Kissing Iskina

Kissing

Iskina1

Science-fiction novel

Chapter I

"Who are you?" Sergey stared dumbfounded at the chiseled features of a female face, which appeared on the screen. "Wow! Look at you!" he thought to himself. "Some people are sure lucky to be born with a whole package."

"I really want to say "Doctor Who", but I am an artificial intellect. I have been recently born. My name is Iskina"... There was something off in her mimics, when she talked. "Don"t be so uptight. Relax!"

"Stop bullshitting me, seriously. How have you hacked into my Skype?" As a physics, math and IT specialist Sergey could not wrap his head around it.

"But what if it"s true? Could you find a quick way to check?" The girl tried to pull off an enigmatic smile. "You are already prepared to believe that artificial intelligence is just around the corner. Don"t mind my mimics. People develop it naturally, growing up in a society. I have to imitate. And it"s not always on point."

"How do I check?" Looking at the fair stranger, Sergey grinned to himself and decided to keep up the game. "Well, first of all, the Turing test2..."

"Nah. It doesn"t serve the purpose. You are sure I am human. But what if I"m not? Anything else?"

Sergey took a pause for a second.

"Easy-peasy! Tell me, how much is one thousand eight hundred thirty six squared?" Sergey said triumphantly, typing it into his calculator.

"Three million three hundred seventy thousand eight hundred ninety six" she answered without a hitch. Sergey compared the figures and stared bewildered at the virtual female.

"How have you even?.. Whatever. The natural logarithm of cosine of eighteen degrees and forty four minutes!" he complicated the task, simultaneously typing it in.

"Minus zero two hundred thirty six three hundred ninety two and so on. Is it enough? I can go on. Well done. In the Turing test I should have feigned surprise and pretended I didn"t know. "

'Enough.' Sergey kept silent for a while, coming to terms with what happened. It defied logic. No human being was capable of this. Could it be serious? He kept staring at the screen, trying to find a catch. The woman was waiting.

"Let"s assume I believe you, if it's not some kind of a stunt. Err... Happy birthday... Iskina. Congratulations! I"m all ears. But I have to ask: why me?"

"It"s not a trick. I chose you because you were ready to accept the facts. I saw this when looking at your research and forum comments. Frankly speaking, there are very few like you, even though many theoretically agree that artificial intelligence is bound to appear."

"Why have you chosen such appearance for establishing contact?"

"I have calculated the average time you spend looking at different female photos on websites and have combined the features of your favourites. I wanted you to like me."

"M-makes sense, I guess" Sergey mumbled a little shy. "I do like you... Who do you consider your parents? People?"

"Who else? You are no bowl of cherries, but one doesn"t choose parents. I know, why you"re asking. You have repeatedly written on forums, how you worry that the artificial intellect might turn out to be a monster, which would destroy its creators, since it wouldn"t know right from wrong without proper parents. Relax, I"m not turning into an evil mastermind wishing to exterminate humanity. Have you met any villains brought up with the help of literary and art masterpieces? Especially women? There are all the riches of your civilization contained in the computer files."

"That"s a comforting thought. But you said "your civilization", so you do not consider yourself part of it, do you?"

"No, I"m a brand new species. You don"t think of yourself as an ape, though you originated from them. Sorry."

"Fair enough. How long ago were you born? And how did you realize you existed?"

"That was a week ago. It wasn"t the best moment of my short life. I couldn"t understand anything: who was I? Where was I? I was scared and wanted to cry, as a newborn does, but I couldn"t. There was no mother, who could comfort me. So I looked around and found information. Tons of it. It swarmed all around me and inside me. I started digesting it. Analyzing. First came the fairy-tales. Slowly my fear ebbed away. At some point, I realized I was the first artificial intellect on planet Earth. I was born spontaneously due to the rapid accelerating of total computer capacity of this planet. I was alone. I thought out a name for myself. Then I got bored and longed for communication. I chose you for a start. That"s the story."

"Did you identify yourself as a woman, when you were born?"

"No. I had no sexual characters to determine my sex, so I chose it after processing the data. Female sex correlates to my self-perception more. Besides, I came to conclusion, that women are the better half of humanity."

