Incarna

94 - Point of No Return

Day 13: Early morning, JI Research Centre, Lake Katithandra Central Australia.

"So ..." Koora began then pointed at the wall screen and the icon for Harold and the orbital track of the AINGEL. "So, the AIME component of the AINGEL is the same AIME as the one here, or over at Jervis Bay?"

"Ah, yes, and no!" Massi smiled at her question and noted the way she held her head and had just the hint of a frown ... "It's best to think in terms of a laptop compared to a multicore desktop that run the same operating system." Koora's frown deepened a little.

"Ok, so the hardware is different with each of the original AIME because each one is a further development of the preceding model, yes?" Koora nodded not interrupting his stream of consciousness reply. "This gives us different abilities with each model that is I suppose, matched to the JI research centre each AIME was built in." She just kept nodding every time he glanced at her and away from his screens. "Now, we have the five terrestrials, and one in the IOS. The AINGEL is really just a self contained AIME, smaller in size but probably just as capable as the one in hamburg not necessarily this one here. It's probably the closest so far to Harold's original concept for the AIME, with the one at Jervis Bay being the first."

"So you're telling me that JI has spent, how many multi millions just on building these AIME. You do realise this program is consuming the entire JI profit?"

Massi turned slowly to the love of his life and now his hired conscious and smiled sheepishly, "Yep!"

"Boys and their toys ..." "Oh come on, you surely don't want me to run a complete profit and loss statement on our AIME program for you in your first week ..." Koora raised her eyebrows and gave him her very serious look.

"Nope, not now, no way! Nope, not with the Boss up there about to ..." Massimo broke off and turned immediately back to his wall screen. "Shit, the new orbital vectors have red zoned!"

Massi enlarged a window that had a data set showing a red flashing alert. He thumbed his Comlink and the speakers so Koora could listen in.

"Max, Harold, the new orbital vectors just won't hold. You've still too much velocity to achieve the fly over and then hit the landing field at Sky City!"

Harold's voice came back almost immediately, "just watching the track predictions now. Looks like I'll need another full orbit to make the adjustments!"

Max jumped in, "Continue with the Tug docking as planned and then I'll send through a complete ground track prediction and we can use the Tug to make the adjustments as planned but spread them over the orbit."

"Agreed," came Harold's less than enthusiastic voice, or so Koora thought. He must be exhausted. "We'll conduct a data link before and after the docking," and the Comlink went silent as each genius went to work.

Koora waited for Max to check over his inputs then turned back to her. "Why aren't the AIME linked permanently ..." she asked matter-of-factly.

Massi went pale and Koora was stunned by his change of demeanour. He recovered quickly and gave her a smile, "Ah, because that would form a network and we aren't ready to experiment with a network of supercomputers." Koora stared at him unsatisfied with his response. "Besides, data transmission is still too slow to take advantage of what the AIME's are capable of. What we do is ..." and Massimo expanded the orbital display window across the entire wall screen.

He highlighted the JI ComSat network and then the AIME locations. "We use Burst Laser communication in direct line of sight between them in the same fashion as our encrypted data transfers. It has the speed and data capacity, but we can't hold the tracking well enough at present for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

"So to get to a permanent encrypted network you need permanent laser comlinks?" "Yep ..." "... and this is one of the research subfields of the AINGEL program, to work out how to have permanent laser comlinks?" "Yep," and he gave her a big smile then turned back to finish coding some more of the required orbital changes.

"... but at present you're afraid of what that might produce? AI perhaps?" His fingers stopped in mid line of code and he turned to her. "You're getting ahead of things with that," and he held up his left hand to her while he finished the coding with his right. He checked the orbital display window for the new track prediction, nodded in satisfaction and turned back to her.

"First things first, and that is perfecting the AIME system for commercial applications like AINGEL and the IOS and Kalpana, and even Research vessels like our Gaia One and for technical universities. We don't do anything unless it's secured by commercial success, not even AI." He shrugged at her with a 'is that ok with you' look. "I mean AI is a goal, but it's quite probably impossible because of the data transfer issues for the sort of distributed system model we use with AIME and Analogue Nano-memory."

Koora turned back to her ePad and swiped open another window. "OK, so if I'm to be an effective part of JI, I need to be able to redirect some of the JI programs and, get JI into a balanced spread of operations and investments." She made some adjustments and many of the graphed data sets changed angles and went from red or orange to green lights. "If AI is to be the main goal of JI in the coming months and years, then I need to ensure a more sustainable resource base for that research, yes ..."

Massi broke into a huge smile as she spoke. Her words were like Beethovens' 9th on a stormy day on the cliffs at Jervis Bay after a great meal and winning a chess competition. It was as if all his Xmases had come at once and he was in nerd heaven. It was as if he was sitting on a red sand dune in the Tanami Desert National Park watching the restored herds of Leathernose migrating down to the grasslands of Lake Katithandra, and of course with a Laptop close by to work on what ever inspiration came his way.

Koora took in his gorgeous big smile and took a deep breath before she trashed it. "Now that's the AI question out of the way, and since you've now got our Boss safe for a couple of hours at least. What the fuck is JI waisting money on Incarna for? I mean it's aliens come to test us out isn't it?"