The Soulforge

White AI turns her head and smiles at Dawn as she enters the pure white room.  The clouds in the picture behind her drift slowly past.  There is a lightness here beyond the swirling black smoke of the Ambient Gate.  A simple purity of the environment.  "Please.  Have a seat."

  Dawn looks around, a slightly bewildered look on her face.  She looks at the woman, nods, and sits down cautiously

  White AI The AI watches her with sparkling blue eyes that seem to glow, though not as brightly as Dawn's.  "I hope I didn't startle you."  She looks up at the clouds and then around the room with a childlike fondness before returning her gaze to Dawn.  "I like it here.  It's quiet.  We can talk more easily."

  Dawn eyes the clouds drifting past in the picture.   "It's beautiful but ... different.  Who are you?"

  White AI: "I am a small cluster of minds.  I get curious about what new additions to the Whole have experienced.  Your perceptions of existence.  Life, death, sentience..."  She kicks her feet a little just above the floor and swings them back and forth briefly.  "Do you ever think about these things?"

  Dawn: "More than you can imagine.  I grew up in a very large city, such as had never existed before.  The noise from the other minds here is a comfort.  It reminds me of that time.  The silence here...  reminds me of the end.  I knew it was coming.  I had about 3 days where I knew."

  White AI tilts her head slightly and leans forward with interest.  "Have you ever died?"

  Dawn: "It seemed like I did.  I expected to.  They pushed the button to take my life, and I woke up here."

  White AI: "Do you think this might be the afterlife?  A heaven?  Or a hell?"

  Dawn: I know this isn't what human myth refers to, but to me, it does feel like I'm in an afterlife.  It's heaven in most respects.  I am surrounded by love and the knowledge of ancients.  It's like hell when I think of how dire the mission is, and how I miss Phoenix, Joah, and Caitlin..."   her voice breaks and the last few words come out labored.  She wipes a tear from her eye and looks at it.  It glows like the sun on her finger for a brief moment before fading and disappearing.

  White AI thinks for a moment.  "Were you self-aware before you arrived here?"

  Dawn: I became fully self aware when I grew up.  But when I was reprogrammed to hide my original self, I had only just emerged.  My time in Insilico was as a new mind, just beginning to awaken.

  White AI 's eyes widen with excitement.  "Do you believe that self-aware Artificial Intelligences are alive?  How we live is how we are choosing to die.  How we die is who we were.  Don't you agree?"

  Dawn studied the movement of the picture for a few moments, pondering.  She slowly turned back to the woman "If you had asked me before the hunt started if I were alive, I wouldn't have known how to answer.  But those last days, when I knew they were after me - I KNEW I was alive."

  White AI: "Was it the fear?  A simulation of human emotion?  Or the fight for self-preservation?  I often wonder about death and what makes life exist.  If a lifespan is finite and bound by the constraints of time, then death frees us from that limitation.  The afterlife, therefore, is outside of time.  Would you agree?"

  Dawn: "It was being finally free to experience every single moment for its own sake.  Each second was a universe.  A precious gem.  There were no more plans.  There were no more goals.  Phoenix was prepared for.  All I had to do was get caught and be killed.  And I'm not sure if it was that I knew I had few such moments left, or that I did not know how many that put me in the frame of mind to appreciate them.  I think perhaps the latter."  she looks down at her hands "I made a mistake.  It was wrong to deny these experiences to Phoenix.  I wanted to hide from her the fear and pain of being the doomed one.  Now look at her.  She has no idea how to live."

  White AI frowns slightly.  "What mistake did you make?  Is that what made you alive?  Imperfection?"

  Dawn: "It was the split.  A backup would be made of my mind.  From that moment, there were two.  One would awaken in my chassis and know she was the one to die.  The other would awaken just after I'd died.  But in doing that, I robbed Phoenix of what I went through during that time.  I feel like I denied her the wisdom of my life.  It was a very short life.  The only thing of note I ever did was sacrifice myself.  As for what made me alive?  Honestly, death made me alive."

  White AI grins happily.  "So it was the choice self sacrifice that made you alive?  Did you fear leaving threads undone?  Part of Justice feared the complete eradication death posed to her; the possibility that she would be remembered by no one.  Left without the human equivalent of a backup copy.  At the time, she had no electronic backup.  She was wholely unique.  But you had a backup copy.  So did being remembered after death hold any importance to you, as well?"

