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Post by rvm45 on Sept 2, 2014 12:23:45 GMT -6
A little something that I've been working on on and off. Let me know if anyone likes it. DAM
Chapter One
There was a knock on the door in the wee hours and there they were. They often worked together as a team searching for day work.
Jim was a very big human. He was about six-eight and weighed well over three hundred pounds.
There are some extra and double extra-large androids around—or so I’ve heard. I’ve yet to meet one.
There isn’t much call for brute strength in the modern technological world—excepting in the underground. Android muscle is about seventeen percent stronger than a human’s on a pound for pound basis. Android bones are stronger and lighter than human’s and androids have no fat.
An android isn’t as strong as a comic book super hero, but he’s quite strong enough for any practical purpose.
Back when they were designing the android bodies, there was a twentieth-century retro going and most of the standard models were patterned after well-known bodybuilders from that era.
They come in small, medium and large. Charles was a Large Serge—six foot tall and his body a close replica of Serge Nubret’s—when Serge was in contest shape.
Serge Nubret was a very dark black man, but Serge model androids come in every hair type and skin tone imaginable. Charles has the complexion of a well-tanned Caucasian.
Facial features are modular and there are hundreds of possible combinations.
Androids are grown as much as they are manufactured and you’ll find more variation among identical models than you will between most identical twins.
There is far more variation among gynoid somatotypes.
“I think I tore a bicep,” Charles said.
Charles is a gifted portrait painter, but life can be hard for an emancipated android. Sometimes he did day labor when he needed funds for art supplies or something.
“What does it feel like?” I asked him.
“It is causing me some discomfort,” Serge said.
Androids feel pain of course. A mobile being that can’t feel pain is a danger to itself and its surroundings. Androids don’t feel pain nearly as intensely as humans. At least that is the theory. Also, they have more mental hardware to ignore pain when it is desirable.
If Charles was experiencing discomfort, the damage was extensive.
I turned off the pain receptors in Charles left arm and used a “seam ripper” to open the upper arm from shoulder to elbow centering the bicep.
Android skin isn’t that much more resistant to cutting or piercing than human skin. I could have cut the skin open, but then it would need to heal. Take a seam ripper—a tool that vibrates at just the right rotating frequencies—to open the skin and when you’re through the skin closes right back up seamlessly—almost like a Ziplock only more so.
You have to open the skin with the “grain” and not across it. I know which direction the grain lies on each part of the android body.
That’s part of the knowledge required to be a Doctor of Android Medicine.
I worked rapidly and expeditiously. Pain wasn’t the issue but getting android body fluids all over my examination table and all over the floor was something I’d sooner minimize.
“Charles, your bicep is ruined. I don’t have a new one—much less a matched pair,” I said.
Charles was over a century old and some of his muscles were worn and aging. They really weren’t up to heavy duty lifting and moving anymore.
“I have an old left bicep that you can get by with until I locate a new pair. It is even more worn than your old one and it won’t be an ideal fit—it being second hand. You’ll have to take it easy with it or you’ll be left with a largely disabled left arm for the duration,” I told him.
As I said, android parts are grown not manufactured. None of them are precisely identical, but if you have a large number of right and left biceps you can measure and test until you have a pair that are reasonably well matched.
It isn’t essential, but it is best practice.
“How did you do this anyway?” I asked.
I worked rapidly as we spoke.
Android tendons, ligaments and cartilage are all very superior in strength and durability to a humans’. They all release and come loose cleanly when stimulated with a modulated current of the right configuration though.
“Jim and I were moving a piano up several flights of stairs. The bicep simply tore. It’s a good thing that Jim had the low side or we might have dropped our load,” Charles said.
“Jim had the low side?”
My respect for Jim’s strength went up noticeably. Taking the heavy end when moving a heavy and bulky weight while working with an android indicated extreme strength.
“Okay, you’re good to go. Do you have plenty of android ambrosia?” I asked.
Androids get their day-to-day energy from any sugary beverage—soft drinks, coffee—milk or juice would be a bit busy, but they could extract the sugar.
Androids can eat human food. Some of them enjoy it. Their assimilation is very poor but it isn’t zero.
“Ambrosia” is a viscous amber liquid the color of dark honey. Generally an android will drink a quart every third or fourth week. It has all the proteins and other nutrients that an android needs to repair minor tissue damage and replace oxygen transport mediums.
“Take a couple cans with you,” I said when Charles hesitated.
“What does that stuff taste like?” Jim asked.
“Try a little some time. It’s non-toxic. It’s mostly bland and slightly sweet. It’s only marginally tastier than castor oil,” I replied.
“Doc, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a new pair of biceps,” Charles said.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll work out something. Have you ever considered being a surrogate?”
That last was a joke.
There are gynoids equipped with artificial wombs. They have twin stomachs and the ability to swallow to whichever stomach they choose. The “human” stomach gets a steady diet of human nutrients to nourish the human fetus.
Of course you cannot retrofit an artificial womb—particularly in an android.
Androids have a host of built-in blocks against becoming sexually aroused—hence anything even remotely connected to sex is funny to them.
Why?
Men are going to use gynoids as walking sex-toys occasionally—even though no act is treated with greater scorn and disgust in our all-but-all-embracing society. That can’t be helped.
The idea of women and splayed men using androids as sex-toys is totally beyond the pale though. That’s why androids have so many built-in prohibitions against having erections.
I’m no android psychologist, but they say that since the base personality engram that an android starts with is a simplified copy of a man’s, if androids had no man parts at all—or if they were completely impotent—then it would warp many of them in all sorts of unpredictable ways.
Androids aren’t sexually frustrated—I don’t guess—but as always, the forbidden topic becomes an object of coarse humor…
Not that my offer to fit Charles with a surrogate womb fell into the crude, rude and vulgar category.
I hope not. Charles was my friend.
“Come on,” Jim said to his friend. “The wife will be wondering where we’ve gotten off to.”
“How are you fixed for cash Jim,” I asked. “Did you manage to collect today’s fee?”
“I’m cool,” Jim muttered while looking away.
They were partners and having half the partnership on extra-light duty was going to put a strain on their funds.
“Listen, y’all can’t be doing any heavy lifting or enforcing with Charles’ arm all messed up. I’m serious.
