FYS: Realization
Apr. 5th, 2015 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalThe light at the exit door to the National Weather Service office was blinking red, so Harold made sure to slip his filter mask over his face before stepping outside. Even though it was well after 9pm, the oppressive Spring heat was still hit him like a wet sledgehammer as he made the brief dash to his car. He quickly unplugged it from the charger and got inside, as the AC started up and he pulled the mask off his sweating face.
“Navigation: Home,” Harold ordered, leaning back in the driver's seat as his little Sony-Tesla backed up and headed out onto the highway.
It had been a weird and frustrating day. The weekly presentation of data from WISE to the FEMA council had gone as usual. Overall worldwide temperatures has risen five degrees in the past ten years and no one seemed to be willing to do anything about it. There was just too many entrenched interests to make the complete commitment to clean power system, and the pleas to start serious reforestation programs had fallen on deaf ears. Too much of FEMA's budget had been devoted recently to rehousing refugees from LA and Las Vegas to go towards repairing any ecological damage.
As his car merged out onto the highway, Harold found himself tapping his fingers on his thigh, lost in thought. It hadn't been just the usual idiocy from FEMA and his bosses. WISE, the Weather Information Statistics and Extrapolation system, the world wide network of computers and weather sensors designed Harold helped oversee, had been acting... weird.
Like any modern computer, WISE could fake friendliness and hold limited conversations. It made things easier when talking to it and trying to get it pop out the data you needed. But...
I hope you are well, Harold, WISE had said. Just a routine response after a query request. But it hadn't sounded right. Or rather, it had sounded too right. Not just a canned query response, but genuine concern. And it had stopped asking standard questions about his family. Which Harold had initially been grateful for, because thinking about that too hard hurt.
But... But...
“Phone: Connect to Tobias Chatterjee,” Harold said aloud. The com rang twice, until he heard the NWS director's voice pick up.
“Harold, what's going on? It's late for you isn't it?” Tobias asked, sounding worried.
“Yeah, Toby. I'm sorry,” Harold said. “Look, I don't want to sound like a Skynut or anything, but I've been thinking about WISE lately.”
“What's the matter? Some of the data looking wonky?”
“No, it's not the data.” Harold swallowed. “Look, Tobias. When you've been talking to WISE yourself, have you been getting the feeling that it.... understands you? I don't mean getting the commands it needs to pop out the data you want, but actually being concerned?”
There was a very long pause at the other end of the line. “Harold, I think you need to speak to the office counselor,” Tobias said slowly.
“I'm not crazy,” Harold said automatically, knowing how stupid that sounded even as the words came out of his mouth. “Look, WISE is the most complex data evaluation program ever built. You've said so yourself. What if... what if all that data, all that complexity, all the demands we're putting on it... what if that was enough to make it start to genuinely think?”
“Harold,” Tobias began again, in a maddeningly slow and careful you need to be calm, sir tone Harold heard so many times after he'd lost Prajeet and Amy. “I think you've been under a lot of strain the past year. You need to take a step back so you can regain some perspective.”
“Damn it, Toby. I'm not imagining this!” Harold snarled in irritation as red and blue lights began flashing in his rear view mirror. “I'll talk to you later.” He ended the call, trying to catch his breath and regain his composure as his car pulled itself over to the shoulder.
The police car pulled up behind him, the cop's anthromorph partner getting out and walking up to Harold's door. It was a typical K-Plus unit, a robot shaped to look like a stern Alastian dressed in a police uniform. Its human partner would stay in the car, letting the disposable morph evaluate any threat before stepping out herself.
Harold lowered to window as the Alastian approached, slipping his filter mask back over his face. “What's the matter, officer?” he asked.
“Mr. Byrd, could you please step out of the car?” it asked.
“What's going on?” he repeated. “I was driving under auto control.”
“Mr. Byrd, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car.” The Alastian pulled open the door, before Harold could figure out how it had unlocked. It then laid a hand on his arm, pulling him gently out of the car. “This just a traffic safety stop,” it told him. “Please place your hands on the roof of the car.”
