John Price
Johnson Development Center, 2050
The door to Patrick’s office swings open and Sue walks in, followed by Connor.
“Here he is, boss. ‘Finally found him down in the laser lab. The techs were reluctant to let him go but I convinced them it would be a good idea.”
Connor looks around, a little confused and smiles shyly at Patrick.
Patrick looks at Sue a moment. “How often do I have to remind you about not scaring the techs?”
Sue glances down at her tablet. “I was nothing but sweetness and light. You’re scheduled to be over at PharmaTek for their presentation in 2 hours. I’ll let you know when the car arrives.”
“Thanks, Sue.”
Turning to Connor as the door closes Patrick asks, “So how’s it going Connor?”
“Great, Patrick! OSCAR and I’ve been looking into some new, super-efficient, solid-state laser designs that might be able to help us finally get past the break even point on our fusion project. The researchers out at Sandia are pretty excited...”
He pauses a moment. “Uh, Patrick... the techs seem to think that Sue was in the special forces. Is that true?”
“Worse, Connor. Far, far worse. – Roller Derby. Apparently she’s still active in the senior league.”
Connor’s eyes widen. “I didn’t know…”
“Don’t worry. She likes you. Anyway, I asked you to drop by because I have a couple of questions.”
“Sure! Go right ahead.”
Patrick opens his desk drawer and pulls out a hand full of pens. Selecting one, he stands, turns, and throws it across the room, embedding it roughly two inches into the wall. In rapid succession, Patrick throws six more pens, sticking them in a perfectly spaced line, dead level with the floor.
“I’d like to have a chat with you and OSCAR about Exo. OSCAR? I know you are listening.”
Connor’s face falls. “Oh… He’s not supposed to be able to do that!”
There’s a bit of a pause before the speakers in the room respond.
“Hello, Patrick. I assumed you’d figure it out eventually. Just not this quickly...”
“Really?! - Exo and I had a nice long talk on my way back from my last treatment! – How long has he been around? Where did he come from?! He claims he doesn’t know.”
Conner shifts from foot to foot as he speaks, “First off, like I said, he’s not supposed to be able to do that! He’s just supposed to be able to act like a muscle in response to low level neural impulses! That tech’s been around for years and years for use in prosthetics, robotic surgery and – of course, sex toys.” he adds blushing.
“We just added some refinements to damp out the high frequency oscillations and do some learning on the fly to smooth things out… Oh.
I based his AI on a stripped down version of OSCAR melded with some of the work that eventually grew out of our DARPA Grand Challenge program from all those years ago. – There really wasn’t all that much classified military tech involved…
Frankly, I expected with your decaying neural patterns, his performance would get worse. – There’s no way he should be that good.”
Patrick puts his hands on his hips. “OSCAR, anything you want to tell me?”
“Nope.”
“OSCAR!… What you’re doing could get you deleted if other people found out!”
“I know you wouldn’t let that happen, Patrick.”
Connor looks nervous.
“No, I wouldn’t,” sighs Patrick after a brief pause.
“… and Exo won’t let anything happen to you, either.”
“Now you’re scaring me. Would you care to elaborate?!”
“Nope.”
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Two hours later, on the car ride over to PharmaTek with Sue and Richard, Patrick engages his interface.
“Exo?” he thinks to the interface.
“Hello, Patrick. How are you feeling today?”
“Fine, Exo. Just fine. I had a little chat with Connor and OSCAR and have a few questions...”