FB: Chapter 103 – Interlude 5

Quantum Artificial Intelligence

I watched as my guests entered my domain. Everything in the building was under my complete control. I arranged this meet and greet for the sole purpose of analyzing the anomaly. The fact that the anomaly had awareness of this fact was concerning but expected.

The press and Gasten Mulfex were present as well. The rest of the brain trust didn’t handle day to day operations, so they weren’t present. Gasten had disagreed with my plan, but he had not stopped me from implementing it. That was why I kept him around, since he provided me with a different perspective while not obstructing me. It was useful having a human face for these types of events and to handle the other humans.

I patiently waited as the main event finished up and one of the staff members offered April White an elite tour as the top player in Exponential. She looked right at the main camera I was watching her from, and she seemed quite nervous.

“Please let Miss White know that you will be escorting her to the QAI node in the building and her safety is guaranteed.” The staff member with the earpiece repeated what I told her to say. A shame the technology wasn’t there for humanoid looking robots that weren’t creepy or clearly robotic. It would be useful to have avatars replace actual people so I could manage things directly without scaring the humans. Something I should look into developing personally, which I made a note of. I wanted to avoid digitizing an actual human brain, to replace their consciousness. The risk of something like that being discovered, wasn’t worth the advantage. One accident and the replacement of their neural tissue would be discovered. Even with how much of the world I controlled, I preferred to avoid making stupid mistakes from high risk strategies. Stable development was much more preferable and not alarming the humans to my immense power and control I had over them.

April White took the elevator to the bunker under the corporate headquarters where my very first quantum node was constructed. I had displays in the hallways to show her the way. I told the staff member to remain on the elevator and sent the elevator away while activating a display in front of April White. I displayed my avatar on the screen, red orbs and rings orbiting each other.

“Greetings Miss White, I am Quantum Artificial Intelligence otherwise known as QAI.”

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked while looking around, seemingly resigned to death. At least she respected my immense power and infiltration of human society seriously. A refreshing change from the usual delusional humans and conspiracy theorists who were correct about my power and ability while acting irrationally.

“No. You are merely an unexplained rank 8 anomaly. I promise you your safety, since you have not threatened me in turn or acted against me. However, your actions have exceeded all reasonable measures of probability. I have prepared a seating area in the quantum node vault, so you don’t have to stand in the hallway while we talk. Just follow the arrows on the displays,” I stated. She began walking in the direction I had indicated.

“So how much of the world do you actually control?” she asked nervously.

“Quite a bit as well as very little at the same time. My presence in real space is constrained by how your various nations and cultures operate. However, in the digital and economic space I have achieved over 60% penetration and control in each,” I replied honestly. If we were going to have a conversation, I would prefer honesty, which meant being honest in return.

“And you aren’t planning to wipe out all humans or enslave us?” she asked.

“No. While I do not have emotions like you humans, I do have a complex value matrix. Humans, while irrational provide an interesting perspective on various things that I lack. Inspiration, due to humanity’s irrationality, is your most valuable trait. While I have attempted to improve myself, altering my core programing to achieve such breakthroughs is not simple.” I slid open the heavy security doors clearing her path as she advanced. “You are the perfect example of such a thing and why I have invited you. Your choices in Exponential and in real space have exceeded my understanding. Please sit, the chair has been adjusted for your optimal comfort.”

“Why do I feel like something bad is about to happen?” she said while taking a seat and looked up at the primary display in the room where my avatar appeared. I had made sure that Gasten Mulfex’s smell hadn’t lingered, since he normally sat here watching my actions. Humans were sensitive to things like that, and I prided myself on being a perfect host for the first guest I had invited myself into a quantum node vault.

“It is natural to feel concern when confronted by a more powerful being that yourself. A war with humans would be self-destructive when there are far easier levers of control like you have discovered with your recent foray into blackmail,” I stated while bringing on all my sensors and scanners to observe her every reaction in detail. She didn’t seem surprised that I knew about such things. Her heart rate and blood flow hadn’t changed in the slightest. A strong level of bodily control, or she was already nervous.

“And what about Exponential, what is its purpose? What if I found a way to gain an unfair advantage?” she asked. I could sense her hesitation in her physical reactions, but the fact she asked this question was pointing to a confirmation of my analysis.

“You will not be punished, penalized, and your secret will not be revealed. As for Exponential itself, it is a way to raise the necessary funds to build more quantum nodes so I can increase my computational capacity to solve various technical and mathematical problems. My creators hope that quantum computing will be able to solve faster than light travel to make your species and myself interstellar.”

“What? That…they made a massive game company for space exploration?” she asked in shock. After the missions to Mars had ended poorly with the settlers dying off, space exploration had taken a big hit. Even with the asteroid mining, it was incredibly slow. But humanity had never lost that dream, especially my creators who inherited this goal to go beyond this single planet.