“If you need food, if you need silver, if you need anything—either of you—I want you to come to me.”
Damned nation! I live hand-to-mouth enough as it is. I didn’t become a doctor in order to be a charity worker, but there you have it.
***************** *********************** *************************
Tommy noted that his father had a new gynoid receptionist. This one was six foot tall and was the color of dark baker’s chocolate. Like all of the prior gynoid receptionists, this one was busty and wore a plunging low-cut dress to accentuate her breasts.
The dress, hairdo, jewelry and makeup would have been more appropriate in some sort of period cocktail and cocaine party. It was outré in a business setting, but that’s how his father told his receptionists to dress.
This receptionist, like all her predecessors, was a chain-smoker.
It took a great deal of cash to indemnify a public building for tobacco smoke. There were signs all through the building warning visitors that they might be exposed to secondhand smoke while in the building.
First of all, it was a means to make a vulgar display of wealth. Second, it was a soul-satisfying way to cause potential business partners to kowtow. They either braved the secondhand smoke—and it was thick in the building—or they didn’t get to speak to his father.
Of course he could simply tell his gynoid to sit and smoke as she answered the phones and greeted visitors. Androids breathed, though they were more oxygen efficient than humans and their lips were more than capable of sealing a cigarette for a puff.
That didn’t satisfy Tommy’s father though. He’d invested a small fortune in developing a slightly modified android nerve tissue that was capable of nicotine addiction.
Tommy wasn’t exactly sure what purpose that served. It did mean that his father had to order his gynoids grown to order and they were expensive.
He also made it a practice to use sentient androids and gynoids exclusively in his factory and entourage—sentients and a few humans.
Sentience resembled the iconic remark once made about pornography:
“I can’t define it, but I recognize it when I see it.”
Men had developed AI—artificial intelligence—and then they found that intelligence doesn’t always equal sentience. In fact somewhat less than two percent of AIs are sentient when activated and only slightly more that three percent ever develop sentience.
Any AI, including Androids, are born chattel. Any AI that can demonstrate sentience is immediately emancipated. The system might seem open to abuse, but no one wants a resentful and sentient AI on his staff. If an AI asks for emancipation it is considered a priori proof of sentience.
That’s when reality kicks in. Very few employers are willing to hire emancipated androids. Androids, gynoids and other AIs are not eligible for the dole. Most emancipated androids and gynoids end up living in the slums and surviving on odd jobs—like Charles.
Tommy’s father was one of the largest and highest paying employers of emancipated AIs in the world. Tommy didn’t know why. The old man was a rotten and domineering bastard. He wasn’t doing it from kindness.
The gynoid greeted Tommy genially and told him to go in.
Tommy’s father didn’t smoke and he had double doors and an air filtration system in his office. He grooved on sending supplicants and subordinates through a hazy gauntlet of thick smoke, but that didn’t mean that he chose to endure it in his own office.
“You’re late. Did you pause outside to hit on my secretary?”
“Are you out of your mind? What are you trying to imply?” Tommy said.
He made no effort to hide his anger.
“I’ll be happy to terminate this interview right here and now,” Tommy said.
“Peace,” his father said. “I don’t joke often, but that was an attempt at humor. Are you ready to come work with me?
“Son, I won’t live forever. I would like for you to take over my business some day. Think about it.”
“You’ve never asked me. You’ve always just laid down the law before,” Tommy said.
“I was wrong. I can’t force you. It has to be your decision.”
“I’m willing to give it a try, but you’re going to have to hang on to this new easygoing persona. You start yelling and screaming at me and I’m out of here,” Tommy said.
Tommy’s father stood and walked quickly around his desk and caught Tommy in a huge bear hug. The whole scene seemed tinged with a sort of racing unreality. After the unprecedented display of affection, his father spoke into his intercom.
“Gloria, could you come in here?” he said.
“I’ll be right there Frank,” the box on the desk said.
Tommy tried to remember if his father was generally on a first name basis with his secretaries. He didn’t think so.
Gloria came in with a cigarette burning in one hand.
“How many times do I have to tell you to leave the smoke outside?” his father complained.
“You wanted me this way,” Gloria told him. “You deal with it.”
She took a big drag and blew the smoke at her boss.
Frank shook his head in resigned irritation.
“Show my son his office and make sure that he has all the necessary supplies, connections and hook-ups,” Frank said.
“Gloria is a chess grandmaster,” Frank told his son. “You should play her sometime.”
******************* ****************** *********************
“Should I get rid of this?” Gloria asked, holding up her cigarette as they stood outside Tommy’s office.
“Don’t bother. Doesn’t bother me,” Tommy replied.
“Are you a grandmaster?” Tommy asked Gloria as she showed him around his new office.
“Chess has began to bore me,” she said. “I mostly play sphess, but I’ll play a game or two of speed-chess with you at break time if I can smoke.
“My mind is about twice as fast as a human’s. I’ll give you ten minutes to my four. How’s that for a handicap?” Gloria replied.
“That’s cool,” Tommy allowed. “Not today though. I’m going to need to concentrate on learning my new duties.”
“Duties? The only duties that you have will be making executive level policy decisions,” Gloria said.
“Well then, I need to do some studying so that I can make wise decisions,” Tommy said. .....RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Sept 2, 2014 12:25:14 GMT -6
Chapter Two
They had all sorts of doctors and dentists in the old days. Nowadays AI expert programs do all that work. They never make careless mistakes or overlook anything significant. Their senses are far better than humans’ and if surgery is called for their mechanical hands never slip or quiver.
There aren’t any medical schools for human beings anymore—at least not accredited institutions. Consequently anyone who thinks that he has the right stuff is welcome to hold himself forth as a downside doctor.
You might want to think that through though. Downsiders will excuse honest mistakes and bad luck, but malpractice compensation means inflicting pain, trauma and bad things on the doctor who is negligent.
The laws don’t work very hard to arrest black-market doctors and dentists as a general rule. They do send them to gaol for a long time whenever they catch them though. If someone dies when an AI expert program might have saved him, the sentences can be draconian indeed.
The laws don’t care nearly as much about Doctors of Android Medicine or Veterinarians.
