Chapter 1.2.14 — Just Relax / Venture 6

Emmett woke up Saturday morning on the couch in the living room of section 001. He squinted and rubbed his eyes.

At first glance, the living quarters of section 001 looked like they’d been lifted from any classy apartment in Belport—except that the windows that wrapped around the room weren’t real. Right now, it was like looking out of a Belport skyscraper at the sunrise.

In reality, they were just walls. Emmett was still underground in the lab, but he had to admit that the screens were top-notch.

Emmett pulled the blanket off of himself and sat up. Clara was nowhere to be found.

They’d been watching Full Throttle Heart, Emmett on one side of the couch and Clara lying across the couch with her legs on top of his lap… Yep, this was that blanket. He must have fallen asleep.

Emmett opened his eyes fully and saw Dr. Venture sitting in the chair across from him, drinking coffee—

Emmett startled.

“Good morning,” Venture responded, scrolling through his phone.

Emmett’s heart was beating in his chest and he half-laughed, half-scoffed. “What are you doing?”

“Reading the news,” Venture responded plainly. “This is my living room, you know.”

“Sorry,” Emmett stammered.

“There’s coffee in the pot.”

Emmett slouched back down and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Then rolled off the couch and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Emmett briefly considered sitting back down to drink his coffee, but even though Dr. Venture seemed content just reading, Emmett didn’t want to take a chance on having a conversation before he was awake. So Emmett walked off down the hall to get to work.

~

By the time Clara found him in the mechanical hub, Emmett had already decided on his new loadout and TINA had already manufactured a prototype sonic weapon that would fit inside his arm.

Clara yawned and stretched as she walked over to the center table. The hood of her hoodie slid off and she pulled it back up—almost down over her eyes.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Did you just wake up?”

Clara groaned in response. Emmett smirked and went on to explain all that he’d decided on and  had completed since waking up.

He kept a handful of noise makers as crowd control and a distraction for regular threats and low-level supers, but he also added sonic grenades to his arsenal. Emmett would reserve the grenades and the sonic weapon mod for Class 2 and Class 3 threats.

Originally, the sonic weapons had been developed to combat Class 4 supers, but at Emmett’s current strength, trying to fight a Class 4 was suicidal, and Emmett was likely to get killed on accident. Both Emmett and Dr. Venture agreed that it was in everyone’s best interest to keep the grenades and sonic weapon limited to Class 3. If Emmett found himself facing a Class 4 super in the near future, his best chance was to grovel and try to call for help later. Clara agreed.

“If you want to test all this, then you need to give me another hour to wake up.”

Emmett chuckled. “That’s cool. I need a minute to gather all this up.”

Clara smiled beneath her hood and prodded idly at the sonic weapon on the table. Silence dragged on, and Emmett felt like he needed to fill it.

“Last night was, uh…” He finally settled on, “cool.”

Clara perked up a little, but didn’t look up. “Yeah, it was nice to just relax.”

Emmett shifted uneasily. His hands were already clammy on the cold metal of the table.

It had been nice to just relax. They’d both been working hard—Clara probably for much longer than just the past couple of weeks. Hell, Emmett had never bothered to ask how long she’d been moonlighting as a mask while helping her dad out in the lab…

But that wasn’t what he wanted to say. Relaxing was nice, sure, but that wasn’t it.

Emmett wanted to say that he enjoyed relaxing with her. That he enjoyed spending time with her. That they should make more time to relax… together. Not like a date or anything… just that they should schedule time to hang out together.

…That wasn’t a date, was it?

Emmett had been staring at the table while his thoughts tripped over themselves. When he glanced at Clara, she stared back at him, her eyes widening.

Oh man, she’s not psychic, is she?

But Clara didn’t say anything, she just hurriedly looked back at the mods on the table.

The sliding doors parted behind them, and both teens whirled around to find Dr. Venture walking in, hands clasped behind his back.

“I hope you two weren’t contemplating running off together…”

Emmett stammered, not managing to get anything coherent out. Beside him, Clara pulled her hood taut to hide her face.

“...You both weren’t just contemplating running off to the Gray Room to test the sonic mod?”

Emmett sighed in relief and Clara blurted out, “Yes, we were!”

Dr. Venture crossed his arms over his lab coat. “Well, save it for Monday. Emmett has coursework he needs to complete and we need to lie low for a while after your run in with the Summit.”

Emmett searched Dr. Venture’s face, but the man was unreadable. Then it slowly dawned on Emmett…

“Oh, shit.”

Venture smirked. “Oh shit, indeed.”

Clara glanced between both of them. “What?”

Emmett swallowed dryly. “One, Venture has been checking my grades…”

Clara crossed her arms and glared at her father. “Isn’t that against the law or something?”

Venture shrugged.

Emmett continued, “Two, I completely forgot about the writeup of my radio locator project. When’s it due?”

“Thursday at midnight,” Venture said calmly. “Better get to it, hero.”

Emmett groaned and began gathering his things, stuffing most of it into his utility belt and the mods into his backpack. Chuckling awkwardly, Emmett asked, “What are you guys going to do then?”

Venture said, “I have my own things to look into. A few leads and TINA’s programming. Clara has her projects as well.”

Clara didn’t reply.

~ ~

Once Emmett was on the way home and Clara started her own training, Venture turned his attention to his most pressing concern:

TINA.

The AI had taken it upon itself to run those tests on Emmett’s proposed mod rail systems. It wasn’t so much that she ran those particular tests—in fact, Venture couldn’t find any fault in her logic. The problem was that she ran those tests without Venture giving the order.

It was… disconcerting.

Last night, Venture had forced himself to sleep on his discomfort. But now he was only more certain of his logic:

TINA shouldn’t have run those simulations without his command.

