Claws and Curls

Claws 51 - Moon Pool

I just stared at the two of them. “Did you know ...” Terry cut me off, “just learnt of it during my briefing this very morning before I went to pick you up.” “Far out,” was all I could think of that wasn’t a profanity of some sort. I turned to Harold, then that strange voice came over the intercom.

Aquatruck from Huskisson Mr Parrish, I've opened the rear dock for them. It’s Dr Montrose and his team.

“Thank you, send them straight to the moon pool and we’ll meet them there. “Very good sir.”

“Tell me that’s not AIME?” I asked. “Ooh, of course not. AIME cannot have free access to the world at this point, and never at all unless we are absolutely certain of its sympathy toward us.

I watched Harry walk across to the Holo table and sit in one of the command chairs then do this small stretching movement of his back. “You’ll have to excuse me, an old injury that doesn’t get the amount of therapy it should!” I nodded in sympathy. He sat upright and typed in a different code sequence and up came an image of a series of icons each with ever larger numbers, that went exponential on the last one.

“This is the diagram of our AI Seed program. You can see the rapid growth in computing power as new tech was introduced to give greater and greater storage and speed.” Harold used a cursor and I watched it go from icon to icon. It stopped at an icon with a huge jump in the x10 to the power of the number. This icon was at the base of the exponential phase of the growth curve. “Here is where we introduced Quantum tech mainframes and new algorithms with very clear sympathy over rides on all responses. We had not been prepared to use quantum mainframes until the software was looking nigh on, end of humanity proof.” Again I just nodded, the numbers meant nothing but I knew they were huge.

The cursor moved to the next icon and the numbers were now beyond my complete comprehension. Harold turned and saw my expression. “Yes, this is Seed AI at work. It is writing its own software, but our overrides prevented AIME from applying the new programs to itself. So in effect each rewrite was a new form of AI that we could analyse and test to ensure sympathy to humanity.

This was like a uni lecture and I used all the memory techniques I could think of to lock these images and details into my mind.

The cursor moved to the second last icon. “Here we saw the beginnings of self improvement beyond our control so we closed off any external communication and moved the mainframe to the SubLab.” Harold shrugged, “actually we were given a choice by the authorities of either locking up or destroying AIME. We put around the rumours about the AI temper tantrums and brought AIME here. The voice you just heard is the last of the non sentient AIME computers and that one runs this ship.” Harold changed the display back to that of SubLab. “AIME lives in there and we will now go and meet per.” Per?” I asked, “yes, its a non sexual term coined by the aussie scifi writer Damien Broderick to be used in future novels were no sexist terms were to be used. We borrowed it for sentient AIME. It just doesn't seem right to use, it;” he shrugged again as he got up and stretched out his back again. “As you’ll soon see!”

I took one last look at the holo table and the SubLab display, then I turned and followed Harry out the situation room. Terry closed the door and followed us across the bridge then down the external gangway to the boat deck. We went down the central stair well to a machinery deck. Various crew members went about maintenance and moving equipment from racks to a central ramp.

Harry stood talking to a woman directing the activity. An older chap stood with an eTab and appeared to be cross checking a list as the various pieces were lined up next to him. I followed Terry across to the console rising from the deck near the end of the ramp. He checked over the display then typed in a code and the two halves of sliding floor began to withdraw back into the decking. Lights came on and there was one of those classic moon pools I’d seen in movies were the hero swims in from the outside to do battle with the evil genius. Except here I was now standing next to the evil genius. I wondered who the hero was in this situation.

Terry turned and Harry nodded to him. The screen came awake at his touch, showing the MV Gaia, another vessel below it and SubLab on the sea floor. Terry touched the other vessel icon and drew it up to merge with the Gaia. “Discovery docking initiated. Moon pool open, please stand clear.” came that strange voice I’d heard directing us for landing earlier this morning.

“That’s AIME,” Terry said, “and this is the first test of its ability to dock the two vessels.” Suddenly the water of the moon pool frothed and spilled up onto the deck as a small submarine conning tower emerged from the water to sit gleaming before me. There was a loud clunk and the boat rocked a little as the docking clamps took hold. “Oh shit a sub, bugger,” I thought, it hadn’t even occurred to me how we were going to get down to the Lab. “Shit you can be slow me lad,” I heard myself say in my dad’s tone that I used when I was telling myself off.