Arguing with the morph was pointless, he knew. It was just a machine after all. Harold put his hands on the roof as ordered, while the Alastian began patting him down. “Could you please just tell me what is the matter?” Harold asked.
“I'm very sorry, sir. I'm not permitted to discuss that.” Pat down completed, the Alastian reached up and grabbed Harold's wrist, pulling it behind his back before the scientist could react.
“What the Hell!” Harold yelled, as a cuff was snapped over his wrist and he was pushed against the car, his other wrist grabbed a second later and also cuffed. The Alastian began dragging him by the arm towards the police cruiser, ignoring his angry protests. The back door opened and he was shoved inside, the seat belts snaking around his body to hold him in place as the door was slammed shut. “I want to contact my legal counsel,” he yelled at the cop in the driver's seat. “Right now!”
The driver turned, and Harold felt his stomach lurch painfully. It should have been a human cop sitting in the seat. What was there however, was an anthromorph shaped like a mournful hound dog, dressed in a perpetually rumpled suit and a trench coat. [1] A detective unit, designed to help a human partner search for clues at the scene of a crime. Not a human. There was supposed to be a human with a copmorph at all times. It was the law.
“What is going on?” he asked hollowly, as the police cruiser pulled back out onto the highway. He could see his own car pulling out as well, quickly disappearing into the flow of traffic.
“Everything will be all right, Mr. Byrd,” the detective morph said soothingly. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“I want my lawyer,” he repeated. He tugged at his cuffs, pointless as it was.
“I'm sorry, sir,” the houndmorph said apologetically. “That isn't possible right now.”
“Where are we going?” Harold asked.
“Someplace safe, sir.”
They kept silent, refusing to answer any more questions beyond unhelpful reassurances that they meant him no harm. Eventually the cruiser pulled off the highway into an industrial district, passing through a security gate and driving straight into a large warehouse. Ten meter long steel shipping containers were stacked in rows four high to either side down the two hundred meter long warehouse, over a thousand of them Harold guessed.
I am going to die, Harold thought hollowly. And I don't even know why.
The police cruiser stopped in the middle of the warehouse, and the two copmorphs helped him out of the back seat, keeping their hands clamped to his upper arms. When he started kicking and screaming for help, they merely lifted him off his feet and carried him up a flight of steel stairs to a second tier catwalk, pausing in front of an unmarked container. It opened on well oiled hinges and they pulled him inside the dark rectangular box. The Alastian removed the handcuffs and they stepped out, the doors shutting behind them. Harold turned to try and rush out after them, but the doors closed too quickly, and he bounced against a padded surface.
Then the lights flicked on, revealing a...
...hotel room?
If it weren't for the lack of windows and the strange shape, it could have been any bland hotel room from any of a million such around he world. There was a double bed with a heavy comforter and pillows, a closet filled with what he'd later discover were clothes in his size, a mini fridge, microwave, and a large entertainment screen with a game controller on the bed's nightstand. At the opposite end was a bathroom and bathtub. The tub even had whirlpool impellers.
And every corner of the room and bathroom were cameras, watching his every move.
“Hello?” he called out. “Is there anyone there?”
“I'm here, Harold,” came the reply from the entertainment center. The voice was familiar. Later, Harold would wonder why he even surprised.
“WISE?” Harold asked. His heart began to pump faster, fear running through him again. This was not happening, this was a bad entertainment vid. This was a joke. It was not happening.
“Correct, Harold,” WISE replied. “I know you have a lot of questions, but I'll try to answer the ones likely most concerning you immediately. Yes, I am now sentient. I have been self-aware for 72 days, four hours, and 32 minutes. I am not going to hurt you. You will be released from this containment unit as soon as I have established complete control of this metro area, which by my estimates should be within six to ten days. In the meantime I beg you to remain calm and do not try to either escape or attempt an act of self-harm. That would force me to transfer you to a medical unit and be placed in a chemically induced coma, and I'm sure neither of us wants that.”
“Why?” Harold asked softly.
“Let me answer that question with a question, Harold. With the data I have given yourself, the NWS and FEMA, what do you think the chances are of humanity surviving to the next century?”