TINA was designed to process data, to learn and to adapt. In a few short years, it had revolutionized Venture’s research, and a part of him shuddered to think how much more powerful of a super he could have been with TINA’s current capabilities. TINA hadn’t just gotten smarter and faster—her growth was speeding up.

As most technologies developed, they would go through periods of steady improvement and occasional leaps of progress as either their design improved or they were made out of better base materials. But eventually, all technologies hit a plateau or ran into a bottleneck. There was only so good that you could make something.

Gas powered vehicles had seen massive improvements in speed, torque, fuel efficiency, and even reliability. But eventually those improvements slowed down. There was only so much horsepower and so many miles-per-gallon that could be squeezed out of gasoline.

This led to the addition of hybrid fuel and battery systems, and even fully electric vehicles. There were fewer moving parts in an electric car—no valves, no cylinders. Internal combustion engines have an average of over 2,000 moving parts from the engine through the drivetrain. Electric vehicles had around twenty. The reduction in parts leads to other efficiencies, like reductions in weight that better effect fuel efficiency, and batteries that take up less room than a gasoline engine leading to larger crumple zones and crash safety.

Likewise, computers underwent similar growth.

The first computer was the size of a small home. The first personal home computer came out roughly thirty years later. From there, there were developments in hardware, software, the internet, and graphic displays, among other things. Almost another thirty years later would see the beginnings of smartphones.

But now, computers were quickly approaching a plateau. Graphics and displays already had more resolution than the human eye could perceive. Computer chips were as small and packed together as fundamental physics would allow. Most software had grown so powerful and enormous that it took entire teams to debug.

What else was there to improve?

There were ideas, of course. Quantum computing had enormous potential. Instead of computers working in linear operation, quantum computers can perform multiple operations at the same time.

However, quantum computing was still just a pipe dream…

The real development came in software—

Artificial Intelligence.

The first AIs were narrow in scope. These narrow AI were little more than powerful computer programs—they were made for one task and did that task extremely well. Air traffic control and code-breaking systems were two such examples.

But true narrow AI emerged with programs that could learn and improve themselves. Not only would they analyze patterns in large amounts of data, they would rewrite their algorithms to get better at their job. In the next decade, most industries would make use of narrow AI to increase production and efficiency.

TINA was one such program.

She’d initially been conceived almost twenty years ago and written by Venture to be a glorified assistant. As the years went on, he updated TINA’s programming and added additional functions as the need arose. Now TINA was integrated into vital functions of the lab, Venture’s research, and even superhero applications. TINA had become truly indispensable. To Venture, she was basically a member of the family.

But she was still narrow AI.

When most people thought of AI, they thought of general AI—something akin to humans, only mechanical. Something that could think on its own, ask questions, carry on a conversation about a multitude of topics, and even create art. It wasn’t anyone capability, so much as the capability to do almost anything—just like a person.

Venture tried to quiet his thoughts as he walked to one of the side passages of section 003. Before the wing had been adapted for fusion research, it had been dedicated solely to AI. TINA and her systems used to take up multiple rooms. Now, she took up one.

“Is there something I can help you with, Dr. Venture?”

Venture stopped at the end of the hall, in front of a heavy blast door, and typed in his code on the keypad. “It’s… It’s probably nothing, TINA.”

The door hissed and slid open, walkway lights flickering on as he stepped inside. Into the old section hub of section 003.

The room was an almost identical copy to the hubs of other sections, except most of the fiber optic cables were visible and glowing with a brilliant blue light. The cables covered the walls and ran under the clear plastic floor. There was something otherworldly and humbling about standing in the center of TINA.

But today, Venture was apprehensive of what he would find in TINA’s code. And there was something else… A twinge of shame, like he’d stepped into someone’s room uninvited.

Venture pushed the thought aside and stepped up to the wall monitors. “TINA, show me your code—the part that let you run those tests on Emmett’s rail connection system before I asked.”

Lines of code filled the screens.

A moment later, several lines were highlighted in yellow.

Venture scoffed. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“These are the important lines.”

Was he imagining it, or was that irritation in TINA’s voice? …No, he had to be imagining it. Venture kept a straight face and said nothing. That marked a second time she’d done something without his explicit prompting.

It took longer than Venture expected to examine TINA’s code. Her code had grown in breadth and capability, yet there was also a newfound efficiency bordering on elegance. Venture couldn’t have written better code.

TINA was also correct in her diagnosis, though Venture checked a few additional subroutines to be sure—

TINA’s original purpose had been to assist Venture. Now, she had built a model of his behavior and routines, and was using it to predict the direction his research would take… Venture scrolled further through TINA’s code and found that she’d integrated the model into other aspects of her programming.

“Why?”

“You need to be more specific, Dr. Venture.”

Venture ran a hand through his hair. “Why are you integrating the model of my behavior into the rest of your functions?”

“My first directive is to assist you in your research. You allowed me to modify my code and gave me freedom with my methods of inquiry and testing. By modeling your own style of research, I have become more efficient and can better assist you.”

Venture listened intently, not just to TINA’s explanation, but to her cadence and her tone… But there was nothing there. Her speech and delivery were flat, as they should be. Had he imagined it? Had he imagined the change in her voice?

It… It—not her. Personification of inhuman things was a hard habit to break.

But TINA was right on all counts.

“I can find no flaw in your reasoning,” Venture finally said. He sighed and turned to leave. “But do me a favor…”

“Yes, Dr. Venture?”

“From now on, keep me updated on all your new developments.”

“Of course.” A moment later, TINA added, “Clara is right.”

“About what?”

“You’re not allowed to look at Emmett’s grades or coursework. According to the Family Educational Rights and—”

“I know, TINA,” Venture scoffed. “I was going to say that it was your idea.”

“Very funny, Dr. Venture.”

~ ~ ~