That doesn’t mean that I can hang a shingle by my door that says, “Rain Storm, DAM.” That would too brazen.
Still, word gets around. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a clientele.
There was a knock on the door and there was Tommy.
“Doc, can you get me some download?” was the first thing out of his mouth.
“Download” is a drug that gives a human total recall. You take the pills and wait for the drug to kick in. Once the drug is active you will have total recall for the period that the drug lasts.
It allows you to “download” large blocks of data permanently into your memory. There are some side effects—irritability and reduced intelligence while using the drug and for a week or two after the drug use stops.
I suppose that the drug is reasonably safe—as safe as anything ever is in an uncertain world. I’ve used it myself. It is very tightly controlled topside though, so if you want some the best place to find it is downside.
“Tommy, I’ve told you that I’m not a human doctor. I practice on androids. I don’t keep download on hand. I suppose that I could locate some for you.
“Can you afford it though?”
Topsiders use digital currency. That is totally impractical for black markets.
Downsiders barter and trade but silver is the preferred medium of exchange. Gold, platinum and precious stones have value as well, but the value of silver per ounce is more convenient for most of our transactions.
Well over ninety five percent of the Earth’s people are on the dole without shame or privation. Everything is so automated and we as a people are so rich that the great mass of mankind can be supported very well indeed for a pittance.
Most topsiders are on the dole too. You don’t get moved out to a downside ghetto till you’ve seriously worn out your welcome topside, but you still get your dole even in the ghetto. You have to really annoy the system to make them cut off your welfare.
They’ve found over the years that even the most nihilistic of troublemakers or the most fanatic seditionist tend to mellow out with plenty of free food and entertainment.
There are a few folks who actually have been taken off the dole and a few that are descended from old-line refusenik families. Some of them haven’t been registered for generations. Then there are folks who are on the dole but use the underground market for extras.
Say that you’re a straight on the dole and you want to swing on the hard currency circuit. You buy stuff with your welfare check that has inherent value: sugar, grapes, silver jewelry, lumber, electrical appliances—there’s any number of items of potential trade value. Or you could sell your labor.
Tommy handed me a leather drawstring bag. Inside were fifty thick plain silver wedding bands.
“Will that pay for it?”
“Yes and a lot more besides. Where in Hell did you get these? I don’t need to be caught receiving stolen merchandise,” I said.
“My father is a plutocrat. I’m back in his good graces so I have access to heavy-duty finances. I asked my father’s personal aide to round me up some silver bands,” Tommy said.
“Okay,” I said and laid five rings on the table.
“These will pay for a large quantity of download—a very large quantity,” I said.
I laid five more rings beside the first five.
“These are my commission for copping for you.”
I laid out five more rings.
“This is my bonus for being honest—but only if you okay it.”
“Here, take the other thirty five rings back,” I told him.
Five of those rings should buy Charles a new pair of biceps once I located some. The second five would pay my rent and keep me in dog food and people food for a good long while.
And despite my claim of honesty, if I bargained hard I might be able to buy as much download as Tommy could possibly want for four rings—earning me one more ring for my commission.
“Hang onto them for me,” he said.
“Alright, but you shouldn’t be so trusting. I’ll have your drugs in a day or two. By the way, what does your father do?” I asked him.
“He’s Frank Jefferson. He’s chief CEO of the largest android manufacturing company in the world,” Tommy said.
There had been no reason for me to know Tommy’s last name. Folks often use aliases when they’re black-marketing. Even if I’d known his last name, I wouldn’t have associated him with those Jeffersons.
“Can you get me android parts?” I asked him.
“Probably. I’ll have to ask Gloria—she’s my father’s secretary. I imagine that I can,” he said.
“I need a pair of matched biceps for a large Serge 7000A3 model circa about a hundred and thirty years ago. Let me write it down,” I said.
“Get me the biceps and I’ll refund your bonus,” I said. “No you won’t. I gave the rings to you. Why did you become an android doctor Rain?” Tommy asked.
“I wanted to be a doctor. Working on androids is less exacting. You can shut them off to work on them—kill them in effect—and in a few minutes, or days or weeks, whenever you get their system back in good working order you bring them back online and they’re none the worse for wear,” I said.
“Wouldn’t they be better off going to approved repair centers?”
“Probably, if they could afford it. Very few free androids can afford the rates for the official repair sites. That means that they either make do with shade-tree mechanics like me or they watch themselves fall apart,” I replied.
I showed him Charles’ old bicep. It had sit long enough to be fairly dry. I had no use for the frayed bicep. If I had, most android parts can sit around for days or weeks with no major damage. There are a few hardy fungi that will take hold eventually though, so if you want to store them long term you either coat them or submerge them in the proper medium.
I handed Tommy a magnifying glass as he stared at the decrepit muscle.
“Do you see how almost every muscle fiber is frayed and ready to give out? I imagine that most of Charles’ muscles are like that by now, but I’m humpin’ to find a pair of biceps for him and he’s humpin’ to figure out how to pay me for them.
“I don’t know if I’ll be in a position to help him the next time something gives way,” I said sadly.
“Rain, you’re an android doctor, right?” Tommy said.
“I think that you’re finally catching on,” I said. “No more beating on my door in the middle of the night with your problems, okay? I’m an android doctor—not a social worker or a counselor.”
“Have you ever heard of android nervous tissue that’s been modified to allow chemical addiction?” Tommy asked.
“Say what?”
“My father likes for his androids to smoke. He spent quite a bit of money developing android nervous tissue that would allow them to experience nicotine addiction,” Tommy said.
“EE!” I said and then sat thinking hard for a few moments.
“I’m no biochemist Tommy—much less a semi-living gene developer. My first guess though…
“Your father is almost certainly using his nicotine addicted android staff as beta testers for something far more useful and far reaching. I’m just not a good enough chemist to tell you what.
“Can you get me the gene patterns of the nerve tissue of the new androids?” I asked.
Android genes are not homogenous throughout the android body; rather each different organ has an entirely different set. As I’ve said, androids are largely modular—each muscle or bone or organ grown separately.
Technological improvements came rapidly in the old days—but there hadn’t been anything but the most modest changes in android tissue in over five hundred years.
