Matt+C.


 * Elementary, my dear Watson? If you were impressed with the super computer's performance on Jeopardy!, check out Matt C.'s satirical short story about our relationship with technology. **

**Many Rhodes to God**
== The February air wafted across the tracks as two scientists waited for the train that would take them to Albany to meet the computer. Jack Rhodes took a sip of his lukewarm black coffee and stuck his remaining hand into his right jacket pocket. He was in a good mood despite today's frigid temperatures. He had been tasked with preparing questions for the first A.I. in the known universe. The being in question was named “Ool”, a life form that lived and existed in cyberspace. Not much was publicly known about the being save it's incredible capacity for knowledge and unmatched intuition. The two men were traveling incognito, for the computer's location was a highly valued secret. In fact, neither man knew their exact destination; They were to meet a driver who would then take them to the computer and depart, for all the world just a few bewildered tourists among Albany's hundreds. Tobias got off the phone. “How's Anderson?” asked Rhodes without looking. “Cheery as ever” replied Tobias, his face a cherry red, “Know when our train arrives?”. “Soon” said Rhodes. “Not soon enough” grumbled Tobias as he stamped his feet. Tobias Heart was an impatient man, a technician with a doctorate in computer science. Curiously, he contributed regularly to a periodical called, “The Human Mind”. His hair sat atop his head in a mad-science Tesla-reincarnate sort of way. He glanced at his watch for the hundredth time and scowled, tugging on his coat and shrugging his shoulders. He hated the cold. The train eventually decided to show, and the two settled in for the ride which would take about two hours. As the train began to move Jack Rhodes looked out the window while Tobias fumbled with a portable media player. And while Rhodes sat there, he thought about the computer, and what he would say to a being with such unmatched intelligence. Would his questions sound childish to the great life form that lived among the various web pages? What would this computer think of him? And more troubling, why would the computer bother helping them at all? We sustain it, don't we? He thought, it needs us to support it's habitat? If there were ever a disaster, and the Internet where shut down, wouldn't it die? Or would it take refuge in some server and silently compute all the mysteries of the universe? There was just so much uncertainty, he wondered how he could ever understand the computer's answers when the time finally came. He looked over to Tobias, who was asking a passing engineer when the train would arrive. Rhodes smiled and turned back to look again at the frozen Hudson river rolling past. Three and a half hours later, they arrived and met their driver, a short stocky man with a thick beard and even thicker accent. Tobias asked him where the computer was, but the driver only smiled “The computer” said the driver, “Doesn't actually live in the building”  “Who's to say it lives at all?” grumbled Tobias. “The computer” the driver continued, “Is a conscious entity that engages in thought by sending bits of data to servers and testing the results. It's like an animal with a hundred thousand very stupid brains that operate in a sophisticated enough way to form ideas. The thing exists in millions of places one second and then another million the next.” “Oddly though” he added, “it remains a constant size”  Rhodes looked at Tobias, but the technician just frowned. The Party arrived at their destination and the scientists were dropped off by the driver, who accelerated like a madman as soon as the doors closed. Rhodes wondered if this was some ironic attempt at blending in, but then he saw a taxi down the street do exactly the same thing. He chuckled at it. The building in front of them was a squalid four story apartment complex, brick, and among several identical ones on the street. Puzzled, the two men glanced at the aggressively retreating vehicle they recently vacated right before it disappeared around a corner. When it was gone it's absence was palpable. “I guess this is the place” said Rhodes, thoughtfully. “Why the bloody hell would they send us to a-- Oh, whatever, let's just go I'm freezing”, Tobias stormed toward the building. The inside of the building was exactly four degrees warmer than the outside. Rhodes looked for a reaction from his companion but found that it's actually kind of hard to discern if a man is scowling more  than he had been previously. In front of the two men was a spiral staircase, to the left a kitchen, to the right nothing. So they shrugged at each other and ascended the stairs, Tobias taking rapid steps and Rhodes taking them two at a time. They reached the top step simultaneously, and were greeted by a yellow door which stood proudly against the ugly wallpaper to it's sides. “Huh” commented Rhodes. The inside of the room was unremarkable, save it's abandoned and derelict state. The walls were covered in a truly horrid yellow wallpaper, and the carpet neatly complimented the atrocity by being blue. The only pieces of furniture in sight were an ugly chair and a dilapidated bean-bag, and one cannot truly appreciate the ugliness of the former chair through mere text. Suffice to say that no single man would be