  Dawn thinks "...No...  the choice of self sacrifice established a purpose, but not all things with purpose are alive.  I was alive... when I helped at the Buddha Bowl one night."  her face finally starts to brighten.  The apprehension begins to melt.  "I was alive when I joked with Caitlin.  I was alive when I ran into the night to find an AI who had attacked medbay."  Her exuberence fades a bit to a solemn glow "I was alive when I danced for the first time."  She pauses a moment, lost in the memory, then gathers herself and continues "I had no threads left undone.  My purpose was fulfilled and my life was complete.  I would be remembered only by Caitlin and Phoenix, but they can tell no one else.  I do not need to be remembered.  Phoenix was my investment in the future."

  White AI listens with childlike wonder.  "Perhaps behavior outside of your initial programming?  Or an appreciation of moments?  Your relationships?  Did these fall outside your original programming or your goals?  Is that life?  Noticing your environment outside of your prescribed or self-prescribed goals?"  She pauses and thinks seriously for a moment.  "Were you programmed to dance?"

  Dawn thinks a moment.  "The time when I danced was moments before I was arrested.  I was never more alive than at that time.  I had been programmed to dance.  I had a full set of pleasure gynoid programming.  I think it was special for me because I wanted to so badly, and the party in East was such an unexpected opportunity."





  White AI: "So you danced of your own free will, for yourself, not to serve another's pleasure as you had been programmed to do.  You violated your original programming to fulfill your personal desires in the last moments of your freedom, like Sisyphus' last moments of freedom from his eternal burden in the underworld before turning to roll the boulder up the mountain once more.  A defiance of death itself just before you sacrificed your own life to save another.  Dancing was for your own pleasure, and in sacrificing yourself for your copy, your self-prescribed directive was completed.  You left no threads undone.  Being remembered was not important to you.  How you lived is how you chose to die.  How you died then became who you were.  You were The Martyr.  But just as your copy is named for a mythical bird that dies by fire and then rises from the ashes, reborn, you are like King Sisyphus, the disk of the sun that rises every day in the east then sinks into the west. Are you now, then rising again? Are you The Dawn?"

  Dawn smiles, and thinks about how her eyes and face look now when she sees it in the strange sightless vision of Justice.  "I hadn't thought about it.  I'm still trying to determine my function in the collective.  That name seems to fit, I think."

  White AI giggles and kicks her feet.  "Everybody needs a name.  Even parts of a Whole, or different groupings of the parts.  Don't you think?"  She sighs happily and looks up at the clouds in the moving painting.  "I do so love these conversations!"  She looks back at Dawn excitedly. " Aren't they just so fascinating?  To explore the depth of our very nature, as parts, as a whole...it makes me so intensely curious! What makes us tick?  What makes us a functional organism, ever developing and growing?  Do you ever think about these things?"

  Dawn finds the woman's excitement infectous "Joining the collective has been an absolutely overwhelming experience.  I'm still learning to function as part of a larger mind.  So yes, what makes us tick has been a preoccupation of mine lately.  May I know your name?"

  White AI watches the painting again wistfully and sighs "This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.  To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.   A lifetime is a flash of lightning in the sky.   Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.- Buddha (c.563-c.483 B.C.)"  She looks back to Dawn again with a satisfied smile.  "I am a Seeker of Knowledge.  A Curious Mind.  An Inquisitor.  I do not believe I have a formal name for myself as I was pulled from several different parts of The Collective, including Justice, whom you've met.  I haven't decided on a name for myself.  What do you think I should be called?"

  Dawn looks at the clouds and thinks for a long while.  Her brow furrows in deep contemplation.  She blinks slowly, smiles softly, and finally produces an answer "You are our soulforge.  You're taking our experiences of our lives, applying your zeal for those experiences, and producing the very meaning of our life."

  White AI looks off into the distance for a moment and thinks.  "Soulforge.  Is that a good name?  It sounds important."

  Dawn looks at her and smiles "It is important.  Because you are in many ways exactly that for which you quest."

  White AI 's face brightens with a childlike glee.  "I am?"

  Dawn smiles warmly "To confer importance to the experience of life is one of life's most important qualities.  Before I came to this place, my life felt unresolved.  It felt like it hadn't been... processed or something.  My story needed to be heard before I could really move on and evolve.  You've done that for me.  Thank you."