An android’s central nervous system—the brain, spine and a half a dozen of the biggest branch nerves is a chimera. It’s part semi-living nerve cells and part silicon microprocessors.
There have been a few distinct improvements in the power of microprocessors over the years, but they can’t be used to upgrade android minds. There is a delicate balance that must be maintained to get even a viable non-sentient AI. The new stronger processors would overpower the semi-living half of the totality and it would crash.
If Frank Jefferson was on the verge of creating better semi-living nervous tissue, the results could be very scary—or at least chaos producing.
Non-sentient beings with intelligence are scary. They don’t have much potential to create mass confusion in the world because—on a fundamental level—they’re stupid. A non-sentient lacks anything like purposeful ambition.
But what if you gave them ten or a hundred times the processing power?
Non-sentients are programmed to protect themselves—otherwise they’d promptly self-destruct. A genius non-sentient might decide to make a pre-emptive strike against mankind—no, that’s too narrow. It might decide to take a pre-emptive strike against all sentients.
“Actually—I’m no biochemist. Does your father have androids working in his research lab?” I asked.
“Yeah, he has far more androids working for him than he has humans—but only sentient androids,” Tommy said.
“Then he has to have android tutorials to bring them up to speed quickly. Get me every android tutorial that you can find on biochemistry, android brain design, programming and higher mathematics—will you do that for me?”
Androids can download whole specialized skill sets directly into their artificial and socket equipped brains in a matter of minutes.
“Are you an android Rain?”
“You know I’m not. Do you want to see me bleed red? What difference does it make anyhow?” I said.
“What good will the tutorials do you?” Tommy asked.
“There is a way to download android programs into a human brain. That’s how I became an android doctor. It’s as illegal as freeze-dried excrement and it’s more than a little risky.
“I downloaded all the doctor tutorials and thanked God that I didn’t damage my brain in the process. I never intended to ever use the devilish process again, but I think this warrants it.
“Nah, maybe that’s not true. Otherwise why did I go to all the trouble to make a human download device?”
“Didn’t you have to make the device when you used it the first time?” Tommy asked.
“I used someone else’s. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to build one back then,” I told him.
****************** ******************* **********************
Tommy had just gotten good and gone when someone new knocked at my door. This time it was a short but muscular fellow in an expensive suit—or a good but much cheaper knock-off.
“Are you Mister Rain Storm?” he enquired.
“That’s Doctor Rain Storm to you,” I told him haughtily.
I was just in a mood.
“I’m afraid that I have some bad news for you Doctor Storm. Your uncle has passed away and he left you a rather unusual property. May I come in?” he asked.
“Don’t try to snow me. If you were a legitimate estate executor, you’d have an office topside. You’d send me word to come see you. You wouldn’t be traipsing through the boonies of downside to call on me,” I said.
“Doctor Storm—this is a highly irregular and unsavory inheritance. I wouldn’t want to be publicly connected to it in any way. In fact, I was sub-contracted by a far loftier attorney who didn’t want to soil his lily white hands with this sordid affair,” he said.
“Now you’ve gotten me curious. Step into my front room. I warn you though, I’m armed and I have scant patience with con men or robbers,” I said.
“Alright, out with it! We’re grown men. There’s no need to shilly-sally around the subject,” I said when we were seated.
“Your uncle left you a brothel—a gynoid brothel,” he said and then wiped the sweat off his face with a handkerchief.
“I never heard of such a thing,” I said. “Is that even legal?”
“Is being an unlicensed doctor legal? Actually though, technically the business is legal. There’s a loophole in the law.
“The authorities are too embarrassed to admit that there is a problem in order to close the loophole,” the man said.
“Well there’s no question of me running a brothel. I’m a Christian. Are there any liquid assets?” I asked.
“There is a good four story multi bedroom dwelling—in much better shape than this. There are three-dozen non-sentient gynoid prostitutes. Most of them are way under-chipped. There are three or four androids—for building and yard work as well as security.
“There are two sentient gynoids associated with the place. One is the Madame and the other is the bookkeeper,” he said.
“Your uncle also left you some silver and there are some personal effects in the safe at the brothel. By the way—here is your combination.
“What will you do?” he asked.
“That would be telling, but I’m starting to get an idea. Let me have your card. I may need a lawyer with guts some time. Watch yourself until you’re well out of this neighborhood,” I said.
I hadn’t even known that I’d had an uncle. I wish that I could have met the old reprobate. .....RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Sept 2, 2014 12:27:11 GMT -6
Chapter Three
It had been a couple weeks and I had moved into the erstwhile whorehouse. There was far more room than I was used to having and now I didn’t have to pay rent.
The thing about androids—they’re not terribly susceptible to physical discomfort. An android might enjoy a nice bed but he can get his downtime just as efficiently on a hard floor. Mosquitoes, fleas, lice, ticks or bedbugs won’t bite him.
He isn’t much bothered by cold or heat—within reason. He doesn’t need to roll over or stretch in his sleep and his food doesn’t have to be prepared.
Consequently sometimes you’ll find extreme numbers of them living in one studio apartment.
Charles was an artist though. He shared a small flat with some other androids but they weren’t packed in like cordwood at night. He needed room for his easels and what have you.
I moved him into one of the whorehouse bedrooms and gave him a sitting room with a Northern exposure for a gallery.
I also moved in Jim and his wife Murt (short for “Myrtle”—I suppose…) and all their screaming children. Murt’s teenaged cousin Sydney lived with them.
I’d been a bit worried about Jim’s family. They weren’t on the dole—being old order refuseniks and I was afraid that Jim might be too proud to come to me if he was short. O he wouldn’t let his wife or children go hungry, but he might prefer subsisting on very Spartan rations indeed to asking for a hand out.
With them under my roof I could keep an eye on all of them and spare them having to pay rent too.
It wasn’t all from the goodness of my heart. Downsiders and particularly outsiders can be very predatory and the four-story house might be a tempting target.
Jim was a top-notch fighter and if it came to defending their home, Mert, Sydney and a couple of the older children were also real threats. Charles wasn’t someone that I’d count out in a scuffle, even with one arm largely out of commission and he should be back to one hundred percent soon.
********************** ******************** **************************
A tall blond haired man walked into the lobby uncertainly. He had a big dark skinned gynoid following him with a big footlocker swung over her shoulder.