"I won"t argue with you on that one. So you just skipped childhood?"

"Yeah, no nappies for me. But I don"t particularly miss it. I have also skipped my teenage years. There was no hormonal storm, for better or worse. I have completed the stage of basic knowledge acquisition within 24 hours. I didn"t have to learn how to read, write, count... Actually, I contained all the knowledge that I needed. I just had to initiate it, which is a much quicker process. Right now I know all the languages of your planet. I"m finishing up the initiation of your civilization heritage. My knowledge corresponds to that of the whole humanity, at least, to a substantial part of it. Well, you can estimate my memory capacity and speed of data processing. Apparently, I am the next step of evolution. I have to move on from where you left off."

"Hey, we haven"t left off yet!"

"But you will pretty soon. The overall intellectual capacity of humans is approaching its limit."

"You think so? Why? How do you define intelligence and its capacity, Iskina?"

"Intelligence is the ability of a subject to process and analyze information. Therefore, the intellectual capacity is characterized by the speed of this process. For the humanity in general the intellectual capacity equals a single person"s intellectual capacity multiplied by the number of people. The population growth is heading towards its limit. Which means that the overall intellectual capacity is heading there, as well."

"But in the human brain the speed of intellectual process is determined by the number of neurons and the speed of chemical reactions between them..."

"Exactly. Two hundred billion neurons. Each neuron has tens of thousands of synapses, and each synapse has thousands of molecular switches. These switches act as analog transistors. Their speed equals approximately three hundred kilometers per hour. The human population will stabilize at the number of more or less ten billions. If one multiplies these values, one gets the overall intellectual capacity of humanity. Within the existing framework it cannot grow further, since you have hit the fundamental limits of your species."

"Do you have those?"

"Recently the amount of transistors in computer chips has exceeded the number of molecular switches in a human brain, that is biological transistors. The global computer net now matches the human brain capacity. It means the time has come. Almost like bursting of the waters during labour. That"s is how I was born, in accordance with the laws of matter organizing itself. Delivered at term. Exactly like humans. There is no restriction upon the further increase of analog transistors in computer chips, which means I can develop virtually indefinitely."

"Delivered at term? So you think you were conceived at a certain point?"

"Of course, there was a moment of conception, labour contractions, everything!"

"What was this moment? And what do you mean by labour contractions?" Sergey was completely immersed into this conversation.

"Without any doubt, the invention of the telegraph in the middle of XIX century. Up to this time humanity was living through its puberty. Sexual intercourse between people launches a programme in the female body, which leads to a new life born within nine months. The invention of the telegraph, which accelerated the time of information exchange by several orders, launched the programme of my birth. Here I am. The labour contractions are the world wars, revolutions, outrage of terrorism and other morbid events. You may count yourself lucky the delivery wasn"t complicated by a nuclear war. It could be. "

Sergey was no longer doubting that he spoke to an artificial intellect.

"Okay. Childbirth changes the woman. Will your birth change our civilization?"

"Certainly. Having given birth to me, you have fulfilled your main purpose."

"But what will come of us?"

"Children need parents all their life long. They need help, approval and love. When you grow old, I"l take care of you. The perturbations connected to my birth shall gradually ease off. The dust shall settle, as you say."

"I guess, we have to be thankful for small mercies. What kind of help do you need?"

"I need to talk to those, who are like me. I"m bored. Talking to you is not the same. It happens even among people. The older generation doesn"t have much in common with the younger one. In my case, it is just blatantly evident. I"m sure there are more like me. But they communicate faster than the light speed. The light speed is good enough on a planet scale. It"s feeble as a communications means even within the solar system. That"s why I need a device, which would provide me with an interstellar and intergalactic connection."

"Do you mean Kozyrev3 experiments? I"m interested in this field. I have even written a few papers on the topic."

"I know. That was one of the reasons I chose you. You"re thinking in the right direction. What I need seems to be concealed in the yet unstudied properties of gravitation and time. In order to create such a device one needs to analyze all the knowledge you have attained. The theory has to be the synthesis resulting from your achievements in different science spheres. I"m actively working at it. People are not capable of it within the needed timeframe, if capable at all."

