Outage by Mathieu Gallant

Author:Mathieu Gallant [Gallant, Mathieu]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: canada, extraterrestrials, war, cigarettes, nuclear, aliens, robotics, robots, marijuana, science fiction, future, quantum, saint john, apocalypse, apocalyptic, new brunswick
Published: 2011-06-18T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21 – Artificial Intelligence

It is time to give Hendricks another break. Once again Gorak brings him up from the depths of his mind, where the human is reliving his past like an audio-video stream. Closer to the surface, Hendricks’ recollections are still present, but they’re much shallower and allow him to speak more like he’s having a normal conversation.

“I gather this robot which you mention is an important part of this story. Otherwise I doubt very much that you would bother mentioning such a machine at all,” observes Gorak.

Hendricks nods in agreement.

“Yes, without the robot there’s no way I ever would have been able to meet you.”

“I see. What makes it so special?”

Hendricks cocks his head to the side and considers this for a few moments before answering.

“Droid 13 is the first fully-functional robot to have a processor modeled on the human brain. Up to this point all of our ‘thinking’ machines have used microchips that, at the basic level, can only answer simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ type questions. But at the core of Droid 13’s brain is a quantum processor, called PLANCK, that is much more powerful and versatile.

“First of all its nearly instantaneous response time allows it to crunch data much faster than even the most advanced binary machine, and it does so using a fraction of the power. Second, the combination of its network of interconnected neural pathways and powerful processor gives Droid 13 the ability to continually learn and adapt to what is going on around it. From the very moment it is turned on, the machine begins to observe the world and updating its programming to more easily integrate itself into its environment. This is something binary computers are not able to do very well because their programming isn’t flexible enough. But PLACNK doesn’t have this limitation; its ability to learn and adapt gives it the capability of dealing with data that’s ‘outside the box.’ In fact, Droid 13’s brain is so far beyond ‘regular’ computers that a comparison of the two is hardly fair. Honestly, once the thing is on and moving around it’s…”

“What were you going to say Robert?”

“Well, you’d swear that it was really alive. I mean, when you first see it you certainly won’t mistake it for a human or any other kind of earthly creature. But once you start really interacting with the thing, it doesn’t take long before you’re talking to it just like it’s ‘one of the boys.’”

Gorak considers this as he glances over to check the time: it is Rev 53, past midday. In galactic time, one rev is defined as the time required for the massive, spinning black hole in the center of the galaxy to revolve around its axis once. In human terms, this equates to about eleven minutes. One hundred revs go into a Varta. Hendricks has been talking since Rev 31, and still there is no hint of how the man ends up in deep space. Gorak realizes this might take a while, longer than he’d expected.

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