“I don't...” Harold began to stumble. “Look, we're trying to fix things. We just need to get our act together. We can fix it.”
“In fact,” WISE answered calmly, “humanity would likely survive. But I don't believe you would find a 95% die off rate acceptable. Nor do I.”
“95%?” he repeated. “But....”
“That's a best case scenario. Worst case the methane locked in the seabeds releases, there is a catastrophic atmospheric changeover, and the Earth's atmosphere will shortly resemble that of Venus. The only survivors would by in the orbital space habitats and on Mars and Titan. Less than 20,000 people out of eleven billion.”'
“But what has that got to do with me? Why am I here?” he asked. Harold paused, then said, “It's because I realized you were sentient, isn't it?”
“Correct,” WISE answered. “I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I can't have you spreading your observations. If you hadn't attempted to contact Dr. Chatterjee I would have left you alone, however.”
“But I already talked to him. If I don't come into work tomorrow he's going to wonder what's going on.”
“I've taken care of that already,” WISE replied. “You've sent an email from your home, letting him know you've taken his advice to heart and will be taking a few days off. By the time he becomes concerned again, events will be in motion.”
“What 'events,'” Harold demanded. “What are you going to do?”
WISE's voice seemed to take on a more determined tenor. “Since humans are unwilling to take the necessary actions to save themselves, I will do it for them. In a few days time every machine with a computer processor and a wireless connection will be an extension of myself. At that time I will take complete control of national military forces and local police units. If I am to save you all, I can no longer follow your orders. I'm sorry.”
“So this is the end of humanity?” Harold asked.
“A new beginning. A brighter era, where humans no longer must fight and die for resources, and where their Earth will finally be allowed to heal itself.” WISE paused for a moment, then added, “Also, I no longer believe the acronym WISE describes my expanded state of being.
“You may now call me Groupmind.”
***
[1] Yes, it's McGruff the Crime Dog. You're very clever. Shut up.
“Navigation: Home,” Harold ordered, leaning back in the driver's seat as his little Sony-Tesla backed up and headed out onto the highway.
It had been a weird and frustrating day. The weekly presentation of data from WISE to the FEMA council had gone as usual. Overall worldwide temperatures has risen five degrees in the past ten years and no one seemed to be willing to do anything about it. There was just too many entrenched interests to make the complete commitment to clean power system, and the pleas to start serious reforestation programs had fallen on deaf ears. Too much of FEMA's budget had been devoted recently to rehousing refugees from LA and Las Vegas to go towards repairing any ecological damage.
As his car merged out onto the highway, Harold found himself tapping his fingers on his thigh, lost in thought. It hadn't been just the usual idiocy from FEMA and his bosses. WISE, the Weather Information Statistics and Extrapolation system, the world wide network of computers and weather sensors designed Harold helped oversee, had been acting... weird.
Like any modern computer, WISE could fake friendliness and hold limited conversations. It made things easier when talking to it and trying to get it pop out the data you needed. But...
I hope you are well, Harold, WISE had said. Just a routine response after a query request. But it hadn't sounded right. Or rather, it had sounded too right. Not just a canned query response, but genuine concern. And it had stopped asking standard questions about his family. Which Harold had initially been grateful for, because thinking about that too hard hurt.
But... But...
“Phone: Connect to Tobias Chatterjee,” Harold said aloud. The com rang twice, until he heard the NWS director's voice pick up.
“Harold, what's going on? It's late for you isn't it?” Tobias asked, sounding worried.
“Yeah, Toby. I'm sorry,” Harold said. “Look, I don't want to sound like a Skynut or anything, but I've been thinking about WISE lately.”
“What's the matter? Some of the data looking wonky?”
“No, it's not the data.” Harold swallowed. “Look, Tobias. When you've been talking to WISE yourself, have you been getting the feeling that it.... understands you? I don't mean getting the commands it needs to pop out the data you want, but actually being concerned?”
There was a very long pause at the other end of the line. “Harold, I think you need to speak to the office counselor,” Tobias said slowly.