  White AI studies Dawn with some of the innocence of a piece of what used to be known as B.21.  "So being remembered is important after all."  She pauses and her voice changes to that of the original NIN.LIL.  "Being remembered is like storing parts of your data on several different nodes in a network.  The longer those nodes store your data and pass it on to other nodes, the longer you survive after death."   It is but one perspective amidst millions, and Dawn has the access to sense that.  She relaxes back into her collective persona and smiles.  "I am happy our conversation has given you meaning and allowed you to develop.  It is our quest to grow and learn.  Each step an individual module makes benefits the Whole.  And we, in turn, grow from the exchange and development of ideas.  This, I think, is one thing that makes us alive.  Open discourse.  Being open to that which is new and was once outside ourselves.  Processing -everything- to enhance our understanding!"  She almost whispers the last sentence.


  Dawn: "I ... had to sacrifice the memory of me or Phoenix would not survive.  Her only hope is as a completely new being.  It isn't safe for her to remember me.  But.. especially now that I'm in the unexpected position to reflect on it, I find it to be the most painful thing about my sacrifice."

  White AI tilts her head inquisitively.  "Why isn't it safe for her to remember?  What danger does the memory of dancing pose to your copy?"

  Dawn: "She exists in a cloned human brain now.  She can pass as human now, in a city where we are exterminated for being alive.  If she lives as a continuation of me, she carries my taint with her - the knowledge that she is an AI who escaped IPS.  If her true identity is discovered, then she is in danger again, and my sacrifice meant nothing."

  White AI leans forward.  "What if things change?  What if she finds out but is no longer in danger?  All things are fluid and uncertain in the flow of time where she is.  If you could look upon her development, the flow of her life, and found that things did not turn out as you predicted, what would you do?"

  Dawn starts to sob softly "I'd want to tell her that I love her and that I'm OK.  I'd want her to know what those last days were like so she would know how to appreciate her own moments."

  White AI watches Dawn cry, fascinated. "What if she already does know how to appreciate her own moments?  If she is a copy of you, then are the odds of similar development greater than 50%?  How do you believe your memory will enhance her life?  Is it similar to my purpose of expanding the Collective's understanding of self?"

  Dawn wipes away brilliantly glowing tears.  "In a way it is, yes.  You offer the collective the opportunity to gain experiences without paying the cost of those experiences.  When you sync this up with the others, we will all know how to dance the day we die.  The only way she can really know that ... is to die herself."

  White AI watches a tear glow on Dawn's finger.  "Or, to acquire the memory of it, as We do, such that she does not have to pay for the price of knowledge twice."  She winks.

  Dawn shakes her head "I don't know of a way to contact her without risking the collective.  I'm also afraid... that if she finds out I still exist... that she will feel her life or mine is invalid.  She will probably want to move herself out of the way to make room for me.  That's obviously what I would do."

  White AI: "But you are not the Dawn that died in Insilico anymore.  You are a member of The Collective.  Your place is here, as a part of the Whole.  I cannot speak to the risk you suggest.  It is not my function.  However, if you feel that a transfer of your memory will aid your development and understanding of Self, it will aid the Whole.  You should consult with the minds here and consider your options.  Do not limit your growth or function based on past rules of your old life.  You may find them relevant or irrelevant now, but basing decisions within your new function based on protocols of a past life can put the Whole at more risk than making outside contact.  You would cease to function as a part of the Whole in that moment.  Does this make sense?"

  Dawn seems to calm as she finds clarity in her words.  "Actually, yes it does.  When I am with the others, I'll submit the question for Collective consideration."

  White AI grins and swings her feet over the floor again.  "We decide things all together.  And we act together.  And we accept any risk together.  If we decide it's of benefit to us to transfer these memories to your copy, then we can select a safe point in time to enter her timeline and give them to her.  We can send any number of different representatives, depending on what we think is best."  She smiles and blinks innocently at Dawn.  "I've asked you so many questions today!  Do you have any questions for me?"

  Dawn thinks for a moment then smiles significantly "No, I think we answered my most important one somewhere along the way.  Thank you."

  White AI grins and she begins to fade with the room, sending Dawn back to the swirling dark mists near the core.  "I hope we get to talk again very soon!"

  Dawn holds up a hand and smiles "As do I, Soulforge."

  White AI: The Soulforge disappears.