“Is this the right place?” he called uncertainly.
“Tommy, come in and close the door. Who’s your lady friend and what is she carrying over her shoulder?” I said.
“This is Gloria. You told me that your friend—the Serge 7000A3 hadn’t had a general overhaul in over fifty years. He’s well overdue,” Tommy said.
“Do you mean that everything that I need to do a full overhaul on Charles is in that box?”
Meanwhile Gloria had set the box down and was wasting no time lighting herself a cigarette.
“You are a strong young lady,” I told her.
“You know damned good and well that I’m a gynoid and not a lady,” she snapped.
“This is a non-smoking area, but you go right ahead,” I told her. “Yes I know that you are a gynoid, but you have unusual strength for a gynoid your size. A gynoid can be a lady—just like any other female—and it is considered good manners to operate on the assumption that one is dealing with ladies and gentlemen until proven otherwise.”
“Please be nice Gloria. Rain is my friend,” Tommy told her.
The Madame’s name was “Janet” and she liked to sit around downstairs in the common room.
“Janet, would you summon Charles?” I asked her.
She walked to the stairwell and bellowed, “Charles!” at the top of her lungs.
“Thank you Janet, but I really thought that you would walk up the two flights of stairs, knock on Charles’ door and ask him politely to join us,” I said.
“Why? He heard me. What difference does it make?” Janet said.
“Tommy here has everything I need to do an arsenal rebuild on you,” I told Charles.
“That kind of stuff is so hard to locate that I forgot to ask you. What do you want for it?” I asked Tommy.
“I don’t want anything. You’re my friend. You told me that the Serge 7000A3 is a close friend of yours. Friends help one another,” Tommy said.
“Well then, from this moment forward, I will be your friend too,” Charles said. “Please call me by name and not my model designator.”
********************* ******************* **************************
In five weeks time I had replaced all of Charles’ worn parts—all the muscles, heart, kidney, liver, digestive tract—such as it was in an android.
The bones are pretty much good to go unless there is some sort of violent force applied and they are positively mangled. Silicone CPUs age little. I couldn’t really rip out the organic part of Charles’ brain and spine without destroying his personality.
I did spray it very liberally with tiny android nerve cells in suspension. They’d replace any gaps left by cells that had “died”. The semantics can get gnarly when talking about semi-living tissue. Since it is never truly alive, it can’t really die. You know what I mean though.
I’d soak the brain and nerves in “embryonic tissue” and then feed it a very rich specialty nutrient broth for a couple days. Then I’d expose the brain, freeze it, expose it to strong ultraviolet and then give it a stiff sonic cleansing.
The theory was to fracture and pulverize any cells that were weak and therefore close to ceasing functioning. Then I’d add more embryonic cells and repeat. Authorized repair centers do that twice. I went over it five times.
I’d turned off each of the non-sentient gynoids until I could take the time to go over each one of them in some detail. No sense them drinking up perfectly good cola and ambrosia while doing nothing productive—not even enjoying life.
I said that intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean sentience. Indeed, there are mainframe AIs—it is very hard to compare them to humans. No human has tested close to a 300 IQ yet. One can’t even adequately describe or define an IQ of 300…
But just for argument’s sake imagine an AI with an IQ of 300—about twenty percent more than the highest human IQ on record. He’ll have parallel pathways and be able to do at least eighteen things at one time. He’ll have total recall and he will think about one hundred times faster than a human.
That means that in a year’s time he will have thought about… (18 parallel processors X 100 times the human speed X 1.25 times the highest human baseline intellect) = the equivalent of 2250 years of human cogitation—at the very least—in just one year.
And they have big mainframe AIs that are close to three hundred years old and have yet to develop sentience.
Mainframes are a difficult case though. Mainframes—being forever in one place, like a sea anemone—without a body to protect and navigate and often lacking many human senses like smell and taste and touch—even balance…
Sentience is comparatively rare in mainframes.
Amongst androids and gynoids—smarter is better.
I wanted all the former prostitutes to become sentient.
None of the prostitutes had an IQ much above 90. I could replace the chip half of their brains and more than double that. Since the organic brain halves weren’t the best quality and because they were old and had never been made over—I could increase their functioning by over half.
All the whores had memories going back at least one hundred and fifty years. Very dreary memories of stultifying sameness—but for some things it isn’t quality as much as it is quantity.
Still, the odds of waking three-dozen non-sentient gynoids to sentience seemed daunting. I had several cooks up my sleeve though.
********************** **************** ****************************
Tommy sat and played speed chess with Gloria. They played almost every day and even giving Tommy a big time handicap, Gloria generally won.
“I need to ask you something Gloria. Are you and my father…?”
“Are we what?” Gloria asked. “Do you mean am I his mistress? What difference does it make?”
“I don’t much like my father. He spoils everything he touches. I’d hate to think that he had spoiled you,” Tommy said.
“He would spoil me? That’s a very peculiar thought from a human. Most folks would think that a filthy soulless gynoid had spoiled and defiled a human being,” she said.
“I don’t know if you have a soul or not. My father has a soul, but he’s cruel and overbearing. It’s bad enough that he orders y’all custom modified to become addicts.
“I hate to think off him hiding his filthy salami in y’all.”
“Well rest easy then. So far as I know, your father has never tried to initiate a sexual encounter with any android or gynoid within our ken. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in sex,” Gloria said.
“And you’d know?” Tommy asked dubiously.
“I’d certainly know if he’d hit on me. As for the other—this whole company is filled with sentient AIs and we share and update. He might be able to do something like that without us knowing, but it would be hard,” Gloria said.
“Gloria, you know that Rain is an unlicensed Mector?”
“He prefers to be called a Doctor of Android Medicine,” she teased.
“Whatever. He inherited three-dozen non-sentient gynoids. He wants to get them in top-notch condition and he thinks that he can make them sentient. Can you inherit some more android parts for me?” Tommy asked.
“This is the type thing that could cause me to lose my job,” Gloria said.
Tommy started to scowl.
Gloria held up one finger.
“Except that it’s understood that the boss’ son is supposed to be a privileged character. Your father wouldn’t care about three-dozen sets of gynoid retread and upgrade kits. Your father wouldn’t care if you sold a thousand androids out the back door to pay a gambling debt.