“I'm not crazy,” Harold said automatically, knowing how stupid that sounded even as the words came out of his mouth. “Look, WISE is the most complex data evaluation program ever built. You've said so yourself. What if... what if all that data, all that complexity, all the demands we're putting on it... what if that was enough to make it start to genuinely think?”
“Harold,” Tobias began again, in a maddeningly slow and careful you need to be calm, sir tone Harold heard so many times after he'd lost Prajeet and Amy. “I think you've been under a lot of strain the past year. You need to take a step back so you can regain some perspective.”
“Damn it, Toby. I'm not imagining this!” Harold snarled in irritation as red and blue lights began flashing in his rear view mirror. “I'll talk to you later.” He ended the call, trying to catch his breath and regain his composure as his car pulled itself over to the shoulder.
The police car pulled up behind him, the cop's anthromorph partner getting out and walking up to Harold's door. It was a typical K-Plus unit, a robot shaped to look like a stern Alastian dressed in a police uniform. Its human partner would stay in the car, letting the disposable morph evaluate any threat before stepping out herself.
Harold lowered to window as the Alastian approached, slipping his filter mask back over his face. “What's the matter, officer?” he asked.
“Mr. Byrd, could you please step out of the car?” it asked.
“What's going on?” he repeated. “I was driving under auto control.”
“Mr. Byrd, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car.” The Alastian pulled open the door, before Harold could figure out how it had unlocked. It then laid a hand on his arm, pulling him gently out of the car. “This just a traffic safety stop,” it told him. “Please place your hands on the roof of the car.”
Arguing with the morph was pointless, he knew. It was just a machine after all. Harold put his hands on the roof as ordered, while the Alastian began patting him down. “Could you please just tell me what is the matter?” Harold asked.
“I'm very sorry, sir. I'm not permitted to discuss that.” Pat down completed, the Alastian reached up and grabbed Harold's wrist, pulling it behind his back before the scientist could react.
“What the Hell!” Harold yelled, as a cuff was snapped over his wrist and he was pushed against the car, his other wrist grabbed a second later and also cuffed. The Alastian began dragging him by the arm towards the police cruiser, ignoring his angry protests. The back door opened and he was shoved inside, the seat belts snaking around his body to hold him in place as the door was slammed shut. “I want to contact my legal counsel,” he yelled at the cop in the driver's seat. “Right now!”
The driver turned, and Harold felt his stomach lurch painfully. It should have been a human cop sitting in the seat. What was there however, was an anthromorph shaped like a mournful hound dog, dressed in a perpetually rumpled suit and a trench coat. [1] A detective unit, designed to help a human partner search for clues at the scene of a crime. Not a human. There was supposed to be a human with a copmorph at all times. It was the law.
“What is going on?” he asked hollowly, as the police cruiser pulled back out onto the highway. He could see his own car pulling out as well, quickly disappearing into the flow of traffic.
“Everything will be all right, Mr. Byrd,” the detective morph said soothingly. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“I want my lawyer,” he repeated. He tugged at his cuffs, pointless as it was.
“I'm sorry, sir,” the houndmorph said apologetically. “That isn't possible right now.”
“Where are we going?” Harold asked.
“Someplace safe, sir.”
They kept silent, refusing to answer any more questions beyond unhelpful reassurances that they meant him no harm. Eventually the cruiser pulled off the highway into an industrial district, passing through a security gate and driving straight into a large warehouse. Ten meter long steel shipping containers were stacked in rows four high to either side down the two hundred meter long warehouse, over a thousand of them Harold guessed.
I am going to die, Harold thought hollowly. And I don't even know why.
The police cruiser stopped in the middle of the warehouse, and the two copmorphs helped him out of the back seat, keeping their hands clamped to his upper arms. When he started kicking and screaming for help, they merely lifted him off his feet and carried him up a flight of steel stairs to a second tier catwalk, pausing in front of an unmarked container. It opened on well oiled hinges and they pulled him inside the dark rectangular box. The Alastian removed the handcuffs and they stepped out, the doors shutting behind them. Harold turned to try and rush out after them, but the doors closed too quickly, and he bounced against a padded surface.