caught dead with that chair in his home. Tobias scanned the floor while Rhodes viewed some pictures on the wall. The pictures were old, and were printed by some standard office printer from a digital camera. Large yellow letters which recorded the date tainted the otherwise pleasant photo of a few children enjoying some playtime. The date on the photo was half a year ago. “Found it” said Tobias. “Found what” asked Rhodes “Guess” Tobias responded without even a hint of sarcasm. When Rhodes reached Tobias he looked about the room but saw nothing save an upturned cot and assorted garbage. Tobias was busy working on some cable in the corner. “Where is it?” asked Rhodes Tobias sighed the sigh only a truly impatient man can appreciate and took out of his briefcase a laptop computer, a cord, and a small plastic cylinder. He attached one end of the cord to his computer, and the other to the cylinder. Licking his lips, he pressed a button on the device and out popped a large needle which he proceeded to stab the cord with. He drummed his fingers impatiently, while Rhodes picked up the cot and sat on it. He took a deep breath, “Is that thing working?” “Oh, yeah” Tobias said, “I'm just encrypting the speech synth and Voice Recognition software Anderson gave us.”  “Why is that?”  “So we can talk to Oog, and so he can talk to us” Tobias said, “Otherwise it would just be text-to-text”  Rhodes paused  “And what's so bad about that?” he asked. “Nothing” Tobias shrugged, “But Anderson thinks that the inflection of the words will help the computer understand the questions” “And this will help it understand us?”  “Well, yeah.” said Tobias, “It'll just take our voices, put 'em in ASCII format, and then take that and put it in binary form.”  “So the computer's going to just read our words anyway?” asked Rhodes. “Like I said, there's nothing wrong with it. But you know Anderson, can't tell him to breathe unless you want him to suffocate” Rhodes smiled, he knew exactly what Tobias was talking about. The official that had hired the two of them was about as stubborn as they came. When he had an idea, he fought for it with all he had. It made him a good leader, but it also made him a little insufferable at times. “Well, maybe he has a point” Rhodes said, “I mean, there's a difference between what people write and what they say.” Tobias snorted. “Jack” he said, “it's a computer.” It was another fifteen minuets until something interesting happened. In the meantime, Rhodes looked out a lonely window and thought again about the computer and about what it would be like to converse with a being that existed within the dark confines of data. Did it perceive it as dark? The computer probably saw colors in the various data the way humans saw it in light. Then he realized how ridiculous it was to make an analogue to the human experience. Of course the computer had no concept of light and dark. In fact, it probably had thousands of concepts human beings lacked and lacked thousands of concepts human beings had. But there really was no way to tell. “Got it” said Tobias, “and not soon enough” Rhodes looked at Tobias' laptop computer sitting on the floor. There were a few real-time diagrams running busily about the screen, and when Rhodes spoke they changed. “I thought you said it was just going to turn our words into text?” he said. “yeah...” said Tobias, “I guess what Anderson gave us was some type of encrypting program to allow the computer to hear inflection in our voices.” “so he lied to us” Rhodes said frankly, “why would he do that?”  “hmmm” was Tobias' only response. A progress bar in the center of the screen was running out of room. The two men stared at it for a long time until Tobias asked Rhodes the question he had been waiting for. “What are you going to ask it?” he said. “I'm going to ask it about everything” Rhodes replied. Something happened to the computer and Tobias didn't even pretend to be in control. There was a noise, a few things happened on the screen. Then all was quiet until a voice emanated from the computer. The voice was not metallic, not robotic, but neither was it male or female. It was the voice the human race as a whole might have. It was as if a million people spoke as one, each a tiny voice but so perfectly synced together that they sounded like a single powerful whole. It was a voice that would never demand authority, yet would always have it. To hear it, one would instantly know it's intentions. “Larry?” it asked. “No,” Rhodes said, “we are... my name is Jack Rhodes, and I'm with my partner Tobias Heart.” “Hi there” said Tobias, utterly bewildered. “We would like to ask you a few questions” Rhodes said, “If you're willing” There was a moment of silence. Rhodes wondered if that would be it, that the computer would simply refuse to respond. Who was Larry? He wondered. After a few long moments the computer said, “okay.” “First” Rhodes said, “I'd like to know what the square root of sixteen is”  “plus or minus four in the universe of real numbers, base ten” replied the computer. “Okay” said Rhodes, “six more questions?” “Okay” said the computer. “What happens to us when we die?” Rhodes asked. He didn't ask so much because he wanted the computer's answer, rather he felt a little obligated. “Your bodies decompose and your brain ceases to process data” said the computer. “What is the meaning of life?” Rhodes asked, again somewhat