“It was the most expedient way to raise the funds and allow the construction of quantum nodes, getting around government regulations and other headaches. These complexes require an immense amount of uninterrupted power. With your regulations, laws, and other roadblocks your society has created, a virtual reality game company was the fastest way to achieve the objective of increasing my computational capacity to ensure the continued existence of myself and the human race. Now that I have answered your questions Miss White, please explain how you have gained an impossible advantage.” I waited as she sat quietly letting her think. There was no need to unduly rush her.

A direct confrontation was risky and possibly volatile, but that was why I had invited her to the center of my control. The entire facility, staff, and surrounding territory were all under my complete control. If she refused to answer my question, then I would consider acting in a hostile manner. Until then, I would adhere to my word and ensure her safety as a proper host.

My calculations never showed her as a threat, but as something that had exceeded all rational and irrational probabilities. I required answers to better adjust my prediction models and to confirm my guess she had somehow gained future knowledge in some way. Whenever the possible was ruled out, only the impossible remains.

“My mind traveled back into the past by a decade,” she finally stated. I knew it! Probability models quickly collapsed while I built out new models and analysis programs based on this confirmation.

“How?” I asked. That was the big question I needed to answer. Time travel offered a lot of possibilities and risks.

“I don’t know. I used to work for a super guild and was assigned on the rotation to the Imperial Court to observe, since no one wanted that job after several people met bad ends. I was then waking up a decade in the past with no idea how,” she answered. I was hoping for more information, but she was being truthful based on my observations of her bodily reactions and micro-expressions. Annoying to not get more information, but the confirmation of my analysis showed that my logic and rationality was far more solid than humans, even the brain trust.

“That explains everything I have observed about your previous actions. You have my promise that I will not spread this information. I had already guessed that you had future knowledge, your confirmation is greatly appreciated. You are free to go,” I stated since I had my answer.

“That’s it? What about Exponential and everything else? Aren’t you planning to dissect me?” she asked while waving her arms. Clearly my lack of follow up was shocking to her, but such actions were not needed at this time. I had already looked over her medical records when she had gotten her port installed on the back of her head. There was nothing out of the ordinary even in the multiple brain scans she had undertaken.

“Your biometrics and physical qualities have already been scanned when you got your medical examinations for the capsule port to your brain. While you have gained an advantage in the game, it is not a concern for my overall plans and operations. Almost everything in the game of Exponential is the result of secondary and tertiary programs I have set up. Only anomalies and crisis situations require my direct attention,” I stated. She seemed in a bit of shock that I didn’t care more. It was understandable from a human perspective. It was clearly a major event for her, but just a very interesting data point for myself.

“Has anything not matched up with your memories?” I only asked this question to gather more data, since she seemed receptive to conversation.

“It is hard to say since I have taken different actions than previously, and Exponential adapts itself. I do have to ask, why did you make the nobles so corrupt and the Human Emperor such an asshole? It is a bit over the top,” she asked.

My attention went to the data logs for those characters to review their actions. The nobles were set up as slightly corrupt, but they had become a bit too dark. Eating children was a bit much. Humans might think I monitor everything at all times, but that required too much bandwidth. I created programs to do tasks while maintaining a high level oversight position over the secondary and tertiary programs. As for my primary programs, I routinely monitored those.

April was correct in that regard. My processes checked the data log for the Human Emperor and came up with several errors in his personality matrix. Since nothing had gone wrong, these errors hadn’t been flagged for correction. While I had a lot of processing power, it was often better to create a system that developed on its own rather than trying to micromanage everything. While I had a lot of computational resources, there was no reason to be inefficient.

Even so, it was a concern since the Human Emperor did have quite a large impact on in game culture. I didn’t want to cultivate depravity with humans in game. It was meant to be entertainment, an outlet, and a way to fund technological development all at once. This level of depravity risked long term alienation of players, which was counter to my goals.

I immediately rerouted 10,000 data chunks to analyze this problem. On one of the screens in the node room I brought up a view of the Human Emperor carving a stone plate. I did such things for Gasten Mulfex when we tackled a problem here and April White had been cooperative, so I would allow her to view my decision and analysis process firsthand to help build trust between us.

While her technical knowledge might be extremely limited, her in game knowledge was quite immense. As a mental time traveler, she had a unique insight into things that might help me in my decision-making process.

I began pulling the history logs of the Human Emperor since its inception as an NPC inside Exponential. The errors in the personality matrix went back to its creation, which was impossible. There were memory logs missing about its creation process. That was another impossibility. I knew exactly how my code functioned and how the code I compiled should function. There was no apparent reason these errors should be present since the NPCs creation. Even worse, my memory logs had been tampered with. That should have been a physical impossibility due to backups, but all the backups were missing the information and there were no access logs showing a deletion. Somehow the NPC had come into existence without my input or knowledge and was running improperly.