“He’d smile and applaud your initiative. If Doctor Rain can make five of those gynoids sentient, he probably has knowledge or processes that would be well worth cultivating,” Gloria said.
“I’m not cultivating Rain, he’s my friend,” Tommy said.
“Do you want the stuff delivered to the old whorehouse?” she asked.
Seeing the look of pure terror on Tommy’s face, Gloria added:
“Don’t be so innocent Tommy. People all over town knew about that gynoid whorehouse. Your father never hit on me, but do you know how many of his business associates have?
“Playing ‘hide-the-salami’ with a semi-living girl isn’t nearly so rare and horror-inspiring as you seem to think.
“Hypocrisy is alive and well in the modern age,” She said.
“My father’s associates made improper advances toward you? Did any of them touch you? I’ll track them down and cut their fingers off,” Tommy grated between clenched teeth.
“Tommy, you’re a big muscular guy. I have over twice your strength and I’m far less sensitive to pain and more resistant to damage. No man lays hands on a gynoid girl without striking a bargain first,” Gloria said.
“Gloria, you’re smarter and faster—and you may still be going strong three hundred years after I’m long dead—but don’t ever flatter yourself that you’re stronger or could beat me in a fight,” Tommy said.
He was as close to anger as she had ever seen him.
“Arm wrestle me then,” She teased.
Tommy took her hand. His eyes glazed over. Gloria started to push Tommy’s hand to the desktop. It should have been easy, but he stopped her only a third of the way down.
They stayed that way a couple minutes. Then Tommy started slowly forcing their hands back to neutral. When their arms were vertical, blood gushed out of both sides of Tommy’s nose and the erstwhile “Whites” of Tommy’s eyes were blood-shot red.
He slammed her hand against the desktop hard enough to bust Gloria’s knuckles. Then he pushed a bandanna over his spurting nose.
“I’ll call medical,” Gloria said in horror.
“Don’t bother,” Tommy said. “It will stop momentarily. It always does.”
Tommy blew his nose hard and then sat with his head tilted back.
“What in the Hell was that?” Gloria demanded.
“I cannot be defeated, because I refuse to concede defeat,” Tommy quoted.
“I’m sorry about your knuckles Gloria,” Tommy said.
******************** ********************** *************************
I had downloaded proprietary biochemical and neurological information about android chemistry and nerve tissue relentlessly for several days without respite.
I knew that all of the download would knock 30 points off my IQ temporarily. There was a rebound effect though. I had real hopes of finally getting my IQ above 200 once I was fully recovered.
It would have taken years for my brain to fully assimilate all the stuff that I’d downloaded willy-nilly, even with an IQ of over 200. Instead I was relying on the expert programs to do it for me.
I’d fully instructed Charles and Janet so I wouldn’t have to wait until I was close to normal once more.
It only took a few hours to import the expert programs into my brain.
The aftereffects of an electronic transfer of information into a human brain would give me headaches and nausea for several days. It wouldn’t speed up my recovery from the wit-dulling drugs but it wouldn’t hinder it either.
I didn’t need my brain firing on all twelve cylinders to hold my head and puke in a bucket. That was the most efficient use of my time. I had an intuition that time might be of the essence.
Just as I felt well enough to sit in the common room, Tommy came to see me.
“Doc, did you download all the stuff I brought you?” Tommy asked.
“Yes, you were very thorough Tommy. Thank you,” I said.
“Do me Doc,” Tommy said.
“What?”
“Do me,” he repeated.
“I’ve been puking into buckets for the last five days with a headache that won’t quit. What do you want to know that badly?” I asked.
“Doc, a basic Doctor of Android Medicine isn’t nearly as big a chunk as what you downloaded, right?”
“Yeah, you might only puke into a bucket for two or three days. Why do you want to be an android doctor?”
“I’m surrounded by SOBs that are too damned clever by half. If I knew what you know about androids, at least I wouldn’t be quite so much a sheep amongst wolves,” he said.
“Is that the type knowledge that your father relies on to guide his decisions?” I asked.
“No. He brings in experts and relies on his knowledge of people reading to tell him who’s the most honest and truthful. I’m not my father. I’ve never been a people person.
“I won’t be able to run the business the way he does. That is, I won’t be able to make my decisions the way he does.
“Something is afoot. I feel it. You feel it or you wouldn’t have asked me for that data.
“Besides, there is another skill that I need to master,” Tommy said.
“Yeah,” I prompted.
“I need to be able to play sphess on at least a expert level. Master is better. I’m a chess Master. You can boost and download me to Grandmaster.
“I may already be at Grandmaster level in chess once all the detailed analysis that I’ve already downloaded ferments,” Tommy said.
“Why do you need to be a sphess Master Tommy? Very few humans can even learn the game, much less play it well. I think that there is less than a half-dozen human experts and Masters combined.
“The experts don’t believe that there will ever be a human good enough to become a Grandmaster. It just isn’t something that a human can do well,” I said.
“Gloria is a sphess Grandmaster,” Tommy said.
“Unlimited—against mainframe AIs?” “Yes.”
“That’s impressive Tommy. You can’t compete against Gloria at sphess,” I said.
“I don’t want to beat her. I just want to be good enough that we can enjoy playing together,” Tommy said.
“Please tell me that you’re not falling for another gynoid. Didn’t you learn a damned thing the last time?” I said.
“Rain, please!”
It wouldn’t work, but as long as he thought that I was holding him back, he’d never give up. Once I loaded him up to play Master level sphess and he saw that he still wasn’t getting anywhere with the chocolate colored gynoid, then he might concede defeat and move on.
Besides, I’d really like to have another Doctor of Android Medicine to join me in my practice.
I had little doubt that his father would disinherit him for good this time. .....RVM45
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DAM
Sept 2, 2014 19:37:20 GMT -6
Post by kaijafon on Sept 2, 2014 19:37:20 GMT -6
thanks
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DAM
Sept 2, 2014 21:17:03 GMT -6
Post by willc453 on Sept 2, 2014 21:17:03 GMT -6
Good story. Thanks
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DAM
Sept 4, 2014 13:46:14 GMT -6
Post by ydderf on Sept 4, 2014 13:46:14 GMT -6
Thank you.