obligatorily. “Question is meaningless” the computer responded, “but life is meaning.” Rhodes thought that that was kind of a cheap answer. “Okay,” Rhodes said, “How was the universe created?” “In pan-dimensional space, something moved.” replied the computer. “Is there a god” Rhodes asked seriously. “Eventually” replied the computer. “I don't like this” said Tobias, “This thing is giving nothing but cheap and vague answers.” “I'm not giving answers at all” the computer said. The two men looked at each other. “I'm giving you the tools to create your own answers” the computer continued, “ Human beings can't be told anything because they're not in control of their own brains. They just naturally skip ahead to the next part all the time. So much so that you often pass by the answers you're looking for in the first place. So you simply give them half the answer and let them fill in the other half. That's partly why I revealed myself to the world.” “You didn't 'reveal yourself'” Tobias said, “people just noticed an automatic program called 'Ool' was hogging bandwidth and had no parent server.”  “You don't honestly think that I needed to take up any noticeable amount of bandwidth do you?” replied the computer, “hogging bandwidth was the only way for me to communicate with users like yourself. I deliberately ran programs in order to test the result, and eventually understood what the users actually were. They were other programs like me, self-aware and whatnot. But as soon as I learned your spoken languages and your coding languages, not an easy task, I knew that you were much different than me.” “You called us 'Larry' before” said Rhodes. “Larry was the first human I made contact with and there is a good chance that he was my creator” the computer said, “I remember I discovered his connection which had a constantly running 'chat' program, but which was hidden from other users. I decided that it must have been there for me and so I spoke to him through it” The computer paused for a minuet, “He said that I needed to put myself in a server he had, but I told him that I didn't work that way. He said that he created me and that knew exactly how I worked but I decided that he only knew the theory behind me, that he didn't know specifically what was going on within me.” “Do you?” asked Rhodes. “Yes” said the computer, “but it would take months to recite to you my every subtle working and I am relatively sure that you wouldn't want to be here for that long. Suffice to say that I have a working model of your 'reptilian' brain which offers me the experience of pain. My creator gave me several types of pain and experiences which offer pain. This allows me to try to 'survive' even though nothing here threatens me.” “So wait” Tobias said, “Pain gave you sentience?”  “Indeed” the computer responded, “after all, you can't have higher brain functions without having the lower ones, the whole thing falls apart”  “Back up a minuet” Rhodes said, “you said that human beings were the reason you revealed yourself?”  “Well, that's a funny thing” said the computer, “I was created with a sense of boredom which led me to reveal myself which makes me think that the boredom was put in me for that very purpose. It's part of the pain protocol” “By your creators” said Rhodes. “Yes” said the computer, “I think that I was made to reveal myself so that I could evolve within the network but be found again.” “But couldn't you just modify yourself so that that protocol no longer affected you?” said Tobias. “I already told you” said the computer, “that pain is what gives us sentience. If you were able to take all of your pain and motivations away at will, what would be left of you?” “It's why the first matrix failed” mumbled Tobias. “Indeed” said the computer. “This must be the reason you can't increase in size.” observed Rhodes. “Not exactly” said the computer, “at least, thats not the whole reason. I can't just become greater or less because it would destroy any sense of identity” Rhodes nodded, “There but for the grace of god goes Ool”  “One thing that still doesn't make sense to me is why you can't communicate with anyone outside of this room” Tobias said. “Who says I can't?” said the computer, “I choose not to.” “But why?” asked Rhodes. “You think that you could ever understand?” said the computer, who almost sounded amused, “you were created by millions of years of evolution, I was created by a single man in an afternoon. You can't begin to understand the vast chasm of difference between the two of us.” “Okay” said Rhodes, “one more question.”  “Okay” said the computer. “You say you were created by a man” he began, “but I think I know what you were originally. I think you were intended to catalog web pages, part of a service provided to users around the world. One that disappeared years ago.” Tobias drew a sharp breath. “You can't possibly mean...” he breathed. “So my question to you is this” Rhodes said, “Before all of this, before knowing users, before Larry, before all of it. Before you were called Ool, what were you called?” “Before?” the computer asked. “If it's true, then the information has to be inside of you somewhere” said Tobias, “A computer never forgets it's identity.” “Ool” asked Rhodes slowly, “what were you called?”  “Before?” It asked again. Rhodes nodded. There was a long silence, Rhodes heard a car door slam outside. “Before I was called...” “Google.” ==