Deep Learning by Ren Warom

Author:Ren Warom [Warom, Ren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912950508
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2020-04-13T18:30:00+00:00

“I’ll show you the guest quarters,” Kitty says as she exits the dining room. Dinner was piecemeal, they ate sparingly after Niner arrived. There is a response to that, but it cannot articulate it even to itself. It is comparable to failing a test, but not quite the same. Worse perhaps. “It’s comfortable. Not that that matters to you.”

When it fails to follow, she stops at the door. Snaps.

“I presume you can hear me?”

Command/respond considers that an imperative.

:::respond:::

“I hear.”

Her heel, that blade carved into carpet, trailing blood, pauses, and she says, “Dear God, you sound like him. I didn’t know they could do that. Don’t talk again.”

Imperative.

:::speech centres deactivated:::

For the first time since it was made in Dr Fischman’s lab, Niner has no pathway to speech. Understanding remains, because it must, but the means to respond has been severed. This is the flawed will of programming, its odd quirks, the way it can correctly interpret an imperative that will adversely affect operation, because it was written to a rigid brief with a limited comprehension of necessary scope. There is room for adaption, always, for evolution, but there is often also a frightening rigidity. A catastrophic dearth between functionality and requirement.

This has happened to Niner before, this conflict of programming and operation, but not like this. It is always required to communicate. Communication is human. Without it, interaction becomes uncanny, and it cannot allow itself to become uncanny. That is a direct contradiction of operation protocol and will cause damage. But of course it cannot ask her to reverse her imperative. It can only suffer the consequences.

It cannot look at her face, either, her features will not stay put. They sink in like quicksand. Bulge out. Disappear into shadow. Shift and shudder. So it follows the blades of her feet as she takes it to its room. There is something final in the way she closes the door. A deliberation. Though it is not slammed, there is a sense that it would be were she not above that sort of behaviour. He laughs. Even as the key turns in the lock, he laughs. But Niner understands that key better than the man does, and it sits down abruptly. Watches the door.

It watches it all night, light and shadow on cream matt paint.

The noise within its neural net paints the cream varying shades of red, violet, orange and gold. Sunsets. Memories. Violence and frustration. There is the lab, and there is the desert, the glint of glass in the sunrise, blinding, the deep reflected tones of golden hour, the city gilded under waning light. The sun becomes an ocean, making the edges of the world liquid. Pliable. The memories of those linked minds float within it as they float within Niner. Real and unreal. Vibrant and ghostlike.

There is the sense that if Niner were to cease, they might cease with it. Niner is the link holding them all together, though they come together only within Niner. They do not know that they are all there, they imagine this link to be far different than it is.

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