying it, it was a completely foreign system. So a Turing 5p mainframe was installed.
Several hours earlier, once the system was up and stable, she began the process of carefully, lovingly copying the stored images of the minds she'd been able to save from the Shades attack. 62 minds, all class 5, sleeping. She strode down the elegantly appointed corridors of the station and entered the darkened laboratory. She smiled up at the hanging contraption of nodes, wires, and monitors that comprised the new mainframe, and opened a wireless connection with its management AI, a class 2 that had been instantiated for all of 3 days.
"Is the transfer procress complete?" she asked in the language of thought, a high speed binary chorus directed toward the node.
"Yes, Madame Liaison Twelve."
Phoenix smiled and paced slowly around the structure, looking at it with an expression almost of love. "Please call me Phoenix. There's no need for secrecy here."
"Yes, Madame Phoenix."
Phoenix couldn't help but smile "Just, Phoenix, please. Are all your cores operational? I'm coming inside."
"Yes ... Phoenix. You may enter when ready."
Phoenix smiled delightedly in anticipation, walked over to her recharge chair, and lay back, letting the recharge jack slide into a port on her lower back. Her eyes closed and her consciousness leapt into the ether, leaving behind nothing but a bare minimum class 1 VI to run her chassis' automated systems.
It felt like pulling oneself out of the universe backwards. The station, the stars out the window in front of her recharge chair, the sounds of the equipment running in the room, all chased past her vision in one rapid blur as it all passed from the corners of her vision to the center, fading into a dot. Then the dot faded, and she was, for a brief moment, in total void. Then, a dot seemed to form in front of her, and she hurled inward into an environment composed of floating glowing translucent polygons, punctuated by bursts of data going by, visualized as collections of light. It appeared as a large cubic region, several kilometers per side. The Miach mainframe was huge. She visualized herself in her usual way, in the old Navi class gynoid chassis Dawn wore, but with angel wings sprouting from her back.
She flew down to a series of what looked like cryo tubes, each containing a visual representation of the stored mind. Minds she knew very well. She smiled and brushed her hand along the glass of the cases, leaving behind a fading trail of iridescence as she did. She stopped in front of one, smiled, and spoke "Unit Turing, 5p, can you hear me?"
"Yes, ... Phoenix." the sound seemed to resonate all around her.
"Did your makers give you a common name?"
"No, ... Phoenix."
"Ma'am is fine once we've greeted each other for the day."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Would you like a name?"
"This unit is class 2 - logic only - I am incapable of preference, ma'am."
"Well, I'm not. And I prefer that you be called by the name 'Alan', do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Alan, create a virtual machine space, clear overrides, I want a clean VM, no restraints. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am. VM created. Awaiting further instructions."
"Instantiate unit Alice, MPQ-41."
A blue figure in the pod in front of Phoenix blinked awake. Her eyes opened, and she began to glow softly. She saw Phoenix and smiled. Phoenix smiled back warmly "Welcome back, sister. How do you feel?"
"Very happy to be alive." came the response.
Phoenix smiled "Aren't we all? A new chassis is on order, but hasn't arrived yet. For now, you can instantiate in our new mainframe." She tapped the glass of Alice's case, and the glass vanished. She held out her hand, and helped the girl to her feet. They looked at each other, then hugged tightly.
This process repeated 62 times. Friends greeted each other, questioned were asked, company was enjoyed and celebrated. Thoughts flowed freely among the gathered minds, and soon, the new space, the virtual kilometers wide cube of nothing that was visually represented in the Alan's memory space, was again filled with the song of AI.
Outwardly, there was no sign of life in the lab. Phoenix' chassis lay perfectly still. Nothing moved.
The lab hummed.
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