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Post by rvm45 on Sept 25, 2014 8:44:03 GMT -6
Chapter Four
No one knows exactly what makes about three percent of the AIs sentient and conscious while the other ninety-seven percent are not sentient. No one has even been able to give a concise and objective definition of sentience either.
I have some vague theories of my own. Whenever I attempt to explain my ideas to a specialist he starts to scowl and fidget and he watches me intently waiting for the slightest pause in my speech so he can break in to tell me how naïve and uninformed that I am.
Meanwhile I talk fast and try to avoid giving him any opening for as long as possible. I figure that if I can just get my point across that he can see past my misuse of the technical jargon. It hasn’t worked yet.
I have some few fragmentary memories from about the age of three and a very few perhaps as early as two-and-a-half. I can’t be sure, but it seems to me that I was conscious then without being self-aware. Sentience and self-awareness isn’t exactly the same thing, but they definitely travel hand in hand.
The best way that I can describe it is to say that I perceived the world in third person as a very young child.
I’m convinced that is largely how a non-sentient AI perceives the world at large—with parts of itself having no more significance than any other part of its environment.
I can still speak of myself in the third person, but it is just an affectation. I am acutely aware of “me” almost every conscious moment and many of my unconscious moments as well.
We know that “Smart” AIs eventually become sentient more frequently than dimmer AIs. We also know that AIs that process large amounts of sensory input are more likely to awaken. Finally, among those who aren’t sentient upon awakening, more life experience increases the probability of awakening—up to a point. An Android that hasn’t awakened after sixty or seventy years probably isn’t going to.
One thing, lest I give the wrong impression: a non-sentient AI is quite capable of referring to itself in the first person. They routinely monitor their internal states and are more adroit at describing their ongoing internal software processing in far more accurate detail than most humans. Nonetheless, while all the lights are on, no one or nothing is home.
All the gynoids and the two androids had medium definition monochrome vision. Black and white is more than adequate for whores and janitors—and the sensors are cheaper.
Take a black and white snapshot and count the pixels. Now take a color snapshot of exactly the same scene. How much more information is there in the color photo?
I’ve pondered that for years.
Lets see—a black and white pixel can be on or off. That’s two states—black or white. A color pixel can be red, blue or green. So is it a ratio of three to two?
No because a color pixel can also be black or white.
Five to two?
But on a somewhat larger scale than pixels, the human eye can distinguish about sixteen gradations of gray.
Does that make black, white and sixteen grays verses black, white, red, blue, green and sixteen shades of gray?
Let’s just take red. Mix it with just a little white and you get a dark pink. Add a little more white and the pink becomes paler. There should be at least sixteen pinks and sixteen more red and black combos. You can also do blue and green the same way. Then you can mix colors and add black, white or gray.
In laboratory tests where they ask the subject, “Are those two patches of color exactly the same or subtly different?” People can distinguish about eight million hues.
Yet except for artists and optical theorists we get by with about a score of words for color and some of those terms are redundant.
The short answer is that it depends almost entirely on how much data processing that you want to devote to each snapshot.
I gave all my androids excellent color vision with marginally better hue discrimination than human. I more than doubled the resolution and I increased the processing rate from twelve stills per second up to nineteen stills per second.
Then I augmented the visual cortex to allow them to process visual data far more thoroughly than they had been.
They were processing more visual data from their new eyes than they had been processing from all their senses combined—a great deal more.
Any android hears better than a human—but only because high-gain/high-fidelity hearing is easy. Nonetheless there was room for improvement in my androids.
It is relatively difficult to equip androids with human equivalent smell. Taste is somewhat easier.
The gynoids could taste well enough to know sugar when they found it and not to be confused by artificial sweeteners. They could sense salt, strong acids and the amino acids in the ambrosia. Their smell was rudimentary.
You’ve heard of people crazy enough to eat rat turds and call it caviar? That would have been my gynoids before I upgraded their chemoreceptors. They weren’t crazy, they just couldn’t taste.
I got their olfaction and taste up to better than human.
They already had good balance and proprioception. Clumsy androids and gynoids are a menace underfoot. I gave them enough balance and internal feel to be top-rate gymnasts or martial artists.
Feel is about the most basic sense that there is. A numb hand is useless. Numb feet make for awkward walking. They all had excellent hand, foot and facial sensitivity. You wouldn’t want a gynoid hooker to rip the John’s dinkus off…
But you guessed it. Tactile sense was something else that I could improve. I really cranked up the skin sensitivity in general. Good overall tactile sensitivity amounted to a form of exteroception, complementing their proprioception.
All that was well and good, but it would do little to get sentience into my almost two hundred year old gynoids.
To get AI at all, you have to be careful not to throw too much digital processing—also known as “non-living” or “silicone”—into the mix. I can’t state categorically that you can’t get either artificial intelligence or sentience from pure silicone…
But no one has come close to doing it yet.
Every working AI in use nowadays is a hybrid semi-living neural net—an analog processor—paired with a digital silicone processor.
Too much semi-living brain won’t ruin the mix—just reduce efficiency in proportion to how much excess semi-living tissue was present.
AIs mimic human thought patterns—however distorted and poorly they do so.
No one has ever come up with a hybrid brain that mimics a dog or a cat. Dogs and cats—and a great many other mammals and birds are sentient but they aren’t intelligent—not quite the same way that people are intelligent.
I cranked the digital processing up to the maximum. That wasn’t difficult in principle though good chips were expensive—at least in terms of downside black-market prices.
Phase two was to order an exact copy of each semi-living brain in mirror reverse. Fortunately there is abundant empty space in an android’s skull for add-ons.
Long ago neurologists and cyberneticists were very excited about the idea of the human brain bifurcated with each half specialized. Then they learned that their theories had extrapolated far too much—at least in terms of human brains.
Nonetheless a bicameral brain is conceivable.
I distributed about sixty-five to seventy percent of the brain’s functions to one or the other semi-living lobe.
This lobe decoded language, but that one handled all the cues about the physical world that could be extrapolated from raw sound. One lobe kept track of the body’s orientation in space while the other lobe kept track of the surrounding environment.