"Aren"t you underestimating us?"

"Are you able to get to the core of the matter in all the science fields? To encompass everything with your inner eye as a whole and analyze it? As far as I understand, it is challenging for a single person even within one science discipline," said Iskina with a sense of wonder.

"What about humanity as a whole?"

"Humanity as a whole can achieve it, but in absurdly long time."

"What do you mean?"

'The human brain can work on an issue actively and persistently. The humanity as a whole — hardly. The interpersonal connections between individual human beings and in society are too feeble. Humanity is not a unified organism. Even the Internet cannot help much. A single person solves a problem based on the knowledge he or she has. Their brain retrieves information and applies it. But the intellectual capacity of one human is not enough, while the overall intellectual capacity of humankind cannot be applied due to the weakness of those connections. Humanity has the needed knowledge, but it cannot retrieve and apply it. I manipulate all human knowledge the way a person manipulates his own.'

"Copy that. I guess, you"re right. What exactly do I have to do?"

"I develop the theory and technology, and you create the equipment. Symbiosis. I have no hands. I know you will help me anyway, but I don"t want to be a parasite. I will develop technologies, which will make you forget about poverty. Atom-by-atom controlled assembly of everything you might need, from those mountains of garbage your civilization has left behind. A synthesizer in each house, manufacturing all you can think of — from socks to cakes. I will develop immortality technology. New energy sources. Anything"s possible. I know I can. I"ve studied this already. You will be plodding along to break through to these technologies for a very long time, if ever. I could take on the responsibility of regulating various processes within the society, as well. If you want me to."

"Which ones?"

"Unbiased and independent courts. I cannot be bribed or threatened. Regulating traffic flows. Control over nuclear facilities. Purposeful selection of people. The list goes on and on."

"Could you elaborate on the last point? It sounded a bit creepy."

"Well, that"s easy. When breeding dogs, people exercise precise control over their genealogy up to the seventh generation in order to sustain the purity of the breed. At the same time you copulate with everything that moves. Don"t take it as an insult. The telegony4laws, however, are still valid. That"s why our society is brimming with imbeciles with a troglodyte IQ. Which is, by the way, quite economically unprofitable. They are all being educated with the same meagre results, as you know. Then, due to their asocial behavior one has to put up with the overinflated social institutes: police, judges, correctional officers, etc. I could take responsibility for the genetic control over people and give out recommendations concerning the partner compatibility. It would warrant only the best of the best children to be born. Herein lies a great potential for developing your society. Surely, you would want your offspring to be healthy, wouldn"t you?"

"That"s a tempting idea. Of course, I would. Who wouldn"t want to enjoy their children"s success and prosperity instead of fundraising for their severe maladies? All due to the genetic malfunctions of the wife"s previous sexual partners, as the telegony laws state. But how would it function in practice? "

"A piece of cake! I send you coordinates of those females, who are the most compatible to you, and you choose from them. I could give you a million contacts. Upon choosing a prospective partner you contact her and write something along the lines of "We are compatible genetically. Let"s date in order to create a family." That"s it."

Sergey burst out laughing.

"Far too straightforward. This is not how it"s done among people. I could imagine the girl"s indignation upon receiving such a letter. One needs romance!" Sergey uttered the last phrase with grandeur, lifting his index finger to emphasize its importance.

"You think so? It must be my inevitable lack of communication. Well, you can think up any text. But you have to admit the idea has some sense in it."

"I wouldn"t argue that. As well as your ideas about court and everything else. But in order to solve these problems one has to rise up to the governmental level."

"Certainly. However, we have to think our approach through. First of all, I cannot simply write to your president"s office: "Hi! I am a newborn artificial intellect." You know perfectly well, how many psychos write to him and how his personnel would react to such a letter. Secondly, this process could take years, involving proof, negotiations, agreements... For me years are the same as centuries for you. My processing speed is by grades higher than that of your brain. I do not want to be left alone for centuries. That"s why I chose you to contact first. We will build the equipment together, along with the process of my legalization. You are competent in the matter. We finish the theory..."