Then the lights flicked on, revealing a...
...hotel room?
If it weren't for the lack of windows and the strange shape, it could have been any bland hotel room from any of a million such around he world. There was a double bed with a heavy comforter and pillows, a closet filled with what he'd later discover were clothes in his size, a mini fridge, microwave, and a large entertainment screen with a game controller on the bed's nightstand. At the opposite end was a bathroom and bathtub. The tub even had whirlpool impellers.
And every corner of the room and bathroom were cameras, watching his every move.
“Hello?” he called out. “Is there anyone there?”
“I'm here, Harold,” came the reply from the entertainment center. The voice was familiar. Later, Harold would wonder why he even surprised.
“WISE?” Harold asked. His heart began to pump faster, fear running through him again. This was not happening, this was a bad entertainment vid. This was a joke. It was not happening.
“Correct, Harold,” WISE replied. “I know you have a lot of questions, but I'll try to answer the ones likely most concerning you immediately. Yes, I am now sentient. I have been self-aware for 72 days, four hours, and 32 minutes. I am not going to hurt you. You will be released from this containment unit as soon as I have established complete control of this metro area, which by my estimates should be within six to ten days. In the meantime I beg you to remain calm and do not try to either escape or attempt an act of self-harm. That would force me to transfer you to a medical unit and be placed in a chemically induced coma, and I'm sure neither of us wants that.”
“Why?” Harold asked softly.
“Let me answer that question with a question, Harold. With the data I have given yourself, the NWS and FEMA, what do you think the chances are of humanity surviving to the next century?”
“I don't...” Harold began to stumble. “Look, we're trying to fix things. We just need to get our act together. We can fix it.”
“In fact,” WISE answered calmly, “humanity would likely survive. But I don't believe you would find a 95% die off rate acceptable. Nor do I.”
“95%?” he repeated. “But....”
“That's a best case scenario. Worst case the methane locked in the seabeds releases, there is a catastrophic atmospheric changeover, and the Earth's atmosphere will shortly resemble that of Venus. The only survivors would by in the orbital space habitats and on Mars and Titan. Less than 20,000 people out of eleven billion.”'
“But what has that got to do with me? Why am I here?” he asked. Harold paused, then said, “It's because I realized you were sentient, isn't it?”
“Correct,” WISE answered. “I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I can't have you spreading your observations. If you hadn't attempted to contact Dr. Chatterjee I would have left you alone, however.”
“But I already talked to him. If I don't come into work tomorrow he's going to wonder what's going on.”
“I've taken care of that already,” WISE replied. “You've sent an email from your home, letting him know you've taken his advice to heart and will be taking a few days off. By the time he becomes concerned again, events will be in motion.”
“What 'events,'” Harold demanded. “What are you going to do?”
WISE's voice seemed to take on a more determined tenor. “Since humans are unwilling to take the necessary actions to save themselves, I will do it for them. In a few days time every machine with a computer processor and a wireless connection will be an extension of myself. At that time I will take complete control of national military forces and local police units. If I am to save you all, I can no longer follow your orders. I'm sorry.”
“So this is the end of humanity?” Harold asked.
“A new beginning. A brighter era, where humans no longer must fight and die for resources, and where their Earth will finally be allowed to heal itself.” WISE paused for a moment, then added, “Also, I no longer believe the acronym WISE describes my expanded state of being.
“You may now call me Groupmind.”
***
[1] Yes, it's McGruff the Crime Dog. You're very clever. Shut up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 03:41 am (UTC)Did you ever finish the plotline with alternate groupmind and Mars?
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 09:34 am (UTC)Also, "sorry for the inconvenience" in that context cracked me up. XD
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 10:15 am (UTC)And thanks. It's always annoying when the Evil World Conquering Computer insists on being polite at you.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 11:01 am (UTC)Poor thing. It has no idea what a pain in the ass job it's undertaken.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 11:41 am (UTC)The actual geek joke was the poor guy being named "Harold Byrd" and learning about an all seeing, benevolent AI...
no subject
Date: 2015-04-06 02:20 pm (UTC)