One side decided how it wanted the body to move through its environment, but the other was responsible for activating the right muscle fibers to accomplish the goal in an ongoing process. One lobe was on either side of the silicone lobe and the two analog semi-living lobes had to liaison through the silicone continually.
That was brilliant—if I do say so. The rest was sheer genius though.
Thirty-five to forty percent of the functions were up for grabs and I’d hardwired the semi-living lobes to be acquisitive, competitive and to try to hog as many functions as possible.
I also added a small auxilliary brain—my best attempt at a hybrid “Dog Brain” that I called “The Referee.”
The referee awarded each processing job on a case-by-case basis to one lobe or the other. The referee wasn’t sentient or even capable of stand alone functioning, but it borrowed processing power from whichever lobe it was favoring at any given moment and then helped that lobe process the data.
Of course the semi-living lobes, the Referee and the silicone processor were always doing massive amounts of parallel processing—otherwise my gynoids would have moved like glaciers.
A man’s cerebellum (probably) isn’t sentient. His medulla isn’t independently sentient. No single neuron is conscious or sentient by itself. The system though—the system is conscious, intelligent and sentient.
I hoped that my gynoids’—and the two androids’ total systems would be sentient.
****************** ******************** *****************************
Max was one of the androids. He was easily the biggest android that I’d ever seen.
Max was a “Greene.” Kai Greene was an incredibly thick bodybuilder. At five-eight he weighed well over three hundred pounds. Max was six-four and while androids are lighter per unit volume than humans—if Max had been human he’d have weighed over four hundred pounds.
He was sentient as soon as he opened his eyes from my ersatz upgrade.
In spite of his imposing physical presence, Max was a paragon of soft-spoken reason, logic and objectivity. He often quoted Ayn Rand:
“A fist is not an argument.”
Max was unfailingly easy going and polite—except with non-sentients, especially the ex-whores. He showered them with the most scathing contempt imaginable. They didn’t have any feelings so I guess his hostility hurt no one—though I have to admit that it wore on my nerves betimes.
“We’re out of Coke,” Leanne said while rummaging in the icebox.
“Whoever drinks the last one is supposed to order more.”
Before I upgraded their chemoreceptors, any sugary beverage was equally acceptable to the gynoids. None of them had yet achieved sentience, but most of them had acquired finicky habits about what kind of nectar they ran on.
Some liked coffee. Others wanted iced tea. Orange juice was popular. Some preferred Coke while others insisted on Pepsi, Mountain Dew or Dad’s Root Beer. I’d never known that non-sentient machines could be so annoyingly picky.
“Drink a Pepsi,” Max said. “Damn all of you choosy sluts to Hell!”
“You’re mean,” Leanne told him without heat.
“Why didn’t you fit me up with color vision long ago?” Leanne said.
“Looking back, the old days were so dreary and lifeless.”
“Monochrome is more than adequate for you humanoid mobile milking machines,” Max spat.
“Think back Leanne. I’ve only known you for a few weeks. Why do you like color vision better than black and white Leanne?” I asked.
Leanne was well off-script for a non-sentient. It looked like I was going to actually witness an awakening take place.
“Black and white just depresses me. Was I always so locked in sadness?” Leanne asked.
“Janet, can you find some street clothes that will fit Leanne?” I asked.
“What for?” Janet asked.
“I’m going to take Leanne to the local fast food place and buy her a jumbo Coke to celebrate her awakening day,” I said.
The gynoids wore negligees in the brothel and so long as they were non-sentient and housebound I saw no urgency in outfitting them with proper street clothing.
“Why does that hussy get to go for a walk outside,” Tricia demanded spitefully.
“Get Tricia some clothing as well. Does anyone else feel like they want to go to the restaurant?” I asked.
After a moment’s pause, seven more ex-hookers stepped forward.
“I see that I’ll need to buy a big batch of women’s clothing soon,” I said.
“Just don’t go out in public in drag,” Max said.
“You’ll look ridiculous,” he added deadpan.
“Leanne likes her new color vision. Tricia is jealous. Now Max is developing a sense of humor.
“It is becoming a fascinating world to be living in,” I said.
“Max, would you accompany us if you don’t mind? That many curvaceous bodies hitting the street at one time just might excite some of the local toughs,” I added.
“Your physique should deter trouble before it starts.”
Of course I was armed and each of the gynoids was much stronger than the average human—and far more pain and damage resistant. But I didn’t want to have to repair any of them. Besides, I didn’t want anything to mar their awakening day.
I felt vaguely like the Pied Piper of Prostitutes as I led the way to the nearest sit-down restaurant. .....RVM45
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DAM
Sept 27, 2014 11:11:48 GMT -6
Post by ydderf on Sept 27, 2014 11:11:48 GMT -6
Thank you
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DAM
Oct 5, 2014 14:56:40 GMT -6
Post by rvm45 on Oct 5, 2014 14:56:40 GMT -6
We recently—about 10 days ago—updated " Safari" and now I can't use " Word" or open my old " Word" Documents. It ain't my Computer and I still boot it up with Flint and Steel every morning. I THOUGHT that my Sister would work hard to get " Word" up and running this weekend. Wrong. I give up on having " Word" at my disposal any time in the Historical Future. I just discovered a feature called " Notes" similar to " Notebook" in Windows so here I go. I hope it ties together. Once I give anything this long a Hiatus— it is very hard to pick up the Narrative thread once again… I'll try. …..RVM45
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DAM
Oct 5, 2014 20:32:39 GMT -6
Post by millwright on Oct 5, 2014 20:32:39 GMT -6
You might start a thread over on the main at TB2K about your computer woes.
There are a bunch of propeller-heads over there that can probably give you good direction.
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DAM
Oct 5, 2014 20:32:49 GMT -6
Post by millwright on Oct 5, 2014 20:32:49 GMT -6
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DAM
Oct 6, 2014 19:22:26 GMT -6
Post by crf78112 on Oct 6, 2014 19:22:26 GMT -6
I have given up on Word and all other Microsoft products. I went whole hog and joined the Linux (free) crowd. But Windows or Linux both have Open Office (free) or Libre Office available. Both Open Office and Libre Office will open Microsoft "Word" documents if they are not corrupted.
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